I love Lisa’s latest post about really valuable WordPress plug-ins we can take advantage of. Here’s a few. This is a little sidetrip from bootstrapping but still it’s related because if you run a WordPress site, then you would highly appreciate this stuff.

SEO/Techie Plugins

• All-in-One SEO Pack – The Ultimate SEO WordPress plugin, allowing you to easily set custom titles for posts, pages, categories, archives, tags and searches. You can also designate noindex for duplicate content areas like archives, tags and categories reducing potential canonical issues in the search engines.
• Google XML Sitemaps –Creating an XML Sitemap can be very technical process, but with the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, you just activate it and customize the settings. Keep in mind that if you’ve signed up with Google Webmaster Central and Bing’s Webmaster Center tools, you can get notified of any crawl issues they’re experiencing.
• Headspace2: Headspace makes tagging and managing your meta data much more streamlined. Once activated, you can use Headspace to “suggest” tags for a particular post, which are generated from the content of that post or through Yahoo suggestions (you decide). You can also mass edit meta data, as well.
• Robots META: Use Robots META to prevent the search engines from indexing extraneous or duplicate content areas like your search results, feeds, login and admin pages, privacy pages, archives and more. You can also use this plugin to easily validate your account with Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer.
• CformsII: Highly customizable form builder plugin that allows you to create custom contact forms for specific pages on your site. Setup auto-responders, tell-a-friend functionality, file attachments and comprehensive form tracking. It offers very simple customization and cloning.
• WP Super Cache: Are you expecting a lot of people to visit your site? Use WP Super Cache to reduce potential problems with your host and survive a flood of traffic without the site going down! The plugin works by serving HTML versions of a page to visitors versus the heavier, PHP scripts. If you plan on being “social” this is a must-have.

Check out the complete list on her post — Essential Plugins For Your WordPress Blog.

Stel je hebt een blog op WordPress.com die je gestart bent op een url die je destijds wel goed vond, maar nu wil je toch over naar een andere url omdat die beter past.

In mijn geval was dat van lessen.wordpress.com naar handleiding.wordpress.com.

Maar je hebt natuurlijk al de nodige berichten geschreven en die zou je dus ook mee willen nemen!

Met WordPress kan dat heel makkelijk via de exporteer en importeer tool.

Stap 1. Exporteer

In je Dashboard klik je op tools en daarna op “Exporteer”.
Vervolgens laat je de standaard staan op “alle auteurs” en druk je op Exporteer.

WordPress zal je dan vragen waar je het export bestand wilt opslaan, kies dan voor een makkelijke plaats op je harde schijf en sla het bestand op.

Stap 2. Importeer

Als je ingelogd bent bij WordPress.com type je de url die je graag wilt in je brower adres balk,

WordPress geeft je dan direct die blog als die nog niet bestaat en koppelt hem  aan je account.

Nu kun je direct onder Import het bestand dat je opgeslagen had weer importeren en alle berichten en comments zullen in je nieuwe blog verschijnen.

Stap 3. Afronden

Stel nu je theme en andere aanpassingen die je aan je theme en widgets gedaan hebt weer in zoals je ze hebben wilt en ga verder met bloggen op je nieuwe adres.

Je oude blog kun je laten staan omdat er een hoop afbeeldingen links nog verwijzen naar die blog.
Wil je die toch verwijderen, zorg dan dat alle afbeeldingen opnieuw geupload worden en alle links aangepast naar het nieuwe url pad.

Een laaste bericht op die oude Blog om te zeggen dat je op de nieuwe url verder gaat is ook  een goede optie om mensen daarover te informeren.

Als je je RSS Feed via feedbruner hebt laten lopen is het aanpassen van de basis URL daar voldoende om alle lezers van je blog te houden!

En mocht je dat willen, dan kun je de optie “Headline Animator” gebruiken op je oude Blog om daar ook de nieuwe URL te promoten.

