Sean’s Blog

I’ve gone and updated this blog to the latest version of Wordpress.  If you run a wordpress blog, you should really check out the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin.  Wordpress upgrading is a pretty straight forward process, but why not just set it up so you can click through an upgrade.

The plugin will backup your installation and database, download the files, put the site into maintenance mode, and then fetch and install the upgrade all within the administration console.  It really doesn’t get much easier.

My one gripe is that it seems that it does not automatically re-enable your plugins after the installation (even though it says it does).  This is a little bit of a pain, but plugins are what can really hose up the installation sometimes so re-enabling them one by one is usually the best course of action anyways.

Here’s the link for the plugin. (from TechieBuzz)

This weekend I was working to setup a new blog that I have been getting ready.  I had the wordpress installation all set and ready to go and I ordered the domain name from GoDaddy.com.  I then pointed the new domain at the directory on the webserver that would be hosting the new site and set it up as an addon domain.  Everything looked good until I tried to navigate to the site.

When I actually when to the new site (we’ll call it addon.com) it redirected me to the front page of seanelavelle.com.  Now I know that the new blog was set up correctly on the webserver at http://seanelavelle.com/addon/ and the DNS record should point to the subdomain as addon.seanelavelle.com, but going to that address also seemed to redirect me to the main site.  I was at a loss.

After talking to Bluehost support we determined the problem was not DNS, but the Wordpress installation.  More after the jump

Read more »

Last week, when I installed the new theme for my site (Xplosive from BlogOhBlog), I noticed my stats in Wordpress.com Stats plugin dropped to 0. I thought this might just be a fluke, since every once in a while I will have a day where the visits are in the single digits. But by day two I was getting worried. Then I received a message from a friend using the Contact page and I knew something was up since it was still showing 0 hits.

I was still getting a page count via Google Analytics, but I love Wordpress.com Stats. The stats are (almost) real time, and it gives me just enough information for a quick over view of what has been going on. After some digging I found that this sometimes happens.

The fix is pretty easy, although it will require you to modify actual PHP pages (which is not that hard with the Wordpress Theme editor. I am assuming Wordpress 2.5 for this (although everything should work in earlier installations). Simply go to the Design Tab->Theme Editor. Now we will need to add the function in 3 places:

Read more »

When I started using Wordpress 2.5, I really liked some of the features. But I have been noticing little bits of weirdness here and there. The biggest one is that the Add/Edit Link button in the Visual Editor didn’t seem to work. I could put in whatever I wanted, but it would not create a link.

The workaround was easy enough, since you could just add the links within the HTML Editor and they worked fine, but switching editors felt like a pain. While I did not find a fix to the problem, I’ve found a workaround. Wordpress’s built in post editor is called TinyMCE. There is a Plugin that will add extra functionality to TinyMCE called TinyMCE Advanced.

I just installed this plugin and links seem to work fine. It also looks like it adds a bunch of features to the editor, but I have not had time to play with all of them yet.

So if you are having trouble with links in Wordpress 2.5, try installing the TinyMCE plugin. It seemed to work for me. Just make to clear your browser cache so you do not see the old editor.

Plugin available here

I’m still fumbling my way around Wordpress 2.5 since I upgraded over the weekend.  In general I like it alot, but some things have moved and it seems to take me a while to actually find them again.  One of the things I couldn’t find was who to schedule a post.  I live and die buy this feature and sort of freaked out when I couldn’t find it.  But then I calmed down and figure it how.  here is a quick step by step on scheduling posts in Wordpress 2.5:

Read more »

Earlier I posted about some of the traffic fall off I’ve experienced recently. While I know “content is king” and am actively working on it, I have also been looking into some of the more technological ways to get the word out about the blog. One of the things I’ve found is the ability in Wordpress to customize what blog directories are “pinged” when you write a new post.

The only line in there by default is rpc.pingomatic.com which is a service that contacts multiple blog listing sites. When I went the actual site though, there was only 16 directories listed (plus another 5 specialized that i haven’t listed):

Read more »

Ever since I moved to a self hosted blog, I’ve had a fall off in traffic. I expected this, but not to the degree that it has happened. I’m getting double on triple the traffic on the existing sites that I had at wordpress.com even though I haven’t updated these sites in months. I am somewhat convinced that after the problems I had upgrading my wordpress installs my page ranking was affected as well.

One of the weird things that I’ve been noticing is that sometimes the Google Analytics numbers and the Stats plugin for Wordpress give different numbers. Normally, I would attribute this to Analytics seeing traffic outside my blog, but it seems that Wordpress Stats plugin will give the higher numbers. I think that the Google Sitemap plugin might have some issues since I am running 2 separate plugins for my 2 wordpress installations. I’ve also turned on stats at my webhost, so hopefully this will give me a little more insight.

So to rectify this, I’m trying several things. I’ve installed the All In One SEO Pack Plugin. I’ve resubmitted my sitemap to Google. And today I am updating my pinging services (on which I’ll post later today or tomorrow). Hopefully this will lead to some improvement. If any of you pro bloggers have any other ideas, let me know.