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List of Basic WordPress Plugins to Install

By on May 6, 2013 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

Time for some more blogging talk? Oh yes. And today I’m blogging what’s my list of basic wordpress plugin to install for every one of my blog sites.

List of Basic WordPress Plugin

You see, I run dozens of blogs, most of them running on the WordPress platform. And after installing and building up sites I have it now down pat, in fact, I think I could do it with one of my eyes closed. Hahaha. It also helps to have a list of basic plugins in I need to install. The other plugins I just add depending on the site’s needs, eg, some sites need Google maps integration, some don’t. So it really varies if I’m setting up a site for cd duplication services at disc2day, a photo blog, or a simple personal blog.

But these are the very basic must haves for me.

  1. Akismet – for spam
  2. Bad Behavior  - also for spam too.
  3. Better WP Security – my favorite wordpress security plugin. Easy to use and effective.
  4. Proper Contact Form – easy to set up and use, and nice looking contact form plugin. This is for single contact form only, but for other complicated forms, you can check out other form builders.
  5. Feedburner Feedsmith – I used Feedburner for my feeds, so I need this to redirect my feeds.
  6. Google Analyticator – I use Google Analytics a lot to track my website, so this is handy.
  7. WordPress SEO by Yoast – comprehensive, easy to use and quite effective.  This one also offer a xml sitemap.
  8. Quick Adsense – easily inserts ads on any part of the post or widgets. Easy to use too.
  9. WP Super Cache -cache plugin, easy to set up and makes the site faster and less strain on the servers too.
  10. Broken Link Checker – a must to check broken links.
  11. WP Touch – for a responsive mobile version of your site.

Optionals:

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WordPress Security Woe Workarounds

By on April 15, 2013 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

So, the past few days had been hectic. For web hosts and web admins anyway. There has been a wave of global brute force attacks on WordPress and Joomla installations. When I first learned about it, I was a bit panicked coz I have dozens of sites and I also take care of several dozens more for friends. All of them running WordPress.

When I checked my reseller hosting, I was informed that the host temporarily disabled login pages for majority of the sites. So I breathed a sigh of relief and that’s when I started thinking rationally. I can’t help it when you hear something like this, can you imagine several hacking attempts every second on a site? But I did realize, my wordpress sites are not that vulnerable to brute force attacks, at least not too vulnerable.

It’s really a must to be secure against this attacks as I think its rather common now. How to do that?

  • First things, don’t use commonly used usernames like “admin” or “admininstrator”, “test”, “root”…You can check out this very informative post on Brute Force Attack Myths or Reality.  You’d see there the commonly attempted user names and passwords.
  • Use a strong and long password. Combination of upper, lower cases and special characters. I personally use more than 20 character passwords.
  • Limit login attempts. Yes, this is effective in way that the server will block an IP address after trying several wrong logins. This can be easily achieved by a plugin like Limit Login Attempts and also Better WP Security. I prefer Better WP Security, as it can have a lot of security functions.  Note that these plugins wont secure the site 100% but it will surely block them from exploiting commonly used routes for hacking.
  • Hide the wp-admin page. Better WP Security has this functionality if you have enabled your permalinks. You can change the location of your login area to where nobody has the business to know.
  • Lastly, always be aware and contact your host if there is something weird. Ha!

It always pays to be vigilant and actively work to secure your sites. Don’t wait until its too late.

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A Bit of SEO Won’t Hurt Your Blog

By on November 15, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

Nor would it require too much effort.

That’s what I found out anyway, after almost 6 years of blogging. When I started out blogging, SEO was alien to me like how articulating arm wall mount are alien to me. I thought it was some techie whachamacalit that I shouldn’t really bother with. I mean, you can’t really fault me on that (as well as a lot of newbie bloggers too) because to be honest I was just too busy trying to figure out how Blogger works (and more so if you use WordPress) to think of something like SEO.

I was also too preoccupied with too many things and ideas that I wanted to blog about. But after awhile, my crazy burst of excitement died down, and I was a calmer and rational, I have decided to stick to some particular topics for each blog. Not exactly a  micro niche but I think I was able to pinpoint what exactly I wanted to write about in my first blog.

