One of the main goals of most websites is to have good traffic levels. That is, a large number of people visiting your website, and visiting multiple times if that’s appropriate for the type of site you operate. For other websites, the most important metric may be “conversions” –of all the people who come to your website, what percentage of them actually “convert” into customers or members by taking whatever action you want them to.

It’s therefore important to work to improve your traffic and conversion numbers. But in order to do this, you need to know what your current levels are (so you have a baseline upon which to improve), and you need to be able to measure how your various promotional activities and initiatives are affecting your traffic and conversion numbers.

In order to do any tracking, you’ll need a technical method for doing so. Your website might have a built-in statistics or analytics package, but it might not provide you with the level of detail that you need. If you don’t currently use analytics software, consider the free Google Analytics solution; it’s easy to install, and very powerful. While there are many different types of data to collect, at a minimum you should be tracking the following:

Traffic Sources

The first set of data to analyze is the sources of your website traffic. Google Analytics breaks this down a number of different ways, so that you can see what percentage of your traffic types your web address into their browser, what percentage came from another site’s link (and what those links are) and how many visitors came by finding your website on a search engine. You can use this data to either try to gain traffic from additional sources, or to focus your efforts on the sources that are already proving to be successful.

Search Engine Keywords

When you examine the traffic that came to your site from a search engine, you’ll also be able to see what keyword or keyword phrase led someone to your site. You can use this information to try to improve your website’s standing for that keyword or keyword phrase (by using proper SEO techniques, for example). You can also use the best keyword or keyword phrase as a potential basis for web advertising.

Advertising Clicks and Conversion Rates

Tracking clicks and conversions can be very beneficial in determining if what you are doing is successful. If you use different links for each advertisement, you’ll also be able to identify which advertisements or content lead to a higher percentage, as well as a higher number, of conversions. For example Google’s AdWords program makes it easy to identify which of your advertisements are giving you the most clicks and conversions.

It’s not essential that you know exactly what metrics are going to be most important to you when you start gathering the data. The important thing is to start the gathering process now, so that you’ll have more data available as you learn what measurements are most important to your website.

Need help tracking your Traffic and Conversions? Request A Quote

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You already know that through the use of “plug-ins” – small packages of code that can add a discreet and focused functionality to a WordPress website – it’s possible to take your websites to the next level.

But like WordPress itself, plug-ins get improved and updated over time. When you log into your WordPress admin area and you see Plugin Update notifications like the ones shown below you have plugin(s) that needed to be updated.

It may seem easy to just ignore the update notifications but it’s important that you make sure the WordPress plug-ins you’re using are always up-to-date. Here are three reasons to update your WordPress plugins.

1. Outdated Plugins Can Break Your Site

Your website is the face of your business or organization on the Internet. It’s one thing to have a website that might look a little outdated or plain – that’s not ideal, but many customers will look past it. It’s completely another matter if your website is broken, doesn’t function the way people expect it to or has error pages that ruin your visitors’ experiences.

Unfortunately, a plug-in that is no longer compatible with an updated version of WordPress itself (particularly if the most recent WordPress upgrade was a major one) can cause a significant loss of functionality or, depending on what the plug-in does, make it so that the site won’t even load into a user’s browser.

2. Outdated Plugins Can be a Security Risk

Sometimes an outdated WordPress plug-in can cause an even bigger problem than a loss of functionality. Depending on how old it is, an out of date plug-in could even put your entire website at a security risk.

For example, some plug-ins (particularly those relating to e-commerce or subscription lists) interface with databases in your WordPress website that contain sensitive customer contact and financial information. An out of date plug-in that allows a hacker to gain access to any of this information is a significant liability to your website – in terms of both direct financial liability, as well as potential damage to your reputation if the information is ever compromised.

3. Outdated Plugins Can Put You Behind Your Competition

Even if an outdated plug-in on your website still functions, the current version might have improved functionality or additional features. This means that any other website that uses the updated version of that plug-in will be able to offer more to the people who come to their website.

Since the best plug-ins for a particular functionality are often used by a number of websites, running an out of date version will often be particularly noticeable to your customers and website visitors.

In order to make sure you’re getting the most out of WordPress, you need to stay current on all WordPress updates. This includes making sure that all of your website plug-ins are running on the most current and stable version. By avoiding outdated plug-ins, you can be confident that your website will function optimally.

Need help keeping your WordPress Plugins up to date? Request A Quote

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Are you asking yourself “How can I stop getting spam in my inbox?”

Spending hours a week cleaning out your inbox is interfering with your productivity. You spend hours cleaning out your inbox because you don’t have an email filtering system. To take back your time you should use an email filtering system, such as Spam Assassin.

Spam Assassin is an open-source email filtering system that identifies spam messages based on the header and the body of the email.  It you would like to know more about how Spam Assassin determines if an email is SPAM you can read more about it on the SpamAssassin website.

