You go on your way and find a couple others you want to try out as well.You found half a dozen plugins that had updates so you updated them

Maybe a week goes buy and one day you notice something doesn’t look right.  Oh, something is missing. Or you find something funny out in the margins or at the foot of your site.  Where did that come from?  It must be a plugin, but which one?

Date Installed On Plugins

One thing I’ve been wanting for a long time is to have the date installed somewhere on the plugin screen.  Better yet, I’d like to be able to sort the plugins by date installed/updated.  This would let me do a better job of debugging what went wrong.  As it is now I’m left trying to remember which were added, which were updated and I start deactivating and testing.

Plugin Memorandum

A new plugin showed up on the dashboard today and it isn’t what I wanted but for the time being it is better than nothing.  It lets me put a memo on the plugin screen under the plugin.  I can now add a date activated or updated.  Leave notes about the configuration or anything about this plugin I want to remember for future reference.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Plugin Memorandum

DS Mobile Script

Diverse Solutions has been rolling out a mobile script that you can install on your site to take your visitors to your search page directly to your DS mobile search page that you can configure from the DS  Control panel.  I love it.  Gives you total control over the mobile visitor and you can setup custom pages for them to see and a custom search for them to view etc.

Be careful how you install it.  The instructions on the control panel say to paste the code in the header of your site before the </head> tag.

What they don’t tell you is if you do that for the main site header.php it will take every visitor to your site no matter what page they are trying to access from their mobile device to your DS Mobile page.  EVERY SINGLE MOBILE VISITOR TO THE DS MOBILE PAGE.

Why?  because you put the script in your header.php file which is the beginning of ALL your pages not just your search page.

The Solution to installing DS Mobile on a WordPress Blog

The solution isn’t very hard if you know a little code and have FTP access to your site.

You have to create a custom page and header template for your DS Search page.

Here is a quick way to do that (I’m using the TwentyTen theme in this example).

1. Copy the header.php and page.php file from your theme directory to your computer.
2. rename the header file to be header-search.php
3. copy the DS Mobile script into that header-search.php
4. rename the page.php to search-page.php
5. Add the page template tag to the top of the search-page.php file
6. Change the call to the header to be the header search.php
7. Upload them to your theme folder
8. Open your Search page in the editor and use the new search page template

Sample Page Template code

/**
* Template Name: One column, no sidebar
*
* A custom page template without sidebar.
*
* The “Template Name:” bit above allows this to be selectable
* from a dropdown menu on the edit page screen.
*
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Twenty_Ten
* @since Twenty Ten 1.0
*/

This is the one from the TwentyTen one column template   change the template name to Search Page

Change the header file call in the Search Page template

Close to the top of the page you will see:

get_header(); ?>

Change this to

get_header(search); ?>

Once these steps are done your visitors will only go to the DS mobile page for the search page and not every page or post on your site.

As with all site modifications, once you have completed these steps, test it by using your mobile device to access your site.

Don’t forget to configure the mobile page on your DS control panel, don’t just copy the script to your site.  Scroll down on that page and fill in the information you want to convey to your mobile search visitors.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Diverse Solutions Mobile Script

One of the changes in a recent WP release was a new permalink option.  It used to be that if you wanted the Post Name as the permalink structure you would enter that in the Custom Permalink field as /%postname%/

Now that option is available as a selection just above the custom option field.

I Want to update my Permalink Structure

Four years ago the SEO experts (you know an expert is a has been drip, right) were recommending including keywords for your category names then using a permalink structure of

/%category%/%postname%/

Probably good advise at the time, however, times change and the move toward shorter permalinks happened a couple of years ago.  Therefore, for the past couple of years every new site I setup I use the /%postname%/ structure.

I’ve always wanted to go back and update my older sites to use this simpler structure, but didn’t want to deal with having to create a 301 redirect for all my content and wait for it to be re-indexed with the new structure.

I’ve seen plugins like Redirection which can be fine for one or two redirects, but honestly for one or two I prefer to do it in the .htaccess file and not use a plugin.  And if you don’t use Redirection correctly you can really screw up your site.

Permalinks Moved Permanently

This little plugin is perfect for this situation.  It intercepts a request coming from the search engines to the old permalink and redirects the visitor to the new one while letting the search engines know this is a 301 permanent redirect.

Nothing to do but install the plugin and activate.

Go change your permalink structure and that’s it.  Now just wait for the new permalinks to be indexed.  After a few months you shouldn’t even need the plugin active on your site.

For the Paranoid

I say this as one of the Paranoid.  If you want to verify this, run a site search in Google and page through till you come to a post showing the old permalink.  Click on it.  You should be taken to the post and it should show the new permalink structure in the address bar.

How to do a site search

For anyone new at doing site searches:

Open Google and enter in the search field site:yourdomain.com   The results will show you how many pages/post you have in the google index.

Have you been putting off updating your Permalink Structure?

