The reason for this is of could of course be the birth of a new baby boy, Jake, to our family but I don’t think so.  Jake has however, made me take a long hard look at things in regards to life and my aims and how I approach things and where I put my valuable time and how I prioritise my responsibilities. Hence the reason that my posts on this blog have ceased more or less completely for the last month. I just had more important things to do.

So the point is making time for those things that are REALLY important cause we all know that time is the only thing you cant buy back. Its precious, its continuous, it wont ever stop and most of all its intangible. You cant claw it back when its gone.

Managing your time is paramount in life and in business to make sure that everything you do, every move you make is as effective and efficient as possible so that real time can be spent on the important things and the things that matter, family, friends and loved ones.

If, in any of this you thought “money” was the most important thing then you need to re-evaluate.  The reason we all want money after all is to have time.  Money grants us time, and just what then?  You go of and try and make more money and find that you have less time?  Or maybe you decide to buy that car you always wanted so you can drive it around…alone.  Sounds great.

Me, I’m all up for doing good business, and in the right way, to the right extent, but don’t ask me to waste my time.  Don’t expect me to work for free either.  My time is far to valuable for that and mostly, don’t assume that your time is more valuable than mine.  I would never think that about you or your time so I expect the same courtesy in return.

So, rather than go on, I think I have said enough this time round, and I would prefer to go and play with son than waste more time repeating myself, and Im sure you have better things to be doing as well. So stop wasting time…go do them!

I love the way it shows the movement of the “blank” message across different mediums, from phone calls and word of mouth to blog reviews and opinion based comments to car stickers and mico blogging formats and helps us get a grasp of the Big Picture that effective marketing has become. Hat tip to the guys at 22squared.com for such a good job.

Enjoy and as always, comments are always welcome.

Most of us in the industry knew this was coming and there was speculation as to the effect it will have on the results in both relevancy and of course with Search Engine Optimisation. Many people joined the initial google testing experiment that allowed them to gather data on social search and allowed us to see what the results where of doing various searches under different conditions, such as when your logged into your google account and when your not, different geographical locations and of course trying to account for your particular social network and the influence it will have on the results but from the information in the post I think Google have went even further. (I can see some SEO’s starting to scratch their heads right now).

Google Social Search

According to Google (and aside from suffering a minor baby boom in their offices) they have been enjoying the creation and integration of social search as they see it as a major way to increase the accuracy of results for individuals due to the trust factor involved with a social network.  For example, when you perform a search, traditionally you count on Google to return the most relevant results for that search but once that process is complete, you are basically at the “mercy” (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the resulting website, its information, content and brand.

Once you establish that the website is authentic, something we do very quickly if the brand is recognisable such as Amazon, E-Bay or similar, we continue the decision making process about the host site and whether we wish to continue the transaction, book the flight, make the enquiry or contact them by phone etc. and now social search brings a whole new aspect to this process.

Social Search Consequence

By including your own social network in the results, effectively Google are increasing the need for a good quality brand, integrity and high level of service from businesses as we can see references to the products, the recommendations, the complaints or the company name from a group of people that are on line, connected to you and whom you already know and consequently trust (to varying degrees of course) and the experiences that they have had with the subject you are searching for.

Having found someone who has already experienced something first hand, and whom you have a relationship with, you cna then gather feedback and information about the matter at hand directly and on a much more honest and reliable level.

Basically, companies (and indeed individuals) need to be on their toes now if they want to maintain standards in their every day business practices and this will mean offering much more personal, polite and direct customer service.  Not a bad thing in my opinion!

Social Search Setup

Their is no Opt in or opt out of social search it seems and Google have said that results will appear whether you are signed in with your Google account or not.  This in itself has annoyed some people as it means the standardisation of results, where the number 1 result for “Product A” is he same for both you and me, has effectively been disrupted (but not removed yet) as depending on the size of the searches social network and their activity, the social part of search will serve to produce different results for each and every individual and this cannot be managed or manipulated by any third parties in the same capacity as a website can be created and coded or grown to place for specific search terms in results.

This will in itself make for a very interesting year ahead and a very different view of search engines.

Anyway, have a watch at the video below to see what other features social search will include and if you feel like it, don’t be scared to pipe up and leave your opinions on social search and what it means in the comments below.  I would be very interested to hear another point of view.

Author: Jaimie Sirovich

Download the Wordpress SEO Pager plugin

This isn’t good for two reasons.

Firstly, it won’t help search engines find the pages on your site because they are set in series by this method, therefore to get to the earliest posts the search engine spiders will have to follow and scan, follow and scan follow and scan in this method.  Cumbersome and not very friendly. Secondly, visitors will work in the same way.  They have no desire o cycle though 12 pages one at a time to reach a desired post.

What WP Page Numbers does is add a line of numbers (surprise surprise!) in one of 5 styles you can choose from, to the bottom of the page allowing spiders to reach all the following pages from one place, effectively opening up the site in a friendly manner and allowing them to search and scan in parallel rather than in series.

This is the same for visitors.

They can simply click the page numbers and skip to that page immediately rather than being forced to cycle through all the irrelevant content they have no interest in.

Not all themes will need this plugin, but if you realise that you do, it will require a little editing in the theme code in order to work so you may need som help to sort this out. Definately worht it on a search engine level and a usability level.

