Archive for the ‘Advanced’ Category

Trying to install that cool new plugin or theme you just discovered? Using the WordPress web based admin panel to do it? Getting really miffed, enough to Google the problem and find this article, and about to throw your computer through the window?

Stop.

Try this before you start digging around in your .htaccess file. Look in your uploads folder for the year folder and then the month folder and look in there for any .zip files that may be upgrades and not files you want to have available later. Unless you specifically placed .zip files in your uploads they are probably from upgrades that either did not properly install previously or the one you are currently trying to install. The WP dashboard upgrade function “should” automatically delete the .zip (compressed) files for upgrades as soon as the upgrade is installed. Read the rest of this entry »

Got a self-hosted WordPress blog on your server? Wonder where all the “stuff” happens? So you have taken time to dig around in all those .php files and you really aren’t sure exactly what happens where. All you want to know is how to change the header image or the font and it doesn’t really present itself with flashing lites and big red arrows pointing to the file and code line.

While there is no way we can dig far enough under the hood of the WP files in this short Twitterbits article we can look at the two examples mentioned earlier. For the sake of ease let’s start with changing the font in your theme. You’ll only need to dig around in one file (unless your theme has mutliple files for various browsers like mine). Read the rest of this entry »

Okay – it’s only as cool as you want it to be but it’s much easier than it is cool. You can actually see it in action here on this site in the vertical menu bar or sidebar. Literally it took less than 2 minutes to install the Facebook features here on Twitterbits.

First you need a Facebook account – in the event you are the one person who does not have one.

Next you need a web presence, unless you are planning on installing the Facebook feature on your local machine.

Then go to http://developers.facebook.com/plugins and find the item you want to use on your site. They call them plugins but they are really just HTML code or XFBML code. Read the rest of this entry »

The advent of Twitter is good and bad for social media. It is good because anyone can do it. It is bad because anyone can do it. Catching myself saying, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”, is a frequent self-reminder of my parents. They liked to say it.

Likewise it can be said for Twitter and indeed all of social media where it concerns small business and?marketers.

Everyone has a friend or family member who is always into the newest fad, multi-level marketing, the greatest opportunity since the 8086 microchip. You know who I am talking about. If you don’t then it is time to examine yourself to see if it is you!

Golden Nugget number one: Be sociable

Being social means to interact with others on their same field. It does not mean spewing line after line of what is important to you without listening to what is important to others. Take a look at http://twitter.com/SBALoanBlog for an exceptional case of Twitter spam – and more over social media abuse. Notice how all of the tweets are one way, look at my link posts. Don’t be this person.

We can all measure your sociability using some pretty complex tools but that really doesn’t matter. What matters is if people like you and want to follow you and want to recommend you to their friends. Tools like MentionMap can tell how many people you actually share a meaningful exchange with so anyone who wants to check can do so. Read the rest of this entry »

The more successful you are the thicker your skin. Or at least that should be the case. Knowing what people say about you or your brand is very important to your success especially if the sayings are outside your scope of intent. Brand awareness is good when it is positive but unless you are Borat the supreme fool you will most likely want only good to be spoken of your brand.

Relax, it is not as difficult as you would think. In fact there are many tools available to monitor the use of your brand name and key words associated with your brand. Some of these are automated and others will require interactive use but are still powerful.

1. Google Alerts – this completely free service is very easy to setup and monitor. I run it on my name, my websites, my company name, and keywords relative to what I am monitoring for. Simply visit http://www.google.com/alerts and follow the very simple instructions. You can choose how often you would like to receive your notices and create as many as you like. If you want the exact phrase be sure to use quotation marks such as “social media edge radio”. You can choose to have the alerts delivered directly to your registered email account or your Google Reader. If you have a staff of people obviously Reader is the way to go. It can also be published to your public reader thereby giving you even more Google juice. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a cool tool I, and you, have just got to have. Since our main topic on the radio shows and for the most part this site is about community building online you will love Wibiya (http://www.wibiya.com)

The Wibiya toolbar parks dynamically at the bottom of your page. You can see one in action at http://lanebailey.com – my friend’s “Garage With A Detached Home” blog. That’s where I found it and tried to steal it!

