How To Configure WordPress Post-Installation

Over the past few years, I’ve done quite a number of WordPress installations. When you’re installing WordPress from scratch, there are a number of tweaks you need to make before your blog is ready to use.

I thought I’d share some of my post-install tips. Some of them are necessary and others are purely my personal preference, but hopefully you’ll find them useful: Read the rest of this entry »

Fixing A Blogging Mistake

About a year ago, I made a blogging mistake, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I started a tech-focussed blog called Interweb World.

Of course, with my interest being primarily in web design, search engine optimisation and all that malarkey, I ended up writing semi-regularly to Interweb and neglecting the blog here at Scribble Designs.

Why was this a mistake?

Several reasons:

• The tech blogging market is severely overcrowded, unless you’ve got the time to create something really special.
• Unless you’re a field leader like Darren Rowse, your money making opportunities from a tech blog are severely limited.
• The themes of Scribble and Interweb were similar, yet I was doubling the effort to build content on both blogs instead of making one really great blog.
• Because the blogs were split, I had to market both blogs as well. Double the effort for everything. Leaving comments on other blogs, building backlinks to two blogs instead of one.

It was a blog post by Raj Dash over at Performancing that made me decide to concentrate the two blogs into one. And instead of trying to make money through advertising, I’m hoping the more focussed content here will serve to solidify my experience. It’s not all about Google AdSense, don’t you know!

What this means is that I’ll be slightly redesigning the Scribble Designs site to reflect the kind of work I’ve been doing for the last few years. I’ll be sharing my experiences of things that have worked for me in the past and things that haven’t. And, like my heroes over at SEOmoz, I’ll probably share a little more information than is commercially viable for a web designer!

Recommended Reading for 24th March through 31st March

Interesting posts I’ve read between 24th March and 31st March:

• Jason Calacanis Challenge Update - Neil Patel shows how even a popular blogger can increase traffic through some pretty basic search engine optimization. Interesting article that looks at the effect of a few basic changes can make to increasing visitors to your site. See the debate in the comments about including your branding (name) in the page titles.
• Head META Description - A potentially useful plugin for generating meta description tags in WordPress. There’s a lot more buzz about meta tags in the SEO arena again - at the very least, controlling your description means controlling what the search engine displays to users.
• The Beginner?s Guide to Social Media Optimization - Social Media Optimization is the child of the new wave of Web 2.0 services, an opportunity to promote your website to an interested audience, generate buzz on the Internet and increase your subscriber base.
• SEO for WordPress - The Complete Guide -
• SEO Friendly URL Structure for Wordpress Blogs - As some of your have noticed, we changed the URL structure on Search Engine Journal entries today from the classic …

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

Submit Your Website To Google? You Don’t Have To….

I’ve noticed that there’s a common misconception among new website owners that you have to submit your site to Google in order to get listed. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done this.

Here’s the truth about getting your site listed on Google: all you need is another site to link back to you.

How Google Works

Google is a crawler-based search engine. Sounds creepy, but what this means is that Google’s technology ‘reads’ the web by following links on web pages. It then makes an index of the information it finds and uses that index to return results whenever you do a Google search.

In reality, if another public website links to you, like a trade directory or a business partner, then Google will become aware of your website through that link. Simple as that.

I think that submitting your site to Google is a bit of a placebo. Instead, concentrate on getting quality links to your site. This has more long-term effectiveness as Google counts every link to your site as a vote of quality, and the link itself will provide visitors with another way to find your site.

Building Online Communities

Rand from SEOmoz waxes lyrical on community-building from the unusual perspective of the recent Seattle storms. He recounts that the storms have caused adversity and this has been met with benevolence by many residents, helping friends, family and neighbours by sharing services with them.

I suppose until very recently, I’ve shirked away from online forums as places to contribute. Generally, I’d be promiscuous and visit loads of blogs dropping comments where I had something to say and moving on. I never thought of forums as places to build communities until recently.

We started up a forum on our reality TV website. It bombed. We wiped it out, figuring there wasn’t much of a market for a forum in the space (especially since there were better established alternatives).

A few months later, after looking at some of the communities these forums generated, we decided we wanted to try again, but with a different focus.

We reinstated the forum using the free and excellent Simple Machines forum software and started posting on it. Since then, the forum has experienced dramatic growth, and here are some of the reasons why:

• Invite An Audience: We asked regular commenters and contributors on the blog to join. Many did, and this lead to us getting to know each other better.
• Promote It! We lifted the RSS feed from the forum and republished the recent posts on the homepage, which lead to greater click-through. It helped people actually discover the forum!
• We also promoted the forum in other ways - an advert beneath each post encouraging signups was one. Another was by creating a menu under the site logo with links to “Blog” and “Forum” clearly displayed.
• Create content: In the early days, it was important to generate content on the blog, so we’d post about big news items on the blog and the forum. We didn’t want visitors landing in a barren forum!
• Respond. In building the forum, we interacted with our members and got to know them better. Because we’re actively involved in the discussions, we know what shows people like and dislike and we’ve been able to set a fairly mature tone for the forum which keeps insults to a minimum!
• Kill Trolls Quickly! We don’t often get trolls on our forum, but when we do we shoot them down with a total ban/account deletion. A side effect of our community is that we’ve become very protective of our members. They don’t deserve to be abused or insulted. Long time members are fine, but if a new member is abusive, they’re shown the door!

