Business Blogging Pros

VaultPress vs BackupBuddy Vs Updraft Plus

I recently decided to stop relying upon my web hosting company for daily backups.  In the process I evaluated three WordPress backup plugins:

• VaultPress
• BackupBuddy
• UpdraftPlus

Bottom Line: for me, UpdraftPlus  was the best choice, though for most people I thing VaultPress would be fine.

VaultPress

VaultPress is offered by Automatic, the same people behind WordPress.com. VaultPress stores the backups on Automatic's servers. There is no option to store your backups elsewhere. It can be inexpensive - if you dig a bit you can find the option whereby the charge is only $5/month.

I have several clients using VaultPress and it has always performed flawlessly.

There are two things you should know about VaultPress:

1. It backs up the WP-Content folder (and it's subfolders and contents) and nothing else.  For most people that is just fine, but I have clients with additional folders in the root of the site containing videos, podcasts, etc.  If the site were to go down, restoring just wp-content would not be enough.
2. It backs up only tables in the database containing the 'wp_' (or whatever you have chosen) prefix.  There is a plugin I use (Digital Access Pass) that creates its own tables in the database with the prefix 'dap_'.  Whatever backup tool I use needs to backup everything in the database.

Bottom line for me was that VaultPress did not give me the functionality I needed.

BackupBuddy

On paper, BackupBuddy looked like the perfect choice.

• It can be configured to backup every file, including custom folders you have created in the root of your website.  
• It can be configured to backup the entire database.
• If offers several options as to where it stores the backups.You can store the backups on your website, or offsite in Amazon S3, Dropbox, etc.
• In fact, you can have it store multiple copies of the backups in multiple different repositories for redundancy.

One negative: BackupBuddy does not support WordPress Multisite.

After using BackupBuddy for a few weeks however, I found that it simply was not robust. I have a couple dozen little websites and blogs.  Almost every day, I would receive error messages telling me that the backup process failed on at least three of them, which meant I would have to go investigate and manually re-initiate the backup process.  If it was always failing on the same three websites then I could find the problem and fix it.  Not so however. I frequently had failures one sites that had run fine to several days. When I explained the problem to their support guy, his response was:

"My own personal approach is that if the hosting can be a bit flakey sometimes then I don't bother with chasing up the occasional backup failure on a site"

I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it. Not only is the backup process not robust, I found that the Restore process suffered from the same non-robustness. I was in the process of moving some of my websites to a different hosting company, and found that the backup files created by BackupBuddy were so large that I could never get them to successfully upload to the new server without timing out.

The bottom line with BackupBuddy was that I had to babysit it way too much.

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is the premium version of the free Updraft plugin. I offers several features that the free version does not have. (You can find a comparison chart here.)

UpdraftPlus offers all the features that BackupBuddy does (or at least the features important to me) and it just works. (It also supports WordPress Multisite but I have not tested it there.)

I've been using it for about a week now on over a dozen websites and it has operated without a hiccup. I've used the Restore functions to move websites between servers and it worked very smoothly (UpdraftPlus divides the backup into several zip files instead of one huge one, thus avoing the timeout issue.)

 

Update to WordPress 4.4.1 Causes Redirect Loop

Many people who quickly updated their WordPress sites to 4.4.1 were met with a rude surprise: Accessing the site's home page causes a redirect loop. 

If this has happened to you then log in to your dashboard.  Go to Settings->General.  Make sure there are no uppercase characters in these two fields:

WordPerss Address (URL)
Site Address (URL)

These two values may also specified in wp-config.php:

define('WP_HOME','http://yoururl.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://yoururl.com');

If there is an uppercase character in these URLs then WordPress 4.4.1 will go into an infinite redirect loop

 

Tracking EBook Downloads

Almost every blogger these days has an eBook available for free download. It would be nice to know how many times that eBook has been downloaded, wouldn't it? Fortunately, Google Analytics provides us with a way.You can create an 'Event'.

Note: Google is slowly migrating from it's classing analytics code (ga.js) to Universal Analytics (analytics.js) To determine which you are using, do a 'Vire Source' on any page in your blog and look for 'ga.js' or analytics.js'.

Event Tracking with ga.js

Google has a page that describes setting up event tracking but here it is in a nutshell:

Let's say you have two ebooks as well as several other items available for download. Right now the dowload link for the first ebook probably looks something like this:

<a href="http://blablabla/ebook1.pdf">Click Here to Download EBook 1</a>

To this, you would add something like:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Downloads', EBooks', 'Book 1']);"

The entire download link then becomes:

<a href="http://blablabla/ebook1.pdf" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Downloads', EBooks', 'Book 1']);">Click Here to Download EBook 1</a>

This allows you to:

• Track downloads separately from any other events you might create.
• Track EBook downloads separately from your other downloads
• Seperately track the number of downloads of each ebook.

Event Tracking with analytics.js

Google has a page that describes setting up event tracking but here it is in a nutshell:

Let's say you have two ebooks as well as several other items available for download. Right now the dowload link for the first ebok probably looks somehting like this:

<a href="http://blablabla/ebook1.pdf">Click Here to Download EBook 1</a>

To this, you would add something like:

onClick="ga('send', 'event', 'Downloads', 'Ebooks', 'Book 1');"

The entire download link then becomes:

<a href="http://blablabla/ebook1.pdf" onClick="ga('send', 'event', 'Downloads', 'Ebooks', 'Book 1');">Click Here to Download EBook 1</a>

This allows you to:

• Track downloads separately from any other events you might create.
• Track EBook downloads separately from your other downloads
• Separately track the number of downloads of each ebook.

Viewing Event Metrics in Google Analytics

Log in to your Google Analytics account. Go to Behavior->Events->Top Events to see how many times your ebook has been downloaded.

 

 

Video Missing from RSS Feeds

One of the frequent complaints I hear is that a YouTube video imbedded in a blog post does not appear in the blog's RSS feed.  This is also true for the 'Subscribe via Email' facilities found on most blogs.

The sad truth is that RSS is not a multimedia protocol. 

For our own clients, we have a routine we have written that detects when the WordPress function the_content() is being used for an RSS feed. It scans the post and replaces the embedded YouTube video with an image.  The image is linked back to the blog post.

The result is that RSS feed consumers wil see the image, click on it, and view the video in the original blog.

Which Website Pages Are Your Mobile Visitors Viewing?

When creating a mobile-optimized website, It is important to create the shortest path possible (the leat number of taps) to the content mobile visitors want. Google Analytics allows us to do that, though it is a little laborious.

1. Drill down in the left sidebar menu through Behavior and Site Content.  Click on All Pages.
2. Locate the Secondary DImension drop-down above the header. Drill down through Vistors and click on Device Category.
3. The display will refresh with a new Device Category column.
4. Click on the new Device Category column header to sort by that column.

 

Creating a Client Area for FIle Uploads

We are currently creating a website for a printing company who needs an access-controlled area for clients to upload files. One of the best things about Wordpress is the nearly endless supply of plugins that add functionality. And one of the worst things about Wordpress is the nearly endless supply of plugins.

Many are out of date and do not work with the latest releases of Wordpress. Many don't work at all or are not ready for prime time. We expend considerable energy evaluating plugins and running them through our own internal certification process before foisting them on unsuspecting clients. After all, our clients trust us to deliver websites that work.

For providing client upload functionality, we like Smartypants Client Document Manager the best. It does require the use of an additional plugin, Theme My Login in order to make access control be seamless for the user, but the end result works very well and gets along nicely with the other plugins and themes we use.