Wait, no need to steal it because it’s in beta right now and will soon be released to the public … stay tuned and maybe we’ll get someone from Wibiya on one of the show!

Facebook users with more than two friends may want to choose which friend can access which information. Using the game “Armies” as an example let us review how simple it is to create a separate user group and choose how members of that group can interact with you on Facebook. I have chosen Armies because my wall was recently violated by an endless stream of posts from a member of that group. Instead of blocking her, which would have removed her as a valued member of my army, I chose to block all members of my group ARMIES from almost all of their ability to interact with me.

Since there are “real friends” on ARMIES I also created a subgroup called “ARMFRIENDS” to which I can add them so they can interact with me on my wall and other aspects of Facebook.

First you need to create a group. If you have never done so it is very simple.

1. Log in to your Facebook account
2. Click on the “Friends” link in the blue link bar at the top of the page
3. Click on the “Create New List” button
4. Enter the name of your new list in the text field in the pop-up
5. Add members to the list
6. Click the “Finish” button

Now that you have a list created and have added members from your contacts to your new list you can set the privacy setting for that group. In fact you can pretty much keep everyone from that group from doing almost anything with you. The following steps will allow you to block members of your new group from interacting with you as members of that group. Keep in mind if a member of this group is also a member of another group they may be able to interact with you as members of that other group according to the privacy settings for that other group.

1. Log in to your account
2. Mouseover the “Settings” link in the blue link bar at the top of your screen
3. Click on the “Privacy Settings” link
4. Click on the “Profile” link
5. Start selecting the drop downs and click on “Customize”
6. Features that allow you to block entire lists will a text field labeled “Except these people”
7. Type in names of individuals or entire lists
8. Repeat for every attribute you wish to block
9. Click the “Save Settings” button
10. You just modified your privacy to block an entire list!

Remember, if there are people who are on that list you wish to be able to interact with you then you MUST add them to another list which allows them to interact with you in the ways you wish. Also if someone you want to block is on two or more lists they may still be able to interact with you through one of the other lists they are on.

Be sure to list to Social Media Edge Radio every Tuesday at Noon Eastern. This week’s special guest is @ChrisBrogan

Follow me on Twitter @TheKenCook

Money Maker – noun – the website where you actually convert surfers to prospects and prospects to customers.

Most people do not consider it a “waste of time” to use new media resources, like Active Rain, to build their network of associates, providers and clients. Many AR users have already seen the power of having a well stocked blog when it comes to search engine results page (SERP) positioning. Most of those do not know why and some of those do not care why they are simply happy it works.

Maybe right now your links are coming up in the fourth through tenth position and that’s not bad – first page positioning never stinks. Of course being positioned in spots one through three is everyone’s goal – or should be. The question is important to note, “search results for which search terms?” In other words if you sell real estate what good does it do to be in the top three for the search term “warts”?

TIP NUMERO UNO

Track your inbound search terms. Almost every web host provides good analytical tools. There are plugins available for almost every content management system from Drupal to WordPress. Knowing what people searched on to find your site is one of the most important pieces of information a web master or content manager can have. If you blog you are a content manager.

Google Analytics is a little difficult to people who don’t know much or have much experience but is a good tool. Of course it is free and there is some clue using it will help your site with a little Google juice, too. There are service providers like iCobb who will set up your Google Analytics account for you and teach you how to use it.

TIP NUMERO DOS

Inbound links have a huge impact on search engine juice. In fact it can work for you or against you. If you are linked to from web sites known for black hat techniques it can hurt you if those links make up the majority of your Eigenspace. Study about the value of links and what they add or detract from your ranking. Once you have a fair understanding of the difference between a heavily weighted inbound link and a link that can cause damage you can develop a strategy for where you spend your time posting and linking back to your money maker.

