I explained how they needed to take their dinosaur HTML site and have it converted into the most search friendly system I knew of, and that’s how this particular website was born.

It’s a specialized niche site, to fit the growing industry of converting sites into WordPress, and that’s how the domain name came to be chosen.

Yesterday however, attorneys for the WordPress Foundation sent me an email, saying that we are in violation of the WordPress copyright by using WordPress in the domain name. ;(

On the one hand, I realize that a company does have the right to protect themselves from misuse of their trademarked name or logo, but on the other hand, I’m surprised that they have nothing better to do with their time than go after supporters like us, who provide services based on their product.

Here’s a copy of the letter in its entirety:

Re: Trademark Infringement By

Dear Mr. Hendison:

I write on behalf of the WordPress Foundation to ask that you stop all use of the domain and transfer it to WordPress and that you also remove the WordPress Logo from your site. As you know, our client is one of the world’s most famous providers of blogging and website support services and offers these services under its famous WORDPRESS trademarks. It has used its WORDPRESS trademarks for many years and this trademark is the subject of many trademark registrations throughout the world including the United States.

As I am sure you can understand, in business a company’s brand is its reputation with customers. For this reason it is critical that a company have the ability to control how its brand is presented to the public. Further, the company has set out its domain name policy on the WordPress.org website as follows: “For various reasons related to our WordPress trademark, we ask if you’re going to start a site about WordPress or related to it that you not use “WordPress” in the domain name.” http://wordpress.org/about/domains/

Your use of the domain name(the “Subject Domain”) and your use of the WordPress Logo is without the permission of WordPress and removes its brand reputation from its control since visitors to your website will wrongly believe that the site is controlled by, or at least approved by WordPress when this is not the case.

In order for the company to maintain control of its reputation, we ask that you transfer thedomain to WordPress and remove all uses of the logo from your website. Should you care to discuss this matter please don’t hesitate to call or email me. I await your reply.

Very truly yours,

Steven M. Levy, Esq.
FairWinds Partners, LLC
1632 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
United States
+1-202-341-3722
steve.levy@fairwindspartners.com

Now I really don’t have the time or money to get into some legal battle that I would probably end up losing in the long run, so I said I would come up with a new domain, and would remove their logo (as obfuscated as it is) from our header.

Our communication back-and-forth has been very cordial, and Mr. Levy said that they could give me a reasonable amount of time to make the switch, get the new site indexed, etc. but I can’t find a domain name I like yet this morning.

We’ve established a pretty good  business here, and we’ve got some good search rankings, decent backlinks, and a loyal base of returning customers who know us by name.  Changing domain names is really going to require some thought, and this morning I set out to get one.

My first thought was to follow the suggestions that WordPress makes here and use a WP instead of their name, but when I tried to buy GetWP.com I found that it was already taken.  I was surprised at that, so I tried to visit the site, but when I did,  I got redirected to a subdomain of WP.com, called get.wp.com -  Huh? Could it be?

Yep – I looked up the registrant information, and found that the domain I want -  GetWP.com -  is already owned by the folks at WordPress – The same people telling me to use WP!

Registrant:
   Automattic, Inc.
   60 29th Street
   #343
   San Francisco, California 94110-4929
   United States

I really like the name GetWP.com, and feel it would be a fair substitution – after all, they’re not even USING it!  So I wrote the lawyer back just now, asking if maybe they’ll consider giving me getwp.com, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Anyway, I thought I’d share – After they refuse, have you got any ideas for me for another good domain name?

The original post is titled Changing Our Domain Name? , and it came from GetWPress .

Update August 26 2011 – It’s here – $39 for one color or $99 for all six.

The original post is titled Scentsy WordPress Themes , and it came from GetWPress .

While a problem may not present itself for months or years, it’s reasonable to assume that someday, something will go wrong and you’ll wish your database was smaller and cleaner. Perhaps it will come during a routine upgrade and you’ll notice something’s out of whack, or the automatic upgrade will fail, forcing you to upgrade manually.

On the other hand, you might discover a problem only after something has gone seriously wrong – like while trying to restore a backup after a loss – and at that point, to put it technically, you are screwed.

