Getting started with a blog can be exciting and nerve racking for some; just like learning to drive. You really want to get started, you really want to do it, but once you are behind the wheel, you start worry about everything. You want to do everything right, but there are so many unknowns. What if… How do I… Umm…

Like driving, you need to start somewhere and take it slow. Sure, you want to take on the world and just go, but there is no way to know everything right away; even if you did read all the books and how-to’s. Instead, take it one step at a time and focus on the basics first. Then, as you get those down, learn new things.

And lets not worry about traffic. Everyone who starts driving is concerned with big city traffic. There is so much of it and it and yet other drivers have no issues. Well that’s because they’ve been driving for a long time and know what they are doing. When you first start blogging you can’t expect to be as good, or as popular, as those that have been doing it for years. It just doesn’t happen that way. You need to take it slow and learn the ropes. Before you know it, you’ll be cruising along just like everyone else.

You’ll probably screw up a few times too. Don’t be afraid to fail though as that’s a part of learning. Everyone has to make some mistakes before they learn the right way; or their own way. As long as you are getting out there and trying, that’s what matters.

There is no right and wrong either. Yes, driving is based on a set of laws as defined by the government, but people learn over the years what works for them and what makes them comfortable in regards to how they drive. The same goes for blogging. Just because someone else is doing things one way, that doesn’t mean you can’t do things differently. Search engines and web hosting companies do define a set of rules that you site should abide by, but when it comes to actually running your blog, you need to find out what works best for you.

Getting started blogging can be nerve racking, seem complicated and possibly overwhelming. If so, then you’re thinking to hard. It’s much like when you learn to start driving. Don’t focus on big city traffic, focus on where you are comfortable. Then, when you are ready, start to take the next steps, learn something new, and go at your own pace. Before you know it, you’ll be cruising down the internet super highway and wonder why you worried so much.

A blog should be considered the central hub of your social networking universe. Everything you do should drive traffic back to your blog, or website, as a way of combining all your efforts to give your brand maximum exposure.

Once thing you can do to help populate your social networks would be to update your status with your blog posts when new content is published.

By no means is auto-populating a service like Twitter going to get good results on its own, but as one piece of a social networking strategy, it can help a network grow.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can automatically syndicate a blog post to social networks.

TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed is quite possibly the best way to syndicate content. TwitterFeed can update Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, HelloTXT and Laconica. It also integrates URL shortening services, hash tags and keyword filters.

Ping.fm and HelloTXT

By default, Ping.fm and HelloTXT need someone to manually send out updates, but when integrated with TwitterFeed, you can auto post blog posts across the social web. Ping.fm and HelloTXT include nearly all social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning, Tumblr, Posterous, Flickr, Yammer and many more.

FeedBurner

If you’ve already got FeedBurner setup, you can add your Twitter information and have it auto update your Twitter stream every time FeedBurner finds a new story.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a web based social networking aggregator. You can add in one, or more, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, Facebook pages, WordPress.com sites and even Ping.fm accounts and manage them all in one location. You can then manually update multiple accounts at once, or add your feed, select your accounts, and have it auto-populate your social networks.

RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti is the easiest way to update your Facebook, and Facebook Page, status with your latest blog posts. It takes the post title, a short snippet, and an image from the post and updates your status.

All the services noted above are free and work with any site that has an RSS feed.

Please keep in mind that automating a social networking account doesn’t provide quality to the people you are connected to. However, automated updates from your blog, mixed in with normal conversation and networking is a good way to help drive traffic back to your blog.

One of the biggest features that Blogger.com had over other free blogging sites is the ability to publish files to a website via FTP. This allowed site owners to have a blog in a directory on their site without having to install and maintain software on their web server.

Unfortunately, on March 26th, Blogger.com is shutting down their FTP functionality.

Blogger claims that only .5% of their users use this feature and that it’s a big strain on their engineering staff to keep it working like it should. So they are shutting it down.

So now what? Are you a part of that .5%?

Believe it or not, this is a blessing in disguise. If you were using the FTP functionality, then you probably are serous about blogging. And if you are, then it’s time to take the next step and move away from Blogger.com.

The best advice is to setup WordPress on your site and import all your blogger posts. Setting-up, importing, and learning new software may take some additional time, but the in the long run, you’ll be happy you did. Not only will you have more features and more control over your blog, but it’ll be better for your users and perform better in search engines.