Author: Jens Törnell

Download the Wordpress Page Numbers Plugin.

The beauty of this plugin though is that it can see where your visitor has come from and presents them with a greeting related to the site they originated from. For example, if a visitor has come from Twitter, the icon displayed in the box will be the twitter icon and the message will read:

“Hello fellow Twitter user! Don’t forget to Twit this post if you like it, or follow me on Twitter if you find me interesting.”

The great thing about this is it adds a little magic to the greeting by recognising where the visitor came from but also, because the messages are fully customisable you can change the greeting to suit your site and make the whole thing a lot more personal, allowing the visitor to feel just that little bit more special.

Greet Box Placement in Posts

One bit of advice I would give here is regarding the placement of the Greet Box.  Many people will be inclined to place the greeting at the top of the post due to the format of the message it contains but I would suggest that you use the options to have the box appear at the end of the post allowing the visitor to read your information and make a decision rather than asking them before they have even begun reading.

I think it is a little obnoxious to ask people to subscribe to your RSS based on the quality of the article before they have had that chance to decide from themselves, but thats only my opinion.

Simple to install and configure, this plugin is a no brainer!

Author: Thaya Kareeson

Download Wordpress Greet Box plugin.

Recommended by the likes of Matt Cutts right down to yours truly, it is the essential tool to safeguard your site when it comes to managing and maintaining site stability when your traffic is high and your server resources are being stretched to the limit.

If, during the life of your site you should gain a traffic surge, for example you write something very in depth or challenging or insightful and your visitors decide to use the Digg button a lot, hence driving more traffic your way quaikly and in bulk, the PHP scripts that access the MYSQL database that your site runs off, will be stretched to and possibly beyond, breaking point and there is nothing worse than a dead site for new visitor!  The reason for this is that each time someone visits your site the page is served or “called” from the database on the request of the visitor via PHP.

Database Caching Explained

With a traffic surge or even consistently high traffic, this puts a lot of pressure on the database as it continually serves the page to each new visitor.  Imagine it like a restaurant that’s got one waiter and suddenly it fills up with a queue outside, each person must be seated, the order taken, served fresh food, which is freshly cooked and then shown out. The waiter would in this example be your blog and the cook or chief would be the PHP scripts. That’s not really the best way to run things is it and the inevitable outcome is disaster!

Now imagine that the waiter and chief where prepared in advance with a set menu and 1000’s of plates all ready to be handed out immediately.  There is no expiry date on web pages so don’t worry about hygiene or food poisoning :P. People would be surging into the restaurant and the chief and waiter would be able to manage and serve all their requirements, not without strain or pressure but certainly with more efficiency, speed and less chance of a meltdown.

Wordpress Super Cache is Essential

That’s exactly what this plugin does for your blog. In technical terms it creates a cached version of your page in HTML without accessing the PHP allow your site to say live, serve visitors and do it quickly and with minimal problems.

Just to clarify, even if your site hasn’t got massive traffic, speed loading time is still a major factor and using this plugin will make the pages appear faster regardless of server load or the amounts of visits you have so even on a low traffic site it is still worth using.

Author: Donncha O Caoimh

Download the WP Super Cache Plugin

Peter has explained in his post and in the comments that he has been in communication with the Indepenadant.co.uk newspaper over a matter of copyright infringement when they used a photo that he had taken , and applied “All Rights Reserved” terms to and which they decided to ignore.

As far as I can see this has occurred, and I am basing this on the information on Peters Flickr page, which I have no problem doing because he has quite comprehensively included the email thread and correspondence between himself and the contact at the Independent newspaper and he has approached the whole situation correctly and properly in my opinion.

The newspaper however, have not. I would suggest that you have a look at the thread and comments in their entirety as it makes for very interesting reading, for me, mostly because it shows how there is a serious lack of understanding about the nature of the Flickr site and its Terms of Service, or in other words, they thought, “Lets have that, its on the internet so it must be free, oh what’s that All Rights Reserved thing, ignore it no one will notice and sod the Terms and Conditions everything on Flickr is free”.

Horrible and inexcusable conduct from a national newspaper who should know better.

One of the most prolific and professional wordpress plugin developers his work is excellent and the WP DBManager is only one of a selection of plugins hes created that is absolutely fantastic.

A compliment to the Wordpress-Backup plugin this is much more extensive at it serves to backup your whole database and not just the images, plugins and themes covered by Wordpress backup.

Installing this particular plugin is a breeze (as usual) but the configuration does require some file moving and server administration to permit access to files and folders, so if you are unsure about this, hire someone to sort the plug-in out.  It goes without saying that you should be hiring a trusted professional as you will be allowing them access to moderate your server files, so expensive should not be a factor if you want this done correctly, its worth it.

The plugin itself covers allows you to optimize, repair, backup and restore the database, as well as delete the backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Most importantly for you, once it is configured it will run an automatic schedule to backup the database every 24 hours, ensuring that, in the event of a disaster, you will not have lost a massive amount of your time, effort and work.

Author: Lester Chan

Download the WP DBManager Plugin.

Wordpress Backup makes this possible. Installing it is simple and it includes an option to have the backup files emailed directly to you for saving on your local computer but this may prove impossible as the file size grows.

Do not get caught out, back up your files!

Author: Blog Traffic Exchange

Wordpress backup Plugin information:
Download the Wordpress Backup Database plugin.