Well Wordpress 2.8 is out. Considering what happened last time I updated I decided to wait on this blog but updated another blog I have.

There are actually a few good changes, like the ability to search for and install themes right from your dashboard. It also offers better options for a more user friendly layout of the screen option windows in the admin dashboard within the post and page editors. You can choose to only have one column so the editor sits  on top and and screens like tags, categories and publish are set below it, which really opens up the editor area.

All plugins seem to be working with the 2.8 version as well.

Great Admin Plugin

I personally hate the new dashboard that came with the 2.7 upgrade, especially the lack of color and the way the toolbar now sits on the left side of the admin area making you have to scroll all the way down the page to find settings, tools etc… and that there is no drop down so it takes two clicks to get to anything.

So I found this great plugin - Ozh Admin Drop Down Menu. It puts the admin nav bar at the top of the dashboard (like it used to be in WP 2.6) and you can choose from a variety of colors and settings that makes it much more user friendly than the 2.7 version.

All admin links are available in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then “Pages” to edit pages, you can go to any admin page from any admin page and there are several other setting options to make Wordpress life easier!

Check it out at:  Ozh Admin Drop Down Menu

The topic of this post has caused me much trouble and many searches for guides have yielded few results. I am in the process of changing my blog theme and I have finally figured out how to change themes safely and easily in the background while visitors see the current blog with the old theme intact.

This is awfully helpful as when you are converting themes, no new theme will fit perfectly with old theme tweaks. Existing ads, comment styles, sidebar contents, widgets and other tweaks that we all have done to our blogs along the way, will need to be customized for the new theme. Some themes break everything or most everything and many changes are needed to be made manually and no one wants to do them live while the world is watching

Step-By-Step Guide to Change Blog Theme in Background

1. Install and activate this plugin: Theme Test Drive

2. Upload new themes that you are interested in, you can get as many as you want to play with.

3. From wp admin go to:
Appearance - Theme Test Drive. From the drop down menu choose the themes you want to preview and hit the Enable Theme Drive Button.

Now when viewing your live blog, you and only you as the admin will see the blog with the theme you selected.

4. Choose your new theme.

5. Check the New Design.

Now you will want to check the new theme for any issues that exist and what maybe missing that was on the old them.

A useful method is to open the live blog in one tab of the browser as well as the theme test drive version with the new theme in another tab and view them side by side.

Look all around the new theme and see what does not look right, check out the Footer, and Header especially since changes to those are usually made in the theme files and will not convert automatically for the new theme.

Make sure your comments look properly with the new theme as those can get weird by the CSS stylesheets in the new theme.

Also any adds, affiliate banners and such that you have manually placed into places like posts, pages and footers, will have to be added to the new theme’s files as those will not automatically convert over.

Basically just check everything to see what needs to be edited.

6. Editing New Theme Files.

Now, you can edit all the theme files for the new theme by going to:

Appearance - Editor - Select The New Theme from Drop Down Menu
Caution: make sure you select the new theme and not forget because you can mistakenly start to edit your existing theme files.

You can also make changes to the CSS stylesheet if needed for the new theme. I personally like to tweak fonts and other styles, but this is totally optional.

This will allow you to make all the changes you need to to the new themes files, and remember that you are editing the new theme and it has no effect on the old theme so your live blog remains the same, and you can preview all the edits in the new theme by continuing to enable theme test drive.

7. Editing Sidebar - Widgets

When theme test drive is enabled, the widget area is updated for the new blog. So, if your new theme has any additional sidebars as compared to the old theme it will show those to you in the widget area, even if your original theme only had one.

This is where it gets tricky…

You can edit the second or third sidebar that did not exist in your old theme all you want, however, the sidebar that did exist will still be the one that shows live on the blog and with that one whatever edits you make will also appear on the live blog.

So, the best thing to do is plan out that sidebar on paper or in your head and save that edit for last and just launch the new theme after that.

You can check your blog analytics for the time of day your blog has the least amount of traffic, for most US blogs late at night should be a good time and do it then so you can tweak any issues in that sidebar while little traffic is viewing your blog, overall this is a not a big deal and should go relatively unnoticed.