Of course, Blogger.com is suggesting that you either use their domain mapping feature, or set-up a blogspot.com address, to keep your blog hosted with Blogger. However, taking the easy way out now may be something you regret in time.

Blogger.com is nice for new bloggers and those that aren’t technical enough to get a blog setup, but the freedom and advantages that come from hosting and managing your own WordPress blog is well worth the time and effort it takes to move.

If you need help moving your blog away from Blogger.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog, TopRank Online Marketing can help you out. Just drop us a line or give us a call and we’d be more than happy to discuss options with you.

The idea of trackbacks and pingbacks are great. It’s a way of getting notified when someone else posts about you on their blog. However, spammers have taken over and it makes you wonder if there is any value in trackbacks anymore.

My guess is that most bloggers will say that the value is little to none. The number of spammy trackbacks are overwhelming at times and, even if you do have a good spam plugin protecting you, the ones that get through are not quality. The chances that a good trackback comes into your site is rare, but when it does, it is great to see.

The idea of trackbacks is fantastic, however it is to easy for spammers to abuse; and they know that. The system has been corrupt for a while and it makes a blogger think that it may be time to just disable them and forget about them.

What do you think?

Do you still see value in trackbacks and pingbacks? Or have you disabled them and let them die?

Yes, trackbacks/pingbacks are dead. Lets turn them off.

If you’d like to disable trackbacks on your WordPress blog, go into your blogs settings and then click ‘discussion’ and un-check the box for ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)’

No, trackbacks/pingbacks are still alive, they just need to be monitored better.

If you’d like to keep trackbacks, but manage them better, check out one of these plugins:

• Moderate Trackbacks
• Simple Trackback Validation
• Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks
• Disable Trackbacks

Believe it or not, there is only one item you need to have a successful blog; and that’s ambition.

Ambition – Photo from hlkljgk

It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger or TypePad. It doesn’t matter if you are an industry thought leader or a virtual unknown. As long as you have the ambition to post often, the ability to stick with it, and can be patient, you’ll be successful in time.

Yes, there are other things that can help make your blog successful but if you don’t put forth the effort to create good content in the first place, all the tools and plugins in the world won’t do you any good.

Have you ever wanted to have the ability to better organize your uploads folder in WordPress?

By default, WordPress organizes all uploaded media by year and month. Where this works well for some bloggers, others want to organize their uploads into things like pdfs, downloads, videos and so on. This is especially important when using WordPress as a CMS.

That’s where the Relocate Upload plugin comes in handy.

Relocate Upload allows a blog admin to setup custom folders inside the uploads folder, or anywhere on the web server, for better file organization.

Relocate Upload Settings

When uploading media, Relocate Upload is integrated into the upload window with a drop down menu that allows the user to select the folder for the item to be uploaded to.

Relocate Upload Integration

And that’s all there is to it.

Relocate Upload is an excellent plugin for organizing your blogs upload folder. It’s easy to use and works very well.

If MacGyver has taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need big expensive tools to get the job done. The same goes for blogging.

There are plenty of free blogging tools and resources to do everything from creating SEO friendly sites to keyword research and analytics. Why spend the money on a tool when you could use that money on internet marketing services or to grow your company?

Here are 13 free blogging tools and resources that MacGyver would be proud of.

WordPress

MacGyver would surly use the most popular, customizable, powerful, and completely free, blogging software on the internet. WordPress offers a large number of feature and hundreds of plugins that will make any blog successful. From newbies to web design professionals, WordPress is a great choice for ease of use, search engine optimization and price.

Google Analytics

MacGyver’s got to keep tabs on his site and know where his traffic is coming from.  For this, Google Analytics is a no brainer. No need to spend hundreds on an analytics package, Google Analytics as all the features you need at a price that can’t be beat.

Firefox

Security issues? Not on MacGyver time. He needs a web browser that is not only safe, but also a web browser that turns into a blogging & SEO machine. Especially with extensions such as:

• SeoQuake – Keep tabs on page rank, inbound links, number of indexed pages and more.
• ScribeFire – A blogging client that allows you to write posts without leaving the page you are browsing.
• Pinger – Because a broken link is embarrassing, this tool checks to ensure all the links on a page are valid.
• yExplore – Quick access to many other SEO tools and page information.
• SEO for Firefox – Another SEO tool to get all sorts of ranking and linking information.

