Well, here we go again. Wordpress 2.9 released in the last few days is already causing a storm of misery for unwary users with new threads opening on the Wordpress support forums by the minute.
Regrettably, the aspirations of the Wordpress developers seems to have got beyond their capability to manage the development process again. The number of known bugs contained in each new release of Wordpress grows each time and with the growing popularity of the Wordpress platform this affects more and more users on each occasion.
As a Semiologic user I have the benefit of some guidance on the subject and Denis has just posted some advice and some free fixes for the three most common issues .
As you will see from Denis' post, his advice is always to let the new version run intil at least after the first fix, i.e. 2.9.1 before upgrading your blog. Of course, you should always make sure you take a full back up before upgrading and then see if everything runs OK. Deactivate all your plugins before the upgrade and then activate them one at a time. But be ready to go back and restore the whole site when something goes wrong.
It is often quicker (and therefore cheaper!) just to Restore from your back up, report the problem and wait for a fix before attempting the upgrade again than to spend time and money trying to fix something that the techies have not yet got a handle on.
Semiologic users already have a Version Checker plugin that also removes the WP 'nag' to upgrade from their dashboard until WP 2.9.1 is issued and the package of plugins is already aligned to all the changes planned for Wordpress. One of the best reasons I can think of for buying a 'paid for' package with Wordpress. At the end of the day, you always get what you pay for.
These May Be Related Websites - Finding the Best WordPress Plugins for your Blog WordPress originally saw the light of day in 2003, and is now being used on thousands of different websites in...
- Why is WordPress the Best Blogging Platform? There are a variety of reasons for why WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms on the internet. Many...
Filed under Blog, Semiologic, WordPress by on Dec 22nd, 2009. Comment. 
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: |  |
- Image by cote via Flickr
Time management and particularly the information overload that comes from your bulging email inbox is a problem that arises frequently for many people.
Just to emphasise the point I came across an interesting snippet of information recently that it takes you 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after you have been interrupted by an email (or, I suppose, any other interference).
So if you check your email every 5 minutes then that's about 1 hour per day that you think you are working but are not actually operating at your maximum capacity. Even worse if you respond to that beep every time a tweet lands in your Tweetdeck.
So there is every chance that a scatterbrain approach to your work is going to take 8 hours or more per week out of your working time. You think you are working Monday to Friday but in reality you don't get past Thursday tea time!
Solutions? My own include the classic broad brush approach.
First, switch it off! Set aside specific times to deal with your email maybe twice a day. Leave it off the rest of the time to allow you to deal with your priorities – not those imposed on your by somebody else.
Second: use the unsubscribe link. If you are already having problems dealing with the volume of email then it makes sense to reduce the flow. So unsubscribe from the least important sources of email, newsletters, reminders,special offers blah, blah.. If you don't have time to do anything about them then why bother spending the time to read them?
Third: use an email client to automate the process of filtering your inbox. My preference is for Gmail because the effect of using filters to set up rules has a cumulative effect. It may take a minute to set up a filter but if it takes that email (and every one that follows it from the same source) out of your inbox forever – or at least until you want to go looking for it – then that is a great investment.
Just my thoughts – but if you want the academic background then you can find out a whole lot more about the effects of email on how your manage your time at http://www.drthomasjackson.com/
Other email management articles
- Manage eMail Overload By Using A Temporary Inbox With Re:Subj (makeuseof.com)
- Principles of email management (informata.blogspot.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=fc4ac4ba-0f67-4301-b50e-c46a4dc7a0c8)
These May Be Related Websites - Avoid EMail Bankruptcy with Inbox 0.5 As someone who makes their living off the Internet, I get a lot of email every day and some days...
- Getting a Grip on Email The world of business has changed immensely today with almost everyone communicating through the latest technological device to hit the...
Filed under Blog, Email Management, Time Management by on Dec 8th, 2009. 1 Comment.
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
God forbid, but that juggernaut of the digital world, the good old BBC, is just about to start applying search engine optimisation to it's content!
With in excess of 3 million pages on their website you would have thought they would have been satisfied with the dominance they have already achieved. But like all good marketers they declare that they are making changes in order to meet the needs of their users and are about to start optimising their headlines.
You can read the the full post from Steve Herrmann, the BBC's Sports Editor to get the details but, in essence, they are breaking away from a 33 character headline imposed on them by the old Ceefax system and will start to write 2 headlines. One will comply with the old system and fit neatly on their front page for visitor navigation while a fuller, longer headline will adorn the actual subject page.
With the ability to refer to full names and details in the page headline they are clearly moving into long tail keywords that can be very specific in search engines. Equally, for those who have read my advice on search engine optimisation, the headline of the piece becomes the website page title where it is easily found by the search engines.
