Wednesday Wordpress

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

March 21, 2012 by Kathryn 8 Comments

Welcome to my series of quick tips for WordPress bloggers! Please note that nothing I post here will be for experienced users. Instead, the series is just quick little tips that I’ve come across since moving to WordPress. If you happen to have a random question about WordPress, feel free to send me an email and I’ll do my best to hunt down an answer!

This week’s quick tip…WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org!

wordpress vs image When a blogger decides to either start a new WordPress blog or to move their current blog from another platform to WordPress, one of the first confusions they may run into is the two different WordPress options available: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. These two publishing options look and seem similar but they are actually completely different. And if you’re confused about which one is right for you, you’re not alone! So for those that have been wondering what exactly makes a WordPress.com blog different from a WordPress.org blog, here are some of the key points about each publishing method:

WordPress.com

Pros

Free – WordPress.com is hosted by some of the key creators of WordPress software in the same way that Blogger is hosted by Google, so creating and publishing on WordPress.com is completely free of charge and setting up your first blog takes mere minutes
Unbreakable – If things like HTML, CSS and PHP are foreign languages to you and getting a Forbidden error when you tried to access your site would have you convinced the police were coming to take you away, you’ll love publishing on WordPress.com. Spam, upgrades, backups and security are all handled by the site owners and the only Themes and Plugins that are offered are ones that are guaranteed to work as they should
Cutting Edge – The designers behind WordPress.com put a lot of their energy into it since it’s the money-maker. So WordPress.com actually shows the newest developments sooner than WordPress.org

Cons

No Monetizing Options – WordPress.com prohibits users from using third-party ads, sponsored posts, affliliate links or any other possible monetization options, so if you want to make money on your website, it is NOT the choice for you
No Control – While you can choose from any of the 160 themes and the approved Plugins available to WordPress.com users, you cannot upload your own Themes and Plugins and you cannot edit the HTML, PHP or content of a theme
Ads – WordPress.com makes money from advertisements, so unless you purchase an ad-free option for about thirty dollars a year, your site will display advertisements periodically to your readers

WordPress.org

Pros

Total Control – Because you choose where your website is hosted and then install the WordPress.org software there, you have total control over the experience. You can choose the high performance of a dedicated server, use an inexpensive shared hosting plan or, if you have the money and the know-how, even run your site on a server computer in your very own home
Limitless Possibilities – Not all WordPress Plugins and Themes are created by WordPress designers. In fact, the vast majority aren’t. They’re created by third-party developers and then offered to WordPress.org users. The Plugins can make your site do almost anything and are all available to WordPress.org users. And that means everything about your site can be completely customized to suit you
Monetization Options – Whether you want to host a store on your site or monetize your blog with Google AdSense or other third-party advertisers, you are the boss when it comes to making money on your WordPress.org website

Cons

Easy to Mess Up – That limitless functionality that comes with being able to install and upload whatever you want also means that you may install or upload something that causes your site to crash or stop working like it should. And things like backups, upgrades and dealing with spam are your responsibility
Expensive – WordPress.org blogs are self-hosted, which means that you have to purchase hosting and then install the WordPress.org software with that host. Most reputable hosts have an easy one-click installation of WordPress software, but depending how busy your site is, hosting can cost you anywhere from $5 to $500 per month
Complicated – When you run a WordPress.org site, you are free to change the code and styling to your heart’s content. But it’s always possible that one thing you change may cause changes to other aspects of your site. And figuring out what has caused the problem can be a long trial and error process if you’re not a professional designer

Basically, as long as your blog is just a hobby, you will probably be completely happy on a WordPress.com website. But if you decide that you want to start making money or creating a genuine, recognizable brand for your site, you will likely be better off with a WordPress.org site. And if you deeply care about what you are creating, keep in mind that when you publish with WordPress.com, you are publishing to a platform you don’t control. If it unexpectedly shuts down one day, you may very well lose everything. While a hosting service could do the same thing, you can completely back up your entire site including your theme, plugins, posts, comments and everything else whenever you choose.

Any other advantages or disadvantages I missed? Which do you prefer; WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-URL Editing

March 14, 2012 by Kathryn 6 Comments

This week’s quick tip…URL editing!

girl with dot com magnets By default, most people have the URLs on their WordPress posts set so that they automatically contain the date and the title of their post. It’s a great way to set up your URLs so that they reflect the content of the article but when you’re also trying to write engaging titles, the URL can end up being pretty long.

I wondered for a long time whether it was worth it to take that extra minute to edit the URL so that it was a little shorter. And recently I learned that not only is it worthwhile because the URL will be shorter, it can actually be beneficial for my site!