Adobe Browser Lab

Even though MacGyver doesn’t like IE6, he still has to make sure his site looks good in all browsers. Adobe Browserlab is a free tool for checking designs across multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Mac, Windows) to ensure it looks awesome and is usable.

Feed Reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines

For spying on the competition there is no easier tool that a feed reader. You’ll want to subscribe to your competitions blog to ensure that you know what they are up to. It’s also good on keeping up with industry news. You never know when Duct Tape might come out with new features.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

For investigating new and interesting keywords that MacGyver should be optimizing his blog for, Google AdWords Keywords Tool is a good place to start. No expensive monthly subscription here, all you need is a Google Account. Looking for other keyword research tools?

Social Networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Who wouldn’t want to be friends with MacGyver? Social networks helps him connect with his allies and build a following who will help him promote his posts or who might come to his aid when he needs some assistance. It takes time to build them out, but building good connections will pay off in the long run.

Social News & Bookmarking such as Digg, Delicious & StumbleUpon.

Yet another avenue to promote good content and attract more visitors. It’s not always easy to become popular on social news sites, but with interesting content and patients, they could become one of the largest traffic drivers.

Blog Directories

You never know who might be using blog directories these days. Getting a free listing is one more area to gain awareness and expand the reach of a blog. Sure, search engines are all the rage, but an additional free link in a decent directory is beneficial.

Image Sharing such as Flickr and PhotoBucket

I’m sure MacGyver would have some great photos so photo sharing sites like Flickr would be a good spot to put them and reap the benefits of their built in community. Thousands of people do photo searches ever day and showing up in those results may be another way to drive people back to your blog.

FeedBurner

Tracking visitors in analytics is one thing, but not everyone visits the site; some only read the feed. That’s why we’d need to use FeedBurner to track those that subscribe to the blog’s feed. FeedBurner also has the ability to setup feed to email subscriptions as well for those that haven’t grasped feeds yet.

Google Webmaster Central

To ensure that no hackers put spyware on MacGyver’s site, and to ensure that it’s being properly crawled by the Google, Google Webmaster tools is a great resource. The amount of information that Google gives back can be used to improve the site for users and search engines. Yahoo and Bing also have webmaster tools, however they don’t give as much information at this time.

Creative Commons Search

Sometimes blog posts just need an image to polish them up.  Creative Commons Search is great for finding images and content that a blogger may want to utilize to make their posts more appealing. Creative commons search has websites, images, audio, and video that can be re-purposed for free.

So you see, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on tools and resources to make your blog successful. Yes, you’ll have to learn the tools and take the time to analyze the information, but there are a number of free tools out there that can get the job done.

With literally hundreds of millions of blogs in the vast blogosphere, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to develop a unique brand for your blog by writing posts that are unique, creative and entertaining. The next time you find yourself in a rut, try these 7 blog copywriting ideas for creating fresh and interesting content:

1. Start With the Headline

It might seem logical to write the body of the post first. After all, length-wise, it’s the most significant piece of the puzzle. Instead, try coming up with the most creative, most intriguing headline possible. Then design a post around that inspirational headline. Similarly, you could choose an image or create a call to action first. Whatever your typical process, turn it around to inspire some fresh thinking.

2. Tell Your Story With a Graphic

Instead of using words to convey a concept that’s perhaps been covered by other bloggers — or even your own blog — rely on a custom illustration to tell the story. This tactic can have some SEO benefits, as well. A creative, useful graphic or illustration can have the potential to go viral, with readers linking to it and sharing it.

3. Include a Resource Guide

As a blogger, you’re not always tasked with coming up with lengthy, in-depth original posts. Include a few resource-type posts in the mix, as well. For example, create a post listing the top 25 upcoming events for your industry, the 50 best industry blogs, or 100 useful books and publications. Not only are these posts easy to write when you’re finding it difficult to come up with a new concept, they’re also likely to be linked to.

4. Insert Your Own Opinion

Instead of simply reporting on the news or a recent development, incorporate your own thoughts on the subject. If a piece of legislation passes that affects your industry, write about your individual stance on the issue at hand. Instead of merely including an announcement on a major industry merger, offer your opinion of what you have done differently and what you think was handled well.

5. Rely on Someone Else’s Story

As a blogger, it’s not always necessary to rely on your own ideas for new posts. Contact an influential or interesting figure in your industry, and base a post around him or her. That could take the form of a guest-written post, a Q&A or a case study. Readers are likely to appreciate the fresh perspective.