 

Online Image Resizing Tool

I found a great (and simple) online tool for resizing images.

While both Typepad and WordPress can automatically resize images in the body of a page or post, often you need to resize an image manually for placement in the sidebar.

This tool at http://www.photosize.com does exactly that and nothing more.

Checking our Sites for iPad Compatibility

I was meeting with a new client yesterday and suddenly realized that everyone around the table had an iPad except me.  While my client is an industry leader, they are not a high-tech company by any means.  The message to me is that it is becoming imperative to test the websites and blogs we build not only for compatibility with the popular browsers, we need to be testing for iPad compatibility as well.

"My Blog Posts aren't Showing Up on Facebook and LinkedIn"

At least once a month someone calls me or send me an email with this problem.  The purpose of this article is to help you troupbleshoot it.

The fact that your posts aren't showing up in TWO places is significant.  It means the problem is not at either Facebook or LinkedIn.  What else is in common?

• Are both Facebook and LinkedIn being fed from Twitter?
• Are both being fed your RSS feed via Feedburner?

If the answer to either of those is 'Yes' then you have an additional point of commonality to investigate.

The Most Common Cause

Note the date of your last blog post that appears on Facebook and Twitter. That's important because the problem is mostlikely associated with the very next post, the first one that didn't get published on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Usually when I investigate the problem, I discover the culprit is the client has pasted directly from MS-Word.  Most people have 'Replace straight quotation marks with smart quotation marks' turned on, for example.  Smart Quotes are not legal characters in an RSS feed and will bring things to a halt.

Follow these steps to fix the offending post:

1. Carefully look for curly single and double quote characters.  Replace then with the stright variety.
2. Switch to HTML mode (There is an HTML tab at the upper right of the Body field).  Strip out everything that is not the text of your post.
3. Switch back to Rich Text mode and reformat.

Accessing Your Feedburner Stats

This text will be replaced

Here's where to look in Feedburner to see how many people are subscribing to your blog via RSS. Since Feedburner can also deliver your blog via email, We'll also show you how to determine that numner as well as the actual email addresses of your subscribers.

If the video isn't visible Click Here.

TypePad Micro is the Bomb!

'Bomb', as in 'Fantastic'.

I've started a TypePad Micro blog as an alternate stream for my foodie blog. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I tweet the progress of my Sunday evening meal preparation.  Just to torment you, this Sunday I prepared:

• Sliced FIlet Minon on a bed of Cippolini Onions and Wild Mushrooms
• Prosciutto-wraped Mozzarella on a bed of diced Heirloom Tomatoes

I usually include photos of the preparation as well as the finished product. While I can do so via TweetDeck, its a lot of button-pushing.

With TypePad Micro there is an easier way.

1. I created a TypePad Micro blog under my main Fumbling Foodie account.  I called that blog 'Fast Food''. 
2. TypePad provides each blog with a special email address.  You can create a blog post be simply sending an email to that address.
3. I take a picture using my iPhone and then email it to that address.
4. My TypePad Micro blog is connected to my Twitter account.  Each time a new blog post is published it will automatically tweet it for me.

BTW, you can see photos on my TypePad Micro blog of meal here and here. 

New WordPress Version Released

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges.  If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended. 

We've seen a flurry of new Wordpress versions recently:

11/12/2009 - Version 2.8.6
10/20/2009 - Version 2.8.5

08/12/2009 - Version 2.8.4
08/03/2009 - Version 2.8.3
07/20/2009 - Version 2.8.2
07/09/2009 - Version 2.8.1
06/20/2009 - Version 2.8

That's seven versions in less that five months. Frankly that's too much for you - a business owner with a company to run - to have to deal with. 

That's why - for most business owners - I prefer TypePad.

Which is Better? Convertible Sportscar vs Pickup Truck?

It's a ridiculous comparison and it's meant to me.  The two are designed for two completely different types of people and two completely different types of driving.

Mashable doesn't seem to see the distinction.  Last week they did a 'WordPress vs TypePad' poll, and it's just as ridiculous as the 'Convertible vs Pickup' comparison - the two are designed for two completely different types of people.

WordPress' template system is simpler and easier to understand.  If you need to heavily customize your blog then you are probably better off with WordPress (Having said that, I customize every client's TypePad blog and so so with only a few CSS changes.  I never modify the templates themselves).

The big issue is this:  Do you have the technical ability to host your blog, and understand all the maintenance issues that go along with it?  New Wordpress versions seem to appear every month.  Yes, WordPress has made the upgrade process easy, but is your theme compatible with the new  version? Are your plugins compatible? What if they are not? Are you prepared to handle it if something goes wrong?

My clients are business owners.  Their business is running their business, not running their blog.  For most of them, TypePad is a better choice.

TypePad Help: Display a Static Page as Your Blog's Front Page

If you are using your TypePad blog as a website then perhaps you will want to move the blog off the front page. You may want to have the front page be a static page that tells your visitors who you are and what you do.

Click on the Settings tab. Locate Posts & Pages in the left sidebar and click on it.  Scroll down until you see the section shown here.  Click on DIsplay a 'page' and select the desired page.

Typepad Help: Write Now, Publish Later

It's time for your long-overdue vacation.  You're about to spend two weeks at a spot so remote there is no Internet access (Yes, those places still exist).  But what about your blog?  You don't want your readers to feel neglected, do you?

Fortunately TypePad provides a way for you to write your posts ahead of time and publish them later. Look for the Status section in the sidebar. Change the drop-down to Publish On.

A pop-up calendar will appear.  You can specify the exact date and time you want your post to be published. Don't forget to click the green Publish button when you're done.

TypePad Help: Widgets

A Widget is a little piece of content or functionality provided by a third party that you can add to your typepad blog.

For example, I often get asked about adding a 'contact us' form to a blog.  There's a Widget for that.  Want to add a PayPal storefront?  There's a Widget for that.  Want to share upcoming events from your Google Calendar?  There's a Widget for that. Best of all, you don't have to be a geek to install a Widget. 

TypePad's Widget Gallery can be found here, but here are some of my favorites:

FormSpring forms.  Create a contact form.  Use it to gather opt-in data. FormSpring can connect to various shopping carts so you could use it as a simple online store.

Feedzilla. Build your own custom news feed using any search criteria and display it on your blog.

Google Calendar. Display your events from your Google Calendar.

PayPal Storefront. A mini store.  Displays title, price, and image for each item you want to sell.

OpenMind. Prominently display quotes from your blog.  When a reader clicks on a quote they are taken to the blog post containing that quote.

Job Search. Several widgets allow you to display job postings on your blog.

ShareThis. My all-time favorite.  Give your readers a single icon to click on and share your content via Twitter, Facebook, email, Digg, and more.

Lijit.  My second favorite.  Add a search engine to your Typepad blog.  User's enter a search term, click 'search' and see all your blog posts containing that term.

TypePad Help: Google Analytics

TypePad has made it easier than ever to add Google Analytics to your blog.  After you've set up your Google Analytics account and created a 'website profile' for your blog, all you need to do is:

1. When you log in to your Google Analytics account you should see a pae that looks like this. Find the UA Number associated with your blog. (If you can't find an entry for your blog in the table then you need to add a profile for it.  Look for the Add Profile link):

2. Log in to your Typepad account. Click on the Settings tab.  Then click on Stats.  Enter your UA Number in the field:

3. If you previously added the Google Analytics code snippet to a Typelist you should remove it from the Typelist.  If you previously added the Google Analytics code snippet via an 'Embed your own HTML' module (on the Design-> Organize Content page) then you should remove it that module.