Words that don’t add any real content like the and with take up a lot of room in your URL. By taking them out, your URL will rank better in search engines. And editing that URL couldn’t be easier.

When you are creating a post, you will see a line of text labelled Permalink right below your title box. Click the Edit button at the end of this line of text. This will open up the entire URL so that you can edit out the words that you don’t need. For example, here’s the URL of one of my recent posts:

http://www.mommykatandkids.com/2012/03/taste-the-goodness-of-the-new-freshly-baked-dempsters-bagels.html

Now, just delete any words that don’t provide any real value, making sure to leave a dash to separate the words that do remain. Here’s what the URL looked like after editing:

http://www.mommykatandkids.com/2012/03/new-freshly-baked-dempsters-bagels.html

Or if you prefer, you can even cut it down to the bare minimum and just leave this:

http://www.mommykatandkids.com/2012/03/dempsters-new-bagels.html

Easy peasy, and now this URL is not only shorter, it’s also more descriptive to Google and other search engines!

Bonus Tip: If you have a word that appears throughout the text but that isn’t actually in your title, you can add it to your URL to increase its SEO impact. So for the above example, I could also add in the word Canada since it helps add value to the URL and it appears throughout my review!

Do you edit your WordPress URLs before publishing?

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-The Back Door

March 7, 2012 by Kathryn 3 Comments

This week’s quick tip…the back door!

This is a concept that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but conquering your fear of the back door can have some pretty big benefits. Relax, I don’t have my mind in the gutter! I’m talking about the back door to your blog, also known as phpMyAdmin.

A lot of people spend years blogging on WordPress and never so much as glance at their Control Panel, or cPanel, but what happens if something goes wrong and you end up locked out of your dashboard with a non-functioning website? You can call your host and have them fix the problem for you (and if you have a good host, they will), but communicating the problem and waiting for support to fix it can take hours. Or, you can use another route and solve the problem yourself.

The majority of the time, the problem will be caused by a Plugin. These clever add-ons are a love-hate relationship for most people; they offer amazing functionality but they are also very often the reason that your website will stop working. So I’m going to run through the steps for accessing your WordPress files and deactivating your Plugins using phpMyAdmin. As scary as it may seem to be altering the files that make up your website, a simple Plugin deactivation is actually quite easy.

Log into your cPanel. If you have no idea how to log into your cPanel¸ you’re not alone. Search your emails for one from your host. (In my case, the email is from sales@hostgator.com.) This email contains the link to your cPanel and your password. Use the info to log in.
Look for an icon labelled phpMyAdmin. There will be lots of icons on your cPanel dashboard, but this one should be fairly easy to find. On Hostgator, it is under the heading Databases. Click on it to access your phpMyAdmin dashboard
In the left-hand column of your phpMyAdmin homepage, you should see a file name that contains either your name or your website name followed by a _wrdp. This is your WordPress database. Click on it.
From the list that opens on your left, choose the file titled wp_options and click on it
From this new list, choose the table named active_plugins. There is more than one page in this list so if you don’t see it on the first page, don’t panic. I found this one on the second page. Click on the pencil icon; this will open up the table so that you can edit it.
You should now see a box with some various lines of code inside. The lines of code are your active Plugins and if you look closely, you’ll be able to see the names of your Plugins within the code. Copy this code and paste it into a text file on your computer just in case. Then delete the entire box of code and hit the Go button at the bottom to save your changes.

Congratulations, you have just deactivated your Plugins! But not to fret, they are all still installed on your site, just waiting to be reactivated. If you had an issue with a Plugin that prevented you from accessing WordPress, you should now be able to log in to your WordPress dashboard and reactivate your other Plugins. Just make sure not to reactivate the one that caused your problems!

If you are not a programmer, you definitely shouldn’t be adding and deleting files in phpMyAdmin. But if you are installing or updating a Plugin and after get a fatal error message when you try to access your dashboard or look at your site, try deactivating the Plugins in phpMyAdmin before you call your host. You may be able to get your website up and running again in a matter of minutes, and if deactivating your Plugins doesn’t solve the problem, you’re no worse off than you were before!

Have you ever edited files in phpMyAdmin?

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Themes

February 23, 2012 by Kathryn 4 Comments

This week’s quick tip…themes!

wordpress theme image While Blogger has Templates, WordPress has Themes. And Themes are a little more complicated than the basic Blogger website design because they incorporate all the little details of the design. When you first start using WordPress, the sheer number of available themes can be completely overwhelming.