Client Guide: Understanding Web Hosting and Domain Registration

A common cause of confusion for first (and sometimes second) time website owners is all the jargon surrounding web hosting and domain registration. That’s understandable, because to a non-techie, it really is a different language.

When I meet new clients, they’ll often ask me to explain what each component is and why they need it. I’ve even come across people who believe their ISP has something to do with the process too!

So, this guide will be dedicated to explaining the basics of web hosting so that you can be clearer on web hosting. Hopefully you’ll walk away with a better idea of how web hosting and domain registration work and how they relate to each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fast Way To Upgrade WordPress Via Shell

Oops! A server breach over at WordPress.org caused the downloadable version of the software to become compromised.

Now, I’m not normally one to upgrade every time a new version of WordPress is released, especially a minor point version. But the WP developers seemed concerned enough to cross post this on all their blogs, so I decided it might actually be necessary. A tiny bit irritating, as I’d just upgraded virtually everything to WordPress 2.1.1, but what can you do?

Anyway, I was very pleased to stumble across Ajay’s neat instructions on how to upgrade WordPress via SSH shell. I’ve done a couple of upgrades now and neither have taken any more than 5 minutes each. My previous process was to download the latest version, unzip it into my Dreamweaver site and upload the whole thing again. This could be pretty time intensive, as you can imagine.

I did spend a lot of time trying to get SSH to work, on sites hosted on both Media Temple and Dreamhost (aff). If you’re new to SSH like I am, let me save you a lot of time: Most hosts don’t enable SSH be default, you’ve got to enable it yourself. In Dreamhost, you enable it through the user management on the panel. In Media Temple, it depends on what package you have, so check their knowledge base.

Anyway, do take the time to learn Ajay’s SSH technique - it’ll save you hours in the long run and it’s such an elegant solution to managing WordPress. Of course, someone has to mention SVN at this point…..

Client Guide: Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation

This guide is intended as an introduction to search engine optimisation for clients who have little to no previous knowledge of the topic. It’s a fast-moving field, and increasingly competitive, but I often find there is a lot of unreliable information given to clients about SEO and they in turn loose money and waste time on ineffective optimisation strategies.

In this guide, I’ll explain briefly what Search Engine Optimisation is, why it’s important, what your goals should be for SEO and the two main types of SEO techniques that exist. I’ve tried to make things as simple to understand as possible, but if you’ve any questions, please leave them in the comments section and I’ll respond to them there.

What Is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is the process of fine tuning your website so that it can be found more easily on the Internet. The goal is for your pages to appear on the first page of search engine results for keywords related to your business or topic area. In an ideal world, your site should show up in one of the first three results shown.

Why Is SEO Important?

The vast majority of visitors will arrive at your website through a search engine. For example: on one of my sites, Google, Yahoo! and MSN account for over 80% of traffic.

Many savvy website owners recognise that being easily found on the web is essential to the success of their site. It’s certainly critical if your business is web-based. It’s as simple as this:

Better Search Engine Positioning = More Visitors To Your Site = Increased Sales or Business Opportunities

What’s A Realistic Search Engine Goal?

Many people think that it’s acceptable to have a good position for their company name. In reality, that’s not a very difficult task to achieve unless your name is fairly common. Besides, most people searching for your name probably already know about you.

The bigger challenge is to be found for each product or service you provide, or topic area if you have an information website. If you’re an accountant from Co. Antrim, you’ll want to show up each time someone searches for “accountants co. antrim”.

In terms of positioning, the first result that shows up will attract the most visitors. The further down the page you are, the less likely you are to be found. If your site doesn’t appear on the first page of results, the chances of traffic diminish further. Think about how you use search engines - how far are you likely to look, especially if the first couple of websites have the information you’re looking for?

I’d advise that you set a goal of ranking for a particular set of keywords. Think especially of the words people will use to look for you.

Are There Different Types Of Search Engine Optimisation?

Yes, there are two traditional types of search engine optimisation - on-site and off-site. The on-site optimisation involves making sure all your pages can be found by search engines, and optimising the layout and content to improve keyword relevance. You (and your web designer) have control over the on-site content and layout, so changes can be made easily.

Off-site optimisation is more time intensive, as you’re essentially trying to build links back to your site. The logic behind this is that the more sites that link back to you, the more authoritative a resource you seem to be (to the search engines). As a result, they are more inclined to list your site higher in search results.