Because we manage a lot of domains on a lot of different hosts, we’re probably a lot more prone to see a problem than you are, however, it never hurts to be safe, and be proactive. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep your database clean of unnecessary data.

A few weeks ago, while dealing with a site that had literally hundreds of revisions for every page, and a giant database that was giving us problems moving from one server to another, I looked for a plug-in that would get rid of all these revisions that we no longer needed.

I found a good one in WP Optimize, that not only gets rid of unwanted revisions, but also optimizes the database tables, which was previously only accessible through your web hosts phpMyAdmin.

Rather than tell you all about it, take a look at this 2 minute video…

The original post is titled Optimize Your Database , and it came from GetWPress .

These requirements are designed to provide a standardized set of consistent security measures for merchants to follow that are handling credit card transactions.

The standard includes 12 requirements for maintaining a secure operation:

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

• Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
• Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
• Protect Cardholder Data
• Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data
• Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

• Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software
• Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

• Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
• Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
• Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
• Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
• Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes
• Maintain an Information Security Policy
• Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

For WordPress your E-commerce options are limited, and for a PCI Compliant shopping cart, they’re limited even further.

There is no way in a million years you should consider developing a new site using ANY shopping cart that is not willing to be compliant or in my (non legal) opinion, you’re setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

This list of WP shopping carts and their PCI compliance info will grow over time…

1. Shopp – The are compliant, and they are willing to say so, which is why they are our current platform of choice.
2. PHP Purchase – We’ve never used them but they say they’re compliant right on their home page.
3. Cart 32 – We’ve never used them, but they do claim compliance.
4. Vevo Cart – They DO claim to be compliant

These carts are either Non Compliant or simply not addressed on their sites:

1. WP Ecommerce – Although we HAVE tested their compliance once before and found no issues,  they now seem to fail test –  They refuse to offer any statement about compliance here – Check although there are lots of interesting discussions though here
2. WP Auctions –  No mention of PCI Compliance – check.
3. WP eStore – No mention of PCI but they use something called instant digital product delivery – check
4. Shopper Press – Has more than 20+ payment gateways, but not PCI compliant?  check
5. Market Theme – No mention of PCI Compliance – check.
6. Word Press Shopping Cart Plug-in – No mention of PCI compliance – check.

In the comments below, please leave any links to compliance info for anyone you come across, and I’ll update this list. Likewise, if you have information about anyone that’s NOT compliant, that would be helpful too.

WP Ecommerce

The original post is titled WordPress Shopping Cart PCI Compliance , and it came from GetWPress .

1. Before beginning, be sure you have the latest cForms downloaded and unzipped from Delicious Days.

2. FTP to the plugins directory of the site, download a full backup copy of cForms.

3. Do a database backup in the wp-admin, if you haven’t already done it.

4. Deactivate cForms.

5. Upload the new cforms folder through ftp. (Be sure you are uploading the cforms folder and not the zip file name – this will cause cforms to have errors and partially work.)

6. Leave the ftp on for now – activate cForms again.

7. Go to the cForms admin page.

8. Does it say: It appears that cforms was not able to create abspath.php…?
If it does, start a new text file. Copy the green highlighted code cForms produced.
Looks like: <code>&lt;?php $abspath = ‘/home/www/domain-name.com/’; ?&gt;</code>
Paste that code into your new text file and save as abspath.php.
Upload that file to the cforms folder.

9. Refresh the cforms admin page to be sure it’s correct now.

10. If you see more notations at the top, such as upgrade database table, just follow the instructions. This isn’t as common anymore unless you’re upgrading a very old installation.

11. Final step: test one of the forms.

Failed tests:

1. Did you add the abspath.php file and is the path on that correct? If the installation is in a sub-directory, check to see that cforms recognized that and the sub-directory is showing at the end of the file path in abspath.php.

2. If cforms didn’t tell you to add the abspath.php file, check that it’s actually in the cforms folder anyway. If not, create one using the above code with the correct server path.

3. Is the cforms folder it’s own? In the plugins directory, when you open the cforms folder, do you see files or another cforms folder? If you see another cforms folder, you will have to open it, select all the files and folders, and drag them up one directory.

