Wordpress 2.6 Released – But Wait!

If you are a user or watcher of Wordpress you may have noticed that the latest version (2.6) , called Tyner, has just been released.  I’ve had a quick look at it and also the support forums and there appears to be a few things that need sorting out before I would suggest you apply this update.

Will let you know when I think it will be safe to apply.

Blog Subscribers – How Many?

This post is a question that I received from a client a week or so ago. You will see more of these sort of Q&A type posts from here on in as I start to offer, first clients and then open it to the general community, the opportunity to ask a question about any aspect of small business webs, blogs, tools and other technology.

Q – How do I find out how many people are subscribing to my blog?

The best option that I have found to manage and track subscribers to a blog is by using Feedburner.

Feedburner is a free service (recently purchased by Google) and it handles 3 main aspects about blog distribution. It helps you -

• Publicise your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
• Optimise distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
• Analyse your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.

Did You Know?
After Google purchased Feedburner the previously fee-based Pro Stats are now available at no charge to all feedburner users.

If you aren’t registered with Feedburner then I suggest you go there right now and sign up.

If you are using Feedburner the all you need to do to see how many people are subscribing is log in to Feedburner and in the main dashboard click on your blog’s name.

You will then see something like this ….

You can then click on links for the subscribers, the day of the week or other links to find out more details.

If you have a Wordpress blog then the other option is that you can install the plugin called Wordpress Reports (from Tan Tan Noodles) that takes the stats information from Feedburner and Google Analytics (if you are using it) and delivers some basic graphs straight into your Wordpress admin area.

Does Your Blog Follow?

The traditional question has always been “are you a leader or a follower?” but in the blog world it is more like are you a follower or a blocker?

Did you know that as a way to deter comment spammers most blog platforms have a “no-follow” rule for links in comments. This means that when a “spider” from one of the search engines is indexing you site and they come across the link the “spider” won’t follow the link, and thus the site that the link targets doesn’t get the link-love that they were looking for.

Now that is great for those spammy-bastards who bombard the web with offers for all sorts of weird and wonderful things that have no relevance to you or your readers. BUT … what about all the great people who genuinely come by and contribute to the conversation by leaving a message.. Unfortunately the [tag]no-follow[/tag] rule will stop them getting [tag]link-love[/tag] too

That is unless you have a self-hosted [tag]Wordpress[/tag] blog and you can install the DoFollow plugin. Thanks [tag]SemiLogic[/tag] for putting together this great little [tag]plugin[/tag] that allows us to reward our commenters and not ignore them.

You can now leave a comment on this blog and get rewarded for your contribution with a little more search engine heads-up from me.

BTW – If you are interested Randa Clay has created a little graphic that you can show proudly if you have enabled this plugin on your site.

Wordpress Tip – Enabling The Visual Text Editor

With the upgrade to Wordpress 2.1 there has been a little confusion by some users about the disappearance of the visual text editor.

It used to look like this :

But now looks a little more like this :

Yuk!

To have the option change plain text editor and visual/WYSIWYG mode all you meed to do is :

1. Go to Users on the main menu
2. Click on Your Profile int he sub menu
3. Check the box for “Use visual editor when writing”

There you go all fixed! (Especially for Pete)