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…

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 process of upgrading your WordPress used to be a tedious one. You had to manually backup all of your files, download them deactivate all your plug-ins upload the new version run the upgrade

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

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Click here to post a video response.

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…

Putting pictures in WordPress posts and pages is easy, but not exactly intuitive. This is a fast tutorial to show you how it’s done with minimum effort.

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…

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!

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?

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

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

“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.

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.

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.

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…

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…

As an introductory offer, we are giving away one free default installation of Wordpress with every web hosting package.

Upon completion of a web hosting sign-up, simply e-mail support and request your free Wordpress installation. Within 24 hours, (one business day) we will install Wordpress on your domain, and e-mail you your admin username and password.

An account sign up with our Portland, Oregon Web hosting partner only takes a minute. This offer may not last - (but then again, it may!)

Where are the servers really located?
In Portland Oregons Pittock building & data center right in downtown Portland Oregon. We are simply a reseller of a virtual hosting package from Sri Lanka.

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All sites are backed up twice daily, so yes, your data is safe.

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Yes, very. The Pittock center is a state of the art facility that is used by XO communications, and Easystreet, and many other local ISP’s. There is no faster or more secure public web hosting facility in the state of Oregon

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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…

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

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.