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Archive for December 2009

Happy WordPress New Year

By cathy · Comments (3)
Thursday, December 31st, 2009

This week as been a time of reflection and planning.  Notice I did not say creating resolutions.  I believe resolutions don’t work.  Planning does.

My business coach, Linda Lopeke, gave me some great ‘planning’ advice.  Start by making a list of your victories.  Yes – victories.  Why not start on a positive note?  Decide to do more of that in the coming year. 

Did you get your blog up and running in 2009?  Did you NOT get your blog up and running in 2009?  Either way, put your WordPress site at the forefront of your plans for 2010.  Remember, your site/blog is the heart of your virtual marketing empire and if you pay attention to it, you will reap great rewards in the coming year.

The WordPress Workshop is a perfect way to accomplish that plan.  It starts in a few weeks and the people on the early notification list will get the first chance to register starting on Monday, January 4.  You can get on the early list for the next few days by visiting The WordPress Workshop. 

We will learn so much more than how to ‘do’ a blog – we will learn how to leverage the power of WordPress through social media AND how to use your WordPress site as your complete content management system – including a blog portion or not.  It’s your choice. 

The WorkShop size is strictly limited due to the hands on nature of it – everyone gets his/her own ‘practice’ WordPress site – away from the prying eyes of the search engines.  This WorkShop is the true definition of interactive.  After each WorkShop session you will have a challenge to complete before the next module.  You will learn by doing and there is no better way to learn than by doing it yourself.

So – go on over to The WordPress Workshop and find out all the details about what we will be doing and learning and then register for the early notification list.  Remember, early notification ends on Monday when the people who are registered for early notification will get the first chance to register for the WorkShop.  It will open to the general public on Wednesday, January 6 if there are still open slots.  MANY people have already expressed an interest in this WorkShop so I don’t guarantee that it will even be available to others.

Start the New Year with a plan and a WordPress site.  You will reap the rewards!

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

Comments (3)
Categories : The WordPress Wizard TeleCourses
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Web 2.0? How about WordPress Themes 2.0?

By cathy · Comments (5)
Monday, December 28th, 2009

iThemes Builder WordPress themeWe’ve all heard about Web 2.0 – it’s all about community.  Now IThemes has taken WordPress themes to a whole new level with their Builder theme.  It’s all about flexibility.

Here’s what IThemes has to say about their new Builder theme:

Here are some of the awesome benefits of using Builder Theme:

  • One Theme for Almost EVERY Project!

  • Build almost any kind of new layout or page template you want in minutes (without knowing code)

  • Use one theme to build a website with multiple layouts and individual looks for each (Yes, each layout can have its own CSS!)

  • Assign specific layouts to certain WP Views (Specific layouts for blogs, pages, posts, EVEN categories!)

  • Create new widgets areas layouts or sidecars on the fly (We almost called this theme the Widget Theme)

  • Have special landing pages, squeeze pages, email opt in pages, feed pages, portfolio pages – on ONE theme!

What does this mean for you?  One theme can have many different looks.  You can have different looks for different pages within your site.  You don’t have to know how to code – html, php, css.  There are some built in looks you can use when you are starting out with Builder so you can get used to what it does OR you can continue to use one of the built in looks indefinitely.  It’s all up to you – no limitations!

I’m using Builder on a new site that you will be able to see in a few weeks and The WordPress Wizard will be migrated into Builder soon.  You will see that the two sites won’t even resemble each other but it will be the same theme.

If you are tired of the limitations of your current theme, I highly recommend Builder.  Just click on the Builder graphic at the top of this post and take a look for yourself.  I guarantee that you will be impressed!

Oh yes – if you decide you really like Builder and decide to get it by clicking on the graphic above, send me your receipt and I’ll send you a really cool notepad to print called My Next 10 Blogging Ideas.

Comments (5)
Categories : New Media, The Wizard Recommends, WordPress Themes
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A Very Merry WordPress Christmas

By cathy · Comments (1)
Friday, December 25th, 2009

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Taking just a moment to wish everyone a Very Merry WordPress Christmas.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day with friends and family.

Watch next week for posts reflecting on the past year and making predictions for what might be in store in the new year.

But today, take time to be with loved ones and reflect on your blessings!

 

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

 

 

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Categories : WordPress Wizard
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WordPress 2.9 – Should I or Shouldn’t I

By cathy · Comments (9)
Monday, December 21st, 2009

wordpress-icon-128WordPress 2.9 is out.  Should you upgrade now?  NO! 

Don’t be a beta-tester on your live site.  Wait for some reviews to be written.  Wait for people to test it with plugins and themes to see what, if anything breaks.

WishList products has already advised people using the wonderful WishList member to wait until they test the new version.  Heed their words of advice.