TypePad help: Connecting your TypePad Blog to Twitter

If you have a Twitter account you can have your blog automatically tweet about your blog posts each time you publish them. Here's how to set it up.

Click on Account near the upper right corner of the screen.

Locate Other Accounts in the left sidebar and click on it. The Other Accounts page will appear. Locate Add an account and select Twitter from the drop-down.

The Twitter Authorization form will appear in a pop-up window.  Enter your Twitter username and password and click the Allow button. After a moment the Your Other Accounts page will refresh and you will see Twitter in the list.

Now it's time to set the default. Click on Blogs in the green bar at the top of the page and select your blog from the list.  Click the Settings tab.  Click on Sharing in the left sidebar. Turn on Twitter under Publicize Defaults:

When you create a new blog post, notice the Share This Post section.  Twitter will be checked by default:

My new book, Guide to the New Typepad is packed with tips and step-by-step instructions just like this.

48 Pages of Step-By Step Instructions for TypePad

Complete with annotated screenshots.

The new TypePad interface is a great improvement, but when I saw it for the first time I knew I had to write Guide to the New TypePad.

If you are a business owner who has been using TypePad for a while, the new interface will come as a shock.  I can just hear you saying, "I have to learn it all over again".

If you are new to TypePad - particularly of you have just come from another blogging platform - you are probably playing 'scavenger hunt' while you find everything.

Step-by-step instructions for just about everything you want to do are in Guide to the New TypePad.  I know because I've spent the last four years helping business owners get started blogging on TypePad and answering their "How do I..." questions.

Topics Covered:

• Logging In
• Creating a new post
• Formatting text
• Composing in MS-Word
• How to include a photo or hyperlink in your post
• How to embed a YouTube video in a post
• Posting Status - Publish Now or Later
• Featuring a post
• Technorati Tags
• Trackbacks
• Controlling Comment and Trackback Functions
• Editing Previously Created Posts
• Stats
• Uncovering search terms used to get to your blog
• Comments
• Creating and Editing Pages
• Navigation Bar
• Managing Sidebar Content
• Adding a Badge or Other Custom Sidebar Content
• Typelists
• Connecting your blog to Twitter
• Connecting your blog to Facebook
• How to create Landing Pages using your TypePad blog
• How to map a domain name to your landing page

This is not a PDF! This is a 48-page plasticoil bound book.

Guide to the New TypePad $39 Including Shipping

Save Hours of your Precious Time

You know how frustrating it is to know exactly what you want to do but can't figure out how to make the software do it.  Guide to the New Typepad will save you many times its price in terms of your valuable time.

Blogging is Supposed to be Fun and Easy!

GUide to the New Typepad will save you hours of learning and tons of frustration. Easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions will have you navigating TypePad like a seasoned master in just a few minutes.

Google Ignores the Keywords Meta Tag

For everyone agonizing over the content of their META Keywords tag:  lighten up.

The keywords meta tag doe snot affect your page rank, not even one iota:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Other search engines still use them, however.

TypePad Help: Technorati Tags

Very few people understand the significant Google juice provided by Technorati Tags.  You are fortunate for two reasons:

1. Support for Technorati Tags is built into TypePad
2. I'm going to explain how to use them

First The Experiment

It had been about 2 years since I last tried to quantify the impact of Technorati Tags upon Google rankings and so I decided it was time to run the experiment again.  

I created two blogs under my TypePad account and made them as identical as possible.  As the subject, I chose the Planet Magrathea (deliberately misspelled 'Magrathia') from the famous Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book.  I posted the same content to both blogs.  I specified the technorati tag "Magrathia" in every post on one blog and used no Technorati Tags on the second blog.  Here's what I saw after about a week:

The blog in which i used the Technorati tags is ranked number 5 an 6 in Google for the term "Magrathia".  In fact if I expand the "Show more results from..." link, the results for the blog in which I used Technorati Tags both out rank and outnumber the one in which I did not.

Using Technorati Tags

When you create a new blog post, scroll down to the Keywords and Technorati Tags section and expand it if necessary.  You will see the Technorati Tags field.

What do you put there? Put words or phrases that describe what this post is about.  Put yourself into the shoes of your reader.  If this blog post answer's a reader's question, how would they type the question into Google?  Whatever that is, put it here.  You can use multiple tags separated by commas.  Each tag can be a word or phrase.  It helps if the word or phrase also appears in the body of your post.

Displaying Technorati Tags in the Post Footer

It does no good to enter TechnoratiTags for each post of you don't display them. Click on the Design Tab.  Click on Organize Content.  Locate the little edit icon (it looks like a pencil) adjacent to Post Footer and click on it.

Make sure that Technorati Tags is checked.

How to Create Landing Pages in Typepad

Not long ago, my friend Any Wibbels hosted a webinar describing how to use a TypePad blog as an eCommerce website.  You can view Andy's webinar here. An additional feature that I get asked about frequently is a landing page. 

Most of us eventually need a landing page.  We produce a book or white paper and we want to direct people to a page focused on our offering while providing them with as few other distractions as possible.

I'm going to describe three ways to accomplish this:

Method 1, The Simplest: Create an Ordinary Static Page on Your Blog

The simplest method is to create an ordinary static page on your blog. While it is the simplest, your landing page will display your blog's banner, nav bar, and sidebar(s). You may consider these elements too distracting.

Assuming you are on the New TypePad, click the down-arrow in the Compose button and select Page.  Create your landing page, making it appear exactly as you wish.

Method 2, Landing Page on a Second Blog

This second method allows your landing page to share your blog's look and feel while eliminating distracting elements such as the Navigation Bar and Sidebar(s).  You need to have a Pro account to use this method.

Click on Blogs in the green band at the top of the page and select Add a Blog. For the purpose of this post we'll name the new blog 'Landing'. On the Design Tab select Choose a Theme and select the same theme for your new blog that you use on your existing blog.  While still on the Design Tab click on Select a Layout and select the 1 Column layout. 

Next go to your main blog's Design Tab, click on Add Custom CSS and copy the contents of the large custom CSS field.  Now go to your new landing page blog's Design tab, click on Add Custom CSS, and paste into the field.  This will make sure that your landing page has the same look and feel as your main blog.  

Most of TypePad's themes are 940px wide except in 1-Column layout.  You'll want to modify the width of the 1-Column layout to accommodate your original blog's 940px-wide banner.  To do so, add this to the end of the CSS in the Custom CSS field:

.layout-one-column #container,
.layout-one-column #banner,
.layout-one-column #alpha {
 width: 940px;
}

While still on the Design tab, click on Organize Content. Uncheck:

• Navigation Bar
• Archive Headers
• Post Date Header
• Post Title
• Post Footer
• Blog Footer

Remove (by clicking on the white X in the red circle) the sidebar modules:

• Archives
• Categories
• Post Feed
• Powered By TypePad Link

Create a static page for your landing page content.(Click the down-arrow in the Compose button and select Page.) Very Important: Leave the Title blank. 

After publishing the page, click on the Settings tab. and select Posts & Pages. Scroll down to the Front Page section. Click on Display a 'page' as the front page. Since your landing page has no title the entry in the drop-down box will be blank.

Method 3: Landing Page on a Second Blog that Looks Completely Different from Your Main Blog

With two small modifications, the Journal theme makes an excellent blank canvas for a landing page.

Click on Blogs in the green band at the top of the page and select Add a Blog. For the purpose of this post we'll name the new blog 'Landing'. On the Design Tab select Choose a Theme and select one of the Journal themes.  While still on the Design Tab click on Select a Layout and select the 1 Column layout. 

