Planet WordPress Canada

The great thing about WordPress is that while it makes a fantastic blog platform, it is also versatile enough to tackle other applications as well. There are many people who use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for a seemingly static website, largely because it is so good at managing all of that content.

For instance, you will notice that my freelance writing site is actually powered by WordPress, even though it is not a blog. I don’t have too many pages on there, so managing the different pages is a relatively straightforward process. However, this isn’t the case if you have a website with lots of pages in a multi-tier hierarchal configuration. How can you better manage those pages?

A simple WordPress plugin has been designed that allows you to easily navigate pages from within the WordPress dashboard system. This plugin will insert a widget in your dashboard that lets you navigate through your pages as if it were a Windows Explorer. This maintains the hierarchal structure, not unlike the folder system you have on your PC.

For more information and to download the free plugin, head on over to the official WordPress plugin directory.

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Lets Make Money on Your Blog!

The topic that has come up over and over this week has been how to monetize the blog. And, as many of you are busy writing, working, and looking after a home and family, you haven’t had the time to scour the internet for all the information on monetization! So here is the summary version just for you:

Ad Networks

These are large marketing or public relations firms that do the gathering of blog sponsors for you. They take applications from bloggers, whom they call “publishers” to publish the ads that they procure.

PROS:

• they have taken care of the legalities between big sponsors like Campbells and your blog.
• They take care of paying you and collecting from the company.
• Maintaining this type of network is very easy. Most of them have a help desk that will help you install (or do it for you) the ads.

CONS:

• The downside is that they do have a list of expectations from their publishers that you need to follow.

Women bloggers should check out blogher, Real Girls Media. Food bloggers should check out FoodBuzz.

About.com has a list of 60 Ad & Affiliate programs.

Contextual Ads

Adsense is the most well known example of this type of advertising. When people come to your blog from google, they have entered some search terms. From these terms, google serves up ads that might interest the reader. Thus, they are contextual. Problogger lists these contextual advertisers to check out:

• Chitika
• WidgetBucks,
• Text Link Ads,
• Azoogle Ads,
• Intelli Txt,
• DoubleClick,
• Tribal Fusion,
• Adbrite,
• Clicksor,
• AdHearUs,
• Kanoodle,
• Pheedo,
• TextAds,
• Bidvertiser,
• Fastclick,
• Value Click,
• MSN Adcenter,
• YPN.

I’ve only had experience with Adsense and Chitika, but I know that several of you use Text Link Ads, Adbrite, and WidgetBucks – How was your experience in applying for these ads? Were they easy to install?

How much money can YOU make?

AdsenseGuide.info uses these examples – if all you do is copy and paste the Adsense code, and you are a small website, with only 400 impressions per day, and a click through rate of 1.5%.

And for a website with medium traffic- 4,000 impressions per day:

The above tables are from regular adsense ads that aren’t optimized or placed in any particular ‘hot spot’.

Darren Rowse has doubled his contextual ad revenue from simply moving them to a more effective location on the page! From this, and lots of other examples on the web, we can learn that placement of the ads are just as important as the relevance of the ads.

Where do I put the ads?

This is a ‘heat map’ from Adsense itself.

A ‘heat map’ is measuring the reader’s length of time spent in a particular area of the page. Isn’t it interesting that most of us will focus on the center of the page, and not the header?

If you think like your reader, you will be more likely to see where and how to place ads. When you come to the page, what are you searching for? What will you do after you’ve found it? Will you spend time on this page or click through to the next? Will you read daily or come once in a while when looking for a particular resource? Will you shop from this page? All of those things will determine the best placement for your ads.

The best place to start your ads is blending into the content – that is where the most bloggers experience the most success with advertisements. Remember to always abide by the terms of use of any particular advertiser. If you can, blend the ad into the background, and set apart the text.

Whether or not you should use text or images or both, is a matter of where you are placing the ad, the subject of the blog, and the audience’s preference. Here are some examples of placements:

Image Ad Under Post

Adsense Display Under Header

Adsense Display Links in Sidebar

Adsense Display in Header

Adsense Display Above Header

These are just a few tips to get started with contextual ads and ad networks. Next time we’ll cover affiliate ads, direct advertising and product reviews!

————————————————————————————————————-

For further information on adsense ads, check out the Adsense Guide for Optimizing.

For an 8 Part series on Adsense from Darren Rowse click here.

You may also be interested in: the Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Business.

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A very little-know and hidden feature in WordPress MU is the ability to add a customize page that is displayed when a blog is suspended or archived. Only Site Admins can archive or suspend a blog, and you can do this in the Site Admin -> Blogs menu. Hover over the blog in question and see the extra links.

Deactivate, archive and spam are the ones you will use. Right now, there is no difference (code wise) in what happens. Each action here will result in the same page being displayed. It does, however, set a different flag in the database for each one. (I plan on filing a trac ticket for further enhancement.)

By default, when a blog is suspended or inactive, a very plain page is generated with a simple message.

This blog has been archived or suspended.

Let’s say you want to pretty this up. Maybe show it with the same look as the main blog on the site, or insert a contact form. Or even, as the first example I saw, slap Google ads on it in cases where you’re suspending spam blogs.