Here is how you can start using Spam Assassin today.

1. Log into your cpanel.
2. Scroll down to the mail section.



3. In the mail section click on Spam Assassin.



4. Click Enable Spam Assassin.

Then a screen will load that says Attempting to enable Spam Assassin.

And once it is enabled you will see a message that says “Spam Assassin has been enabled on this Account.” You will also see a message that says SpamAssassin is now: Enabled

By clicking the back button at the bottom of the screen you can set other filter settings. You can set Spam Assassin to automatically delete messages that meet a certain score. Or you can disable the Auto-Delete Spam feature to ensure important emails are not deleted.

If you would like to review email that is labeled SPAM enable the Spam Box. If everything is spam great you can delete them all with one click of the mouse from the spam folder. You can also log into Cpanel and go to Spam Assassin and click the Clear Spam Box button.

After using Spam Assassin for a while you will want to come back and configure Spam Assassin to better meet your needs. You can add spam email addresses to the blacklist. You can also add email addresses or domains to the white list to ensure their emails are never treated like filthy SPAM. You can also set a required score to be hit before an email is classified as SPAM.

So there you have it a tip to help you stop wasting so much time clearing SPAM from your inbox.

Sources:
Cpanel Documentation http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/11_30/CpanelDocs/SpamAssassin
The Apache SpamAssassin Project http://spamassassin.apache.org/

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Being able to add to and remove pages from your navigation is a must if you are going to manage your own website content. So here are some pointers for setting up and changing your WordPress Custom Menus.

Not all themes are created equal! Check Your theme for the number of custom menu locations.

Check Which Custom Menus Your Theme Supports

The default WordPress theme supports only a single menu near the top of the screen. This default menu will initially only include the pages (not posts, but static pages) you have set up on your website. Other WordPress themes may support multiple menus in different locations on your web pages. A common design is to have a main navigation menu at the top of the page (as with the default WordPress theme), and a second menu at the bottom of the page (or perhaps in a sidebar). Check to see what your theme supports.

Change Your Menus

After you log into WordPress, click the “Appearance” selection from the dashboard menu, then click “Menus.” (You may also be able to reach this screen by clicking the “Menus” selection displayed under your currently installed theme, within the “Themes” selection of your dashboard.) After you’ve identified how many menus can be used within your theme, it’s time to decide which of those possibilities you want to use, and what you want to go into each menu.

Set Up Custom Menu Items

On the right side of the menu screen, you’ll notice a named tab (usually some type of “Main menu”), and a tab with a “+” sign. If you want to change the items that are listed in the main menu, simply drag and drop the custom links, pages, categories and tags (if you’re using them) from the left side of the menu screen into the tabbed box on the right side. You can specify as many of these items as you want within each menu, but make sure to check your website to make sure it still looks the way you want it to if you have a large number of items. Click “save menu” when you’re done making your changes.

Set Up Multiple Menus

By clicking the”+” sign, you can set up additional menus to be used throughout your website. Type in a name for the new menu and click the “create menu” button. By breaking up links into multiple menus – rather than simply having everything in a large and potentially unwieldy menu – you make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your website. A common technique is to put links to other pages of your website (such as the “about us” and “contact us” pages) in the top menu, and put outbound links and category links on a sidebar or footer menu.

Add A Vertical Menu

Once you have setup a custom menu you can add that menu to any widget area on your website. After you log into WordPress, click the “Appearance” selection from the dashboard menu, then click “Widgets.” You should see the “Available Widgets” meta box and meta boxes for your themes defined widget areas or sidebars. Drag the Custom Menu widget to the desired widget area. Click the Down arrow to expand the widget meta box. Enter a title and select your custom menu. Make sure you save the widget settings.

Keep in mind that you can set up more menus then you can display on your website at any one time. Why would you want to do this? You might have additional menus set up so that you can easily switch back and forth between them and test how different menus affect the way in which your visitors navigate your website.

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Some businesses are content to use their websites simply as a means to give customers and potential customers basic information about their businesses, and perhaps provide email and telephone contact information. If the business has a physical location, then a basic website might also give a map or driving directions to that location.
But other businesses use their websites to actually sell products and services over the Internet. If a business is using WordPress for its website (and an increasing number of businesses are doing so), then the easiest way to facilitate doing business over the Internet is through a WordPress ecommerce plugin.
A WordPress plugin is a small package of computer code that you install into your WordPress website. Plugins are used to extend the functionality of a WordPress website in a particular way, such as an email sign-up list or a photo gallery. There are even plugins to help you conduct business over the Internet; these are usually referred to as “ecommerce plugins.”
What should you look for when searching for a new ecommerce plugin for your business website?

