Including a video in WordPress can be done in several different ways, with or without plugins.

My favorite way is do to it is without any plugins by adding the special inclusion code from Youtube itself.

YouTube WordPress Plugins

But for those of you that don’t want anything to do with HTML codings, here a four af the best Youtube Plugins:

• Smart YouTube
• TubePress 
• YouTube Brackets
• WP YouTube

If you want simple, use one of the last two, want more options choose TubePress Pro (25 Dollar for One Year) with which you can create video gallery’s.

Smart Youtube might be the smart choice of you are going to embed more video’s in you blog postings.

Including YouTube HTML Coding

Like I said, I prefer to just included the HTML coding because I have very few video’s in my posts and I don’t want another plugin to slowdown the site.

When you see a Youtube video you want to include, look for the Share button below the video.

Not all video’s can be embedded, sometimes they are exlcuded because of copyrights.

If you can share it you will see the following code that you can copy and past http://youtu.be/NAc83CF8Ejk into your post and as you can see this is enough for your WordPress website. For me it works just by pasting the code (WordPress 3.2.1).

You can use the same code for inclusion with a plugin like the above mentioned ones, but if you want the inclusing code, use the embed button.

What you don’t want is the standard format unless your theme content size is just right…. for me it never is :-).

But you can easily change to the format you want by just setting the width you need and other options you want to set like the use of High Definition (HD).

Once you set the size, copy the code from the top box and save it in notepad or past it right into your post. Attention! before you paste it into you post, first switch to the HTML input screen!

In the HTML screen you can post the code right were you want the video to show.

Hope this will help you to live up you blog. Make sure you listen to some of the video’s that you see here!

Enjoy this beautiful  music before you get back to working on you WordPress site, Adele is one of the best singers at this moment!

Here are two of my other all time favourite video’s…

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WordPress 3 SEO consists of several aspects and this book of Micheal David covers all of those aspects in his book WordPress 3 Search Engine Optimization.

Here is a short breakdown of each chapter:

1. Getting Started: SEO Basics. Good introduction into the On-Page ranking factors that you need to be aware off, good in details information that you can use on your website before you get into link building. User good keyword rich navigation is coverd and in chapter 3 keywords are getting more attention, but I would have liked to have more information on the right structure for you websites topics. As said, Chapter 3 covers keywords, but a good website structure example would have been gret, either here or in the keyword chapter. Definitely a great start of this book to get into the topic of SEO

2. Customizing WordPress Settings for SEO. This chapter start by taking a step back and lets you look at the goal of your website, which is not always clear unless you write it down on paper and stick to it! If you look at the first few posts on this site you will see that I was guilty of that sin myself… The rest is about the strengths and weaknesses of WordPress as a platform.

3. Research and Working with Keywords. Keywords, keywords, keywords… for some this chapter will be an eyeopener, for others it will be tough to read, but Keywords are the corner stones of your website and Michael David teaches you how to lay the best possible foundation for your site. If you don’t want to read the whole book, don’t skip this chapter.

4. Understanding Technical Optimization. Don’t be scared for the term Technical is is not about the in depth technical mambo-jambo that you think. This chapter will tell you how to use the basics of WordPress Title, Meta descriptions, Permalinks structures and Images to get the most of your website. I do suggest you try the alternative WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin instead of All-In-One-SEO and Google XML Sitemaps.

5. Creating Optimized and Engaging Content. Together with the keyword chapter you will learn a lot about what will attract visitors to your website and keep them coming, together with the search engines. Here you get some good information about writing content and how to structure you categories for optimal results. It has a Nice collection of plugins listed that can help your with your categories.

6. Link Building. Short chapter on Link Building which is good for me (I don’t do much link building).It is good to see how you can get inbound links, but I feel that Google’s PageRank is not a thing that you should focus on. If you want to start with basic link building this will give you some good hints.

7. Using Social Media. Social media is hot now, LinkedIn, Twitter, Social Bookmarking, Facebook and YouTube are all covered in this chapter. I love the Facebook section and how to setup a fanpage! And maybe in the next version he can put in an extra section about the new http://www.google.com/+1/button/

8. Avoiding Black Hat Techniques. Hopefully you will never have to use the advice given to undo Google penalties, but it is good to know which things you need to avoid on your website. Here a just a few of them that are covered: Link Exchange, Website Submission Services, Offshore link building (I don’t like those emails) Autoblogging.

9. Avoiding SEO Mistakes. There are some things that you have to avoid if you want good rankings in the search engines, read through this chapter ans start your cleanup session, you probably will have some mistakes in place…

10. Testing Your Site and Monitoring Your Progress. Use the tools the search engines offer you, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo!Site Explorer and more. Learn how to use theme, but don’t go checking everything every hour. Use your time to write good content and build your site. Set aside a moment per day and an hour per week for analysis.