6. Turn an Idea Upside Down

In lieu of the traditional tips or checklist post, create the reverse. For example, instead of writing “The 10 Steps to Start Saving,” try “The 10 Worst Ways to Send Your Credit Into Disrepair.” When it all boils down, both posts offer similar information — they’re simply positioned differently.

7. Think Outside the Box

Try this fun trick to come up with creative blog copy: Write down 20 words or phrases on separate pieces of paper. Get creative — think “pink elephant,” “wild flamingos” or “ace up your sleeve.” Next, place the pieces of paper in a container. The next time you write a blog post, randomly select a piece, and try to include that word or phrase in your post. In the end, the phrase may not work and can be eliminated. But at the very least, it’s an effective way to start thinking outside the box.

Guest posters are a good idea for all blogs. Different people have different ideas, different writing styles, and different ways to connect to visitors.

Not only is it a good idea for your readers, it’s a good idea for your blog.

The more authors a blog has, the more content that will get generated, the more active the blog will appear and, when that happens, search engines can give more rankings and traffic. All of this leading to more sales, revenue, or whatever the blogs KPI is.

More bloggers help out a blog in more ways than one and growing a blog with multiple authors, or guest posters, is a win-win situation.

And with that, BloggerDesign is happy to have Michelle Bowles, a copywriter at TopRank Marketing, publishing her first post here tomorrow! Check back to see what tips she has for bloggers.

One of the most popular posts on BloggerDesign is how to get Flash (swf) into a WordPress post. The previous post is about three years old so I thought I’d write up a follow-up post, as embedding Flash is much easier now as it’s all built into WordPress.

With the newer versions of WordPress there is a button to embed media.

Embed Button

Once clicked, all you have to do is enter in the Flash (swf) file URL, set the dimensions, hit ‘Insert’, and WordPress will do the rest.

Embed Window

It’s that easy. No plugins, no confusing code, just provide WordPress with the URL of the Flash swf file and it’ll write the code to embed the Flash file into your post.

As a bonus, the embed option also works with Shockwave, Quicktime, Windows Media, YouTube URLs, and Real Media if you need to embed those media files as well.

A bloggers dream is to get noticed. That could be in the form of a post getting re-tweeted hundreds of times, hitting the homepage of Digg, shared a lot on Facebook, getting noticed by the media, or one of the many other ways a blog can get traffic. However, a flood of traffic can quickly cripple a blog and turn that dream into a nightmare. The good news here is that the WP Super Cache plug-in can help minimize issues caused by too much traffic.

The WP Super Cache plug-in creates a static HTML file of each post and serves that file up to users. This static HTML file loads faster and is a lot less demanding on the web server and database. Now if hundreds or thousands of people were to visit the same post in a short amount of time, instead of re-pulling that post from the database and piecing it all together, WordPress would just show the cached page; aka a static HTML version of the post. This page now loads faster and more efficiently.

Think of it like this, you are selling lemonade and every time someone wanted a glass, you measured out the water, sugar, and lemon juice to make one glass for that one person. If you became popular, it’d take forever to fill all the orders one glass at a time. Not to mention all the work you’d have to do. You’d be tired! So instead, you make a picture of lemonade that allows you to easily serve many people in a short amount of time. The WP Super Cache plug-in works the same way. It ensures that your posts are served up quickly and are ready for a flood of viewers.

As a perk, the user never knows the difference. The blog loads faster, they get to consume the content faster, and hopefully, they continue sharing the post.

It doesn’t matter if a blog has a few visitors or thousands, installing the WP Cache plug-in helps ensure that a blog continues to run smoothly and every visitor has a good user experience.

It’s also good to note that the WP Super Cache plug-in and WP Cache plug-in are not the same. The WP Super Cache plug-in does a much better job at reducing the amount of work the web server has to do. If you are using WP Cache, it’s time to upgrade to WP Super Cache.

Whether you are new to WordPress, or have been using it a long time, there are always features that are available in the software that people either forget about or don’t know exist. So I thought I’d write up 10 lesser known WordPress features.

1. More options in the WYSIWYG editor.

When writing your blog post in WordPress, there is a toolbar with items such as bold, italic, and lists. At the of that toolbar is a box with little squares on it. Click it to reveal another toolbar with options to underline, change the font colors, embed meida, undo, and more. Quite a few handy options hiding there.