8. Launch New Theme

When everything is perfect go to:
Appearance - Themes - Select the new theme and make it live!

I will follow up this post with a long list of places to get very nice WP themes free, so stay tuned!

Any questions?

Reading and commenting on blogs is necessary, fun, good for networking, good for backlinks and link building and we all do it. Here are some tools that will aid your blog commenting efforts.

DO NOT SPAM the blogs, read the posts and get involved in the conversation by providing quality comments, if you SPAM you will ruin for the rest of us and your comment will just get deleted.

Easy Comment Firefox Add-On - This is a must have! Automatically fills out blog comment forms with your name, email and url for the profiles you have pre-entered. And, if you comment on many blogs with different urls and keywords, this one will save you loads of time because it supports multiple profiles.

One click and the form is filled out, no more entering your information manually on each blog. The profile selector sits in your browser’s bottom status bar, right click and select a profile, click the easy comment icon and the profile you selected instantly goes into the comment form. Supports all blogging platforms.

Comment Sniper - If you want to be the first to comment, then this tool is for you. Gives real time alerts when the blogs you program into it update and so you can be the first to comment.

Finding Do-Follow Blogs:

Do-follow blogs are good for backlinks. By the way, do not ignore the no-follow blogs for comment backlinks, they are beneficial as well, because Yahoo and Live both ignore the no-follow attribute.

As anywhere else, relevancy to your keywords is essential when commenting is part of your link building strategy and especially for those blogs that allow keywords in comment names.

There are many lists of do-follow blogs out there, I only listed one. The lists are nice but they become outdated after a while since blogs change their comment policies and many of these lists only offer Internet marketing related blogs. So, I listed a couple of good search engines and free softwares that find do-follow blogs by keyword.

Feverish Thoughts - Do-Follow Blogs List - This is one of the longest lists I ever found with a variety of blogs on all subjects.

Do-Follow Diver - Great search engine for finding do-follow blogs.

Do-Follow Search Engine - Newly launched with current results.

Real Link Finder - Free software to find do-follow blogs by keyword subjects.

Fast Blog Finder - Free software to find do-follow blogs by keyword search.

Finding Top Commenter Blogs

Top commenter blogs is where the blogger lists the top commenters in their sidebar or footer, giving them a quality site-wide backlink to their sites.

Top Commenter List - Yan of Thou Shall Blog put together the best list of Top Commenter blogs that is also updated regularly and listed by PR.

Comment Plugins for Wordpress

Here are some of the best comment related plugins for Wordpress.

Akismet Spam - Must Have! Catch and filter spam blog comments, Akismet is highly accurate and will filter out SPAM comments for you to review and delete or post.

WP Threaded Comments - Must have! Puts the reply link under each comment and nests replies below the original comment. Allows for a much neater and tighter comment area. Also, emails the commenter when there is a reply to his/her comment. Lots of customization options in the settings of the plugin.

Edit Comments - Allows commenters to edit their own comments for as long as the default time of 30 minutes (can be edited in settings).

Subscribe to Comments - Provides a check box for readers to subscribe to comments that sends an email notification when a new comment is added to that post.

Cap Comment - Turn off comments when a post has reached the limit you set.

No Follow Free - If you want to make your blog do-follow, this plugin is great!

Keyword Luv - This plugin allows for Name @ KW do-follow comments, where the real name is in the comment but not included in the anchor, good for conversation, and the keyword is anchored with the url, good for SEO. Note: In order to make the anchor do-follow a separate do-follow plugin is required, such as, No Follow Free, in order for the links to be followed.

Comment Luv - Parses the commenters latest blog post and shows it in the comment.

Top Commentator Plugin for Wordpress - Allows you to list top commenters in Blogger blogs and give your most active commenters a nice site wide backlink. Highly customizible.

Top Commentator Plugin for Blogger Blogs - Allows you to list top commenters in Blogger blogs.

Recent Comments - Retrieves most recent comments and places a list in the sidebar widget.

Ajax Comment Preview - Allows commenters to preview their comment exactly as it will look when posted.

WP Gravatar - Allows you to add gravatar’s to comments and put a face with the comment, from a number of services, including Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico. Lots of options and customization with this plugin.

