Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

WordCamp Chicago is June 5th and 6th, 2010. It is a two day convention on WordPress related topics, as well as some helpful information for bloggers and site owners too. I will speaking on “Rocking Out Your Site With WordPress.”

I am nervous… but I am also excited to share what I love to talk about here at Blondish.net and WPAddict.net. I will be sharing pics and my powerpoint presentation once the convention is done. Maybe not so much here, but at my WordPress related site. However, I will keep everyone informed via Twitter and be taking lots of notes from all of the presentations I will be attending.

I also have a surprise interview to reveal VERY soon at WPAddict.net.

However, during that time, I am putting out a call for guest writers to cover those 3 days. Whether it is your opinion over current Internet related news (example: I have written recently my opinion on Facebooks privacy policy), or social media, web design, blogging, or even SEO, I am interested in hearing from you.

Bonus for you is that you get some link juice and possibly people coming over to visit your site. It would mean a lot to me and the readers here at Blondish.net. I have gotten some great feedback from many people who have enjoyed the guest bloggers. Some of my guest bloggers have even came back to write again.

Are you interested?

WordPress isn’t often thought of as a CMS that business can utilize, but it is. Highly customizable, it extends functionality through the use of various plugins. Trust me- there’s a plugin for everything. One thing that has been throwing us for a loop is the idea of the “average” contact form. The contact form that simply lets the user enter in some data, and the lead is thrown into your email inbox for you to find, risking going into your spam folder never to be found again There has to be something simpler than this… right?

Right. This is how WordPress-to-lead was born. When integrated with the Salesforce CRM, this is a powerhouse for your website. By nature, WordPress plugins are always easy to install, so business owners new to WordPress will not have any problems installing and activating this.

WordPress-to-lead

Skipping the complete anarchy of finding your lead information in your email inbox, WordPress-to-leadwill pull all the information out of your contact form and put it directly into the Salesforce CRM, completely eliminating any chance of error that could occur if you were copying and pasting it yourself. This is both efficient and time saving. Salesforce found great value in this. According to Joost de Valk at Yoast,

“Because the WordPress-to-lead plugin had the potential to really help their SMB customers, Salesforce.com enthusiastically offered to sponsor the program.”

The beauty of this plugin is that it also:

• syncs effortlessly with Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! and more
• tracks all your interactions and conversions
• keep all your information and tasks organized under one roof

If you want to see this great plugin in action, simply take a look at the video below:

If you’re interested in trying this out, but you don’t have a Salesforce account, you can get a Salesforce CRM free trial for 14 days.

Have you heard about this or tried this?

For a while I wanted to make a WordPress related website dedicated some to helping, but mostly the fans. There are quite a few sites out there that are WordPress related, but nothing to say there were not already enough. (lol)

I created WP Addict. Of course, I will still blog about WordPress, but leave them on WP Addict. I am even moving my tutorials that I have currently here over to the site. Never fear…those will be redirected. I am making room for my other tutorials (like html) that I use to have on my site before it became Blondish.net. This is just another refocus. By the way, anyone who likes to help out WordPress users are welcome to post and cross-post their articles at WP Addict. Just use the contact form there and send me a note that you are interested in contributing articles from time to time.

I am actually making fan-ish (WordPress fan stuff) like Wallpapers and such, are free to all who are fans.

WP-FollowFriday for Twitter is a plugin that allows you to select the people you would like to recommend for #FollowFriday. However, when setting this up, I ran into some issues.

It does not ask for a password like in Twitter tools or any authorization. So, how will this connect to the user? I believe more thought and possibly allowing users connect with their Twitter account, and select users would be better. Also, I am the administrator of my blog. Somehow the plugin was telling me I did not have sufficient access to use the plugin.

Also, here is another issue, Follow Friday is not just about listing names. It is about also saying why you recommend a person to be followed. This plugin would allow people who already do not get the concept of #FollowFriday and there would literally be lists of icons, rather than why people should be followed, especially if the list has many.

This also could run into some load time issues with the blog (if the plugin were to work and the people using it list – say 50 people to follow), this would put a little strain on the Twitter API, and frankly as Twitter is known to fail whale or go down lately, or even freeze up, this plugin is not necessarily something I recommend using.

I believe this is a first time I am not recommending a plugin for use, but that is what a review is all about. Unless it is brought back to the drawing board to deal with the user unfriendliness, and altering it to be practical for those who would use the plugin as it should, then I would recommend it. I can give credit to Fabien Bouchard for at least trying to accomplish something like this to make #FollowFriday recommendations unique and easier.

Have you tried this plugin? How has it worked for you?

HookPress is a plugin that allows create POST webbooks to publish material or send push notifications to other sites, like making your own Twitter Tools without the plugin itself. So, in a way, you are just about making your own plugin. You can use PHP, Python, Perl or any code language.

You can use it to can take the content through WordPress filters and publish it in a unique way. Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine aka Mitcho, created the post and explains more about it in his video, which I embedded below.