2. The convenient drop down menu.

At the top of the admin area, in the dark grey bar, there is a drop down menu that lets you add a new post, add a new page, go directly to the drafts, upload media and a few others. What are a few clicks away via the sidebar may only be a click or two away with the drop down menu.

3. Edit, reply, delete, and approve comments from dashboard.

When looking at the WordPress dashboard, you can monitor the most recent comments, approve or un-approve them, delete them, or mark them as spam. You can even reply to the comments right there on the dashboard.

4. Change the screen options.

At the top of most admin screens, there is a ’screen options’ tab. This is where you can change what appears on the screen. You can add boxes, remove the ones you don’t use, and find other settings as well.

5. Minimize, expand, or move boxes.

Most boxes in WordPress have the ability to be minimized. Hovering over the title of the box should show an arrow on the right side. Click that arrow and the box should minimize. Click again and it’ll expand. Don’t like where it’s located, click the title of the box and drag it around the screen. You can create the layout that works best for you.

6. Minimize the sidebar.

The sidebar is nice, but it also takes up space. If you’d like, you can click on the << in the sidebar and it’ll minimize to just show section icons. When minimized, it also has a nice rollover effect to show what options each sidebar item has. This can reduce the number of clicks you have to make to get to different areas of the blog.

7. Expand a sidebar section and locking it open.

If the sidebar is maximized, click the down arrow on a section to reveal what options it has to offer. Once that happens, the box will be locked open and no matter where you navigate, that box will remain open. Want to unlock it? Just click the arrow again to minimize the section.

8. Access the media library.

When writing a post, every piece of media that’s ever been uploaded to the blog is accessible via the media library. Simply click on the add an image button, then click on the media library tab and you can page, and even search, through past images and files. Want to use one? Click on ’show’ next to the item and you’ll be able to insert it into the post.

9. See the most used tags or categories.

When writing a post, there is the ability to see the most used categories and tags. This helps save time if there are a lot of categories and you don’t want to scroll through them all, or are unsure what tag to use in a post.

10. Add widgets.

Widgets are one of the best items in WordPress. They allow for anyone to customize the sidebar. Click on Appearance -> Widgets and you’ll see a list of widgets and the sidebar. Just drag a widget into the sidebar and you’re done. Drag it up and down to reorder and drag it off the sidebar to remove. There are also text widgets that will allow someone to add JavaScript, images, text and just about anything to your WordPress sidebar. No coding or FTP required.

WordPress does have a lot of features and functionality under the hood. Take the time to look around and see if there isn’t something you’ve never discovered before. I’m pretty sure you’ll find something new.

There are a lot of people who think that WordPress is just blogging software, but it’s much more than that. It can be a website’s entire content management system (CMS).

Here are 31 reasons why WordPress works as a CMS.

1. Simple to install.
2. There is a WordPress plugin to add almost any functionality you want.
3. Can setup multiple users with multiple levels of control on the site.
4. It’s SEO friendly.
5. Easy to theme.
6. Easy to customize design and add widgets.
7. One piece of software can run both the website and blog.
8. Comes with pages and posts to separate the blog from the website.
9. Post and page revisions so you have a history of changes to content.
10. RSS feeds included with no setup.
11. Built in media area for images, documents and so much more.
12. Flexible theming structure that allows you to create multiple different layouts and easily apply them to any post or any section of the site.
13. Built in link manager makes it easy to add a resources section to your site.
14. Thousands of powerful WordPress functions allow developers to pull all sorts of information into any part of the site.
15. No property code to learn. It’s all PHP.
16. You don’t have to know code to use it. Upload the files, follow the on screen instructions and never look at the code.
17. Clean and customizable URLs.
18. W3C standard compliant.
19. Most web hosts support WordPress. Lots even have it available as a one-click install.
20. Posts updates and design changes take effect immediately, no waiting for anything to re-publish.
21. Can allow for a members only area of the site.
22. Can create password protected areas for privacy.
23. It’s easy and quick to upgrade.
24. Works in all browsers on all platforms.
25. Can create drafts so you can start work on a page now, and finish it later.
26. Lightweight and user intuitive admin side.
27. It’s available in your browser or on your mobile device; such as the iPhone.
28. It’s free.
29. You can create an entire site in less than an hour.
30. You have control over just about everything.
31. There are over 15 million WordPress publishers: 6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 9 million active installations of the WordPress.org software. So you know it’s good stuff.

Can you come up with any more?

Google Analytics is a full-featured analytics suite that is free to all to use. The data it captures lets blog owners know referrers to their site, keywords, popular posts, unique visitors and so much more.