From there, it was a natural progression and a learning process and along the way I have learned slowly how to integrate those things I learned to my blogs. One of which is SEO. If you are a newbie blogger, my advice would be not to beat yourself on the head trying to do too many things at the same time. Better pace yourself, learn and experiment.

So what exactly is SEO and how to do a little bit of it so it can help your blogs? A foreword: I am not an  SEO expert (there are countless others there calling themselves gurus, just google and pick up from their tips and tricks). These are just simple SEO tricks I have learned as I waddled my way into the blogging world.

  • SEO is search engine optimization. Unless you want to publish a private blog, then I’m assuming you want a fair bit of traffic to your site. One of the best sources for good traffic is SEARCH ENGINES. It’s free traffic, after all. You must remember that when someone searches for a term related to your blog niche, you would want to have your blog up there on the search results. It’s common sense (and studies have also proven) that 1st and 2nd page search engine results bring around a lot of traffic.
  • Remember too that there are millions of websites out there competing to get into that results page, so that is now the goal of SEO. To get you a good place in the search engine results.
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Optimizing CPU Usage of Your WordPress Websites

By on October 26, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

The last three weeks I had been pretty much preoccupied trying to optimize my websites and after a lot of tweaking here and there, I think I have finally managed to lower down the CPU usage of my websites. I’ve blogged about my CPU over usage and about CloudFlare, last time.

It has been a little nerve wracking, specially so since I’m not really well versed in server management. My technical knowledge is limited to design, a couple of CMS but I’m completely an ignoramus when it comes to server issues except for the basics like installations, FTP etc. I understand it the same way disk defragmentation boggles me. But I really think these things are learned by experience.

Everything is working fine and well now, however, I have plans on upgrading my current Hostgator business plan to a reseller account. I have to distribute my sites into several cpanels so I could get most of them dedicated IP’s, higher CPU quotas and for easier management too. I also need a reseller account now since I’m getting some site building requests and I could offer hosting side by side with the webdesign service.

Anyway, this experience have thought me some valuable tricks into keeping WordPress websites optimized so it doesn’t wear down the server and earn that dreaded temporary bans.

  • CloudFlare – my webhost support technician recommended installing CloudFlare, which is easy coz their cpanel already has a pre-installed one-tick button to install it. I was at first hesitant to use this, but I tried it one a few sites and observed for more than a week. The verdict? Worth it! Faster loading websites, visitors stay for a longer time and access more pages, almost no more spam comments. The traffic went down and I think that is natural because a lot of bots, spammers are weeded out.
  • Use a cache plugin – a must anyway for all wordpress sites. WP Super Cache plugin is my preferred plugin since its easier to configure and works well with Cloudflare.
  • Remove unnecessary plugins – some plugins do consume too much unnecessary resources, so I trimmed down to the basics. Also removed plugins which are not up to date as they pose security risks.
  • Replaced some plugins – I searched for a lightweight plugin to do my site SEO. I was previously using All-in-One SEO but tech support says it does use up and runs unnecessary processes. I replaced it with Greg’s High Perfomance SEO.
  • Weed out too much banners and ads – yes. those excessive number of banners and adverts are also resource drainers.

Other recommended optimizer is to limit the number scripts running and avoiding too much use of encrypted pages.

Image courtesy of basketman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Trying Out Cloudflare

By on October 5, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

In my previous post, I mentioned that my hosting account has been suspended because of too much server activity. One of the recommended steps of tech support was to install CloudFlare on my sites. It was an optional recommendation so I decided to just install it on a couple of sites to see how it goes.

I’m a bit cautious when it comes to installing third party apps on my sites. This is not a game for me and maintaining sites is not as easy as choosing pallet covers, you know. Questions like, what if I lose all content, what if I lose my traffic, what if I lose the little Adsense earning I get? And so on.

So it was with a lot of caution when I tried CloudFlare coupled with a day’s worth of reading reviews. But first things first, what is Cloud Flare?

CloudFlare Web Service

Well its a web service that:

protects and accelerates any website online. Once your website is a part of the CloudFlare community, its web traffic is routed through our intelligent global network. We automatically optimize the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your bandwidth and server resources. The result: CloudFlare-powered websites see a significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks.