Let others (and there will be plenty of them) do the testing and then do the upgrade.  When you are ready, remember to deactivate all your plugins and do a database AND theme files backup.

Watch this blog and I will let you know when it seems safe to do this upgrade!

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

 

 

Comments (9)
Categories : The Wizard Recommends
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Alex Mandossian says your first site should be a WordPress Blog!!

By cathy · Comments (1)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Alex Mandossian says your first site should be a WordPress Blog!!   He says this alex-sittinga lot and he said it again last night on Teleseminar Secrets.  And he should know.  His blog has an Alexa ranking of 59,562. 

Let me explain this ranking.  If you have a ranking of less than a million you’re doing OK.  When your ranking falls below 500,000 it’s time to celebrate.  When you break below 100,000 you know you have a top blog.

I’ve been Alex’s blog manager as well as his traffic manager and  I can tell you we worked diligently on his blog.   He created a posting schedule and he told his readers what that schedule would be.  And he stuck to it.  He also sends e-mail to his community when there’s a great new post and he tells them to go to the post and leave comments.  And they do it.  This technique is part of my Commenting Strategies class – along with many more.  Alex also says your first non-hosted site should be Twitter and Facebook.  I couldn’t agree more and you are going to learn all that and a whole lot more in the next WordPress Workshop.

I’d like to invite you to get on the early notification list for the next WordPress Workshop.  It will be starting soon – mid January.  Because of the hands on nature of this WorkShop, enrollment is strictly limited.  Those on the early notification list will have the opportunity to register before it is open to the general public.  So go to TheWordPressWorkshop now and get on the early notification list.  There is no obligation – you are simply telling me that you want to be notified.  While you are at the WorkShop page, read all about it and find out what all you get in this WorkShop – you will be really impressed and you can’t get his kind of training anywhere else!!

Comments (1)
Categories : The WordPress Wizard TeleCourses, Trust, social media
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WordPress Blogs – Another Great Question on Traffic

By cathy · Comments (6)
Monday, December 14th, 2009

Just got another great question on WordPress blogging – how to get traffic.

It’s easier to get traffic than it is to turn that traffic into loyal readers who come back again and again.

Some traffic tips are:

twitter-logo-small1Get your Twitter account at twitter.com.  Pay attention to your profile and your avatar.  Fill out your profile as completely as you can and put your website in there.  People do check out who you are and if they can’t figure it out they will not follow you.  I do not auto-follow!  I check out everyone who follows me.

Do not use the default avatar.  Use your picture (don’t worry – it’s very small) or your company logo.  Let people know you are serious about being there.

Incoporate Twitter Tools into your WordPress blog.  It’s a plugin that let’s you do many things.  Only do 2 – create tweets from your posts and put the twitter widget in your sidebar.  Do not let it create posts from your tweets.

 

facebookLikewise – get a FaceBook account.  Do the same as you did for Twitter when it comes to setting up your account.

Create a badge and put it in a widget on your blog.  Let people know you are out there and give them the ability to click the badge and ‘friend’ you.

 

Start with these and we’ll expand your efforts from here in further posts.

In the next WordPress Workshop there will be an entire module on how to get people to your blog and what to do with them after they are there.  Remember – you have to turn that ‘traffic’ into loyal readers who will want to come back.  Watch for a blog post later this week about how to do that!

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

Comments (6)
Categories : New Media
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WordPress – Where to Start?

By cathy · Comments (0)
Friday, December 11th, 2009

As you might know, I invite you to ask your most burning question about WordPress.  In fact, you can do that right now – look just to the right of this post – top of the right sidebar – and ask your question.

Recently I was asked – ‘Where do I start?’  People who have been around WordPress for awhile might forget what it’s like not to know where to start but I have a great solution to that.

It’s called ‘The WordPress Workshop‘ and it will begin again in January – next month!  This workshop is great for beginners or for veterans who want updated, to the minute information about WordPress.

Each person in the WorkShop has his/her own student blog – well hidden from the prying eyes of the search engines – for beginners to learn and for veterans to have a  stress free environment for experimentation and learning how to incorporate Social Media to leverage that immense power.

Enrollment in this WorkShop is limited but there is an early notification list of people who will get the first chance to enroll when it is open for registration.  A go to the head of the line pass, if you will.

Check it out at The WordPress Workshop and get your name on the early notification list.  Enrollment will be first come, first served – AFTER you who have expressed an interest in the WorkShop have your chance.

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

Comments (0)
Categories : The WordPress Wizard TeleCourses
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WordPress Plugins – A Great Question

By cathy · Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

pluginsYesterday’s post on plugins brought a great question to my attention.  The question – How do I get plugins?

Let’s take a step back and see how we get plugins.

