Ok, ok. This is a rant. Be prepared!

I recently tried to find a good Wordpress plugin developer to develop a plugin for me. I commonly use the platform odesk to find new people and I’ve been horrifed by a trend that has emerged on these types of service type sites.

The folks on odesk have gotten very expensive! Did I say very expensive! Oh ya. Here’s what happened to me. I contracted to find a Wordpress plugin developer as I mentioned earlier. The cheapest price – with my hesitation came in on a bid of $200. The average bid was between $500 and $1000!

You did hear me right. Well, I was a little taken aback and decided to see what it would take to just write it myself and how long it would take. I’ll tell you that I’m no master programmer. I do know a lot about WordPress, but again, I kind of hack together what I need.

The end result? After three hours, I completely wrote the plugin. Turned out to be 10 to 12 lines of code! Now, you would have to know what to write, but in my opinion it was too simple. Turns out my time was worth close to $200 per hour or $100 per line of code!

It comes down to the fact that a lot of the India programmers have gotten smart to the ways of North Americans. Why write it yourself when you can contract to someone in a foreign country and get it down for a 1/10th of the price!

Initially when you look at the cost per hour, it looks really good. For example the average programmer price was around $9 to $12 per hour. But they kept telling me that it would take a solid week of building and testing! Yep, it was a load of do-do for sure. For me being a hacker/programmer, I got the job done in under 3 hours.

So, what are we to do? Well, I did find a partial solution to the problem. Whenever I ran into trouble, I’d post a job on odesk asking for a line of php code to solve the problem. Turns out there’s a lot of great programmers who will charge a dollar or two for a solution! With that in mind, I was able to put the code together in no time flat and for under $1.50.

Also, make sure you know what you need. This will mean that you are going to take some time and develop the layout of what is going to happen and what, where and how it will look in the end. Many times, you can find the pieces you need with good old Google searches. This pretty much what I did.

The clearer the job, the cheaper it will be in the end. Even if you do sub it to a wordpress plugin developer.

All in all, my recommendation to you is just be sure of what you want, and how much you think it should cost. And hammer down the developer to a price.

Well, Wordpress is finally maturing! Over time the fine folks at Wordpress have had to work through some pretty severe growing pains, but luck for us, things have really improved with age.

I’ve been using Wordpress since version 1.7 and when I step back to any of my sites that are still running that old of a version (none now), I was just astonished how I could actually use that old version!

But what has made Wordpress so much better since the introduction of version 3 and specifically version 3.2.1? Well, there’s a ton of improvements under the hood.

First and foremost security has greatly improved. I’ve faced some pretty bad hacks on hundreds of my wordpress sites and it came down to having my hosting agent restore all the sites from a backup. But with the latest version and some innovative plugins, Wordpress has hardened pretty good. We always have to vigilant against potential hacks. Let’s face it, it’s still code, but things have greatly improved.

Next, functionality. What can I say? Wow! I love the custom menus available in Wordpress 3. My only complaint is programming information has been slow to flow on the docs site. Over time I can see some great improvements coming down the pipe that will make menus even more exciting and feature filled. Time will tell.

Finally in the latest versions, speed. Things are greatly improving on the speed side of Wordpress. There’s been some pretty awesome code optimizations to the code base that has really helped things out. Again lot’s of exciting things coming down the pipe in regards to speed. Time will tell again.

But there are things that I’m still waiting on. The programmers are fantastic. WordPress is definitely a blessing from the open source community. But these suggestions are just that – suggestions. Things that I think need improvement or could be great additions to Wordpress.

My first complaint is the structuring of menus. I understand the menuing structure within the database but I have a really interesting question to ask in this regard. Why the heck was it done the way it was done? I can see it broken down as a post or page is. But man to create a menu there are several database touches that must be completed to ‘get the job done’. Well, yes, it fits into the current structure but when another table is not really a big deal, it would have made way more sense, in my humble opinion to split this functionality out.

