Ladies and Gentlemen, I take great pride in presenting you the Embedded Youtube Plugin (EYP). This Plugin pulls videos from Youtube automatically based on the keywords you supply. Once you provide the keyword, EYP will publish a video from among the TOP 5 videos for that keyword. You can see a working demo at Blogrepreneur homepage in the sidebar.

The Plugin is simple to use. Unzip and upload all the files to the plugins directory in your WP installation. Go to Plugins menu in your Admin and activate it. Then, go to Options – Youtube Video and provide your keyword and the height and width of the video. To place the video in the sidebar, copy and paste the below code wherever you want it to appear in your sidebar.

<li>
<h2 class=”sidebartitle”>Latest Video</h2>
<ul class=”linkcat”>
<?php video_link(); ?>
</ul>
</li>

You are done!

Download the Youtube Plugin.

Introducing Embedded Youtube Plugin

What happens is this – When you write a post and click the PUBLISH button, Wordpress pings all the service you have listed in the Admin panel and informs them of your new post and each of these services in turn crawl your blog and index your latest content. While this is good, there is also a serious problem. If say, 10 minutes later, you go ahead and edit the post and then click PUBLISH again, Wordpress goes ahead and pings all the service again, as if you have published a new post.

This can pose a serious problem if you edit a post multiple times in a day. It can actually be considered spam by the Ping services and can eventually end up in your blog getting banned.

As Wordpress has done nothing about this flaw, the author has come up with a neat solution. The solution comes in the form of a Plugin called Ping Optimizer. What it basically does is restrict Wordpress from pinging a post already pinged as well as those posts that are time stamped. Yes, Wordpress also pings those posts that are time stamped for a future date. Ping Optimizer solves this problem completely. It is an Out-of-the-Box solution that requires you to only install and activate.

So, right away download Ping Optimizer and install it on your blog.

Weekend Talk – Wordpress Blog and Ping

For many of us, basic Search Engine Optimization itself is a pain in the rear. The technicalities involved in the game can be very challenging and at times, sensitive. At a stage like that, to think of someone like Dan Thies and his SEO strategies can simply be overwhelming, if not scary.

I have some good news for you. You better believe it when I say Good news. But, before I proceed, as always, please read my Affiliate Review Policy. I do not review to make a quick buck, but to help you, my readers, make an informed decision.

The software I am reviewing today is WP SEO Sniper, an SEO Plugin that makes it easy, even for a newbie to perform SEO tasks on a Wordpress blog;or so says the author. The author, Dewald has studied Dan Thies Search Engine Optimization methodology and has expressed it in the form of the Plugin.

I had a lengthy conversation with Dewald regarding the Plugin. The important question of course “Why should I buy your Plugin?” According to Dewald, it has been a challenge to simplify and possibly automate Dan Thies SEO methodologies for Wordpress. As he was a programmer, he decided to work on Dan’s methodology for Wordpress. The result being WP SEO Sniper.

The following are the features of the Plugin at a glance:

1. Add Title, Meta Description and Keywords on a sitewide level as well as individual posts and pages.

2. Avoid Duplicate Content by applying the Noindex and Nofollow rules.

3. Decide what pages to show up in Wordpress Pages list.

4. Apply Dan Thies 3 Tier rules for Pagerank control.

5. Perform the Third Level Push theory as stated by Dan.

6. Create 301 redirect pages

7. Google Webmaster verification.

8. Add Google Analytics Code.

9. Build a custom Footer page menu with Nofollow option.

10. Advanced Internal Linking.

11. Cloak Affiliate Links

The Plugin in my opinion is a complete solution for Wordpress On-page Optimization. I mean it. Dewald has covered everything. This one Plugin can replace:

1. All in One SEO

2. Robots Meta Tags

3. Duplicate Content Cure

4. Google Analytics Plugin

5. 301 Permalink Redirect

6. Affiliate Cloaker

7. Nofollow

8. Related Post

That is a good list of Plugins and WP SEO Sniper has all of it neatly organized in the Wordpress Admin Panel. You do not have to edit any theme files, a big plus to many of us who dread programming.

