Archive for plugin

Design Portfolio: Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain

Posted by Cat 
· Monday, November 9th, 2009 
· 2 Comments

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Patt Lind-Kyle has created a book and companion CD set to support people in changing their lives for the better.

Her WordPress website incorporates the following features:

  • Blog
  • YouTube Channel
  • Social Media Icons linked to Social Media sites
  • Free MP3 incentive for joining email list
  • WordPress as fully-functioning website/CMS
  • Custom graphic design and layout to match product branding
  • Embedded audio players for interviews and samples of work
  • SEO techniques
  • Re-sizable fluid width for different screen sizes
  • Facebook Fan box
  • Dark background with light text color (to match product)
  • AWeber email marketing with Blog Broadcast feature
  • Blog sync with Facebook Page and Twitter account
  • Google Analytics reports within WP dashboard and by email
  • Automatic weekly Database backups
  • Plugins: Spamblocker, Security, Super Cache (for faster load time)
  • Feedburner RSS feed optimization
  • Teleseminar Registration possibilities for the future

What do you think of Patt’s website?  Leave me a comment.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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Categories : Design Portfolio
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Mobilize your WordPress site

Posted by Cat 
· Monday, October 19th, 2009 
· No Comments

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The dotMobi “Mobile Pack” is an essential plugin for WordPress sites geared for mobile users.  Once installed and activated, this plugin will automatically detect if your site visitor is viewing your site with a mobile device or on a desktop and convert the site view accordingly.

Even if the demographic of those you serve with your business is not technology-savvy, it is still a good idea to make your site as user-friendly as possible.  More and more people are using mobile devices to surf the web every day.  Making your site “mobile-friendly” increases the range of people you can reach with your WordPress site.

Go here to get the plugin: MobilePack

If you would like assistance with installing and configuring this plugin, I can help.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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Categories : learn wordpress, Plugins
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Back yourself up: The 3 top reasons to back up your WordPress site

Posted by Cat 
· Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 
· No Comments

Why backup?

1) hosting companies disappear

2) servers crash

3) code gets corrupted

Ok, so I convinced you.  Now if you’re like most people, you’ve got 2 tasks ahead:

backup

To backup your database, use the WP-Database-Backup plugin.  Before I discovered this simple backup plugin, I manually backed up my clients’ databases for them before I upgraded their version of WordPress.  Those of you who have used MySql to backup can imagine how grateful I was to discover a plugin that would do this automatically.  With WP-database-backup, you can schedule an automatic backup with email delivery to yourself or your WordPress manager.

To backup your wp-content folder, use an ftp program like fetch or use your web hosting control panel’s file manager.  Once you’ve copied the wp-content folder to your computer or hard drive, burn your database and your wp-content folder onto a CD-R or DVD disk for storage (remember – hard drives can fail).  Then sleep well at night – you’ve backed yourself up!

Read More →

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Categories : General How-To, learn wordpress, Plugins
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Stats for WordPress: Analytics or WP stats?

Posted by Cat 
· Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 
· No Comments

One of my clients just asked me if there was a way to see how many people were visiting his WordPress blog each day and my answer is yes!  There are 2 ways I recommend:

1) Google Analytics and 2) WordPress.com stats

Google Analytics is by far the most in-depth, comprehensive stats provider.  It is very useful for when you want to employ search engine optimization techniques.  However, sometimes it’s just TMI (too much information!).

WordPress.com stats is a wordpress plugin that gives you the basics in your dashboard – how many visits, keywords people used to find you, the links they clicked on while they were there, etc. Here is a screenshot of my wp.com stats since I started my e-newsletter:

stats

Which to use? Both.

Generate and schedule a weekly Google Analytics report to be delivered to your email inbox for the more detailed information – what country visitors are from, how long they were looking at your site, bounce rate, what browser they used, etc.  And add WordPress.com stats to your dashboard to get the basic facts.

If you have found this information helpful, please let me know by leaving a comment on this blog post!

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

– Catherine

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Categories : General How-To, learn wordpress, Plugins, SEO
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Measure your site’s effectiveness with Google Analyticator

Posted by Cat 
· Monday, September 21st, 2009 
· No Comments

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This free WordPress plugin makes it super easy to install the necessary Google code so you can access the valuable information provided by Google Analytics.  First, install the plugin through your WordPress plugin installer.  Next, create a Google Analytics account.  Then, go into the Google Analytics settings:

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Enable the plugin and copy and paste your Google Analytics ID (looks like UA-XXXXXX-X) into the plugin settings.

Now you are good to go!  You can access your stats by logging into Analytics and/or by generating a report.

For more free WordPress tips by email, subscribe to my e-newsletter:

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Categories : Analytics, learn wordpress, Plugins
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The most popular WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin

Posted by Cat 
· Friday, September 18th, 2009 
· No Comments

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If you sell products or services online and you have a WordPress site, you will want to use the most popular WordPress shopping cart plugin created by Instinct.  This plugin has been in development for 4 years and has been downloaded over 300,000 times.  It comes with social media networking options, multiple payment options, security, documentation and online forums for support.

For more free WordPress tips by email, subscribe to my e-newsletter by email with this form:

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Categories : learn wordpress, Plugins
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The perfect video blog theme

Posted by Cat 
· Thursday, September 10th, 2009 
· No Comments

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Tubular Theme by Studio Press is the perfect premium WordPress theme for a video blog.  To see “Tubular” in action, visit this website I setup for the Debt Resolution Foundation or visit StudioPress.com for a live demo.

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Categories : learn wordpress, Themes
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Turn your audio and video into Podcasts with this WordPress plugin

Posted by Cat 
· Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 
· No Comments

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Turn your audio and video into Podcasts with this free WordPress plugin: BluBrry PowerPress.  And the best thing about it – when configured correctly, Powerpress will automatically send your audio and video podcasts to the iTunes podcast directory.

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Categories : learn wordpress, Plugins
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Send text messages to your peeps with this WordPress plugin

Posted by Cat 
· Friday, September 4th, 2009 
· No Comments

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Introducing SMS Text Message for WordPress: a plugin that allows you to send SMS text message updates to those who want to receive your most recent information.

Some fun ideas for use:

  • sending out the location for a secret event, performance, poetry reading, etc. at the last minute
  • publish inspirational messages to support your contacts in their daily lives
  • announce real-time updates on your world wherever you are (when you have access to the internet)

I hope you have found this post helpful. To learn more about using the self-hosted version of WordPress, take my free e-course.

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Categories : learn wordpress, Plugins
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ProPlayer MP3 Player Plugin for WordPress

Posted by Cat 
· Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 
· 2 Comments

Recently, a client wanted an MP3 player on her WordPress site that would autostart on the landing page and have volume control.  The audio player by OnePixel Out that I had used on my website would not suffice.

After a lot of research and testing of various plugins, I found a solution: Pro Player. You can see ProPlayer in use on my client’s site here:

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Pro Player was originally designed to embed video (such as YouTube, Vimeo and more), but it works just as well for embedding MP3’s.  Here’s how to use it for audio:

  • After you install and activate the plugin, go to the options area for ProPlayer, change the media type to “sound” and use this code in your post or page: [pro-player type=”MP3″]http://YOUR_URL.mp3[/pro-player]
  • Replace the URL with the actual URL of your mp3 (where ever it is on the web) before your publish or update the post.
  • Change the height in the settings area to about 34 pixels so you just get the audio player and not the image for video.

If you want to change the color scheme, there are 27 different skins available.

I hope you have found this information helpful – feel free to leave a comment!

Best,

Catherine

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Categories : learn wordpress, Plugins
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