Appendix A: WordPress SEO Plugins. A WordPress book is not complete if it doesn’t have Plugin recommendations. There a definitely a few ones that I will be testing but I do think All-In-One-SEO is no longer the best choice, even in Beta WordPress SEO by Yoast is beter (and it will soon be out of Beta)

Appendix B: Other SEO Resources. Very helpfull list of websites and forums to get more information and to keep up-to-date with SEO in general.

Conclusion: If you want your WordPress website to get better ranking in the search results, this book covers all the basics and has good advice about content and technical improvements. And you did build your website to get visitors, right? Follow the advice in this book and it will help you to get those visitors.

For me this book will stay on my desk a lot longer than I thought it would.

Read Reviews

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This is a question I get on a regular base: How can I convert my Static HTML website into a WordPress website?

Let me give you a warning in advance, a WordPress website needs to be kept updated!
A static HTML site can run for years without you ever touching it for things like security updates. Just to make you aware of the need for updates!

Another thing that needs really close attention is to make sure that your rankings in Google and other search engines stay intact.
That means you need to make sure your URLs of your old site will stay the same with your new WordPress based website.

Luckily this can be done and for those few links you want to change you can redirect them via your .htaccess file.

But first things first, the conversion of your website.

First, what do you need:

• good hosting that support php
• a mysql database: databasename, username for that database and the password for that useraccount
• the possibility to use a .htaccess file

If you are not sure about the above mentioned items, ask your website hosting provider!

Installing WordPress in a Subfolder

The first thing you will do is to install WordPress into a Subfolder like /cms .

After you finished the installation you have to set the Privacy setting so that Search Engines are not allowed to visit and index your site (Settings -> Privacy) so your new URLs are not getting into the index until you are ready with your conversion.

Now you can strat building your WordPress website next to your current site, that site will say active while you build a new one.

Keeping Old URLs

Like a mentioned before, it is very important that you keep the URLs for the new site the same as the old one!

That is why you need to set the Permalinks to custom with the value /%postname%.html this will result in Posts links with the extension .html.

During the development of your new site the urls will be like /cms/pagina-url.html zijn, but after the final steps this will become /pagina-url.html , that same as the old site.
Make sure that the “slugs” are the same as the old site, and there is a plugin you will need is “.html on pages” . I take it you will have some pages that use the extension .html

You can now start to convert your old pages to WordPress by copying the text or the HTML code of the content from the old website into the HTML code screen of WordPress.

Your page URL is created by the Title of your page, but you can change them by editing the Slug permalink.

There is a plugin that could help you convert old pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/import-html-pages/ Attention! For this plugin to work you really need  PHP5! Ask your hosting provider if you are not sure.

Website Layout

The conversion from your old site to a WordPress based site with the same layout is completely different exercise than what I am describing here, to do that your will have to get a complete custom Theme / Layout. But why not take this opportunity and change the look of your site together with the conversion? Choose a nice premium or free theme  that will fit you company / website topic and customize it to your needs.

If you are happy with the look and feel and the content of your site you can follow these step to get it “live”:

1. delete or rename the index.html file in the root of your old site.
2. copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the /cms folder to the root of your site
3. change one rule in the index.php file into require(‘./cms/wp-blog-header.php’); (only with the index.php file in the root, not in the folder  /cms!!)
4. change only the Site address (URL) in the general setting (Setting -> General) into the domain name. (remove the /cms part)

Change Site Address Only!

5. remove or rename the old  .html files.
6. change the privacy settings so the Search Engines can access and index the site again.

If you handle the change over it this manner, than your old site is not reachable during the 5 minutes you need to change the index.html to the index.php and if you kept your URLs you are not loosing any visitors from the search engines like Google.

And of course you had taken a Back-Up of your old static website so you can restore you old side if you should encounter an unexpected error.

If you want new URLs for your pages than you can redirect the old URLs to the news ones in two ways:

• use a plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
• via the .htaccess file in which you have to write a rule per url you want to forward:  redirect 301 /olde-url.html http://www.example.com/new-url.html

Good luck and if you still have some questions, please use the contact form.

If you have other tips and additions that might help others, please write them in the comments section below.

One last question: Is there a need to have this information in an even more detailed form like a pdf manual with screen shots and tips? if so, please leave a comment.

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Once you have completed the basic setup of your WordPress website, it’s time to add more functions by instaling plugins.

Here is a basic list of plugins that I integrate into every WordPress website I build.