What is your favorite blog commenting tool?

There is no denying that the United States and many parts of the world are having major financial difficulties. The recession is affecting retail sales across the country, and Internet marketing and the online marketplace will surely feel the effects as well. Some affiliate marketers are seeing significant decreases in sales, and while so far most of my sites are staying steady, some have seen a decline in sales.

This does not mean that this business is over, in fact, I truly believe that the Internet marketplace will become even more significant in these hard financial times because:

1. Its unique ability to provide below retail prices and major savings on products, just look at sites like eBay, Amazon and Overstock.

2. People seeking information on how to get through tough times and make extra or full time income while unemployed.

As always, the key to online success is to look for trends and the opportunities to exploit them and in hard times like these, the opportunities will focus around consumables and information.

Consumables:
Clothes
Pet supplies
Household items
Coupons
Baby items
Toys
Cheap home entertainment
Deal sites
Cheap anything sites
Health
Weight Loss
Free anything
…thousands more.

Valuable Information:
Making money
Work at home opportunities
Jobs and work
Schools and training for new careers
Career guides
Recession news
Saving money
Budgeting
How-to get cheap anything
Decreasing utility bills
Saving on car insurance
Health Care issues
Free anything
…and lots more.

Some of those make money, work at home niches and money blog sites are pretty competitive, but there are still long tail keywords that are viable and you can build a great website and make money. As always, make sure to research keywords for any subject matter you want to get into.

One of the most solid money making venues is still Google Adsense, and in hard financial times, Adsense is on top of the list, because you don’t need to make a sale, you get paid for the click, so information sites sprinkled with Adsense is a sure winner anytime and especially now!

Another solid money making opportunity is flipping websites, still one of the best ways to make money online with a wide open marketplace, here is the best how-to guide for doing this from Jason Pereira, a very successful blogger and website flipper at Flip Noobs.

Problogger wrote a good post about 13 Tips to Recession Proof Your Blog definitely worth a read.

A reader emailed me and asked for some advice about internal links:

“link titles” - that extra fill-in-the-blank box when entering a link in a post? Is there any value or is it just something nifty for the reader to mouse over?”

First, he is referring to Internal Links that are links back to your own home page and sub pages within your site’s content with the keywords you are targeting and want to rank for in the anchor text. Learn more at: The importance of Internal Link Building for On-Site SEO.

Purpose of Internal Links and
Title Tag vs. Anchor Text

1. Internal links are good for SEO. But, for SEO purposes the title tag is useless, the keyword anchor text is key to relate the page you’re linking to for the keyword you want it to rank for.

2. Improve Bounce Rate. Internal linking improves bounce rate (the rate at which visitors leave your site) and gives readers more stuff to browse on the site thereby keeping them there longer. The Title Tag, which shows up when the reader mouses over the link, is used for this purpose and is crucial to captivate reader interest and get them to read the contents of those links.

So, for example, while the anchor text (the keyword I want that page to rank for) may be Website Traffic, the Title will show more detail about the link, such as “Website Traffic that Converts are You Missing Out?”

Also, it is irritating to read a page and see internal links and not have any clue what is there, it is always good to give your readers a sneak peek.

Title Tag Code

Most softwares, including Wordpress have a fill in box within the add link area for the title and then it will automatically code in HTML, but here is how the code looks:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Here is how it looks live with the title tag appearing with a mouseover:

No-Follow/Do-Follow Link Attribute

In Wordpress and most website software links created within text are automatically Do-Follow. For Google, when links are Do-Follow you are passing page rank juice to the url in the link and in essence giving it a vote of confidence helping their SEO efforts vs. No-Follow simply means that Google will not follow the link nor assign any rank to it based on your link juice to them.

When to add No-Follow:

For internal links you always want to pass your own internal page rank, also for reciprocal links and other sites that you may want to give a Google strong backlink to.

But, in reality there are several links that you may not want to do-follow and those need to be set manually as no-follow.

