I’ve been a fan of Wordpress for quite some time. In fact I’ve been using the CMS since 2005. Up until recently I haven’t had many issues running Wordpress aside from a few heavy plugin snags.

Well about 2 months ago I started the task of making Wordpress run more efficiently or at the very least lighter. Here’s a serious list of things to try if you’re site begins spiking.

How to Make Wordpress Run Better

1. Install WP Super Cache – First and foremost you should be running the wp-supercache plugin. IMHO this should be a core part of the Wordpress platform, but until it is you’ll have to install this one yourself. This plugin creates an html file out of served pages that is much smaller than it’s php doppelganger.

2. Remove Heavy Plugins – Some of the plugins written for WP while value adding are often heavy draws. One of the ways to find some of your heavier plugins is with the Plugin Hog Detecor. This will help you pin point offending plugins.

One of the things that makes plugins heavy is the number of queries made to your database. This article here will help you determine how many queries are being run every time someone accesses a page on your website.

3. Delete old SQL prefixes – Over time your sql database will start to accumulate more and more unused sql tables. You may uninstall a plugin while it’s table info is still saved in your database. By logging into phpMyAdmin and removing old plugin prefixes you can speed and streamline your database performance.

4. Remove large files – This one is a no brainer, but some times when you’re too close to the problem it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Make sure there aren’t any outside sites serving a large media file from your server. If you really must serve up video create your own to be hosted on Youtube or track something down. Chances are whatever you are looking for is already there.

5. Use phpMyAdmin to optimize your database – Log in to phpMyAdmin, select all the tables, then, “repair”, and, “olptimize”.

How to Make Wordpress Run Safer

1. Keep your Wordpress version up to date – Aside from compatibility issues WP releases are filled with new security fixes. As Wordress is constantly evolving so are the ways it is exploited. In an effort to stay ahead of the hackers always try to keep the most up to date version of Wordpress running for the best possible security coverage.

2. Disallow Access to WP Core Files With .htaccess – It’s a good idea to keep curious bots out of parts of your site such as wp-admin, wp-content, etc. This can be done with your .htaccess file by banning access to these directories. Get more info about manually altering your .htaccess file here. Or give the AskApache Password Protect plugin for Wordpress here.

3. Update your login information – Never use, “admin”, as your login username. Wordpress sets this by default. So do many other CMS’s and scripts out of the box.

To assign a new Wordpress username, login to your control panel and create a new user. Then set this profile as an administrator. For this user provide a password that is harder to crack than your birthday date or local address. Make sure your password contains both upper and lower case letters. Be sure to inlcude alpha numeric characters as well as qwerty symbols. It may be hard to remember, but it’s also harder to crack. It’s also not a bad idea to update this information every so often.

Wordpress Security Plugins

Ask Apache Password Protect – Password protect sections of your website with this plugin.

Bad Behavior – Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.

Close old posts – Closes comments on old posts on the fly, without any DB queries. By default it’s 14 days, change that setting by editing the plugin file.

Disable Revisions – Disable revision functions in WordPress and delete all entries of revisions in database.

WordPress Exploit Scanner – Scans your WordPress site for possible exploits.

WP-Spamfree – An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

WP Security Scan – Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Simple Captcha – A CAPTCHA for your comment system to prevent unwanted spams. Prevent automated spams by bots and most important naughty peoples. It’s simple and yet secure.

Some Free Handy Web Tools

Page Load Test from Pingdom. This free tool will tell you which parts of your site are running slower than others.

Website Grader Website Grader provides a decent report of where your website needs the most help.

I’ve been playing around with Tweet Adder today and am trying to determine if this is a program I should purchase or not. So far all the reviews I’ve been reading have been positive, but to be honest it just feels a little like black hat SEO to me.

The idea of automating who I follow seems to be counter-intuitive to the whole idea of social networking. That being said I began my trial this morning and have so far been impressed with some of the features at first glimpse.

How Tweet Adder Works

Ok so here are a few screen shots from Tweet Adder. Once you’ve associated your account/ accounts in the Tweet Adder admin you can do a keyword search. I chose to search through profiles as I figured anyone who had any of my search terms in their profile were more than likely going to better fall within my niche. Notice in the screen shot below there are a number of different search criteria.

First off you can search for Twitter users by keyword either in their profiles or in their posts both recent and historical. This way you’re at least aiming towards a targeted audience.

I did a keyword search for, “social-networks”, and got 1500 results. I believe this is the default minimum as I also did a search for, “web-design”, and garnered the same number. however, shouldn’t this be done one at a time to insure the site I’m subscribing to is relevant?

