This is a protected post for members of the WP Owners Club, I will be moving it behind my paywall after this weekend.

In this session I will show you how to use RSS with your WordPress site

Video

Downloads

Download the presentations slides

 feedburner.google.com

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=rss

Sample RSS sidebar code

<a href=”/feed”><img src=”http://dev.wpdude.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/greenrsss.png” /></a>

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Understanding RSS

Really Simple Syndication

RSS stands for really simple syndication, and it is a system that allows people to subscribe to your content.  Whenever you add a new blog post an update ise automatically sent out to your subscribers.

WordPress Comes With RSS By Default, if you go to yourdomain.com/feed you can see the RSS feed in action.

Push not Pull

It’s a push technology, it sends out an update of your content whenever you add new stuff automatically to your subscribers.  This means your people get the new stuff without having to visit your site checking for new posts.

This is a great way to ensure your newest posts are always in delivered to your readers.

Who Uses RSS

It tends to be people who are comfortable  and aware of  the technology that use RSS, so if you have a tech savvy audience, they will expect that you have an RSS feed available for them.  Increasingly this means anybody who reads a lot of blogs.

Imagine the scenario, your reader subscribes to a dozen blogs, their email inbox is already full, they discover that RSS removes some of the clutter and they want less stuff in their inbox.  If you don’t have the RSS option, chances are you are going to lose a reader.

How People Use RSS

People setup a feed reader, this can either be a desktop system or an online service like Google reader.  People then click on the RSS icon on a site they like,  this allows them to add that feed into their reader of choice.

People like RSS because it allows them to follow multiple sites from a single aggregated feed reader.  You can read your content when you like without having to visit multiple sites.

Lets face it who is going to sift through the noise to come back to an individual site.  Providing an RSS feed to your readers lets them consume your work at a time that is right for them.

Why Use RSS

I’m not going to say abandon your email list for RSS, it’s not that widely adopted, and it is not as effective a marketing tool as email,  but I would put RSS in your marketing arsenal for the people who like the technology to ensure your content gets to as many people as possible.

Subscribe To My Feed

You can subscribe to my fee from the following URL WPDude RSS Feed

Want More Information?

I’m running a live coaching workshop this week to teach people more about using RSS on their site.  I will be teaching you:

• What is RSS in more depth
• Configuring your RSS feed
• Displaying your feed to your users
• Collecting Stats from your feed
• RSS / Email integration
• RSS plugins
• Q & A

This training is for members of my WordPress coaching program the WP Owners Club and I’m offering new members a 14 day free trial of the club.  So you can check out my coaching style, watch some of the members only pre-recorded workshops and get a feel for the club at no risk to yourself.  If it’s not for you, simply cancel your subscription before 14 days are up and there is nothing to pay.

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What Is RSS

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WordPress Membership Sites

Favicon is a small icon that displays bright on the browser URL bar, bookmark list or navigation tab. Favicon (the short form for favorite icon) in all its certainty will bring a drastic modification in your website’s outlook, if created with thorough research on the interests of the visitors to the website.

Below I list the steps required to create a new favicon.

The basics

Concentrate on simple images and letters while designing the favicon. The favicon is a 16 pixel by 16 pixel icon with .ico extension. Complex graphics get adjusted in such frame with rare difficulty.

The color of the favicon should be in sync with the basic theme of the website. This makes it easier for the visitors to associate the icon with website and will also reflect your passion and sincerity for your
work.

Use of MS paint and web tools

Favicons being simple image icons, one can create the same with Microsoft Paint. The first step in the series is to create a 32 into 32 pixel JPEG image with help of paint. The same can be converted into favicon .ico file with the help of an online service “Favicon from pics”.

Using Photoshop to create favicon

Another alternative for a well designed favicon is Adobe Photoshop. As, the standard photoshop cannot handle .ico, download the Window Icon Photoshop Plugin. Install the plugin and you can create 64 by 64 pixel canvas with this.

Once the designing part of the favicon is over, one needs to resize the image. Click the Image Size menu. It will show various options, including resample image. Click on the same. By clicking on the resample image option, you ensure that image does not become blurring, even as you scale it down.

Save the 16 by 16 image as favicon.ico.

Upload the favicon.ico file

As the favicon.ico file nears completion, it’s time to upload the same to your site. The only thing one needs to ensure is that the favicon.ico files are placed in the root directory, as the index file is located in the root directory.

Change your header

Change header, as you upload favicon.ico file. Header is the code that goes between the head tags. The following line is to be added:

link rel= shortcut icon

href = favicon.ico

type = image/x -icon

Installing a favicon in wordpress

The new favicon.ico file is to be uploaded in current theme’s main folder. An FTP client helps upload the new Favicon.ico file. Another copy can be uploaded in the main directory of your site. In case, an old favicon.ico file exists in your current theme’s main folder, the same is to be deleted using FTP clients. The same can be deleted by using mdel command under FTP.

