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Posts tagged ‘wordpress’

28
Mar
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Arrrrgh!!! The CSS of it all…!

Have you ever been through an experience that changed your world, but left you broken for the future?

For 15 years, I built, created, then ran a site for the now antiquated Commodore Amiga computer community by the name of Amiga.org..  Since 1995, it really was a focal point in my pathetic little world until I recently sold it to another community member.

Over those 15 years, I built and redesigned the site probably a dozen times, always keeping in mind that development of new browsers hasn’t really moved forward in at least 10 years.  They’re still dealing with HTML 3.0 AT BEST.  Meanwhile, the world around them has moved on to XHTML, CSS, RSS, XML, and about a hundred other technologies that the PC and Mac communities have long ago taken for granted.

Last year, we needed to move the site forward to vBulletin 3.8x, which afforded the community lots of new and nifty features, but at one big cost, and that was the need to embrace Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  CSS has been around ALMOST as long as Amiga.org, but as I said, 99% of the Amiga browsers out there were never updated to support it.  The 1% that does support CSS, doesn’t run on 99% of the remaining so-called “Classic” Amiga computers.

For the first time in 15 years, even *I* had to step outside my comfort zone to start learning CSS (again) and how to write a site that wasn’t based on HTML 3.2…

All I can say is that in 1995 when I wrote the initial site with a text editor on Windows 95, life for Web developers was a LOT simpler.

Now, I’m trying to both learn how to write a custom theme for WordPress, as well as to adapt it to the Thesis theme framework which almost exclusively uses CSS, Javascript, and a whole host of “newfangled” crap that I’ve long-since forgotten.  Never before have I felt like such an idiot as I do now, when I’m trying to go back and re-learn everything again from scratch.

I’d say “it’s worse than SharePoint” but pfft.  Who would I be kidding?

All of this, btw, with very restricted network access and working from my macbook the rest of the time..

Fun…  If anyone has any pointers, or wants to contribute free “idiots guides to doing stupid web shit that my 12 year old niece can do in her sleep” type books, please let me know..

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18
Dec

WordPress for Newbies #3: SEO

Wayne HuntThe third in the series of quick articles sharing the lessons learned by a newbie with others like him so that they might avoid the same mistakes.

Lesson #3 : Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is your friend.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization” which is just a fancy way of saying “give search engines what they want to get good placement of your site in their listings”.

There are literally thousands of tutorials, articles, and other links out there to teach you how to do SEO, but most newbies reading this article may be prone to “blow it off” as unimportant or “too much trouble to do”.  I’ve even got a friend who runs a fairly successful Tech web site who still doesn’t “get it”, so you might ask yourself, why should I bother?

The answer to that question is the very key to why you blog in the first place.  Whether you want to monitize your blog, or whether you just want to become the next famous blogger out there, if you want your blog to be anything, you MUST practice successful SEO.

For the purposes of this little mental eruption, I’ll stick to Google, since they seem to rule the universe at the moment.

SERPThere are three essential things that Google looks for to get started, four really, but we’ll get to that in a sec.  Each of the first three is “META information” which describes your page to every visitor, bot, and browser out there.

  • The META name/title
    This is the short title that shows up as the link text on search engines.  This is “what you click on” when you search for something
  • The META description
    The META description is a short sentence, normally around 160 characters or less to describe the site to a search engine and its users.
  • The META keywords (aka tags)
    META keywords are essential little “tags” which help search engines know how to better index your site, and get a better idea what to show their users when they search for something.  For example, if you use the keyword “WordPress” in an article (as I have below), it might show up any time someone searches for “wordpress” at Google.  There’s a lot more to it than that, but I’m just speaking simple example here.

Luckily, things don’t have to be very complicated and you don’t have to learn HTML or even edit CSS files.  WordPress already has several plug-ins to help you out with your SEO needs.

To find a list of what’s available, log into your WP Admin, then go to the Plugins >> Add New screen and search for “SEO”.  You can pick one based on the ratings, or just try a few to find one that you like

Some themes, such as Thesis even try to add the appropriate stuff automatically for you, but the fact is that the average free or low-cost theme is built to look pretty rather than provide the best functionality.

Just be sure that when you create a post, you take the five extra minutes that it’d take to fill out the SEO details and your site will become much more popular.  After all, what good is a great site if no one can find it?

Oh yeah, almost forgot about mystery item #4.  The fourth thing, highly recommended is that you add a plugin to handle the creation, update, and submission of a sitemap.xml file.  That little file, submitted to google, helps tremendously in letting google (and others) know how to index your site, what sections exist, and how to better get visitors headed in your direction.

When you’re searching for an SEO plugin above, you might also search for “sitemap” and install that as well.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

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16
Dec

WordPress for Newbies #2: Focus

Wayne Hunt“WordPress for Newbie Bloggers” is a series of short, direct-to-pen lessons written by a newbie himself as he goes along the process of learning how to write a blog and get noticed.  Lesson 2 of this series is all about focusing on a subject and sticking with it in order to seem at least coherent in what you’re covering. If you’ve ever found yourself wandering far off key, this article is for you.

Lesson 2: Stay on Target

If you’re like me and you tend to ramble, before you click submit on a new masterpiece of literary expulsion, ask yourself three important questions;

“Why exactly am I posting this?”

All too often, as a rambling writer, I find myself starting a post with the intent to write a movie review, then quickly arcing off into things like popcorn prices, ticket prices, and other things that aren’t really related to the movie review itself.  Why is this important?  Well.. Hmmm.  Simply stated, while everyone loves a car wreck, if you can’t even follow your own train of thought, how do you expect others to follow along with you?

