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Blogging Basics: Do You Have an Editorial Calendar?

May 11, 2011 by 5 Comments

Oh my goodness, I found a toy that I am already in love with!  I don’t know how I managed to survive without it.  What is it?  The Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress!  Look at it:

editorial calendar thumb Blogging Basics: Do You Have an Editorial Calendar?

If the post isn’t yet live, you can go to your calendar and just drag it to a different day!  Amazing, huh?  It is also very simple.

Don’t have a wordpress blog?  Why not?  They have a learning curve, but let me tell you… I literally was freaked out about moving my site (almost 2 years ago now) because everyone talked about how hard WordPress is.  Ok, it is NOT hard if you have the right support network.  People also said they would lose so much… your GFC followers can go with you, your feed can be redirected… your entire site can be redirected!

But.. it costs SO MUCH!  Yeah, not really! My boss does a switcheroo for 215.00!  Hosting with her for a small site is only 36 bucks per year.  Yeah, the cost isn’t that much and it outweighs the risks of sticking with a free program.  #imjustsaying

DISCLAIMER:  Yes, I work for DSWP these days, but I was a client with her for over a year before she offered me a job.  I like and trust Cathy with my baby!

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Blogging Basics: Blog Maintenance

March 9, 2011 by 11 Comments

If you are a blogger, you know that there is so much more than just writing involved in this business.  We also have to keep up with all the backdoor stuff and the bigger the blog gets, the more stuff there is to keep up with.  When we first started it was no big deal, but all of a sudden we have to:

  1. keep up with the thousands of spam comments that come in each day
  2. update wordpress regularly
  3. be sure our blog is backing up
  4. check (and fix) any site errors
  5. update those million plug ins we just had to have
  6. be sure our site is up to speed
  7. be sure we aren’t going over our memory usage
  8. and many more!
  9. broken links
  10. funky redirects

If you are anything like me, this is certainly NOT something you have the time for and even if you manage to find the time, you don’t know how to do most of the stuff or are scared of messing it up.

Cathy, at Desperately Seeking WordPress understands that fear and lack of time.  That is why she offers a retainer service for only 28 dollars per month!  For only 28 dollars, you can have someone else worry about your site issues!  Plus, you have someone (a REAL PERSON!) to help you with other issues and point you in the right direction when you have a problem at a 30% discount.

That’s not all!  Do you keep up with stats, submitting to different blog directories,  plus the regular day-to-day stuff.  And people think we do this for the free stuff – HA!

Is there a topic or problem you would like to see me cover during Blogging Basics?  Be sure to check the full write up to see if I already have.  If not, please drop me an email and I will put it in the line up!

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BLOGGING BASICS: 23 Must-Have Word Press Plug Ins

May 5, 2010 by 6 Comments

*IF YOU HAVE BLOGGER, BE SURE TO READ!  Some of the plug ins have Blogger options!*

I started a blogging conversation in my Blog Frog community about my plug ins, but the entire message didn’t show up.  So, I promised my community friends that I would re-do the post and put it on my blog.  Here’s my list!  Be sure to drop by the community to leave your opinions of your must have Word Press plugins!

1. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (can be used on Blogger, too!)

Help your visitor promote your blogging site! The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget allows any visitor to bookmark your site easily with many popular services. Sign up for an AddThis.com account to see how your visitors are sharing your content–which services they’re using for sharing, which content is shared the most, and more. It’s all free–even the pretty charts and graphs.

2.  Akismet

Akismet checks your blogging comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a Word Press.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.

3.  All in One SEO Pack

Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

4.  Batch Categories

Easily manage the mass categorization of posts that match various criteria.

5.  Broken Link Checker

Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the blogging dashboard if any are found.

6.  Comment Email Responder

Emails commenter when an admin replies to the comment, if commenter is not subscribed to email updates via Subscribe-to-Comments

7. CommentLuv for Word Press (Blogger Too!)

Plug-in to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments. CommentLuv for Blogger, go here!

8. Contact Form 8

Based on Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7 version 2.0.1. Has better support for checkboxes (clickable labels, actually separate onto different lines)

9. Full Comments On Dashboard

Show full comments in the Recent Comments box on the admin dashboard.

10.  Google Friends Connect Widget (you will have to search for this one in the Word Press dashboard)

Google Friendsconnect OpenID & Faces widget. FOR BLOGGER

11. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

12. NoFollow Free (Blogger Too!)

Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… FOR BLOGGER

13. Profile Pic

Allows authors to add a picture to their profile and automates the process of displaying profiles. Highly configurable via plugin and widget settings

14. Quick Adsense

Quick Adsense offers a quicker & flexible way to insert Google Adsense or any Ads code into a blog post.

15. Search Meter

Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for. After you have activated this plugin, you can check the Search Meter section in the Dashboard to see what your visitors are searching for on your blog.

16. SEO Friendly Images

Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.

17.  Technorati Tags (will have to search dashboard for this one)

Returns a list of technorati tags associated to the post (http://www.technorati.com/tag/). Follows the same convention of listing tags native to Word Press 2.3. the function the_techtags(); must be used within the loop.

18.  Ultimate Google Analytics

Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.

19. What Would Seth Godin Do (BLOGGER, TOO)

Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors. For this same concept on your Blogger Blog.

20.  Wordbook

Cross-post your blog updates to your Facebook account. Navigate to Settings → Wordbook for configuration.

21.  WordPress.com Stats

Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.

22.  WordPress Thread Comment

wp thread comment allow user can reply comment and same comment On display, can choose ajax or not.

23.  Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (For Blogger, Too!)

Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display. GO HERE FOR BLOGGER WIDGET!

After installing your word press plugins, be sure to go to your settings and configure them to work for you!  Have fun and don’t forget to stop by my Blog Frog Community to give us your input!

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