The Little Geeni

Although I usually post on topics related to business strategy or marketing, a few weeks back I posted an article about my experience of getting hacked and a related tutorial on how I went about recovering from my Joomla site hack.

Apparently I wasn’t alone.  In the ensuing weeks, it has become my most visited post and has encouraged more people to sign up for my feed than any other article I have written.

That got me thinking about the power of trends and how I might go about using what people are already searching for to grab peoples attention.

Paris and Britney can help you…maybe

This article is not about recovering from your site getting hacked.  Instead is about trends, how to find out what they are, and how to take advantage of them to help drive visitors to your site.

To track what is hot (no Paris pun intended), I usually use Google Trends.
http://www.google.com/trends

This is a free service and allows you to compare different search terms for relative search volume, where these searches come from, and for more popular terms, they also link relevant news articles to search volume peaks.

I have never been a trend marketer

It’s not that I can’t or that I find it morally offensive.  The simple fact is that I have never been particularly hip, trendy, or ahead of the curve on the newest fad.  I tend to stick to long term marketing strategies with tried and true metric analysis.  My method is similar to how I invest.  I don’t day trade and I prefer to plan on the 10% long-term average rather than looking at my portfolio every day (Thank god since my balance is in the crapper over the last year)  It’s not sexy, it’s not hip, but it has worked in every business I have run and made me a millionaire in the process.  That’s cool enough in my book.

But I also realize that blogging is a new game. Especially for me.  I have only been doing this for a few months, so I am also in the experimentation stage. I am starting to understand that there may be real marketing value in occasionally chasing after the shiny new firetruck to roll down the street.

Here is how I use trends to drive traffic:

OK. My own stats prove that waaaay more people are searching for help on recovering for a site hack than they are for advice on how to build a solid marketing strategy.  I get it.  I’m sad, but I get it. So, assuming I am going to hop on the trend band wagon, how do I decide what trend to follow, and how do I incorporate it into my area of expertise?

Here is what I did:

I know my site got hacked.

I know that people are interested in the topic

I know that I have sites that use both Joomla! And WordPress

I know that both types of sites have similar weaknesses

So I pulled out my trusty google trend search and compared the search volume for “wordpress hack” and “joomla hack”  What I found was that Joomla was searched a bit more often and there seemed to be a spike back in Q3 of 2008.  Because there was not much news coverage on the events, there were no links tied to the spikes, but if you search some other topics: For example Bush vs Obama, you will see that there are usually specific events tied to peaks and valleys.

So how does this help me?

Well for starters, it lets me know that Joomla seems to be searched for a little bit more often than WordPress, especially in Q3 of ’08 for some reason. At that point, I might want to try to dig into the details further by seeing what actually happened during that time period.

What I was hoping to see was a huge difference in popularity which would give me a clear cut direction on which topic to focus on.

For example: In the case below, if I wanted to find some way to incorporate a train-wreck whore into my article, the choice is pretty clear.  Paris is the slut of choice.

 
So going back to my Joomla Hack Vs WordPress Hack, my plan is to create a tutorial for BOTH  now that I have this information.  Since there is no clear cut winner, but both have a decent amount of search traffic, I might as well proceed with a tutorial that can help visitors deal with the pain in the ass of a hack on either platform.

The second thing I plan to do is what you are reading right now.  That is – write an article in my area of expertise that ties in poplar search terms with my content. Now there is the danger of this article being completely irrelevant to those searching, and that is a real risk.  But the relative small amount of time it takes to create an article, and my own results proving that people will sign up for my marketing and strategy feed based on a technical tutorial seem to be proving me wrong.   My stats will ultimately prove this one way or another.

Isn’t this another “Punch the Monkey” banner?

