All Entries Tagged With: "wordpress"

Time To Upgrade Your WordPress

If you’ve been a customer of Blog Content Provider for some time then there is a chance that you are still on WordPress 2.6.1, but the latest version of WordPress is 2.7.1. In fact, developers are currently working on 2.8.

We don’t recommend upgrading with every new release, but we do recommend upgrading about once a year (at the least). The reason you want to upgrade your WordPress to the latest version from time to time is because older versions frequently pose a security risk. If you are running an older version of any software then you are making yourself vulnerable to hackers and other malicious online creatures. We’d hate to see anything bad happen to you.

If you need to upgrade WordPress, let us know. We’ll be glad to help. If you’d prefer to do it yourself, that’s OK too, but you need to get it done.

Should You Host Your Company Blog On Blogspot?

I am still amazed to see businesses setting up their company blog on Blogspot. I would not use a free host of any kind (Blogspot, WordPress.com, Typepad, etc.) for my business blog. The reasons are numerous

1. If you don’t own the domain name then you are at someone else’s mercy
2. The costs for setting up a blog are too minimal
3. You can have a well optimized business blog on your own domain name for less than the cost of a single sale in most industries
4. WordPress standalone software is free and easy to use
5. Having your own domain name is beneficial for a number of reasons, one of which is its resell value
6. Control, control, control
7. Owning your own domain name looks more professional
8. You can design your own company blog with unlimited possibilities
9. WordPress plugins allow you to expand your marketing options with a standalone blog

These are just a few of the reasons why you want to own your own domain name and put your company blog on that domain. Blogspot may be good for a personal blog, but I would not use it for a business blog.

Learn more about blog hosting here.

5 WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Should Know

It’s difficult if not impossible to run a WordPress blog without at least one plugin. I recommend the following plugins as plugins that can benefit every blogger, but the only one that is absolutely essential is the first one on the list. All others are helpful and I’d strongly urge you to consider them:

• Akismet - Akismet is WordPress’s default spam catcher. It will catch about 90% of your spam. If you set your WordPress settings to require a moderator approval before a comment goes live then that should get all the rest. Don’t run any kind of blog without a spam catcher.
• All In One SEO Pack – Your SEO will be tremendously improved with this plugin. Each post will have its very own title and description.
• AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget – You can also use other social widgets that do the same. I like AddThis. It makes it easy for your readers to bookmark your posts.
• SRG Clean Archives – If your WP archives doesn’t work, this plugin will save the day.
• Feedburner Feedsmith - Run all of your RSS feeds through Feedburner for easier tracking and better stats. Good plugin to have, especially if you want to include links in your feed footer.

There are many more plugins that can be useful for WordPress, but I’d say these are the five most basic plugins for any WordPress user. Akismet is a necessity, the others are a strong recommendation.

Add A Twitter Badge To Your Blog The Hard Way

I decided I’d put a Twitter badge on a client’s blog so I went looking for Twitter badges. Man are they hard to find. Well, if you have a Twitter account and you are active in your account then you should add a Twitter badge to your blog. What better way to attract new followers than right there on your blog?

Here’s what you need to do to find that Twitter badge:

1. From your Twitter page, click on “Help”
2. In the left sidebar you’ll see “Twitter FAQ” – CLICK ON IT
3. Click on 1.1.FAQ
4. Scroll down
5. Keep scrolling down
6. Scroll, like, all the way down until you see “Can I put Twitter on my blog?“
7. Click the link using “put a Twitter badge” as anchor text in the “Can I put Twitter on my blog?” paragraph

Yikes! That’s seven steps just to find the page on which the badges can be found. Five if you count the three step scroll function as one. Facetiousness aside, you’d think that Twitter would make it easier for bloggers to find badges for their blog. And, I’m a bit disappointed in the limited choices available. Oh, well.

Instead of the above seven-step process, just click here and you’ll go to the Twitter badge page. Or you can go to http://twitter.com/badges. Now, from here:

• Click the type of widget you want to use (again, I’m disappointed they don’t have one for WordPress – the most popular blogging platform); if you use WordPress, click “Other”
• Choose the type of badge you want
• Customize your badge
• Copy the code
• Inside WordPress, click on Design then Theme Editor
• Click on the Sidebar php file you want to edit
• Insert the widget code where you want it to appear in the sidebar
• Update file
• Visit Site and make sure the badge appears the way you want it to appear

Don’t have the time to install your own badge? We’ll do it for you. Call Chris at 786-317-8774 or visit the website and fill in our contact form.