Below you can see the, “Follow”, panel where you can set up how many users you want to follow. This number could be zero if you wanted. There’s also a time delay between follows option which to me…feels like your trying to pull a fast one.

Here’s a sample of what the, “Unfollow”, panel looks like. Again I don’t understand how blanketly unfollowing an arbitrary number of users pans out. This feels like a ditch effort to try and not be black listed by Twitter if you garner too many followers too quickly. Does this feel Black hatty to anyone else?

Below is the Scheduled Tweet panel. This is interesting to me as I would like to see how this affects my traffic in different parts of the world if I were to post tweets in the middle of the night from the US. Here you can set as many tweets to go out at what ever interval you choose. The one thing about this that feels Black Hat to me is the fact that you could set the program to rewteet the same post over and over again for as long as you wanted to. You can even set up a number of different posts to go out in a determined time frame retweeting from a group of selected tweets. This just feels like Twitter spam to me.

You can also schedule when to send tweets out and automate posting. This article here is from marketingflop.com, a blog based in Norway. This blogger noticed he was getting a lot of traffic from America and wanted to tweet his posts while he was sleeping. I’ve been experimenting with times of day to post to see if there is a prime time for my site to garner the most traffic. With Google Live Search I think we’re going to see this is more important than ever.

Here’s a look at the scheduling panel in Tweet Adder.

In this panel you can declare how you wish to deal with Direct Messages. Again this is a social network. Don’t you want to receive these and reply to them individually?

Why It Feels Like Black Hat SEO

So in summation the following bullets are why this program feels so Black Hat or at the very least Gray Hat SEO to me.

• The idea of bulk adding followers through a social network seems counter-intuitive
• Time delays between adding friends seems like a black hat move.
• The bulk unfollow option feels like a quick fix to a possible black listing.
• Automate redundant ReTweets of a singe post or posts.
• Bulk handling of direct messages.

That being said, I haven’t read a bad review yet. I just feel like in my heart of hearts when you automate something like this you will in the end up screwing yourself some how. Time will tell.

Why do I want more Twitter followers?

In an effort to increase traffic to my newly revamped website I began stepping up my Twitter efforts. Why is this important you might ask? Well with the advent of Google Live Search it makes more sense now than ever to get on board with Twitter. As Google Live lists the most current updates returned from the social networks this was a no-brainer to step up my tweeting.

Not only that, but like Facebook and the rest of the social networks; notifications are sent out to all of your followers every time you post a status update. Increased awareness = increased traffic. Click here to find out how to automate your social networks every time you make a post to Wordpress.

With that said I try to follow people who share common interests with me or my website. As it can get hard to follow multiple users I use a program called Tweetdeck. It’s a great way to follow your favorite social networks. As you begin to follow more people obviously you begin to get more updates. Following people with like interests increases the chances that they’ll make use of your tweets.

Be Specific When You Tweet

I always include the title of my article along with any url I tweet. As people often don’t take the time to read if they don’t have to it helps to have specific or provocative titles. For instance a tweet of this article would look something like this.

Making The Most Out of Twitter –> http://bit.ly/6CVwIf

Make It Easy To Find You On Twitter

If you’re looking for more Twitter followers you need to make it easy for people to find your twitter page. There are a few effective ways to do this. First and probably the easiest step would be to add your Twitter address to your email signature. In addition to that, it’s a good idea to list your Twitter url on Facebook. And if you’re using Wordpress you can install the WP FollowMe plugin which adds a follow me button to the side of your website. Look to the immediate left for mine.

Set Up An Auto Responder

Setting up an auto responder for people who decide to follow you is a must. This way you can use Twitter to promote different parts of your website. As my gmail address is associated with my Twitter account I had to come up with a way to auto respond when new followers added me to their lists. You don’t want to overdue it with your response as people are more apt to delete your email if you send them something that looks like spam. Below is a sample of my Auto response text.

Hello Fellow Tweeter,

Nate Balcom
Come on in the web is fine.

This message can be changed at any time if you wish to promote a different section or post on your website so be creative.

How to set up an auto responder in thunderbird, using your gmail account

1. Associate your gmail account to Thunderbird.

To associate your gmail account with thunderbird click on Tools > Account Settings > Add Account > and select Gmail.

2. Set up your auto responder text.

To set up your auto responder text select your gmail account from the list in the left hand pane and then click on, “Write”, as if you are sending out a normal email. Add the Subject and text here you want to send as your automated response. Then rather than sending that email choose File > Saves As > Template

3. Set up your message filter.

To set up your message filter go to Tools > Message Filters New. I use the criteria, “Subject Contains”, and ,”following you on Twitter!”.