4. Follow this path in your ftp: cforms/js/. Download the cforms.js file and open for editing.
Just past the copyright information, look for this line:
<code>var sajax_uri = ‘/wp-content/plugins/cforms/lib_ajax.php’;</code>

If the wordpress installation is in a sub-directory, add it to the code like this:
<code>var sajax_uri = ‘/sub-directory-name/wp-content/plugins/cforms/lib_ajax.php’;</code>

Upload the file and re-test the form.

The original post is titled Upgrading cForms Plugin , and it came from GetWPress .

Unable to locate WordPress Plugin directory.

Warning: unlink(/tmp….

Unable to locate WordPress Content directory (wp-content)

How to fix:

The best solution is to create a new ftp login that goes directly to the sub-directory rather than to the root. This usually takes care of the problem right away. When you upgrade in the admin area, it normally asks you for this information before continuing.

If you don’t have control panel access for setting up a new ftp, Artyom’s Blog has a suggestion to try. I’ve not tested his method since I’ve had control panel access for all blogs that had issues, so try at your own risk.

Still having issues:

After clicking “Upgrade Database” – Fatal error: Call to undefined function: populate_roles_270() in /your-abspath/blog/wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php on line 904

For some odd reason, a wordpress file corrupts or does not always upload correct during manual upgrades. This actually resulted in issues through the entire admin. Simple solution was to re-upload the file: wp-admin/includes/schema.php

Yet one more issue to help:

Any error relating to tmp/anything directory couldn’t be found.

Add the following to the end of the wp-config.php file (but before ?>):

(I suggest this as a last resort if all else has failed to stop errors, but I have tested this method and it did resolve an issue for one site.)

The original post is titled WordPress and Plugin Upgrade Issues , and it came from GetWPress .

Starting with 2.7 I typically deactivate and delete the automatic upgrade plugin after upgrade. But mostly of curiosity I left one on when upgrading to 2.7.1.

Question:
Should I definitely deactivate and delete the automatic upgrade plugin once upgrading to 2.7? Will it make a difference leaving it on?

Answer:
Yes. At the least it must be deactivated. It will cause an error during the attempt to auto upgrade if the plugin is still active. This won’t cause damage to your blog, but the upgrade will not work until you have deactivated the plugin.

This feature now being built-in to Word Press is very nice though. It skips several tedious steps from the the previous automatic upgrade plugin.

No Automatic Backup:
One important thing to remember though, you definitely need a database backup plugin now. It no longer takes you through the steps for backup during the upgrade.

I recommend WordPress Database Backup. It works very well, simple to use, and have used it myself to restore lost or corrupt databases with 100% success. This plugin also has automatic backup, which I highly rercommend taking the few seconds to set.

The original post is titled WordPress Automatic Upgrade Has No Backup , and it came from GetWPress .

Recently, one of our customers told us that they were being required by their credit card company to pass a certification test verifying that their website was PCI compliant and wanted us to attend to it.

The company doing the compliance check was called Trustkeeper, and I’m very proud to report that right out of the box, with no changes on our part related to their cart, WP e-commerce passed the PCI compliance test with flying colors.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on PCI compliance, but I can tell you that we had no problem passing the test using the WP e-commerce software. We did have some server configuration changes, but those were unrelated to the WP or the cart plugin.

If you’re a WordPress lover and you’re in need of a shopping cart too, this one will meet your needs…   Please tell them that Scott sent ya!

The original post is titled PCI Compliant Cart for WP e-commerce , and it came from GetWPress .

This has most commonly been used in the page.php file of the WordPress themes only, but can certainly be applied to any page that you would like the ability to set the h1 tag (or some cases, if you prefer, the h2 tag). Remember, it is recommended to set the default theme h2 tags displaying the header of the pages to H1 for an SEO advantage.

This documentation will demonstrate applying this hack to page.php in your theme, but can easily be understood from that point on doing the same to your template pages, index.php, single.php, etc.

Step by Step:
1. You will need to be using an installed version of WordPress at least 2.x or greater as this method uses the “Custom Fields” you will find toward the bottom of the page in the admin area as you create or edit pages or posts.

