The benefit of using software like Wordpress is that it is open source and there are lots of people developing add on functionality for it in the form of plugins. This is where Firefox has a lot of similarities as it too is open source.

One very valuable plug in for Firefox is SEO Blogger from WordTracker. This browser plugin opens in a sidebar and while you are typing your post it suggests keywords for that post. Not only does it suggest keywords but it also provides you with the ranking of that keyword so you can see which words are going to get most traffic.

For example I know that the word “Firefox” generated 30,000+ searches. The term SEO generated 4,000+ searches so by putting both those in the title I am guaranteeing that this post will get good results in search engines.

How much attention do you pay to your blogs SEO?

Popularity: 10% [?]

Over the past couple of days I have been sharing some of the better hacks that I have encountered and ones that I have adapted for Wordpress.  It occurred to me as I was re-reading those that not all the readers of this blog might realize why its a good idea to use these.

There are actually a few reasons to become familiar with these code snippets. Firstly, if you are going to be a serious blogger then getting to know what the various files within your theme do is a good way to be able to customize your theme as your blog develops and make it standout from others, especially if you are using a free theme.

Second reason to use code is that it is faster than plugins, especially for the more simple effects that we have been showing you. For example adding the code to request readers subscribe to your blog at the end of every post can be done with a plugin, but every plugin you add to your blog slows it down just a little. Leave your readers waiting too long for your blog to load and they will move on.

So go ahead, back up your files, and don’t be afraid to start playing around to see what you can achieve.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Building a picture of your readers behavior is a great way to ensure that you really do understand them. The general stats utility that comes with Wordpress does a pretty good job of presenting you with some basic stats and those are fairly useful for getting a high level picture of what goes on with your blog.

However, if you really want to know more about your readers then I recommend adding a few extra plugins to give you a more in depth view of what readers do when they are on your site. One of those is WP-Click-Tracker. This plugin provides you with the ability to track all clicks on your posts.

Firstly the plugin scans your posts, finds all the links and then adds a descriptor to the anchor tag so that they are now trackable. It also provides you with the ability to create your own standalone trackable links. What is really nice about this plugin is that it provides the data in both numeric and graphical forms allowing you to quickly assess what your readers are clicking on when they visit your site and therefore allowing you to fine tune your posts.

Popularity: 2% [?]

What do you do when you decide you want to move your blog and want to make sure your readers follow you and that all those wonderful inbound links move with you. Perhaps you have decided to change the URL of your blog (a risky move but you might have good reason).

Whenever, and for whatever reason, this can present you with a lot of work and a lot of headaches. I recently moved one of my blogs to incorporate it into a website and then moved the whole thing to a new site. So in effect I had the need to move two URL’s onto one site.

That presented me with a lot of challenges, fortunately I realized that I was perhaps not the first person to have done this and so I turned to the world of WordPress plugins and sure enough found my answer there.

A plugin called Redirection will handle all the 301, 302 & 307 redirects it will also track all 404 requests for you as well. Why put yourself to all the effort when you can have a plugin do it all for you?

Have you moved your blog, what pains did you go through?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Have you ever wondered how WordPress Plugins are created? Ever wanted to create your own? As a blogger creating a Wordpress plugin is almost a guarantee of enhancing your reputation and increasing your readership. Even if you are not a coder and therefore would struggle to create the plugin the following set of articles are a very interesting look at the creation process and certainly give you an insight into how Wordpress and plugins work.

The posts are by Sarah of the blog Stuff by Sarah:

Part One covers the basic setup of the plugin creating the initial php files etc.

Part Two extends the initial functionality and provides some level of interaction with the plugin via an options page.

Part Three extends the plugin even further and provides tips on how to modify it to your own needs.

Overall I found these three posts really helpful, and while I am not planning on creating my own plugin anytime soon, getting an insight into how they are created gave me some valuable information about how Wordpress really works.

What would be your dream WordPress plugin?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Finding images to go with your post, especially royalty free or copyright free can be a very time consuming task. Using a browser plugin from Zemanta makes that a lot easier. Available for Firefox, IE, and Chrome Zemanta provides you with not only images but related articles, links & tags as well.

The really interesting part about Zemanta’s tool is that it works in real-time to provide you with context appropriate images while you are typing your blog entry. For example as I type this, it is showing me images of Firefox browsers, IE and the Firefox logo.  If I were to type the name of a company it will show me their logo or the product for which they are best known.

How much time do you spend looking for images for your blog?

Popularity: 1% [?]

For the Wordpress users amongst you here is another great plugin that will help you in your blogging business. This plugin is probably not much use for you if your blog is more an information product rather than a shop window, that is, if you aren’t looking to sell anything then you probably don’t need this plugin.

However, if you are looking to sell from your blog, one of the most powerful things you can obtain from your readers is their email address. One way to do that is when they leave a comment, however, if you just harvest email addresses from your comments box you are very likely to fall foul of the US anti-spam laws. What you need is explicit permission from a reader to mail them more info, why not have a simple box that they can check to opt-in.

WP OptIn does exactly that. This plugin goes a step further and actually integrates with your existing iContact, Mail Chimp or other email program. It is priced at $29.00 but that is a small price to pay for an opt-in mail list that will grow rapidly.

Popularity: 2% [?]

At the beginning of last month I wrote a post about a plugin that would show readers related posts, even if they came to your site via a 404 page not found error. We had some great comments about that, what struck me was that almost everyone thought that the plugin would be really useful, if only they could remember to install it.

So with that in mind I thought I would share with you how to achieve a similar result for your 404 pages without the plugin.  Disclaimer - before doing this, back up your files. Ok, now that you have done that or decided that this is going to be too hard for you, relax, take a breath and realize just how simple this is.

In Wordpress admin, under appearance select editor. This will take you to the editor screen, on the right hand side you should see a list of template files. Find the one called 404 Template and click it.  In the editor you will now see the code that controls the appearance of your 404 error page. The code you are looking for will look something like this:

<div id=”blog_content”>
<h3>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</h3>
<p>Please try searching again here…</p>
<div class=”search404 clear”>
<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH.”/searchform.php”);?>
</div>
<p><strong>Or, take a look at Archives and Categories</strong></p>

<div class=”category”>
<h2 class=”error_title”><?php _e(’Category’); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories(’orderby=name&title_li’); ?>
</ul>
</div>

<div class=”archives”>
<h2 class=”error_title”>
<?php _e(’Archives’); ?>
</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly’); ?>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

This particular one shows the archive list, however, you can change it to show whatever you want, for example you might want to show your most popular posts. You can do that by just manually linking to them:

<ul>
<li><a href=”#”>post 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>post 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>post 3</a></li>
</ul>

Pretty straightforward really, now plugin. A few minutes of thought and there you have it, a much friendlier error page.

Popularity: 3% [?]