Austin WordPress Meetup

Bringing together WordPress users of all levels

Helpful plugins

WordPress for Bloggers

WordPress Beginners, Tips and Tools, SEO/Marketing your site, Helpful plugins

Tonight we welcome Julie Gomoll and Clark Wimberly to talk about using WordPress for blogging.

Announcements:

Getting Started with WordPress (WP 101) class: Sept. 20th, 7-9pm at Cospace.

Blogathon Austin – Oct. 1st at Link CoWorking. All-day blogging, conversations, tech support for bloggers. Join us!

Submit a question for next month’s meetup

 

 Julie Gomoll

Julie is a graphic/web designer and entrepreneur. In the 90s Julie started up Go Media, which she sold to Excite. She “rode the internet wave” going from 35 employees to 3500. She started blogging in 2004 or 2005, but when she got into WordPress she felt she could control her own destiny. She feels like she has a lot of power with WordPress without being a coder.

How to develop a content strategy

When you’re planning a blog, you need to have several ideas at hand. You should have a plan for at least a couple of months or you’ll run into trouble. Do they all have to be all long thought-out articles? Actually a mix might be ideal. A long post makes people realize you’re serious. But there’s nothing wrong with a post that’s brief and spontaneous, as in, “this is a cool thing I found today” so you are generating content on a regular basis. A blog is a living thing.

Plugin to help with this process: Editorial Calendar – allows you to plan and schedule your posts.

Reposting content

Actually reposting content is a bad idea because Google will penalize you for duplicate content, even if it’s on another website/blog. But referencing a previous article is a great idea because it will drive more traffic to your site and help with your search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is using keywords, headlines, names of categories and navigation so that when people are searching for things, they will find your blog.

Inserting a link that says “click here” isn’t useful for Google. Instead, make the links contextual, so make your links more along the lines of “see another recipe”.

Coming up with content for your blog

An opportunity for new content that helps also bring traffic to your site: interviews. The subject of your interview will tell their friends, it will add credibility to your site, and is always a good way to generate content if you’re out of ideas. You can ask someone a few questions via email and then post the answers on your blog. Keep in mind that videos are also great but they won’t help you with SEO as much unless there’s a transcription.

Don’t be afraid of controversy!

For photos: try Flickr – search for Creative Commons photos that allow for republishing

Blog design

What’s the difference between a blog and a website? A blog is a website. It just has posts in chronological order with the most recent on the top.

What are good themes? There are great premium themes (ones you have to pay for) including Thesis and Genesis. There are also a lot of great free themes, but there are also some really bad free themes.

Newsletters

Register with MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc. first; they will then have a plugin that you can add to your site. –

Meenews – lets you style your newsletter to match your blog. (Nick recommended)

WP-Instapay – Sales Processing and Order Fulfillment system (Sandi recommended)

How to monetize your blog

Lots of options.

  • Google Adsense – ads on your blog
  • Join ad networks in niche markets
  • Sell your items – ebooks, merchandise
  • Affiliate sites – Amazon Associates, , Commission Junction
     (Keep in mind that you need to state that you are receiving compensation for items. You can have a disclaimer page that states that the read can treat all links as endorsements.)
  • Free stuff (like ebooks) can generate business leads, mailing lists, etc.
  • The best way to monetize your site: If you are becoming an expert and getting traffic, you will gain credibility all over the place. You might be asked to speak at conferences or given other opportunities to consult or write guest blogs – all of which can bring you considerably more compensation than ads or affiliate links will ever achieve.

Building traffic

  • Need really compelling content that people want to read
  • Are people who are looking for that content able to find it?
  • Comment on other blogs
  • Do you have compelling headlines?
  • Write about issues people are searching for
  • Contribute to local print media/newsletter with links to your blog
  • Follow other blogs in your field/subject matter and see what they’re writing about (and do this regularly)

Categorizing and Tagging

Categorizing is great for SEO, especially if the category is in your URL.

Tags are not useful unless you have a strategy for using them. Each tag creates new pages and it can lead to site bloat. However, if you tag effectively, it can keep people on the site as they follow the tags like breadcrumbs.

 

 

Clark Wimberly

All of the notes and links to Clark’s presentation

Clark runs the Android and Me blog.