CloudFlare Overview

Not bad right? It simply servers as a buffer so that your site can be delivered fast.

So I added it on some of my sites. Set up is easy, some webhosts have 1-click installation, or you can also manually add your site on CloudFlare but be prepared to do some tweaking on your domain registrants.

Here’s what I observed for the past few weeks.

  • Fast loading website. Seriously. Specially my sites with a lot of photos.
  • Significantly lower traffic. Like almost half of the traffic went kaput. I’m guessing its all those bots and spammers. But I’m not turned off with this coz this means the bad traffic is filtered out and I get genuine visitors accessing and reading the site.
  • Visitors tend to stay longer on a page. I don’t know why? Perhaps because the page loaded fast and they have more time to read?
  • Surprisingly more clicks on Adsense. I’m attributing this to faster loading, and filtered traffic. People who actually want to be there on the site. They have more potential to click on related ads.
  • Oh yes! Less spam comments!!!

As for the Cloudflare dashboard/functionalities. I like their analytics, threat control and its also easy to switch on/off most features. But since I’m a tweaker, I like playing with my blog themes etc, and CloudFlare caches the site, it takes awhile to see the changes. Thankfully they have the feature called ‘Development Mode’ which you can turn ON in cases you are making site changes.

All in all  (for now) I like CloudFlare and it helps a lot. Check out CloudFlare, they have free and paid services. If you wanna try them out, the free one is a good deal.

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Blogging Tips: Behind the Scenes

By on October 5, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

Howdy!

Been itching to post and update but I had to stop myself coz I needed to do things behind the scenes..of my blogs.

You see, a week ago, my webhost had to suspend my account because I was using an excessive amount of server resources. Two of my websites in particular are really getting a lot of traffic and it was churning up a lot of processes. I can understand why my account needed to be locked down.

Thankfully, their tech support was really helpful in recommending what I could do to lower the processes of my sites. It was nerve wracking coz I didn’t really know much about server management. I guess you can just ask me to shop for yamaha clarinets at wwbw that tinker with my cpanel and hosting whatchamacalits.

So what did I do behind the scenes? First things first, 98% of my websites use WordPress. While WordPress itself is lightweight and doesn’t use up much processes, some plugins however are a different story.

I had to install a cache plugin so my sites would be cached and a static version would be served to visitors thereby lowering the processes on the server.

Second, I had to weed out and remove all unnecessary plugins. I’m quite guilty about this because I experiment a lot. Sometimes I’d install something and forget about de-activating and uninstalling when I’m no longer using it.

Third, I had to remove All-in-one SEO pack plugin. While yes, it was working well and helping a lot with my site’s SEO, the consensus was that it has a lot of unnecessary blings that just takes up space and consumes a lot of server resources. The recommended alternative was to use Greg’s High Performance SEO Plugin. And I did change to this plugin but bad me, I forgot to backup my previous SEO details so now I had to add all SEO keywords and descriptions again per post. Sigh.

And lastly, I decided to install Cloudflare to protect and accelerate some of my websites. I have not yet installed it on this blog but on some of my blogs. I’ll be discussing about this on my next post.

So far, so good. After those few tweaks they lifted the suspension and for the last week its been well and good. Hope it stays that way.

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Chick Blogger’s Favorite Domain Name Generators

By on September 15, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks, Web Talk

I build websites for a living. For me, its not just work, its fun and its a challenge too.

Having built dozens of sites already mostly for my own online business as well as for clients, thinking up of names sometimes prove to be difficult. Considering that there are millions if not billions of websites out there competing for a web surfer’s attention, one must pick a catchy and brand-able domain name.

For example, if I want to build a site around toyota seat covers niche, then I will try my best to look for a domain name that would be catchy, memorable and also very important for us, SEO friendly.

Thankfully there are online generators there to help me fast track thinking up a domain name. First things first, you must have an idea of what your site will be. A main keyword or niche would be a great starting point. Then I usually use any of these domain name generators to come up with various combinations..