While still on the Design Tab, click on Add Custom CSS and enter the following two lines into the large custom CSS field:

#banner{ display:none;}
.entry-header { background: none; }

While still on the Design tab, click on Organize Content. Uncheck:

• Navigation Bar
• Archive Headers
• Post Date Header
• Post Title
• Post Footer
• Blog Footer

Remove (by clicking on the white X in the red circle) the sidebar modules:

• Archives
• Categories
• Post Feed
• Powered By TypePad Link

Create a static page for your landing page content.(Click the down-arrow in the Compose button and select Page.) Very Important: Leave the Title blank. 

After publishing the page, click on the Settings tab. and select Posts & Pages. Scroll down to the Front Page section. Click on Display a 'page' as the front page. Since your landing page has no title the entry in the drop-down box will be blank.

Give Your Landing Page it's Own Domain Name

No matter which of the above three methods you choose, to finish this project in a professional way you should give your landing page it's own short memorable domain name. GoDaddy is an excellent place to register a domain name because they give you complete control over all DNS settings. The instructions are in TypePad's Knowledge Base here.

More Small Business Resources

Typepad has an entire website dedicated to providing help and resources to small business owners who want to make the most of their TypePad blogs. You'll find a series of webinars, tools, and experts dedicated to helping you leverage your blog and other forms of social media to grow your business. To visit TypePad's Small Business Center, click here.

TypePad's Google Analytics Integration

TypePad has made it easier than ever to add Google Analytics to your blog.  After you've set up your Google Analytics account and created a 'website profile' for your blog, all you need to do is:

1. When you log in to your Google Analytics account you should see a pae that looks like this. Find the UA Number associated with your blog. (If you can't find an entry for your blog in the table then you need to add a profile for it.  Look for the Add Profile link):

2. Log in to your Typepad account. Click on the Settings tab.  Then click on Stats.  Enter your UA Number in the field:

3. If you previously added the Google Analytics code snippet to a Typelist you should remove it from the Typelist.  If you previously added the Google Analytics code snippet via an 'Embed your own HTML' module (on the Design-> Organize Content page) then you should remove it that module.

WordPress Attack Underway

So here we go again. From the WordPress.org blog:

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

Granted, if you have already upgraded your WordPress installation to 2.8.4 you are protected.  Chances you you haven't.  I'm not scolding you, I'm commiserating. You have a business to run.  Receivables, Payables, Payroll.  Not to mention working your tail off to produce your company's product or service. 

You have important things to do. Keeping your blog's software up-to-date to insure that the latest security holes have been plugged should not have to be one of them.

Wordpress' overly-simplistic answer is:

the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades.

The problem is that in my experience the one-click upgrade seldom executes flawlessly.  In fact, here's a lovely little snippet from the Upgrading Wordpress page:

if you run into problems Upgrading WordPress with the three Steps described here, you need to revert to your old version first before using the more detailed upgrade instructions (ie. restore the backup made in step 0). Even though you might not run into any errors with this process right away, you might run into problems later down the line. Then it may not be possible to revert far enough back to fix the problem without losing any recent changes. So 

If you use Plugins and Themes other than the ones that come with the default WordPress installation, it is advisable to start over with the more detailed upgrade instructions.

Isn't that just dandy?

So when people ask me why I I am so passionate about TypePad as the best platform for your business blog, This is why.  Or at least one of the big reasons why.  If you have a Typepad blog then all this stuff is taken care of for you. No worries.  Just blog.

Ten Must-Have Wordpress Plugins

When we set up a blog for a client, we want it to be 'firing on all cylinders'.  Here are the plugins we install on every Wordpress blog we create:

• Akismet.  Great anti-spam plugin.  It comes standard as part of the Wordpress files but neds to be set up, including the creation of an account on Wordpress.org.
• WP-Tags-To-Technorati Most people do not understand the Google juice that technorati tags give you.
• Feedburner Feedsmith  The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed.
  
  
• WP-Security-Scan  Use this plugin to make sure that you are complying with best practices for WordPress.
  
  
• All-In-One-SEO-Pack Provides complete control of meta tags and title tags to give your blog its best shot at high Google rankings.
  
  
• WordBook Each time you publish a new blog post it will automatically appear on your Facebook wall.
  
  
• ShareThis Probably the best general-purpose chicklet for allowing readers to share your content.
  
  
• Twitter Tools Each time you publish a new blog post it will automatically also tweet it.
  
  
• TweetMeme Provide you readers with a visible way to tweet about your content.  Also display the number of times the article has been retweeted.
  
  
• WP-DB-Backup Automatically backs up your Wordpress database at scheduled intervals.

Does Your Wordpress Theme Support Printing?

Today a new client came to me wanting some minor tune-up work done on her blog.  It's Wordpress, installed on her server. Unfortunately - like a lot of Wordpress themes - no accomodation was made for printing.

If you are shopping for a Wordpress theme and can view a demo, do this:  RIght click and click on 'View Source'  Then look for something that looks like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="...." type="text/css" media="print" />

That "media=print" is the key. It means that the theme's author has thought about printing and if someone prints the page it has a higher probability of looking good when printed.

What About Typepad?

Typepad includes the print version of the stylesheet automatically. It probably won't print your fancy banner but it will print the name of your blog and look presentable.

Some Wordpress Security Considerations

A few weeks ago a good friend called me and said that something was wrong with his site.  I took a look at hi site, a Wordpress-based website and saw nothing but a php error message.

The long-and-short of it was that he had been hacked.  Every now and then, a vulnerability is discovered in Wordpress.  The release a new version to patch the hole, but it is up to you to keep up with the new releases in order to avoid the same fate as my friend.

This is another reason why I like TypePad: It's always up to date and I never have to worry about keeping the software up-to-date.  Typepad takes care of that.

Since I'm on the subject of security, the biggest vulnerability of a Wordpress blog is typically the username: When you install Wordpress, it automatically creates an administrator account with the username 'admin'. If you don't change it, you've just cut the hacker's problem in half.  The first thing you should do upon installing Wordpress is to create a new administrator account with a unique name and delete the 'admin' account.

And then there's your FTP account

If you host your own blog (using Wordpress, for example) don't forget about the security of your FTP account.  FTP is the method for uploading and downloading files to and from your server. (If you installed Wordpress on your server, FTP is the tool you used to get the files onto your server in the first place.)  If your FTP account password is compromised it may take days to figure it out.  Make sure you have a good strong password there too.

Use Your Blog to Create Landing Pages

Almost everyone needs to create a Landing Page now and then. 

If you are using Wordpress, most themes contain a 'No Sidebar' template and you can use that. For this client we created a special template that removed the theme's extraneous background colors. 

Typepad users may be frustrated because they can't select the template on a page-by-page basis and don't have a way to eliminate the sidebar. Here's the trick but it requires a PRO level Typepad account: Create another blog in the same account. Select the same theme and give it all the same stylesheet customizations. Then select a Layout that contains no sidebars. 

The final thing you should do is to give the landing page it's own short memorable domain name. GoDaddy makes it very easy to forward a domain name to a specific page on your blog.

Why I DIslike Wordpress.com, Reason #46

The Navigation Bar

OK, first some background: I build blogs for small business owners.  What happens when your blog is also your website? (a good example is here)  You need some extra pages: Perhaps one to describe your services, one for your public speaking schedule, another for your press releases, etc. Maybe even one for your online store.

The logical way to provide visibility and access to these pages is via a horizontal nav bar, typically positioned just below your banner or header. Many (but not all) Wordpress.com themes support a nav bar.

