Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Those who have been loyal readers and supporters the past couple years know that I have been speaking at WordCamps every year. Last year I spoke at 6.

WordCamps are WordPress conferences where people come to learn more about using their WordPress-powered site to its maximum potential… whether you are a newbie, intermediate user, a designer, or a developer. Every WordCamp speaker is a volunteer, so the money comes out of our own pockets.

I am speaking at WordCamp Kansas City in June 2012 and need your help to cover my travel and accommodations. My topic is typography. This is he 9th WordCamp I will be speaking at since 2010. I of course will podcast my presentation, but I know that WordPress will film it. The issue is, that their film queue is extensive, so you are more likely to catch the podcast first than the video.

I would like to raise $600 before the end of May. In return, I will mention your name and website at the end of the podcast presentation as a thank you AND publish your name and your website in the post here at Blondish.net that the podcast will be listed. It is the least I can do for your support.

To donate, click the button on the module below, specify how much, and then pay the amount you are donating.

Note: The support module is hosted by Chipin, but payments are handled by Paypal.

I know, I know, not again! Facebook has once again changed their fan page format. This time it is to the Timelines format that we see in regular Facebook profiles. You might be a bit miffed about the changes, and maybe even previewed it, but not fully accepted converting over yet. You may even be a bit confused or not sure what these changes should mean to you. Never fear, Timelines For FB Pages is here!

Kimberly Castleberry just recently held a very handy webinar called Timelines For FB Pages just in time for the new Timeline features that Facebook rolled out. This is a big change in the design and how both the fan page administrator and the actual fan use their page.

The biggest factor in this change, is that the terms Facebook has laid out for the administrator and these changes mean that not only do you lose your custom landing tab as your front page, but that some tricks to get fans to like your page may end up with your fan page removed.

Kim covers Timelines for Facebook Fan Pages thoroughly. Here is some of what she covers:

• Facebook’s new policies for Timelines for fan pages
• New branding tools
• How the Timeline works and can be used to convert visitors

And much more…

While Kim is a great friend of mine, she has this knack to take you through new tools and show you every nook and cranny, so not only do you feel comfortable in using your fan page, you can use it to your advantage. I really recommend purchasing this Timelines For Facebook Fan Pages Training Webinar if you are hesitant to switch to the new version for Facebook fan pages. Facebook will be making every fan page convert to the new Timelines format over by March 31st, 2012 anyway, so you might want to at least preview and play with the new format.

Have you checked out the new Facebook Timeline for fan pages? What are your thoughts about the new format?

Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP) was just recently updated (March 3, 2012) and it calls a fatal error. This is in version 3.5 of the plugin and using WordPress 3.3.1.

The error should be something similar to:

- Catchable fatal error: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string in /home/blondish/public_html/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 805

If you are upgrading or have already upgraded your Yet Another Related Post Plugin, please check your website. If this fatal error occurs on yours, simply deactive, delete, and go to the YARPP download page in the WordPress plugin directory and download the previous full version of the plugin. The previous full version would be 3.4.3 and you can find it by going to the link that says “Other Versions.” Install that versiion, adjust the plugins settings, and you should be good to go.

Somedays WordPress Can Make You Want To Pull Your Hair Out!

That’s why we’ve added a new weekly event for you to Kimberly Castleberry’s Facebook Fan page!

Hey everyone, I’m Kimberly Castleberry and for those that don’t know me I’m a WordPress tech that specializes in supporting small and home business owners in getting the most from their WordPress sites without having to become geeks themselves!

I run a number of events including #TribeTuesday and #FanPageFriday on my page throughout the week that provide you with opportunities to promote others as well as yourself. Check them out for more details.

I put #WordPressWednesday together to give anyone that is feeling stuck, confused, baffled, or generally curious about something related to WordPress or use of WordPress in marketing an opportunity to come out and ask questions and get them answered! Even better… its FREE!

Several generous individuals, including Nile here at WP Addict and others graciously join me in the fun and help answer a wide range of topics.

While there are some questions that are not possible to answer in a Q&A format, you’d be surprised what we can find a way to answer!

Whether its a plugin setting, questions about what plugin to use, difficulty with a configuration, puzzled over the difference between contact forms and optin forms, or wondering what the pros and cons of wordpress.com and wordpress.org are – we got you covered!

How does it work? Just come over to my page – ( Kimberly Castleberry Facebook fan page )], hit the “like” button if you haven’t already, and then go to the Wall tab and start a new message/conversation! As soon as I can I will answer you back to the best of my ability!

Now, of course actual support work is going to be required in some cases but generally with a little discussion most things can be answered right there on the page!

Even if you don’t have any questions, watching the questions that come in can be a great way to pick up pointers and ideas.

Skilled in WordPress? Come join us and flaunt your WP muscles! It’s a great opportunity to help answer questions, build your reputation and foster the love of our beloved WordPress in new users!

I look forward to seeing you on Facebook each week!

Kimberly

PS: Also be sure to check out #WordPressWednesday, #FanPageFriday, and #SharingSundays on Nile Flores’ fan page for another great place to promote your most recent blog post AND ask those WordPress questions!

I have been tagging quite a few commenters for spam and noting at other WordPress related sites, that there have been a lot of people leaving comments for their premium plugins.

The message has nothing to do with the original post and in my case, it was on a post of a plugin that had nothing to do with the premium posts.

