When it comes to social media, the easier to use for a client the better. I don’t like to micro-manage my clients websites. I like to give them great ideas, a great theme the right plugins and get them on their way. Here are a few wordpress plugins to help you with social media.

1. ShareThis

Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. We use this easy to implement plugin on just about all of our websites. Why have a great site with great content if your browsers cannot share it with their friends ?

2. Simple Facebook Connect by Otto

This bundle of easy to use social media plugins for twitter and facebook is another great plugin from Otto. What can I say this guy writes great plugins, takes feedback from end users and keeps them updated. I love his plugins and use his solutions above and beyond anyone else’ for my clients. use the SFC – Publish portion of the plugin to automatically publish to facebook.

This plugin has about 26 plugins to activate in total. Everything you need for facebook and twitter integration Using the “Facebook Connect Foundation” and “Twitter Connect Foundation” You have everything you need to integrate your website with facebook.

3. (( WP Twitter ))

Easily show your tweets in your widgetized sidebar. Twitter in recent months has updated its API call system. This has made it harder to integrate tweets into wordpress for your everyday user as well as theme developers. This plugin makes the integration as simple as possible.Install, activate, go to your widgets drag it to your sidebar, fill out the info and your done! Also publish new posts on twitter from within wordpress. After you write your content on the right hand side will be the option to publish to twitter. Too easy right ?

Did you need more choices for other social media ? Register and comment today to be heard

 

Today we are going to review a few plugins that will help you with traffic analysis. If you have some good ones you would like us to review please register and comment. Thanks!

Avoid traffic tools that require you to register. I don’t want anyone knowing about my traffic besides me and Google. Google already knows about your traffic even if you don’t have an account with them, they monitor everything on the internet is how I see it.

1. post-views By Suny Tse
Record how many times the post have been views and show it. The perfect plugin to track without leaving wordpress dashboard to show you what pages/posts are the most popular. Easy to install and use. We have been looking for a wordpress dashboard tool that isn’t out of date or require registration and after playing with about 20 of them to no avail this is what we got to finally do what we want to do. See posts/pages hits without too much complication. Thanks Suny Tse

2. Google Analytics
Still the best resource for drill down reports. This will show you all of your properties (once configured). The Google Analytics report will show you more information then you will ever need about your website. What country your visitors are from, language, computer and browser information, ad well as traffic source, campaign information for Google Adwords. The great thing about Google Analytics is that you can link multiple website properties into one easy to use interface. In fact, they have just updated their dashboard!

3. Crazyegg.com
I personally love crazyegg the most. It provides an overlay of hotspots. This will allow you to see what users are actually clicking on in a visual format allowing you to optimize your website. Crazyegg has a new report called “Scrollmap” This tells you the percentage of visitors that scroll down your website to see additional content. this will tell you how well your website is designed. More information about scrolling in our next article.

4. AWStats
If you have CPanel the most information you will find for your website will be with awstats. An oldie but still goodie. You need cpanel hosting at this time. Go to your cpanel control panel to verify awstats is active and save the link to your stats. There are a few WordPress plugins that attempt to provide the same information within the wordpress dashboard but we have not found one that is as easy to use as the original. The Awstats is a little hard to get to if you have a ton of sites to check. This is why you should bookmark the link to the report. This will require a cpanel username and password to access on a regular basis.

Q. Can you add Youtube to my drop down menus.

A. Yes, you already can.

Go to : http://www.youtube.com/

When you click on the drop down for the choice of Search engines you will get an additional link to add Youtube

1- Answering the phones

Yes I know this seems like a fairly easy tasks. You build it they will come. But its not as always easy as it sounds. Your staff must be professional at all times. Even if they think they are not being heard. Clients can hear background noise, gum popping, and attitudes. You will be amazed at the things that go one when employees think there is no one on the phone. In reality someone might actually be taking a call. Thank you for calling [brand] This is [name]… Easy right ? Now you call 10 up and coming web hoisting companies and tell me how many pass that simple test.