In case you haven’t seen it 10 million times already, the “punch the monkey” banner is a slick and clever banner ad featuring a monkey that scrolls back and forth and you have to use your mouse to “punch” it with a giant boxing glove.  This click then takes you to whatever website the banner is pointed to.  This banner has been used on everything from dating sites to mortgage brokers.  Granted the click through rate is HUGE (everybody loves to punch a monkey apparently) but there is usually zero relevance to the final site and whatever goal the site owner had for your visit is rarely fulfilled. (Would you submit a mortgage application from this banner?) Granted some miniscule percentage of the population may be looking to refinance their home at the time, but chances are, most clicks are wasted.

The key to using trends to help boost your marketing is to actually offer something related to the hot keyword.  In my example, I DO have content on my site that teaches someone how to recover from a site attack.  In addition, many of the people suffering from the same attacks I had are also small business owners, bloggers, and marketing folks that could benefit from seemingly unrelated content on my site.

As a funny closing note, I also have proof that complete irrelevance will NOT boost sign-ups.  It goes like this:  When I first started my blog I wrote an article called  “The Jennifer Lopez Model vs. the Dolly Parton Model vs. the Kim Kardashian Model.”  At that point I wasn’t concerned at all about driving traffic to my site and in no way was trying to use those name searches to drive visitors to my site.  The goal was simply to be clever (The article is about different marketing approaches…big back end, big front end, big front and back end)  I still think it’s funny, but that’s me.

Anyway, lots of people enjoyed the article, but I can tell you that it’s also the highest abandon rate page on the entire site. That tells me that many of the visitors were in no way interested in what I had to say..and rightfully so.

The key is relevance. You CAN make popular search terms relevant to your content. You CAN make strategic decisions based on trend results. You just need to be smart about how you do it.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think or comments on your own experiences using trends as a diving board.  I’m usually pretty solid in my ideas on what works, but in this case, I’m just throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks.  I’ve been proven wrong plenty of times before. I have no issues with it happening again.

Google Drive, Hack, Joomla, Traffic, Trends, Using, Wordpress

WordPress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme’s template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live. The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress theme designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.

Whether users are working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Theme Design will give them the know-how to effectively understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system enabling them to have full control over their site’s design and branding. Users only need to be comfortable with the basics of web development and this book will take care of the rest.

What you will learn from this book

Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design
Create detailed designs and code them up
Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics
Debug and validate your theme using W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation tools
Customize and tweak your theme’s layout
Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms
Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme
Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox
Add interactivity to your themes using Flash
Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0′s template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions

Chapter 1 introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you need to be aware of regarding the WordPress theme project you’re ready to embark on. The chapter also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you’ll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.

Chapter 2 looks at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. The author explains her own ‘Rapid Design Comping’ technique and gives some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have a working XHTML and CSS based ‘comp’ or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Chapter 3 uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from Chapter 2 and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this chapter covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of the chapter, you’ll have a basic, working WordPress theme.

Chapter 4 discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should employ throughout your theme’s development. It covers the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This chapter also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons ‘good code goes bad’, especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.

Chapter 5 discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme’s CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress’s administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.

Chapter 6 covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress’s PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of “The Loop” along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this chapter is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.

Chapter 7 dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier chapters, and enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.

Chapter 8 continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by looking at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. It also gives you a complete background on AJAX and when it’s best to use those techniques or skip them. The chapter also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress theme appear ‘Ajaxy’.

Chapter 9 reviews the main tips from the previous chapters and covers some key tips for easily implementing today’s coolest CSS tricks into your theme as well as a few final SEO tips that you’ll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.

For more details on the book please visit http://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-theme-design/book.

Jquery book, Create, Professional, themes, Wordpress

In my blog post I’ve written on Enhance your blogging skills with WordPress Plug-ins. Today I’m going to explain about advance hacks & wordpress plug-in for powering your blogging.

We all know that WordPress is best CMS for blogging, if you have bit technical skills to tweaked with coding & R& D for trying new plug-ins, then blog post is must read for you. Let’s start with WordPress Plug-in & Hacks:

Wordbook – WordBook is provides you to facility of posting your blog posts in to your Face Book Wall. These blog posts will be showing on Boxes tab of your recent blog post.

