SEO Tag Cloud Widget – Love ‘em or hate ‘em, a lot of people use tag clouds on their blogs.  Since their inception they have been fairly unreadable by search engines, but with this plugin they will be converted to an SEO-friendly HTML markup that can be indexed.

SEO Title Tag – Your tags are an important part of your site for making sure that search engines know where to place your posts, and SEO Title Tag focuses exclusively on this.  Unlike some other plugins, and WordPress itself, this extension will allow you to add tags to your pages, your main page and even any URL anywhere on your site.

Simple Tags – An extremely popular plugin that focuses on helping you choose the best tags for your posts by offering suggestions, auto-completion of tags as you type, an AJAX admin interface, mass tag editing and a whole lot more.

Sitemap Generator – This is a more customizable sitemap generator than most with options to support multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, permalink support, choices on what to display, options to show number of comments and more.

TGFI.net SEO Wordpress Plugin – This particular plugin will do most of the usual SEO work of optimizing titles and keywords, but it adds a unique twist as it is mainly directed at people who use WordPress as a CMS.

What did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

SEO Tag Cloud Widget and More Plugins
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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WordPress is free. Facebook is free. Twitter is free. If I can do or get it for free why should I pay you?

The most frequently asked question I hear — often not verbalized aloud.

There are a host of responses. Here are a few…

As easy as some aspects of WP are, there’s no way somebody could set up a site like this without a good knowledge of html to start with. The navigation links, tables, bookmarks and IDX would drive anyone else insane. -Linda Slocum

Social media is not free or easy, but if you employ the right people who can utilize these tools effectively, it can be an efficient choice to augment your other efforts. We should focus less on selling people on shiny new tools and more on building strategic plans and how tools can help us achieve the goals we have established. -Cara Keithley

I tell clients that I conservatively think I spent well over 500 man-hours learning Social Media and that was just to get started. I probably spend 2 hours a day learning each and every day… so at their salary, what is all that time worth? Funny how it makes the large number I just slid across the table seem not so large anymore. -brandmarken

If you want to trust your brand with someone who’s spammed their way to 100k Twitter followers in the last 6 months, then you weren’t the right client for me anyway. On the other hand if you’re serious about exploring the possibility of entering the social media space and are willing to dedicate the resources to ensure success, then we’ve got something to talk about. -Scott Schablow

Social Media isn’t free–depending upon the goals and size of the brand, executing Social Media strategies and programs may require monitoring, research, third-party software and services, development, planning, and resources to work effectively. – Augie Ray

Those “inexpensive” efforts take specialized knowledge and a lot more time to manage and execute. Things like public relations, guerrilla marketing, event marketing, and viral have always been more labor intensive and require a special kind of daily hands-on management. Same with social media. -Michelle Tripp

Wondering… How do you, as a buyer, determine the value of a service? Is it monetary? Time saved? Share your thoughts in the comments.

How Much Does Free Cost?
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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Many WordPress users report their self-hosted WordPress site missed scheduled posts. The earliest reports of the “missed schedule” posts date back to WordPress version 2.7, with more frequent reports noted with the WordPress version 2.9 upgrade.

I believe this is because the timeout value is too short: wp_remote_post($cron_url, array(‘timeout’ => 0.01, ‘blocking’ => false));

When making a request to wp-cron.php, it won’t return until all cron jobs are executed. And 0.01 is too short. It doesn’t hurt to extend the time span, as much as 10 minutes even. It will return as long as the mature crons are fired up and executed; in most cases only a few seconds.

For those of you who know how to edit the /wp-includes/cron.php file, simply edit 0.01 to 10 and extend the time allowed for running future scheduled posts.

Detailed instructions for extending the timeout value in /wp-includes/cron.php are below. You need ftp access to your server and a text editor. I use Notepad++, however Notepad2 or Notepad may work well for you.

How To Correct Missed Schedule Posts in WordPress

1. Login to your ftp server account and locate the /wp-includes/cron.php file.

   
   The cron.php file is located within the wp-includes folder.
   

2. Open the cron.php file in your source code editor.
   NOTE: Save a copy of the original file to your desktop prior to editing.

   
   

   Locate the following source code in the cron.php file.
   }
   set_transient( ‘doing_cron’, $local_time );
   $cron_url = get_option( ’siteurl’ ) . ‘/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron’; wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array(‘timeout’ => 0.01, ‘blocking’ => false, ’sslverify’ => apply_filters(‘https_local_ssl_verify’, true)) );  }

3. Change ‘timeout’ => 0.01 to ‘timeout’ => 10
4. Save the edited cron.php file and upload to the /wp-includes folder, overwriting the current cron.php file
   REMEMBER: Backup the original file before overwriting.
5. Schedule a post and test for success.

Don’t Speak Geek?

Did your eyes glaze over simply looking at source code? Does the thought of getting into your hosting server account make you weak in the knees?

Take a deep breath. Relax. Send us a confidential email. Our WordPress tech team can do it for you.

Source

Missing Your WordPress Scheduled Posts?
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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How do people find YOUR content on the Internet? The key starts with great search engine optimization (SEO). Here are 5 of the best SEO plugins.

