Marketing with WordPress and More

When I log into my WordPress blogs and see a notice at the top of the screen that there is a new version of WordPress, I feel excited and nervous at the same time.

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Updating your WordPress plugins regularly is VERY important. Updates usually include bug fixes and other improvements. It’s wise to check your plugins to see if they need to be updated at least once a week.

Note: you’ll probably see a lot of update notices after a new version of WordPress is released because the plugin developer had to change their plugin to work well with the new version.

How Do You Update WordPress Plugins?

It’s very easy!

1. Log into your WordPress blog. After logging in you’ll be on what is called the Dashboard. At the left hand side of your screen you’ll see something like this:

2. Hover over or click on Plugins and choose Installed

3. As you look at the list of plugins that are installed on your blog, you’ll see a notification if any of them need to be updated.

An update message will look something like the image below.

This is snapshot from one of my client’s blogs. I underlined the update message in red.

Click on the image for an expanded view.

4. Choose upgrade automatically and the upgrade will be just as it says, automatic!

5.  As the update takes place you’ll see the lines below appear one by one until the update is complete:

If there is any issue with the update, you’ll be notified and you can decide if you need to try updating again or if you want to get rid of the plugin and find something that works better

Another Note: Please read Leanne King’s comment on this post about the exceptions to this upgrading method

6. Remember to check your plugins every week and update as soon as you see the notifications.

Also, don’t forget to back up your WordPress blogs regularly. To learn how to do that, read my post:

Easy Wordpress Backup

~ Lillea Woodlyns

I was wasting a lot of time with trial & error before I read WordPress for Internet Marketers by Leanne King – a treasure trove of excellent tools and techniques that can help you transform your blog into something attractive and profitable.  It’s also one of the best resources I’ve found for information on reliable plugins!

Note: The majority of these are plugins are free and recommended by Leanne King

1. Platinum SEO Pack is often cited as being better than the very popular All in One SEO plugin. It can greatly improves how your blog is indexed in search engines and is a must-have, unless you are using a premium theme that is already properly SEOd (and regularly updated to keep current with what search engines like) like Thesis

2. OptinPop allows you to easily add a customized opt-in box that you can connect with one of the top 2 autoresponders I reviewed in my post Autoresponder Review – Top 2 Choices

However, I am far more keen on Robert Plank’s Popup Software which I’m using on this blog.

3. Privacy Policy is essential if you use Adsense. Starting at the end of February 2008, Google law is that sites that display AdSense ads or search boxes must  have a privacy policy. If you don’t use Adsense it’s still a good idea to have a privacy policy and the wording in this one is general enough to cover many different kinds of sites.

4. Theme Tester is handy because having a great theme for your business blog is essential and you will probably end up switching themes more than once. With this plugin you can test different themes without affecting what your visitors see until you’re ready to make the change official.

5. Robots Meta is awesomely helpful. It allows you to  easily change which pages  in your blog are indexed in search engines (you don’t want download pages indexed, for example) and whether links in a post or on a page should be dofollow or nofollow.

6. Sociable adds social media buttons to your posts  so your visitors can easily submit your site to their favorite social bookmarking and news sites. You’ll see it in action at the bottom of this post.

7. WP Database Backup helps you to backup your blog as often as you like. Backing up  regularly is wise for everyone, but it can be all the more critical if your blog is a source of income. This plugin makes it easy, allowing you to set how often the backup runs and where to send the file for safekeeping. You can read more about backing up WordPress here

8. Maximum Security will fix a huge number of  security problems that allow evil doers to hack (mess with) WordPress blogs. As it stands now, WordPress is fairly easy to hack even if you use some of the security plugins that are available. Maximum Security is still in beta right now but will be released soon. It won’t be free but the beta testers are wowed by it – it will likely be a must-have.  You can sign up to be notified about the release date when you visit the site.

Note: To learn about the best security plugins and strategies to protect your blog from malicious hackers, I recommend John Hoff’s excellent ebook and video package: WordPress Defender: 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog from Attack that Anyone Can Do

9. TESTIT makes it possible to split test different posts within Wordpress. You can write two versions of any post and  see from within the WP Admin which post generated more clicks or which blog post inspires the most people to click through to other pages on your blog, other categories, other posts, what you have in your sidebar, etc.

10. Podcasting is a great way to get your message out. This plugin takes a file from your site or another site and adds it to an iTunes-based feed. It also includes a player so visitors can tune in on your blog. Having a good microphone is important.

11. Auto Social Poster Gold will auto bookmark your blog posts to over 30 bookmarking websites as soon as you click Publish. It also has a random submission option if you want to avoid being slapped for submitting to too many sites at once. This works far better than software like Web2Submitter in my opinion. I learned about this product from James Schramko -  a marketer with a refreshing amount of integrity and an awesome ninja coaching forum that you can join. Have a look: Super Fast Strategies

~ Lillea Woodlyns

Leanne King is known as The WP Queen. It’s easy to see why when you read WordPress for Internet Marketers , her WordPress how-to guide that helps beginners and pros turn WordPress into, as the product tagline says, a money press.

I am VERY happy with this product. It’s one of the best things that I’ve bought for my online business.

The guide is filled with easy to understand directions and lots of screenshots. Leanne knows how important it is to explain things clearly. Beginners and advanced users will appreciate this because WordPress can be fussy to work with at times.

