WordPress SEO and Blog Marketing

Over the last few months, I’ve been watching the amount of referrer spam coming out of Google groups rise.

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I install WordPress a lot — at least, a lot more than the average Joe or Jane. And since I tend to install WordPress manually each time, I prefer to optimize the process as much as I can. In that vein, I keep a tally of all the must-be-done core hacks for each version and I administer them as soon as I download and unzip the files. It then becomes my stock WordPress install.

Let me just back up for a moment and explain my system a little better. On my computer, I keep a Tools folder for all the tools I use online (i.e. WordPress, robots.txt template, .htaccess file, and so forth).

Each time a new WordPress release comes out, I immediately download and unzip the files into my Tools folder and then change the default wordpress folder to wordpress-version (example: wordpress-2.5.1).

From there, I go in and add the stock themes, plugins, robots.txt, and .htaccess files. Then, I make each of my core hacks. I then use this version of WordPress for every new installation or upgrade until a new version is released.

This system works for me; it means that all of the themes, plugins, and files I typically use will already be ready and waiting for me and I don’t need to repeat unnecessary tasks for each install.

Now that you know my system, I’ll run down each of the core hacks I make (current as of the 2.5.x branch). It should go without saying that these hacks should not be attempted if you don’t feel comfortable working with PHP code because you could seriously cripple your WordPress installation files if you aren’t careful. You assume all responsibility should your server blow up as a result of following my hacks. Continue reading »

Before we begin, there’s just one thing you need to know: you can take it with you, but you can’t redirect it. Basically, it means that if you’ve established yourself well in the search engines using your wordpress.com domain name, you have a mountain to climb when you’re starting on your own domain with your own installation of WordPress.

The best thing to before embarking on this journey is to assess what the best course of action would be for your particular case. If you’ve been blogging at wordpress.com for a while and have a long standing readership and search engine rank, it may be wise to mothball it and put up a notice explicitly stating that you’ve moved to a new location with a link to your new blog. Then set up your new blog and start fresh.

If, however, you haven’t truly dug your heels in at WP.com, have used your own domain name, or just really want to start over with all your posts on your own self hosted version of WordPress, readership and search engines be damned, then follow along. It’s really quite simple. Continue reading »

It’s all about the color people.

The day has finally arrived…After playing around with it and letting it sit in my dev folder for a couple months, the Supr Preppy WordPress theme is now available for download.

Here’s a basic overview and gotchas: Continue reading »

The official WordPress Theme Viewer has been the place to find WordPress themes for years. Recently, there was a flurry of activity when it was thought a blogger had faked some screen shots of a new redesign.

It spurred an entry at Weblog Tools Collection entitled Where You Download a Theme Matters. In that flurry, one major fact was overlooked while dolling out advice for readers to only download themes from the Theme Viewer or the theme authors’ websites. That’s good advice in general, except that part about downloading from the theme viewer.

Since the theme viewer was taken over by Automattic, and after the flurry of activity to remove all the sponsored themes and those which violated copyrights, the site has seen no more love; it’s been well over 7 months and counting. Continue reading »