2. In your favorite editor for editing your theme pages, or using the Theme Editor under the Presentation tab of the WordPress admin area, open pages.php for editing.

3. In the default theme of WordPress or the theme you are using, you will see a section toward the top of the file that looks exactly like or similar to this:

It’s this line – <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> that you will be changing. It may not look exactly the same, but will almost always be enclosed in h2 tags.

You will want to replace the contents inside those tags, but it is highly recommended that if they currently say <h2></h2> to change those to h1.

4. Replace that line with the following:

So your file should now look similar to this:

5. Save the file and upload it to your theme folder or save the file in the theme editor.

6. Now you can edit or create new pages and use the custom fields to change the heading of the page without changing the actual title of the page.

7. To do this, as an example, let’s create a new page named “Test”.

8. Publish the page, then view it from your WordPress site.

9. You can see that not only the title in the browser, in the menu, and the heading of the page says “Test”.

10. Now back to the admin area, edit the page “Test”.
11. Scroll to the bottom of the editing area until you see “Custom Fields”.
12. You may have to click on the “+” sign to the right to see the area for editing these fields.

13. Here you will need to add “changeH1” to the key text box for the first time. Be sure that changeH1 is spelled exactly the same and the “H” is capitalized.

14. After you have done this the first time, you will be able to select the changeH1 from the drop-down box under the word Key instead. It is only necessary to add the key once with a value, and from that point, it will remain in the drop-down list to be selected easier.

15. Now change the header by typing a new one in the Value text box to the right. Let’s just test it out by typing “This is my new heading text”. Then click “Add Custom Field”.

16. Save and continue, or save the page now.

17. Go back to your site and refresh to see the change.

18. Now you can edit any page to display a different heading just by setting the “changeH1” key in the drop-down list and typing in the heading you want in value. Don’t forget to click “Add Custom Field”.

19. If you have already set a heading in a page using this method, you can also go back to editing the page, and change the value in the box just above where you set it originally. After making the change click on “update”.

The original post is titled H1 Hack for WordPress Pages , and it came from GetWPress .

We’ve been using it in several places for quite awhile now and although it recognizes standard .html for making links, nothing we did would force manual linebreaks. It was REALLY irritating and quite unprofessional looking.

Over on Lorele’s blog I found a suggestion but I couldn’t get that working either so I posted on the actual plug-in page. Finally, things slowed down enough that I asked Heather, our #1 programmer to try and figure it out and she was able to.

It turns out that the plug-in itself has to be edited, and rather than explain it here I’ll just place a version of the edited plug in.

So for those of you wish to force line breaks in the get author profile plug-in, you need to replace your version with this version and then simply type this >>> where you want the line break

Thank you to the original creator of the plug-in, thank you to Lorelle for almost solving it, and a giant thank you to Heather for actually making it work!

* There is no support for this edited plug-in, so any comments other than “thank you” will likely not be answered

The original post is titled Line Breaks in Author Profile Plug-in , and it came from GetWPress .

Their 25+ page site previously required Front Page to edit, or another .html editor, and there was very little graphic appeal. It was all Times New Roman font on a white page, with the company logo in the upper left corner.

The design they chose (from Template Monster) was actually a Joomla template that we then converted to a 100% WordPress 2.5 compatible theme, including fully widgetized sidebars.

We pulled in all of their existing content, and 301 redirected all of their old pages, to ensure no loss in traffic. Now, not only is is good looking, but any of the employees they desire can make edits as needed.

See the site here…

The original post is titled Joomla Template to WordPress Conversion , and it came from GetWPress .

This goes against our usual practice of upgrading immediately every time a new version is released, and but the changes are just too major to have to deal with until we know more about how it affects plug-ins that we use.

The article goes into some pretty good detail about what’s changing, how it’s changing, how it might affect users, and even includes some great screenshots to illustrate their point. It’s a highly recommended read before you do your upgrade…

The original post is titled WordPress 2.5 Dramatic Changes , and it came from GetWPress .

Assuming that everything went okay, you then had to manually reactivate all of your plug-ins. I went through the step by step WordPress upgrade using a video on my main blog, and even though it was fairly straightforward it still took up too much of my time.