With the Google Analyticator plug-in, you can view a summary of the blogs Google Analytics, for the past 30 days, right on the dashboard for quick and easy access.

Here’s how to setup Google Analytics on WordPress’ dashboard.

1. Sign up for a free Google Analytics account. If you already have a Gmail, or other Google account, then just sign-in. http://www.google.com/analytics/

Get Google Analytics

2. Get the Google Analyticator plug-in, install it on the blog, activate the plug-in, and remember to configure it.

Download The Plug-In

3. Once you have Google Analyticator up and running, go into the settings click the link to authenticate with Google.

Authenticate with Google

4. Google will then ask you to grant access.

Grant Access

5. Once access is granted, Google Analyticator will confirm that you are indeed authenticated.

Authenticated

6. Head back to the WordPress dashboard and check out the blogs Google Analytics summary for the past 30 days.

Dashboard Google Analytics Summary

That’s it. Google Analytics integration into WordPress’ dashboard is complete.

What I’d love to see is the ability to break down data based on a specific date range, however for a quick summary, Google Analyticator provides an easy way to see Google Analytics information on a blogs WordPress dashboard.

The nice thing about the iPhone WordPress is that there is a plug-in for just about everything.

Lets say you want to create a fancy image gallery to showcase your photography. With NextGEN Gallery you can add as many images as you want and have the beautifully displayed in blog posts or on a gallery page.

Image Gallery with NextGEN Gallery

Want to poll your audience? With WP-Polls you can create as many questions and get as many answers as you want.

Polls with WP-Polls

Maybe you want to you want to add Google Analytics to all pages of your blog AND see your stats on your WordPress dashboard. Google Analyticator can do that.

Google Analytics via Google Analyticator

Lets say you want to create a contact form. With cforms you can create simple, or complex, forms all by dragging and dropping form elements.

Forms with cforms

Need to find out how to easily embed a YouTube video in your post? Viper’s Video Quicktags lets you embed YouTube, DailyMotion, Viemo, Flickr, MySpace and more.

YouTube Videos with Viper's Video Quicktags

Thinking about creating an XML sitmeap for search engines? Google XML Sitemaps has you covered. It’ll automatically generate one and tell the search engines.

Google XML Sitemaps

Lets say you want to make your blog iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm friendly. Well the WPtouch iPhone Theme does just that. Install the plug-in, activate it, and you are good to go. No additional coding necessary.

Mobile Theme with WPtouch iPhone Theme

Want to turn your blog into an e-commerce store? WP e-Commerce has you covered with all the store options you need to start selling anything.

Create a Store With WP e-Commerce

You can also translate your content into 41 different languages with Global Translator.

Language Translations with Global Translator

Worried about loosing your blog posts or images? WP-DB-Backup and WordPress Backup can back everything up daily and email you a copy.

Backup Your Blog with WP-DB-Backup and WordPress Backup

There’s a plug-in to do just about anything, only in WordPress.

So, what are your favorite plug-ins? Or what functionality do you need?

As blogs grow, and new content gets created, old blog posts can quickly get lost in the archives. As much as bloggers try to keep everything organized, it’s hard to ensure that all posts get the exposure they deserve. However, there are ways to help ensure that older posts get additional exposure.

1. Related Posts

On individual post pages, add links to other related posts. This shows visitors that there is more content on your blog that might be of interest to the reader. I’d suggest showing 5 posts as it gives a little variety without giving to many options.

Tip: Try out the Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in to integrate related posts into a WordPress blog.

2. Top or Popular Posts

In the sidebar, create a section for the blogs most popular posts. Again, pulling in 5 posts from the entire history of the blog and showcase what users feel are the best posts on your blog.

Tip: Read How To Find Your Most Popular Posts for plug-ins and ideas for obtaining posts.

3. Recent Comments

Having a list of the 5 most recent comments, with links back to those posts, can highlight which posts are getting the most chatter. These may be newer posts, or they may be older ones, either way, we are drawing more attention to additional posts and possibly gain more comments.

Tip: Use the built in WordPress widget or get a recent comments plug-in to enable this functionality.

4. Random Post

You can add a random link to the blog navigation that when it’s clicked on, WordPress will choose a post at random to show. This works great for blogs with a lot of good information that doesn’t necessarily get outdated over time. Then again, sometimes it’s just fun to go back in time and see how things have evolved.

