Have a fun and safe Fourth of July tomorrow!

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’d just like to show you one more improvement in WordPress 2.8 and then I’ll stop.  Promise!

With older versions of WordPress you can only see one sidebar at a time in the widget panel.  For those of you with just one sidebar, this wasn’t a problem.  But for the rest of us it was a pain to select the sidebar from the drop-down box.  Plus there were always those exiting moments when you thought you were working on the left sidebar, when in fact, you’d been working on the right sidebar.  Those days are gone, my friends.  WordPress 2.8 shows you all the sidebars at once.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’ve made the jump to WordPress 2.8. What do I think?  I think that that the new theme downloader is fantastic!

In WordPress 2.8 when you click on the “Appearance” tab in the left-hand navigation bar you’ll see a new option.

See the “Add new Theme”?  When you click on that you’ll see a lovely interface that helps you find just the right WordPress theme.  It’s much easier to work with than the theme interface on the WordPress.org site.

From there you can browse themes, preview them and in the end install them with a click of a button.

I’ve circled the “Install” button in green in the above photo.  Once you click on “Install”  WordPress will download and install the theme for you as if by magic.

To switch the theme on your blog just click on the “Appearance” button again.  You’ll see all the themes that you’ve downloaded.  Click on “Activate” and you’ve changed your theme.

What’s the next version of WordPress going to do?  Bring me lattes and doughnuts?

Popularity: 1% [?]

The folks over at Common Craft have a great video that explains what RSS feeds are, why you’d want to use one and how to use one.

Popularity: 2% [?]

State governments across the country are looking for ways to increase state revenues.  North Carolina is one of the states considering taxing online revenue as a way to increase state coffers.  However their imminent legislation has had some unexpected results.   The Motley Fool states,

Amazon is fighting back. It’s threatening to eliminate relationships with all of its affiliates residing in North Carolina before it has to begin adding 4.5% in sales tax to orders placed in that state. The tax is not just a hassle for Amazon; it would put the company at a pricing disadvantage to rival online merchants who don’t run affiliate programs.

With other states looking at similar legislation, this may be the tip of the iceberg.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Recently a friend and I were talking about Google search results.  We queried Google for the same term and received different results.  Why?  I was logged into my Google account at the time.  I discovered that Google uses people’s web history to try and give them more relevant search results.  While that might be nice in general, it’s not at all useful when trying to analyze search engine rankings.

What Is Google Web History?

Google gives the following definition of Web History.

You know that great web site you saw online and now can’t find? From now on, you can. With Web History, you can view and search across the full text of the pages you’ve visited, including Google searches, web pages, images, videos and news stories. You can also manage your web activity and remove items from your web history at any time.

How Do I See Non-Personalized Google Results

If you’re interested in viewing non-personalized Google results log out of your Google account before submitting a query.

If you’re curious you can see your history by going to http://www.google.com/history/

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is a good news/bad news situation,  my friends.  Blog Perfume has written a great post on the 45 Best Free WordPress Themes of All Time.   This isn’t a quickie list.  This is an in-depth analysis complete with photos of each theme.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that looking at themes is addictive.  Get a cup of coffee and settle in.  You’re going to want to spend some time looking at this.

Popularity: 4% [?]

“My WordPress toolbar doesn’t look right.  I don’t have the controls that you’re talking about.”  When I hear things like this from clients I ask them to see if they’re working with the Visual or the HTML view of their posts (or page) editor.

The above is the user friendly Visual Editor. As you can see, it has controls similar to other applications you may have worked with, such as Microsoft Office.  I recommend that you use this editor most of the time.

This is the less intuitive HTML editor. This is handy for pasting affiliate code, YouTube video links or PayPal code.  Keep in mind that some of these items will never do well in visual mode.  So once you’ve started with the HTML editor, my advice is to always use it for that page or post.

Popularity: 5% [?]

WordPress 2.8 is coming!  It’s scheduled launch date is next Wednesday.

Geting new themes will be a snap. You’ll be able to download and install new themes directly from your dashboard.  No icky FTP required.

The revamped widget area will be easy to use. The new layout of the widget area will allow you to see all your sidebars at once.  Currently if you have multiple sidebars you can only work with them one at a time.

Here’s a complete list of the changes.

My plan is to wait a few weeks before installing 2.8.  I’ll let the people who haven’t been burned by the premature release of Microsoft products test out the new software.  Once I’m convinced that 2.8 is stable, I’ll upgrade too.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Akismet - You have to install this!  OK, if you enjoy receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of spam emails then don’t install this.  Otherwise, Akismet is a must.  It will filter out most of the nasty comment spam.  If forced to make an estimate I’d say that Akismet catches 98% of spam.

WP-DB-Backup – You’ve heard about backing up the files on the hard drive of your computer?  WP-DB-Backup will do the same thing for your blog.  This easy to run plugin even gives you a choice on how to store your backup.  It can email it to you, put it on your server or save it to your hard drive.

All in One SEO Pack – This handy plugin helps your blog to do well in search engines.

It changes the Title Meta Tag of your posts to a search engine friendly format.  It also adds Meta Tag Description information to your posts.  That means that when your post appears in search engines there will be a nice description of the post’s contents.  That will entice people to come to your site.

You can visit the home page of the All in One SEO Pack to get more information about this workhorse of a plugin.

Google Analyticator – You’ll want to be able to track how many visitors your blog has, how they’re getting to your blog, what search terms they’re using to find you and how many pages visitors look at once they get there.  This whole subject area is called your blog statistics.  Google Analytics is a free application that provides all of this information in a slick graphics-driven format.  However in order to use Google Analytics some code has to be added to your site.  Google Analyticator will get that done for you.  Just sign up for Google Analytics, then install and configure the Google Analyticator.

Add to Any – This nifty plugin helps your visitors spread the word about your blog. By using this plugin they can email their friends links to your blog, bookmark your blog or even share it with their social media sites.  Love it!

Popularity: 7% [?]