Tutorial: Different Sidebars for Homepage and Posts

February 27, 2012 By 1 Comment

This is an update with full illustrations to an older post.

Basic Method:

1) Find your sidebar.php file.

2) Make a copy of it.
Name it sidebar-secondary.php. Your second, third, forth, etc. sidebars
all need to start with sidebar-NAMEHERE.php. That’s part of the naming
convention in WordPress.

2sidebars Tutorial: Different Sidebars for Homepage and Posts

3) Make the content changes you need in secondary sidebar file.
This is where you make the secondary sidebar different. Whatever it is
you need to be different should go in this file. Save
sidebar-inside.php and upload it to your server.

4) Locate your single.php file.

5) Look for a line near the end of the file that looks like this: <?php get_sidebar(); ?>

6) Change it to <?php get_sidebar(‘inside’); ?> (note, the ‘inside’ part should match the name of the new sidebar-inside.php file). The single quote marks ‘ ‘ are required. [Read more...]

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PSD to WordPress Conversion Instructions

January 21, 2012 By 1 Comment

Section 1 – Designing a WordPress theme in Photoshop

Designing a theme for WordPress in Photoshop is straightforward. In our example today, we will create a simple two column fixed width theme. Before we start, we need to decide what the width of our theme will be. I chose a 980-pixel sixe because it will fit on most screens without the need to scroll form side to side, as most screens today are at least 1024 pixels wide.

To get started create a rectangle that is 1024px x 768px. This will serve as our background for the theme. You can color your backgrounds or even add an image. For our tutorial, we will color the background blue. [Read more...]

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The Day of SOPA / PIPA Protest Begins

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google and Wikipedia have  begun their protests of the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation before Congress.

Wikipedia has taken their own site down and offered a landing page that enables users to lookup contact information for their elected officials. [Read more...]

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Jetpack for WordPress

January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The new suite of plugins called Jetpack (by WordPress.com) offers an all-inclusive set of features for self-hosted blogs.

jetpack wordpress 240x154 Jetpack for WordpressOne of the things I am asked most by friends and strangers:

That plugins do I need for my WordPress blog?

I get this question most often from people who have recently moved their blogs over from WordPress.com to the self-hosted WordPress.org version.

The core of both platforms is nearly identical with the exception that the self-hosted version requires you to install all of your own plugins.  Most, but not all, of the features available in WordPress.com are available as one-off plugins in the open marketplace.

Unfortunately, you are responsible for updates and anything that goes wrong if they experience bugs. [Read more...]

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The First Steps in Turning Your Hobby Blog into a Business

December 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

Inevitably, most hobby or amateur bloggers wake up one day and realize that they could turn their hobby blog into a business.  Yeah, you might not be able to quit your day job, but you might be able to earn yourself enough money to take a vacation or by yourself a new iPad.

Mr. Hobby blogger does some quick Google research and realizes all they have to do is throw some Adsense code on their blog template, and the checks will start rolling in!

Fail.

Do not pass go.  Do not collect new iPad.

What the heck happened?  Mr. Hobby blogger actually has a pretty sizable following for his site all about Legos.  Sure, it is a hyper specific niche, but there’s an audience for this stuff.  He has even received invitations to attend major toy conventions.

Mr. Hobby blogger has actually talked to marketing folks from the Lego Group Inc. about his site, yet they do not seem interested in sponsoring his website. What’s the problem here?

No one is taking you seriously because your site does not look like a serious business.

Yes, we’re talking about kids toys here so of course it does not have to look like the Dow Jones homepage.  But here is what’s making you look amateur:

  • Your website URL is:  http://legofreak.blogspot.com.
  • Your email address is:  blockhead433@yahoo.com.
  • Your “About” page talks about where you grew up and has a picture of your dog on it.
  • Your blog template is the same template used by 2.4 million other bloggers.
  • You are secretly obsessed with funny animated gif files.
  • You steal photos from other websites.  You loooove Google image search.
  • Privacy policy?  What’s a privacy policy?
  • You don’t have or use a web analytics program.

There are probably a few more issues, but these are the most common.

You’re content is probably some of the best Lego related content on the Internet.  Unfortunately, it is hard for legitimate advertisers to take your site seriously.

You get an A+ for content, and a D+ for execution.

Here is your homework assignment:

Run out and register a Lego related domain name.  Maybe don’t use the word Lego in the domain since it is a registered trademark, but pick something in the “building block” arena.

Once you’ve got that domain name locked down, set up a real email address.  John@buildingblocks.com would be lovely.

Write out a better About page.  Talk about the site and the type of content you hope to deliver to your audience.  If you happen to know some data about your readers, here’s your chance to highlight it.  Think of this as a soft sell for why an advertiser might be interested in doing business with you.