2- Think like a customer

When using your website take a step back and say to yourself: How would a customer use this, how would a vendor use this. If I didn’t have a part in building this site would I be able to find what I am looking for ? How Do I get to support, live chat help? Does this company have any affiliations with the BBB, If you see no logo why is there no logo. Is this a potential problem. The absence of a BBB logo can mean one of three things, it’s been overlooked as being part of the site which is the most obvious reason, The company is too new to get a BBB online logo, or the BBB terminated their relationship with the vendor. As a customer I am going to find out which one it is. I will expect the sales team to know these types of questions.

3- Choose the right people

Easier said than done. Some people have a knack for interviews. Some for giving them and some for being interviewed. You need to have the knack of giving the interviews, your in charge have some confidence. Your trying to fill a role in the company. Try to be friendly but know where the line is. Know what questions you are going to ask beforehand. Have a list check it twice. A list of ten questions will give you a good start. When hiring for a new position at a web hosting company there are a few things i want in the interviewee. Did they show up on time. This is important it sets the tone for their employment. Did I make the person comfortable enough to not be too nervous ? When they were not nervous about being on the interview can i put this person on the phone with clients 8 hours a day ? I don’t need this person to be friends with everyone at the company but can this person get along with the manager that is filling the position within their department.

4-Choose the right software

Know your Competition But don’t Steal from them. Yes, ideas are great. Get your own. Stop copying mine. Seriously. I worked at a hosting company and this new kid on the block actually stole every piece of content we had word for word. We did a google search to see that it was duplicate content. They called all of our vendors and decided that since we were doing well they wanted to use the exact same ones. Billing system, voice recording, merchant account, EVEN FAQ’s, and terms of service, and once in awhile when we had a newsletter they would rebrand it and send it to their clients. Are you serious ? Not only are you affecting our brand, calling our vendors, your affecting our SEO, and our company morale. Find the right billing software, do you need to handle multiple brands ? By an outright license without monthly billing. There is nothing worse than a billing system being down because someone forgot to pay the bill. Choose the right hosting platform and people to support it. Do your research do what is right for you not what everyone else is doing. Sometimes your differences will set you ahead of the pack.

5- Marketing for cheap

Again, we will talk about branding. How do you market on a very limited budget? That is the question that all small companies ask themselves. Have your customers link to your homepage, or like your Facebook fanpage. Setup a twitter account. A little goes a long way, make sure you are listed on webhosting talk, sign up for all the industry news you can get your hands on. Pingzine for example. Pay attention to your brand make sure you know about people talking good and bad about your brand on the big websites like webhostingtalk.com  Get business cards, they are inexpensive and sometimes free. These help get your name out to local businesses, as well as being able to look professional at Expos, conferences and conventions. A hoisting company without a business card is not a business. It is hard to take a person seriously when they do not take business seriously. Partner with the right companies. Ones that will recommend you and ones you can recommend to your clients. Sometimes your clients are not looking for you to execute something they are looking for you to be the go-to guy.

Sometimes you may want to install wordpress in a different folder then the root folder for the website, typically with cpanel hosting the root directory is going to be public_html or in windows hosting httpdocs. For example my client has a lot of legacy files in their public_html folder. I want to delete them as they are migrated to wordpress and be able to manage files.

• First I create a backup of my clients website files, all the files in the public_html folder.
• Next, I upload wordpress to a /blog folder. Install wordpress.
• Copy (NOT MOVE!) the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory into the root directory of your site (Blog address). The .htaccess file is invisible, so you may have to set your FTP client to show hidden files. If you are not using pretty permalinks, then you may not have a .htaccess file.Open your root directory’s index.php file in a text editor
• Change the following and save the file. Change the line that says: require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’); to the following, using your directory name for the WordPress core files: require(‘./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’);
• Login to the wordpress installation. It might now be http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/
• In the box for Site address (URL): change the address to the root directory’s URL. Example: http://example.com
• Click Save Changes. (Do not worry about the error message and do not try to see your blog at this point! You will probably get a message about file not found.)
• If you have set up Permalinks, go to the Permalinks panel and update your Permalink structure. WordPress will automatically update your .htaccess file if it has the appropriate file permissions. If WordPress can’t write to your .htaccess file, it will display the new rewrite rules to you, which you should manually copy into your .htaccess file (in the same directory as the main index.php file.)

Additional information can be found here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

Now as pages of the original website are moved to wordpress you would create an .htaccess rule like the following:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

I use the following webpage to help me with various redirect options: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

Next, I delete the old pages after I verify they show up in wordpress properly. I also use a 404 error monitor in wordpress to make sure that nothing is missing in migrating pages to wordpress. Sometimes image URL’s, dependency files such as .css or other issues arise. You can see what these issues are and take care of them as they appear in the log. I check the log everyday after migration for a few weeks, I check it once a month after that.

It doesn’t matter how large or small the project there are a few things you should do before updating a new clients website. I always take an emergency copy of their site, a snapshot. You want to be able to roll back the site if anything goes wrong. When upgrading from an older version of wordpress to a recent stable version, or upgrading plugins, or installing new ones the client hasn’t used before you do not know what impact these changes will have on their database or site. Database corruption is one of my biggest concern, as well as security. You want clients to be on the newest version of wordpress if possible, as well as the newest version of the plugins that they are using. I create a backup of the following items before starting a project:

wp-config.php

wp-content

• uploads
• themes
• plugins

mysql database backup

wp-config.php

This is the only file that is modified from the wordpress core files that will get your site back online. Dont worry if you don’t have it, but be sure to capture the following information in a safe place in case you need to recreate it for your client. If you don’t have the wp-config.php file you will need this information to connect the database. If you have an upgrade issue or corrupted core file I delete all the files and folders except the ones listed in this article, re-upload the newest version of wordpress, and viola Usually.

wp-content folder

This folder contains the following folders:

• uploads
• themes
• plugins

The files that live in these folders are the heart of your blog. the uploads folder contains files you have uploaded for your blog such as images videos and wordpress updates. The images you see in posts, for example are kept in this folder. The themes folder contains all themes you have added to your wordpress installation, including your current theme. The plugin folder contains all the active, and in-active plugins that you have in your wordpress installation. For my personal sites i remove any plugins, and themes that I will not be using, this reduces backup time, helps keep the database nice and trim. Deactivating and deleting a plugin removes the values from the database, if the plugin is written properly. This reduces the mysql database which can impact load times for your wordpress website.

mysql database backup

Even if you lost all your themes, plugins and upload files, you cannot live without a database backup. This can tell you what plugins and themes were active at the time of backup as well as all the posts, pages, customized settings. With a database backup and wp-config information you can get your site up and running with the content and settings you had at the time of backup. I always go to phpMyAdmin and “optimize” the tables with overhead before creating a mysql backup. I also delete all records in log files when creating a backup or optimizing a site. Any log files older than 30 days contain data that can be replicated if the issues still exists. If you have updated your website or resolved issues in your log files you would want to clean these out to see new issues that are occurring with your site. Check the plugin documentation for log file information. Typically logs track visitors, error messages such as 404 errors and other plugin functions.

$paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
$sticky=get_option(‘sticky_posts’);
$args=array(
‘cat’=>”,
‘posts_per_page’=>10,
‘post__not_in’ => $sticky,
‘paged’=>$paged,
);
query_posts($args);

For more information please visit wordpress get_query Function Reference

When it comes to wordpress plugins you need to have the right ones to do the right job. Plugins to manage contact forms, allow you to write your

Contact Form 7 – This plugin is the standard in contact forms, create amazing email campaigns, prevent fake contact information, require fields, use captcha and more.

Executable PHP widget I use this plugin to embed code into my sidebars, no more hard coding themes. This also allows you to easily upgrade your themes since the code is within the plugin and hte sidebar loop.

Google XML Sitemaps Generates the xml sitemap that google needs to accurate crawl yoru site, updates every time you add content to wordpress.

Page Links To Create a page and link it, anywhere.

Register Plus with Really Simple CAPTCHA No more fake registrations for your site, lock down your comments to registration only and use this plugin. Additionally you can gather marketing data from your new subscribers by adding custom required fields to the registration process. Email verification is an added bonus.

Scheduled Draft PublishWrite all your posts on one day and have them publish on a regular basis.

Twitter ToolsPublish your new posts to twitter, even works with scheduled draft publish.

wp-cache

WP-DBManager

WP125

Yoast Breadcrumbs