Yes, WP SEO Sniper comes with a price. Some may consider it steep. Every business comes with a cost, an investment; and we all know how important an investment like SEO is. Fortunately Dewald provides unlimited personal licenses per purchase. One purchase and you can use it on all your blogs plus free upgrades, bug fixes etc. Dewald is pretty fast in his response time.

Try the Plugin today. Dewald covers you with a money back guarantee, but I don’t see a reason for it, unless you really have no idea what SEO is. Then you shouldn’t buy it.

If I find any shortcoming in the tool, I will definitely update you. So far, I haven’t seen anything except good. Did I sound like a salesman? Read my Affiliate Review policy again. Go Buy WP SEO Sniper.

Review Thursday – Wordpress SEO Plugin

It is called the Automatic Wordpress Upgrade Plugin. Initially after I uploaded and activated it, I was worried. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to push the automatic upgrade button. What if messed up my database? I then decided to take chance by backing up all my files.

I have to tell you, it is a wonderful Plugin. Really wonderful. It did exactly what it promised. I take my hats off to the author for making a Plugin as this one. It cuts down the time that takes to upgrade the Wordpress edition manually.

Pick up a copy of the Wordpress Automatic Plugin at this link.

Weekend Talk – Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Recently, I had to reformat my Hard Drive due to slow performance of my machine. No amount of tuning and junk deletion helped. So, with a heavy heart, I set to format the HDD and re-install the OS. It took about an hour to finish the task and another hour to organize the contents, install the necessary components, restore backed up files, etc.

In the midst of all this, there was one element I couldn’t find after repeated search. My IDEA Notepad. It was gone. Poof! I had deleted it during the HD formatting. I had not backed it up. My brain was on fire. There were ideas in it to cover blogging for the next 2 months at least. It was all gone.

There was of course no point crying over spilt milk. After a day of consoling myself over the loss, I decided to take action. I Googled for an organizer software and came across some. Then a thought struck in me. I changed my Search parameters to Wordpress Plugin. Guess what, I found my favorite Notepad in the form of a Plugin.

Its called Khan’s Instant Notepad. It is a neat Plugin that, once installed sits in the main menu of your Wordpress admin panel under the name “Notepad”. When you click on it, a new page pops up with Notepad features. Take a look:

The tool even has the Author option for Multiple Authored Wordpress Blogs. Every author who jots down ideas can save it under his/her name and retrieve it later. All in all, it definitely is a great tool for lazy bugs like me.

Give it a try. Download Khan’s Instant Notepad Plugin and let me know how it worked for you.

Weekend Resource – Using a ThoughtPad to Store Blog Topics

Why should you offer a partial feed?

1. If you offer a partial feed, your readers have to visit your blog every time they want to read your article. This counts towards Alexa average and pushes your blog up in ranking.

2. Every time your readers come online, there is a chance that they might buy an advertising spot there. After all repeated exposure can lead to such an action.

3. You do not want to post full posts in your blog. You always use the “<more>” tag for people to click to continue reading. You basically do this to stack up more posts in the front page.

Why you should offer a full feed?

1. If you offer a full feed, your subscribers do not have to go through the “inconvenience” of visiting your site every time you post an article. They can read it right from their desktop or online reader. After all they have subscribers to many other blogs too.

2. The chances of retaining your readers are high. Even if a subscriber doesn’t like your content, he may stay for the heck of it or due to laziness of having to manually un-subscribe.

3. It also portrays the picture of a responsible blogger who cares for his readers and wants to make it as easy as possible to read and benefit from your content.

Personally I like full feeds. I offer full feeds to my readers too. I share my sentiments with them. So far all the feeds I have subscribed to offer a full feed except one. His name is David Ledoux and he is a make money online “expert” who shares his money making “tips” at didyousmellthat.com. Oh, you are wondering why the quotation marks. Well, read on. I have been a subscriber of his blog for sometime and even though he offers a partial feed that drives me nuts, I have not closed my subscription. I may never. He amuses me with his content. He really does.

Out of sheer concern, one day, I penned a comment. You can see it in this link.

“Hi,

Been reading your blog for sometime now and I think you should avoid posts like these. I come here everyday hoping to find something valuable and get disappointed seeing these. You may want to meet them, but how will it help me?

Kindly take my feedback positively.”