Backup often: use import and export; back up via FTP; backup with phpMyAdmin; store offline with VP (Vault Press) or other backup plugins.

When code editing (CSS, PHP, etc.) – Edit smarter: use a real text editor; avoid the built-in editor; practice version control; run a development server.

Test smarter: use a staging area; run it locally; do it online with subdomain; find a fancy host.

Know the loop

Own your own theme: learn the template hierarchy; create custom templates; make a child or sibling theme

Google like crazy: Answers for everything; try, try again; check the date; copy and paste and tinker

Image Handling in WordPress

Helpful plugins, WordPress Beginners

In today’s Hands-On WordPress meetup we discussed using the media library to upload and handle images.

Nick demonstrated the basics of adding an image using the upload/insert image option in your WordPress post/page editing window. You can modify your image title, add alternate text, add a caption, and then at the bottom you can choose the layout and size options and then finally, insert into the post.

He also demonstrated how you can go to Library under Media that allows you to batch upload a series of images ahead of time.

The media “Library” includes all images/media associated with a site; the “Gallery” is associated with an individual post or page.

You can manage a given gallery (or call one to a specific place) by using a gallery shortcode. This is a small piece of code included within square brackets [ ]. The details of different options available to you, including number of columns, display order, and so forth, can be viewed via the WordPress Codex. Shortcodes are good when you need to repeatedly place a given photo, because once you know the shortcode for an image, you can use it over and over again easily.

In your admin panel under Settings > Media Settings, you can choose the default size for each image setting (thumbnail, small, medium and large), as well as the location/name of the upload folder for your media. You can also choose the option to organize uploads into folders by date.

You can also upload music, video and PDFs using the media library.

Using featured images: how (or if) this is used is entirely theme-dependent. To select one, choose a photo by selecting ‘use as featured image’ in the media uploader. In Twenty-Eleven (the default theme for WordPress 3.2) it will place the featured image in the header image. In other themes it may place that image elsewhere on the page. It will not show up as part of the post itself, however. It will also be the image shown as a thumbnail on social media sites like Facebook.


Plugins:

  • Media Library Categories: allows you to organize your media library contents.
  • NextGEN Gallery: A very popular image plugin that allows you to organize your images into galleries not associated with posts/pages. There are also a number of plugins for NextGEN that add to its functionality by giving different slideshow/display options. One problem with NextGEN is that it creates its own media library and does not utilize the native WordPress media library, meaning you must upload all photos through NextGEN. Sandi points out that it is pretty intuitive and easy to fix mistakes, and easy to reuse images throughout your site. Also has good bulk-action options.
  • More MIME Types: allows you to specify and organize media by different file types. It will then tell the browser how to handle or display the media files.
  • Scissors Continued: expands on the WordPress media library’s functionality by allowing you to crop, rotate and resize images.


Helpful tips:

  • Add photos to media library rather than just cut and paste images into your WordPress window, and you can call up the image to use later. This will also create your thumbnail and other image sizes for additional options and functionality later.
  • Using the plugin Add from Server you can add photos and other media to your WordPress media library that have previously been uploaded via FTP.
  • Always include “alternate text” when uploading photos. This will display to anyone who doesn’t have images turned on in their browser, and will also be available to people who use screen readers to view your site. It also gives you a good boost with SEO.

For an additional resource on images, be sure to review the information provided at the WordPress Codex.

Questions? Tips you’d like to share? Suggestions for other plugins dealing with images? Please add your comments below!

Don’t forget that we have several classes coming up with Hands-On WordPress: adding and managing content; plugins; and backups and Google applications. Go to Hands-On WordPress for more information and how to sign up.

WP Austin Meetup 3.1.11

Helpful plugins, Tips and Tools

Tonight I will be your friendly live blogger for our discussion of Google Analytics. I will do my best to capture the conversation as it occurs.

Our presenters: Paul O’Brien, Nick Batik and Seth Thomas.

Plugins to use/track/monitor Google Analytics:

Paul uses a plugin called Google Analytics for WordPress, written by Yoast, an active plugin developer, but it requires a separate plugin to see the analytics on the dashboard. Nick also recommends Web Ninja, which gives you the analytics right on the dashboard. Our third presenter, Seth Thomas, uses Ultimate Google Analytics. A fourth plugin some people like is Google Analyticator.