Active Rain has long been proved very powerful for Google juice (especially) for real estate agents and mortgage people but AR alone may not be enough to topple your competitors from positioning above you in your most important key words. Once again if you are number one for “donuts in Minneapolis” that really doesn’t quite mean the same as “Minneapolis police department”.

Make sure you do your keyword research and apply your keywords appropriately. That subject is beyond the scope of this article but over-saturating your content with your keywords has an adverse affect. Using your keywords appropriately is just as important like which tags do you use for your keywords? Where in the content are your keywords placed?

LA ULTIMA – TIP NUMERO TRES

Getting people to repost your content is not as simple as just throwing out some words but it is possible. Concentrate on the value of your content to your audience. Obviously this requires knowing your audience which would follow from knowing tips one and two which would really help you know your audience. Remember if you study your inbound search terms that will tell you if you are reaching the audience you want and what your audience is searching for. By controlling where your inbound links originate you can better control your audience.

Getting reposted is simply a matter of supplying something of value to your audience. What that is really is up to your audience and neither you nor I. Of course if you have performed well in attracting your audience you should already know what they want to read and share.

WordPress makes it easy to see when your content is shared as does Active Rain. But what if you are using some service that doesn’t track sharing? Aha! I am so glad you asked! There are a few third party tools you can use to help track. Many years ago I developed a little Perl application called PageGuard that would tie in with the existing search engines (there was no Google) and web indexes to check and see if your content had been reposted. Of course today we want it to be reposted so long as due credit is given.

You can do a quick search and find a lot of links for things like “guarding your blog content” or you can sign up for alert services on keywords in your content. A trick I use from time to time is to use a very unusual phrase like “keyboard calamity” and set a Google Alert for those terms. Anytime someone cuts and pastes my content Google will let me know about it as soon as they spider the site. That, of course, is only one example – there are many others.

Follow me on Twitter @thekencook – I’m multi-dimensional so you’ll get football, golf, food, kitties, weather chat, politics, jokes, trivia … all that yak.

Listen to Social Media Edge Radio every Tuesday at Noon Eastern on Blog Talk Radio with me, @JasonCrouch @MikeMueller @MyrtleBeachBlog @TS_Elliott and a constant stream of very special guests. You are what makes us a #1 Blog Talk Radio Show week after week!

Also could be titled controlling what your visitors, do, see and where they go.

BEFORE YOU PLAY WITH YOUR HTACCESS FILE: make a back up you will not be over-writing.

Your .htaccess for your entire site will be found in your index level folder in your public documents. I don’t know much about Windows web hosting so this is strictly for Linux hosted machines as far as I am aware. The .htaccess file controls much of the security for your web accessible directories and documents. It tells whether or not the directory requires a password to access and where the username and password list can be found.

One of the most common uses for .htaccess files (that is the full name by the way – it is not a filename extension) is to define the access code files such as 404, 301 or 302 (file not found, file permanently moved, file moved temporarily). Perhaps the second most common use is to define a redirect which is what you are going to get to play with today.

To edit the .htaccess file you will need domain level access to your server through FTP, cpanel, shell or some other method. If you have access to your .htaccess file you will probably already know it. If you don’t know whether you do or not ask this question: “Do I have a real hosting account or just a user account?” If you have a WordPress.com blog you do not have access to the domain level of the host. If you have a GoDaddy account you “should” have domain level access even through FTP. It is beyond the scope of this short article to tell you if you have access or not but for a fee I’ll be happy to check

Below you will find a short sample of what a “basic” .htaccess file looks like:

AuthName “Member’s Area Name”
AuthUserFile /path/to/password/file/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
require valid-user
ErrorDocument 401 /error_pages/401.html
AddHandler server-parsed .html

The top line “AuthName” is the name of the secured directory
The second line “AuthUserFile” gives the server address of the file where usernames and passwords are stored
The third line “AuthTypeBasic” tells the Apache server to read the usernames and passwords in plain English (Digest is another Type)
The fourth line tells the Apache server to require a “valid-user” – in other words that user must exist in the .htpasswd file
The fith line “ErrorDocument” is going to tell Apache where to send the visitor if they get the mentioned error code
The last line “AddHandler” simply tells Apache to parse all files as HTML if they end in HTML (I usually use .htm*)