My comment was out of a genuine feeling and I decided to let him know so he could do something about it. Pat came the reply:

“If you were on the list you wouldn’t say things like that…

How will this help you? Why is this not valuable? Allow me to enlighten…

Do a search on Google for “link bait”. And then do a search for “Google Alerts”. I have a Google Alert set up for anytime my name appears on the Internet. So do a lot of celebrities with publicists…some of which are web savvy and want to get blogged about and appear on Dave TV.

Incidentally…I blog for myself. Not you. Sorry my trained monkey act didn’t entertain you this morning. Feel free to post a rant in the forum about how shitty I am at xyz forum”.

I was blown away. What an attitude. I wasn’t even offering help, for him to feel so inferior. My comment had victimized him after all. I thought we bloggers were community people and so expressed my thoughts about his content. Re-read his response in red. He says he is blogging for himself. Wish I knew that before. So, I concluded that he was a make money online “expert” sharing his “tips” for himself and not the world. I wonder what kind of ROI will I get if I advertise at his place.

The above is the reason why I decided not to close my subscription to his blog. He amuses me, you see.

I apologize I got carried away a bit, but reading this experience should be a lesson for you on a better behavior with your blog readers and not the “Trained Monkey Act”. LOL.

So, if you want to offer a full feed while offering a “Continue Reading” option in your blog, here is a sweet little Plugin for you. It does all the job for you. Just install and activate. Its called Full Text Feed and can be downloaded here.

Lastly, make up your mind, what you want to offer your email and RSS readers. If at all, I land up at your blog, I definitely will be looking for a full feed.

Full Feed Vs Partial Feed: The Debate Continues

Then it all changed.

I decided not to pay anymore. I wasn’t really happy with the performance reports, coupled with errors and database downtimes. I decided to explore the free world. In a matter of couple days, I found what I was looking for. The perfect statistical companion(s).

Let me share them with you.

Before I proceed, here is a piece of advice. Never rely on any one Analytics tool. It is important to have at least 2 different logging tools to gather vital information about your blog’s performance. That said, I use 3 different tools to satisfy my statistical needs.

1. Google Analytics
2. Open Web Analytics
3. Blog Stats from Auttomatic

Google Analytics: This is my favorite tool, no doubt about it. But I use it a bit differently. I login to my Google Analytics just about once a week. I do not use it to see how many visitors I have received on a given day. Instead I use it purely for the purpose of analyzing the incoming traffic, the quality of the traffic, their sources, the keywords used to arrive at my blog, the different locations people have arrived from, the bounce rate, the duration of their stay and more.

I am sure you want to know more about how to use and benefit from Google Analytics. Go to my homepage and download my book “ABC of Google Analytics. It is free and comes with zero strings attached.

Open Web Analytics: My absolute favorite for real time visitors statistics. It was founded by Peter Adams about whom you can read everything here. This tool has the look and feel of Google Analytics, while providing feature rich real time analytical tools. What disappoints me is the fact that this Web Analytics tool hasn’t received the exposure it really deserves. The first time I installed, I was really amazed at what I saw in the Dashboard. Here are a few screen shots.

Auttomatic Blog Stats: Blog Stats is the third Analytics package I use. This is something I refer daily, for the purpose of finding out if there is something that OWA has missed or not tracked. At the end of the day, I cross reference both of them and study both the data in brief to conclude the average figures. I definitely like this a lot, but do not trust the figures as much as I trust OWA. OWA is number 1 in my book for real time web analytics. Here are a few screen shots again for Auttomatic Blog Stats.

The above 2 packages come in the form of Wordpress Plugins. You have to download them and upload it to your Plugin directory. For information on how to upload a Plugin, refer to my post here. Again, the Plugins mentioned above are free and have no strings attached.

To conclude, you do not really have to shell out money on Analytics packages. They all have one or the problem and none of them are perfect. I have to add this briefly. My recent experience with pMetrics was pretty bad and depressing. I do not want to go in detail about it because the guys behind pMetrics are solid individuals with excellent morals and dedication. They are striving hard to improve pMetrics. So I am positive, in a few months it will emerge out a winner. Until then, it simply sucks.

Try the above combination and let me know. I can tell you for a surety you will love them and also that you won’t look back again at any paid packages sold in the market. Do share your experiences in the comments section. I can’t wait to hear them.

Do you pay for your Analytics package?