The final check

Open the browser, pointing to the site if the favicon is appearing or not. It should appear in all circumstances. Open up a few tabs to check the new look of the icon. Need to check the new favicon for the first time. Clear the browser’s cache. If the favicon does not show up, restart the browser.

Neil’s 2 Cents Worth

There is a really good resource at http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Favicon with techie details on adding the header details, you need to add the following line in your header.  I recommend you put the favicon in your theme directory.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/favicon.ico" />

Another good resources is favicon.co.uk, there is a library of premade icons and a generator  where you can upload an existing logo and have it build a favicon for you.

Author BIO

About the author: Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on New Android Apps attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Silver Bracelets the latest fashion trend.

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How to Create a Favicon in WordPress

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Plugin Audit And Tidy

I’m running a training session this week to show you how to audit and tidy the plugins that are on your site.

I’m showing people how to tidy both the plugin files and database tables plugins create to free up resources and make your site more efficient.

This session is for members of my training and support community the WP Owners Club.

What Is The WP Owners Club

The WP Owners Club is my WordPress training and support club. Members of the WP Owners Club get the following benefits.

Live training events – I hold two live training workshops per month. These are online webinars where I teach on a variety of WordPress related topics.

An ever growing library of training videos – all live events are saved and added to my members only area so you can review live events at a later date. There is already a big back catalogue of training on security, SEO, analytics … the list goes on.

Email Consulting – all members get email access to me so they can ask me consulting questions about their site. You can ask about the best pllugin for problem X, how to solve problem Y or any other WordPress related question you have.

How Much Is membership?

Club membership comes with a monthly fee of $29.00 for that you get access to all of the live training, the video repository and unlimited email consulting from me.

Join Now

To join the WP Owners Club or to get more details, check out this link

wpdude.com/wp-owners-club

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Start 2012 With A WebSite Detox

Once you have fixed the hack, there is the lingering problem of getting Google to update it’s index and remove all reference to viagra, cialis and all the other disco drugs these scum buckets are trying to pedal.

In this post I want to share with you the techniques I have been using to speed up the process of getting the pharma links removed.

First Up

Make sure you have completely cleaned up the site there are three areas to fix, if you miss one the infection comes back and none of these techniques will help, see my previous post.

It Takes Time

First up I want to tell you there is no quick fix it usually takes a couple of weeks t0 clean the entire index up.  Be patient, it will clean up.

Assessing The Problem

A good way to check the extent of your problem and also measure your solution you need to do a search like this in Google

site:yourdomain.com (viagra | cialis)

This will return a list of all infected pages, it gives a metric you can work on to recover your site. Here is a screen dump from a real site I’ve been working on

Get Inside Google’s Head

Google plays it’s cards close to it’s chest they don’t want people to fully understand their listing process so people cannot game the system for their own ends.

The techniques I’m showing here are what I have found to work, I have no evidence this is the best way to get your site re-indexed, if you have any insight please leave a comment.

Google Webmaster Tools

All of the techniques I’m about to describe happen in the Google webmasters tools system.

Submit A SiteMap

A sitemap is an xml file containing a list of post and pages in your site, if you submit a sitemap it appears that your site is re-indexed more quickly.

I like this plugin to automatically generate the sitemap every time you add a new post or page http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

If you go into Google webmasters you can submit a sitemap for your site and get Google to re-index your site

If you already have a sitemap you can re-submit it and hopefully get the same result.

Fetch As Googlebot

Another useful tool  I have found is the fetch as googlebot feature.  If you use this to retrieve your hacked pages, as Google sees them, great to check the hack is gone, but also great to re-submit the page.  Once the post or page is retrieved, there is an option to submit the

I have been going through all the hacked pages from a pharma hack attack fetching them as Google bot and re-submitting,

Removal Tool

You can get google to removed cached copies of a page from the index with this technique.  Go to the following URL

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals

Type in teh post or page with hacked details, Google sees the page is still live and asks you to type in a word that is on the cached page but not on the actual page.  I typed in viagra on my test and the pages are submitted for review.

Wrap Up

A nasty hack with a very slow recovery process, if you have any other techniques for speeding up re-indexing please let me know.

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Refreshing The Google Index After Pharma Hack

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WordPress And Analytics

Before you upgrade to WordPress 3.3 watch this video.  The update has a lot of changes and I’m seeing a lot of plugins crashing my clients WordPress sites.

I’ve pulled this over from my premium members only site the WP Owners Club for you to watch before you upgrade to WordPress 3.3 this is the methodology I recommend you use whenever you upgrade WordPress, this will save you a lot of heartache and expensive technical support if things go wrong.

