Install WP Business Directory Plugin Update Be Ready to Spend Time Fixing It

WPBUSDIRMAN – A plugin that provides the ability to maintain a free or paid business directory on your WordPress powered site.
Version 1.8.1 by A Lewis will cause you a lot of extra work and it is still broken. Some of the child category listings just won’t show up and others will if you check both categories.

Let’s start from the beginning… This morning I was shown the message that an update was available for the plugin. Wanting to keep up to date of course I installed the update. (there were no warnings)
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
The update was a good one. It will allow you to separate the directory from your blog including the categories used for each. That said… It blew apart the site (well the directory folder on the site anyway).

This update just seamed to willy-nilly shift some of the directory listings to the posts section and the same for the blog postings. I also sort of split up and in some cases duplicated a few of the categories and dealt them out in some strange way between the directory categories and the posts categories.

After 4 hours of intense work I had the categories sorted out, rebuilt, and placed in their proper places. Now there is no easy way to show the hierarchical directory listings as a widget. I did find a work around. With the help of “Menus” I created a sidebar widget.

Now I have to promote all the category children to top level status… I hope these problems will be solved with the next update.

I even get the following error message:

Warning: Missing argument 1 for wpbusdirman_the_listing_meta(), called in /var/www/html/local-directory/wp-content/plugins/wp-business-directory-manager/wpbusdirman.php on line 5979 and defined in /var/www/html/local-directory/wp-content/plugins/wp-business-directory-manager/wpbusdirman.php on line 6103

Oh well! It still makes a nice directory. I just wish I had some warning the update would blow my directory apart.

Hence this blog post.

I guess they don’t call it the bleeding edge for nothing.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

WordPress Warning – WP Business Directory Plugin Update is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Exorcist Found to Exorcise Seth Godin from This Blog

Seth just wouldn’t let go. So I enlisted the help of the WWSGD plugin’s original creator Richard K Miller as resident exorcist.

Richard located and helped me exorcise Seth Godin’s grip in my blog. Seth was residing in a plugin I have been using for quite some time and am very happy with, HeadSpace.

Seth Godin was hiding inside the HeadSpace | Site Modules >> First Time Visitor.

Richard is a GREAT Exorcist. He found the problem and it is now resolved. Thank You Richard K Miller.

Richard is a backend web developer in Huntington Beach, California. He can be reached through his website RichardKMillea.com.

Richard’s latest project is for one of his favorite restaurants. Pantrucas Chilean Restaurant located at 3161 North Canyon Road in Provo Utah.

Pantrucas specializes in bringing the best of Chilean cuisine to Provo, Utah.

Pantrucas serves several tasty, authentic Chilean dishes. If it’s your first time, try the churrasco palta, a delicious steak and avocado sandwich on soft, home-made bread. Drink a tall glass of juice made to order from your choice of whatever fruit is in season.

If you are ever in Provo I would suggest you visit them.

Thanks again to Richard K Miller.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Seth Godin WordPress Exorcism Coda is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Exorcist Required to Exorcize Seth Godin from This Blog

I have been spending chunks of time this week trying to remove a WordPress Plugin’s “feature” from the Search Engine Optimizician.

“What Would Seth Godin Do” is a great plugin for WordPress. WWSGD has been serving me well for years.

As time has rolled on I have moved past this plugin. The problem is that WWSGD won’t move past me. You can probably still see it at the top of this page/post.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
 
I have done everything I can think of:

• deactivated the plugin through the WP interface
• deleted the plugin through the WP interface
• installed the plugin and changed the settings through the WP interface
• deactivated the plugin again through the WP interface
• deleted the plugin again through the WP interface
• ftp’d to the server and deleted from the plugins folder
• ftp’d to the server and search for and removed “what_would_seth_godin_do.php“
• I have even repeatedly emptied the cash
• I even deleted and reinstalled the cash plugin

Yet the WWSGD greeting still remains.

First time visiting Search Engine Optimizician? Make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed before you leave!

 
 
I have been emailing back and forth with Richard K Miller the author of this stubborn little plugin.

Richard has been very cooperative and helpful but yet Seth remains. I have no ill feelings for either WWSGD or Richard.

I would even recommend this plugin for WordPress beginners.

By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. The message can be excluded from Pages if desired.

I put out this post for some fresh ideas on how I might possibly be able to exorcize this sticky widget from the Search Engine Optimizician.

Any ideas?
I’m open to anything! Any seance experts out there?

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Seth Godin WordPress Plugin Exorcism is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

WordPress Designer Personas for the New Edition of Firefox add-ons that are Cool and Fun

While perusing the WordPress Blog yesterday I came across an interesting post on WordPress style Firefox Personas.

