Wordpress Lets You Do That?

The below text is a definition from Wikipedia:

“A TrackBack is a mechanism used for communication between blogs: if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a “TrackBack Ping”; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.”

The main use of a Track Back is to utilise it for posting comments on other peoples blogs, and also for promoting your own articles. If there is related content between blogs, it helps distribution of participating bloggers content.

How To Enable Track Back:

1. Login to your WordPress Admin Panel and navigate to the Options -> discussion section.
2. Check the option to Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)
3. Click Update Options

How to Trackback:

Using Trackbacks in WordPress is pretty easy to use. When writing a post, simply copy the permalink of the post you want to trackback to into the trackback section. Also, you can just link to a permalink within the content of your posts and a trackback will be achieved.

Another little hidden gem that may just give you that little bit more of an advantage.

Really Simple Syndication. Doesn’t sound really simple to me but it is. RSS is a technology that has been around since about 2000, and what it does is publish blog entries, videos, podcasts and news headlines frequently in a standard format to users who subscribed to the blog’s RSS feeds.

Using RSS allows us (subscribers) to receive updates and content to those sites that we subscribe to instead of going to your bookmarks and constantly checking for updates manually.Now if you’re like me, and have a dozen great sites/blogs that you really like, it can be very time demanding to visit them every day and check for updates.

In order to subscribe to an RSS feed, we have to have an RSS Reader. These readers come in both local (desktop) or web based readers, and you can access your feeds no matter what computer you are using, and no matter where you are in the world. If you are a FireFox user, then you can automatically add Feeds to your browser simply by clicking on a Blog’s subscribe button. A great web based RSS Reader is through Google Reader, and you can set it up even better so you can view it through iGoogle.

Once you have subscribed to a RSS Feed, your reader will automatically update once a new feed has appeared and you will be able to click on a link to view the new post.

So this leaves the question, ‘How do I subscribe to a RSS feed?’. The easiest way, is when you are at a blog you want to subscribe to (like this one:) look at the browsers address bar and you will see an image similar to the one in this post. Click on that image and you will be presented with the opportunity to subscribe via your bookmarks, or other RSS readers that may be there. Many blogs have a very prominent RSS image and encourage readers to subscribe.

Akismet is a free plugin for non commercial use (relaxed rules from the owner apply) that you install to your Wordpress blog. What the plugin does, is to stop and isolate spam that comes to your blog. This spam is via Pingback, Trackback, and of course via Comments.

These packets of information are first submitted to the Akismet web server to see if those who sent the packet is blacklisted on their own server. As Akismet puts it, they either give it the thumbs up or the thumbs down. The information on their web server is kept current so you don’t have to worry about new attackers.

If any spam is caught, it is isolated and you can review if you wish (in case there is a false positive). Other than that, the spam is deleted in 15 days automatically. If a spam post does get through, check it off as spam and Akismet will remember it for next time.

To use Akismet, you will need a Wordpress.com API key. This is the same key that you should have if you have previously installed Wordpress Stats. Once you have logged on to your dashboard, activate the plugin, and you will be asked to enter your API key. Once done, Akismet is ready and will do its thing in the background.

If you have an active blog, and get lots of comments, this is a very valuable tool for managing your time more effectively, and you won’t have to work out what is spam and what isn’t.

In the default Kubrick Wordpress template, it is set up so that your sidebar only shows on your index.php page. If you are monetising your blog, then you will want your affiliate banners to show on every page and every post.

A common thing that may happen, is that a  post of yours will show up on page one of Google for a particular keyword. Unless this was your latest post, visitors won’t see any affiliate banners you may have down the side of your page.

There is a way around this, but it is a little technical.

1. The first step is to login to your administration panel.
2. Click the Design tab from the admin navigation menu.
3. Select the Theme Editor tab from the administration sub-menu.
4. Now select the WordPress default theme within the theme editor window from the drop down menu under themes to edit.
5. Find and select the single post theme file (single.php) from the Wordpress default theme files to the right. You should now see Editing single.php at the top of the theme editor.
6. Near the top of the file, find where it says:
   

   <div id="content" class="widecolumn">

7. Change widecolumn to narrowcolumn so the code looks like the following:
   

   <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

8. Now scroll down to the bottom of the file and find where it says:
   

   <?php get_footer(); ?>

9. Directly above this add the following:
   

   <?php get_sidebar(); ?>

10. Your final entry at the end of the single.php file should look like this:
    

    <?php get_sidebar(); ?>

    <?php get_footer(); ?>

11. Once edited, simply click the update file button at the bottom right and go view your site. You should now have a sidebar on your post pages.

In many themes that you upload to your server to use, this may have already been done for you. Many people do like to use the clean lines of the Kubrick template though, and this little trick makes your blog have that much more advertising space on it.

If we are truly serious about our online presence, then we have to keep up on our web statistics. Web stats tell us loads of information about our visitors. Where they came form, what they looked at, what images they clicked on, what page they left on, and how much time they spent on our site.

If you’re in the business of online marketing, then paying attention to your web stats is crucial, to tweak your site for that competitive edge. The good news is, that you can now install a plugin from Wordpress.com that will allow you to see all this information and more from your Wordpress Blog.

If you have not already got the plugin, you can get it at wordpress.com. Once uploaded to your blog, you’ll have to visit wordpress.com and register, then you will get a security key to activate the plugin. This key is called an API key. Once you have the key you will have to enter it via your blog. This key is emailed out to you, so be sure not to delete the email. If you have more than one blog, you will use the same key for each.