Thanks to a plug-in that was released last summer the process is now seamless and can be completed in under 60 seconds.

This video demonstrates the entire process from start to finish and is not so much a tutorial, as it is a quick demonstration of an amazing plug-in that’s made our lives much easier.

Thank you to Techie Buzz, for releasing it, thank you to Ronald Heureca who has pretty much perfected the automated process of this fantastic plug-in

The original post is titled Upgrade Your WordPress in 90 Seconds , and it came from GetWPress .

Anyway, the original site is totally custom, and I think she matched it perfectly, right down to the “burned edges”…

Here’s the original site on one domain

Here’s the matched WordPress theme on another

And here’s our ever growing samples page with our WordPress portfolio…

The original post is titled Another Perfectly Matched WordPress Theme , and it came from GetWPress .

The original post is titled Adding pictures to WordPress Posts , and it came from GetWPress .

I added a new user, then logged in to post as that new user, and here’s what I saw at the “Write” screen -

Unfortunately, this option then prevents those “Contributors” from being able to add photos to a post, which is a shame.. After hitting the “Submit for Review button, I logged out, then back in as the Admin, and I see that there is a post pending for review – Nice

There was also no email notification to me as the Admin that a contributor had posted, but I guess you can’t have everything.

If anyone knows how to allow for photo uploads or add email notifications, please let me know here…

The original post is titled Let Others Post To Your WordPress Blog Safely , and it came from GetWPress .

Apparently, a recent addition to WordPress (maybe 2.3?) added a button on the WordPress text editor that allows you to paste information directly from Microsoft Word, and instantly strips out all the formatting. I’m exactly not sure how long it’s been there, but it works very well.

First you have to open the advanced toolbar options to see the new button button -

This expands the menu to a second level where you will immediately see the option for Microsoft Word pasting.

Hitting that button opens another small window, where you can paste from Word to your hearts content.

Nice!

The original post is titled Paste Easily to WordPress From MS Word , and it came from GetWPress .

The original post is titled Claiming This Blog On Technorati , and it came from GetWPress .

This is very odd… First they replaced Technorati in there with Google, and now they’ve removed altogether the ability to know instantly when someone links back to you.

That’s a shame, because I really like it! Perhaps it’s just a glitch and it will come back tomorrow?

The original post is titled WordPress Not Showing Backlinks Any More? , and it came from GetWPress .

Old Info:
Having a big ping list added to your WordPress blog is not going to make or break you, but the more exposure, the better, right?

At a recent presentation I gave about using WordPress, I was adding a slide about the ping list, and decided to count them. I was surprised to see that there were only 46, but that’s what I put in the slide.

Apparently, at some point over the last couple of dozen installations, I dropped off a batch from my list, and even my own blog was running short.

Going back through my files and folders, and even some old blogs, I’ve now recompiled my ping list, and removed the duplicates, and I’m posting them here for your viewing pleasure.

To add to your ping list –

• login to WordPress admin
• go to the options tab
• go to the writing sub tab
• scroll further down than you probably ever have before
• paste into the field

There’s an old thread here at Digitalpoint with some detailed info for better pinging too, but I disagree with the detractors there. My own experience has shown me that it’s NOT a wasted or duplicated effort, I prefer these “manual” pings over Pingomatic, and that the no ping waiting plugin is was very cool. (sorry, the domain is gone!)

That’s it. Feel free to copy and paste my list below, with no reciprocal link required, no thanks necessary, and no paypal donation sent to scott (at) pdxtc.com

(I would however appreciate any comments added here if you notice anything missing…)

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoles.net/notificacio.php

http://bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://bitacoras.net/ping/

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://blogoole.com/ping/

http://blogoon.net/ping/

http://blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://blogsnow.com/ping

http://blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrp…

http://blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://blogupdate.org/sverige/ping/

http://bulkfeeds.net

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://catapings.com/ping.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi

http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://imblogs.net/ping/

http://lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://mod-pubsub.org/ping.php

http://newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogoon.net/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/RPC2/

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://pingoat.com/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2 euro.weblogs.com

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.britblog.com

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://weblogalot.com/Ping/

http://weblogues.com/ping/

http://weblogues.com/RPC

http://weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://zing.zingfast.com

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

*** update May 2010***

In the 2 1/2 years since I wrote this post, ping services have grown, and while I’ve never seen anyone get banned for over-0pinging, I’ve heard about it, and reducing redundant pings is a good thing.

