Yes… yes it does.

For me at least, I particularly have a negative reaction to seeing a blogger using Blogger/etc. What do I not like about them?

• Interface:
  for the Blogger: It’s a bit of a mess, I didn’t like the ‘new’ Blogger control panel (admin interface) and the old one was just terrible. There are just too many things to fiddle around with in this interface and it feels very unlike Google products, which is a big negative.
  for the Reader: Moving around in other blogging platforms isn’t as comfortable as it should be, I often am not able to follow the layouts that these other platforms adopt. It has much to do with the fact that WP has hit upon the best way to do it…and now nothing can compare…tsk!

• Commenting: My biggest issue with platforms other than for WP, commenting….why oh why is it so complicated and cumbersome to make a comment. Why on earth would you allow only a Blogger user to comment on your Blog? How narrow-minded an option is that? The captcha option, why aren’t we past that now! Some WP users have the easy question option like “2+4 = ?”I love commenting, it makes blogs so interactive, but non-WP blogs give me a headache to comment. This entire post is basically because of the horrid comment system in other blogging platforms.

• Looks: The common problem, they all tend to be MySpace’d blogs, too many shiny objects and glittering doo-dah’s. WP blogs look so darn professional, they are vivid, colorful, easy on the eyes.

These are my personal views, so enjoy whatever platform you use, even if it’s any of those horrible non-WP ones, but be sure to check out WordPress.org (self-hosted) & WordPress.com (freely hosted). After trying Blogger (and the new one) and having my own self-hosted WordPress blog, I can say I’m biased towards WP

Originally posted at techzonline.net

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For those who don’t know, your website’s Alexa rank affects the amount of money that advertisers will pay to be shown on your site. The lower the numerical Alexa rank, the more money advertisers are prepared to pay. It’s not all that they will be looking for, but it’s an important factor regardless.

In short: a good Alexa ranking matters. So how do you go about ensuring a good ranking? Well, recently I’ve watched the Alexa ranking of this site get better and better over time so the waiting game is a crucial part of the rank improvement process.

So how do you go about improving your Alexa rank? Here’s a few simple tips to get you started:

Install the Alexa Toolbar
If you install the Alexa toolbar on your own web browser, then every time you view your own site, you register as a hit (and so does everyone else who vists your site with the toolbar installed). If you are an Internet Explorer user you can download it here. If Firefox is your browser of choice don’t feel excluded because you can install the SearchStatus Extension instead.

Encourage others to follow suit
Conformity isn’t such a bad thing in this case; so encourage your friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers to install the toolbar or the Firefox extension. Give them motivation by placing a link to it on your site. (Hint, hint)

Install Alexa widgets
It seems every site offers a widget for your site these days and Alexa is no exception. Read all about their widgets here. They look something like this:

Use Alexa redirects
Use Alexa Redirects on your website URL. For example: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.forgedeuphoria.com. Replace forgedeuphoria.com with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will only count each unique IP address once a day.

Write or Blog about Alexa
Webmasters and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has an effect on your Alexa ranking.

Give people good links
The blogosphere is generally a nice place, so it’s only simple logic that the more times you give people good quality links with good anchor text, the more times you will get the same high quality links in return and hopefully when clicked, will increase your Alexa ranking.

Try Alexa Autosurfs
Do they work? Everyone says maybe for brand new sites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there might be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using this option with caution.

So there are just a few options/tips to increase your Alexa ranking and start moving up in the interweb hierarchy.

Got any other Alexa tips? I’d love to hear them.

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This is something that a few people must be encountering, and while there are detailed instructions at the WP Codex on how to backup a database, install WordPress, and reinstate your posts, it can be a little scary for a first timer. (I don’t consider myself a WP newbie, but I did do some very silly things in a process that can be achieved with minimal pain.)

So here’s my quick guide to moving your Word Press site to a different location, incorporating all that I learnt from the experience in one place!

Step 1: Back up your database, theme, plugins

Backing up your database is not as scary as it sounds, especially if you have the WP Backup plugin. If so, you’re probably being a good girl/boy and backing up your tables regularly.

But even if not, a backup can be easily done through PHPMyAdmin, accessed via the control panel at your hosting account. Select the Word Press tables in your database and go to the “Export” tab. Select the “save as file” box and download the backup to your computer. You should be having a .sql file. If you selected to compress, you’ll have a zipped/gzipped version of it.

Right. Now your posts, comments, etc. are safe.

You also need to backup your theme files, and any plugins you use.