Broken Link Checker – This plug-in let you know broking links of your blog. You can monitor links in your blog post, pages and other custom fields. It also notifies redirected links.

Link to This Page – Link to This Page allows you to handy way to obtain a link to your page or blog post from their web site.

WP Wall – This plug-in appears in your blog’s side bar. Readers can add quick comment about your blog and it will appear in side bar immediately, with out reloading the page.

PixoPoint Menu Plugin – Pix Point Menu Plug-in enhance your navigation control with regular or dropdown menu. It’s easy to modifying design & animated drop down menus and you can use it Up to two menus.

Highlight Search Terms – This plug-in Highlights search terms using jQuery within WordPress generated search results. This is compatible up to wordpress 2.7.1

Platinum SEO Pack – Platinum SEO Pack is pretty much similar as All in One SEO. It has also some additional functionality like you can add other Meta tags such as robots, index, follow or no follow. It also helps you to avoid duplicate content issues.

SEO Slugs – SEO Slugs WordPress plug-in eliminates stop words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve search engine optimization.

Extended Options – This plug-in can manage some certain Meta data like Relationship Meta links, Favicon Meta links, OpenID Meta links MicroID Meta links and Protocol discovery Meta links.

After the Deadline – This plug-in helps you to write better and spend less time on editing. You can use this plug-in for checking spelling, style, and grammar.

Automatically insert content after each post – This blog post helps you to minimize your efforts on content which you’re mentioning after each post. This hack will help you to insert automatically content after blog post.

Automatically insert author bio on each post – With the help of this WordPress hack you can add author bio of your blog on each blog post.

Compress WordPress output and speed your blog’s load speed – This blog post helps you to compress your WordPress blog and speed up your blog load post. Now a day faster loading website is having more chances to rank well as per Google’s latest algorithm update.

Hope this WordPress Plug-in & Hacks will helps you to take your wordpress blog at advance level as you want. If you have some other plug-in & Hacks of WordPress then you can share here.

Jquery Blogging, Experience, Hacks, Plugin, powering, Wordpress

WordPress comes two ways; free on WordPress.com where anyone can have a blog and begin publishing right away, and also by downloading the software onto your server and creating your own blog, independent of the WordPress servers. In this article I’m talking about the second method for using the WordPress software to create a blog with its own unique IP address, that can be used as your corporate website, or as an add-on to your corporate website.

Many companies in the Philadelphia area have successfully used the paid hosting version of WordPress to create a website that is virtually impossible to spot as a blog. In fact, I’d bet that a lot of the Philadelphia website design in the past year have been using the WordPress software as a content management system. With WordPress you can create static HTML pages that search engines love to index.

WordPress has hundreds of free themes you can customize to create your site if you are not a developer. However, most Philadelphia Website Design firms will create a custom style sheet and apply that to the WordPress software for a completely unique website containing your branding, graphics and unique style. WordPress has a library full of thousands of plugins that extend its functionality and allow developers to make use of code that others have already tested. Developers can also add to the open source library of plugins and widgets. There are thousands of very talented developers involved in adding onto WordPress.

In addition to all the WordPress plugins you can use to customize your site and add functionality, there are also a host of other open source applications that interface quite well with WordPress. For instance, the JQuery library has numerous animations and uses of Ajax already written for your website design. Since newer websites use more animation to hold user’s attention, these JQuery applications can really save developers time.

Finally WordPress is really a well-designed Content Management System (CMS) that makes posting a new page or editing a page intuitive and fast. The publishing process in WordPress is much easier than in other open CMS systems like Joomla or Drupal. The publishing process happens in a logical order and while full of features, is easy to manage. People with absolutely no programming experience easily use WordPress to maintain their own web pages.

Jquery Design, Philadelphia, Software, Using, Website, Wordpress