The Wordpress.com nav bar has two serious deficiencies:

1. If it's not a page, I can't put it on the nav bar. I may want to have a link to something on another site (such as my website, an online ordering page, another blog for my podcasts) up there on my nav bar.  Can't do it with a Wordpress.com blog.
2. I'm stuck with my page titles as navigation items.  My page may be titled "Explore our exceptional, personalized services" but I probably want something shorter like "Services" on the nav bar so it doesn't take up so much space.  Again, I can't do it with a Wordpress.com blog.

Typepad Gets It Right

Typepad, on the other hand, lets you do what you want.  

Want a nav bar item pointing to something offsite?  No Problem.  

Want to use something other than the page's actual title?  No Problem.  

Want to use a special post category as a navigation item?  No Problem.

Want to point to another blog containing your podcasts or videos? No Problem.

This is the way it should be: empower the user. Yes, there is a little more copy-and-paste involved, but since Typepad introduced this functionality I've taught dozens of business owners how to add pages to their site.  And They Love It.  They love the fact that they can do it themselves without relying upon a webmaster who may later hold them hostage. (I'm working with a client for whom their ex-webmaster disappeared with the only copy of their website passwords.)

Understand that I use both Typepad and Wordpress.  When I have a new client, I spend time with them understanding what they want to do now, as well as what they may want to do in 2-3 years.  Then I pick the best platform for the circumstances.  Typepad's implementation of the navigation bar is one of the reasons the client usually ends up on Typepad.

Why I Avoid Typepad's Advanced Templates

I just got off the phone with a woman who has a Typepad blog and needs a couple of things added to her sidebar.  What's the big deal, you ask?

The big deal is that whoever originally created her blog used Typepad's Advanced Templates.  There is nothing wrong with Typepad's advanced templates per se.  They work wonderfully.  They provide the designer with complete freedom to do anything.

The problem is that when you go to Advanced Templates you give up all control over your sidebar content. In this case, she wanted to add a 'Follow Me On Twitter' badge to the sidebar.  If you've switched your blog to advanced templates then you must modify the HTML in the actual sidebar template module - not something your average non-geeky business owner can do.

My business philosophy is to empower my clients, not hold them hostage.  I want my clients to be able to maintain as much of their own blog as possible.  While I offer to maintain clients' blog for a nominal monthly charge and make these kinds of changes for them, I don't want them to be forced into that.  

When my client wants something done that requires advanced templates I always tell them what the cost will be in terms of the flexibility they will be giving up.  Invariably they make the right choice.

Frankly, setting up a client's Typepad blog in Advanced Templates without a compelling reason is IMHO professional malpractice.  It is not operating with the best interest of your client in mind.

Automatically Tweet Your Blog Posts

Typepad is quietly rolling out a great new feature:  When you publish a new post on your blog, it can automatically notify the world via Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

I'm starting to see this option in some of the blogs I maintain.  You simply select the service you want to connect to Typepad, enter your login information for that service, and Typepad does the rest.

Typepad vs Wordpress vs Wordpress.com

Updated 1/5/2011: It’s been two years since I originally wrote this post and it is one of the post popular posts on my blog. A lot has changed since then and as a result it’s time for an update:

"Which platform should I choose?"

I see this question a lot. It pops up on Twitter about once a day. All three choices have come a long way, even in the past year. Here are my own admittedly biased opinions:

WordPress, the software you download:

Commonly referred to as Self-Hosted WordPress.

You can take WordPress farther and do more with it than any other choice. It is far more customizable than either of the other two alternatives. WordPress has evolved into a powerful Content Management System. What does that mean, exactly? It means that non-technical people can maintain their own websites. It means that you are in charge and in control of your website’s content. Need to update a paragraph? No problem: a few keystrokes and it’s done.

There are so many themes and so many plugins available that you can do almost anything with WordPress. One of my favorite plugins adds an event calendar to your site, for example.

The new built-in menubar system in WordPress 3 is a thing of beauty and IMHO was one of the final pieces that allows a website to be maintained by the non-techy. If you need to create a full-blown website then Self-Hosted WordPress is your best choice.

CONS:

WordPress wants to be installed in a Unix/Linux environment. You can install it on a Windows server but the effort is almost not worth it. Even then, in my experience - unless you are a geek - it is unlikely that the installation will go smoothly.

You need to establish your own mechanism and schedule for backups. Most web-hosting companies provide some sort of automated backup service. If your offers this – even at an extra cost – I recommend you use it. You’ll thank me someday.

You also need to consider that WordPress software is frequently upgraded to address security issues and you'll need to be upgrading your WordPress installation from time to time (more often than you’d like, actually). WordPress now has a ‘click-a-button’ upgrade function built in and it’s been around long enough that works pretty well.

In the past year or so, theme and plugin compatibility has become an issue. While there is an endless supply of WordPress themes and plugins, Many of them don’t play nice with recent versions of WordPress. Freqently we also see plugins that are not compatible with certain themes as well as plugins that conflict with each other. Because we are in this business, we have a list of themes and plugins we have certified for use on our clients’ websites.

And finally, all of that functionality comes at a price: complexity. If all you want is a simple blog then WordPress may be more complexity than you are willing to handle.

COST:

The WordPress software can be downloaded for free from http://www.wordpress.org. You’ll need a hosting account somewhere. Most web-hosting providers charge $10-$20/month for a basic account.

Wordpress.com:

The people behind the WordPress software have created a hosted version, meaning that you sign up for an account at WordPress.com and presto, you have a WordPress blog.

The version of WordPress at WordPress.com is a de-featured (if that’s a word) of the same software you would download from WordPress.org.

It is very inexpensive (in most cases free) It just works, no worries about trying to figure out what's wrong when it's down, no worries about backups. No software to install.

One of the most attractive things about a WordPress.com blog is the easy migration path to Self-Hosted WordPress. You can start with a free account at WordPress.com and then when you outgrow it (and you will) you can easily move to your own hosting account and Self-Hosted Wordpress. (Note: if you think you may need to do this be sure to register a domain name and map it to your WordPress.com blog so that you don’t end up with a bunch of broken links when you later migrate.)

CONS:

Unfortunately, many of the features and functions that are missing are the very ones that make WordPress so attractive.

The number of themes is growing but still limited. Finding a theme that has (a) a Nav Bar, (b) a color scheme and layout close to what you want, and (c) a customizable banner may be impossible. Few of the themes at WordPress.com provide the same menubar functionality that is in Self-Hosted WordPress. In most cases, every page you create will be on the menubar whether you want it there or not. Want that cool WordPress theme you saw somewhere? Sorry, you can’t install third-party themes at WordPress.com

If you wanted to modify the colors (modify the CSS) or map it to your own domain name then they will charge you.

WordPress.com does not allow you to install third-party plug-ins, reducing your expansion abilities considerably. Many of the coolest tools (like Quantcast.com, Feedburner, formspring, AddThis, ShareThis, etc) won't work with Wordpress.com because Wordpress.com prohibits you from embedding snippets of javascript into your blog. Want that cool event calendar plugin? Sorry, you can’t install third-party plugins at WordPress.com

WordPress.com will sometimes (but not always) display their own ads on your blog. I’m sorry, but to me this is a deal-killer.

Cost:

Probably the most attractive feature of WordPress.com is that it’s free. There is an annual fee for features like domain mapping, customizing your blog’s CSS, eliminating ads, etc.

Typepad:

Very easy to set up even for a non-geek. TypePad’s functionality is a subset of WordPress’ but within that subset TypePad is easier to use.