Basic WordPress Plugins List

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
FD Feedburner Plugin
Flexi Pages Widget
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
My Page Order
NextGEN Gallery
Related Posts
Robots Meta
Secure Files
SEO Slugs
Subscribe To Comments
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress File Monitor
WP-DBManager
WP-SpamFree
Fancybox
WP Security Scan
W3 Total Cache

Yes, you counted correctly, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin, you know how difficult a task it was to install these.

Search for the plugin on wordpress.org, click the install button, confirm that the installation was successful and activate the plugin.

Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!

Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac, and it is a great time-saver.

This is always the first plugin I install using the standard process:

Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate Process

Once you have done this, the magic begins. Go to the option “Plugin Central” under the Plugins menu.

The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field were you can paste the list shown above.
Of course, you can just type the names of other plugins you want to install.

Once you are satisfied with your list, click the “Install Plugins” button.

Depending on your host’s security settings, it might ask you for your FTP data such as FTP site, username and password. Or,  it will start to work directly.

The process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes under two minutes for all 20 plugins.

After the whole process has ran, you need to active all of the plugins, which takes about four clicks.

Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin), choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.

Now all of your plugins are active. Some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right off the bat.

Configuring the plugins will take some time, but you just saved a lot of time on the installation, so go ahead and set all the options that you want. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but now it’s time for you to take action!

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You want your new WordPress website to be easily found by search engines, right?

One thing that you need to think long and hard about is the title of your website. This title will show up on every search engine’s search results page, which shows the link to the homepage of your website.

The title should not only contain the keywords you want to target, but it should also invite searchers to click on that title.

The WordPress Title

Most themes will show the title as the title of your post or page, with or without the title of the site (which is set under Settings —> General).

For myself and the majority of my customer’s sites, I use a plugin called Headspace2 which gives you the ability to write different HTML titles. These are the titles that are shown in the title bar of your browser, and are also the titles used by search engines.

With Headspace, you can set different titles for your homepage along with several other pages (archive/category pages, etc.). It shows a separate field under your writing panel where you can put the title.

On this page, you see the title “Use the Right Title in Building a WordPress Website.” But if you look at the top of your browser, you see the title “The Importance of Using the Right Title when Building a WordPress Website.”

The WordPress Theme Header

There is a little catch for Headspace2 to work the right way…. you need to check the way your theme uses the Title function in your header file.

To check this, go to Appearance —> Editor,  select the file called Header (header.php) and look for this coding:

<title><?php if (function_exists(‘seo_title_tag’)) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(”); bloginfo(‘name’);} ?></title>

In the example above you can use a plugin called “SEO Title Tag” that will do the same as Headspace2, with the exception of a few limitations. You can also see that the name of the site is appended at the end of the title. You need to change that code for optimal use of Headspace2 and replace it with:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?></title>

For branding purposes you could add something extra into the code, such as:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?> | WpSiteBuilding.com</title>

The only problem with this is that the title will get too long for the search engine listings. Search engines will cut the title at this moment to about 60 positions.

Did you install the plugin and change the title function in the header of your theme? If so, it’s time to read up on how you can write those great visitor-attracting titles over at Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

P.S. The code “wp_title” is taken from your database table. If you have another table prefix, you have to change the prefix to match your installation (WordPress Installation).

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Brain Gardner, WordPress theme designer extraordinaire, just announced the release of a new theme specifically targeted to Real Estate Agents.

This theme comes with great features like automatic thumbnail creation and special pages for your real estate listing.

There are separate writing panels for your listings with fields for price and other items pertaining to the property. You write the data, and the theme will handle the layout so that every listing has the same format.

For Google maps code, there is a special field where you only need the location code.

It comes with four different color schemes that give you the ability to use the one that best fits your company. You also get the PSD files, so you can make your own changes or hire AgentPress to do further customization for you.

Different ideas for usage

Although this theme was developed by Brian Gardner together with Nicole Nicolay (of My Tech Opinion) for real estate agents, it looks to me like you can adapt this theme. With a few simple changes, you can make it work for different agents like car dealers, motorcycle companies, and even custom car builders.

In fact, every company that chooses to showcase their products with several photos can benefit by using this theme.

If you want to build a professional website for marketing products in the high end consumer market, the SEO-ready Agent Theme from StudioPress may be just what you need.

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I decided to move this WordPress website from the “old” subdomain (www.hummerbie.com) to a new domain and hosting company.

The main reason I moved is because I was unhappy with the hosting provider of the main site. Recently they moved to faster servers and a better internet backbone, but after moving there are still ongoing issues with some of the other sites that run there.