Next, I’d like to see posts and pages getting a little closer in functionality. I totally understand the differences between the two types but I’d love to see something like a ’super post’ that contains the functionality of posts and pages. Allow me to create a post with all the tag love in it but also be able to select a custom template page to create it on.

This is something that I”m surprised that has really never made it.

Another thing is the editor. Things are improving, but there are still some glaring issues with the edit window. Wordpress still likes to mess with the code added in the window and I’d just love to have the ability to have wordpress to trust that I know what I’m posting and let me use the visual window without having to resort to the html window. Or at the very least – don’t mess up my html code if I go back to the visual window.

Another thing and this is probably a theme function more then anything else, but I’d love to be able to tackle in custom css code to tweak themes easily within Wordpress. In other words, it would be cool to have a tab in the appearance folder that is the ‘custom css’ file tab. Here I could lay in some final css code that would override any other css that may be part of the theme.

I suggest the final thing because I already do so much css customization to sites with firefox and firebug and to me, it would be a slam dunk.

So, the final verdict on Wordpress 3.2.x? Well, it’s getting slicker every single day! I’m excited to see what will be coming down the pipe in the future!

Well, it’s not that often when a new WordPress plugin hits the streets in an already crowded market and shows itself to be a winner!

Autoblogging isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination, but the methods of autoblogging seem to be evolving every day. Very soon a new wordpress plugin called AutoPress will be hitting the streets.

This is a plugin that will go head to head with other autoblogging plugins, but will also contain things that make it very unique at the same time.

I’ve had experience with the plugin’s author Edwin Boiten, and this guy is one smart fellow. I got to know him about a year or so back after I had picked up his Amaniche plugin. This is an Amazon autoblogging plugin that I’ve used on several of my sites.

What I like is the fact tha he’s brought to the table some very good aspects to make autoblogging super easy. He’s also combined many great features into AutoPress that you just won’t find elsewhere. You will still have access to post articles from ArticleBase, questions and answers from Yahoo Answers, Amazon product listing, eBay product listings, access to RSS feeds but he didn’t stop there.

Also, you can import your PLR material, with a twist. Imagine that you currently have a subscription to the Best Spinner. It’s gotten a hands down best spinning thesaurus on the market. Now, wouldn’t it just make sense that you could, on the fly spin your PLR material with the Best Spinner thesaurus and post it automatically? Well with AutoPress, you can!

Another great feature is that you can use the same thesaurus to spin articles from ArticleBase, in a completely automated fashion!

Add in text before and after. Again, in a completely automated fashion.

But again, it doesn’t stop there! Here’s a complete list that the Pro version will offer you for autoblogging sources:

• Articles from Directories
• PLR article uploads
• CSV file uploads
• RSS feeds
• Flickr images
• Youtube videos
• Yahoo Answers
• Twitter
• Clickbank products
• eBay
• Amazon
• CJ.com
• LinkShare
• Shareasale

Wow! Now, that’s all good, but Edwin has a bit of a ’secret weapon’ up his sleeve. That’s the fact that you can dynamically keep your posts up to date! This is especially important with CSV feeds. You can manage your autoposts, just like you can with his Amaniche plugin. This in itself is excellent.

Now, I know that this posting is starting to sound like a sugared up sales letter, but to be honest – I’m just that impressed. Also because I’ve gotten to know Edwin, I know that he wants things to be perfect!

I have a quick video posted up on Youtube so you can get a glimpse at the interface pages for AutoPress. Take a peek:

I’ll post another video in the next day or so showing you the results being pulled by AutoPress. This plugin is due to be released in just a couple of weeks, so I’ll put up these videos to give you the ability to make an educated decision on whether or not to pick up this plugin for your online buiness ventures!

The power of the press has never something we talk about but it is one of the most influential devices of the 20th century.

The printing press has completely transformed the last few hundred years, making duplication of printed material very easy and very inexpensive.