Therefore, I recommend you read the May 28 2010 commenters article below -

which recommends using two other WordPress plugins that will eliminate pinging after an edit and another that will eliminate duplicates from your ping list

The original post is titled The Big WordPress Ping List , and it came from GetWPress .

They were happy with their look and feel what unhappy with having to keep someone on retainer just to make a couple of changes each month, featuring two of their tenants.

The site is an executive suite rental business, and the transition was completely seamless. They now have the ability to make changes themselves, and within just a few months, will recoup their entire investment.

Additionally, because the site is now in WordPress, all of the URLs are search engine friendly, and no longer contain multiple parameters that the search engines may have trouble crawling.

They can individually control all of their title tags, keyword tags and the meta description tag, so if they put their mind to it, they should now rank well in the search engines.

Here are some samples of our WordPress site matched themes, and site conversions

The original post is titled New WordPress Site Conversion , and it came from GetWPress .

“If you do everything on WordPress, you’re pretty much covered for SEO.”

That’s exactly what he said, (I wrote it down) and I could barely believe my ears.  I mean, yeah, WordPress is pretty much magic when properly configured, but to have Matt Cutts from Google give it his stamp of approval at a conference presentation was pretty amazing to hear, especially since Google owns Blogger.

To be perfectly clear, Matt was speaking of a self hosted WordPress blog using their free software, and not free hosted blog platform available WordPress.com. There is a huge difference, so don’t be confused!

There are plenty of expensive and cumbersome options for building a website, that lock you into a certain web host, programmer or company, and that’s one of the things I love most about the open source WordPress system.  You’re free to host where you want,  tweak it to your hearts content, and you’re not locked in to an expensive solution.

I would have to say that while WordPress isn’t quite perfect “right out of the box”, with just a few minor tweaks and plug-ins added, it can compete with almost anything else on the market for SEO purposes.

My own success with 100% WordPress powered sites has been outstanding, and for a while, it was the best kept secret in SEO.  Now, with this public endorsement by one of the most famous names in search, I only see it’s use increasing over time, as the community continues to grow worldwide.

The original post is titled Pubcon Quote from Matt Cutts About WordPress , and it came from GetWPress .

However, most people don’t even bother to update the default comment invitation lines that appear in their WordPress blog, because it’s just not something you think about.

If you scroll down below you’ll see that I’ve customized the comment message on this blog, and it’s really easy to do.

First, login to your WordPress admin, then go to presentation – theme editor.

Click on your single.php file over on the right.

Before you do a bunch of work to scroll to the bottom and make sure that you’re not seeing this message: “If this file were writable, you could edit it”

If you see that, then you need to adjust your permissions (FTP – CHMOD) on those files.

Once you are viewing single.php, then using Firefox or IE, (Ctrl-F), you can open a search box and with the WordPress file editor, you will usually find this line “You can follow any comments”. I say usually because these files are in the theme, and most designers will not edit that message.

That will put you smack dab in the middle of your code for editing that text to say what you want. You can also use linebreaks and limited HTML tags, like bolds and breaks to format it however you like. Cool, huh?

Disclaimer:
ALWAYS make a backup of your work, even just in an open Notepad file. That way, if it screws up your formatting somehow you can paste it right back.

The original post is titled Edit Default Comment Invitation , and it came from GetWPress .

If you’re on an Apache host, you most likely have mod rewrite, and you most likely already have an htaccess file, in my experience.

The first thing you need to do is make sure that your htaccess file is writable, and this can be done with your FTP software or your file manager inside your web hosting control.

Many web hosts block the visibility of your htaccess, so be sure to choose to show hidden files inside your FTP software or inside your web hosting control panel.

