WordPress, Blogging & Tech Tutorials

Why Premium WordPress Web Hosting Is Worth It

In the past few years a new breed of web hosts has emerged that focus specifically on hosting WordPress web sites. Some of the key players are WP Engine, FlyWheel, Pressable, Kinsta and Page.ly. These web hosts tend to be a little more expensive that the typical shared web hosting plans you can get through companies like Bluehost, Hostgator, Siteground etc. Whereas a Bluehost plan will cost you around $6/month, premium WordPress hosting starts around $25/month. If you’re used to shared webhosting and nothing has ever gone wrong for you, the price of a premium host seems a little steep, and indeed I was a little skeptical in the beginning too. I had never experienced firsthand any major problems with my current webhosts – no hacked sites or any outrageous downtime. So I really didn’t have much motivation to move to a premium host. But after I had the opportunity to try WP Engine’s service I quickly became a convert for many reasons, including the fact that my site ran significantly faster and the support was excellent. So these days, for my business clients, I always recommend a premium WordPress host and my host of choice is WP Engine.

Full disclosure – I am an affiliate of WP Engine and if you click the links in this post and sign up with them, that will result in me receiving a little extra cupcake money. If you want top notch hosting but are philosophically opposed to me eating more cupcakes you can certainly sign up without using my link and get the same exact price and service.

The reason I am an affiliate is because I use WP Engine every day (this site runs on WP Engine), as do several of my clients, and I love it. I recommend it to all my clients running an actual business on WordPress. As with any decision you make for your business, do your research to pick the right solution for your situation.

Getting The Word Out With Jetpack: Sharing, Subscribers, Social Media Networks

This is a guest post from my friend and super-talented WordPress developer, Suzette Franck. I’ve mentioned the Jetpack plugin before and in this post Suzette will take you deeper into it’s social marketing features.
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Let’s face it, no matter how pretty your blog or website is, people come back for fresh, compelling, unique and informative content. While there are various services that will accomplish the same functionality, never before has posting to all the networks simultaneously been make simpler than with the magic of the plugin Jetpack. Jetpack is chock full of goodies like the Publicize, Sharing and Subscriptions features that can help the most amount of people see your unique content in your social network. Support for posting to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, as well as share buttons for the major networks are all included in this no cost but priceless plugin.

What is Jetpack?

Jetpack (latest version is 2.0) is a free add-on suite of plugins once only available to WordPress.com users made available for your self-hosted blog. If your blog is hosted at WordPress.com, you do not need this add-on to access these features, but if you are self-hosting your blog, for example, at Media Temple, WPEngine, HostGator, Blue Host, etc. you will need to download, install, and activate this plugin to have it provide the features we will be covering, Also, you will be required to have a WordPress.com account, so that all of your subscriptions and stats can be accessed centrally right form the WordPress.com dashboard. I will walk you through the installation and configuration process and get you up and running in no time posting your unique content to your followers.

Enhancing Your WordPress Gallery

I’ve posted previously about the in-built gallery feature of WordPress,and some of the simple things you can do using the shortcode. With this post I wanted to share a few more tips and some apparently less well-known features such as using multiple galleries on one page.

BONUS PDF: Resources for finding, editing and optimizing images, and tools for creating social images.

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Multiple Galleries In One Page/Post

In WordPress terms, when you upload images to a specific post, those images are attached to the post and become part of the default gallery for that post which you can insert into your post from the media uploader.

If you only use the media uploader, it would appear that you can only insert one gallery per post – the images you’ve attached to that specific post. But what if you want to include multiple galleries in one post? It doesn’t seem possible using the standard media uploader, but if you use the gallery shortcode you can do it easily. (I describe the basic use of the gallery shortcode here)

Have Your Face Show Up In Google Results

Have you noticed how some Google listings show a wee photo of the author along with a link to their Google Plus profile? This nifty feature is part of Google Authorship which is a way of associating your name and…

Intro To Podcasting With WordPress

This a guest post by my friend and multimedia WordPress wizard, Jason Tucker. He streams live and archives the OC WordPress meetup group, and has recently launched a new Google Hangout and podcast show called WP Watercooler which you can watch live on Mondays at 11am PST, or you can catch the archive on the website and download the podcast via iTunes. He kindly agreed to share some of his wisdom here. Now over to Jason……

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So you want to learn how to podcast? In this post I’ll go over some of the basics of podcasting using WordPress, a mic and some audio or video recording software.

What is a podcast?

Before I get into how to start your own podcast I think we should define what a podcast is. Wikipedia states the following:

A podcast is a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio, video, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. The word is a neologism derived from “broadcast” and “pod” from the success of the iPod, as podcasts are often listened to on portable media players.

So, in plain English, a podcast is a way for you to receive and then consume typically audio or video in an episodic fashion. I listen to quite a few podcasts – some are news focused, and others are either short stories or very long shows. I’ve listened to podcasts that are 5 minutes long all the way to 2 hours long. Either way, think of a podcast as setting a DVR to receive a show someone records and makes available at various intervals, typically every week.

A Little Taste of The Beginner’s Guide To SEO Ebook

My ebook “Beginner’s Guide to SEO for Business” is launching very soon and I wanted to give you a little sneak preview of what’s coming. Check out some pages from the book below. (Tip – click the magnifying glass with the plus sign to zoom in and click the arrow to the right to open it up full size). Make sure you are on my email list in order to take advantage of early bird pricing. The book is designed to be a practical process that most business-owners can follow in order to effectively attract potential new clients to their site. There’s no tricks or promises of “secrets”. I focus on the fundamental concepts that have longevity and that have worked for me and my clients.