But I’m not here to talk about printing presses today, but a new movement of a different kind of press that is becoming as influential has it’s ink and paper cousins.

I’m talking about WordPress. This blog engine has begun to completely change the face of the electronic world that we call the Internet.

It allows us to do extremely complex sites with just a few clicks of a button! I cannot imagine how much work it would be to create a web site as functional and feature filled as this electronic press.

With the addition of wordpress 3.0 in the past few months, WordPress has taken on even more of a look and feel of a very professional platform.

The funny thing about this great software is that it’s totally and absolutely free! Still I pinch myself when I contemplate the fact that this software is free. Updates are free. Many add ons are free. And even when you contemplate some of the pay for software that can be used with Wordpress, it’s still a tremendous value, overall.

Why? Because WordPress was written from the ground up with the idea of expansion in mind. This expansion has begun to really hit home in 2010 and I only look forward to what we will be seeing from the Wordpress team in 2011.

Power to the Press!

I’m always on the hunt for ways to take my favorite content management system (Wordpress) to the next level. You see, with Wordpress, I’ve been able to do quite well on the Internet. BUT, I believe I’ve only seen the beginning of what is possible.

So what has been occupying my time in regards to Wordpress? More and more automation. That’s the real bomb to wordpress is the ability to automate as much as possible on a web site to gain maximum impact on everything we do.

The one place that I believe there is a deficit is the area of back linking. If Wordpress is the bread and butter of a web site, back linking is the same for ranking. Most ranking occurs for several reasons, but for long term ranking, it’s downright back linking to your web site.

Why would I be obsessed with rankings in the search engines though? I want to capture the number 1 spot in Google, MSN and Yahoo. Plain and simple. Any other spot is unacceptable. More then 40% of traffic to a keyword term is given to the #1 spot and I want that traffic.

The more traffic I can get, the greater my visitors and the better my overall profits. That’s what it all comes down to in the end. Profits. Don’t get me wrong, I love to work on the Internet. I love everything about it. I have to pay bills though and if my favorite thing in the world pays the bills too, then I can do more of it!

So, back to the reason for this article. Automating back links with Wordpress. Right now, I’ve come across several ways to do just this, but I’m starting to crack out the programming books to create just a few more. As I mentioned earlier, there is definitely a deficit of automated back linking plugins in the market place right now.

Yes, wordpress can ping your site for you automatically. That’s the first base to getting back linked. Next, Wordpress can push out your RSS feed information to RSS aggregators and that’s a great second base.

The home run though, is getting authorative back links to the site for each post on it’s topic matter. These back links have to have an element of diversity in them. From experimentation all hard back links are good, but a mix of back links is the magic.

Diversity in back links are back links from multiple types of sources. For example, from articles, then from comments and then from forum links and then from pdf’s and then from web 2.0 sites and so on. This is the real magic here.

There also has to be diversity in where the backlinks are created. You are trying to reduce the ‘footprint’ of the back links. Let me explain. If you created a new post on ‘fishing rods’. Then right behind it the site can automate a social bookmark to Digg. Then it creates a web 2.0 property on wordpress.com. Then it posts an article to ezine.

Then you create a new post on your same site on ‘red fishing rods’. Then the same syndication occurs exactly the same way on the new post. Well, it won’t take long for the pattern to emerge and the search engines are going to start to discount your back linking efforts.

So, there has to be diversity in the back linking as well when back linking. My question in all of this is how to accomplish this in a semi or fully automated fashion to give us the necessary back links that will boost our site in the long run.

What are we to do? How do we accomplish this grand task. That’s where I’m at right now. How to accomplish all of this in a manner that will satisfy the search engines while at the same time not send us to the loony bin.

I need your help. What can you tell me about what you know in this area or what you’ve come across. Help me build a plan and I’ll reward you by letting you in on the plan and the product when it’s done.