Overview

In this module I will take you through the maintenance tasks required to keep a WordPress site up to date.

Video

Downloads

Download the presentation slides

Download a text transcript (coming soon)

Further Reading

The recording, text transcripts and downloads will be made available soon after the session on this page

WordPress file backup - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-backup/

WordPress Db Backup - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

Backup Buddy - http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/

VaultPress – vaultpress.com

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Before You Upgrade To WordPress 3.3

In this post I want to talk about the business of WP, and where money is being made supporting and developing WordPress for the million of sites built upon open source software.

There is A Huge User Base

It was estimated that 13% of the internet was powered by WordPress sites, a huge statistic which I have no way of verifying,  I did some digging and found this page http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ which suggests there are 69 million plus WordPress sites.

This number is growing by the day, there is a huge user base for you to work with.  The business of WP is an evergrowing business. at least for the next few years as far as I can see.

There is a huge user base for developers designers, consultants and trainers to help people build their websites.

The business of WP is a growing business.

80/20 Rule Applies

WordPress is great, about 80% of the knowledge needed to build a WordPress site is not very technical, that is one of the beauties of the system, if you can use a wordprocesor you can publish on the web.

The final 20% is where the money is, the difficult development, the graphical design, the hosting, the hack recovery, the premium themes and plugins.  This is where the everyday site owner begins to struggle and the professionals are called in.

Show Me The Money

The rest of this post is all about where there are business opportunities in the WordPress world can be found.

The Biggie WordPress.com

Probably at the top of the heap is the hosted version of WordPress at wordpress.com.

This is still free for most of functionality of a WordPress site, they use the freemium model, you can have an excellent basic service for nothing, but if you want the bells ans whistles you need to buy the add-ons.  Things like premium themes, your own domain hosting and more space are all addons.

This is where the money is made in free software.

Hosting

The business of hosting WordPress sites is a huge business.  Lets toss together an estimate, if there are 30 million self hosted sites (the other 30 million live at wordpress.com) they all need hosting services. lets say an average hosting fee is $100 per year, there are cheaper and more expensive options, so I think $100 is about average, that conservatively gives us a market of $3,000,000,000.

That’s not small beer that is a huge industry, my work brings me into contact with about a dozen big players, one of those players runs Super Bowl ads, normally the domain of huge brands.

Theme Design

The design of custom themes is another area where people can make real money.

Again I think the 80/20 rule comes into play here, I think 80% of people will be happy with free or premium themes.  If they use a framework theme like Headway of Thesis many people can bring together a custom look.

The final 20% without the technical or design skills turn to a designer to bring them a custom look and feel.

Custom theme development is not cheap, expect to pay $2-5K for your bespoke look and feel.  This is still great value, compare that with a static HTML ground up build of a website.

WordPress has turned the web development scene on it’s head, and made development quick and costs less for the end user.

Web Development

This is the market I live in, technical support of WordPress sites, fixing problems and coding up solutions to peoples problems.

This is a very lucrative market sector, this is definitely not an area the normal site owners wants to dabble in.

If you have the technical skill to fix php errors, remove malware from hacked sites, performance tune a site there is a big opportunity.

Premium Themes

We are moving from services to products now, and the premium theme is a great example of a product

Write once and sell many times.  Setup a great customer service experience and you have a brilliant product line you can sell.

This is a very scalable business model.

Premium Plugins

For some reason plugins never caught up with their premium theme cousins for some time.

The ones that have come out of this are great.  Things like backup buddy, WishList Member, Scribe SEO are amongst some of the great premium plugins I have worked with.

If you can code up and support a great plugin that fixes a real problem you can make money, but expect grumbling, the plugin scene has traditionally been open source and free.

The Licensing Issue

The sticky problem anyone building premium offerings be it themes or plugin is the GPL license WordPress works under.  Anyone can take your premium work and fork it to a new project.

I don’t want to get into the argument, but Thesis’s  head butt with Automattic and the Jigoshop/WooComerce fork are two examples of the GPL license causing problems with the development of premium plugins and themes.

This is probably an area I will cover in-depth later, but be aware of the license if you are building a business around WordPress.

Training

The provision of training to the end user WordPress community is another big business opportunity

This can take the form of traditional print books, the respected WordPress for Dummies for example.  It can be info products like e-books or online membership communities.

Coaches and consultants selling their time to educate and solve problems comes under this heading too.

There is also the old classroom based training that still lives, but is a dying model in my opinion (feel free to discuss this in the comments I’m open to debate on this subject).

Misc. Services

There are other great services out there to help manage your site too, I’m thinking of things like VaultPress.com the backup and security service, Akismet etc etc.