Tip: The Random Redirect plug-in will help in creating a random link on your blog.

5. Social Icons

Having social icons on each blog post helps encourage readers to promote those posts for you. As an example, if someone comes to your site from a search engine, lands on a post from 5 months ago, and likes it, we want to encourage them to Tweet it, bookmark it, or use one of the many social networks to drive more traffic to the post.

Tip: Sociable is a nice plug-in for creating a list of social bookmarking icon links at the end of each post. The Social Bookmark Generator works well for creating a list of links or a drop down menu.

6. Internal Linking

Internal linking is an easy way for a blog owner to control which older posts get additional exposure. When writing a post, cite what has been said in the past with links in the content. Readers may find that the supporting posts are evidence that you’re an authority figure on the topic too.

Tip: No plug-in required, just link to other posts in the content.

Most blogs can benefit from using one, or more, of the items above to help showcase posts that may have fallen into the abyss of the archives. Bloggers write a lot of good content and anything that we can do to promote additional posts will benefit not only the blog, but the readers as well.

What other ideas do you have to promote older posts? Share them in the comments below.

There are thousands of blog posts that get published every day and your posts are competing with them. Not only is good content needed, but so is a good image. Imagery can draw users attention to the content and give your post an additional boost.

Screenshots, logos, people, and product images are all good easy ways to incorporate imagery into a blog post. Almost anything is better than a big block of text.

When considering what type of image to add, think of what’s visually appealing. It may not always be a product shot, or a picture of a smiling person, quite possibly an image of the sky or an animal can convey the feeling you are trying to get across in your post much easier.

As an example, how do you feel just by looking at the images below?

Cat

Storm

Abstract Lines

Flower

Leaves

Each image should give a different feeling. When added to the post, the images can set the tone before someone reads anything more than the headline.

So where can you find imagery for your posts? Head over to Creative Commons search engine and they’ll show you images from Google and Flickr; which should be free to use. Stock photo sites, like iStockPhoto, are also great places to find imagery that can be used on your blog. Granted it’ll cost, but not usually more than a few dollars an image.

Imagery is very powerful. If you look at a magazine or a newspaper, the first thing you’ll probably notice are the images. Those images set the tone for the article and draw readers in. This is also true blog posts. Not only can imagery help catch more eyeballs, but it can convey an additional emotional aspect to your writing.

Bonus: Learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and Online Marketing at the Online Marketing Blog.

It’s never any fun to follow a link just to find out the page you were looking for can’t be found. Chances are, the user may spend a few seconds trying to find the correct page or just bail on the site. To ensure that visitors stay on your site, site owners should ensure that the 404 error page is friendly and helpful.

I did some research in the WordPress plug-in directory and came up with many plug-ins to enhance the default WordPress error page. However there were only two plug-ins that I could get to work and liked. The fist is Dunstan-style Error Page.

Dunstan-style Error Page

The Dunstan-style Error Page has a really nice layout that includes recent posts, a quick error report button, and a feedback form. It’s all built into the plug-in and there is nothing that needs to be configured.

The downside here is that the Dunstan-style Error Page tries to make integration simple but actually makes it complicated. The code did not work right with my design and I had to spend a few minutes modifying the plug-in so the layout was visually correct. This may not be an issue with all themes, but I could see it being a big deterrent; especially if you don’t know code.

404 SEO Plug-in

The second option I liked was the 404 SEO Plug-in. It’s quick and easy to install and integrate into your design. Once the 404 error page is activated it’ll give suggestions based on what it thinks you were looking for.

Downsides here are the lack of features.

Overall, neither plug-in gives me everything that I want. What I’d like to see is more options with a clean layout. Things like a search box, post suggestions, recent posts, and popular posts. I think the Dunstan-style Error Page has a good start, but more could be added.

For now, I’m sticking with the Dunstan-style Error Page as I like the layout and features. If you choose to use one of the plug-ins above, or choose to make your own creation, remember that information and resources are good on a site’s 404 error page. Without options, the visitor may just bail on your site all together.

WordPress, like any software, has the ability to break and that then can cause a blog owner quite a bit of anxiety. This can be caused by plugins not working properly, file corruption, database problems, or many other things. Even though your data is usually just fine, having a blog down is not what a blog owner wants.

Here are 5 things you can do to try and fix a broken WordPress Install.

Before trying to fix any issues, make sure to back up your blog! The fixes below should not cause any harm, but it’s always better to have a backup you don’t need than not to have a backup when you need it.

