Blog Category: Blogs

In the last 12 months, I’ve had three clients with WordPress blogs get hacked into. In every case, the WordPress version had become outdated. So if you see a little message like this when you log into your WordPress Dashboard:

Don’t ignore it, just hit the “Please update now” link and follow the instructions.

WordPress may release updates every month, or every few months, so be sure to log into your blog at least monthly to check for a new version number.

Prevent hacking and viruses – keep your WordPress Blog updated!

I ran across a really impressive article today while I was working on a client’s WordPress blog. She had hired a company to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on her blog and was unhappy and looking for guidance. While I knew some of the basics, I went in search of some expert advice. I wanted to post a link to this comprehensive article called “WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog” written by Yoast that I found, because although it’s quite lengthy and time consuming, it’s a wonderful checklist for those of you who have time and patience and want to increase the rankings of your blog.

He starts out with the most important things to focus on:

• Permalinks (I always do this)
• Titles (yup, this too)
• Descriptions (um, don’t really do this at all for my posts)
• More text (who new you could change this!)
• Image Optimization (those pesky alt tags!)

Enjoy!

Usually Akismet protects my blog from spammers. It’s captured and prevented nearly 50,000 (yes, fifty thousand) spam comments from annoying me. But today, all of a sudden, I got a dozen spam comments one right after the other. I looked at the IP addresses, and they were from all over, Israel to the Netherlands. So I looked inside the Akismet Configuration and saw this scary message: “Unable to reach any Akismet servers.”

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One of the many reasons I like using DreamHost as a hosting company, is their WordPress “one-click installer” program that makes adding a WordPress blog to a website fast and simple. This article lists directions on how to set up a blog on DreamHost, assuming that you’ve already purchased a domain name and set up a hosting account with DreamHost. These instructions also assume that you’ve already got a good understanding of how WordPress works.

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How can tell if a comment you receive on a blog post/article is real and sincere – or just a spammer trying to get a link? I often get very short comments in my blog. They often say “Great post” or “Thanks for the tip”, or some such vague language. One of the ways that people hope to improve their website page ranking, is by getting inlinks – and they do this by leaving fake or spam comments in other people blogs. But how can you tell the difference?

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So you want to start a blog and become a blogger? I recommend you don’t use Blogger or another service that forces you to have a domain like yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.wordpress.com – but rather, strongly encourage you to buy your own domain and set up web hosting for your blog. I know this sounds complicated, but in the long run, it’s very affordable, around $10 per month – and you have complete control over your blog. I often get asked to set up blogs on client’s websites – and have run into some issues with different hosting companies – so this article will detail what to look for in a hosting company with blogging in mind.

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Yesterday the blogging community lost, what in my opinion, is one of the finest examples of what blogging can accomplish: Leroy Sievers, author of the NPR My Cancer blog, passed away. I’ve been reading his blog for around 6 months, following his heroic battle against colon cancer that had spread to his brain, lungs, back, hip – pretty much all over his body. His outlook and conversation style reminded me of a good friend I had when I used to live in Florida – so I felt like I “knew” him, even though I didn’t. In many ways, he introduced me to blogging and is an inspiring example of what good can come of authentic, honest, and brave online writing. If you’ve never read Leroy’s blog, take a look, and maybe leave a comment for his wife Laurie, who was his caretaker.

I’ll miss reading your blog Leroy. ðŸ™�

We all hate spam. If you own a WordPress blog, and you have comments enabled (which is recommended), you will get spam in your comments. But there’s good news…there are several easy steps you can take to prevent spam comments in your blog.

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Static vs Dynamic website pages explained: I’ve found myself explaining this to my clients, with varying degrees of success, so I thought a really well-written blog article might help. This article will attempt to explain the difference between static web pages and dynamic web pages, and why your particular website might have one or the other or even both.

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As you’re reading this, it’s probably June 23rd or a bit later.

As I’m writing this, it’s May 11th.

Have I invented a time machine?

Nope! I’m just taking advantage of WordPress’s Scheduling feature, and I’m really loving it.

If you’re like me, you like writing blog articles. But you don’t always have ideas all the time. I keep a little note pad with ideas for future articles. But I don’t always feel like writing, and the bloggers out there say you should blog on a regular basis, like once a week, etc. The scheduling feature of WordPress comes to the rescue!

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