  • Dot-o-Mator – by far my favorite. I love playing with the combinations and from here I usually come up with some very web sounding domains.  You can easily add beginning and ending words to your main keyword and come up with great domain names.
Best Domain Name Generators
  • Impossibility – another good domain name generator. You can add in adjectives/verbs/nouns to your main keyword.
Best Domain Name Generators
  • Bust a Name – a good domain idea generator. Just make sure you click on the tab – Domain Maker.
Best Domain Name Generator
  • Randomainer – generated names are not as flexible and extensive as the one’s above, but still they come up with something unique from time to time.
Best Domain Name Generators
  • Stuck Domains – another favorite. This is one is slightly different as it searches for a expired domains. These are great domains to grab and you can find some recently expired domains that are still indexed and with a lot of incoming links making your SEO work a bit easier.
Best Domain Name Generators

There are a lot more domain name generators out there but I just picked the one’s above as my favorite’s coz I wanted sites that offer variations and ideas rather than just limited combinations and TLD search on name registrars which is really not much of help when thinking up new names.

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Clean and Easy To Customize FREE WP Themes

By on July 29, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

There are thousands  (if not millions) of blogs out there. And there are also thousands of themes you can use to make your blog look good, appealing and a standout. I mentioned standout coz if you want some readership, then you have to at least make your blog memorable, unique. It’s not all content (not that I’m discounting the value of content) but any reader would shy away from your blog if it hurts their eyes even if you have outstanding content.

As for WordPress, my favorite blogging platform, there are just countless themes you can pick. From free to premium, you’ll be dizzy with choice, its like trying to pick out the best sunless tanning spray in a sea of tanning spray products.

My personal choice for making a unique standout blog? Premium theme (if I have the money) or heavily customized free theme. And I know some would say, you need to have some HTML/CSS mojo to change the look of a theme. That is true, but there are also a lot of beautiful free themes out there that can be easily ‘dressed up’ without messing up a lot of codes.

So I picked out some Clean, Minimal and Easy to Customize Free WP Themes you can have consider for your blog..

Easy to Tweak WP Themes

  • Reddle – one of my absolute favorite. Why? It’s clean, highlights the content well and very easy on the eyes. The problem though was this theme was only available for WordPress.com users but I found a workaround with that (thank you big G, lol!) and found a way to get it to install and work on standalone WordPress. I’m sharing my zip copy of Reddle, download from here.
Customized Reddle WP Theme

I’m using Reddle on this blog, I simply added a checkered background and made a header to achieve the look I wanted. Girly but not pink. :) See the big difference a background and header can make? I also use it on my crafting blog, and there it looks different, again.

 Easy To Tweak WP Themes

  • Twenty Eleven – yup. the default WP installation theme. Some would easily skip this since it is too generic but hey! you can easily change how this looks. And I do love how clean looking it is.
Easy to Tweak WP Themes
  • Scherzo – used this countless times and found it easy to customize. Specially gorgeous if you want to highlight your photos and text.
 Easy To tweak wp themes
  • Origin – minimalist with lots of built-in tweakers.
  • Brunelleschi - very elegant looking. I used it on one blog, I just threw in a ivory damask background and voila! It looks really so gorgeously understated. Check the tweaked theme here.
  • My Base – great start for CSS lovers. easy to customize too for beginners.
  • PressWork – a lot of built-in customizations including fonts. Excellent if you are just starting to learn how to personalize your themes.
  • Codium – minimalist look, but with loads of custom choices. This one makes me think of a rounded Twenty Ten or Eleven theme.
  • Pagelines – lots of built in choices to customize.
  • Platform – same maker as Pagelines.
  • Pico Light – beautiful theme with custom-background, header options.
  • Coraline – clean with lots of options. including custom layouts.

What you can do to dress up these themes? Some easy to do tweaks..

  • Change the background. Google for ‘free backgrounds’, ‘free patterns’, ‘free seamless patterns’ or you can also make your own on Photoshop or other photo/image softwares. Want it easy? Check out PatternCooler (and other free pattern making sites) and play around with the patterns and colors that would suit the look you want for your site.
  • Play with your fonts. Yup, I know this one puts off a lot of people, but you know its fairly easy to do. The main thing first is to have a backup of your style.css and header.php in case you mess something up. The easiest way is to use GoogleWebFonts. Just add in the code of your font pick on your header.php, then on you css-style section of your theme, change the font to the font name you picked. Even changing just the header or title font on  your blog makes a big difference to how it all looks.

 

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