P.s. Deze werkwijze kun je ook gebruiken als je van WordPress.com naar een eigen WordPress installatie gaat.
Een andere optie daar is om WordPress.com te blijven gebruiken maar de domain upgrade te gebruiken zoals je onder een eigen domein naam kunt bloggen.

Deze laatste optie heeft niet mijn voorkeur omdat je daarmee nog niet de vrijheid heb om je eigen widgets en plugins te installeren.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are similar but have their differences. Trackbacks were created by SixApart, the people who created the Movable Type blogging service. Trackbacks allow a blogger send to another blogger a link back their blog post. The purpose is to stimulate more conversation by having two blogs involved with the same topic. Trackbacks are supposed to help prevent bloger comment spamming, because they are from another blog and not random spam selling websites.

Pingbacks use differing communication technologies. Pingbacks use XML-RPC technology. Trackbacks use HTTP POST technology. Pingbacks use something called auto discovery in which the blogging software automatically detects links in a post. It also, automatically attempts to pingback the URLs. Trackbacks do this manually. With trackbacks in the blogosphere, a user has to manually enter the trackback URL that the user wants the trackback to be sent to. Pingbacks as opposed to trackbacks don’t actually send any content (text/images) when executed.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are a remote method to leave links and or comments on other blogs. Trackbacks send a link and content whereas pingbacks don’t . Trackbacks can be edited by the blogger who received the trackback. Pingbacks just send over the link from the other blogger.

The choice of using a trackback for a pingback is dependent on the blogger or user. Trackbacks are much harder to verify. They can come from anyone. Pingbacks are much more authenticate and verifiable, where the blogger being pinged verifies that the pinger is saying who they say they really are.

Feel free to trackback or ping this post!

Well, now that I have a basic layout going here I start posting.

I added some of my pictures.  They are not professional, but they are mine.  I like to take pics as a hobby with my wifes camera gear.  She is really the photographer in the family.  I dont really know if i wat to start posting my family pics yet.  I have a tone of those.  We’ll see.

I’m still trying to figure out this whole thing here at WordPress.  I’m getting used to it though.  All these tools and widgets and what-not.  Is still abit confusing.Some of the tools look very interesting.  Like the one where I grab bits of web page, and post it on my blog to well, blog about.  I would like to be able to grab stuff off the web.  That sounds like a very cool idea.  I’m into news.  Mostly tech news.

Anyway. here’s to getting started !

I’m back from the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) conference in New Orleans, LA. There were social media companies there hocking their wares. There also were charities there who conducted presentations on their use of social media.

I wanted do a brief run down of what I learned.

Some companies that were there included:

• ammado – Global online community of nonprofits, socially responsible companies, and individuals committed to positive change, ie your volunteers.
• Givezooks – Social fundraising tool that fits into many of the social media sites at a grassroots level. I would highly recommend viewing their site.
• ThePort Network – delivers a wide-range of social media tools that include social networking, content publishing, events, reputation, social grouping, Single Sign On, white label, and fundraising integration.

The sessions included:

• Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Blog?
• Fundraising in the Blogosphere
• Using new and traditional media
• Demystifying Online Marketing for Nonprofits
• Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices that Profit Your Organization and Change the World

Also, you can search Twitter to find comments about the event and see how you might want to incorporate Twitter into your own conferences and events.

I was reading Aldon Hayes’ post about following his legislator’s tweet. His legislator, Gary Holder-Winfield from New Haven, CT, is the only elected official to use social networking. In fact, there was a small brouhaha when legislators twittered during President Obama’s state of the union address.

To see if your legislators use Twitter visit www.TweetCongress.org. This site has a list of congressmen who use Twitter. Please note that the site also includes the YouTube webpage links for the legislators.

Have you checked to see if your legislator is using Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube, or any other social media or networking site to connect with their constituents? If they are are you following them or communicating with them through their social media contacts?

Please share a list of your legislators who use social media so we may compile a list here.

Here’s a nice little post about setting up a WordPress Blog for your Nonprofit.

http://tinyurl.com/75hwpa

It gives details on how to post, measure statistics, and make funds using a blog.