There are thousands of great free Themes available, ready-made Themes to purchase and, of course, designers can be hired to create a custom Theme. When you are first starting out with WordPress, you are probably just fine sticking with a free Theme initially. But your posts and pictures won’t look quite the same when you change your theme, so don’t set your heart on one specific Theme. Find a few that you like and see which one works best for you.

Of course, you could just visit the WordPress Free Themes Directory and hunt through it until you found one you liked, but I found it much more helpful to check out a few websites that shared some of their favourite free themes. And for easily finding a theme with the specific features you want, FreeWPThemes.com has some nice search functions. You can narrow down your search by browsing through themes with two or three columns, themes that are widget and AdSense ready or themes in different colours.

Themes are downloaded as .zip files and once you’ve downloaded a theme, installing it is as easy as installing a Plugin. Simply click Appearance in your website’s sidebar, then click Themes, and choose the Install Theme tab at the top. Then just upload the file from your computer and activate it.

And as an added bonus, the Install Themes tab has some handy tools for letting you search for new themes too! Choose the colours, columns and features you want with the help of handy check boxes and then search the WordPress Free Themes Directory right from your dashboard! It’s a great way to narrow down your choices a bit to help you find a theme you like.

Your Theme is what gives your website its personality, so take the time to hunt for one that suits you perfectly. And if you can’t find one, there are some amazing designers in the blogosphere that will create a completely custom design for you for a pretty reasonable price. But as long as you have a Theme you love, that’s the most important thing. After all, it’s essentially the “face” of your website, so make sure it reflects you!

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Errors

February 16, 2012 by Kathryn 6 Comments

This week’s quick tip…errors!

There are all kinds of error messages and issues you may run into when using WordPress, and they are all good at causing panic, but luckily, a little patience and logic can usually hunt down the problem even if you don’t speak a word of html.

The first thing to do when you encounter an error is try again. WordPress isn’t perfect and often you will receive a random error message that will vanish as suddenly as it appeared when you repeat your action. If the error persists, it’s time to think about whether or not you’ve made any recent changes. Most of the time, a Plugin is the cause of the problem and if you’ve just added a new one or updated an old one, finding the issue may be as easy as that.

If you haven’t made any recent changes or if you’ve made quite a few and aren’t sure where to start, it’s time to start using some good old-fashioned logic. Start with a Google search. WordPress has an impressive forum and often you will find that somebody else has had the same problem as you. If you can’t find an answer online, head back to your blog. If you’re getting an error message, check and see if there are any clues within the message itself. Often, the offending Plugin will be listed within the message, making the problem easy to solve.

If your problem isn’t one that results in an error message or if the message doesn’t hold any clues, it’s time to start deactivating Plugins one by one to find out if one of them is causing the problem. But rather than just running through them alphabetically, choose the ones that would be most likely to cause the problem you’re experiencing. If it’s an image problem, start with any photo editing Plugins you have installed. If your comments are acting up, try comment-numbering Plugins. And if you’re having issues with sharing your posts on other networks, deactivate the sharing Plugins before doing anything else.

If you discover that it is a Plugin that is causing your problems, don’t rush to delete it right away. Look through its settings and make sure that they are exactly the way you want them. It may have just been an unchecked box or an unspecified list item that caused your issues in the first place. If the Plugin itself simply isn’t compatible with your site, then delete it and look for another one that offers similar features.

In rare cases, Plugins aren’t the problem. I battled so many issues with my site near the end of 2011 and I learned eventually that they were all due to my incredibly out-of-date theme. But I never would have known that if it hadn’t been for my hosting company. When my site was gobbling up resources, my host was the one that found the problem, temporarily fixed it and told me what had caused it to begin with. So if you’re completely stuck and can’t use your blog the way it is, get in touch with your host! You may find that they know exactly how to solve your problem.

Solving WordPress errors is a matter of trial and error for those of us that don’t know how to analyze code. But a website designer once gave me a piece of advice that I have found to be true time and time again. She said, “First check the Plugins. Then check your Theme and WordPress Settings. Finally, if nothing else works, check with your Host.”

Taking your time, thinking it though and going step-by-step is absolutely essential in eliminating those pesky WordPress errors, so don’t panic. Solving the problem probably won’t be as hard as you thought!

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Backups

February 8, 2012 by Kathryn 8 Comments

This week’s quick tip…backups!

wordpress data backup image Backing up your blog is something that not many bloggers do, but it is incredibly important. Just imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to see that your entire website, every post you had ever written and every comment that you had ever received, was suddenly and inexplicably gone. It’s not something that happens often…but it does happen. And if you aren’t prepared, you may very well lose your entire blog.