SEO friendly and HTML valid subheadings

Some themes for WordPress will confuse your sub-header tags based on the page they are to be displayed on, but this plugin will automatically reset them to make them more SEO friendly by moving them down one spot in the hierarchical tree.  In other words, h2 becomes h3, h3 becomes h4 and so on.

SEO Friendly Images

Images can be a great source of traffic as people search for images of various subjects, and this plugin helps you with making sure that you have “alt” and “title” tags on all of your images so that the search engines can properly index them.

SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin

If you must have duplicate content on your site for whatever reason, SEO No Duplicate will allow you to state which version of the post search engines should index while ignoring the others.

SEO Post Link

The post slug is the blog title you see in a browser’s URL bar, and if it’s too long, search engines won’t take a liking to it.  SEO Post Link comes with an already populated list of words to cut from a title when it turns into a URL to make your post addresses that much friendlier.  You can set it so that it’s limited to a certain number of characters, cut short words, cut unnecessary words and more.

SEO Smart Links

Interlinking your blog can be the key to getting more people to read more of your posts, but it is time consuming and tedious to do it by hand.  SEO Smart Links does this for you automatically when you tell it what words to link to what URLs, and it also allows you to set “nofollow” and “open in window” comands for the links.

Do you have SEO favorites? Share them in the comments.

How Do People Find YOUR Content?
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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You can blog your heart out, but if you don’t have good SEO, then odds are you won’t have many readers. Luckily, the WordPress plugin community values SEO and has developed a number of plugins to help.

Nofollow Case by Case – This plugin allows you to strip the “nofollow” command from your comments, and then you can apply it to only the comments you don’t wish to support.

Platinum SEO Plugin – The Platinum SEO Plugin offers you such features as automatic 301 redirects for permalink changes, auto-generation of META tags, post slug optimization, help in avoiding duplicate content and a host of other features.

Redirection – For any number of reasons you sometimes need to move a page from one spot on your blog to another, but then you risk losing that page’s status in search results.  Redirection helps you with your 301 redirects, captures a log of 404s so you can work on correcting them, sets up an RSS feed for errors and more.

SEO Blogroll – Do you worry that the people you link to in your blogroll are feeding off of your PageRank?  With SEO Blogroll you can make separate sections for various groupings of links, with an unlimited number in each, and all of them will receive the “nofollow” attribute.

SEO for Paged Comments – With the introduction of paged comments in WordPress 2.7, there was a potential problem with search engines thinking you had duplicate content as the post would appear on each page.  This plugin aims to take care of this issue for you until the folks at WordPress change things up.

Have another SEO plugin to recommend? Tell me about it in the comments.

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5 SEO Plugins for WordPress
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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I think SEO, along with email marketing, are two of the hottest and most quickly rewarding internet marketing techniques. These plugins can help you revv up your SEO on your blog today!

All in One SEO Pack – One of the most popular plugins ever for WordPress, this plugin does a bit of everything for you from helping choose the best post title and keywords, to helping you avoid duplicate content and more.

Automatic SEO Links – Automatic SEO Links allows you to choose a word or phrase for automatic linking, both internal and external, set anchor text, choose if it should be “nofollow” or not, and more.  One of the best features of this plugin is that it will only do this for the first occurrence of a word in a post so you don’t have to worry about spamming your post with numerous links to the same thing.

Google XML Sitemaps – An essential tool in any blogger’s armory of SEO tools.  While the name only mentions Google, this plugin creates an XML-sitemap that can be read by Ask, MSN and Yahoo also.

HeadSpace2 – This plugin allows you to install all sorts of meta-data, add specific JavaScript and CSS to pages, suggests tags for your posts and a whole lot more.

Meta Robots WordPress plugin – An easy solution for adding robot metadata to any page you choose on your blog.  You can use it to make your front page links into “nofollows,” prevent indexing of search pages, disable author and date-based archives, prevent indexing of your login page and numerous other features.

SEO Plugins for WordPress
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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WordPress plugins enhance the features of sites we work on.  We’re always on the lookout for the best WordPress plugins to better respond to our client’s needs. Here’s a list of a few favorites you may not know about:

Exclude Pages

We often receive client requests on how to hide pages from appearing in navigation bars. Sometimes there are pages you don’t want the public to see, but you still want those pages to be accessible through other posts or pages. That hidden page could be a thank you page, a product download and confirmation page, or a page you only want to show up after the reader has viewed some other page. The Exclude Pages plugin allows you to check a box that lets you include or hide the box from main menus.

Duplicate Widgets

Sidebars have come a long way since WordPress first started being popular. Now, many themes come with multiple sidebars and often not just along the sides of the screen. They could appear in the headers, footers and content areas. The problem is that sometimes, you’re limited in which widgets appear in each sidebar. Wouldn’t it be nice to duplicate a widget instead of only being able to use it once? The Duplicate Widgets plugin lets you do just that. Simply choose which widget you want to duplicate and voila!

Tweet This

The Sociables plugin used to be our preferred social networking plugin of choice, but since then we’ve discovered the Tweet This plugin. In fact, you can see it in action at the end of this post. The buttons are much more attractive and easy to recognize, and the dashboard interface is simple to use, limiting selection to the most popular social networking resources available.