Rather than go about it this way, perhaps the plugin makes should consider releasing the plugin to notable people in the WordPress community to try out and write their feedback. Commenting and leaving a spammy link does nothing but go to the trash or get ignored.

There are better ways to get the word out including affiliate programs, effective advertising on various networks, and as I have said, through word of mouth through product testing. My concern is that these commenters are the type who were hired cheaply at some freelancer website and by someone with no grasp on how to use social media marketing effectively.

Of course, there are individuals that are merely affiliates and do not work for a particular company, but they can be just as much as a nuisance.

So, this is just a heads up to those in the WordPress community and even bloggers who do talk about WordPress from time to time. Yes, even if you talk about WordPress or WordPress plugins, you might be targeted for comment spam.

How can you prevent this?

Obviously blocking every IP address involved in spamming is not going to cut it as you could accidentally block one of your regular visitors.

You can install spam plugins, but you still get spam. What you can do it visit the site of the plugin and report it. Make sure that if it is an affiliate link, to include that. In the case that you get excessive comments, find out where the domain is hosted and report it on a host level. The host may do several or some of the following:

• Terminate the violator’s account
• Blacklist the user’s IP
• Email the user to warn them of their violation and inform them of what actions will be taken if further behavior continues.

Have you experienced this? How did you respond to it (or did you)?

Direct linking also known as hotlinking where a person uses the image source link on their site instead of hosting it on their own space, is a very common problem. Direct link steals not just the fact that the image was made by another person, but that very person’s bandwidth. Those that pay for their site diskspace and bandwidth have a problem as this drains their bandwidth. If they run out for the month, they face site suspension until the end of the month or paying out of their pocket for extra bandwidth.

To combat this problem, there are several ways to deal with the situation:

1. Contact the webmaster responsible for the problem and inform them that you do not allow people to direct link your images. Give them 72 hours (3 days) to correct the problem. If they do use the image, remind them to give credit back to you.

2. If you cannot contact the webmaster at all whether it is by no response back or no email address given, contact their webhost. Both paid webhosts and freeserver hosts have similar policies on stealing and will either inform the webmaster or immediately remove the problem.

3. If you own your website and have some type of control panel with a Hotlink Protection feature, use that and disbable the ability to allow others to direct link.

4. You can go the mischievous way and give your direct linker an eyeful by creating an image that says something like ‘Stop Stealing my Images’ or ‘Stop Direct Linking’ and replace the image that is being hotlinked while renaming the image that was direct linked to something else. That image will show up on the culprits site and is sure to be removed. If you cannot make a graphic or want to use something, I made the image below and use it. By the way, save it to your own computer or I can make something even cruder.

Do you have any other suggestions?

I recently decided to try out Fiverr, a site where you can put up a service and charge $5. While it works great for a lot of things, it was an Epic fail for WordPress support questions.

I specifically worded my “gig” to not accept advanced questions or questions that would require me to fix a plugin or do something that took more than an hour. Frankly, I was not even up for dealing for a 30 minute problem because… well $5 is not even worth it and I would prefer to give it out for free or not at all.

Perhaps my expectations are high, but this was only an experiment. I do not know the people who have offered WordPress support for quite a while on Fiverr, but I am certain they have been wasting their time. I have had people asking for plugin support on premium plugins from other places, which means… they probably did not buy the original copy or… in the case they did actually pay, they never even bother contacting the plugin developers. The other requests were to add functions to existing plugins.

It was enough to make me click delete on the fiverr gig after two days.

So, while Fiverr is great for a lot of different services, it may not be worth it for WordPress support. People do not read the gig’s description and want you to bend over backwards. Those wanting to try their own venture, good luck, but you will get a lot of inquiries that will want you to do more than $5 worth of work.

If you are going to get a job done, get the guys at WPQuestions to do it. They will do it right and for a fair price.

It has become increasingly annoying to see some of my WordPress colleagues’ works being sold for $5 on places like Fiverr. Here is a quick search access on Fiverr to see if any WordPress themes are being redistributed.

The site does have its uses – that is, as long as people are not abusing the system. This extends to even some of the premium landing and squeeze pages being offered.

One example of redistributing on Fiverr is:

While GPL allows a user to use and alter a theme, and even redistribute it as long as it is under the same license. Software under this license can ALSO be redistributed for free or for money, regardless if the original product was free.

I do know for a fact there are plenty of plugins and landing page packages out there that do not embrace the GPL license. And while, I believe that having free software out there like WordPress is great – and the millions of users out there on self-hosted WordPress powered sites alone that make money through their own business or advertising, is this redistribution/ reselling of premium paid themes acceptable to those developers out there? Do they turn a blind eye?

It is funny, around 2005, in the blog community, I remember a whole uproar and “witch hunt” over webmasters who were being accused of copying other site’s code and design. This is about the time celebrity designs and copyrighted graphics were being blended together and put up on personal sites. Since then the community has changed to accept GPL. I mean- how did everyone learn how to web design…ANSWER: from viewing the source code from the cool code and design ninjas they regularly visited. Well, not everyone, but I am sure some of you reading this may have taken a more than a handful of peeks in the past few years.

Like I said earlier, I do support the concepts of GPL, and understand much of both sides of this coin. I wanted to know from some of the theme designers and developers who have premium themes out there in the online market to share their thoughts on sites like Fiverr re-distributing premium paid themes for a couple dollars.

Your thoughts?