However, there is no reason to feel downhearted by this awakening of the BBC beast. As small entrepreneurs, we are always able to move quicker and more effectively than the big gorillas of the web.
The Permalink created when you publish a post or page can also be edited after the event just the same as the BBC is proposing to do and with exactly the same effect.
The last part of the Permalink, often referred to as; 'the slug' can be edited to closely relate to a tight subject area of your keywords. Meanwhile the post title can make use of the longtail keywords and keyword phrases just the same as the longer headlines now in prospect on the BBC site.
Edit the permalink slug
But wait, there's more!
Clever use of your SEO plugin will also enable you to rewrite the title, description and keywords of every post that you publish. Now, I am no great enthusiast of this method as I believe you are rapidly losing your marketing direction in the technical forest when you go down this road.
But there appears to be evidence that a carefully written description that is concise and uses the same keywords that you are targeting in your title may well be picked up and used by Google as the 'snippet' of content published in the free listing below the title and above the URL.
Once made visible by Google in this way then if you have made it attractive and compelling for the human visitor then you may well get more organic search clicks as a result.
So as a niche marketer I'm not too concerned by the BBC finally switching on to the benefits of SEO. I'm not after their market, thank heavens(!) and I've already got great tools in the form of Wordpress and its plugins to give me all the advantage I need in my niche market.
These May Be Related Websites - A simple guide to search engine marketing (part one) Search engine marketing is by far the most efficient and effective way to advertise your business. With over 86% of...
- Do search engines think that your website is spam? About three weeks ago, Microsoft was granted a new patent with the name Web Spam Classification Using Query Dependent Data....
Filed under Blog, SEO, Search Engine Optimisation by on Nov 25th, 2009. Comment.
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
The question of which is the best Permalink setting is a perennial subject for discussion among bloggers. Having satisfied myself some time ago that I was doing the right thing I have been challenged during several discussions to justify my position and struggled to re-locate my original source.
Best Permalink setting
However, today's a happy day when I have located again the source material and remind myself that it was written by Tim Burners Lee, none other than the man credited with inventing the world wide web.
There can be no better authority to quote and having made sure I've now included a link to the source material on the best permalink setting into my 'How Do I..? page on Permalinks I will treat it as another lesson in making sure to keep your source references well organised in future.
These May Be Related Websites - Modular Buildings: what are they and why use them? The construction industry is massive and regular site-construction is a well tried and tested method of making long-lasting and high...
- SEO Tips for Bloggers on WordPress There are several million WordPress blogs that you can find on the internet, but unfortunately the majority of them are...
Filed under Permalinks by on Nov 19th, 2009. 2 Comments.
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
Getting out and about in your business community can be characterised in a number of ways. You might choose to call it offline marketing, social networking or, best of all, just a good night out at the London Bloggers Meetup.
Last night's Meetup falls into the last category perhaps mostly due to the sponsors, Paramount, being particularly generous with the prize draw (3 winners) and managing to keep the sponsored bar going until late (everyone's a winner!) but also to the wide range of blogging interests represented.
Nice presentation on '58 Ways To Improve Your Blog' that Marko Saric managed to canter through in a very short time. Marko's got some good stuff on his site which is well worth a visit.
Gary Andrews is a football nut who is turning his favourite subject into a way of life by podcasting with his friends about their own take on every aspect of football. Sounds like a great way of getting your views heard by a larger audience.
Another blogger aiming to whip up a storm was Zubyre Parvez though he has chosen a rather bigger mountain to move and wants to change the future of China using interesting music at www.FreedomForChina.co.uk. That seems like one hell of a mountain to be climbing but when you've got a social conscience like Zubyre there is obviously not a lot that is going to put you off.
Insane cycle lane
On a less serious note, Rob Ainsley pokes fun at London's efforts to encourage cyclists in his blog at www.RealCycling.co.uk. Seeing the real end result of planners half hearted attempts to squeeze cycling facilities into London's streets without really grasping the nettle of changing the priorities is similar to the sanity check that occurs when you drag yourself away from your keyboard and get out to meet real bloggers.
Lots of other interesting bloggers around but the usual lapses of neglected business cards and a morning after bad memory prevent them all featuring here.
These May Be Related Websites - Increasing Blog Site Traffic Is attracting blog site traffic really a difficult proposition? Are there any really, incredibly simple ways that a new person...
- Internet Network Marketing - Creating Trust in Just Three Steps Getting traffic to your website is only half the battle, and actually it is the easiest part of your Internet...
Filed under Blog, Offline Marketing by on Nov 4th, 2009. 1 Comment.
| Did you like this article? Then subscribe now to my RSS feed: | |