TypePad’s text-formatting features are still superior to what’s available in WordPress. Suppose you want to make a word stand out by using a different font and font-size than the surrounding text. TypePad makes it far easier than anyone else.

Though there are no third-party themes, TypePad provides hundreds of themes to choose from. You can customize the look of your Typepad blog easily by modifying the CSS and uploading a custom banner.

Excellent (the best IMHO) integration with the most popular blog-related tools (Feedburner, ShareThis, AddThis, etc)

It's a hosted solution so you don't have to worry about downtime, backups, etc.

Though they are a bit hidden, widgets are available to do polls, have an Amazon store, paypal shopping cart, etc. No software to install. There is REAL technical support (They even hang out on twitter - @sixapart ).

Mapping a dmain name to a Typepad blog is easy and is free – other than the cost of the somain name itself.

CONS:

With the merger of SixApart (TypePad’s parent) and VideoEgg into a new company (SAY Media) the long-term future of TypePad is unclear. My personal opinion is that TypePad will evolve into a platform optimized for people who want to build their own personal brand AND generate revenue from their blog.

Typepad's collection of widgets is not as extensive as the plugins available for Wordpress.

If you want to customize the appearance of your blog (modify the CSS) you have to be at the UNLIMITED level which is $14.95 per month.

If you want to host other applications (your own online store, for example), you'll need to put that stuff on your own non-typepad site and link to it.)

If you need to do really heavy customization then Typepad's underlying template code is harder to understand.

TypePad provides far less ability to create a full-blown sophisticated website than Self-Hosted WordPress. Adding things like event calendars and video carousels is just not possible.

Your ability to someday migrate from TypePad to another platform is limited. TypePad’s export facility can export your text but not your images. I recently performed a TypePad-to-WordPress migration for a client who’s blog contained over 500 photos. Each photo had to be manually moved, a process that consumed many hours.

COST:

I recommend that you get an UNLIMITED account at $14.95/month

Summary:

TypePad: Your best choice if you want a simple blog or website that you can easily customize to match your brand, never worry about backups, upgrades, etc, and you just want to write content.

Self-Hosted WordPress: Your best choice if you need more than a blog or website containing just pages of text and images.

WordPress.com: Your best choice if you want to get started with just a blog, envision it growing into something bigger at a later date, and can live with the limited selection of themes.

Adding a Footer to your Typepad Blog

I seldom see Typepad blogs with nice professional-looking footers. Most websites have them and adding on to your Blog helps make it look a lot more professional as well. We recently created a blog with a footer for a client and it occurred to me that I should share the technique. 

It's actually almost trivial to add a nice footer to your Typepad blog without resorting to Advanced Templates (I almost never use advanced templates because you give up so much flexibility and control.) To use this method the footer must be constructed entirely as a graphic image. 

One prerequisite: Your Typepad blog must be at the 'Pro' level or greater.

Most of Typepad's recent templates are 940pixels wide, so create your footer graphic the same width.  Make note of it's height in pixels and then upload it (Control Panel ->Files). Record the resulting URL of the file.

Next go to Weblogs->Design->Custom CSS and paste this into the field:

#container-inner { 

 background-image: url(URL-of-your-footer-image); 

 background-position:bottom center; 

 background-repeat:no-repeat; 

 padding: 0 0 131px 0; } 

Replace "URL-of-your-footer-image" with the url you recorded above when you uploaded your footer image.  Replace the "131" with the height of your footer image in pixels.

That's it.

Blogs Make Great Websites

Starting your own business? A blog makes a great website.

Get Your Site Up Quickly

Using a blog, you can have a web presence in hours or days, not weeks or months. If you've just escaped from cubicle nation, you know you need to move fast. You're running on what's in the bank and the sooner you can get established, the better. And face it, you are not looked upon as a legitimate business unless you have a website.

Low Startup Costs

Sure, there are web-hosting companies and domain registrars that tell you they can deliver a website tonight.  It usually looks that way too.  First impressions are important, and you want your clients (as well as your friends and family) to see a professional-looking site,  Even with custom graphics, the cost of a blog will be much lower than what a reputable web-design firm would charge.

Your Own Domain Name

Yes, your blog/website can be at www.YourDomainName.com.  'Nuff said.

The Best Reason

You don't need a webmaster.  If you've had a website in the past, you know the drill:  Type up the changes and give them to your web guy.  He makes the changes. You review the changes and make corrections.  He puts the corrections up there.  When you're finally done he makes the changes live. Sometimes it takes weeks.

With a blog as a website, you are using and very easy simple online tool.  You login.  You bring up the text you want to change.  You make the changes.   You hit 'Save'.  That's it. Doing without a webmaster saves you money, but more importantly it gets everyone else out of the way. You are in control.

We're doing a lot of these 'Blog As A Website' projects lately. And we have several underway right now.  We can turn these projects around very quickly.

Add 'Tweet This' to your Typepad Blog

In a recent blog post Guy Kawasaki talked about the value of making it easy for people to tweet on your behalf by including some kind of ‘Tweet This’ link or icon with every piece of content. The Twitter equivalent of Digg This, so to speak. 

This article describes an easy way to add such a link to each blog post on your Typepad blog using Feedburner’s FeedFlare service and a Personal ‘Twit This’ flare provided by Eric Olson. 

If your blog is not currently connected to Feedburner:

1. Go to http:/www.Feedburner.com and click on Register. Fill in the registration form. Remember the username and password you supply. After registration, you don’t have to do anything else right now. Go ahead and sign out.
2. Sign into your Typepad account. Click on the Configure tab. Click on Feeds.



3. Halfway down the page, locate the Connect to Feedburner button and click it. supply the Feedburner username and password you created in Step 1.
4. After connecting your blog to Feedburner, click on the Design tab. Click on Content. Look for a checkbox labeled FeedFlare. Turn it on and click Save Changes.
5. Time to log out of Typepad. Continue with step 6, below.

If your blog is already connected to Feedburner, start here.

6. Log into your Feedburner account. Click on the Optimize tab.
7. About halfway down the left sidebar is FeedFlare. Click on it.





8. Scroll down until you see this Add New Flare field. Click on the Browse the Catalog link.     
9. Scroll down until you see the Twit This! entry. Right-Click on the word Link and copy the link/shortcut.
10. Close the popup window, paste into this field and click the Add New Flare button. “Twit This” and a pair of checkboxes should appear just above the Add New Flare field. Turn ON both checkboxes.
11. Click the Save or Activate at the bottom of the screen.

The next time you create a new blog post, Feedburner will add the Twit This link to the end of every post in your blog.

Navigation Bars in Typepad

One of the little-noticed features of the new Typepad platform is that your blog can now have a horizontal menubar just below the banner. 

If your blog is on the new Typepad platform here's how to add and maintain your own menubar:

1. Click on the Design Tab
2. Click on Content 
3. Look for 'Navigation Bar' and turn it on.
4. Click on the Edit icon the little pencil) associated with the Navigation Bar feature. 
5. FIll in the titles and URLs in the popup window 

Up until now, the only way to have a menubar was to have a geek set it up for you.  Usually, this meant using 'Advanced Templates' which means giving up a lot of flexibility and control over changing the layout and content f your sidebars.

In the past, the method I used was to add some javascript to the page that would re-write the banner layer and add the menubar.  This lefty you in control over the sidebar content but it still didn't allow the non-geek to manage the menubar.

This is great news, particularly for people who want to use their blog as a website as well.

Blogging, The Next Generation: Typepad Connect

Maybe that title is an exaggeration but I've spent some time using Typepad Connect (I've turned it on for this blog) and though it has some rough spots I think it is going to be a big plus for those of us who want to build a sense of community around what we do.