Firefox Personas are the latest edition of personalization for Firefox browsers for the latest release. They allow you to put your stamp on your favorite web browser.

You are using Firefox aren’t you?

Already there are over 30,000 different versions of Firefox Personas to tantalize your creative self.

Now we can show off our personal creativity WordPress style.

WordPress Blog

Firefox Personas, WordPress-style
Posted March 11, 2010 by Jane Wells.

To kick it off, designer Chad Pugh created two WordPress personas based on the WordPress brand: “Vintage Press” and “Inkwell.” These two designs are a great way to show the WordPress love, even if you’re only showing it to yourself.

The “Vintage Press” Persona is inspired by the style of old-fashioned printing presses and the mechanics of working with type. This persona might appeal to WordPress developers and users who appreciate the way things work under the hood.

“Inkwell” is more of a palimpsest & watercolor hybrid that might appeal to the artists among us. Music, script and spills of color combine…

Okay, I’m starting to feel like an art critic so I’ll stop there. Check out the WordPress personas for Firefox and decide for yourselves.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

This is a sample of the “Vintage Press” Persona.

This is a sample of the “Inkwell” Persona.

This is the “Inkwell” Persona in action.

This is an extremely small sample of the over 30,000 Firefox Personas available.

Go ahead and check out the Firefox Personas Video.

Get a persona for your Firefox browser and amaze your friends and colleagues.

Try one on today! – b

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Have You Seen the New Firefox Personas with WordPress Style? is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Using WordPress for a Blog post Just doesn’t get any Easier

When my MacSpeech Dictate arrived I couldn’t have been any happier. I couldn’t wait to get home and try it out.

I’d used speech rest of recognition software before, back in the old days I used to use headset to actually give commands to my computer to make it open programs and various little chores like that.

So I couldn’t wait to start talking to my computer and have it actually print out what I’m saying. I was interested in finding out just how accurate the program would be converting my voice to text. I was amazed. It was so easy spend a few minutes reading stuff into the computer and the next thing you know it’s typing what you’re saying.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I didn’t think that WordPress blogging could even get any easier but MacSpeech Dictate has proven that wrong. This blog post was actually dictated through a headset that was supplied with the software and it’s just so much easier than typing all this stuff out. This is the best dictation software I have ever been exposed to.

I can’t wait till were my clients tells me I can’t blog I’m not a good writer I’m just a good talker. Well I have a solution for its called MacSpeech Dictate and all you have to do is tell your story in its types it up for you.

The only problem for some people is going to be that you don’t have a Macintosh. There is other software like this available for the PC but since I’m not PC guy I can’t recommend it. MacSpeech Dictate is powered by Dragon so you might give that a look.

MacSpeech has taken the work of blogging for me and it probably will for you too.

WordPress, blogging, and MacSpeech Dictate were made for each other. Even though I’m sure that there are many other uses for MacSpeech Dictate but blogging is my passion.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

First Time – MacSpeech Dictate for a WordPress Blog Post is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Worth the price of admission tidbit from Matt Cutts’ talk at the WordPress WordCamp San Francisco 2009

I happened across a little known (or used) bit of code that might just make you more money if you use Google AdSense. So I thought I might share it with you.

The information is from Straight from Google: What You Need to Know

Did you know there is a little snippet of code that will allow you to tell Google to focus on this part of your content to determine what ads to show?
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
Well there is and here is the little snippit:

What’s AdSense?

Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.

Google grasps the meaning of your content

AdSense can deliver relevant ads because Google understands the meaning of a web page. We’ve refined our technology, and it keeps getting smarter all the time. For example, words can have several different meanings, depending on context. Google technology grasps these distinctions, so you get more targeted ads.

In this 46+ minute video Matt Cutts shows us how to rank higher in Google with our WordPress Blogs, although most of this information would work with any website.

Matt’s slides are also available in Google Docs if you are interested.

Enjoy!

Late,
Gary Pool

Google AdSense Tip for WordPress Blogs and Your Website is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Well Maybe not the Holy Grail but a Fantastic SEO Tool for Your WordPress Arsenal

From time to time I find great tools to help me accomplish my SEO goals not only for my clients sites but mine as well. This new plugin for WordPress is just such a tool.

The WordPress No Followizer plugin from SEO Automatic gives you ultimate link juice sculpting control over any given page or post. It allows you to easily and painlessly add the nofollow tag to any or all of the links.

The No Followizer plugin adds a collapsible box to the top right of the admin area of each post and page, offering you full control over the header, footer, sidebar, content and comment links.

