Archive for the ‘Plugins’ Category

Sometimes you want to have columns, nice and neat, easy, with no fancy borders or anything.

Simplest thing we’ve found is to install the WP Columnize plugin.

Once activated you do need to carry out a couple of actions to get working:

Add your preferred style details to the style.css file for your theme (Appearance, Editor and be sure to select the style.css file). You can use the plugin creator’s suggestion here, as follows:

div.column-sect {
    clear: both;
    display: inline-block;
    overflow: auto;
    }

div.post-column {
    display: inline;
    float: left;
    margin-right: 18px;
    text-align: justify;
    width: 45%;
    }

Just add that code to the end of the style.css file, save it and your columns will be nicely formatted.

Next you want to use the columns. With the plugin activated and using the HTML sheet, you will see the two extra buttons – one for “column” and the other “col-sect”.

The first thing to do is write your first column, highlight it and click the column button – this will add the required code to make your first column. Then do the same for your second column. And after that, select both columns and click the col-sect button – encompassing the whole into a column section. And hey presto – columns. The plugin programmer offers more detail on his website here.

We’ll add a short video to this post next week, or if you get stuck, give us a shout.

Babs

Long recognised as an essential plugin for WordPress blogs and websites, and something we’ve encouraged you to activate, Akismet does a good job of halting spam comments. Indeed each time we install a new WordPress blog, we’ve include the activation of the Akismet spam filter as standard- it’s always seemed sensible, being pretty good at what it does, and already sitting there ready for it’s API key (which makes it work, basically).

But last weekend, for the first time, on popping to the Akismet site for said key, I found that they’ve started charging for any but personal blogs. Now this is fair enough, in the grand scheme of things – a good service is provided and they’re not running a charity, after all.

Now we need to know if it is still the best option for those of us running business or even non-profit WordPress websites or blogs (though they do offer the latter a discount). Is Akismet worth the $5 per month? Should we pay it anyway out of loyalty for a service well provided?

I did ask the fine folk at Akismet what will happen to existing accounts but have yet to receive a reply – it may be that we’ll simply find out in due course, perhaps when their next update is due, or they may just let it go – there are a lot of us! In the meantime we’re reviewing the alternatives and considering the best service to halt the waves of comment spam. It’s unlikely that any free service will remain so if the mighty, omnipresent Akismet is now charging, so that needs to be taken into account before changing providers.

We’ll update you further as we are able. And if you have thoughts, suggestions, ideas for this, please share them…

Babs

Subscribers to this blog will receive an email every day with any blog posts of the last 24 hours – sometimes a few, sometimes none, depending on how the muse or inclination has taken us (or how hard I’ve wielded the whip). And thanks to Feedburner what you get is a smart email.

So how do you add this to your blog?

First you’ll want to “claim your feed” at Feedburner. If you have a Google account you can use that, or create a new one. Follow the instructions to set things up there.

Then you want Feedburner to work from your blog – we use the FD Feedburner plugin which takes care of all this. Once installed (Plugins, Add New then search for the FD Feedburner – Install and Activate) you’ll have a link to configure the Feedburner under the Plugins Menu.  What we use here is the form provided by Feedburner within a Text Widget box. Nice and simple – have a play and set yours up.

Babs

Now this is a little plugin that has escaped my notice so far, but one that Sarah spotted ages ago as being useful as she’d installed it on a few collaborative blogs we work on.

The Count per Day plugin sits quietly in your Dashboard and provides you with a wealth of immediately accessible information:

• Total visitors
• Visitors per month
• Browsers
• Visitors per day
• Reads per day
• Visitors per post
• Latest counts (20 most visited posts in last 7 days)

It’s great for offering you an immediate snapshot of topics, titles and styles that attract visitors.

Having recently noticed someone selling their Internet marketing wares recently and including the fact that Google picks up their blog content within an hour as a selling point, I’d rather like to point out that this is actually a simple thing for most people. It is not some magical SEO bonus bestowed upon those in the know; it is standard practice if you make it easy for Google to do such.

Think about it. What does Google want to do? What is its purpose?

Google’s aim is to provide you, the searcher/user/however you like to be known with the most relevant websites for your search. And the best way it can do that is to work those spiders hard – sending them out to updated and new content as fast as their little legs can manage (ok – enough with the analogy now!).

So how can you tell Google that you have fresh content? Well if you include a XML sitemap plugin then you’re doing it! A sitemap simply lists all the pages within a website, so any changes to this list are easily spotted and updated. When this post goes live, I’ll check Google after 10 minutes and will be surprised if it’s not listing already – not magic, rocket science or fairy dust – it’s just what Google does if you help it.

We use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin but there are several available to you (as with most plugins!). To then set this up, Settings, Google XML Sitemaps – go through each option and set to what you want. It’s quite a list, but don’t be daunted. If you’re at all unsure, leave the standard, default settings in place, or get us to check yours with you. One thing to watch is not to request updates too frequently – any such settings will be suggestions anyway, but if you do update Google too often with the same post, that may not be well-regarded. Let’s face it, daily is more than adequate for most of us – it’s not that long since we had to wait months for our pages to be listed in Google – now we’re talking in hours or even minutes.

Babs