The way to do this is surprisingly simple. All you have to do is place a file with your customizations in the wp-content folder.

blog-deleted.php will show if a user has elected to delete their blog. Remember, if a user deletes their blog, it is only marked as deleted in the backend. If a site admin deletes a blog, it is really really gone. This gives the user a chance at recovery.
blog-suspended.php will show if a blog has been deactivated in any way (archived, deactivated, or spam).

I spent probably too much time trying to figure out how to pull in exisiting blog headers for page customization here. Just do a simple HTML page with whatever you want. I wanted mine to look like my main blog theme, so I just copied the HTML from the source of the front page, deleting items I didn’t want.

So, to recap: whip up a page called blog-suspended.php, toss in whatever you like and dump it in wp-content. Bob’s yer uncle. Here’s a live example of a deleted blog and also a deactivated one.

Many, many thanks to Andy Bailey from Comment Luv who did the hard work of actually figuring this out, and reminding me to whip up the tutorial.

Random Posts

• October 27, 2007 — How to file a bug ticket and follow the latest issues (0)
• June 9, 2008 — Are you experienced in MU? (0)
• December 29, 2009 — Scaling WordPress MU with multiple databases (26)
• January 15, 2009 — MU is virtually yours (17)
• September 30, 2007 — Where to find error logs (3)

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I have just uploaded the latest version of Ground Floor to the WordPress.org Theme repository. Most of the updates were focused on cleaning up the CSS file as well as adding the two footer functions: bns_dynamic_copyright (version 1.3), and bns_theme_version (version 1.2.1). Here is the lastest changelog:

Changelog as of Mar 6, 2010
= Version 1.3 = - added "GPL2" license statement to style.css - added YUI reset to CSS - general clean-up of CSS file (removed most empty elements) - added bns_dynamic_copyright() ****************************** * Internet Browsers Reviewed * * ========================== * * * * Apple Safari v4.0.4 (Mac) * * Apple Safari v4.0.4 (PC) * * Firefox v3.6 * * Google Chrome v4.0 * * Internet Explorer v8.0 * * Opera v10.10 * * * * IE 6 - basic functionality * ******************************

Ground Floor version 1.3.1 is now live at WordPress.org as of Mar 9, 2010.

© 2010, BuyNowShop. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Desk Mess Mirrored 1.4.6
2. Ground Floor 1.1
3. New WordPress Theme: Ground Floor

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Thank you to everyone who participated and sent your comments!

Survey Results:

1. What technical/blogging information do you need?

• over 50% of you said, “I’m a Geek Wannabe – Teach me!”
• next was “How to do the basics – images, plugins”
• followed closely by “You can do it for me!”

2. How often do you look for help/answers?

• 70% said, “Regularly, I’m a ‘why’ person.”

3. Where do you get your answers?

• Google and Yours Truly were tied for 80% of you (you are such a smart bunch.)

4. How important are the following topics?

• Writing came in surprisingly low in importance to 90% of you! This is probably because you feel somewhat competent in this area already.
• Most important topic to 66% of you was SEO/ Being Seen
• followed closely by how to design, and Pro-Blogging (making money)
• 0% of you thinks that technology news is important!

5. Should I show off the new design?

Only one of you questioned my insatiable desire to get the website ‘right’. I have the nicest clients ever (or we all have the crazy habit of re-arranging our furniture on a regular basis.)

Thank you very much for your feedback. It will indeed shape the future of this blog. I intend to focus on monetizing your websites, maintaining them, and things you need to know – with a big ol’ BUY NOW button for those of you who prefer to outsource your technical support. :)

Free Downloads:

If you haven’t received the Press Release Guide & Template, it is now downloadable in the Desperately Seeking WordPress Client Center, along with “How to Build Your Media List”, and “What to do when a reporter calls”. Along this vein, are 5 More Creative Ways to Get Publicity (free for everyone).

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Yesterday, Donncha released WordPress MU version 2.9.2. 2.9.2 contains fixes for the major outstanding bugs in MU. Unless a security issue surfaces in either WordPress or WordPress MU, this is expected to be the last version of MU.

Thanks Donncha

• January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
• November 26, 2009 — Facebook Dashboard Widget Update (0)
• September 29, 2009 — Option Arrays (5)
• September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (5)
• September 26, 2009 — Community Service (3)

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Want to foster more of a conversation with the readers on your blog? Finding that the comment system is getting overwhelmed and it’s far too hard to follow a discussion? Maybe you want some live feedback from the audience, allowing them to interact with one another in a free and open manner?

It may have been quite some time since you last stepped your virtual foot into a chat room, but you can now integrate the same idea into your WordPress blog with 123 Flash Chat. Rather than directing visitors to a separate site altogether, you can run a full-fledged chat client on your own website. The Internet chat room is back!

There are two main options for using this plug-in. First, you can choose to have a lite chat client embedded into the sidebar on your blog. By using this, readers can continue to chat while reading the different content on your site. Second, you can provide a link to a standard chat client, which would then appear as a pop-up window. For both, you can define the width and height of the client, as well as its skin and language.