Your first step is to decide if you need a plugin.  If you are trying to do something that WordPress or your theme won’t do, there might be a plugin to do it. So how do you find out?

In your WordPress dashboard look for Plugins in the left hand column.  Click the nearly invisible down arrow to the right of the word Plugins and a drop down menu will appear.  Click on… Read More→

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Categories : WordPress Options
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WordPress Plugins – A List of 5 Recommended Plugins

By cathy · Comments (3)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

While not an exhaustive list, here are 5 plugins I wouldn’t be without.

1.   Akismet

Akismet comes with every WordPress install and should be one of the first plugins you activate.  It protects you from spam comments.  Here is what Matt Mullenweg says about it:

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

You will also get an interesting statistic in your dashboard about how many spam comments have been caught for your blog.  Here’s mine -  Akismet has protected your site from 36,057 spam comments already. 

Thank you Akismet – 36,057 yucky comments I didn’t have to see! 

The rest are in no particular order.

2.  Exclude Pages from Navigation

If your theme does not have this built in, this is a plugin you will use a lot.  It allows you to decide which pages appear in the navigation bar.  It provides a simple checkbox on the editing page – you leave it checked to include pages and uncheck it to exclude pages.  Great easy to use plugin but ONLY if your theme doesn’t have that capability built in.

3.  Page Links To 

Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers at WordPress,  wrote this plugin to allow you to link to pages off your blog without the need for an html redirect.  As he says, it’s " Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources."  This is a staple in all of my blogs!

4.  Pretty Link 

Pretty LInk lets you set up and track your own links.  It’s great for disguising those long, ugly affiliate links or ANY link you want to track.  It works outside of WordPress too.  You can use your ‘Pretty Link’ anywhere.  Great plugin!

5.  ShareThis 

Share This lets your visitors share a post/page with others. It supports e-mail and posting to social media and social bookmarking sites and it creates a very cool icon (look for it at the bottom of this post) that is quite recognizable and does not clutter up your blog with a bunch of social media icons. 

There are more and I’ll write about them in upcoming posts.  But these will definitely get you started!

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

 

Comments (3)
Categories : The Wizard Recommends, WordPress Wizard
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The WordPress Wizard Knows – Do You?

By cathy · Comments (0)
Monday, December 7th, 2009

whylovehealsbookcover200What I know is Love Heals.  Many of you heard part of my story on The Wizard Weekly some time back.  Many of you have urged me to tell my story to the world and I plan to do just that but here’s part of it.  I have Multiple Sclerosis and I do know that Love Heals.  The thing is – it took me way too long to figure it out.  If I’d had this book 10 years ago I’d be way ahead.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU there’s a simple way you can make a major difference in your life and the lives of those you love? By doing something that makes you feel good and gives you and others great joy?

Well that is exactly the news that Dean Shrock, Ph.D. brings you in his book, "Why Love Heals"!

This Christmas give yourself, or someone you love, the Gift of Life by giving them the Gift of Love. When you buy "WHY LOVE HEALS", you buy a book that gives you scientific proof of the health benefits of taking time for the fun things in life. It explains why you, and your loved ones, will have more time IN YOUR LIFE – by making more time FOR YOUR LIFE!

Make this Season the Season that you start making time for yourself by reading "Why Love Heals" and sharing it with your loved ones – JUST GO TO:

http://www.WhyLoveHeals.com

When the immortal John Lennon wrote the song, "All You Need is Love," I doubt that he was inspired by science. But now Dr. Dean Shrock’s research has added the science, and discovered that indeed, "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED…!"

Dr. Shrock, author of "WHY LOVE HEALS", began his research with Cancer patients at the Cleveland Clinic in 1986. He then served as Director of Mind-Body Medicine for a physician management group of 40 cancer centers. That’s where he developed, taught, and researched a program that dramatically affected survival with cancer. His patients lived MUCH longer than those receiving only conventional medical treatment
did.

Now in his book, "Why Love Heals", Dean gives you powerful reasons to love YOURSELF and OTHERS! What better time and way to start living that truth than by sharing it with your friends and family this Holiday Season. In Dean’s book you will DISCOVER why every cell in your body, and even your DNA, reacts to your every thought and feeling.

AND, when you purchase Dean’s book today, you receive thousands of dollars of Gifts from the book’s sponsors. Order your copy (or a few copies as gifts) of "WHY LOVE HEALS". Go here NOW!  You’ll get a gift from The WordPress Wizard too – I really believe love works!


http://www.WhyLoveHeals.com

"WHY LOVE HEALS" is not a method of learning to ‘cope’ with poor health. Instead you will DISCOVER that GREATER HEALTH, true joy, peace of mind, and a deeper sense of inner love are all easily attainable. Just as John Lennon so eloquently put it,  "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE"

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard

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Categories : The Wizard Recommends
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