Make note of the original settings, then set the htaccess to 777, which should enable the WordPress admin control panel to do the rest.

Login to your WordPress admin control panel – options – permalinks

From there go to the custom option, and paste the following into the field -

/%category%/%postname%/

That will give you your category and post title for the end of your URL. I’ve been experimenting lately with just using /%postname%/ too, and if your blog is very niche, and you don’t want to to categorize your URLs, there’s no reason you can’t do that.

At that point, you should see this message appear the top -

You’re done!

Check your post for friendly URL’s and change your .htaccess back the way it was, and you’re good to go.

*disclaimer – We will not accept any liability if you do it incorrectly and it does not work, or you get hacked because you leave something writable, or you basically screw thiongs up. Just set your permalinks back to default, and all will be fine.

The original post is titled Permalinks – Change Defaults , and it came from GetWPress .

Once you have an established URL structure, a change can cause you to not only lose search engine visibility, but all of your PageRank will drop to zero, and all of your inbound links will no longer work. That can’t be good!

Additionally, if all of the page names in the search engines index cease to exist, then anyone that ever clicks on one of your Serps would be taken to a 404 error. That’s bad!

Sometimes there’s a lot of legitimate reason to want to change, usually because they were set up in correctly in the first place. The proper way to make change would be to implement real one redirects for every single URL that’s changing. This can be quite the daunting task.

Luckily there is a plug-in available to make this process painless. It’s called Dean’s Permalinks Migration, and here’s a three-minute video to show you how it works…

The original post is titled Safely & Easily Change Permalinks , and it came from GetWPress .

As a quick lesson in SEO, I’ll point out that on the homepage I’ve added text links to the purchase page,  using different anchor text five times.

Because I don’t have a lot of content on this site yet, I’ve chosen to place four primary search phrases there, made them bold, and then linked all four to my shopping cart page.

The fifth link, near the bottom of the homepage is nofollowed, so that I’m not wasting any link juice following text for which I don’t care to rank. Make sense?

Future posts will go into the plug-ins being used, but first I have to get the privacy and contact pages up, (which of course will be nofollowed). Stay tuned…

The original post is titled Using Anchor Text and Nofollow , and it came from GetWPress .

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The original post is titled Free WordPress Installation , and it came from GetWPress .

I ran across a plug-in last night that was absolutely amazing, and I just tried it this morning – It’s called the WordPress automatic upgrade.

I just upgraded a blog from an older version 2.2, to a new version 2.31 in under three minutes total.

I downloaded the plug-in, uploaded to the plug-ins directory, activated, and then clicked the link inside the description of the plug-in to begin.

It automatically deactivates and reactivates your plug-ins during the install, and backs up the files for download too, before the upgrade takes place.

For some reason, the “automated version” failed, but manually clicking next, next, next, had me completed in under three minutes, including downloading the backup file.

There’s really no FTP time either up or down, because the server goes directly to WordPress.org to get the latest version. This is totally awesome, and this plug-in needs to become a part your standard upload.

Keep in mind of course that any plug-ins that don’t work with the new versions are going to delete you screwed and force a manual upgrade, but the new plug-in page from WordPress 2.3x on will now automatically tell you when a plug-in is out of date. Try it for yourself…

The original post is titled Instant WordPress Upgrades! , and it came from GetWPress .

It supposedly fixes about 20 known issues from the recent 2.3 update and will likely be well worth taking a look at.
As cool as the changes in version 2.3 were, it presented quite a nightmare to those that attempted upgrades without doing much research.

Many old plug-ins were broken – more than I can even believe, but it did force me to evaluate all of my own installations, both for myself and for clients, and two people are now making the rounds doing all of the upgrades for all the software as well as all the plug-ins,

Stay tuned for further notice on an actual release of 2.31, and if you’re brave enough (I’m not)  install the RC and tell me how it is

The original post is titled WordPress 2.3 RC1 , and it came from GetWPress .

We’re excited for the launch of the new website, and we are currently implementing shopping cart. The anticipated launch date was November 1, but it’s looking like it may be sooner, so I thought I’d make the site live today.

The original post is titled Site is live, here we come , and it came from GetWPress .