Category: Various

The House that WordPress Built

I spent a few days last week at the Pressnomics conference in Phoenix and, as always, learned a lot more than I could possible give back.

It’s amazing the number of smart people who attend and who give their time generously to speak to others. I’m not going to name names here, but it got me thinking about the house that WordPress has built.

By “house” I mean it in a few different ways.

WordPress has changed many, many lives, including my own. Careers are different. Friendships have been formed. Lives altered.

Heck, WordPress now powers over 25% of the Internet and affects every Internet user.

Some of the things I learned:

  • WordPress has literally built houses for people from the WordPress related income they have earned
  • WordPress has allowed people to work from their homes and connect with their families
  • WordPress has built amazing friendships, families, collaborations (people from different and competing companies shared rented houses to attend the conference)
  • WordPress has built a community that should (most of the time) be envied
  • WordPress updates and changes can affect people greatly

Of course, WordPress itself has not done any of this. It’s the people who have done it. People who are attracted to WordPress. People who are attracted to the WordPress community. People who are good people.

We all live in a community of WordPress houses.

[Interview with Alex King from Pressnomics 2016. Click here to see if you can’t see it]

How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site – New Free eBook

speed-ebook_big
I’ve added a third eBook to my free eBooks that I give away to all email subscribers. This one goes through the best ways to speed up your WordPress website with step-by-step instructions.

Speed. It’s what we all crave in today’s busy world of work and home life. Whether we are waiting for a train, hurrying from one meeting to the next, or waiting for the microwave to “ping,” we’re never far from a glance at the clock and an impatient gesture.

You can subscribe below to get all three eBooks if you’re not already a subscriber. Current subscribers have already been sent an email soon with a link in.

The three eBooks you get for being a subscriber are:

– Income Blogging Guide Blueprint
– Save Your Site! A Guide To backing Up WordPress
– How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site

Feedback on Income Blogging Guide

At the start of the year I was proud to co-create the free multi-media Income Blogging Guide along with Andrew from We Build Your Blog.

Each day we have a double figure number of people who download the guide is easily in double figures and the feedback has been fantastic.

We receive unsolicited comments about the guide all the time, and we also ask for feedback, so a mixture of the two are below.

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Elie Kochman (owner of Optimal Upgrades) said “So check it out, it can help you get up and running as fast as you can read!”

You can read Elie’s full blog post about our free guide here: http://blog.optimalupgrades.ca/2010/01/blogging-guide/

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Stephanie Jewett (owner of Nursing Comments) said, “I highly recommend this study packet to ease the frustration of starting your own blog!”

You can read Stephanie’s full blog post about our free guide here:

http://nursingcomments.com/want-to-set-up-a-blog/

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Monique Hrebeniuk (owner of  moniqueschlosser) said, “I have never found a better resource material for understanding how to set up a blog successful than this one.  I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to start a blog or for people like me who figured it out on her own but was missing a few things.”

You can read Monique’s full blog post about our free guide here:

http://moniqueschlosser.com/blogging/free-income-blogging-guide-review/

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Kenny Loh (owner of im2financialfreedom) said, “You can find instructions on how to choose your niche, how to do keyword analysis, how to get a domain and hosting, how to install a blogging platform, how to post a content and also learn how to make money from blogging.”

You can read Kenny’s full blog post about our free guide here:

http://im2financialfreedom.com/blog/product-review/income-blogging-guide-review/

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Debbie Bills (owner of Happy Maker) said, “Other courses just give you the basics then you get to read between the lines and figure out the rest. You have included the stuff most people miss and I am very grateful. Your course makes me actually feel smarter. It is like having GPS that tells you exactly when to turn and which way to turn.”

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Income Blogging Guide

Kevin Pavilonis (owner of vinfit90) said, “they get right into the meat of things such as blogging platforms, keyword analysis, getting a domain, hosting. Oh and they even go through setting up your own wordpress – step by step with multiple screen shots which makes it really nice especially if your new to this sort of thing. The list goes on and on but hey I’m not going to retype the whole report here, go get your own!

You can read Kevin’s full blog post about our free guide here:

http://vinfit90.com/a-great-wordpressblogging-website-to-check-out/

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John (owner of http://atozemporium.com/) said, “You go into great detail on some of those tricky points, especially around downloading and installing WordPress, and with plugins.”

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There are, of course, some, er, stranger comments that we receive, and Andrew goes into details about those on his blogging guide post.

The guide is available from Income Blogging Guide for free.

Eight Ways To Improve JS Kit Echo

I’ve been using the blog comment system JS Kit Echo for a few weeks now. It has many advantages, namely:

– Pulls in blog comments and mentions from Twitter and Facebook.
– Does this in real time without refreshing the page.
– Can include HTML, photos and even video in comments.
– Enables to post your comment to multiple platforms, not just this site.
– Keeps your blog as the central hub for your brand and business.

However, there are a few things, specifically WordPress related, that it can improve upon. In no particular order:

JS Kit
  1. Speed of support. Yes, I’m only paying a very small yearly fee and not for your Pro version, but 24 hours between each support reply meant it took over 7 days to get my WordPress comments imported. Half the time was my fault due to security restrictions on my site, but still…. As a side note, it was annoying to not be able to manually import comments and having to wait.
  2. Gravatars of old commentators are not automatically included. Despite assurances that email address, IP address etc are imported (and no doubt they are), they do not show the gravatar of old commentators on the site. Apparently they will appear once the commentator makes a new comment and assigns the gravatar.
  3. Styling isn’t as easy as it should be. A simple interface for some styling would be great.
  4. It would be easier to manage comments through WordPress rather than having to go to the JS Kit website. Using an iframe on the comments page would solve this, in the same way as DISQUS and Lijit do with their plugins. Support this idea here:
    http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/manage_comments_through_wordpress. On another side note, the WordPress integration doesn’t work too well, clicking on Comments on the Dashboard takes you to the “old” WordPress comment screen.
  5. Separate Trackbacks. A simple idea that used to be on this site but is not yet possible. Support this idea here:
    http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/separate_trackbacks_from_comments
  6. Disable comments on individual post/page. Yup, this can’t be done yet either, ignoring your WordPress settings. Support this idea here:
    http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/disable_new_comments_on_single_page
  7. Support more than one level of threading. This used to be possible when they had different skins, but not now. Only one level of threading is good, but not great.
  8. Editing comments after they’re posted. The comments are mine as they’re on my site, so I should be able to edit them right? Not yet. Support this idea here:
    http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/editing_comments_after_they_are_posted

If I haven’t put you off too much, these points are improvements I hope to see soon in JS Kit Echo. I would recommend it on a new blog definitely, that way you can avoid any import issues and delays.

On the other hand, I couldn’t be happier with my new Lijit search, especially as they’ve now added cool thumbnails to the results.. Give it a try top right, after you’ve commented on this post of course….

Straightforward Marketing Advice

I’m pretty much a fan of straight talking, no-nonsense when it comes to marketing advice. There are all sorts of snake-oil salesmen and saleswomen, promising the world but delivering the same old spiel. The amount of online courses that promote life-changing advice, yet simply take your money and feed you things you know already, drive me slightly mad.

Where to get good advice is a source of worry for me sometimes, and also where to refer my clients to when they ask. Of course there are great courses and businesses out there too, and often I point them towards this man, Brendon Sinclair of Tailored Web Services. Here he is talking about getting good search engine rankings (if you can’t see the videos, go here):

While that was good, here are some of his finer moments:

No bull, no spin, just good, solid, actionable advice. Good on ya mate!

You can follow him on Twitter at @brendonsinclair, but how his ego fits into 140 characters, I’m not quite sure!

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