The tool is available inside your Adwords account itself. You can check it out by signing up for an Adwords account. Adwords account signup is free and unconditional. I have uploaded a video by Google in the Video section on the right. The video runs you through the basics of Website Optimizer and how to use it effectively for maximum ROI.

Content Robot has released a Plugin by the name “Google Website Optimizer”. The Plugin was created for Wordpress bloggers who use Adwords to promote their blog. In their own words:

“The Google Website Optimizer Plugin integrates the Google Website Optimizer into WordPress blog posts and pages. It allows WordPress bloggers who are already enrolled in Google’s Adwords program to insert the tracking codes required to run headline and copy tests to determine which blog copy/content drives the best conversions”.

Should you really use this Plugin?

Yes, you should. If you are an Adwords account holder, then you should. I personally do not have an Adwords account, so I may not use it, but I will definitely consider it when I go with Adwords for my PPC campaigns. I have no intention to waste my money on campaigns that do not produce good results. Using this tool, I can easily narrow down to the best ROI producing copies.

Here are a few guidelines before use this Plugin:

• Make sure you have a valid Google Adwords Account
• Determine the copy you will be tracking (this can be a headline, image, or paragraphs of text)
• Write alternative copy for your test
• Make sure the WYSIWYG editor is disabled in the WordPress administration area under “My Account” – uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing”. Switching between the “Visual” and “code” tabs in the 2.1.x WYSIWYG editor won’t work – it needs to be disabled.

Lastly, click on this link to download the Plugin. Do not forget to watch the video I have uploaded to your right.

Weekend Resource – Google Website Optimizer Plugin

To start off, you need a tool called FTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and connects your computer with your WordPress hosted server. I personally use SmartFTP, but you can use any of the available softwares in the market. For the sake of this chapter, I will be using SmartFTP.

Once you install and open SmartFTP, this is how the interface looks:

The small window on the left side shows a summary of your webhost content and the big window on the right side shows the specific folder contents. WordPress has 3 main folders called wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes. Our business today is with the wp-content folder. You can find this with the public_html or www folder.

Alright, click on the wp-content folder. Now again, you will find 3 sub-folders called Plugins, Themes and Uploads folder. Our immediate concern is with the Plugins folder. Click on the Plugins folder. Once you are there, right click and in the drop down menu, choose Upload -> Direct -> Select. When you click, you will get a pop-up that will ask you to either add a folder or add files. Depending on what you are uploading, select one and start adding files/folders one after the other. Once done, click Ok.

The files will start uploading.

Let me quickly cover up the Themes part here. Just the way you clicked the Plugins folder and uploading the plugin files, go to the Themes folder, follow the same process and upload the themes folder.

If the files and folders are uploaded properly, it will show a Success message.

Your next job is to login to your admin panel and go to the Plugins section. You can do this by clicking on the Plugins link in the top navigational bar. Once you are there, this is how the Plugins page looks like:

You will see the list of all the Plugins you have uploaded. One by one, activate each of them. Once activated, you can find their config panels under Options. You can do additional modification if you wish. Most of the Plugins come with default settings that you don’t need to tweak. Again, they differ by purpose. So, do take a look at their config panels under Options.

That’s about it with the Plugin management. Now, moving ahead with the themes, in the top navigational bar, click on Presentation and under Presentation, go to Themes. This is the page shown by default. The page looks like this:

The page will show you the current theme you are on as well as all the available themes that you have uploaded to your themes folder in the past. You can always click on them and the theme will change automatically. Under available themes, look for the theme you just uploaded and click on it to activate it. You are done.

In case you want to edit a theme, click on Theme Editor under Presentation tab and you will be taken to the coding page that looks like below:

On the right of the page, you can see a list of all the php files you can edit to tweak your blog’s look or add further functionality. If you are a programmer, you can definitely play with the codes; otherwise, your best bet is to hire a freelancer who can make the necessary changes for you for a fee.

Again, that’s about it with the themes.

With Part 5, we are actually closing the first phase of blogging. You now have a fully functional blog with the necessary Plugins and the design you want. In the second phase of the series, we will talk about the actual process of choosing your niche, building content and promoting it using various distribution outlets. Stay tuned!