• Does it work well with your current theme? As you may have already discovered if you’ve used any plugins before with your WordPress website, not every plugin works well with every WordPress theme. Test any ecommerce plugin before committing to use it on your website.
• Does the developer actively support the plugin? Furthermore, sometimes a plugin developer will stop supporting (and updating) his or her plugin. After a certain amount of time, as the underlying WordPress code itself gets updated, a plugin might at some point stop working with the newest version of WordPress. Take a look at the developer’s history of supporting their plugin before deciding to use it on your website.
• Does it work well with the types of products you sell? Ecommerce plugins are often designed to help sell certain types of product. For example, a particular plugin might be designed to help a business sell physical good and keep track of the inventory of those goods. Other plugins will be better suited for selling products like ebooks where there aren’t any inventory restrictions. Is the plugin you’re considering designed to work with the types of products you sell?



• Does the plugin work well with the type of payments you want to accept? In order to conduct ecommerce transactions on your website you’ll need a means for accepting payment from your customers. You may want to accept Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, or some combination of these payment methods. Verify that the plugin you’re interested in supports the payment types you want to use.

Selling goods or services from your WordPress business website doesn’t have to be a difficult proposition. Search for an ecommerce plugin that fits your needs and goals and you’ll be able to start selling in no time. If you need assistance choosing a WordPress eCommerce Plugin or setting up your online store click here to request assistance.

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There is one question that I receive a lot related to Search Engine Optimization and images.

Do I need to include the Alt attribute or the title attribute?

Let me answer the question first and then explain my answer.

You need both.

The alt attribute and the title attribute make it easier for the user to find what they need. The alt attribute tells Google what the image is depicting. The more descriptive the alt attribute the more useful it is to Google when returning image search results.

The title that Google cares about the most is the name of the file. If there is no alt attribute and Google cannot use the text on the page to determine the subject of the image it relies on the file name to determine subject matter. So when you save your images give them meaning file names.

However that does not mean that you should not include a meaningful title attribute. The title attribute does can be extremely useful to your visitors. The title attribute is displayed when the user hovers over an image.

While I am talking about benefits to your visitors let me also mention that the alt tag is also used by screen readers. Using the alt tag makes your website accessible to more people and helps your website conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Now that I have told you why you should use the alt attribute and the title attribute let me show you have to set the alt attribute and the title attribute.

You can set the alt attribute and title attribute when you add an image to the WordPress Media library. Simple add a meaningful title and descriptive alternate text. Then you can just save your image and continue with your post as you would normally.

I will end by telling you that if you have a lot of images on your website that don’t have an alt attribute or a meaningful title you don’t have to go and fix each image individually. You can install a WordPress plug-in called SEO Friendly Images. You enter if you want your attribute to be the title of the image, the name of the file, the category of the post, or the tags related to the post. You can then determine if you want to override the ALT attribute and/or Title attribute supplied by WordPress. Update your options and instantly you have SEO friendly images.

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When you log in to the WordPress admin area to add content, you have an option for posts, media, links, and pages. For some websites, that does not make sense. Let say for instance, you want to list book reviews on your website. That’s not a post or a page. I ran into this situation when a librarian requested that I create a website for her school library. What I did was to make  Custom Post Type called book reviews. A book review is not the same as a post or a page. It is a book review. This is where a custom post types will come in.

If you look at the picture above you will notice how instead of the normal dashboard menu options you also have a Book Reviews menu option. When you click on book review, it says Add New Book Review, which is great because your not adding a new post or a new page. You’re adding a new book review.

By creating custom post types I was able to make it easier for the Librarian to decide which option to use when she adds new book reviews. When she clicks Add New Book She has to enter in the title of the book, the review, the book author, the Genre(s), and a picture of the book.

The title of the book is entered where it says “Enter Title Here”. The actual review is typed or pasted into the WYSIWYG content area. The author name is entered into the Author meta box. The genre is a taxonomy similar to a tag that allows the book reviews to be categorized based on what genre it’s in. The picture of the book cover is added as a featured image. Which allows you to upload an image, use an image that is already in the media library, or add an image from a URL.

When you view a single book review it displays the book cover, the genre, the title of the book, the author of the book and the review.

You can also view all the books within a specific genre just by clicking on the genre link. When you view all the book reviews you get a list of book review teasers on a page, along with a small picture of the cover, the Genres, and a link to read the entire review.

Using a custom widget the latest book reviews are displayed at the bottom of all library pages. This allows visitors of the library website to easily see the last three book reviews. If the snippet catches the attention of a student he or she can click the link to read the entire review.

So there you have it a practical use of WordPress Custom Post Types.  This post explained how custom post types can be used to create a a library website with easy to manage book reviews. But custom post types can also be used for things such as creating staff directories, adding podcasts, to create product listings, an ads platform, or to provide sermon content online. Custom Post Types are one of the many features that allows WordPress to be used to create an easy to manage website.