This additional service sector is one I see booming, I’m thinking performance management for critical systems, security monitoring, backup and recovery, analytics, e-commerce, I’m sure many are already in development.

Wrap Up

The business of WP is huge, there are opportunities for many people.

I’m facinated by the business of WP, I work in it everydat and I would love to help people build their WordPress related businesses, please leave a comment if you would like to see more posts about building business around open sources tools.

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The Business Of WP

If you want to collect metrics on how your site visitors are interacting with your content, then this is the workshop for you.

Analytic packages are available for your WordPress site to collect user activity, check search engine activity and much more.  I will show you how to select, install analytics software and understand the metrics collected.

How My Workshops Work

My group coaching works via a webinar, you join this live online event from the comfort of your own computer and take the training on-line.  This means no travel or accommodation costs, little time away from your day job BUT a great learning experience.

You can ask questions as the session goes along and really get to grips with the topic.

The session is recorded so you can refer back to the training at a later date, and all workshops come with follow up email support in case you have a question after the event.

When Is The Session

The session is on Thursday 15th December at the following times

• 11am-12pm Pacific
• 2pm-3pm Eastern
• 7pm-8pm UK Time

Coaching Agenda

In this session I will show you:

• What are analytics
• Types of WordPress metric collection systems
• Understanding the metrics generated
• Demo of Google Analytics
• Q & A session

How Much Does It Costs?

My group coaching sessions costs $17.00 for that you get an hours group coaching, a recording of the session and links to all downloads and slides plus follow up email support on the topic in case you have questions at a later date.

Seats are limited by my webinar software so book your slot now to avoid disappointment.

Guarantee

I offer 100% money back guarantee on all my group coaching sessions, if you are not happy for any reason let me know and you get your money back.

Join The Session

To join the session, click on the link below and make your Paypal payment IMPORTANT Paypal will redirect you to a registration page where you can create a login ID to sign up for the webinar.

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WordPress Workshop: WordPress and Analytics

If you are unsure of the process and your involvement in the design and development process, this webinar replay is for you.

Time Sensitive Offer

I’ve included at time sensitive offer at the end of the webinar, stay to the end to get a discount.

Video

Downloads and Links

Webinar slides

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

http://validator.w3.org/

Example concept

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Webinar Replay: Commisioning A Custom WordPress Theme

This is a common theme with clients I work with.  They want a custom look and feel but have no idea what information to supply, how long the process takes, or what is involved in getting their very own WordPress theme.

I’m running a webinar this week to show people my process to design, develop and implement custom themes, including the input required from you as the site owner.

So if you are looking to comissions a custom theme or are curious about how this works, why not join my webinar.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962411057

The session is on Thursday 8th December at the following times

• 11am-12pm pacific time
• 2pm – 3pm Eastern
• 7pm-8pm UK time

If you cannot join live, still register and I will send you a video recording of the event.

I hope to see you on the call

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WEBINAR: How To Commission A Custom Theme

What Is Split Testing?

Split testing is the act of making small incremental changes to you call to action pages, be they sales pages, email signup forms, positioning of ads, the list goes on.

When you make the change you test that alteration against the existing version to see which one performs best.

Things you might want to test are copy, video, images, pricing, colours or any number of attributes on the site

The point of a split test is that you run the current configuration against a changed configuration, and monitor conversions.  If conversions increase your new configuration is seen as a better option and you make that live.

What I will be teaching you

In this live event I will show you how to split test your WordPress content so you can find out which elements of your copy, videos and images help to generate your desired call to action.

In this session I will take you through:

• What is split testing
• Split Testing Software
• Plugins to help split testing
• Demo
• Q & A session

When Is The Session?

I’m running the group coaching on Thursday 1st December at the following times

• 11am-12pm Pacific
• 2pm-3pm Eastern
• 7pm-8pm UK Time

The session will be recorded, so if you cannot attend the session live you can still benefit from the training.,

How The Group Coaching Works

You will join me in a live webinar using gotomeeting.com. This excellent tool enables me to talk to you and share my computer screen over the intternet.

There is a chat facility so you can ask me questions live during the coaching session so you understand the topic completely.

So there are no travelling or accomondation costs and the amount of time away from you day job is limited to the time the session takes.

Cost

This live event costs $17 for that you get an hour of coaching, a recording of the session plus follow up support via email.

Seat are limited by my webinar software so join now to avoid disappointment.

Guarantee

If for whatever reason you are not happy with you coaching let me know and I will refund you money

Join The Event

To join the event, click on the link below and make you payment via paypal.  IMPORTANT: once you have registered you will be redirected to another page to register for the webinar.

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COACHING SESSION: Split Testing With WordPress

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WordPress E-Commerce Workshop