So send me your comments and I’ll be sure to get back to you on this.

I never thought I’d say it but sometimes success can bite. I ran many WordPress blogs as time goes on you get better and better at writing blogs that will attract more and more traffic. Though, time though in the not so distant future we’ll find that your success on bringing people to your blog will drive you bananas.

With the latest version of WordPress 3.0 and possibly before hand the usage of the automated tasking within WordPress occurs with a file called wp-cron.php. The concept basically is that every time somebody comes to visit your website this particular file is run to ensure that any tasks that need to be completed will get completed on your blog.

These tasks can include posting schedule posts, pinging those posts than just maintenance tasks that WordPress runs to stay fast and efficient. But once you start getting inaccessible for 100 people per day to a blog you do find that this task runs way too often.

And as you can guess it doesn’t take long to get to 100 people per day. Fortunately for us there’s been some very smart people who figure to way around the problem and fortune the problem is very easy to solve. If you’re not techy minded you might find this little carry but trust me, it is actually not that bad if you understand what is actually happening in the background.

Disabling the Default Running of wp-cron.php

First things first, we have tell WordPress not to run wp-cron.php every time somebody comes to the blog. Fortunately for us it’s a matter of adding one simple line into the wp-config.php file that sits at the root of your WordPress installation. That line is: define(’DISABLE_WP_CRON’, true); .

With this line does is it tells WordPress to disable the automated running of that file.

Next we have to tell our hosting agent to run this file for us. I’ve been a little bit of reading around the Internet it seems that running this fall once every two hours seems to be a good number of times to run it. You can decide to run this last per day if you not updating your posts that often. On most my more successful blogs I find that I’m updating posts once every four or five hours so running every two hours is definitely didn’t cover any of my needs that could occur for the posts.

Now I always recommend that you use a hosting agent that uses a program called cpanel. This makes making really hairy changes within your hosting relatively simple. But there’s a lot of things you can do that are wrong when you’re sending a Cron job. By the way, the expression Craun job is the UNIX way of saying performing a task at designated times.

Telling wp-cron.php To Run Manually

All you have to do is follow the pictures that I’ve created below to help you set up a Cron job. Once again this is for cPanel uses only.

After you’ve logged into your cPanel account you will want to look down the page and to define an icon that looks much like the one pictured here called “Cron jobs”. Simply click on this icon to get into the interface.

Now very quickly look at the next diagram. You see that one command has to read ‘X’ beside it. When setting the settings for a Cron job it’s very easy to select the run once every minute instead of the ones on the hour once in a five minutes after the hour or whatever. If you select once every minute and then you will tell the Cron job to run every single minute of every day and every hour. You get the point, this is a very bad thing.

So basically you select your minutes, hours, day, month, weekday and fill in the command to call the actual wp-cron.php file. Once again take a look at the picture below to give you a bit of a roadmap on what you want to see in each of these fields.

Now you look at the command you’ll notice that it is a bit of a hairy looking thing but basically it’s good to point directly to the wp-cron.php file for your particular WordPress installation. Now you must ensure that you select the correct directory structure, including the cPanel username and if you have your WordPress in an add-on domain it will be within a subdirectory.

If you do get confused by this don’t be afraid to get in contact with your hosting agent and asked them to help you create the command properly. Most hosting agents are more than glad to help you fix this problem. Once you’ve done all of this congratulations you’ve now went from an automated Cron job happening in WordPress every few minutes when that only happens once every two hours. This should satisfy the most stickiest hosting agent on the planet.

As you can see the command that you’ll be entering is ‘php -q /home/cpanelusername/public_html/wp-cron.php’. Note that your command could look different depending on the installation.

I hope that this is helped you reduce the amount of computer and memory usage that you are using on your hosting agent at this time.

Well, Wordpress 3.0 is official out and I’ve held my breath for a while on it until I got over the initial birthing pains.

You see, I’ve been in the computer business for some time and I really do avoid major updates to any software. I prefer others to run ahead and ‘test the waters’ so to speak. This way, they can initially iron out the major bugs and I can reap the benefits.

It may sound a bit selfish, but experience tells me that this is the best way. As it turns out, there were a couple of troubles that came out of the word work after release. Nothing earth shattering, so I give my congrats to the hard working Wordpress coding team!

I’ve begun to work with Wordpress 3.0. Nothing dramatic, mainly just using it on some of my online Amazon store fronts to see if there are any conflicts with any of my plugins.

For the moment, I’ve just encountered a couple of code burps – nothing to panic about. I have noticed that Wordpress 3.0 is just a speedy as 2.9.2, which sometimes is not the cause. I’m also glad of the further cleanup on the interface.

Some things in the Administration Dashboard were in kind of the wrong places and the folks at Wordpress have definitely seen to fixing this small shortcomings. I’ve yet to try to get it working with Thesis, as I’m sure you’ve heard that there are issues.

Other themes like the Headway theme, seems to work pretty well. The menuing system (a sorrily needed thing) new in Wordpress 3.0 is not compatible with Headway, but Headway is already got a pretty nice menuing system in place, so no loss.

I’ve also begun to write dedicated themes and plugins and will see how well things pan out in that realm as well. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date on that if I encounter any noticable changes.

Otherwise, I’m pleased to say that the Wordpress 3.0 is pretty much like 2.9.2 with one noticable exception. The integration of the mu code into the platform.

I’ve done some reading regarding multi-site setups, especially with multiple domain names. That to me, is very exciting. If this works well, it will definitely be a big time saver. Imagine administrating over 300 domains, each with it’s own install.

Right now, I’ve had to depend upon writing automated tools to perform things like updates to the installs. This can be hit and miss at times, but a tremendous time saver. Now imagine running 20 domains on the same Cpanel account on ONE wordpress install.

This literally could reduce my workload to 1/20th. That is staggering as right now it can take months for me to get back to a blog and make some changes. Again, I’ll definitely post my failures and successes as I battle that one out.

Well, all in all, I take my hat off to the Wordpress team. Great update for sure! Be sure to post what you’ve found about Wordpress 3.0 below in the comments!

I recently had a funny thing happen to me about two weeks ago that involved WordPress and my wife. You see, having someone in the house that understands wordpress is just too handy to let go by. So, she had me setup a site for her and she has started to blog in earnest!

But it didn’t take long for her to run into troubles. She is running a slightly older laptop that is running Vista with just enough ram to say that she has a computer. Whenever she fires up her WordPress site and goes into the administrative back end, her browser window locks up.

Believe me, it had me stratching my head just for a few moments. I’ve been administering well over 300 blog installs for the past two years and this has never happened to me.

With investigation, I could only come up with the fact that the javascript on the page was just bogging down vista too much. Fortunately the fix is pretty simple too.

It was just a matter of performing a ’Turbo’ install. You’ll find the turbo application in your administration panel at the top right hand corner.

It’s literally the matter of clicking on Turbo and then selecting the ‘Turbo:Speed up WordPress’ install now button. Follow through with the install and quickly reboot your computer.

Now, my darling wife is very happy to blog to her heart’s content. With the local cached copy of page elements right on her computer, everything clicks along as it should.

After performing on her computer, I did the same to mine. I did notice a small difference in speed, but my pc has more ram and isn’t running Vista.

So, I hope that this very quick tip helps you with your Wordpress slowdown problems, if you are having them!

’sDo you remember way back when in the 1980’s when Billy Crystal used to say “You look mahvelous” on Saturday Night Live®? Take a peek at the video below for a refresher:

It’s certainly a cute parody but there’s a serious side to this idea too.

Did you know that you could be hurting yourself more then you realize by a poor looking site? Let’s just say that the 90’s just don’t cut it any more when it comes to web site design. The average web surfer has become a very savvy surfer and expects to surf to sites that look, as Billy would say, mahvelous.