Examples for No-Follow:
Affiliate Links (should always be no-follow)
Authority/Reference sites cited to support content
Referral sites provided for readers
…and any other sites that you don’t need to waste PR juice on

Manually Adding No-Follow Link Attribute:

To add the no-follow attribute you need to go to the HTML source of your web page, in Wordpress it is done in the post/page editor by clicking on the HTML tab and manually adding “rel-”nofollow” as shown below:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Free Headers - Must See!

By the way, I did not want to do a separate post on this, but you have to check out this website I found with free website/blog headers at: Free Web Page Headers. They are simply gorgeous with tons of themes and absolutely free, just right click and save image as and then resize to fit your needs in a graphics software such as Gimp Image Software, which, by the way is also free, quite famous and a complete graphics/photo editing software.

You can peruse any Internet Marketing forum and you will surely find a thread titled Blog or Website? This is a very common question asked by those starting an online business and especially for those looking to get into the business blogging.

Many times in the forums, you get lame answers, such as “a blog is a website” DUH!

But, that does not answer the question as it is intended, and even the newest of newbies know that there is an inherent difference between blogs, blogging and websites beyond the technological.

While there are very sophisticated techie definitions, for the purpose of this discussion I will limit the definitions to the basics of Blogs vs. Static Websites and the unique characteristics of blogging that also apply to business blogging for making money.

Blog is short for weblog, which, simply put is a dynamic website that is constantly updated and provides interactivity between it and its users.

vs.

Static Websites usually display the same information, thus it is static. The content is not updated regularly and while the webmaster may always add pages of content, it is not expected. These sites can also be described as passive.

Blog Charateristics:

1. A blog needs to be updated with fresh content regularly, it is expected and required, or else it will die out.

2. One of the blog’s main purposes is to engage readers and gain subscribers, in fact for many bloggers it is an end goal.

3. A blog is never truly passive, it cannot be slapped up and then left alone, it requires ongoing attention and therefore a lot of interest in and motivation for the subject from the blogger.

4. Blogs have messy navigation, since there is new content added regularly it is more difficult to present it all neatly and visibly, and much if it gets buried as more is added.

5. Blogs are more personal and represent a human behind the site.

Static Website Characteristics:

1. They are built, launched and then marketed. They can be a source of passive income without the expectation of new content. They are safe to leave alone to do “their thing.”

2. The navigation is neat and all pages and content can be displayed prominently to visitors, this includes all your affiliate link pages, store pages and anything else that you want visitors to not miss, therefore static sites allow you to have more control over what is presented to visitors, while blog content easily gets buried over with the new incoming content.

3. The static website is not usually personal, it is detached from a “human behind the site.”

Blog vs. Website

The decision to go with a Blog or Website is really a personal one. However, the problem for newbies is that they lack the experience to make an informed choice and often it is just trial and error.

I for one, do not think blogging is for everyone. Blogging is a bigger time investment and blogs are not the greatest passive income tools. In fact, many Internet marketers say that blog readers and subscribers do not click on Adsense and they do not take you up on your add offers very much. Usually they are there to read your content. The true money comes from search engine traffic, that will not subscribe but will exit with a click on Adsense or by buying an affiliate product.

There are exceptions. Some blogs focus on shopping and product reviews and that is the focus of the posts with the focus of making money, I have no experience with this type of blog and so maybe some of my readers can add their input, like Frank from Money Saving Reviews - Money Saving Guides.

Blogging takes a lot of dedication to the written word, versus the static website that does not. Tons of blogs fail because the blogger loses interest quickly after launch.

With all that it takes to learn and apply the marketing and SEO end of the business, a static website lessens the work load and allows newbies to focus on learning the tools and skills necessary to succeed.

There are many user friendly website builders, such as WYSIWYG, that stands for “What You See is What You Get” website software that allows those without any code or even basic HTML knowledge to build beautiful sites with simple drag and drop simplicity. Once the website is launched then experience can be gained on the Internet marketing end, without the constant stress of updating. Two of the best WYSIWYG softwares are WebEasy 7 Pro and Coffee Cup HTML Editor.

Also, you can use the free Wordpress platform to build niche sites, with an empahis on pages instead of posts, that allow for neater navigation and a focus on making money as opposed to getting readers, but this is not true blogging.

What do you guys think?