More information, including the download link, can be found at 123flashchat.com. Note that there is an attribution link that comes along with this free WordPress plug-in.

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BlogHer Publishing Network has said that

Blogs that will be considered for the BlogHer Publishing network must be: …free of any advertorial or sponsored posts, and compensated product reviews….

And a number of you have been inquiring about providing a separate page without BlogHer ads, on which to post product reviews or giveaways. If you have tried this, you have no doubt seen that it isn’t as easy as it sounds! On category pages and searches, and on the front page – the giveaways still show up! And how do you get the ads OFF your special giveaway page anyway?

Although this may look a little technical, it is actually pretty easy to do:

(If I have installed a separate blog for you, and you’d prefer to combine the blogs and use this method, let me know.)

#1 Prevent the BlogHer Ads from Showing on Certain Pages

• Download the “Widget Context” plugin by Kaspars Dambis from your Plugins >> Add New panel.
• Activate it.
• Go to the Appearance>> Widgets panel, and open the text widget that has your blogher code pasted in it
• And complete the new “context” part like this:

This is what you need in there:

spc-*
category/spc-giveaways
category/spc-giveaways/*

#2 Create a New Category for the Blogher-Ad-Free Giveaway Posts

• Go to Posts>> Categories.
• Add a new category just for the BlogHer-Ad-Free posts: ”Special Giveaways”.
• Use the slug, “spc-giveaways”.

When you have saved the new category – look at the navigation bar at the top of your screen – it will look something like: http://mysite.com/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=352. Make a note of the ID number – in this case, “352″.

#3 Exclude the BlogHer Ad-Free Page from your Home Page

• Go to Plugins>> Add New and download “Front Page Excluded Categories” by Sean O’Steen.
• Activate.
• Go back to Plugins screen, select the new “Front Page Excluded” plugin, and click on the link “edit”.

• Replace the “1,2″ text with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

#4 Directions for Thesis Users:

• Go to Thesis Options>> Custom File Editor>> and select “Custom_functions.php” from the drop-down menu.
• Scroll to the very bottom of the file, and copy and paste this:

• Replace the ‘-nn’ with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

You are not finished yet – there is one more thing that it needs to work. Read the how-to post below.

How to Write a Special Giveaways BlogHer-Ad-free Post

You are all set to use this category for your ad-free giveaway posts. If you post to this category, it will not show up on the front page. If you check the special giveaways archive, it won’t show up there either. But there is one more place to take care of – the single post. Whether the permalinks post it under a title alone, or a date of some sort, we will need to append the URL with a few characters.

So – in English:

• Write your special giveaways post
• Assign the Special Giveaways category (that can be the only category)
• Edit the url to include the letters “spc-” like this:

• Write your ‘teaser’ post pointing readers to your new giveaway.
• Categorize this with “giveaways” or whatever you like, but do NOT use the “special giveaways” category.

NOTE ABOUT PERMALINKS:

• This will ONLY work if you are using pretty permalinks (view Settings >> Permalinks panel to check)

If you have any problems at all let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to help you out. Good luck to all my women-blogger friends and clients!

Huge props to Kaspars Dambis and Sean O’Steen for their plugins – I’m sure a small token of your appreciation would be welcomed! Their links are in their plugins for donating.

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One of the keys to maintaining the readership on your blog is to keep those readers on your site for as long as possible. You can direct them to the most recent posts, in case they missed any in the last few days, or you can deeplink to some of your own older posts from within the current article. What if you want to show off your most popular posts?

Keeping things simple and effective is the Top 10 WordPress plug-in. This plug-in keeps track of the page views received by each of your blog posts, ranking them accordingly. You can then embed a widget in your sidebar, displaying the top 10 most popular posts from the current day or from all-time. People tend to follow other people, so if they see that a post is popular, they’ll want to read it to find out why.

The Top 10 plug-in can display the view count on single posts and pages, and it offers full support for post thumbnail images. You can also view the list of daily and overall popular posts from within the WordPress dashboard. The plug-in is also compatible with caching solutions like WP Super-Cache.

To download Top 10 for WordPress, direct your browser to ajaydsouza.com. The plug-in page also supplies more information, including screenshots, if you want to check that out too.

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One of my great pleasures in seeing how my themes are being enjoyed by others. Today I would like to share two more web sites in my series of “showcase” posts.

The first web site is using a modified version of the Desk Mess Mirrored theme. This design has a completely new header section that enhances the theme character for this author’s content and direction. Here is a screen snippet from The DigiScrap Quality Guide:

Digital Scrapbooking Quality Control Guide and Information

The next web site was quite a pleasant surprise; not for its theme modification but simply for its content. I am quite honored to have my theme, Shades, chosen to display Kayla and Orion’s online wedding album. Thank you very much. Here is a snippet of their web site with their special day clearly marked.

Kayla and Orion - May 30, 2010

Please accept my best wishes for a prosperous and joyous future together.

© 2010, BuyNowShop. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Themes at Work and Play
2. Shopping with Desk Mess Mirrored
3. Desk Mess Mirrored 20,000 Downloads

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