How To Create Your Own ReTweet Button

What does RT Stand for? The answer is ReTweet. So why would you want to get your site rewteeted?

Getting your site retweeted is a good way of diverting traffic to your website. Making it as easy as possible for your site or posts to be retweeted only make this that much easier. There are a couple ways of doing this. If you have a wordpress site a very good plugin for retweeting is Tweet Meme. Not only will this provide you with a handsome widget, but it also has support in the back end for placement of said widget.

If you’d rather create one your self you can copy and paste the code below.

<a href="http://www.twitter.com/home?status=add+your+text+here" target="_blank">ReTweet My Site</a>

After, “?status=”, in the code above you can add your own personalized message. make sure to separate each word with a, “+”. You can add urls here as well.

Twitter Directories

I posted this question as I’m still not sure if you can even optimize for Google Live Search aside from submitting to social networks. Live Search pulls the most recent updates from social networks across the web and displays them in line with regular Google results. New results are pulled as they happen.

Since these are based on recent updates it would seem that they are only searchable for a short period. Older social posts still appear in live search, but they get progressively pushed further down the page. Fickle viewers statistically only view the fist 1-5 listings so this wouldn’t pull much weight with the majority of people.

Here’s a shot of Google Live Search if you haven’t seen it yet. The listing under my Wordpress blog site is the actual live view. It must be Ajax they’re using to pull results that appear entwined in a scrollable search box within the search results.

Google Live Search Vs. Facebook

The big controversy here is that Facebook being a social network will be indexed by Google Live Search. As of December 14th this has become a reality. By default all Facebook accounts are wide open for inclusion into Google live search results.

So if you don’t wish to have your Facebook page and status updates crawled by Googlebot follow the instructions below. Thanks Wezzul.

Settings –> Privacy Settings –> Search –> then UN-CLICK the box that says ‘Allow indexing’.

Cool Live Search Features

From The Official Google Blog:

Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.

• Filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others.
• Works with the iPhone and Android

How to turn on Live Search

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With Google open click on the, “Show Options”, link at the top of the page. On the left hand side under, “Any Time”, click on latest.

How Does This Effect SEO?

It’s still unclear to me exactly how this will change how we market web sites as I’m already hitting the social networks. So I guess time will tell if there is more we should be doing to get the most out of Google Live Search. In the mean time, I’ll keep my eye on the trends and get back with you.

Tweetdeck is a program for following and contributing to social networks. In particular Twitter (obviously), Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace. Not only can you follow all of these accounts, but you can follow multiple versions of these accounts.

For instance at work I have Twitter accounts for all of our different companies so when I make updates I tweet to a targeted audience. If you look at the top of the Tweetdeck panel you’ll notice a number of account names. These are my various social networks. To post to them you simply click on the username or usernames if you want to post to more than one account at a time.

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If you’re big into Facebook this is a great application for following your friends. It can be set up to follow full news feeds, status updates, wall posts, photos and videos.

(Updates panel looks like this)

How to control where the updates panel pops up

Updates can be configured to pop up in any corner of your screen in the option settings. Click on the settings icon. It looks like a little wrench. Then click on the, “Notifications”, tab.

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Related Links

TweetDeck for iPhone
TweetDeck on Twitter

In this post I showed you how to automatically post updates to a number of different social networks, but that doesn’t mean that you’re done submitting if you truly want to get your blog the maximum exposure possible. In addition to being posted to the main social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin here are a few more sites you should make sure you’re listed on.

Must Have Social Networks

Digg – Since Digg requires a little more finessing you will be unable to automatically post here. Digg requires that you select a category for your posts as well as implements the use of, “Capthca Code”, making this a manual submission.

Stumbleupon – This is my biggest traffic referral. I’ve crashed servers by submitting to Stumble so don’t leave this one out.

Reddit – Popular social networking site where users can vote on your content and pump it up if they like it. This works well when you have a lot of online friends.

Simpy – This is a social bookmarking service kind of like delicious.

Technorati – Technorati is one of the most popular blog search engines out there.

Manual Submission Quick Tips

I always try to submit to all the networks possible so I end up doing a fair amount of manual submitting. It doesn’t have to be so bad if you do a little work ahead of time. Since I use the All in One SEO Pack for Wordpress I need to generate a list of keywords and tags for each post.

Using Google Analytics I form a short list of relevant keywords and keyword phrases. I put this comma separated list in a txt file that also has the title of your post as well as a different short description. Once you have your lists it’s just a matter of being logged into your social networks and a little copy and pasting.

