Affiliate Links May Be Penalized By Search Engines

I need to research this more, but I thought I’d give you a heads up. I just got this information from an affiliate (advertiser) I work with on one of my full WordPress sites: If it hasn’t happened already, it appears that some of the search engines may start penalizing affiliate links, categorizing them as […]

Customizing RSS Feed Links for WordPress.com and WordPress Sidebar Widgets

With the new feature in WordPress.com blogs to add feeds to your sidebar using Sidebar Widget enabled WordPress Themes and/or the soon-to-be-released Sidebar Widget WordPress Plugin, you now have a powerful feature to add content to your blog and accessorize your sidebar. If you would like to add feeds from another WordPress blog, the feed […]

New Features for WordPress.com: New Themes, Import, Video Links, and Some Privacy Protection

The developers of WordPressMU and WordPress.com have been working overtime lately and there are a few new features for WordPress.com users to play with. One of the most popular requests from WordPress.com users is how to import their old blogs into WordPress.com. Well, there are now three import features for Blogger, Moveable Type, and Typepad […]

Adding Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and Slashdot Links to Your WordPress Blog

David Breyer’s article on putting Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and Slashdot buttons in your WordPress blog is brilliant and a must have if you are going for good SEO page ranking. It also makes it easy for users of Del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg, and Slashdot to add your article to their tag service. BUT…it begs the question: […]

Site Optimization: Checking Loose Links

The three biggest complains by Internet users are speed issues, broken links, and slow ads. Let’s tackle the number two complaint: broken links. Few things are more frustrating than tracking down the information you want, and you click the link and get the famous “404 Page Error – Page Not Found”. The term “web” came […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: Who Changed Your Life?

This is one of the special Blog Exercises this year, a chance to really celebrate who you are and those who helped make you. As we travel through life, people change our lives on a daily basis as well as for a lifetime. Today’s exercise is focused on those who stepped in your path and […]

Blog Exercises for April

April seemed to fly by in this Blog Exercises series. Have you been able to keep up now that we are done with month four of improving your blog? A lot of the blog exercises this month deal with interactivity and links, tips for building a community with your site. One of my favorite exercises […]

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to […]

Blog Exercises: Footnotes

In “Creating Footnotes in WordPress,” the tutorial explains how to use footnotes in WordPress, and applies to other blog publishing platforms. Links are the footnotes of today, linking to citations, references, and resources on the web. Yet, there are still times when footnotes are necessary, especially when the citation isn’t online or if your topic […]

Blog Exercises: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]

Blog Exercises: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles

What are the articles that drive people to your site? What are the posts that help people understand and benefit most from what you publish on your site? What articles represent you as an authority on the subject? These are your reference articles. We all have them, the articles that explain who we are, what […]

Blog Exercises: How to Add Headings to Your Post Articles

I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]