You noticed the line “ErrorDocument” and I said that is one of the more common uses of the .htaccess file – to tell Apache where to send visitors who encounter an error by the number of the error. Some other solutions could be:

ErrorDocument 401 /error_pages/401.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error_pages/404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /error_pages/500.html

Now here is an interesting tip for you: It is not necessary to leave the visitor on the same server when you deliver them an error file. In fact you can redirect them to any web accessible document in the world. For example I could redirect all 404 (file not found) visitors to Yahoo. I would not want to do that but I could. I would do so thusly:

ErrorDocument 404 http://yahoo.com

I showed you that to give you a million ideas flooding through your head for what we are going to learn next. I bet a lot of you just thought, “Wow. You mean I can send people to pages they didn’t ask for just by using a little line of text in that .htaccess thingamubob?” Yes, you can. You can do it based on a many input parameters. Check this out, are you ready? You can redirect people to specific documents anywhere on the web based on which domain they came from. No joke. If someone comes to your site from Google you can redirect them to Ning. Why? I have no idea it’s just a simple way to teach you how to hack your .htaccess file.

Go ahead and try. Add the following lines to the bottom of your .htaccess file – AFTER YOU MAKE A BACKUP. If you break your server don’t blame me. (Actually you wouldn’t break your server but you could jack up your .htaccess file – so make a back up, aight?)

# BEGIN Search Engine Re-direct
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*google.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yahoo.com [R=302,L]
</IfModule>
# END Search Engine Re-direct

Save the .htaccess file and upload it the folder on your server it is protecting. Then go to Google and type in the exact url of the directory where you put the .htaccess file and click it in the search engine results page. Nifty, eh?

Now you see what it does I bet you can think of a couple of actually resourceful uses of that trick. If you have an idea but just aren’t sure how to implement it that’s one of the ways I feed my family so don’t hesitate to give me a call at 678-439-8683 on my Google Voice or contact me through this form.

Follow me on Twitter @thekencook – I’m multi-dimensional so you’ll get football, golf, food, kitties, weather chat, politics, jokes, trivia … all that yak.

Listen to Social Media Edge Radio every Tuesday at Noon Eastern on Blog Talk Radio with me, @JasonCrouch @MikeMueller @MyrtleBeachBlog @TS_Elliott and a constant stream of very special guests. You are what makes us a #1 Blog Talk Radio Show week after week!

Rule one: Do not “borrow” one of Lenn Harley’s maps.

Rule two: Use maps.

Dynamic maps, maps that zoom in, scroll and give the choices between satellite photo and map views among others are a little involved. Using static Google maps, however, is a cinch. In fact, you’ll be able to do it yourself in less than 5 minutes.

Step 1 – get yourself a free Google API (Automatic Program Interface) which I will be talking about on Social Media Edge Radio on September 8 by the way. Simply go to http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

Read and agree to the terms and conditions and simply enter your TLD (Top Level Domain) name – for example http://twitterbits.com – the API will work on all subdomains such as http://radio.twitterbits.com or http://twitterbits.com/radio

Select the “Generate API Key” button and on the next page copy the API key with which you are presented. It’s a long one so you’ll need to copy and paste instead of printing. (The API in the sample is faked.)

Step 2 – replace the BOLD ITALICIZED text with your own:

<img src=”http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=Smyrna,GA&zoom=13&size=400×400&sensor=false&key=YOUR_API_KEY” />

If you are using a WordPress Blog or something based on WordPress like Active Rain simply paste the link into the image link form field. If you can’t figure that out either email me or phone my office at 678-946-0101 and I’ll help you!

Here is a sample of Smyrna,GA using my API:

For those who want all the goodies you can get the low down from Google here http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.html

Listen to SOCIAL MEDIA EDGE RADIO every Tuesday at Noon – or HIRE KEN COOK at 678-946-0101