How to install Plugins and Themes for Wordpress – Part 5

There are a million Plugins out there and everyday new Plugins are created by programmers and developers. While you cannot use each and every plugin, you can and should use a certain handful of them. Today’s chapter will cover the recommended and popular Plugins in the blogosphere. Click on the name to visit the respective sites to download the plugin.

Akismet: This is a plugin that comes together with the WordPress Installation. This is basically an anti-spam plugin and the most powerful among all the anti-spam Plugins. Akismet requires a API key to work. You can get one by signing up at WordPress.com. Once confirmed, they will email you your personal API key.

Advanced WYSIWYG Editor: WordPress comes with a basic word editor that has limited features. This plugin enhances the editor functions and adds a lot of styling options. I would never do without this plugin.

All-in-One-SEO: I covered this plugin in the previous post. Make sure you get install it. One of the best SEO Plugins I have come across.

Challenge: I treat this plugin as a companion to Akismet. While Akismet catches most of the spam, there are some well thought out spasm that get through to my blog. The Challenge plugin simply challenges the bird brain of the spammer by asking him “did you pass math” and posing a 5^th grader question. Obviously the spammer fails in answering the question as he hasn’t passed 1^st grade yet.

Contact Form: When you run a blog, you obviously want a contact form through which people can contact you and possibly build relationship. This plugin can help you build a contact form with the least hassles and zero coding.

Feedburner Feedsmith: In layman’s terms, this Plugins make sure that you do not lose any potential subscribers by getting them to land on pages other than the subscribe page. In the long run, this plugin will definitely save a lot of pain.

Firestats: A very powerful visitor statistics plugin. It is Ajax based and has a lot of features. Even though I don’t use it, I am told it is pretty reliable in its output. Give it a try.

Google Analytics: If you are a blogger, you will be using Google Analytics for visitor statistics. In case you are not, and I don’t know, go ahead right now and sign up for an account. Google Analytics will provide you a tracking code that you have to add to every page of your site to be tracked. I know, it is a very daunting task. This Plugins makes the job easy. You paste the copy in the admin panel of this plugin and it automatically replicates the code in every page of your blog as they are created. Cool huh?

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo. Sitemaps are very essential from a Search Engine optimization point of view. This plugin not only creates the sitemap, but also pings the Search engines successfully.

Got Banners: Though I am mentioning this plugin here, you should think about getting it only when your blog is ready for monetization. This plugin is a widget based tool to display banner ads in the sidebar of your blog. It not only displays the ads, but rotates them randomly every time the blog is refreshed giving equal exposure to every banner.

Lucia’s Link Love: This is a do-follow plugin. If you want to reward your blog commentators with a backlink that Google can follow and count, then you need this plugin. All no-follow links will turn to do-follow and will be counted as an active backlink. I will explain this in a separate post. Do not crack your head now.

Maintenance Mode: Once in a while, we all perform maintenance activity on our blog. Be it database optimization, theme modification or some other activity, it can interrupt the visitor’s experience in your site. At such times, it is best to use this plugin. As soon as you activate it, it will show a maintenance message on the homepage with a time of 60 minutes or whatever you set. This way your visitors will know there is serious work in progress and to come later.

Subscribe remind: See the Subscribe request message in the footer of every post in my blog? It is the work of this plugin. It places a footer message in every post reminding them to subscribe. A marketing tactic indeed.

Subscribe to comments: This plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted after their comments to an entry. This is just a way to keep the readers connected to the blog and its activities. Another marketing tactic.

What Would Seth Godin Do: This plugin displays a custom welcome message to your first time visitors. Alternatively, you can set the number to zero and the message will be shown always. You can place a message asking your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed.

WP-Sticky: Have you ever wanted to highlight a particular post or keep it at the top of other posts for a longer time? This plugin does just that. It adds a sticky post feature to your blog’s write section. Whenever you want to highlight a post, enable the sticky option and it will stay there for as long as you want it to.

Wp-table: This plugin helps create tables easily. Whenever you want to present statistical data or information involving numbers, this is the plugin to bank on. It creates tables without you having to dirty your hands with coding.

Apart from Firestats, I use each and every plugin stated above and so I can tell you they are very reliable and highly recommended. Let me close this part here. In the next part, I will cover how to upload and install Plugins as well as custom themes.

Essential Plugins for your Wordpress blog – Part 4