Hire Arelthia to add custom post types to your WordPress website?

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I want to look at where to find images you can legally use on your website or blog. Of course Google is the first place that comes in mind when you are trying to find anything on the internet, but it is not always the best choice for website images. Yes, you can filter images based on usage rights, but then you don’t have many images to choose from. In this post I am going to provide you with three other sources for images.

Searching for images using Google Advanced Search and filtering images based on usage rights normally returns a large amount of images from Flickr. Flickr is a great source for creative commons images.  Images licensed under creative commons can fall in one of the six categories.  Each license has its own set of restrictions and requirements. Not all images on Flickr are licensed under creative commons, so always make sure you check before you use someone else’s images.  If you want to learn more about creative commons, you can go to Flickr.com, scroll down to the footer, and click on creative commons, or you can go to creativecommons.org.

Flickr is a good source of images, but my favorite source of free website images is sxc.hu. If I search for lion, the first row of images at the top and the last row of images at the bottom are from iStock photos. We don’t want to look at those now. The images we can use for free on your website are the ones in the middle.

Sometimes, you can find some really great images to use on your website. You will want to click on the image to get access to the download version of the image. Before you download an image you should read the availability. The availability section provides you with the requirements for using the image.

You will notice in the picture above it says “standard restrictions apply and the author must be notified and credited when using the photo for any public work.”  That means that if you download this image and use it on your website, you just come here and you leave a comment basically telling them, “Hey, great image. I used it on such-and-such website.” Then, in your caption or somewhere on that page where you used it, give the creator credit.

If you are unable to find images that meet your needs from Flickr or Stock.xchng you can purchase stock images.  iStockphoto , is my favorite place to purchase images for websites. Sometimes I even start my quest for an image at iStockphoto.

So I hope this post has given you a few sources of images that you can use on your website or blog. Just remember to always check the licensing and restrictions before you use an image. If you know of any other good sources of images let me know by leaving a comment below.

Screen shots from sxc.hu

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Adding images to your website and blog posts can increase the interest of readers and help to highlight a point. I highlight recommend you use images as long as they are appropriate and LEGAL. Don’t just be going to Google and grab any image, just because it is returned in an image search.

There is such a thing called copyright and you can’t just use anybody’s work. You need to make sure that when you find images on Google they can be used on your website without committing copyright infringement.  You always want to check the licensing of an image. If nothing else use the advanced search feature in Google to filter out images you should not use on your website.

Normally you would search for a picture just by typing in your keyword and clicking the search button. Google returns a lot of images BUT that does not mean you can use them on your site. What you want to do is click on Advanced Search. Then scroll down to the Usage Rights section which will tell Google to return images that are labeled for reuse, labeled for commercial use, labeled for reuse with modification, or labeled for commercial reuse with modification.  The type of license you choose should be based on what you are going to do with the image. If it’s a business website, only use the one that says commercial. If it says commercial reuse, that means that you can use the image but you cannot alter it in any way. Reuse with modification means that you can use that picture and you can change it any way you want to make a whole new picture.

The advanced search has other filters you can use as well such as the type of image, size, file type, and color. Once you type in your keywords and choose your filters you just click search. Google returns images based on your advanced search criteria. One final point. Even if Google says it is labeled for a specific license make sure check the original source (website) for the specific license information.

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In a previous post I showed you how to backup your site using BackupBuddy. Today I am going to show you how to move your WordPress site to a new host.  On the  “Restore & Backup” options page you should click on “Restore/Migrate”, which will  prompt you to save the importbuddy.php file.

Save that file on your local computer, in the location where you saved the full backup. Now we are finished with the site on the current server.

Using the information provided by your current host log into your new cPanel. In the databases section click create a new MySQL database. In the section that says create new database type in the name of my new database. After you create your new database copy the database name and save it because you will need it again. Then you need to create a database user and password. What I recommend you do is use the password generator. Have it generate you a nice new password. Oh yeah don’t forget to paste your password into your text file for later. After you have created a database and a user you will have to add the user to your database.

Since you are already logged into your cPanel use the file manager to upload your full backup you created with BackupBuddy and the import.php file to the directory where you want your website installed.

After you have uploaded the zip file and import.php in the address bar type yourdomainname.com/importbuddy.php. You could also just type in your domain name and click on importbuddy.php to start the migration process. Just follow the onscreen instructions as the ImportBuddy script finds your backup and installs it on the new server. Once all the files have been extracted you will be prompted to enter in your database information, your new blog url, and your new table prefix.

Once the installation is complete you will receive a message that the installation was complete. Now you can log into your site on your new host using the same username and password. Congratulations, you just moved your site to a new host using backupbuddy.

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