The problem is that backing up your blog can be intimidating. It involves scary-sounding steps like logging into your cPanel and accessing your phpMyAdmin. But while leaving the comfort of WordPress to navigate the unfamiliar world of phpMyAdmin may sound frightening, it is actually fairly straightforward. WordPress has a great step-by-step tutorial for manually backing up your blog and if you follow the steps carefully, it is a fairly easy process. Of course, exporting your content first is always a good plan!

If you’re just too nervous to make the attempt, you do have other options. The simplest solution may be to just ask your website host if they offer any software for easily backing up your blog. But if they don’t or if the software is too complicated for a non-technical user, you’re not out of luck yet!

Because this is WordPress we’re talking about, you may have already guessed that, yes, there’s a Plugin for that. You can find a list of various Backup Plugins here, but whatever Plugin you decide to try, do so with caution! While simple Plugins for buttons and category posts are generally fairly safe, Backup Plugins are large and complex and are notorious for either not working correctly or for causing errors on your site. Read the reviews and the forum for each one! And then, if you do decide to give one a try, make sure that you export your content first.

Which brings me to my final tip for backing up your blog. As a last resort, using the Export feature found in the WordPress Tools category is a great way to ensure that if your site does go down, you won’t lose everything. You can do it every day and not even have to leave WordPress, so it’s also a handy additional step to take in between full database backups. Simply click on the Tools tab in your WordPress dashboard and then click the Export tab. On the Export screen, leave All Content checked, click the Download Export File button and when your browser’s download screen opens up, save the file to your computer.

Exporting your blog will not save your theme and it will not save your Plugins. But it WILL ensure that your posts, comments, categories and tags are all preserved in the event that something happens to your site. As a backup method, it’s easy, quick and much, much better than nothing. In fact, if you are using a basic free theme and just a few plugins, it may be the only backup method you need! But if you have a custom theme you adore or a list of Plugins you’re not sure you’ll be able to remember the names of when you need them, learning to back up your entire site is a good move to make. Because if the unthinkable happens, that backup file may be the most precious piece of data you will ever have!

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Settings

February 1, 2012 by Kathryn 6 Comments

This week’s quick tip…settings!

wordpress image When you first start blogging with WordPress, it’s natural to want to spend most of your time customizing the look of your website and theme so that it suits you. But it’s incredibly worthwhile to also spend a few minutes running through your WordPress Settings. Checking out each and every one of the tabs in the Settings section and going through your options is an important first step to customizing your site since it lets you choose everything from the way your RSS feed is published to the way your readers leave comments. Let’s take a look at the tabs one by one and go through the things you should consider:

General Settings: This tab is where you enter your website’s name, tagline and URL. It is also where you enter the email address you will need to receive notifications from WordPress and where you can set your membership settings. For most bloggers, this won’t apply but if you’re setting up a forum, the Membership option is essential. You also set your time zone and favourite date format in General Settings.

Writing: These settings can usually be left in their default mode. WordPress automatically files posts with no category as Uncategorized and also converts emoticons to actual graphics. If you want to post via email or using a remote blogging client, you can set that up as well but most bloggers will likely be fine staying with the default settings.

Reading: This is a section that most bloggers will want to customize a bit. Reading is where you can choose between having your latest posts as your home page or having a single static page display as the home page instead. Reading is also where you decide how many blog posts will show on your home page and how many feed items will show in your RSS feed. To ensure your home page loads quickly, you will likely want to limit your home page posts to no more than ten. I currently show eight posts on my home page and ten posts in a Feedreader. Finally, and most importantly for those trying to increase page views, Reading is where you can choose between displaying your full text or a summary for each article in your RSS feed. Make sure to switch this setting to Summary if you want people to visit your site instead of just reading your feed!

Discussion: The WordPress default comment settings are fairly effective for minimizing spam comments, but Discussion is still a worthwhile section to read through. Whether you want to cut comments off after a certain number of days, limit the amount of links a comment can contain, require readers to be registered to comment, allow or deny trackbacks, manually approve comments as readers leave them or any of the other things that some blog owners like to do when interacting with their audience, you can do it here. Remember, comments power your discussion on a blog, so make sure that your comments are set up in a way that lets you engage with your audience in the most effective way for you.

Media: This is where you can set your favourite sizes for pictures and videos on your website. If you happen to know the pixel width of your posts, entering it into the Large section will save you lots of time resizing pictures you want to span the post!

