Setting up a WordPress Site the Right Way [video]

How To Set Up A WordPress Site The Right Way - Natalie MacLees - WordCamp Phoenix 2013

WordPress.tv is a wonderful resource for WordPress users of all levels. They post all the videos of presentations gathered from WordCamp events all over the world. You can see some amazing speakers with excellent info to share.

The video below is from my friend Natalie MacLees who is an extremely talented WordPress designer & developer and also runs the SoCal WordPress Meetup group (highly recommended if you are in the LA area). She spoke recently at WordCamp Phoenix on how to go about setting up a WordPress site the right way. And don’t be fooled by the title…this is not your average tutorial about how to install WordPress. Read the rest of this entry »

Get More Out Of Google Analytics – 4 Gems You Might Be Missing

In: Online Marketing

Google Analytics - 4 Hidden Gems

Google Analytics is a super-powerful tool and most people only scratch the surface. Here’s a few cool features to check out that you may not have discovered yet.

Do You Need A Better Mobile Strategy?

Google Analytics - Audience Overview - Mobile Talk of responsive design, mobile apps, mobile plugins etc are all the buzz right now, but what will be the best strategy for you? If your site is not responsive, will it be worth investing in a responsive design, or should you just use a WordPress plugin to cover your bases?

Well one way to find out is to look at the mobile report within Analytics to see how many people are even trying to access your site from a mobile device. You’ll find this report under the Audience tab on the left. Click on Overview and you’ll see a simple breakdown of how many visits came via desktop vs mobile devices. Currently Analytics doesn’t distinguish between tablets and smartphones – both are ‘mobile’.

Click the pie chart icon on the right to get a nice visualization of what percentage of visitors use a mobile device.
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Are You Consuming Or Creating?

In: General Marketing

Are you creating or consuming

One of the differences between success and mediocrity is the amount of time we spend on activities that create movement for our business vs. time spent simply consuming information related to our business. Most of us bloggers and entrepreneurs are wearing multiple hats at any given time – juggling clients with our own projects, or perhaps juggling a day job with a new side business. When time is a limited resouce, becoming conscious of how you’re spending it is crucial.

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GoDaddy WordPress Sites Getting Hacked

In: Quick Tips| WordPress

WordPress Sites on GoDaddy Being Hacked If you have a WordPress site on GoDaddy, keep a close eye on it. This week alone two different people have come to me with site issues that have turned out to be the same exact hack. There seems to be a spate of them going on – see this thread in the WordPress forums that I came across – this is the same hack that I found. Fortunately in the cases I’ve seen it hasn’t caused a ton of damage – more a nuisance than anything, but it indicates vulnerabilities in your site. GoDaddy of course will provide you with no help at all – they won’t even check if it’s a hack, they will just assume it’s some WordPress issue and not even give you a place to start trying to fix it. I’m not a security expert so I’m not sure if the timthumb vulnerability was the way in, but in both cases that vulnerability was present. In both cases I found code added to the functions.php file as well as a few other dodgy files showing up. Read the rest of this entry »

What Happens If I Change My WordPress Theme?

In: WordPress Tutorials - Basic

What happens when you change your WordPress theme

When the same question crops up again and again, it’s time for a blog post!

Changing your WordPress theme can be a scary prospect if you’ve already invested a lot of time and effort building your site – what if you click the button and ‘poof!’ your site becomes dust?!

So here’s a guide to what will and won’t change about your site when you switch themes. Depending on the specific themes you are switching between your experience may be more or less tricky.

The overarching rule is that anything that is a core WordPress feature will remain, and all plugins and their features will remain, but anything that is theme-specific will no longer be available to you.

So let’s dig a little deeper into what this means. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Ways To Sell Using PayPal and WordPress

In: Ecommerce on WordPress| WordPress Tutorials - Basic

Sell Products With PayPal And WordPress

There are many, many ways to sell things from your WordPress site, from physical products to digital downloads or access to content. The best solution will depend on your particular circumstance and needs. While WordPress can get quite sophisticated in the ecommerce department, a lot of folks just want to be able to sell a few items quickly and easily using PayPal.

In circumstances like this where the user wants the simplest possible solution and knows they want to use PayPal, a fully featured shopping cart / ecommerce solution such as WooCommerce or Shopp might be overkill. Sometimes simple PayPal buttons will suffice.

So there are 2 primary options I recommend:

1) Generating buy butons directly from PayPal
2) Using a simple plugin to create a very basic shopping cart

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