With this new WordPress plugin you can selectively add the nofollow tag to the header, footer, sidebars of any page or post, and can also choose individual links in the body text or even in the comments.

So what are you waiting for?
Take total control of your WordPress Link Juice and increase your search rankings!

Late,
Gary Pool

The WordPress SEO Link Juice Holy Grail is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Save Time, Money and Look Good Too! Use The WordPress Plugin SEO Automatic

From time to time I find incredible software for SEO businesses I just have to share and this is one of them.

Make your time run backwards, at least it will seem like with the time this plugin will save you.

When you purchase the full licensing rights to this WordPress Plugin, then you’re limited only by your imagination.

With SEO Automatic, you have the ability to replicate your own SEO expertise hundreds of times over, efficiently reaching businesses like you’ve never been able to before.

You can edit the report to suit your SEO business’ “SEO best practices”

Automatic SEO is a WordPress plug-in, so it just works.

Just imagine being able to give a SEO web site evaluation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with out any time or effort on your part. Just check out the information below.

“Already know about SEO?”

Here is a tool that will save you untold time and energy depending on your skill and efficiency level.

"Don’t “already know SEO?”

This Tool will not only show you “what’s wrong” with a given URL, but it’ll give you all of the necessary details needed to do things “ to SEO a site”.

Not so long ago, a SEO evaluation to this depth could cost thousands of dollars and many man-hours, but now, much of organic SEO has become “SEO Automatic”.

To manually look at certain aspects of a web page to determine its “Search Engine Optimization” isn’t a complicated task if you know what you’re looking for. It can be tedious and extremely time consuming though.

No matter what your skill level, if you are familiar with SEO you would probably look at a few basic elements of your web page, and now these investigations can now be automated.

The page elements are nearly always the same no matter how big or small the website, and include the following:

1. Title tag
2. Description tag
3. Keyword tag
4. Header Tags

This is usually an easy fix…

Beyond the above basics, a more experienced SEO will also look at your…

1. Alt Tags
2. Robots.txt file
3. Internal links
4. External links
5. XML sitemap
6. Page size
7. Image sizes
8. Object sizes
9. Design issues
10. Styling issues
11. Favicon
12. Page & Image caching
13. Server Configuration
14. Canonical issues – and more

This new tool “SEO Automatic” tells you exactly where you stand on these things, it will aslo tell you about you about each of them, and in most cases, tells you how to fix ‘em too.

If you own a SEO business you know the value of a tool like this.

It is available as a WordPress plugin. Remember this “SEO Automatic” plugin is completely customizable. You have total control over what it checks what information and recommendations are given. Check out SEO Automatic today!

Late,
Gary Pool

SEO Automatic WordPress Plugin for SEO Businesses and Agencies is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Blog WordPress and SEO

The WordPress and SEO session dealt with how to make your blog work better, not only with the search engines but also with your users. WordPress and SEO also gave us some great insights into how to make updating our blogs an easier task.

Moderator: Scott Hendison – SEO Automatic

Scott has released his own WordPress plugin “WordPress Core Tweaks Plugin” for your blog.
I have been using this plugin for a while now and I would recommend it to anyone using WordPress.
You can read my review of Scott’s plugin “WordPress has a new plugin from Search Commander“.
Thanks for the great plugin Scott.

Jordan Kasteler – Search & Social

Robots.txt – block all the unnecessary areas

Canonicalization – helps solve duplicate content problems

WordPress Templates

• rename:
  • image files
  • CSS IDs
  • Classes
• rearrange:
  • code
  • layout
• delete:
  • extraneous code
  • comments in code

Code Optimization

• Title Tag – (header.php)
• Post Headings – (index.php)

Duplicate Content

• Meta Robots
• Canonical URLs

Code

• Make your code as static as possible
• CSS stylesheet location
• Blog title
• Meta http-equiv
• etc

Permalinks

• It is best to use just your post name.
• Use slug trimmer plugin

• Pagination
• Categories
• Nofollow – add Link Attribute Plugin
• Breadcrumbs
• Custom 404

User Generated Content

• DoFollow Plugin
• Top Commentators Widget

Internal Linking

• Popular Posts Plugin
• Sticky Post

Security

• htacess
• Protect wp-config.php file
• Protedt wp-admin directory
• WP Security Scan
• Login Lockdown
• WordPress Firewall Plugin

David Wallace – SearchRank

David shares with us some of his favorite WordPress plugins.