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Permalinks Moved Permanently

When you started your blog you were probably hit with the initial greetings from those that troll for new sites to salt with their comments designed to garner back-links to their sites and customers with the expectation that a newbie won’t know what’s really happening.

But this is different.  Like snow in winter, it is Spamuary and we are all seeing heavy spam falls in our spam filter (or worse, waiting in moderation if you don’t have a spam filter setup).

You might even have your site setup to automatically delete spam comments after 30 days so you can leave it to do the job and never think about it.  Most of the time that strategy works.  But Spamuary is a unique situation.

When you get hit with a few hundred spam comments going into your spam folder, it can overwhelm the auto delete feature.

Proactive Spamuary Deletions

No need to panic, here’s my suggestion.  When you log into your dashboard check to see how many comments are in your spam filter.  If you find more than 50 click on the spam folder link and empty the spam filter.

Why?  Because I’ve found that anything over 200 can choke the process and you end up looking at a blank screen (which usually brings about a moment of panic).  No need to panic if this happens.

Hit the back button, then hit the refresh on your page.  You will then see how many are left in your spam filter, run the delete again.

Ex.  This morning I logged into the lab and we had a very productive 24 hrs.  220 comments in the spam folder.  I ran the manual delete and got the blank screen, back button, refresh, 10 comments still in the spam folder.  One more round and the folder quickly was empty and I was back on my spam comments page.

This too shall pass

Like allergy season this too shall pass, eventually.  There’s not set date when it stops, but it will eventually slow to a trickle if past seasons are any indicator.

Happy Deleting Everyone !

From: Real Estate Blog Lab It’s Spamuary – Check Your Filter

It was simple, I rebuilt the menu in about 5 minutes and activated it for the sub-nav below the header image.  This experience caused a few hours of research on how to backup just the custom menus.  Not much out there on them.  A great plugin would be the ability to export and import custom menus.

I found one small post mentioning a conflict with All-In-One-SEO with custom menus causing them to disappear on update.  But I couldn’t verify this and I updated a few small sites with it still activated and had no difficulty.

The big guns have several custom menus and up to 70 pages in each.  I didn’t want to rebuild those menus.  Therefore here is what I did:

1. Backed up the entire database using SQLAdmin Export function.  I did the entire database and just the options table (that’s where the menus reside).
2. I updated all plugins
3. Updated the theme files
4. Deactivated all plugins
5. Ran the upgrade
6. Reactivated all plugins

Everything went of without a hitch.  All menus are there and functioning.

Take the recommended precautions (and don’t shortcut the process this time by leaving the plugins activated) and everything should upgrade without a hitch

When you reactivate the plugins, make sure you check your site.  If it doesn’t look right, deactivate the plugins again and start adding them back one at a time.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.3 Let’s Do IT

You want people to contact you don’t you?  Well of course you do.  You want to plaster your email address all over your site in hope they will contact you “For All Their Real Estate Needs”. (Yes, that’s sarcasm).

But you want to make it easy for them so you make your email address click-able.  So you or your “Webguy” use the HTML command mailto: to make the link click-able.

However, there are two things you should be aware of before you do this:

Spam bots crawl sites looking to harvest email addresses

They look for “mailto:” and harvest email addresses so they can begin sending you offers by the thousands to enhance certain body parts.  Sell you drugs from Canada or invite you to “personal webcam chats” in Russia.

This is one of the reason we have contact forms that never display an email address, the contact come to you and you can respond accordingly.

Annoying as HELL

Well, it’s  not as bad as HELL but it really is annoying when a website opens my email client so I can send them an email message.  If you happen to be on a computer that isn’t yours and suddenly the email client is opened and you are viewing someone’s email messages. Even worse is when they don’t tell you the link is not to a site but instead mailto

With all that said, I still have clients that want those email addresses displayed and click-able.  Now there’s a nifty (yes, I said nifty) plugin that will encode the email address so Spam bots can’t read it and send you all those desirable offers.

Email Address Encoder

This plugin (Click Add New under plugins and search Email Address Encoder) is simple to use.

1. Install the plugin
2. Activate the plugin

That’s it, no settings or configuration.

Enter an email address in a page or post and then look at the page source.  You won’t find mailto: or the email address, instead just a lot of sweet gibberish.

Now it doesn’t solve the Annoying issue  (I really try to NOT piss off annoy my site visitors).  But if you are still stuck in the 70′s & 80′s way of embedding your email address believing this is “The Way” to effective lead capture . . .

From: Real Estate Blog Lab I Want My Email Address Clickable

It was still working and was easy to reconstruct, but it raised a big question.

The rest of my sites have some pretty extensive menus.  Some have over 60 pages on them.  I don’t want to have to rebuild them.  I’ve looked at ways to back them up, export them so I can re-import if needed but so far no luck.

I did read one short note about All-In-One SEO having an effect on Custom Menus.  So I think I’m going to de-activate all in one (Yeah I know we are supposed to de-activate all plugins but we haven’t done that for quite a few version now, have we).  If that works without a hitch then I’ll let you know as shortly.

