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How to Search and Replace on Your Blog – the Easy Way

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:18:04 +0000

Anyone who has a WordPress blog will probably find that at some point it is necessary to perform a search and replace on your blog. This is usually necessary when something odd is happening and you just can’t figure out what or where the problem is. For example there may be a weird character in blog entries, you’ve found a typo and are concerned that it may appear in other areas of your blog or maybe you want to rename your keywords. Whatever the reason, there is an easy way to do a search and replace in blog posts. This is how you accomplish this task:

The first thing you should always do is backup your files so if something goes wrong you are not left in a bind.
You can do a search and replace with a WordPress plugin that is called, you guessed it, the Search and Replace plugin. This plugin is used with the WordPress Admin section (WP-Admin). Simply download and install the Search and Replace plugin and you will be able to search and replace in the following areas: content, titles, excerpts, comments content and comments author.

That’s it, pretty easy, right? Of course there are more difficult ways to accomplish if you want to get into the programming aspect of a WordPress blog, but it really is not necessary to make this too complicated.

7 WordPress Optimization Tips

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:01:53 +0000

There may be times when your WordPress blog starts running slow. This can be frustrating and time consuming if you are trying to figure out how to get the performance of your blog running better. Here are 7 tips for optimizing your blog and making the visitor’s experience pleasant and efficient by speeding up the site so they (and you) can move through the blog without speed being an issue. Another point to take into consideration is if you are going to be substantially increasing the traffic to your blog. In this case you will want to ensure the blog is running at peak performance so the increased traffic is handled well without causing the site to run slowly.

Try keeping page sizes fewer than 100 Kbytes and under 50 Kbytes is really ideal. Many times people add too much stuff to their sites not realizing that the page size is increasing exponentially. Webpages will typically have images that may not have been optimized for the web, flash files, JavaScript and videos. Hosting your videos on YouTube and linking to them is better than hosting the videos on your site.
Check on the performance of any plugins you are using on your WordPress blog. Some plugins are very resource intensive and will definitely slow down your site. To check the plugins you will need to deactivate them and then spot check your site. If your site is running faster without the plugins, don’t worry, you do not need to get rid of all your plugins. Simply activate each plugin one at a time, then go back and spot check the site again. Paying particular attention to the areas that were previously running slowly. If, after activating one of the plugins, the site begins to run slow again, you have found the culprit. There are two choices you have if one of the plugins is the problem. Try contacting the author and asking them to take a look at the plugin for possible problems, or you can find a different plugin that will do the same task for you.
Themes are great and can add a very nice look and feel to your blog, however, the theme may be the reason your site is running slow, especially if the theme includes a lot of javascripting, or large image files. To test the theme, default back to the original WordPress theme and then check your site. If it is now running quickly, you need to consider an alternate theme. Or you can try to debug the theme using Firebug which is a Firefox debugging tool.
Post version tracking is a tool that writes post revisions to the database whenever you save a post. Sometimes, with heavy blogging, this feature can create a bottle neck. If you don’t think you need to save post revisions, you can turn this feature off. Blogs that have been saving post revisions for quite some time may need to have the revisions deleted. Of course you should make a backup copy of your blog before you attempt to delete the post revisions. Deleting post revisions will make the overall size of your blog smaller which may enhance its performance.
WordPress will ping any servers you have listed in your ping list. The reason for pinging is to let servers know of changes and posts to the blog. This helps bring in traffic which is why people have a ping list. Sometimes pings will time out during the process of pinging. When this happens, slow downs can occur. WordPress will also notify sites of any links that you have made in your posts by doing what is called a pingback, however, this can also time out. To find out if this is what is slowing your site down, clear the ping list and also disable the pingback option. Check your site to see if it is faster.
If you have data that is constantly needed to be retrieved, try using a caching plugin to retrieve data.
Reducing the image file size is such an easy thing to do and will greatly improve the function of your WordPress blog if it is running slow. Photos taken with a typical digital camera are way too large in file size to be loaded onto a WordPress blog without reducing them in some way. There are a few different programs that will do this. I use Photoshop and it works great. You can also use Gimp, which is a free photo editing software. The ideal size for a WordPress photo is 96 dpi for resolution and about 280×280 pixels. Of course the size of the photo will change depending on the orientation (horizontal or vertical).

Having a blog is a lot of fun and for some people it is a way of making a living. Ensuring that your blog is running well and is providing a good experience for your visitors can sometimes not only be important, but vital as well if you are running an income producing blog. The tips in this article should get your blog running well again in no time.

Make your WordPress Blog More Appealing: Top Five Tips

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:02:10 +0000

Everyone has heard the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” With WordPress blogs this is especially true. Millions of websites use WordPress as their mechanism to deliver their blog to the public. The idea is to generate traffic by a variety of means, some including paid advertising. But once you have the traffic visiting you only have a few seconds for that visitor to decide whether or not they want to stay and browse your content. If you pay for advertising to attract viewers to your site you do not want it wasted by turning them off to the design and having them leave.

Instead you want your site to be attractive and appealing so people are enticed to stay. You also want to make it easy to use and have interesting content. If you can make the site more appealing your advertising efforts whether paid or just time will be well worth the investment. Of course, an attractive site has to be backed up with content so make sure you spend as much time on ensuring you have regularly updated, interesting blog posts to share with your community. But the design is a first step. To enhance your site, here are the top 5 tips to make it more appealing:

Make sure your site is clean and not cluttered. If your site looks messy a new visitor won’t even bother to try to wade through it because there are many cleaner options available. Use menus to give overall topics. Do not have cluttered side bars. Only use line items in a side bar or menu that support the actual content categories found on your site.
Make the site readable. You may have a formal site but using script may be too hard to read for some. Get rid of it. Choose a font that is consistent and compatible with all platforms. Also, make sure you use a font size that is neither too small nor obnoxiously large. Do not excessively use italics or bolds. Be consistent throughout the entire site so that all pages and posts are similar looking and the eye does not have to adjust to multiple font styles.
Optimize your site to encourage your visitors to stay on the site as long as possible. Suggest relevant additional reading by using plugins. You can download a plugin that suggests similar posts the reader may be interested in. You can also download plugins that allow viewers to share your post at other locations such as via email, RSS feed or social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and the like.
Encourage user participation as much as possible. Encourage users to make comments and read what others before them have contributed. Use an anti spam plugin to help prevent spam from cluttering your comments section so you can make it as easy as possible for even unregistered users to post. Cultivating a sense of community will go a long way in ensuring each visitor to the site enjoys themselves.
Change your design entirely. If you are unsatisfied with the efficacy of your design choose another one. You can download a variety of different themes from a variety of different places. You can get free themes that will likely suit our purposes. You can also find paid themes that are customizable and have complete solutions for your site. Finally, you can hire a professional designer to ensure you have exactly the theme design and functionality you need for your site. You can choose everything from free to affordable paid themes.

When you concentrate a bit on ensuring you have an aesthetically pleasing and easy to use WordPress blog site you will find your visitors will spend a lot more time on your site. When you put effort, time and even money attracting visitors to your site you want them to stay so using the top five tips on making your site more appealing is a great start that can only be enhanced when you add in interesting, regularly updated content.