The best part is the fact that you can now have threaded comments. In plain english, this means that when a reader leaves a comment, it is easy for a second reader (or you) to reply to the first reader's comment.  You can see in the snapshot to the right that my comment is indented under Larissa's, indicating that my comment is a reply to hers.  In the past with unthreaded comments these sort of conversations were very difficult to follow and participate it.  Typepad Connect makes it very intuitive and natural.

The second interesting thing about Typepad Connect is that you can click on the little picture next to my comment and see my profile.  You can learn a little about me, the conversations I am participating in around the blogosphere, and get a feel for my credibility, authority, and trustworthiness.

Typepad Connect has it's rough spots: the 'Post' and 'Preview' buttons are sometimes missing, and currently Typepad Connect's login screen is case-sensitive (Typepad's main blog login screen has always been case-insensitive) and this will cause great consternation until it gets sorted out.

The big deal here though is at a slightly more abstract level.  Typically (unless it's a community blog) the conversation on a blog is one-to-many, meaning that the blog owner is having conversation between himself and his readers.  There really have not been a good way to have conversations that are many-to-many (In other words, for readers to converse with each other).  

A tool that supports those many-to-many conversations is necessary in order to effectively foster a sense of community. (I realize that at a much higher level, we do have that with multiple blogs and the foodie blogosphere is a great example.) Up to this point we've resorted to using other tools such as Facebook groups, Ning, discussion groups, forums, etc to fill the gap.

Though it's not all the way there, Typepad Connect now makes it possible to build these ckinds of communities using our Typepad blogs.

I Hate Captcha

What is Captcha? It's that obnoxious little box you see with the hard-to-decipher letters and numbers you have to type to prove you are a real human. Take that fourth character in the captcha box you see here: Is it an el?  i?  t?  

The last time I left a comment on a blog that used Captcha, the letters were so distorted that I needed to do it two or three times before I figured it out. Usually, if what I type fails on the first attempt, I abandon my attempt to leave a comment on that blog and simply move on. 

Feedback from your readers is too valuable to let this happen to you. 

You should set your commenting system up so that the barriers are as non-existent as possible. You want it to be easy to leave a comment. If you are having trouble with spam comments, don't shift the burden to your readers. That's being lazy. Moderate comments to deal with the nasty ones and use some sort of ant-spam function to deal with the rest. 

If you have done a good job with your blog, the people reading it are your fans. They are emotionally invested in your success. Their feedback is priceless. Don't make it hard on them.

Using MS-Word to Compose Blog Posts

This topic has come up three times in the past two weeks.

Almost everyone is comfortable using MS-Word. Spell-check and all the editing and formatting features make it seem like a great way to compose and format a blog post, right?

Wrong. Or Maybe.

It is easy to be fooled. You can copy and paste directly from MS-Word into the 'New Post' or 'edit Post' form and it looks like it will work just fine. The problem is that the code that MS-Word creates is not web-compatible.

The biggest offender is Word's ability to change straight quotes into curly quotes. (Look for "Replace straight quotes with Smart Quotes" on the AutoCorrect dialog box.) Those curly quotes are not web-compatible characters and will play havoc with your RSS feed, among other things.

It is possible though to use MS-Word as a blog composition tool.

Option 1: Use MS-Word to Compose, Format in Typepad

Use this option when you are mainly interested in using Word for spell-checking and getting your thoughts out of your brain and onto the screen.

Before you copy-and-past your entry from MS-Word into Typepad, locate the Display Options link on Typepad's 'New Post' or 'Edit Post' form. click on it and select 'Markdown'. (None of Word's formatting will be copied to Typepad.)

Then click on Display Options again and select 'Rich Text + HTML' instead of 'Markdown'. You can then use Typepad's controls to format your post.

Option 2: Office 2007

The Word Blogging Tool - included in the new Microsoft Word as part of Microsoft Office 2007 - lets you publish to your blog from inside the familiar Word environment with a single click. TypePad is a default option in Microsoft Word, which makes it simple and straightforward; all you'll need is your Typepad username and password. Better yet, the HTML the tool writes to your blog is in a simple, blog-friendly format.

To use Word 2007 to Compose your posts and publish them right within Word:

1. Open MS-Word 2007
2. Click File -> New -> New Blog Post
3. Enter the information about your blog
4. Write your post
5. Click 'Publish'

Option 3: Other Options

Microsoft has a great new free tool called Windows Live Writer that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog. If you are familiar with MS-Word, you'll have no trouble with Windows Live Writer:

http://get.live.com/writer/overview

There are several other options and Typepad has a Knowledge Base article describing some of them:

http://kb.typepad.com/id/87

Technorati Tags: What They Are, Why They Are Important, and How to Use Them

Long, long ago, on a galaxy far, far away, in a time before The Empire, we had web directories. You would submit your website to the directory and along with the URL, you would provide a list of words or phrases that described what your website was about. When someone searched the directory and entered your matching keyword, the directory would serve up your site’s url. In a way, life was good then. Those primitive tools based their results not upon what some algorithm thought was important about your web page using keyword density and voodoo; they based their results upon what a real human being said the site was important about the site.

Technorati tags give us this same humanized approach today. When you configure your ‘Compose Post’ page to display the Technorati Tags field, it gives you the change to tell Google and other search engines what your blog post is about. Google recognizes that you, a genuine intelligent human being, are far better at determining what a blog post is about than Google can, even though Google’s brain is reportedly the size of a small planet.

If your post is about widgets, it will rank much more highly for the search term ‘widgets’ with a Technorati tag ‘widgets’ than it will without. Much more highly.

Do you want an example? Ok, I’ll give you one. My house is presently for sale and to prove I could do it, I created a blog that is essentially a brochure about my house. I tagged every post in that blog “85302 real estate”. After two weeks of posting twice a day, that blog was number one for the search term “85302 real estate”. (CAVEAT: Don’t interpret this as my recommendation that you try to sell houses this way. I did this only to demonstrate the power of Technorati Tags and a blog’s Google Juice.)

The lesson learned from this is that Technorati Tags and frequent postings can be combined into a powerful tool for boosting your search engine rankings.

Strategy

I recommend that you decide upon a small number of themes. These should topics that you write about frequently. You may write about many topics, but your themes are the topics you always return to. From your readers’ perspective your themes are your blog is about.

Then create a tag for each of those themes. The tag can be a single work or a phrase. Each time you write a blog post on one of your themes, tag it. You can include multiple tags by separating them with commas.

Be consistent in your use of theme tags. Always use the same word or phrase. Over time then, Google will see a large body of work tagged with the same search term and as a result your blog will rank higher in Google.

“What about Categories?”, you ask. For all intents and purposes, Technorati Tags and Categories perform the same function. My recommendation is to pursue the following methodology:

• Your Categories should be broad and less specific that your Technorati Tags.


• Your theme-related Technorati Tags should provide the next level of specificity.


• Include one or more additional tags or keywords in a posts Technorati Tag field that are very specific to that particular post.

One final caveat: Google is much less interested in Technorati tags that do not appear somewhere on the page. If you use a term or phrase as a Technorati Tag make sure that same term or phrase appears elsewhere too, even if it is in the sidebar.

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What Your Business Blog Needs

Many web hosting companies are now offering a blolg as part of the package. In my opinion, most are - unfortunately - not really suitable platforms for a professional business blog. They provide the basic functions of an online diary or journal but a blog for your business needs to be more than that.