Items to backup:

• Your /wp-content/ folder
• Your blog’s database.
  • Use the wp-backup plugin to make backups easy.

1. Disable Plugins

Plugins add a lot of additional features and functionality to a blog but can cause also cause unexpected issues such as admin pages that show nothing but a white screen, slow loading pages, or PHP error messages on public facing pages.

To disable plugins you can go to the plugins screen on the admin side, select all, and then disable them. Once disabled, go back through and ensure the issue is gone. Then, enable the plugins one at a time until you find the one causing the issue.

If for some reason you can’t get to the plugins page, you can FTP into your blog and rename the plugins folder. The next time that you try to load the plugins page in WordPress, it’ll not be able to locate the plugins folder and de-activate all plugins. Renaming the folder back will bring all the plugins back but keep them deactivated. Then, enable the plugins one at a time until you find the one causing the issue.

Once the plugin with the issue is located, you can choose to remove it or check the plugins homepage for updates.

2. Check Your Config File

If you’re blog is not loading at all, and you see an error message that says ‘cannot connect to database,’ connect to the site via FTP and check the wp-config.php file to ensure the username, password and database names are correct. If it is, and you’re still having issues, contact your hosting provider to see if there are any database related changes or issues that you should know about.

3. Re-Install WordPress

Most of the WordPress files can be re-installed without causing any issues with the blog. The only directory NOT to touch is /wp-content/.

You can re-install WordPress’ files by logging into WordPress and going to Tools -> Upgrade and selecting the re-install option. WordPress will use the built in updater to re-install all core files but not touch any theme or plugin files.

If you can’t use the built in WordPress tool to re-install WordPress, you can upload the files via FTP. Just be sure not to overwrite the /wp-content/ folder as this contains your theme, upload, and plugins folder.  The best solution is to first delete the old files before uploading the new ones.

4. Repair Database Tables

If your problem doesn’t appear to be with a plugin or the core WordPress files, you can always try to repair the database tables via phpMyAdmin.

Log into the blog’s database via phpMyAdmin, check all the database tables, and select Repair. You can also choose to optimize them as well.

To get access to your blogs phpMyAdmin, contact the hosting provider.

5. Something Else Is Wrong?

If the blogs issue still exists then it’s time to head over to the WordPress support forums and ask for help or do a search on the error message, or problem, and see if someone else is having the issue. Chances are you aren’t the only one and the solution is just waiting for you to find it.

In my experiences with WordPress, there have been very few big issues. At times a plugin has gone rogue, or comments have disappeared, but a few maintenance items and things have gone back to normal with no loss of posts or comments.

WordPress is a smart blogging platform and most issues can be fixed quickly without any harm to the blog content.

It seems that that there could be a lot more done with WordPress’ internal search. More results, better options, filters, or something to make the user experience better. So I started looking for options.

One option I found was Lijit. Lijit offers the ability to allow your users to search your blog, bookmarks, photos, videos, social networks such as Twitter, and other sites from one search box on your site. It seemed like what I was looking for, so I installed it.

The downside to Lijit is that it can give other sites more visibility via advertising or the web searches tab. And taking traffic off your site isn’t always a good idea. The upsides though are that you can include many blogs, social networks and all sorts of different things into your search results. Lijit makes it all about your network of sites, not just about one blog.

So far I’m not overly impressed with Lijit as I don’t see any Twitter results and I see sites like TechCruch which I don’t have listed in my settings. I’m hoping the bugs get worked out in the next day or two.

Another option is Google Custom Search. Google is a great option as it’s a format that most people already know. You can add sites as you see fit, change the layout a little, and you get all of Google’s pre-defined search modifiers. There is even a Google Custom Search WordPress plug-in to make the install easy.

A third option I came across was Viewzi. Viewzi not only searches your blog, but video sites and photo sites too. I had Viewzi installed in the sidebar, however it never loaded results and the WordPress plug-in conflicted with WordPress and it had to be de-activated. Oddly enough, when the plugin was de-activated, it worked fine. So there seems to be some bugs, but it also seems to be working. It’ll be in the sidebar for a while while we test it out and you are free to take it for a spin.

With all my searching, I’m still at a loss for a search replacement that really takes the search results page to the next level. Something that gives filtering options, a nicer layout, or just better usability over all. The default WordPress search is fine, but seems lacking.

Have you come across any good search alternatives?