• All in One SEO Pack
• Share This
• Twitter Tools
• WordPress Mobile Edition
• Dofollow
• Math Comment Spam Protection
• Subscribe to Comments
• Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress
• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress
• SEO Slugs
• Avatars
• Category Order
• Meta Robots

Rick Turoczy – Silicon Florist

• Visual tour of WordPress 2.7
• instinct.co.nz
• eCommerce plugin

Rick says he will save time for the Q & A since that is where he does best.

Change your submit button to javascript and that will defeat every spam bot on the planet.

Great session I learned and re-learned a lot. I am even taking inventory of my WordPress plugins for my blog.

Late,
Gary Pool

WordPress Blog and SEO Session SearchFest 2009 is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

WordPress

The software that blogs run on is the key to the presentation and features available. There are a multitude of different applications available, all with their own respective pros and cons. It is not very surprising that close to half of the Top 100 blogs run on customized software. When it comes to out of the box blog software WordPress is still the most popular.

There is blog software of all kinds as well as free blog hosting available today.
Here is a list of just some of the options available:

• WordPress
• Typepad
• Blogsmith
• Movable Type
• Gawker
• WordPress.com
• Dupral
• Blogger
• Expression Engine
• Scoop
• Bricolage
• iWeb
• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Open Diary
• Skyrock
• Typo
• Windows Live Spaces
• Xanga
• Vox

There are many ways to get you blog on the internet. All you need to do is choose one.

I have chosen to use WordPress for many reasons:

• open source
• template system
• widgets
• customizable
• easy to use
• link management
• search engine friendly
• clean permalink structure
• multiple categories
• multiple author capability
• rich plugin architecture
• trackback and pingback support
• support for tagging of posts and articles

Blog

So what is a blog?
A blog (a shortened version of the term weblog) is a website, usually maintained by an author with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other stuff like graphics and/or video. The posts or entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” is also used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Themes

There are many free WordPress themes available today. Your theme will present your online personality to the world.

The best WordPress themes are really a matter you your personal preferences. What is you want your WordPress theme to do and/or present to the online world?

The WordPress site currently offers 618 free themes and there are more available on the net.

Plugins

There are many WordPress exciting plugins available today for just about any use you can think of. There are even an astounding amount of WordPress photo plugins that will give you total control over your images. Plugins are very useful if you’s like to customize the WordPress Theme you have chosen to use.

Some of my favorite WordPress plugins I use are:

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade
  Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org. By Keith Dsouza.
• Plugin Central
  Automatically installs WordPress plugins by name and URL. Provides automatic update of multiple plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
• Maintenance Mode
  Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. By Michael Wöhrer.
• Search Commander WP_Core_Tweaks Plugin
  Conceived by Scott Hendison and programmed by Heather Barger for Search Commander, Inc. to automate proper WP setup. It also extends the built-in features of WordPress menu management, an and combines several common plugins into one.
• TweetSuite
  A WordPress Plugin to integrate Twitter and WordPress By Dan Zarrella.
• Advanced Excerpt
  Several improvements over WP’s default excerpt. The size of the excerpt can be limited using character or word count, and HTML markup is not removed. By Bas van Doren.
• Post Avatar
  Attach a picture to posts easily by selecting from a list of uploaded images. Similar to Livejournal Userpics. Developed with Dominik Menke. By Vicky Arulsingam.

These are just some of the WordPress plugins I have chosen to install my blog.
What are some of your favorite WordPress plugins?

Late,
Gary Pool

WordPress – What is a Blog without Plugins? is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

As promised here are my impressions of Scott Hendison’s WP Core Tweaks plugin.

This is one of the most useful WordPress plugins I have used. The first release was developed primarily for use on a brand new WP installation. It is very useful for this purpose but it is also comes in very handy for a seasoned WordPress install as well.

Core Tweaks has allowed quite a few changes I had been trying to implement in my blog’s structure for quite some time to actually take place. Have you noticed that the Search Engine Optimizician front page now shows more posts with just a teaser of each? This WordPress plugin has really opened up my ability to customize my blog. Being so powerful you have to take care when using the control panel too. You can change a lot of stuff with one click and some of the changes may not be what you intended.

When used with care this WordPress plugin is one of the best available. I would strongly recommend it to anyone using WordPress as a platform for their blog.

Here are the particulars on the update.

Search Commander has released version 0.8b of the SC WP Core Tweaks plugin for WordPress.
Included in this update are:

• Nofollow and open in new tab options added for the rss feed widget.
• Nofollow and open in new tab for any blogroll links added.
• A few other minor features for the blogroll, such as option to choose number of links shown, image links, text links, show links category, limit links displayed to a multiple categories.
• rel=”nofollow” added for Link Relations (XFN). The check box to do this is on the right hand side when editing a link. This now sets the rel to nofollow and works in conjunction with the built-in XFN of WordPress’s link relations.
• Scott’s Secret WordPress H1 Hack, but continues to require a short-code in the theme files.
• Meta tag for WordPress version number removes from the header automatically for security purposes.