Privacy: This is a very short section that simply lets you decide whether or not you want your site to be indexed by search engines. If you are trying to grow your readership, you absolutely want your site indexed.

Permalinks: This is the final section of the basic WordPress settings (if you have others, they are connected to Plugins you’ve installed) and one that is fairly self-explanatory. It simply allows you to choose what type of URL your posts will have. If you moved from Blogger, either you or the person that migrated your site would likely have set up a Custom Structure that closely matches Blogger’s URLs. Otherwise, simply choose for yourself whether you would like your posts identified by the Post Name, the Day and Name, the Month and Name or some other structure.

Going through your Settings options will take a bit of time, but when you are done, your website should be running in a way that you like a lot more. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with some of your options in WordPress and once you’ve seen what kind of choices you have available in your Settings, changing them in the future is so much easier! Take a look and see what kinds of setting are perfect for your WordPress blog!

Wednesday WordPress Quick Tips-Spam

January 26, 2012 by Kathryn 4 Comments

Welcome to my series of quick tips for WordPress bloggers! Please note that nothing I post here will be for experienced users. Instead, the series is just quick little tips that I’ve come across since moving to WordPress. If you happen to have a random question about WordPress that doesn’t have to do with actual programming issues (which I know nothing about), feel free to send me an email and I’ll do my best to hunt down an answer!

This week’s quick tip…spam!

wordpress spam cartoon Spam is a huge problem on WordPress. On Blogger, I found spam was like that bit of sand that gets stuck in your bathing suit at the beach…irritating, but manageable. On WordPress, spam was like a huge pit of quicksand, and I was drowning in it.

I’ve already talked about the importance of a good spam filter Plugin like Akismet but even when it’s not being published to your site, spam can cause problems for you. If you let your spam folder get too full, it can overload your site’s resources and get your site shut down. And some themes keep a record of old spam comments so even if you delete your spam, it will still gradually clog up your files. When it comes to spam, the less you have, the better!

It took me a long time to figure out some tips and tricks for dealing with the spam on WordPress, but I’ve finally found some ways to make the spam situation more manageable. First of all, that horrible WordPress feature that tells people they are posting comments too quickly is actually in place to protect blogs from spam! If you run giveaways using comments as entries, you really have no choice but to use a Plugin to disable the feature (unless you want your readers to go crazy, that is!) but if you use Rafflecopter or another third-party giveaway method, do NOT disable this feature! Computers can post spam comments much faster than people can type them and this setting helps prevent your site from being flooded with comments about pornography and Zune.

Another important tip is, of course, to empty your spam folder regularly. This is one of those jobs that is pretty tedious but very essential. My best advice? Try to find some humour in it! Take, for example, this fabulous comment posted on a lip balm review:

Thank you for sharing. Not to many people in your position are so gracious. Your article was very poignant and understandable. It helped me to understand very clearly. Thank you for your help.

All I can say is, that man really must have needed some lip balm. Or this fabulous comment on a post announcing some recent winners:

If I told U I didnt agree? Would I be shot down like a… couldnt think of an analogy which is funny cos I am usually full of them.

Umm…it was a list of giveaway winners. What’s to agree with?

Of course, since 99% of spam is left by malicious computer programs, it’s no wonder the comments are so hilariously irrelevant. But as I mentioned, they can also be horribly harmful to a website’s operation. And so my very best quick tip for dealing with spam is this: turn your comments off after a certain number of days.

Changing the settings is easy. Click on the Discussion tab found under Settings in the WordPress dashboard. In the category Other Comment Settings you’ll find the option of automatically closing comments on articles older than __ days. Check the box, enter your desired number of days that you’d like to accept comments and then save your changes!

Of course, if you have posts that still get comments years after you’ve posted, this may not be a good tip for you. But if your comments tend to mostly come within the first few months, setting your comments to turn off automatically can be a lifesaver. Because I run giveaways for two to three weeks, my comments on a post turn off automatically after 30 days. Since changing that setting, my spam comments have dropped from over 1500 comments weekly to about 200. That’s a lot less you-know-what to sift through!

If you are completely desperate, there are plenty of Plugins to help minimize comment spam even more, from programs that block spam computers from even accessing your site to ones that add CAPTCHA words or math problems to comment boxes. But like all Plugins, they will eat up some of your site’s resources as well, so if you don’t need to leave your comments open indefinitely, closing them off is a much more resource-friendly way to deal with the problem.

Spam is one of those inevitable burdens website owners have to deal with. But a quick setting change or two could make that burden a lot less heavy. So try some different options out and see what works best for you!