Step 2: Recreate the WP database at the new location

Using your control panel, create a new MySQL database at your new host’s, adding a user and password. Go to PHPMyAdmin, select the database, and then click on the SQL tab. Copy and paste the data from your .sql backup file in the box provided. (Alternatively, use the “Show location of textfile” option: click on browse and point it to the .sql backup file). Now go get some coffee while the query executes. Sometimes it can take a while.

Step 3: Install Word Press at the new location

Upload all the files to your new location. Remember to rename config-sample.php to config.php, and put in your new database settings (database name, username, and password). Also upload your theme files (to the wp-content/themes folder) and plugins (to wp-content/plugins folder).

Step 4: Type in the URL of your site and press Enter/Return

Yes, you’re mostly done. At this point you may notice that clicking on your posts or archives is returning an error. This is the case if you had a custom permalinks structure. You need to update your .htaccess. Log in to the dashboard. Go to Options –> Permalinks. Update the permalinks. If Word Press cannot rewrite to your .htaccess, it will tell you exactly what to put in there. Use this data to update your .htaccess manually.

And now you are done!

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Knowing this, what can we do to improve ourselves?

Think beyond the basic Blog

Other Bloggers know the basics already. They don’t need you to hold their hand teaching them how to write a post and click Submit. Use that knowledge and smarts you gain with owning a blog for more than a day, you often discover tiny tricks… tips if you will that others may not know. Share it!

Ideas and originality

A Blog is all about the original content it brings to the internet. Bloggers alike find news and other bits of common knowledge from a variety of already well established sites, make yours stand out with the information you bring to them.

Involve your readers

Being part of your Blog is something any reader would like to do; the best way it to involve them by way of comments or participating events. Carolyn Manning recently had a Virtual Conference which really got her readers active…it’s a lot of work to put together such an event though, so start small and build into weekly or monthly events.

Give your Blog a human touch

Odd as it may sound, there are bloggers out there that forget they aren’t only dealing with wires and circuits…but people. People who read and in some way are connected to what they read. They feel and react to what they see on their screen. Bloggers are a community and as such driven by the groups of Blogger friends they make. Keep them coming back!

Hopefully we can keep the Blog world interesting for a good while to come, keep blogging!

Originally posted at my site.

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An hour later your host/provider has a server fart and your database and all your hard work goes down the drain. Your instant reaction is most likely rage.

Your first thought is most likely: I can’t be motivated to write it again, so I’ll just sit back and wait until the urge builds up to rewrite the post. “there goes all my hard work!” And to think all of this grief could be saved with 5 minutes work. Here’s a few methods to save you pulling your hair out:

Method One – cPanel

If you happen to be using a host that has cPanel, you can find the script I have written below to be quite useful for backing up your WordPress database (or any other database for that matter, which is why I love it because it is not restricted to WordPress). After you have downloaded the file, rename it from a .phps to .php to be sure the script will be executable. This step is absolutely imperative.

Download The Script

Security Warning

Now using your favorite FTP client, upload your newly created file In the directory under public_html/ or www/. I emphasised that because it is absolutely critical that this is where you upload it, otherwise you will be left open to someone being able to download your database information. And now we’re ready to roll onto the next step.

Now presuming you’ve either created a new PHP file or downloaded the file and renamed it, you need to login to cPanel and find the Cron Jobs icon. If you’re having trouble finding it, reference this image for help. Note that the image you say may differ to your cPanel interface.

Once you have found it, click it (duh) and youll be greeted with two buttons: Standard or Advaned. For now, choose standard and you’ll be greeted with a few boxes and inputs. See this image for an idea of what you need to put in all these boxes. The settings I have selected in this image are that my backup will be emailed to me every day at 3am (Server Time). If you would like to change this, simply do so by using the boxes. If you have trouble understanding what to do, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email me.

Method Two – WordPress Plugin

So there’s many great plugins out there for WordPress which can do everything from add ajax goodness on pages to backup your database, which is exactly what we want.

For this tutorial, I have used WP-DB-Backup which was originally developed by skippy.net but was since abandoned and taken up by Austin Matzko and has since been rereleased for WP 2.1. Simply head on over to the WP-DP-Backup page, download the plugin and read the simple installation instructions. I would repost the incstructions here, but you can simply view them after you click the link. I myself have not used this plugin, as I am a faithful user of the above mentioned Method One.

Method Three – WordPress Internal Backup

As far as I can tell from reading and watching a short video, this method makes the above mentioned Method Two of using a plugin obsolete (although having not used the plugin myself, it may offer extra functionality that the WordPress Backup Tool does not). To save me explaining this method, a video on TubeTutorial which can be viewed via this link explains the method in great detail.

Conclusion

So there’s three methods to hopefully save you some grief in the long run if you do happen to lose your database(s). Just a quick shout out to the guys and girls at TubeTutorial for the use of their video in Method Three which is part of their series: 7 Essential WordPress Hacks. It’s well worth a look.