“Who am I talking to?”

Second only to “Why am I posting this?” is a great question which deals with something a great number of blog writers tend to forget.  Their target audience.  Who exactly are you writing the blog post for?  Yourself?  Economics academics?  Fans of the TV series “Dexter”?  It’s only by knowing who you want to reach that you’ll discover the style of writing which allows you to best reach — and better yet keep — your readers.

After all, fans of Science Fiction writer Isaac Asimov and fans of comedian Lewis Black may both be intelligent crowds, but they seldom have much in common.

“Is this something that I would want to read?”

The most important question of this lesson is perhaps the most simple.  Unfortunately, it’s often the most overlooked.  When you get done writing whatever masterpiece that happens to be leaking from your grey matter, take a moment to glance over it and ask yourself… Is what you’ve written something YOU would actually want to read? If not, you’ve got work to do before posting.  If you can’t even figure out what you are talking about, no one else can either.

As a blog writer, it’s relatively easy to get someone to randomly click on your article.  The first 34 seconds of that reader’s experience will determine whether or not you’ve created a fan of your writing.

Here’s what works for me

  • When putting the proverbial pen to paper with your thoughts, try to keep the subject in mind.
  • The “draft” feature is your friend.
  • Write whatever you’ve got in your heart to say, THEN go get some coffee, drag a cigarette, or whatever you need to do to chill out.
  • Come back to the screen and read your article from scratch, pretending to be your potential reader.
  • Ask yourself whether this is something someone might want to read, or whether you’re just venting your own rambling thoughts
  • Take out, change, or shorten anything that doesn’t need to be there until you’re absolutely sure that what you’re saying is being said in the absolute best way possible to keep people interested.

There are people out there who may disagree with my theories, but all great authors go through drafts.  That’s why God (and the publishing industry) invented Editors.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

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15
Dec

WordPress for Newbies #1: Consistency

Wayne HuntLet’s get this out of the way.  I’m a newbie blogger.  Well, that’s both true, and false.

Technically speaking, I’ve run this blog since 2003 in one shape or another but it’s only recently that I’ve become serious about making something out of it.  I’m by no means an expert, but I wanted to share with you what few great tips and tricks I’ve discovered so far along the way.

Lesson 1 – Post early, post often, post consistently.

Nothing kills a blog faster than a visitor finding “last updated April 2003” for the last article you wrote on your site.

When you create a blog, you’re either serious about it, or you’re not.  Either way, if you want your blog to be more than your own private psychobabble outlet, you need to realize that you’re making a commitment to post regularly.

I fell into this trap.  Most people do.  Work, real life, and just general bleep happens to get in the way of your blogging success, but if you stay focused, keep posting, and appeal to your readers, good things will happen.

Even if you consciously make the effort to post one thing that interests you per day, in a little over 3 months, you could have 100 different articles on your favorite subject.  They could be sharing your perspective on a particular set of subjects, teaching others how to do certain tasks, or literally anything else you might think of.

If you take nothing else away from this lesson, please understand that “Content Is King”.  Without content, there’s nothing to read.  No readers, no blog.  Get it?

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

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5
Nov

Where WordPress hits the wall

Let’s be honest.  if you want to blog without having to deal with the hassles of spammers, setup, updates, and configuring thousands of nibbly little details, then WordPress.com is perfect for you.  I’ll be the first to admit that wherein WordPress is concerned, I’m absolutely no expert so this editorial is just my personal opinion.

What I do see however is that after going self-hosted with segwayne.com is major limitations in the way the common hosted version of wordpress (wordpress.com) is being marketed.  Major missed opportunities.  I certainly intend no complaint against a free-hosted, free blog engine.  God bless ‘em for making it available.  It’s great.  Lots of features, statistics, all the right plugins built in and everything else.  Best of all, hosting your blog on WordPress.com is FREE.  My point is that I could easily see WordPress.com expanding their market (along with their income) 10 fold with a couple of simple changes.

wordpress27dashboardSo what am I babbling on about?

Put simply, I’m talking about their offerings which seem to consist of only “Blog only” themes.

WordPress.com offers about 75 or so themes for newbie bloggers to jump in and start expressing their inner demons.  Most of them are actually very nice layouts and are perfectly suitable for the average newbie that doesn’t want to deviate from a stock layout.

That being said, I’m starting to figure out that WordPress (the package) is growing beyond simple blogs and into a full CMS engine.  Every day I see people turning to WordPress to run commercial web sites which are more “CMS” than strictly “blog”.  While I can’t claim to be perfect and less than whiny about my posts, Segwayne.com for example is evolving from the simple “whinery” aka blog that it was, into more of a self-published magazine style, thanks in large part to the self-hosted ability to install my own theme choices.

// None of the 75+ themes available at wordpress.com allow for anything more than straight blogging. //

The missed opportunity comes in where they limit their audience to personal bloggers only.  Imagine if you can, if wordpress.com opened up their themes management and the ability to add/upload new themes.  How many small (or even medium) businesses would jump on the boat to be able to host a commercial type site, even if the themes were in a bundle, say $25.00 (or even $49.95) per year for hosting, the theme (with theme options to personalize) and a domain name?  I can’t help but think thousands — if not tens of thousands worldwide.

Again.. not an expert.  Simply a geek with a stray thought, so I’m sure everyone reading this can and will take apart my opinion.

Have a great day and thanks for listening.

Wayne

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