Because of all the interest in Teaching Sells and membership sites in general, people have been asking about my own membership site, Authority Blogger, so I thought I would tell you how I built it, and how you can easily create your own membership site using WordPress. … [Read more...]

UsefulTools is described as ... ... a web magazine for people who love web tools and apps. There are new and exciting applications being developed all the time. We sift through the abundance of technologies available to you, and help you find the most useful tools. Right away you might be thinking this puts them right up against such web power houses as TechCrunch, Mashable, Scoble and every other tech blogger out there. And that is true to an extent. The way that UsefulTools is … [Read more...]

Knowing who and what your site is for is key. As important, is knowing who and what your site is NOT for. Consider this site, there are lots of things I can and do talk about, but in most cases I try to bring it always back to the main themes of boosting your authority and business via new media. Pictures of my cat are more likely to appear on my personal site. Photography stuff goes on my photography blog. What about when a topic does have relevance to your audience, but only a small … [Read more...]

WordCamp UK 2008 was an interesting mixture of blogging (as you would expect) and developer conference. It was like two familiar worlds had collided. WordPress as CMS One of the development issues raised was the growing use of WordPress as a platform rather than as a blog. Many people are now looking to WordPress as a CMS or as a framework. Notably, one of the big announcements from the weekend was that our Prime Ministers home, Number 10 Downing Street, new website is going to be 100% … [Read more...]

One of the common issues I find with my blog critiques is people not utilizing internal links to boost their search rankings as much as they could. Do not underestimate the influence a good internal link structure can have on your rankings! Also internal linking is good usability for readers. You want visitors to find more of your great content, right? If you link your older posts well you can give archived content a whole new lease of life. Internal Link Problems Here are the top … [Read more...]

What are visitors arriving at your site for? It's a question worth asking because if you don't know, how can you provide it? Search stats will tell you, as will some of the visitors if you ask. In general your readers have followed a scent, a trail that will lead them to their goal. What is their goal likely to be? Understanding Reader Missions There are several missions a reader will be on, and while the specifics will be as unique as the individual person, people are always looking … [Read more...]

Here are two new plugins that you might like to try out. First up is WP_DeliciousPost from my friend Damian WP_DeliciousPost is a free WordPress plug-in that auto submits your post and pages to Delicious as you publish them.Submitting your post to Delicious makes it easier for Delicious users to find under the appropriate tags, plus some blog advertising/ranking and valuation services count the number of Delicious entries into their scores so the more times you appear the better. The … [Read more...]

Bloggers like to give and win prizes. It offers some excitement for readers, content and links for the blogger, and if the prize is offered by a third party it gives them some exposure too. Darren does this a lot and to good effect, I do it very occasionally when I have something good to provide as a prize. One question I get asked is how exactly do I select a random comment? You probably can make or find a plugin but I just use some simple SQL to read the WordPress database. Most hosting … [Read more...]

I'm a little embarrassed to tell you that I have been using the phrase "New Media" without ever thinking about the definition very much. You see, "New Media" is one of those things you know when you find it, but when it comes to explaining to someone else we can stumble. Let me try now and see if  you agree. First let me describe what I believe New Media isn't. It's not just the internet or web - New Media could be a PDF, a multimedia CDROM, a DVD, a mobile application ... It's not … [Read more...]

Recall I found out about an automatic commenter-thanking plugin I was very excited about? It turns out that Dreamhost, my hosting company, were not quite as thrilled as I was. Hello, Please disable the plugin that is causing this query (otherwise I'll have to disable your mysql table or user and I really don't want to do that!): # Query_time: 2 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 2045519 use chrisgcom; SELECT c.*, p.* FROM wp_comments c INNER JOIN wp_posts p ON p.ID = … [Read more...]