The important point is that Google doesn’t care which plugin you use, and you won’t lose stats if you switch between them – so use one you like.

A few other plugins:

Analytics360: allows GA integration with Mail Chimp
Twitter Tools: allows you to send notifications of new blog posts to Twitter; Twitter Tool Tagger allows you to actually track twitter traffic in tandem.

Three additional plugins Nick mentioned that might also be helpful (but for which I missed the explanations he gave) are Headline Split Tagger, and Phoenix Split Tagger, and Google Analytics Multisite Asynch.

Tips for Google Analytics accounts:

You will get one account in Google Analytics but then get individual IDs for each website in GA so you can have separate metrics for each site you administer. You can also give people view only or admin privileges to see the metrics.

Make sure your clients get their own Google/Gmail account and give them access to metrics; don’t give them access to your GA account itself.

Even if you don’t think you need the data, add GA to your site now. Let Google collect the data, and you can worry about analyzing it later when you or your client needs it. Always good to have the data collected just in case.

Looking at Google Analytics itself:

Paul pointed out the most important basic metrics:

Visitors:
He noted that this can be interesting but may not be useful to everyone.

Traffic Sources:

  • Direct traffic: people who have typed in the actual URL for the site
  • Search engine: what comes from searches
  • Keyword traffic: organic and keyword searches

Content:
This tells you which pages are being consumed, what they are looking at, how long they stay on a page, etc. It is important to look at keyword and content reports to see what people care about, which is a good way to tailor the business or blog in a way that is useful to your visitors.

Bounce rate:
A metric that shows how many people hit your site and then leave immediately. It is interesting, but may not be immediately actionable. If the bounce rate is high, it could affect how Google ranks your page. 34% is about average; if it’s above 50% it needs some work.

Goals:
These are things you want to occur on your site exclusive of buying things (for the most part): hitting a certain page, watching a video, filling out a form. These can be set up in your profile settings. You choose which kind of goal (URL destination, Time on site, Pages/visit) to track. The reason to set up a goal is the funnel which is important if you take orders online.

A goal funnel is how successful your goal is, such as how many people click from home page to the order form and then make it to the confirmation form. The data will show how many people don’t complete the “funnel” and where they leave the process.

E-commerce:
How many dollars were spent, where the orders were places, the type of purchase that was made, etc. You will see conversion rate (how many people convert, or pay $), how much is spent, the SKUs (what is purchased), where the money is coming from (did they hit site directly, or through search). Helps to see how effective the site is and what people are buying.

Paul pointed out that the GA dashboard can be customized with the content you most want to track.

Referring sites:
You can see which sites (such as Facebook) are driving traffic to your site over time. Good to look at week by week.

Advanced segments:
This allows you to slice the data in any way you want, pulling different metrics however you want. You can see mobile traffic; just the blog (with keywords, traffic sources, etc); you can look at all data from Facebook; all the traffic for a specific order type; people who return to site; and so on. It requires boolean (and/or) considerations: e.g. traffic source AND recurring users.

He suggested you play with the advanced segments and see what you get; you can’t break anything.

New features that are a little funky/buggy still:

  • Intelligence: compares site to other similar sites.
  • Overlay: shows a heatmap of the site traffic.

Next, Seth Thomas demonstrated how his company uses Google Analytics. He showed a spike in traffic that came from a blog mention, and it’s worth noting those things in case there are server considerations. Because he is a server admin, he uses an iPhone app called Analytics Pro to watch metrics on a daily basis.

He is interested in browser stats. He can tell that they are tech savvy (lots of Chrome users). He can also tell that they don’t like ads – which he knows, but he has data to prove it. He likes to see connection speed as well.

He noted that it’s a good idea to have the GA code in the footer of your site, and even better to have it be asynchronous, which helps optimize page speed. However, it may cause some discrepancies, because the full page has to load and the script has to fire, or that visit isn’t counted. Both the Google Analytics for WP and Web Ninja plugins put the code at the bottom and do it asynchronously.

(For those who get this far… bonus points if you get the joke in the post title.)