Once activated, you’ll generally have to wait half an hour before the plugin begins to work. The Web Stats are located on your Dashboard and there is plenty of information contained there to keep you busy. Take note of where your traffic comes from, as you can beef up your efforts in these areas, and cut down in areas where you may be dedicating a lot of time trying to get small amounts of traffic from.

Being the hard working Internet Marketers that we are, sometimes it just isn’t time friendly to punch out a blog post every two or three days. If you have a good following of readers who love your content, they may get a little disgruntled and begin to look for their content elsewhere. We don’t want to lose our readers, as they are our biggest asset. So what can you do?

The easiest thing to do is schedule your posts to come out at a time and date that you can pre select. What many bloggers choose to do is to set aside a few hours once a week or so, and just blog away for that entire time. Just make sure you close your email down and turn your phone off, so that you actually finish what you started (This is a great way to get anything done by the way).

So now you have written your fantastic post filled with awesome content, it’s time to schedule when you want it to be published. When you are actually writing your post, there is a section on the right that says “Preview This Post” in a little box in the sidebar. In this same box you will also see, “Publish Immediately Edit”. You want to click on that hyperlink that says edit.

All you have to do now is put in the date and time you want you post published and it is all done. Don’t forget to save your post before closing the page.

So if you could write ten or twelve posts in a couple of hours, you can set your blog up on auto pilot for the next few weeks, giving you more time to focus on other things.

Did I write this post now or did I write it a few weeks ago and set it to be published now? Well, I published it as soon as I wrote it actually:)

Headspace II is a great plugin that is great for SEO. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

First, if you don’t already have it, you can get it here and upload it to you wp-content file on your server. Once activated, you can go to your settings and find it in the nav bar.

HeadSpace II has a couple of different ways of creating meta descriptions and keywords to assist your SEO efforts.

Firstly, for those of us who feel we don’t have enough time, there is the automatic way. HeadSpace II can put an excerpt of your post in the description tag and the categories associated with the post in the keywords tag.

Secondly, for those of us who need a little more control, there is the manual way. Once installed, each post now comes with a meta description and meta keyword box on the posting screen. Simply fill those two out and HeadSpace II will do the rest.

All in all a very nice little plugin that can make life just that bit easier.

Add This is a Plugin that you can add to your Wordpress site that will make Social Networking and Bookmarking, a whole lot easier for just not you, but anyone who stops by your blog.

What it does is it inserts a small button at the end of each of your posts. When you run your cursor over the button it expands and there are links displayed to every major, and a host of smaller, Networking and Bookmarking sites.

Sometimes you can insert a plugin for each of your preferred sites, such as Digg and Facebook, but this plugin caters more for your readers who may use the tool if their Bookmarking site is available. This becomes more important as your levels of traffic starts to increase.

All you have to do is to go to the Add This website, and download the plugin. Upload to your server, activate, and at the end of each post you’ll have a nice little button that you can have easy access to turbocharge your SEO efforts.

There are a number of ways to insert a Youtube video into your Wordpress post, and this is just the method that I use as I find it easiest.

Pretty simple really. Go to the YouTube website and find the page where the video you want to you use sits. To the right of this there is a section that says “Embed”. If you click on the customise link then it will open up some more options for you.

What we have here is HTML code that you will have copy and paste into your post into your post under the HTML section. To customise it, select if you want a border and what colour you want it too.

You have the option of including or not including the video to show related videos when it has finished. If you do not want readers to move away from your post, or even to expose your reader to a possible competitor of yours, then it might be a good idea to choose the ‘Don’t include related videos’ option.

Video blogs are getting quite popular and as faster broadband is reaching out across the world, this is a great medium for getting your message out there. I’ll be sure to insert a Youtube video insert of what I have just described above soon, to clear things up for you.

If you have a look at a lot of Wordpress blogs out there, especially the monetized ones, there are images in the side bar that are Call To Action buttons. If you click on the image then you will get taken to another page or website. This is very cool if you are an affiliate marketer and want to drive traffic from your blog to another site where your reader can be presented with an offer.

We put images in the sidebar of our blog through use of a Widget , or to be more specific, a Wordpress text widget. You get to your Widget toolbar by hitting Design, then select Widgets from the Nav bar. From the left hand side, you will want to select a new text widget and add it to your sidebar. That being done we can now add the image that you want to display there.

A couple of choices here, have a image that has no clickable properties, or one that does, and takes the reader to a new page. Which ever one you want, you still have to insert HTML code into the text edit. Do you have to know HTML to do this? Well it doesn’t hurt to know a little for tidying things up, but it is easier to use an HTML editor (Frontpage will do), so you can insert you image in design view , and then just copy and paste the source code into your text widget.

Your HTML should look something like this:

<p align=”center”><a href=”http://clintmaher.com/feed/atom/”><img src=”http://clintmaher.com/wp-admin/images/rss_logo.gif”></a></p>

This tells the browser how the image should sit on the page, and it also tells it where the image lives, which could be on your server (remember FTP uploading), or it could be on someone else’s server, and you are just borrowing their image (with permission of course).

Once you have done this, save your changes and check out your blog. If you have done everything OK then there should be your image in the sidebar for everyone to see. Try this with your blog. You’ll probably have to play around with the size of your images to make sure they fit in the sidebar and inside of any borders and the like.

With a bit of practice you’ll have a pretty funky site in next to no time.