WordPress for Internet Marketers offers lots of information about free and paid WordPress services & tools which will help you to easily:

• install, backup and upgrade WordPress.  Note: Power users will appreciate Leanne’s how-to for installing WordPress on several sites at the same time.
• fully optimize your WP blog for search engines like Google

• customize the look of your WP blog with one of the many free and premium themes that she has carefully tested. To learn more about good themes, see my post  Best Wordpress Themes
  
• create many different kinds of sites. For example:

• membership site – one of the most interesting options she covers is the ability to charge a fee to access an individual post
• salespage – Example: landing page for affiliate sales
• Amazon store, e-store
  
• article directory – could your blog be the next Ezine?
• review blog, video blog, job search directory … it’s amazing how many options she covers. Before I read this guide I didn’t realise that WordPress could be used to create so many different kinds of sites so easily.

Bonus with purchase: 100 simple WordPress themes, some with resale rights + WordPress upgrade reports *

* Leanne’s upgrade reports are time and stress savers. WordPress is notorious for frequent upgrades that can change how your favorite WordPress plugins and features behave. Leanne beta tests new WordPress versions and alerts you about what will be new and improved after each upgrade.

Option: Comprehensive video tutorial package to speed learning. I went for this option and it has helped me tremendously!

I think that the price of this product is very reasonable for what you get. Most people will never find most of the information that Leanne reveals because she is a thorough researcher and WordPress is her specialty.

Leanne and I have many friendly exchanges on Twitter and the SFR Business Coaching Forum. It’s cool to interact with marketers who put a lot of care into their products and respond quickly to questions. Leanne King is a marketer with integrity which is very important to me.

WordPress for Internet Marketers can help you even if you aren’t interested in making money with your blog. The directions will show you how to create a great looking blog quickly.

I truly love this product.

Is there anything that I don’t like about it? Yes, but it’s minor. I don’t like most of the free themes that are bundled as a bonus, but that’s fine, the themes that Leanne recommends in the book are great and I have my personal favorites anyway such as the theme I’m using on this blog and frugal Theme.

There is also a minor flaw in the book: the Adobe Acrobat pages and the pages that Leanne has assigned in the book don’t match – the result of dividing such a long book into several PDFs I imagine. Keep that in mind when you read the table of contents and try hunt down a particular section. See the example below to understand what I mean about the page mismatch:

Feel free to ask me questions about this product by writing to me at AskLillea.com – I’ll do my best to help you determine if this product is right for you. I’m also happy to contact Leanne King on your behalf.

~ Lillea Woodlyns

P.S. If you’re interested in WordPress for Internet Marketers by Leanne King I suggest that you buy it ASAP. The price may go up soon.

Tags: Leanne King, Leanne King WordPress, make money with WordPress, WordPress for Internet Marketers, WordPress for Internet Marketers Review, WordPress membership site plugin

Special Notice:  I highly recommend: WordPress for Internet Marketers by the ‘WP Queen’ Leanne King.  My full review is here: Wordpress-for-Internet-Marketers-Review

You probably know it’s important to regularly back up the files in your computer in case something goes screwy and you lose your data.

For the same reason, it’s equally important to backup your WordPress files!

Technical wackiness can happen online too. Wouldn’t it be awful if you lost all of your posts and settings? But don’t worry, if something dreadful happens and your files go belly-up, a recent backup – say, a week old at most – will definitely help a lot.

If you post a lot on your blog, it’s wise to backup your WordPress blog database frequently - perhaps daily.

I use the WordPress Database Back Up PlugIn for exactly that.

After the PlugIn is installed and configured (not hard to do!)  it can be set to automatically back up your blog’s database whenever you like. Mine is set to backup daily. Every day the backup file is sent to an e-mail address of my choice.

Very easy!

It’s also best to do a FULL backup of ALL of your WordPress files – perhaps weekly.

I save the full backup files in a folder in my computer.

I have used the FREE FTP program Filezilla to upload files to this blog. It turns out that you can also use it to for the full backup of your WordPress blog. Filezilla works on both PCs and Macs.

After connecting to your site with Filezilla, it’s very easy to download your WordPress blog files to your computer for safekeeping.

7 Easy Steps to Follow to Create a FULL WordPress Backup

1. Download and install Filezilla on your computer.

2. Create a new folder on your computer desktop to store your blog’s backup files. Name it something appropriate and exact like ‘Full Blog Backup Jan 1 2010′.

3. Using Filezilla, connect to the site that your WordPress blog is installed on. For information on how to configure Filezilla, read the directions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_FileZilla

4. In the Right Pane of Filezilla double click on WWW.  Click on the ‘blog’ folder. Or, if you have more than one site, find the site for the blog you’re backing up and look for it’s blog folder. In the Right Bottom Pane of Filezilla you’ll see these folders:

wp-admin

wp-content

wp-includes

Those are the folders for your WordPress blog. You’re going to copy them into the folder that you created on your computer desktop.

5. In the Left Pane of Filezilla click on the folder that you created on your desktop for your backup.

6. In the Right Bottom Pane of Filezilla highlight the wp-admin folder. Right click on it and select download. This will download the folder to the folder on your desktop. When the download is finished do the same thing with the folders wp-content and wp-includes.

This process may take a while if there are lots of files to download inside the folders. Be patient.

7. Do you see the files right under the wp-includes folder? Select all of them, right click, and then select download to download them to the folder on your desktop.

You’re done!

Remember, if you upgrade to a new version of WordPress, you should do a full backup beforehand!

~ Lillea Woodlyns