With Wordpress, you can definitely shortcut your web development time greatly by using pre designed themes that plug right into Wordpress. Now, themes define the look and feel of your site.

Consider a theme that gives your site the professional look that you are looking for and fits the actual theme of the web site itself.

I always start my hunt for a good wordpress theme right on wordpress.org. Many of these themes are completely free, but don’t let the low price fool you. There’s some very nice themes in there.

But there’s a lot of trash too. Always analyze the theme you decide upon and make sure that there is not encryped or hidden code in the theme. I once downloaded a free theme that contained an encrypted header.

After running the theme for a few moments, I found out why. The header is loaded with hidden links back to the authors site! Great for the author and terrible for me!

I’d also recommend that you check out some of the pay for theme’s too. If you are looking for a general purpose theme that you can do a lot with, consider the Thesis theme. Now, this theme isn’t for newbies. I’d recommend a bit of experience with Wordpress before using it, but it’s a great theme. I run this theme here on this site, with modification. And that’s why thesis is so great. Consider it more a framework and less a theme.

Also another great source for themes is Themes Forest. Actually this site has become one of my favorite hunting grounds to find progressive, modern and sexy themes for Wordpress. I’d recommend you take a peek there too.

But why the bother? Why not just use plain Jane? Doesn’t content matter at all? Yes content is very important, but consider your web site a gift.

If you were to receive 10 gifts and you were told to open them up. Within a split second, you’d probably choose the prettiest wrapped gift of the bunch to start. Why?

You don’t know what’s in the gifts? You are automatically making a judgement call on ‘value‘ of the gift on it’s wrappings.

You and I and everyone who surfs the web does exactly the same thing. If you don’t capture the attention of your web surfer in under 5 seconds, you’ve lost them to someone else. And you may have had the exact information that they were looking for!

As you can see the wrapping on the gift is probably more important then the gift, in the first 5 seconds.

The moral of the story? Make sure you have great content, but when someone comes to your site, their first thought should be “Baby, You Look Mahvelous“!

Looking for more resources on themes?

• Check out Anatomy of a Wordpress Theme
• Graph Paper Press is putting  Multimedia theme- lots of jquery – sounds cool!
• Authors! 8 Tips For Your Website’s Usability and Design
• 100+ Resources for WordPress Theme Developers

When considering a web site, definitely give WordPress a try. There is tons to be gained from it. But there are pitfalls you should know about it too.

Let’s just take a moment to analyze what you should watch out for before looking at what makes WordPress a great choice.

First, WordPress is a complex system to run a web site upon. This sophistication comes at a price. WordPress is much more hackable then a static web site. Fortunately, protecting your administration directories in WordPress can protect you against about 95% of all hacks.

Next, there is a lot of ways to setup WordPress. What plugins should you use? What theme is the right theme? What’s a theme? Oh boy. But these are things you need to consider before using WordPress.

Personally, it took me about two years of use to really get a hang of successful WordPress installs. This included well over 300 site installs and fixing dozens of other people’s installs in the process.

Think of WordPress as the Mustang of web sites. Press the pedal too hard and you will find over 300 hp of raw power crashing you into another car.

What’s the good of WordPress. If you know how to properly drive this powerful web site engine, it can be a very potent ally to your quest to get ranked by the search engines.

Personally, I find that I can dominate a niche over time for many keyword phrases with very little outside backlinking.

If you are incline to learn WordPress and you are willing to establish many web sites with WordPress, then you can definitely do very well with WordPress, generating a secondary income.

In my opinion this can be accomplished very quickly with very little expense on your behalf. This investment into your future, learning how to flex WordPress, can pay you back very well indeed.

Learning WordPress doesn’t have to be too hard. It is a complex system, but stick to it and over time, you’ll find that you too can become a WordPress expert!