Ha ha! I sucked you in with that grandma-inspired line and now you have to listen or I will guilt trip you every christmas… well maybe not. There is an important message to that title, and it’s one that successful bloggers follow. The simple fact is that by blogging your are spreading knowledge, and if you don’t learn anything yourself, your probably not providing value to others!

By teaching you learn (again) more!

If you sit down to write a post and don’t have to learn anything yourself, chances are you didn’t provide the best information you could. My favorite thing about blogging is being forced to think about subjects differently and learn new information to provide a complete article. Researching your topics will boost the quality of your information ultimately giving your content more value.

People use the web to gain knowledge.

This is a simple truth. The key is to provide the requested information in a format that provides the most value to the user. That is great if you want to post pictures of your cat, but chances nobody but aunt millie will be commenting on your posts.

When you write a post imagine you didn’t know anything about your subject and ask yourself: Does your post provide all the necessary info needed to comprehend the subject? If not, what questions are left unanswered? Provide a complete picture and your content will shine above the rest.

Everything to be learned IS already taught someplace else.

Damn Wikipedia… but seriously, don’t let this get you down.You have the opportunity to provide valuable information with your unique style and presentation techniques even if it can be found elsewhere. Set yourself apart using some of the following ideas:

• Present the idea with your unique style.
• Combine multiple concepts to provide a unique look at a subject.
• Take a different angle when presenting the information.
• Present the information in an easier to absorb fashion.

Being a blogging student is key for beginning bloggers.

If you are a beginning blogger with little authority to your name, then providing A+ information is key. When you prove that what you have to offer is complete, detailed, high quality and dependable you will gain the respect and trust of your readers. Providing quality information lets people know that you are the real deal.

When you are thinking about writing that next blog post and you know you could find the same information with a quick search then twist up your thinking and go more in-depth or find another angle! Unique and valuable content is king and there is no better way to provide it than to educate yourself.

If you are selling a product or service, you should be displaying testimonials. Testimonials give your customers a human connection that proves your product’s worth and your and company’s dependability. Your testimonials pack a bigger punch when you can display a photo to accompany your feedback. It is easier than you think to collect high quality testimonials with user photos, and chances are you are already collecting them and you don’t even know it!

This may not be a secret to some, but I guarantee that the people who don’t utilize this will be slapping their heads wondering how they missed it. The answer is simple: social media feedback.

Social Media as a Testimonial Source

Provide a good service and people will let you know how they feel via social media because it is the easiest way for them to contact you.

There are many benefits of social media testimonials:

• Instant, Cataloged Feedback
• User Photo (Profile picture is of the user and free of copyright most of the time)
• Users Can be Easily Contacted

Once you receive a testimonial you simply contact the user thanking them for their input and asking for use of their content and photo. Because social users are also potentially more web-savvy, you can often offer a link in exchange for use of their testimonial. Linking also offers an amount of validity to the testimonial content when presented on your site.

Not getting good testimonials?

Listen to the feedback your customers leave and improve your product. Negative feedback can often be more helpful than positive feedback. The biggest mistake you could make would be to dismiss the negativity and continue down the same path.

Don’t receive testimonials?

If you aren’t getting feedback from your customers, then ask for it! People love to share their opinions, and there is no easier time to share than when prompted.

Utilizing your social comment stream to your advantage is easy to do, and provides great value. If you have been overlooking this source, I suggest you start collecting the benefits from it today!

I would love to hear how many have used this method and how it has worked!

Over time WordPress has become much more than a simple blog software. WordPress can be modified to create almost any website you can imagine. This flexibility is in large part due to the wide selection of plugins available, but like anything, too much of a good thing can be bad.

I believe you have to look at each WordPress install on a case by case basis when asking if there is an excess use of plugins. I have seen cases of people happily running upwards of 20-30 active WordPress plugins with no issue, but I don’t recommend you run out and grab all the plugins you can.

If you asked me if I thought your WordPress install had too many plugins I would answer: probably. Chances are if you have to ask if you are running too many plugins, you are.