Social Networking Plugins & Programs

Sociable Plugin For Wordpress – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.

Shareaholic Plugin For Firefox – is the better, quicker, easier way to share, e-mail, tweet, and bookmark stuff you care about online with friends.

Ping.fm is a great free web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks at one time. It can be configured to update most of the popular social networks including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and many more. As an SEO guy I still submit my posts to Digg, Reddit, Simpy and Stumbleupon manually as these services require a little more finessing, but are no less valuable.

How to use Ping.fm

First thing you’ll need is a Ping.fm account. Sign up for one here. Once you’re logged in you can add your networks. Below is a screen shot of my network configuration.

From here it’s just a matter of associating your social network accounts. As you can see there are a lot of different services to choose from including image networks like Flickr and Britekite. You can configure ping.fm to update delicious as well. The downside is you’ll have to go back and add your own tags and keywords as this method will only post status updates to the social bookmarking network.

Suggestion for the developers @ping.fm: It would be cool to have a way of pulling tags and keywords from my posts to my delicious account.

Creating Posting Groups

Posting groups are for for submitting to specific networks. At the top of the Ping.fm dashboard is a drop down that gives you the option to ping any of your social networks or posting groups. To create your own Posting Group click on the, “Create Group”, link at the top of the page and choose what type of posting method you wish to use.

For instance I may want to post status updates to all of my social networks except Flickr as it’s an image based social network. From the dashboard I can create a posting group that doesn’t include flickr for Status updates and another posting group that includes only image based social networks when pinged.

Why should I bother?

Any serious web marketing guy will tell you that you need to be on board with the social networks. They’re the wave of the future. Just look at how many businesses now a days that have Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s an easy and effective way of updating customers about new deals and promotions. Not only that, but with the advent of Google Live Search you’ll want to be submitting to the social networks for inclusion in recent news listings.

How to Automatically Syndicate Your Blog Posts

I wrote a post on the 3rd about how to automatically update Ping.fm every time you make a post to your blog. Check it out here >>

I was looking for a way to automatically update ping.fm every time I posted to my blog. This way it would hit all of the social networks so I didn’t have to submit them all one by one. I was looking at Yahoo Pipes at first as a way of doing this, but was turned onto Twitterfeed; (Thanks Cirrius Business Solutions), as a solution to this dilemma.

Twitterfeed allows you to feed your site’s rss feed to not only Twitter, but Facebook, Laconi.ca, HelloTxt and yes Ping fm.

This is beautiful as you can configure Ping.fm to hit a huge number of social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Delicious & many more. You will still have to submit articles to Digg and Stumbleupon as those not only include captcha code, but require some finessing of your actual ads.

You just have to love syndication. Beautiful…:)

Are you trying to find out what time of day you get the most traffic to your website? Is it Thursdays at lunch time or Saturdays after 4pm? In this quick tutorial I’ll show you how to view your hourly traffic using Google Analytics.

I became interested in hourly stats as of recently when I posted the question When is the best time to post to my blog? For Traffic?. I was curious to see what time of day I could garner the most traffic. As I recently started automatically submitting my rss feed to a number of social networks I thought the next step would be the best time of day to post.

Click here for larger image

In Google Analytics select the, “Visitors”, tab. Under Visitors select Visitor Trending > Visits. Then over to the right select hour in the Graph By options. You can also choose to view traffic by daily, weekly or monthly here.

I’ve been using Thunderbird to download podcasts for a while now, but my good buddy Shane just clued me in on how to use Winamp for all my podcast needs.

How To Download Podcasts With Winamp

First off you’ll need to download the newest version of Winamp. You can grab Winamp Media Player 5.56 right here.

Where do I find Podcasts?

Secondly you’ll have to find feeds to the shows you like. Here are a couple of my favs.

• The Adam Carolla Podcast
• NPR Podcast Directory
• This American Life

Most broadcasters nowadays have podcasts if they’re savvy enough. If you have someone else you’re interested in visit their website and look for a podcast or rss feed.

Once you find your podcast feed you will want to click on the, “Media Library”, link at the top of Winamp . On the left hand side you’ll see a list that looks something like this.

Remote media, local media, playlists, online services and podcast directory.

Click on the, “Subscriptions”, link under Podcast Directory and paste your feed in here. Once you have pasted in your feed hit Ctrl + P to pop up the Winamp Preferences console. From here you can set where to download your podcasts to and how often to do so.

Winamp Podcast Extras

Once you have your feed entered into your saved list you can use Winamp to browse the podcast website or view videos from the same site. I’ve always been a fan of Winamp, but here’s one more reason to love it all the more.