Move your blog to a self hosted system such as WordPress.org.  There’s plenty of cheap (like $6 per month) hosting out there.  Sign yourself up, and get WordPress installed.  It is not hard and you can get it all done in under an hour.

Pick a better template that fits your blog’s theme.  If you are really committed to this, hire someone to build a custom template for you.  You should be able to get this done for a less than a couple hundred bucks for something basic, but classy.

Stop stealing photos.  Yes, it is easy to do a Google image search and rip pics from someone else.  Unfortunately, that’s kind of illegal.  However, hope is not lost!  Solicit photos from your readers.  I’m sure there are Lego fans out there that would love to share their creations with you.

If you find pictures on another site, ask the owner if you can use them.  Often times, they’d be happy to let you use a photo in exchange for a link back to their site from the post.

Google what a “Privacy Policy” is.  There are stock templates out there.  Get your hands on one and get it up on your site.  Many ad networks and direct advertisers require that you have a privacy policy on your site.  Plus, it make it look like you know what you are doing with this whole “business” thing.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Google Analytics.  Run, don’t walk.  Sign up right away and start measuring your traffic.  Your advertisers are going to want to know how much traffic your site gets.  This is how you will know.

Get out there and make us proud.

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Still haven’t gone local yet?

March 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

About a year ago, I wrote a post about Attacking Local on your Blog.  Looking back over the last year, how true has it become?

A year ago, most people had never heard of mega online brands like Groupon.  And forget about Gilt, Living Social, Buy with Me, etc.  Now, they’re everywhere.

Even the “old school” media like CBS is cashing in (sort of).

The trend is only going to continue.  Now is the time to get on board if you haven’t already.  There’s still plenty of time and space for amazing local content sites to stake major audience claims.

As more and more consumers head to the web for even their most hyper local needs, the SEO value of localized content continues to grow exponentially.

What are you waiting for?

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WordPress Backups: What’s your disaster plan?

September 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What is your backup plan for your WordPress site? You do have one, right?

Anyone that has experienced a personal computer crashing or a web server disaster will tell you the same thing…they wish they had been better about backing up their files.

I don’t care how often you think you will end up backing your systems up, it is never enough if you are doing it manually. Take it from someone who has gone down that road before.

I used to tell myself that I would be regular about backing up both my Mac and my websites. Hoe hard could it be? All that has to be done is setting aside a fee minutes on a regular basis to save some files to secondary storage. Not hard at all. It always seems to work for the a first few days or weeks too. [Read more...]

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Attack “Local” for your Blog

March 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

Being as “Local” as you can with your blogging will yield big dividends.  By local, I mean incorporating as much geo-specific content as possible.

First of all, you can see that the local game is hot right now.  Sites like Yelp are cashing in on these opportunities.  Even Google has continued to drive their local search focus.  Local is starting to spread across multiple products within Google, including:

  • Local Search
  • Google Maps
  • Google Directory
  • Adsense
  • Adwords
  • Google Voice
  • Goog411

All of these products rely on the thirst for local content and information.  Sites like Yelp are cashing in on the local directory and review market where users generate local content about everything from restaurants to dry cleaners.

How to cash in on “local” with your blog?

Try to incorporate a local element with every post you write.  It does not have to be local to you, but local to the post.

For example, right now I am posting about the importance of localizing content.  For this post, a great example of what I am talking about would be a blog called Hoboken411.  This site is all about the city of Hoboken, NJ, right outside New York City.  By mentioning how great this local site is and talking about their content in a local sense, I will increase my odds of someone finding this post when Hoboken is typed into the search query.

Ok, maybe not the best example.  Here’s a few more.

Running blog. When you review that new pair of Nike running shoes for your blog, you should consider talking about the stores, cities, addresses, and websites of the stores that are going to get the first shipments of these hot shoes.  (A great example)

Reality TV blog. When you’re giving the play by play review of last night’s episode of The Apprentice, you should try to find out the name and address of the diner that the episode was shot.  Or the corner that they setup their street cart.  Or really any major landmark/scene from the episode.  There will be a lot of people out there that want to find out the name of the place.  They may be able to figure out that it was New York, but they won’t know much more than that.  If your post answers the “where” question, you will rank well for that search term.

Baseball blog. Let’s say that you write a blog about the New York Mets.  Each time the team hits the road, you could incorporate a post about the most “Mets Friendly” bar in that town to watch the game.  You’d be surprised how many displaced fans are spread all over the country looking for places to watch their favorite out-of-state teams. Here’s a good example of what I mean.  Here is where you can see Yelp cashing in on this idea.

In most cases, you should be able to come up with a local angle for your post.

For anyone looking to start a new blog, starting as a local blog is the place to go.  Most small or even mid-sized towns/cities are in desperate need for good local content.  You could dominate the niche by turning out great content focused on that local audience.

It is much easier to start local and attempt to expand than it is to start with a national focus.  There are a lot more players in the national game right now.  Local is the place to be!

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