Factors Influencing Performance

What kind of plugins are you using?

Different plugins will load your server differently than others, some cause barely a dip in performance while others can be more detrimental. For example the related posts plugin – YARPP requires a high number of queries, and therefore reduces performance. Not to say that you shouldn’t use plugins like this, but if you find yourself unsatisfied with performance then they are something to look at.

The number of queries a plugin makes, along with the amount of memory it uses, determines how detrimental it is to performance.

What kind of hosting are you using?

If you have a dedicated server all to yourself, it might not be an issue. If you are using a crappy shared hosting account then you might not be able to run 20 plugins and have it perform well. You also have to keep page load time in mind.

I am running the standard plan from Dreamhost and haven’t ever had any issues running 10-15 concurrent plugins.

How is the plugin written?

A poorly written plugin can still cause troubles even if it potentially shouldn’t. Try to use high quality plugins that others are using, they are most likely well written, and if they aren’t you will be able to find out.

How much traffic are you getting?

Its no doubt that higher traffic blogs are under more stress. The more traffic, the less performance you will be able to sacrifice.

Recommendations

• Install plugins that are essential for your needs.
• Find other ways to get the functions you need.
• Always keep your plugins up to date.
• Run high quality, well written plugins.
• Make sure your plugins are compatible with the version of WordPress you are running.
• Keep WordPress up to date.

At the end of the day, if you experience a unacceptable performance drop when increasing the number of plugins that you have installed on your WordPress site, then it is time to look at removing excess plugins, finding non-plugin solutions, and using the highest quality plugins.

XAMPP server is a powerful cross-platform PHP – MySQL – Apache server – in other words it turns your computer into a web server accessible on your local network. Having your files stored locally allows you to quickly and easily edit and review changes. You can then easily deploy your local changes to your web server. Lets get started installing and configuring your XAMPP server.

Note: These instructions are for installing XAMPP on Windows, although I am sure they are somewhat similar to the install process on a Mac.

Download & Install

First things first, head over to the XAMPP site and grab the latest version.

Run the install. The default location points at c:\ and I suggest you leave this alone. Click install and XAMPP will install at c:\xampp.

After the install completes, a command window will open which guides you through the install configuration. Tell XAMPP if you want startmenu shortcuts and allow it to start the install. For Should I make a portable XAMPP without drive letters? choose (n). XAMPP will relocate and display the timezone for you.

If the timezone is wrong, you can fix it later in the php.ini file located in c:\xampp\php. Find the date.timezone = variable and set it to your time zone. Find your time zone in these values.

Choose option 1 on the last screen to start the xampp control panel.

When the control panel opens click the start buttons next to Apache & MySQL and wait for them to start.

Minimize the control panel and open your web browser. Navigate to http://localhost/ (this points to the XAMPP server, if the server is not running this link will not work.) You should reach the XAMPP splash screen. Choose your language and proceed to the XAMPP local homepage.

Configuring

While it is not necessary, I recommend you set up a password for your MySQL user. To do this choose the phpmyadmin link from the tools section of the XAMPP local homepage menu. Click on the privileges tab and edit the root user by clicking on the edit icon on the far right.

Scroll down to the change password section and enter your password and confirm. Click ok to save.

This should lock you out of phpmyadmin, we need to enter our password into the config file to access the admin now. Find the config.inc file located at C:\xampp\phpMyAdmin. Open this file with your text editor and enter your password in the password line. Here is my example:

You will now have access to phpmyadmin again.

Congratulations! You now have a full featured local web server that you can use for development or even intranet application hosting. For those of you who will be using this for WordPress development, continue reading the guide to install WordPress on XAMPP/WAMP.

This tutorial assumes you have installed a local PHP/MySQL web server such as XAMPP and want to install WordPress. This guide is specific to WordPress, but these same concepts apply to other PHP web softwares. Lets get started!

If you don’t have a local web server follow the XAMPP install tutorial. I suggest XAMPP over WAMP although both work.

Database

Before we get ahead of ourselves lets start by making a MySQL database for WordPress to store it’s data in. Make sure your web server is started and head over to http://localhost/. Click on phpmyadmin. On the main page in the Create new database field, enter a name for your WordPress database (I went big and named mine ‘wordpress’) and click create.

You will need to know the username and password for your MySQL account. If you don’t know this information or haven’t set it up, read the Configuring section on the XAMPP setup guide.

We are done in the admin.

Download & Install

Head over and download the latest version of WordPress here.

Unzip the WordPress folder to your web root folder. For XAMPP this is C:\xampp\htdocs. For WAMP it is c:\wamp\www. Head over to http://localhost/wordpress.

Note: If you want to change the url of your WordPress install, simply rename the folder and access the corresponding url. I.E. if your WordPress files are stored in C:\xampp\htdocs\testsite then your url would be http://localhost/testsite.

Configure

You will be asked to create a config file. Create this file and continue installing.

The wizard will help you fill in the necessary config settings. Fill them in as follows:

• Database Name - The name of the database you created in the first step.
• User Name – Your MySQL username – most likely root.
• Password – Your MySQL password that you set when you set up XAMPP/WAMP
• Database Host – Leave at localhost
• Table Prefix – Leave at wp_

Click install and fill in the details for your WordPress install. Run through the last few steps and login to your new WordPress install!

The biggest thing standing in the way of you and reaching your goals is yourself. – Believing something isn’t possible, makes it impossible.

Think about the people that you know who seem to be standing still in life. They often complain about their situation, and if asked why not change, they reply with a laundry list of reasons why they are stuck. The truth is that they are not stuck, they just choose not to change their situation.

If this person was to look at each reason they list, and start to look for ways to change that situation to their favor, they would find a fix. If they continued to look at all their problems like this, they would soon be able to stop complaining, and start changing their life. Saying this sounds easy, and I wish it were, but it is not. There is always pain and loss in change, but with the change comes opportunity and growth!

Regardless of how your current life is, whatever you believe possible can become your reality, here’s how:

Picture your life when you have reached your goals.

By constantly imagining yourself living your life as it will be when you reach your goals, you will turn your imagined reality into your reality.

You may do this already, but when you picture your future do you believe it is possible and accessible for you? Unless you really believe and feel what this will be like, then it will always be out of reach. Always use encouraging words when talking about where you will end up, not where you might. Each person creates their own reality through their thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Make your reality the one you want to live!

Change your actions and choices to fit your projected reality.

Life is a series of choices and actions. All of your choices lead you down different paths, and making the best choice now will pay off later.  The key to choosing the right actions to take is simple:

Keep your  goals in mind throughout every day and always choose the option that bring you closer to your goals. While this is simple to suggest, it takes courage and determination to follow through. Choosing these options will move you step by step to your desired outcome.

Options you are presented by others are not the whole picture.

You need to look beyond any options presented to you. If someone tells you that you have three choices, then those are the three possibilities they have, not you. Look at each situation yourself and come up with your possibilities, and never rule out an option at first glance. The key is to get out of your comfort zone (and most likely the comfort zone of others) and find the best answer for you. Often the best option will not be the easiest or most obvious, but if it helps you achieve your goals then it is the option you should choose.

These choices will often send you in an entirely different direction than the people around you. This will put pressure on you because you stand out, but don’t let this get you discouraged. When you reach your goals do you imagine yourself being an ordinary person? Didn’t think so.

Your life will change.

This can be a very intimidating and frightening concept because it suggests that you will have to change the ‘comfortable’ life you are living now. If you choose to make your dreams into your reality, old things will pass while new will enter your life. While this can be painful, it is a necessary step in your evolution. If things get bad, it helps to know that if your other options are grim, then success is the best option. (Thanks to Everett Bogue of Far Beyond the Stars for this concept.)

Persistence is the name of the game.

I have suggested some powerful exercises in this post. Almost all of them are very tough to practice, but the rewards are great. Remember that you need to constantly practice these concepts. Settling for less than what you dream to be will only hinder you. Your future choices, actions, and outlook can take you anywhere you want if you constantly are in control of them.

Everything that you have or have achieved in your life has been because you focused your energy on it with complete passion. This is no different for things in the future, what will you focus on?

These days, running a web project without tracking your visitor statistics is unheard of. Google provides an awesome analytics program free of charge called Google Analytics If you fall into the experienced web master category, chances are you already use Google Analytics to track information about your visitors. If you are new to the game or need to buff up on your Google Analytics knowledge, then this info is for you!

Setup

Before you start, you want to make sure you have your website up and running with access to edit the code so you can install analytics.

Great! Now head over to Google Analytics and sign up for your analytics account. After you sign up you will go through a sign up wizard which will hold your hand through a few very personal questions. The last step will spit out your tracking code, this is where we get our hands dirty.

Grab your tracking code and slap that sucker as the last item in the <head> tag of your site. If your using some sort of blog software or content management system, chances are you won’t have to add code to ever page manually. If you are tracking your small site which you made page by page, then you will need to add the code to each page. The end result regardless of how your site is put together is that you need this tracking code on every page of the site.

I am going to guess there are quite a few of you out there wanting to track your WordPress blog with Google Analytics. You can insert the tracking code into your header manually, or use a program that I recommend called Google Analyticator. This plugin makes it easy to add your tracking code as well as some cool features like disabling tracking of admins.

Lastly, take a look at your website’s source code and make sure that tracking code is in there. Once everything looks peachy, head to your analytics dashboard. On the analytics home, click the ‘edit’ button in the actions column. This is your profile settings for your website. Click on the check status button in the top right.

This should find your newly installed tracking code install and start collecting data!

Profile Settings

The profile settings are where you set up how your data is collected. On the analytics home, click the ‘edit’ button in the actions column.

This section is very straight forward and most of the information should be set up from when you registered. You will want to pay attention to the last few items like the e-commerce option, site search, and AdSense tracking. If you need to set any of these up, or change any of the information in this section, use the edit button in the top right of the panel.

Analytics allows you to track up to 20 goals – 4 sets of 5 goals. Goals allow you to track conversions on your site.  Each site will have a different definition of a conversion. For instance if your an e-commerce site, you would want to track purchases, while if you are running an informational site, you may want to track how many people stay for a specified length of time
The 3 types of goals you have available to start tracking are: URL Destination, Time on Site, and Pages Per Visit. Time on Site and Pages/Visit are very self explanatory, while URL Destination takes more work.

Setting up a URL Destination Goal:

Firstly select a match type. Each match type is defined as follows:

Exact Match: An exact match is a match on every exact character in your URL without exception from beginning to end. Use this when your URLs for your site are easy to read and do not vary.

i.e. – Entering /checkout.php will track www.url.com/checkout.php and nothing else.

Head Match: A head match matches identical characters starting from the beginning of the string up to and including the last character in the string you specify. Use this option when your page URLs are generally unvarying but when they include additional parameters at the end that you want to exclude.

i.e. – Entering /checkout.php?step=1 will track both www.url.com/checkout.php?step=1 as well as www.url.com/checkout.php?step=1&userid=12345 etc.

Regular Expression: A regular expression uses special characters to enable wildcard and flexible matching. This is useful when the stem, trailing parameters, or both, can vary in the URLs for the same website page.

i.e. – Entering /checkout.php?step=1 will track all subdomains containing /checkout.php?step=1 in the url. It would track home.url.com/checkout.php?step=1 as well as external.url.com/checkout.php?step=1&user=1234

Set up your Goal Funnel

If you wish to define what pages users must or do visit on the way to your goal page, then use the Goal Funnel. Include all the pages you wish to track in this funnel and for each step select if it is required or not. For instance, if you are tracking your checkout process, you would want to require all steps, while if you were checking if visitors who landed on your destination page had first stopped by your contact page, then you wouldn’t need to require the contact page.

If you have more questions, complete information on goals can be found here.

Filters allow you to specify information you wish to have analytics track/exclude. The predefined filters are very straight forward and allow you to include or exclude traffic from specific domains or ip addresses and traffic to sub-directories. Custom filters can be set up to provide advanced filtering. More information on custom filters for analytics can be found here.

Chances are that you won’t need to change anything here initially, but possibly in the long term.

You can allow other users to access your accounts if you wish. All you need is the email of the account (the email has to be signed up as a Google account) you wish to grant access to administrate, or simply view the account.

Campaigns/Link Tracking

A very common use for analytics is tracking your inbound links. i.e. You may want to track users who click on links from marketing emails you send out, or your PPC ads. In order to track links pointing to pages on your site you need to tag your urls with tracking tags. Google makes this very easy to do with their URL Builder – I suggest you bookmark this if you will be tracking links often, it comes in very handy.

An example url for Netmospherics might look like this: http://www.netmospherics.com/email-landing/?utm_source=emailnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monthlynewsletter

The bold portion of the url is the tracking code which can be appended on other urls to track them as well. For instance if this was an email with multiple links, I would add the tracking code to each link url.

Each url requires a campaign variable which will create a campaign for you to track your link statistics. Your campaigns show up in the dashboard which we will go over next.

Dashboard

Great, analytics is now collecting all kinds of juicy information about your visitors that can help you improve your site! But wait… where do you get to see the fancy graphs and charts showing your exploding web traffic? The answer is in the dashboard. Access the dashboard for your site through the View report link on the overview page:

While the dashboard has the flexibility to display all kinds of information, I will give you the basics and a summary of each section and the basics of the function that will give you a good understanding of the panel and provide you a basic knowledge to build on.

Dashboard Basics

Export/Email

Export allows you to save the current data to a file on your computer. You can export data to .pdf, .csv, .xml, or .tsv (available file types depend on the type of information in your report)

Email allows you to send a report (in .pdf format) in a message to an email that you specify.

Add to Dashboard adds your current view to the dashboard section (the first page you see when clicking View reports) for easy access.

Visualize allows you to display the current data in motion charts.

Date Range

You will commonly edit the range of data displayed which is defaulted to the past month. This section is fairly straight forward, with one advanced feature. You can compare your current date range to a range from the past which will come in very handy.

Filter/Advanced Filter

The filter allows you to exclude or include data strings when viewing keyword or url data.

The advanced filter lets you add multiple filters to the current view.

Dashboard Sections

The dashboard gives you a customizable overview of data you wish to see. By default it displays information site visitors, visits, and content. See above section on how to add any report to your dashboard.

Find information about your visitors from location, browser information, time on your site, bounce rate and more. Use this information to customize the design and presentation of your pages to present your site the best you can for your type of visitor.

Important Sub-Sections:

-Map Overlay
-Visitor Trending
-Browser Capabilities

This section gives you all kinds of information about how users are arriving at your site. From entrance keywords, search engine entrances to referring sites. This information is priceless for gaining insight into where your site is being linked from. SEO’s will spend lots of time making this information work for them.

Important Sub-Sections:

Really all the sub-sections are important in this section, but pay attention to the following:
-Campaigns (this is where the information from your tracking urls shows up)
-Adwords (if you use adwords)

This section will give you all kinds of insight into how users see your content. From what pages people are looking at, how they got there, and where they left the site from, this information can be very helpful. Finding people are leaving on blog posts? Have you thought about adding a related posts section? This section can help you take your site to the next level of usability!

Important Sub-Sections:

-Top Content
-Top Landing Pages
-Top Exit Pages
-Site Overlay (displays an overlay of your site showing where people are clicking)
-Site Search, Adsense, & Event Tracking (if they are installed)

If you don’t have any goals set up, this section will be disabled. This section displays important things like conversions, conversion rate, and funnel visualizations.

Important Sub-Sections:

If you have goals & funnels set up, all the sub-sections are important for you.

Conclusion

After as little as a month, you will no doubt see how powerful and useful Google Analytics can be for your web project.

Procrastination can turn into an addictive behavior that limits your productive output if you let it. These ten tools will help you reduce the amount of time you waste each day, and become happily productive. I challenge you practice these tools and change your habits and you will see results.

1. Your Time is Valuable

Take your free time seriously and make the most of it.

Think about your day as 24 dollars. Now if I told you that you could save as much of that money as you wanted, how much would you keep? When we think about our time in these terms, it is easy to see that we should make the most of it. It is appropriate and needed to rest or play, but it is silly to think we would waste our time.

When you perceive your time as valuable, you enable yourself to make the most of it.

2. Prioritize Your Tasks

Manage your time well to increase your productive output.

There are only so many hours in the day and by managing your time well you can get more work done in the same amount of time. Set aside time for less satisfying, as well as satisfying activities. Keep in mind the importance of your tasks and organize them accordingly. By setting aside time each day for tasks that move you closer to completing your goals, you will begin to see results. A steady practice which becomes a habit is much better than a sporadic one.

Keep your time-line in mind, and always stick to it. Bending the rules once allows for you to bend them again.

3. Delay Gratification

Set aside your gratifying tasks until the less desirable work is done.

Delaying gratification is an effective practice that will prevent procrastination – but requires a strong will to practice. By delaying your gratification, you enhance the pleasure your Organize your tasks so you save what you are looking forward to until the end. Set a time out for that task, and be strict about staying within that time limit.

You will be more productive in the time you spend working, and the satisfaction from your pleasurable work or play will be greater.

4. Finish What You Start

Stay focused on your current task and finish it before moving on.

Interrupting your current action is one of the key enablers of procrastination. Resist the urge to jump from project to project. Sometimes that means finishing what you start, other times it means getting to your pre-chosen stopping point.

By fully focusing your attention and completing your tasks, you save the time wasted switching gears.

5. Find Your Productive Time of Day

Find the time of day where you are focused and productive, and use it!

Everyone has their peaks during the day. Some people are night owls while some love to watch the sun come up. If you are productive in the mornings try going to bed an hour earlier and waking up to an hour of productive tasks or vice-versa.

Find the time of day that you are most productive and utilize that time to your advantage.

6. Find Your Vices, Limit Them

You need downtime for good reason, but set your limits and stick with them.

While it is alright to splurge, don’t let it get out of control. Take control of how long you spend on your vices each day and make time for them. It is better to clearly lay out the time you will be spending on vices than to not allow time for them. Without a defining time you will spend on your viced, they will always be on your mind and distract you from the work at hand.

Choose the time you will spend on your vices and stick to those guidelines.

7. Remove Access to Distractions

You need downtime for good reason, do it, but set your limits and stick with them.

If your distractions are too tempting to handle, remove your direct access to them or make them difficult to access. Easy to access distractions are very good crutches.

Make your distractions harder to access or remove them from your visibility to remove the temptation.

8. Take Pride in Your Work and Your Play

When you are passionate about your work procrastination isn’t the logical choice.

It is much easier to work on something you are passionate about. Eliminate or minimize things in your life that do not feed your aspirations. There will always be mundane tasks, (laundry anyone?) but when you focus your energy on your passions and your goals you will fell better and be more productive. You also need to be satisfied by your fun, without releasing that stress and energy you will still be behind the curve when you get back to work.

Focus your time on your passions and you will be happier to exert your energy.

9. Keep Your Goals in Mind

Does what you are doing every day help you complete your goals?

If you keep what you are passionate about in sight each day, you will be reminded that you must work every day to reach your goals. This constant reminder will help you stay focused and work to achieve them.

There is no better excuse to put your energy forward than reaching your goals.

10. Be Proactive Every Day

The less you procrastinate, the easier it is to be productive.

Practice being a focused and productive every day and soon you will find it is easier than being a procrastinator.