The plugin is easy to install and you can one-click install it through your own WordPress admin panel. If you do install it, or have already, feel free to drop by and share your creations. It is very exciting to see how people are using this to make their WordPress-core site more versatile. As for using, based on the video, and using my own hook to try something other then my Twitter Tools plugin (which means I when I went to publish, I had to click the ‘no’ to publish to Twitter with Twitter Tools), it was also quite easy to get working. Once I published my first tweet with this, I actually got a bit giddy at the prospect that I could do things I normally do with plugins the countless plugins I have installed in the past.

By the way, I think Twitter Tools is great. I just like trying new things. You cannot always rely on plugins, but not all of use are super code ninjas, so they help a ton. However, this alternative way uses what you already have without loading more files to your webspace for plugins and calling any unnecessary functions.

Have you installed HookPress? If so, have you used it?

Recently, I came across a gentleman who runs a site called Understanding WordPress. The class is a six week course that charges $25. Of course, this is a minimal fee and could be beneficial, but is it worth it if it is not with an accredited schooling facility? For example, I took my Microsoft Courses with the local area Rend Lake College and receive college credits.

On the upside, it proves to potentially be a good thing as there are people honestly looking to learn about WordPress. The downside, there are already free tutorials in many places online, so why pay? WordPress has even free video tutorials at WordPress.tv. Also, WordPress has a whole section dedicated to explaining every function and aspect of the WordPress blog platform in their WordPress Codex. And even more beneficial are the WordPress support forums where users help each other with various issues from installation and even troubleshooting.

Also, for about the cost of that 6 week course, you can purchase Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s book, WordPress for Dummies at your local bookstore (or have them order it) or even on ebay, or Amazon.com. I left the link for Lisa’s page for WordPress for Dummies. The book is great, easy, and can you believe it, I had to buy a 3rd copy from the latest edition because my previous 2 copies were stolen – the most recent only a couple weeks ago! I was mad, but I guess I am glad someone might find some use with it.

So, no, I would not pay for the website courses, but I would pay for Lisa’s book because it was officially blessed by Matt Mullenweg and it is a great resource that I recommend. I would only recommend taking the classes if it were with an accredited college.

What do you think? Would you pay to learn how to use WordPress with the Understanding WordPress courses if you were new to the blog platform? For those who learned WordPress well enough to use it comfortably – how did you learn to use it? Where (what site) or who do you recommend teaching you to learn how to use WordPress?

A lot of people I have heard from like the idea of using a framework to use as a base to design their website. There are quite a few free and premium frameworks out there available that are great. However, it might not be for everyone.

The pros for using these are that these frameworks work and have been developed carefully. They can be applied to themes, however, if your has a big difference, you might have to move code or even add code to get what you want. Premium frameworks usually have become commercially GPL supported (at least that has been all the rage this year) – meaning that you have someone that can coach you through and help you if you run into problems. Freebie frameworks, you might be able to get some forum support with the developer.

However, the huge con that you might run into is that if you choose a framework, your site might look like another cookie cutter layout. It is kind of like two actresses wearing the same gown to the Oscars – not cool and you definitely want to change right away.

If you have a layout design you want to convert to WordPress, frameworks might not always work in your best interest. You may need to apply certain WordPress functions and some frameworks might interfere with your coding or even plugins. Of course, you can always get the framework, alter it and use it how you want. You could browse the WordPress theme directory, choose a theme that best suits what you are looking for, leave the credits intact. There are perfectly good layouts there.

However, if you are a designer, you may want to create a fresh theme with a fresh framework that you can personally market to those who are looking for a framework. Be unique! Make sure your framework offers different types of choices in navigation or features for the content. Offer different alterations of your framework to show your potential clients the flexibility of your layout.

Do you like to use a particular framework when designing a WordPress-based site or do you like to code as you go? What frameworks do you like best and why? What frameworks would you tell people to avoid, and of course – why?

A couple months ago at WordCamp Chicago 2009, Matt Mullenweg had been asked by Dan Schulz on how to make WordPress more secure. Finally what he has said has been written in more detail at WordPress.org in the article How to Keep WordPress Secure.

From the getgo, I had known that the primary way was to keep your WordPress version up-to-date. As a small webhost with Host Solutions, I had seen time and time again hacked versions of WordPress and normal installations. I found that more hacked versions were easily being infiltrated by spammers and the resources used were much higher.

Of course, you could always adjust your .htacess file and “harden” your WordPress installation, but having an up-to-date version allows you to replace any bugs that were found in previous versions right away. I have also found that some users who have hacked their WordPress version so badly have a bit of a hard time tweaking their WordPress to try to upgrade their version.

I did this when I started out using b2. When I went to switchover to WordPress, I had a rough time and had to rely on a fresh Fantastico install of it instead. My version was not only so badly altered, but I was doing more harm to my server.

Like Matt Mullenweg said:

“Upgrading is a known quantity of work, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)”

If you use a hacked version, carefully follow the upgrade notations made to make sure you do not miss any important areas that could leave your website exposed. A lot of the upgrade notations can be found in the developer documents section of the WordPress Codex or even more specifically the WordPress Trac.

Is your WordPress up-to-date on its version? Do you have a manual install or an automatic install like Fantastico? If you have a hacked version of WordPress, have you ran into any problems?