If you feel I have missed anything in this guide drop me a line in the comments or use this revolutionary new technology called Email and get in touch, stranger.

Thanks for reading my first article on Attackr! If you think this article can be improved, please leave a comment.

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I started working with WordPress a little over 2 years ago and decided to write a tutorial as I broke new ground, knowing that one of the most effective ways for me to learn was to share with others, thus encouraging me to make sure that I understood the subject myself. The result of that was a tutorial for WordPress 1.5 which you can find after a quick google for any form of “wordpress integration”.

Now, 2 years and a whole lot more experience later, I’ve finished work on a second tutorial on creating a WordPress theme from scratch which I’m happy to share with you guys in the hopes of encouraging designers to give it a try and to get feedback/suggestions so that I can continue to improve and reach my object of WordPress mastery.

Link: How to build a WordPress theme from scratch

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Plugin description: It’s a simple plug-in designed to display your archive listings in a clean and uniform fashion.

Plugin Features: It lists the Month / Year (links to that months archives), the day of the month the article was published, the title of the article (permalink to article), and the number of comments that have been made on each article.

It also hides password protected articles from showing up in your archives list.

You can see it in action on my archives page.

Find out more by checking out the official project page.

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1. Akismet – Akismet is like a junk-mail folder for the comments on your blog. There are lots of spammers out there flooding blogs with comments linking back to their site. If your blog is even mildly popular, you will get comment spam. It’s a major pain to try and sort through all those manually. Just like your junk-mail folder in your email automatically filters the spam out of your inbox, Akismet filters what it thinks are spam comments into a separate area where you can review it or completely ignore it. Since installing Akismet, I’ve yet to see any comment spam make it through.
2. WP-Cache – A simple to use yet powerful caching module. Enabling caching of your posts can help your blog survive the “digg effect” or other surges in traffic because WordPress doesn’t need to query the database as often.
3. Sociable – This plugin automatically adds links to your posts to popular social bookmarking sites like digg, del.icio.us, and reddit. Getting good exposure on these sites can help to increase your readership. The extra traffic brought in by these sites can also bring you in some extra income if you have any sort of advertising on your site.
4. Related Posts – Displays a list of (possibly) related posts. This makes it easy for your readers to see other articles you have written that may interest them. The easier you make it for people to find your content, the more likely they will be to actually read it.
5. Postie – This plugin greatly enhances the post-by-email feature of WordPress. By default, this feature is fairly limited (posts have all their html tags stripped, no support for attachments, no tagging abilities). After installing this plugin, it is pretty simple to setup a cron job to run the script at a regular interval to check for new posts. Now that my post-by-email options have been opened up, I’ve found myself writing quite a few posts this way. Anything that increases your options when it comes to posting will be good for the health of your blog.

There you have it. 5 must-have WordPress plugins that no self-respecting blog should be without. There are plenty more out there worth mention, but I just wanted to touch on what I feel are the most important ones; the ones that will make the most difference for your blog. They won’t help you write good content, but they will make it easier for readers to find what you’ve written. And isn’t that what we’re all here for?

This article was originally posted on my personal blog – brandon wood

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Now some of us won’t ever bother to try and make money off our blog, either we don’t think we can, or just won’t bother. Those that do have nothing to lose. Ad-supported sites can be respectable and well made, it just takes work on your part to make it successful.

Basic requirements to make money off your blog:

• A Blog, we use WordPress as an example.
• A domain, because a blog.wordpress.com account won’t let you add advertisements.**
• Advertisement tools to use on your site.
• Time, you got to invest time and effort into getting your ads to blend and flow with the content.

**Certain free blogging platforms like Blogger will let you add Google Adsense to your blog.

So you got the basic’s already. Now onto the next step, actually adding these ads, tracking them and improving them after some review.

• Step 1: Sign up to a few of the more popular and easy to use advertisement services that are sure to get your income started. We’ll look at a few later on in this post.
• Step 2: Start editing your site to include the ad code. Make it flow with the content, rather than stick out like a sore blob on your blog and make users avoid it. Remember, good ad placement is a key to getting users attention while at the same time not obstructing the content they are after. For example, starting your post with a huge banner ad is a no-no, but putting that same ad as a set of text-links somewhere in the middle of the post makes all the difference.
• Step 3: Use Meta tags and other tools to help get the right ads targeted to your blog. You don’t want to sell insurance ads on a blog that mainly talks about Health Food and Dieting do you?
• Step 4: Submit your Sitemap and blog link to popular Blog Directories such as Blog Flux and Technorati.
• Step 5: Other than for just posting regularly on your blog, make an effort to post complete pages. Once these are crawled by search engines, they can become valuable inbound links for your site.