You can see the original release features in the “WordPress has a new plugin from Search Commander” post.

I would suggest those of you with blogs using WordPress at the bare minimum check out this WordPress plugin, Core Tweaks from the Search Commander.

Late,
Gary Pool

Search Commander WordPress Core Tweaks Updates is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Search Commander, Scott Hendison, has released an absolutely fantastic WordPress Plugin

It is called Search Commander WP_Core_Tweaks Plugin. It is touted as exceeding built-in features of WordPress and combines common plugins into one.

Scott has steered me towards the right direction with the correct selections of my WP plugins and I am willing to bet this one is over the top!

The current features are:

• Page Order
• Page Link Manager
• Post Teaser
• Change default post category name
• Change default blogroll category name
• Delete default “Hello World” post
• Delete default comment
• Change permalink structure to custom setting
• Sets the Main Blog Email
• Sets the Admin User’s Email
• Change the name of the default page WordPress adds
• Set that default page to the static front page of the blog
• Add and set the page for displaying the posts
• Change article feed to summary
• Remove all the blogroll links that are auto-installed by WordPress
• Nofollow and open in new tab rss feeds.
• Nofollow and open in new tab for blogroll.
• A few other minor features for the blogroll, such as option to choose number of links shown, image links, text links, show link’s category, limit links displayed to a multiple categories.
• rel=”nofollow” added for Link Relatations(XFN). The checkbox to do this is on the right hand side when editing a link. This now sets the rel to nofollow and works in conjuntion with the built-in XFN of WordPress’s link relations.
• The H1 Hack, but still requires using a short-code in the theme files.
• Meta tag for WordPress version number removes from the header automatically.
• rsd_link() and wlwmanifest_link() auto removes from the header.

The “coming soon” features are:

• Avoid displaying the fatal error on activation when installing on blogs using now-included plugins.
• Auto-create the uploads folder and set to 777.
• Secure wp-admin directory .
• Uncheck the “organize uploads by month”.
• Integrate DDSitemapGen and auto-generate the sitemap page.
• Create a robots.txt file.
• Send an email to the new admin when set in the core tweaks settings page.
• Auto create the initial user after admin.
• Add auto upgrade notice feature.
• Will add to this list soon.

I have downloaded and installed this WordPress plugin. I will get back to in a while and give you my impressions.

I would suggest you check it out too. It might just what you need either follow @shendison on twitter or contact hip personally for one.

My first impression of this WordPress plugin is “PRETTY SLICK”!

Late,
Gary Pool

WordPress has a new plugin from Search Commander is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The story of WordPress 2.7, Brain Dump, the wp-visitors plugin, and Incompatibility Woes.

I had just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.7 and was still getting used to the new admin interface when something caught my eye.

The WordPress Plugin Releases for 12/11!
I visited the page to find a very interesting plugin wp-visitors.

wp-visitors

wp-visitors records information about every visitor (page load). Requested URL, Referring URL, IP address, Hostname and Browser along with Date/Time are recorded and displayed in a tabular fashion.

WordPress – Plugin To Keep Track Of Visitors

I understand there are very many plugins available for WordPress that help keep track of a variety of stats. This one, wp-visitors, is simple and light-weight. Myself and couple friends (Adam & Karen and Tim Obermann) have been using it without any trouble – in some form or the other – for over a year now. I am sure this plugin will see further updates – a few bells and whistles (geographical resolution of IP address), etc. As with all WordPress hosted plugins, this too is released under GPL. So, if you like it and like to make it better, please be my guest

Who wouldn’t want a WordPress plug-in that would do all that?

I had one little major problem… when the wp-visitor plugin was activated I lost the entire admin section including the RSS feed from the Search Engine Optimizician. I couldn’t even log-in to the admin area, all that happened was I got stuck in an endless loop of blank pages.

There was an easy fix. All I had to do was log into my server and remove the wp-visitor folder from the plug-ins folder. Once this little bugger was removed like magic everything was restored back to its original glory. Well almost. I did get this nagging little message.

Once I reloaded the page the message did disappear.

I don’t know which one of my numerous plugins the wp-visitor was incompatible with and I don’t think I will take the time to turn off each one to try to find out.

Last words, WordPress 2.7 has forced me to use the browser image uploader for the first time. In the past the flash uploader worked just fine and I never had any reason the use the browser version.

Late,
Gary Pool

wp-visitors plugin and WordPress 2.7 is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician