vAssistant Services » Blogging

13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round

Suzanne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:00:01 +0000

In honor of Thursday Thirteen, here are 13 WordPress plugins that I use and love:

WordPress Automatic Upgrade: allows you to automatically upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions.
All In One SEO Pack: out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.
Feedburner Feedsmith: detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Google XML Sitemaps: generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
Nofollow Case by Case: allows you to selectively apply rel=”nofollow” to your links.
Zemanta: contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.
CommentLuv: show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html.
PhotoDropper: lets you add Creative commons licensed photos to your posts from Flickr.
Contact Form 7: simple but flexible contact form complete with CAPTCHA.
Ad Rotate: a simple way of showing random banners on your site with a user friendly panel to manage them.
Broken Link Checker: checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
Coming Next: shows the next scheduled post with a brief description.
No Self Pings: keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

What are YOUR favorite plugins?

Which plugins really float your boat? Tell me in the comments below.

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Photo Dropper WordPress Plugin

Suzanne — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:25:06 +0000

One of the more common complaints I hear from my clients is, “I want to use pictures on my site, but I don’t know where to get them for free…legally.” To their credit, every last one of my clients who’ve asked me about adding more photos and images to their sites has voiced concern about adhering to copyright laws.

Well, kiss that problem goodbye by installing the Photo Dropper plugin!

Now you can easily add Creative Commons licensed photos - images that are licensed for shared use - to your posts - right from your dashboard with just 1 click. (If you’re running a commercial blog, read this article to make sure you’re clear how Creative Commons works and what you’re allowed to do with Creative Commons photos.)

It’s a pretty cool plugin for a couple of reasons:

You can search for photos using keywords related to your post content, making the process of finding relevant images for your posts a breeze.
You can choose small, medium, or large sizes, just like at Flickr. A couple of clicks and your picture’s in your post!

You might have to play with your image alignment a little bit, depending on the size of the image you choose, but other than that, it’s a great tool for adding relevant images to your posts!

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Why WordPress?

Suzanne — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:06:19 +0000

In the spring of 2008, I made a momentous decision where vAssistant Services was concerned: going forward, I will only build WordPress sites and blogs, for myself or anyone else. What follows is how I came to that decision and why it might matter to you.

Over the years, all of my clients in this business have fallen into one of three categories:

Group 1: You Do It, I Don’t Want Any Part of It! - People who’ve decided they need a website, but don’t know the first thing about how to build one and really don’t want to learn. They (usually, but not always) also have a fear of technology to some degree, a mental block when it comes to things online. They may or may not be aware of this fear in those terms and may or may not be willing or able to admit it to themselves or me, but it’s there, nonetheless. It’s held them back from leveraging the Internet to grow their business, tell their story or do their thing in a bigger way.

They hire me to stand between them and that big, bad Internet, and put their business, their story, their thing out there for all the web to see, knowing that they don’t have to change much about what they do, and pleased as punch that they no longer have to say “I don’t have one” when someone asks for their website address. They’re “online” now, and can take as much time as they need to “figure it out” because they can have me do it in the interim.

Group 2: I Could Do It - But You’re Faster! - People who are technically savvy and quite comfortable with life and business online who’ve realized that their website has been on their ‘to-do’ list for way too long and will likely remain there unless they outsource getting it done. These folks know what they want done, understand what’s required and can “speak the language”, and could probably even do it themselves, but need to delegate the project to another pair of hands so they can have it in this lifetime. Once their site is built or updated, they’re happy to take it back and maintain it themselves. They’ll call again when they’ve got another major project and sometimes they’ll call for some one-on-one tutoring in between. Some of these clients transition back to having me maintain it because their business has grown and they don’t have the time or it’s more cost-effective to delegate to me.

Group 3: Everyone Else - The people somewhere in the middle. Not surprisingly, this is the biggest group for me.

As you might imagine, meeting and serving the needs of this kind of diversity kept me hopping. Not that I don’t like to hop, mind you, it just got a little crazy, at times. A bigger problem, though, was that I could only take on so many new projects because maintaining the sites I built was not practical for the majority of my clients. Making simple changes required me, and as my client base grew, I had less time to take on new projects. Worse, because I’m a stickler for customer service, I could never take a real day “off”, much less a vacation. That stunk. So, I had to find a solution that worked for them and for me.

How Blogging For Fun Changed Everything
About three years ago, I started my first blog over at Blogger. As I recall, there was nothing more magical about that choice than it was the first option I was exposed to because it belonged to Google, and I used Google A LOT.

At the time, I blogged because it was easier for me than writing in a journal. Blogging made sense to me because a) I type WAY faster than I write with a pen (and much neater, too) and b) it was online and fit nicely with the fact that I spent 18 hours a day with my butt planted in this chair, fingers on a keyboard. But it wasn’t long before Blogger started pissing me off.

I didn’t like any of Blogger’s templates, really, and changing them was a pain in the butt, even for me. On top of that, I still couldn’t take a vacation unless I wanted to have nothing new posted while I was away because even though you could start a post and save it as a draft, you couldn’t set it to publish on a certain date. Then a blogger friend I’d made, who was more fed up with Blogger at the time than I was, made the switch to WordPress. For weeks thereafter, I read about how much she loved WordPress and all things she could do now that she couldn’t do before at Blogger. I grew curiouser and curiouser, and started exploring WordPress.org.

Looking back, the funniest part is that I didn’t know you could build a free blog (like you could at Blogger) at WordPress.com. My friend had not only switched to WordPress, but she got her own hosting account at the same time, which explained (I now know) many of the groovy changes I was seeing at her blog. I began to wonder if I could convert an entire site to WordPress without making it look like a blog. Guess what? I could. And did. My coaching website was my guinea pig. What you see today is called a magazine-style blog (yeah, a little more complicated than a traditional website built in WordPress, but SO worth the extra development time.)

That went so well, I converted all my other sites to WordPress, learned a WHOLE LOT in the process, and was able to spend a whole lot LESS TIME (once built) maintaining my own sites because working in WordPress is so easy. Then it dawned on me: if I converted my client base to WordPress, it would be easy for them, too. I could free up a truckload of time and holy smokes - maybe even take a day off! Even the most timid, techno-phobic among them could easily make simple changes here and there as required. One client, in particular, beamed with pride when she said, “Suzanne, it’s so great to be able to say I maintain MY OWN website!”

Why All This Might Matter To You
More bang for your buck - plain and simple.

A WordPress site costs a lot less to build than one built from scratch. Why? Because you’re building on an existing solid foundation, it’s object-oriented, like Legos on steroids.
If you can type a subject, an email and click send, you can type a title, a post and click publish. No longer are you stuck waiting on me to do things for you - you can maintain your site yourself now, if you’re so inclined.
WordPress, itself, is like catnip to the search engines. So you hit the ground running with a distinct SEO advantage, without all the head scratching and mind bending. Out of the box, it’s like that.
The built-in RSS functionality allows you to alert those interested in your updates immediately and without all the headache of email.

Most of all, I have yet to ask myself, “I wonder if I could do ____ in WordPress?” and not be able to find a way. Because it’s constantly evolving and stays abreast of emerging web trends, it’s never boring. I can create great WordPress sites for my clients that meet them at whatever experience and skill level they’re at. Finally, I have a solution to offer that meets the needs of all three groups of clients I have. Gotta love that!

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Drive Traffic to Your Blog Via Memes

Suzanne — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:01:30 +0000

When I started my first blog a few years ago, I faithfully posted for weeks, no months, before anyone left me a comment. I had readers, but oh were they shy! Granted, it was a personal blog, but still - I was blogging and if I wanted to write to myself, I would have just bought a spiral from Wal-Mart and called it good.

Then, one fateful day, one of my oh-so-shy readers who happened to also be a blogger herself, tagged me for a meme for the very first time. I was beyond thrilled!

Now, you might be wondering what it means to be ‘tagged for a meme’. Well, actually, it can mean a few things. In this instance, what it meant was she had posted a list of questions along with her own answers, and at the end, listed people from whom she’d like to see the same. So, to participate, I had to post the same list of questions on my blog along with MY answers to the questions, and then choose other people to ‘tag’ (as in ‘tag, you’re it!’) to continue the meme.

Another kind of meme is where a blogger will ‘host’ the meme and invite other bloggers to post their own version of the meme at their own blogs and come back and leave a comment at the host’s blog to let others know they had participated. All participants are encouraged to visit the other participants’ entries and leave comments, as well.

Either type of meme is a great way to introduce your blog to others and build traffic. They’re also great writing prompts, too, which is invaluable when you’re ’stuck’ trying to think up a meaningful blog post. Thursday Thirteen is a meme of the second type mentioned here. It’s a great meme to participate in because it’s simply a list of 13 things of your own choosing that you post on Thursdays, so you can tailor your lists to your blog audience and gain new visitors to your blog at the same time! To find other memes that might be useful, simply enter ‘blog meme’ into your favorite search engine, and follow the links in the results provided.

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Link to Your Own Content Without Mucking Up Your Comments

Suzanne — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:16:13 +0000

When someone links to your WordPress blog, a pingback/trackback type of comment shows up in your comment list for that post. The same type of pingback comment is created when you link to your own content. I like my comment streams to be clean and clear, so I’m constantly deleting the pingbacks as soon as they’re created. Not only is that ‘extra work’ I could do without, but I it makes me think twice before I link to content elsewhere on my blog. Finally, a pair of plugins that make linking to your own content super easy and eliminate the ‘extra work’ of the unwanted pingbacks!

SEO Smart Links - can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog, allow you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs, set the nofollow attribute and open links in new window.

Woo-hoo! Now linking will happen automatically as I type! Hot-diggity!

But uh-oh - that’ll create a truckload of pingbacks for me to delete. Oh no, it won’t!

No Self Ping - disables pingbacks created by linking to content on your own site, helping to keep your comments clean and tidy.

With this pair of plugins, I can have an incredibly well-linked blog - automatically - without mucking up my comments!

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Use Gravatars to Build Recognition

Suzanne — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:50:55 +0000

Spread your smile around the web with your own Gravatar!

With the advent of WordPress 2.5.1 comes the integration of Gravatars. What are Gravatars you ask? A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is an avatar image that follows you from blog to blog, appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Gravatars help identify your posts on blogs and builds recognition for you around the blogosphere, particularly if you’re an active commenter on others’ blogs.

You can associate an avatar of your choice (or of your own creation) with your email address at Gravatar.com. You can register multiple email addresses with the same avatar, or associate a unique avatar for each email address.

Using Gravatars has long been on my ‘to-do’ list here at vAS, but thanks to Tom asking for help enabling them on his blog, I’ve gone ahead and enabled them here, too.

If you’d like to see how simple Gravatars are to use, follow these easy steps:

Go to Gravatar.com and register your email address. (This link opens a new window so you don’t lose your place here.)
Click the link in the confirmation email you’ll receive and set yourself a password.
Upload the picture of your choice (you’ll be able to crop it after you upload it)
Come back here and leave a comment and you’ll see your Gravatar beside your comment!

If you don’t have a Gravatar of your own set up, this is the Gravatar that will be used for you here.

Note: Gravatars are not specific to WordPress, and can be used not only on other blogging platforms, but on websites and even desktop applications!

If you’d like your blog to be Gravatar-enabled and need some help, contact me.

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How Often Should I Blog?

Suzanne — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 23:00:37 +0000

Use a calendar to plan your posts and stay consistent.

One of the most frequent questions new bloggers ask is, “How often should I blog?” The answer depends on your time available, your overall blogging objective and a good dose of experimentation.

Every blog is different, and there’s no other blogger out there exactly like you, either. What works well for one blog doesn’t necessarily translate to another blog, anymore than what works well for you will work well for every other blogger.

Your Time Available

First and foremost, if you’re not going to outsource any of the writing or upkeep, you want to set yourself a schedule you can keep up with because consistency outweighs frequency in the eyes of Google and your readers. Quality outweighs quantity, too. Take into consideration how many blogs you have and whether you are concentrating on one more than another.

WordPress allows you to “publish ahead”, so you don’t necessarily have to be posting “live”. That makes it nice because you can devote a block of time to writing posts and schedule them to be published over a period of time. For example, I have one client for whom I take about two hours and write half a month’s worth of posts and schedule them to publish every two-three days. I do this twice a month. I do the same on a weekly basis for one of my own blogs.

Your Blogging Objective

Consider the reason you’re blogging. If your blog is a daily recipe blog, then you’re committed (by default) to daily posts. If you’re blogging to get exposure for your products and services, maybe daily posts are in order, maybe not. If your topic and/or objective don’t dictate a schedule, then my best advice is to start with at least once or twice a week and experiment from there.

Experiment and Ask Your Readers

One of the frustrations of starting a new blog is it can feel like you’re writing for a non-existent audience. The advantage, though, is you have time to experiment until you find what works for you while you build your readership. Then, when in doubt - ask! Ask your readers what they prefer and what they’d like to read about. You don’t have to guess what they want - you can ask.

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What’s Keeping You from Blogging?

Suzanne — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:31:05 +0000

Through your blog, visitors have an opportunity to get to know, like and trust you!

No doubt, the idea of starting a blog has crossed your mind. But is that as far as it’s gotten?

I suspect there are many, many of you out there who no longer need to be convinced of the benefits of blogging. If you’re not blogging, I bet the reason is that the whole idea, from choosing the right platform to figuring out what to blog about and everything in between, is just overwhelming. Multiply that by 100 if you don’t consider yourself a ‘technical’ type of person.

The good news is, you really, truly do not have to be a ‘technical’ person to be a blogger. Once your blog is set up, blogging is about writing, not technology. True enough, there are many decisions to be made in the process of setting up a blog, and this is where having the guidance of a ‘technical’ person becomes a real asset. But once you’re set up, blogging can be as simple as emailing - it’s just that your reach is far greater and you don’t have to fool with SPAM issues.

A blog gives people a taste of who you are and build trust and familiarity among your site visitors. You’ll have a much easier time moving them from visitor to client because they have an opportunity to get to know, like and trust you!

I’m sure you’ve also considered some of the other barriers to blogging, aside from being ‘non-technical’.

“I don’t write well.” You may not consider yourself a writer, and that’s ok. You don’t have to love writing to make blogging work for you. One way is to write like you’re telling someone about your topic. Be relaxed and conversational. (This usually makes for better blog posts, anyway.) The more you do it, the better you get at it. And don’t forget, spellcheck has your back.

“There’s already too much competition.” First of all, you have no competition. There is no other you out there. Use your blog to let what’s unique about you and what you have to offer become known to the world.

“I already do article marketing.” Then you really should be blogging! All those articles would serve you better as blog posts. Drive traffic to your own site, not an article directory site!

“I don’t have the time.” or “It takes too long to get results.”Ok, time for a reality check. Like anything else worth doing, blogging is an investment that builds over time. Fortunately for you, it doesn’t have to take a long time. Done well, blogging delivers some of the best bang for your marketing/PR/platform building buck. Bottom line, if you’re willing to invest the effort to create a blog that’s worth the time it takes to read, your readers can make it worth your time to blog.

All of these obstacles and more are the reason we create Blogs for the Brand New or Reluctant Blogger. If you’ve been mulling over the idea of starting a blog or adding a blog to your site, take a look and see if we have the right solution for you. Whether you’re just time-crunched or starting completely from scratch, we can help. If you have questions, leave a comment here or send an email via our Contact page.

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Get Started Blogging at WordPress.com

Suzanne — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:02:39 +0000

People keep telling you over and over again, “You should have a blog!” You know they’ve got a point, yet you still don’t have a blog. It’s not because:

You don’t want the increased, targeted traffic blogs deliver to your site
You don’t want the additional sales increased traffic will generate
You don’t want get to know your target market better
You don’t want to cultivate solid, long-term relationships with your customers or clients

More than likely, it’s due to one of these scenarios:

You have it on your ‘to-do’ list, but other things keep getting in the way of getting it done. If someone else would set it up, you’d take it and run with it.
You don’t want to waste a bunch of time trying to do it yourself, only to screw it up in the end. You’d like someone to set it up and teach you the basics of blogging - then you’d take it and run with it.
You don’t know the first thing about blogging and you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew on your own. You’d like someone to set it up, teach you the basics of blogging and then guide you as you get underway.

vAssistant Services offers the following blog packages to the brand new or reluctant blogger in you! All packages utilize WordPress.com, a free blogging platform that is scalable (when you’re ready for a self-hosted WordPress blog, your content goes with you!), flexible (dozens of themes, widgets and options to choose from) and easy to use (if you can send an email, you can blog!)

	Set Me Up	Set Me Up & Get Me Started	Set Me Up, Get Me Started & Guide Me
Set up WordPress.com account & profile	X	X	X
Install chosen theme	X	X	X
Install custom header (if chosen theme allows it)	X	X	X
Configure sidebar widgets	X	X	X
Set up/Integrate Feedburner account	X	X	X
Set up/Integrate blog stats and spam protection	X	X	X
Set domain name *	X	X	X
Blogging Basics (1 hr instruction session)		X	X
Blogging Guidance (2 30-min consulting sessions)			X
Don’t have a PayPal account? No problem! Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Click ‘Buy Now’, look to the left of the PayPal Login on the next screen and click ‘Continue’.	$89	$159	$229

* (Optional: $15 yearly WordPress.com upgrade to purchase a new domain name and map it, or $10 yearly WordPress.com upgrade to map a domain name you already own.)

Blogging Basics: a tour of your new WordPress.com blog including:

• how to write, save and publish a new post
• how to edit an existing post
• how to set up categories, tags, links and link categories
• how to use categories and tags on your posts
• how to include images in your posts
• how to ‘publish ahead’ so you can go on vacation and still have new content going up
• how to use the ‘more’ tag to manage lengthy posts
• how to manage comments and handle spam comments

Blogging Guidance: Beyond blogging basics, you have (2) 30-minute consulting sessions available which can include any or all of the following:

• how to use advanced posting features (i.e. excerpts, password protecting posts, etc.)
• how to create static pages on your blog
• how to change the home page of your blog to a static page instead of the blog posts
• tracking and interpreting blog stats
• strategizing your blog’s content

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Blogs Aren’t Just For Writers

Suzanne — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:00:34 +0000

Another reason why I prefer to work and build in WordPress is its flexibility. If you think blogs are just for those who like to write and have something to say, you’re missing out!

For example, my sister started a sewing business recently and I wanted to create a website for it so her customers could reach her online, so she’d have a place to show off her work, and so she could harness the power of the Internet to generate new customers.

A blog is not what she would have had me create, and even up to a year ago, a blog would not have occurred to me, either. But that was before I had immersed myself in WordPress.

What she needed was a couple of reference pages and a way to show off her completed pieces, be they children’s clothing, bridal gowns, or curtains.

One of the drawbacks of sewing for others is that your completed work goes with your customer, so when new customers want to see examples of your work, they and you are out of luck unless you’ve taken pictures and have an easy way to show the new customer the pictures.

One option would be to create a physical photo album, but then you have to lug it around and it can get beat up in the process. Another drawback to a physical photo album is zeroing in on specific types of projects - how do you categorize? By type, color, budget, fabric…what? You pretty much have to pick one and then you’re stuck with it. A much better option is to have a web home for your pictures - one that looks professional, is not distracting, shows off your talents well and allows you to zero in quickly to see the types of projects your new customer is interested in.

So, we need a website, but one that’s easy for a non-programmer to update and maintain, one that will handle displaying of completed projects by all different sorts of criteria and is professional in its presentation. Enter WordPress! Once I do the programming that is necessary and get everything set up the way she wants it, I can hand the site over to her to update and maintain and go forward with. Then, the only time she’ll need me is when she wants something done or added to the site that requires technical know-how she doesn’t possess. Perfect solution for her and for me!

So, if you have a business or a project for which you’d like a web presence - think outside the box and consider what WordPress has to offer!

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vAssistant Services » Blogging

13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round

What are YOUR favorite plugins?

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Photo Dropper WordPress Plugin

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Why WordPress?

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Drive Traffic to Your Blog Via Memes

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Use Gravatars to Build Recognition

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How Often Should I Blog?

Your Time Available

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What’s Keeping You from Blogging?

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Get Started Blogging at WordPress.com

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Blogs Aren’t Just For Writers

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