Now you know what needs to be done, let’s take a look at some of the more popular advertisement tools and ways to get your income started.

• Google Adsense: By far one of the most common and easy to implement Ad programs out there. All you need to do is sign-up, and start putting the ad code in your blog to display relevant ads. Be careful of what you choose though..color, size, location, they all matter. Google provides you quite a decent choice of Ad sizes and various other ways to customize the Ads. Also included are referral programs that pay a decent amount as well.
• Yahoo Publisher Network: I haven’t used this myself, but it’s a another alternative to Google Adsense, don’t restrict yourself to any 1 program, but remember that some of these Ad programs won’t allow you to place competing ads on the same site.
• Adbrite: Another ad program that seems to work alongside larger ones such as Google & Yahoo. Selling your advertisement space (in hopes that someone might want to buy it in the first place) is a great way to get ads on your site, remember to see what publishers want to place on your site before approving any ads though, the ad content may be totally wrong for your site to begin with.
• Amazon Affiliate Program: I noticed this is a really popular program now, being an Amazon affiliate you can create your own store, called aStore, whereby you have total control of what gets sold. It’s like having your very own virtual store to sell Amazon products.
• PayPal: Never underestimate the power of a satisfied reader. Prior to content based ads and affiliate programs were started, donations were pretty much the only way a relatively small website owner could make some revenue off the site. Don’t overestimate the kindness of readers as well, many just won’t bother clicking that Donate button to help you out, and it’s usually a few dollars anyway. It doesn’t hurt having it setup on your site, so don’t ignore it as an option.

Ad-based & Affiliate programs have their own advantages & disadvantages. For example, Ad based content is easy to make money off of, because all it takes is a click, where as Affiliate programs require that a reader make a purchase before you get anything out of it.

Don’t miss my previous post on what all I had learned through my first few months of blogging, I hope it helps you out as well.

Some handy links for you to read:

seomoz.org
seobythesea.com
lizstrauss.com
blog-republic.com
directory.sootle.com

Thanks for reading everyone. Any tips or guides you may have are more than welcome here.

TechZ

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Being new at it means I’ve had a lot to learn, plenty to experience along the way and loads of expert help from friends like Viper. Even with my short time in the world of blogging, I can say I’ve learned enough to compile a small list of things every new blogger should be aware of:

• Get your own domain & hosting: Regardless of whether you’re in it for the long run, of just don’t think it’s necessary, it is. It’s cheap, there are numerous hosts out there with a variety of hosting plans just waiting to be used. Having your own domain allows for freedom+control that you will just not get anywhere. Think of it like owning a car versus renting, the pleasure in owning is all it’s own. Utilizing a good theme, aimed at your target audience like katiebird has done, makes a world of difference in keeping readers coming back.
• Blog frequently: I don’t mean 10 posts a day, no, a post a day will suffice. Don’t make it a one-liner either, blog if you have something to talk about, after all, that is the purpose of a blog.
• Get readers involved: Readers love to take part in your blog, by way of comments & thus adding their perspective to what you have written, make it interesting for them so that they see the need to come back and read some more.
• Build a community: Bloggers often keep a small list of regularly visited blogs where they comment, they cannot (as no one can) visit every single readers blog, it’s just too much. So keep that tight nit community involved, by being a regular on their blog as well.
• Commenting: Commenting on blogs is essential, it gets you noticed and it’s basically free publicity for you. High ranking blogs such as Donncha’s blog and largely visited ones like Photo Matt can be a boon for a new blogger.
• Join blog directories: You might not see them as a valuable source of traffic, but they are. Some you can join like technorati, some you are given a chance to become a part of, as in the case with SOB. By far SOB is one of the best places to comment & join in the discussions, there are just so many bloggers and potential readers you can get from there.
• Give credit to bloggers: If you’re mentioning a blogger or a post of theirs, be fair and give due credit by linking them, trackbacks/pingbacks are a respect to other bloggers for the work they put in.
• Contribute to blogs: Some blogs look for either pay-per-post or freelance writers, one such place I’ve recently joined is Attackr.com, I think it’s a great way to get your name out.
• Other things you might want to look into: Gravatar’s are great, they personalize your comments in other blogs and do the same for others. Sitemap creation to submit to services like Google are important. Tagging your posts with services like technorati help you as well. Have a look at my plugin page to see other useful plugins that can aid you in getting your blog customized the way you want it.

So that’s my short lesson, if you could call it that, into Blogging For Beginners 101. Please feel free to add any more info you have, to make this a better resource.

Originally posted at my site.

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