The second reason is, I wanted to see how well Google and other search engines will pick up the 301 redirects (permanently moved pages) and hold my current rankings in the search results. Another part of this SEO exercise is to see how the rankings and number of visitors to this site are influenced by the move of a Dutch hosting provider with servers in Amsterdam to a USA-based hosting company JustHost.com (Geo Targeting in Search Engine Optimization).

After the dust settles, I will write a page/post about the process of moving a WordPress site. I’ve already found one major problem that is now fixed, but I need to do some more testing and tweaking to be sure. After that, I will give you a complete overview of all the pitfalls to avoid in a process like this and how to handle it the right way. Subscribe to the e-mail or RSS updates on the right side of the menu to get those updates.

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This website is primarily focused on how you can setup CMS Options and special plugins to get a static website view using WordPress.

I also write about magazine style and news style themes, and how you should change your WordPress Themes to get a less dated site.

I’ve recently realized that the site needs an upgrade to reflect more on the process of building, configuring and installing things like themes and plugins.
As I mentioned before, this was not the initial intent of the site, but there seems to be a clear need for that kind of information. In the following days/weeks/months, you will see this site grow in that direction.

It takes time to write clear and understandable articles to show you where you want to go, so please stay with me as I will help you build your website with WordPress.

I have already completed some of these pages. A new page about The Process of Building a WordPress website will become one of the cornerstones of this site, and I will create links on this page to point you to the new pages as they are published.

I want to thank Milan for pointing out the flaw in this site’s setup as it is today. I will continue working to make this site one of the best resources around for building a WordPress website.

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Brian Gardner is showing off the redesign of his Magazine Theme, which is already a classic.

If you look at the new features in the header, you can see why this is going to be a great theme to use for Building a website with WordPress.

The tabs at the top are great for extra pages, and the category links will make it easy to “theme” your site.

In Brian’s post, he also shows the new configuration panel that will make it a lot easier to work with for the not-so-technical WordPress website builders.

With this theme, just like the Thesis theme, there are extra fields in the posting panel to give writers a simpler method for adding images to a post and have them show up in the correct positions.

I suppose that the new automatic thumbnail creation that is now implemented in a lot of  Studiopress themes will also be part of this theme…

To be honest with you, there is one thing I don’t like about this theme…. the colors used for the links and headers. As you can tell from my new Hybrid Top Cars website, I prefer blue!

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In my previous post I told you that the theme for this site was going to be Mimbo, which I still think is a great theme. But alas, I have switched…again.

And there is good reason for that switch… I bought The Thesis theme. Not only did I buy the Thesis theme, I also bought the developer license.
The developer license gives you extra features in addition to being able to remove the footer text. You can also use the theme on more than one site, which I do.  :-)

What I was most satisfied about with this theme was the fact that some of the fields in the posting pages are in place to do more on search engine optimization!

Fields like Custom Title Tag, Meta Description and Meta Keywords are already in place, no need for an extra plugin like All-in-One-SEO.

Also the coding is very clean, the theme loads fast, and you can customize your CSS in a separate file so it is still there if you upgrade the theme to a new version.

One thing I do recommend is that you install the Thesis Openhook plugin! It gives you so much more power to customize the theme from the back end without ever touching the Style editor.

What I also really, really like are the custom images that you can use for your post and the automatic creating of thumbnails.
From an SEO point of view, there is the option to fill in Alt Tags for both the post image as well as the thumbnail.

Thumbnails show up in the archives of the blog pages, the overview pages of your categories, and even on my WordPress CMS Blog page.

I have set the width and height for the thumbnails to 220 x 66, which gives me a nice header for all the old posts and on the Weblog page.

There are still some small issues I need to clean up, but for now it is looking great… I think! What is your take on this change?

Genesis Executive Theme

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I have used two different themes on this site now.  The first was Cutline and the second was Revolution Blue.

Both are very good themes and come well-equipped for a Search Engine Optimized website.

Still, I wanted to have a more Magazine-like template. After looking for one that was created for the WordPress versions 2.7 and up, I found the new Mimbo 3.

A new addition, this free magazine theme was built with the ability to use Child Themes.

Changing the style can be done without touching the theme itself. Just change the child theme and all functions from this theme will be there.

A big advantage of this is that if you have heavily customized the theme via child theme, a new version can be installed and will work without you touching any of the core files.

I know, this is a new way of customizing your design with child themes, but I will be looking into these options very soon.  :-)

My Frontpage is not like the standard Mimbo, since that is really built for a blog page, which this site is not.

How about you? Do you work with WordPress theme frameworks yet, or are you still waiting to see how it evolves?

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