I should also mention that both types of optimisation can be assisted by good keyword research and competitor research. I won’t go into those areas in this guide, though.

What Should I Watch For?

In the SEO industry, there are two major groupings - White Hat and Black Hat. You need to be careful of black hat SEOs, as their techniques are not supported by Google and the other major search engines. Black Hat techniques are generally considered illicit and while they may work for a period of time, the search engines usually find a way to remove this type of content and your site will be penalised.

White hat practices generally focus on building quality content for your website and attracting quality links to your site. I have always found that white hat techniques work well in the long term and generally result in good listings.

Also, before you embark on any type of Search Engine Optimisation make sure you have reliable statistics about your current website traffic. You’ll want to compare performance of the site before and after the optimisation has been carried out. I will cover website statistics in a future Client Guide article.

Thanks for taking the time to read my guide. If you have any questions, leave a comment below or contact me directly. If you liked this article, please consider linking back to it from your own site!

(Image courtesy vivalibre547 on Flickr)

9 Random Lessons From A Successful Blog

We got word today that our Unreality TV blog is the place to be for hopeful auditionees on some of the latest reality TV shows. Apparently it’s being highly recommended on the audition circuit (there are three or four talent-based shows in production at the moment).

Little stories like this put a smile on our faces, because Unreality essentially started as an experiment into blogging and escalated into a phenomenon. Last month Unreality received half-a-million hits from all across the UK and Ireland.

I’m not just saying this as a trumpet-blowing exercise - there’s a web development lesson to be learned as well. Here are some of my thoughts on the factors that helped make Unreality TV such a success:

1. Be Personal - Perhaps one of the most important lessons. Every blog has a voice - be opinionated, give your perspective on news and events that your readers care about.
2. Make Sure Your Blog Is Optimised For Search Engines - Most blog designs are pretty search engine friendly, but we went a stage further with our search engine optimisation and site structure. The excellent search engine rankings really helped draw a crowd to the blog in the early days.
3. Regular Content/Quality Content - At the start, we did our level best to identify up-to-date news sources for stories on reality TV shows. These - combined with editorial opinions - sparked comments and controversy on the site and drew regular commenters. For a blog, regular content is essential. Once your draw in a readership, you need to keep them engaged.
4. Offer Subscription Facilities - The RSS bandwagon was slow to take off on Unreality TV, so we added the ability to subscribe by email. Today, between RSS and email we have a total subscriber base of about 450.
5. Make Good Use Of Pictures - Never underestimate the difference good graphics make to your blog. For the first year on Unreality TV, we had no access to publicity pictures, but as the site grew more popular, we were able to gain access to promotional pictures. These really lift the site and help draw people to the information they’re looking for.
6. Get A Reliable Web Host - A critical component for a popular website is uptime. If you’re on a low-cost shared hosting plan, chances are your site may not stand up to a heavy battering when a surge of visitors hits your site. We’re about to move Unreality TV to a better host for the third time, so you can imagine we haven’t quite got this right yet.
7. Build A Community - A year after we launched the main blog, we added on a forum to allow our visitors to chat among themselves and raise topics that we hadn’t covered on the main blog. Although not as popular as the main site, it draws a respectable amount of search engine traffic on its own. (It’s also a great place to get feedback on what your users want!)
8. Promote Promote Promote - We spent a lot of time initially attracting links back to the site, through a variety of methods. Most recently, we’ve managed a very successful local media campaign which has resulted in great exposure for the site. We’ve totally avoided paid-for advertising both on and offline, preferring to use guerilla marketing techniques instead (although I’m itching to try out Pay-Per-Click marketing to see how effective it is).
9. Create Regular Features - A lot of successful blogs run regular features, maybe a movie review every Monday or an open forum session where commenters can ask random questions from the blog author. For example, during the X Factor series, we run a chart every Saturday night giving our verdict on the best performances that night. It’s always interesting to see how readers respond and how they justify their own opinions.

Anyway, that’s my 9 random lessons from a successful blog. There are certainly others, which I may cover in another post. Tonight’s post is very much a braindump of ideas, which I hope will be of use to existing bloggers and those thinking of getting started with blogging.

Styling Drupal Buttons For Usability

I came across this very interesting article by urlgreyhot on how to style the default Drupal buttons for that they provide some visual cues as to which buttons are most important.

In most of the standard Drupal themes, the Preview, Publish and Delete buttons are styled in the same way, which gives equal visual weight to each button. Arguably the most dangerous would be to mistakenly click on the Delete button and wipe out a draft post!

This simple tutorial shows how to style the three buttons so that the Publish button is most prominent, Preview is next and the Delete button is displayed almost as an inline link. Excellent notion, slightly marred in that the solution isn’t particularly accessible for those with poor or no vision (I think the guidelines say that you shouldn’t use color to provide meaning).