Till then update with caution.  And be sure to update your theme’s and plugins before you update WP.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.3 Still Working On It

It has been a few versions since I wrote about an update.  The rule of thumb (for those that want a refeasher)  Big upgrades take very precaution.  Ex.  2.9.2 to 3.0  That was a major upgrade.

The upgrade from 3.2 to 3.2.1  is a minor upgrade and can usually be done as an auto upgrade.

This one goes from 3.2.1 to 3.3  This is a big upgrade.  Therefore, take all the precautions that WP recommends.

• Backup your database (I prefer to do this from the PHPMyAdmin)
• Make sure you plugins are all up to date
• If you are coming to 3.3 from a version before 3.0  a prayer is also in order (or at least cross your finger) like that will help

Where You Update

Where you update is as important (or more so) then when you update.  Meaning, keep your impulses in check when you log-in at the coffee shop or Mcds and see the 3.3 is available Please Update now.  Don’t do it from a public wifi connection that is often slow and probably not the most secure.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even mention this except for yesterday when I was approached by a lady wanting to know how to login at Mcds.  I showed her the connection routine and a little later noticed she was reconciling her checkbook online. (A Simpson moment if I’ve ever seen one).

Wait wait wait . . . for it

I’ll be upgrading a few sites today and if the test sites go well the lab will follow.  I’ll post when the lab is running 3.3 and everything is looking good.

I’ve been getting rid of some old plugins here that are no longer being supported but still have 38 active.  Including some using jQuery which is one of the things being effected by the new version.

The Tucson site uses a lot of different plugins which I’ll also update, (with great caution) so if all is well on the two sites.  I’ll get back to you on the “total” experience.

Finally, I’d wait a week.  You won’t be on the cutting edge using the newest features right away, but you won’t be on the bleeding edge trying to recover from a bug that was missed till in the general population.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.3 Available – But . . .

Tool Tips are the right tool

Real Estate is no exception when it comes to having it’s own nomenclature.  We live inside the world of FSBO, REO, BINSR, SPDS, Active Capa, CMA, etc. and use these terms  on a daily basis.

Even something as simple as “Home Finder”  what does that mean?  It depends on how each of us is using that term.  For some it means: “We will set you up in the MLS to email you homes matching your criteria”  to others it means “Here is where you can search the MLS to find homes”

Tool tips provide valuable information to your visitors

We can add definitions on pages above the forms we want visitors fill out, but we know many don’t read, the just start at the “Name” field and go from there.

But, they have to get to that page first.  Meaning, they have to click on the tab, button, etc. before they can fill in the form.

This is where tool tips come in most handy.  Take the time to add the title attribute to your links to provide information on what this button, tab, etc means and where it will take them.

WordPress makes it easy.  When you add a link, fill in the title field.  If you are adding the link manually, then add the title attribute on the html tab.  (No you don’t have to be a code geek to do this)

I know you think it looks like Greek to you on the HTML tab.  Well it’s time to learn a little Greek.

Start hovering over the line below to see tool tips that tell you what each part of the link code does.

<a title="This is a tool-tip" href="http://www.realestatebloglab.com/"> The Real Estate Blog Lab </a>

Tool tips can help your bounce rate

It takes a few seconds to add the title=”What you want them to read when they hover over the button”.

This simple attribute can help tip-off your visitors before the click. It could also help your bounce rate because they won’t be so fast to click the back button realizing once they are on the page “This isn’t what I was looking for”

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Tool Tips to tip-off Your Visitors

Long lists of links can be visually distracting.  It reminds me of a line from “The Land of Point” Oblio and Arrow in one of their encounter come upon a sign.  ”A point in every direction is the same as no point at all”

Too many visible links in a sidebar are distracting.  A better approach is to title those links with a Master Label then use an accordion menu to drop down on hover or click.

Accordion Menus for Pretty Sidebars

The Jquery Accordion Menu  by Design Chemical works great for this.

The plugins works with WordPress custom menus.  Create your menu, when done switch to widgets and move a jquery accordion menu widget to the sidebar where you want it.  Configure the way it will work from the options list.  Select a theme (I’m using “Clean”) and save.

Customize the look of Accordion Menus

If you don’t like the exact way the menu looks, you can always open the plugin css files and make modifications.  (If you do back them up so you don’t wipe them out one sleepy evening when updating all your plugins)

To the right (as of this posting anyway, it is gone now) you will see  Interesting Stuff  under the label Lab Favorites.  The menu is using this plugin to display posts and categories placed in a custom menu and displayed with Jquery Accordion Menu.

There’s no need to fill you sidebars with row after row of links, instead consider installing the Jquery Accordion Menu plugin.

BTW, Design Chemical has a plethora (always wanted to use that word here in the lab) of various menu plugins for your sidebars.  Ex. Take a look at the Vertical Mega Menu .  Anyone geeky enough to put all your listings with thumbnails in a Mega Menu?

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Jquery Accordion Menu for Neat Sidebars