Google Analyticator for WordPress

Don’t want the hassle of adding Google Analytics code to all the pages of your site? Want to get up and tracking quickly? The Google Analyticator for Wordpress plugin automatically inserts the code throughout the site and tracks stats for all outbound links, comment author links, downloads and more.

Page Links To

Many people want to add links to outside sites to their main navigation. A forum, another blog, a sales site… The Page Links To plugin lets you create that link without having to fuss around with figuring out how to get people over to that other site without hand-coding the link in. Point out all you want!

My Page Order

You can set the order of the pages in your main navigation easily by assigning them a number. That means going into each page and manually assigning order. The My Page Order plugin makes assigning page order even easier, giving you the ability to drag and drop pages (and sub-pages) right in your dashboard.

My Link Order and My Category Order

My Link Order and My Category Order allows you to set the order in which links and categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.

Contact Form 7

There’s a lot of contact form plugins for WordPress, and the most popular seems to be the CFormsII plugin. That plugin can do a lot of stuff and really let you design your contact page like a pro, but we’ve also found that CFormsII isn’t that user friendly. The Contact Form 7 plugin offers an easier option for most needs.

WP Super Cache

Now that you’ve got this great list of plugins, you’re going to have to make sure your blog runs at optimal speeds and doesn’t suck too much CPU usage from your host. Too many plugins have the potential to drain a server and bog it down. The WP Super Cache plugin helps alleviate the issue, generating static html files from your blog that make it easier for the server to process, which in turn helps speed up load time.

WordPress Plugins You Need to Know About
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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WordPress installation is a do-it-yourself project if you follow these simple steps. I find myself repeating this information a lot, so I thought I’d make this process easier on you and me both.

Purchase WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Explore WordPress design themes.

1. I recommend looking at the Most Popular first. Some of the differences (apart from colors) are the navigation menus, number of columns, and how different page elements are designed (bullets, numbered lists, quotes, etc.)
2. Look for a theme that has the general layout and color scheme most like what you want to achieve.
3. Make sure the theme was updated fairly recently.
4. Do NOT Google for free WordPress themes. Too often these are hacked with malicious code. Here is another site I trust.
5. Download the zip file. Do not unzip.

Select Web Hosting Provider

1. Choose a web hosting service provider that offers SQL5, cPanel, and one-click installation. I highly recommend InMotion Hosting. Their customer service is extraordinary. (Note: This link buys lunch for me and a friend. You are free to go directly to InMotionHosting.com or another provider.)
2. Once you receive the Welcome email from InMotion, install WordPress.
   • login using temporary xxx/cpanel
   • scroll down to Software & Services >Fantastico
   • click ‘WordPress’ in left sidebar >New Installation
   • first box should default to your domain
   • second box, leave blank if installing into the root directory
   • next 2 boxes are login information for WordPress
   • admin nickname – first name
   • email address is required
   • leave site name and description blank; it’s easier to edit in WordPress
   • install WordPress
   • Logout of cPanel

Change Domain Name System (DNS)

1. Change DNS from current nameservers to NS.inmotionhosting.com   NS2.inmotionhosting.com (or, as instructed by your web host)
2. The change can take 24-36 hours to propagate, yet generally happens in less than 8 hours.
3. Using a ftp manager, edit the index.htm file located in the root directory. Rename it to index2.htm for now. You can delete when you’re sure you edited the right file.

Add New Theme to Your Site

1. Login to your WordPress Site.
2. Click Appearance>Add New Themes in left menu.
3. Choose Upload and select the zipped theme file of your choice.
4. Install. Preview. Activate.

Refer to WordPress for Dummies

1. Read the chapter on settings. In the Permalinks setting, use /%category%/%postname%/  You want your category names to be short and keyword specific.
2. Learn to create new posts, pages, categories and links.
3. Create your first post.
4. Edit the About page.
5. Delete the Hello World post.

Have fun!

WordPress is a great program, and yet to maximize the benefits and potential of your new site, you need the plugins, and extra features that are offered:

• Upgrade to a Premium Theme
• Redesign the header to Embed your Logo
• Customize the theme Colors and Layout
• Optimize your Site for Search Engines
• Make Your Site Hacker/Spam proof
• Automate Backups for safety
• Setup a Professional Email
• Setup Feedburner account to handle your RSS Subscribers
• Setup Email Subscription Option and Embed it in your Blog
• Add Analytic Tracking
• Monitor Backups, Security and Version Updates

Let me know if you need my services.

Do It Yourself WordPress Installation
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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There are many tasks to be done in running a blog:

• writing
• marketing
• advertising
• hosting
• design and much more.

Time, effort and money all go into making your blog the best it can be.

What would you do if one day all that work disappeared? What would you do if your database became corrupted or you lost all the changes you made to your theme?

One task every blogger should practice is – backup your blog.

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, then click over to the Blogging Tips detailed instructions.

If we customized and installed your site, sit back and relax. Your database is scheduled for back up on a timely basis.

We’ve Got Your Back(up)
If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit Sweet Tea and Straight Talk, where it was originally published.

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