Here are some of the features and functions that a blog for your business must have:

• RSS Feed. The most desirable readers (the ones you want in your sphere of influence) don't read your blog by bringing it up in their browser. Instead they subscribe to your blog's RSS feed and read it in their Feed reader. If you don't have an RSS feed then your blog won't be read. I describe RSS feeds and their significance in a little more detail here.


• Your RSS Feed should be easy to subscribe to.The Mac Browser (Safari) and Internet Explorer 7 have their own buttons that are live when the browser detects that a blog has an RSS feed and allow me to subscribe to your feed wiith a single click. Other people are not so lucky. Google Reader is probably the most popular RSS feed reader today. You should strive to make it as easy as possible for users of Google Reader - and other online feed readers - to subscribe. That's why you see the chicklets in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Subscribe. A Google Reader user can simply click on the 'Google' chicklet to subscribe.


• Connection to Feedburner. Feedburner is the premier aggregator of RSS feeds. They also do a lot more. They provide great stats about your feed subscribers. They can integrate podcasts into your RSS feed and make it easy to publish on iTunes. Any blog that has an RSS feed can be connected to Feedburner, but some blogging platforms make it easier than others.


• Email Subscriptions. Your readers should be able to subscribe to your blog via email. I predict that newsletters will someday go the way of the Dodo bird thanks to this function. (Bringing you this capability is one of the great things Feedburner does for you).


• Technorati Tags. The combination of frequent postings and Technorati Tags is what enables your block to quickly climb to the top of the Google rankings for any given search term. Your blog should have a field on its 'Compose Post' page that allows you to easily enter Technorati Tags.


• Categories.You should be able to group your posts into categories - and you should publish the list of categories in your blog's sidebar. Readers can click on a category name in your sidebar and see everything you have written on that topic. In time, your blog will become a reference site. I often send people to the Blogging 101 category of my blog to give them a place to start learning about blogs.


• A Link to Your Website. Not only do you want interested readers to be able to easily find your website, consider this: Every time you create a new blog post it looks like a new web page to Google. If every one of those pages has a link to your website...


• Recent Posts. If your sidebar contains a list of recent posts, a new visitor can quickly get a feel for what your blog is about. (Yes, I know. I have no 'Recent Posts' section in my sidebar. That and other things going to change soon.)


• Trackbacks. The most important factor in the success of your blog is for you to engage in conversation with the blogosphere. Find other bloggers speaking to the same audience as you. Read their blogs regularly. Leave insightful comments. Write articles on your blog about what you've read and include trackbacks and hyperlinks in those posts. If you go to your own blog and write about this post here on my blog, and you trackback to this post, I receive notification that you have written about it. That notification includes the URL of your blog. When I approve the trackback, an excerpt of your post appears in the 'comments and trackbacks' section of my blog's post. You must be able to do trackbacks.


• Accept Comments. Don't just accept feedback, welcome it. (That's why you won't see CAPTCHA or other forms of authentication on blogs I configure.) Not only that, the comment form should have fields for the commenters name, email address, and website/blog URL.


• Comment and Trackback Moderation. You do however, want to make sure that inappropriate comments never see the light of day. You should be able to configure your blog so it holds all comments for your review and approval prior to publication. The same is true for trackbacks.


• Google Pinging. The other day at one of our Real Estate Blogging Seminars, Jay Thompson was live-blogging during the event. Before the seminar was over his blog post was on Google. You don't want to wait the 4-6 weeks for Google's spider to get around to reading your blog. You want your blog to automatically and immediately notify (we call it a ping) Google each time you publish a new blog post. The same is true for Technorati, Feedburner, blo.gs, and weblogs.com .


• Social Bookmarking. The social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us can be powerful tools for spreading your message virally. For that to happen, you must have three things: (1) You must write good content that other people want to read. (2) Create engaging titles for your content, and (3) Make it as easy as possible for people to bookmark you. -- The first two are up to you. Your blog should take care of the third one for you.

You are going to be spending a lot of time and energy on your business blog. In return, it needs to do the best possible job for you. In order to do that I believe these features and functions must be present.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes may solve a problem I have been complaining about a lot lately.

When I do Reputation Monitoring or erecting a Driftnet, I basically create several RSS feeds of searches. Let's say that I want to monitor references to my name, Dave Barnhart. I'll set up a Google Blog Search and a Google News Search on "Dave Barnhart". But because Google doesn't catch everything, I'll also use Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines, BlogDigger, and other blog search tools.

While that better insures that I don't miss anything, it also means that I have to wade through a lot of duplicates. I've often said, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could run all these RSS Feeds through some sort of filter that would remove the dupes?".

Enter Yahoo! Pipes. I haven't given it a rigorous test but I've played with it a little and the interface is so intuitive that I didn't even have to read the documentation to figure out how to build a pipe to do just what I was looking for.

You simply drag tools or modules from the left sidebar, configure them, and then drag a connector between them. Cool and easy.

I'll experiment with it more over the next few days and let you know how it is working out. I bet that Pipes will become a regular part of my toolset.

Speed-Reading the Blogosphere

I get a lot of questions about how to use RSS to track and read blogs and so I thought it would be a good subject of a post. I touched on this a bit in an earlier post.

Want to make it easy to keep up with multiple blogs? (I currently track over a hundred blogs) Use the blog's RSS Feed.

Every blog is published in two formats. One is the familiar HTML that you see here in your web browser. The second format, called RSS, strips out all the graphics, styling, and formatting and delivers pure text. The interesting part is that MSIE 7 (Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7) knows about RSS, and it will tell you if there are any new posts on blog since the last time you visited and how many.

It gets better. MSIE 7 (as well as most other RSS Feed Readers) can aggregate the feeds from multiple blogs onto a single page. The beauty of this is that at a glance you can see if there are any new posts on any blog you read, and you can also see the first few sentences of each new post. The result is that you can quickly keep up with what's going on.

Here's how to use RSS in MSIE 7:

1. Look on MSIE's toolbar over on the right and locate the small orange square icon shown here. Click on it.
2. My blog's RSS feed will be displayed. Near the top of the page there is a yellow box with the blog's name and the words 'You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content...'.
3. Just below that paragraph is Subscribe to this feed link. Click on it. A pop-up dialog box will apppear. Leave the 'Name' and 'Create In' fields as is and click on Subscribe. There. That's all there is to it.

To check and read a Feed:

1. Locate the Favorites Center icon (the gold star) on the toolbar. Click on it.
2. Click on the Feeds tab near the top of the Favorites list.
3. Mouse over an entry and the tool tip will show you how many posts have been added to that blog since the last time you looked.
4. Click on it and the new blog posts will be displayed.

Want to have new blog posts delivered to your inbox instead?

Many blogs like mine now take advantage of Feedburner's ability to reliver feeds via email. Look for the 'Subscribe via Email' box in the blog's sidebar and enter your email address into the field.

Adding Search to your Blog

Brian at Pajama Market talked today about adding Google Search to your blog. We're not talking about searching the internet. We're talking about searching your previous blog posts.

If youare striving to develop professional trust, be seen as and authority, and have your blog be viewed as a reference, then the ability to search your previous posts is important.

While Brian describes how to accomplish this with Google but I have been setting all my client's blog up using the new Technorati Widget. You can see it in action in my left sidebar under Technorati Tools. Simply type in the search term and click Search. You will be taken to a Technorati page that displays all the posts on my blog in which contain the search term.

I also typically enable the "Blogs that link here" feature of the Technorati Widget. If readers come to your blog looking for information, helping them find it - even if it is on a colleague's blog - is doing them a service.

UPDATE: Currently we are using Lijit for this function.