Keith Goodrum

Found out about a cool plugin for Wordpress today from The 30 Day Challenge. It’s really cool you can add video comments to your blog. It’s from Seesmic.com, and adds a great way to expand the interaction with readers.

I’ve been playing around with it today, and have already posted a comment on the 30 Day Challenge blog. It’s easy to post a comment with this plugin. I also found it easy to setup in the blog.

There is a nice feature to this option. Video blog comments get added to the Seesmic public time line. That means you could grab some traffic from people searching Seesmic. Cool beans.

One thing I like about this plugin is you don’t have to have an account with Seesmic. Anyone can post anonymously. Of course to prevent morons from posting insulting or spam videos you can have them held for moderation. I’m doing that for the time being.

You can grab the plugin at Seesmic’s Wiki page. On the wiki page they show you how to install it & how it works.

I’ve added a video comment to this post, so you can see how it works.

How about posting a video comment yourself?

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Popularity: 60% [?]

This past weekend was spent deleting or moderating comment spam. I couldn’t figure it out & it drove me crazy. All weekend long it was delete, moderate, delete, moderate…. on and on. Kept checking my settings, looking at my comment page in the admin section. Everything looked OK - it just didn’t make sense. How could so much spam be getting through?

Well sometimes I look so hard at the trees… I fail to see the forest!

Today I noticed while looking at the plugin directory that Akismet had been deleted. I did delete a few plugins Friday that I was no longer using, but I don’t recall deleting Akismet. Since no one else has access to the admin panel… theres’ no one to blame but me.

Bummer - It’s always funner to pass the buck.

Anyhow I reinstalled Akismet & made a few other changes to help combat comment spam. Akismet is a good comment spam plugin. However it does have one big drawback. It will occasionally mark as spam a legit comment. Therefore it requires me to go through the Akismet queue and make sure a legit one didn’t get caught.

There are some people who refuse to use Akismet for this reason. But like I said it hasn’t become that big of problem for me.

How to get Akismet

It simple… head over to Akismet, and download it. Unzip the file & upload it to your plugin folder. This is usually located in the wp-content/plugins folder.

Next you have to activate the plugin. Once you activate the plugin you should see a Akismet configuration. You will need to get an API Key from Wordpress.com. At Wordpress.com you will have to sign up for an account. Make sure you go to Wordpress.com & not Wordpress.org.

Once you are at Wordpress.com click on the sign up now button. Fill out the information, check the Just a username, please button, and click next. They will send you a confirmation email. Once you confirm your account you’ll get your API Key.

The last step is to take your API Key & add it to the Akismet configuration page on your blog. Hit update & Akismet takes over from there.

I like Akismet because for me it’s pretty low maintenance. Head on over & get if you’d like to get some relief from comment spam.

Popularity: 61% [?]

Happy birthday to Wordpress. This awesome blogging platform was started 5 years ago today. They are having a party tonight at 9pm…

WordPress Birthday Party — 3 days ago

On Tuesday, May 27th, WordPress will turn 5 years old. We’ve come a long way from that original 0.7 release. To celebrate we’re throwing a party in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM. You can get the full details and RSVP on Upcoming.org or on Facebook. I hope you see some of you there, should […]

If we still lived in San Francisco we would attend. Hope they have a great time.

Popularity: 71% [?]

Christmas morning, used to be very exciting in my household. My brothers, my sister and I would get up at the crack of dawn… actually I’m pretty sure I never fell asleep. We were eager to attack the pile of presents under the tree. Everybody was excited to see what he or she would get. The funny thing was, sometimes we didn’t always like what we got. Some of us were very excited about our gifts Christmas, and some of us were less than excited.

The last few days, most people have been blogging about the Google page rank updates. Judging from what I’ve read the Google page rank updates have been a lot like Christmas. There are some people that are blogging about the increase that they receive from Google. There are some that are bemoaning the fact to they’ve lost page rank. Just like Christmas, some are happy and some aren’t.

Many Blogs rely on Google Page Rank for revenue

I can see how some people are upset about their Google page rank, because of how they base their business model. A blog and that relies on page rank and or Alexa score to determine the value of their revenue hangs on the results. Personally I find it unsettling to allow a third-party to determine how much money I’m going to make.

So after reading several blogs I decided to go ahead and check my page rank. My page rank has been zero for the past four months, but today when I checked, I saw that I’ve been given a page ranking of three. Imagine my surprise.

Seeing such a big jump in my page rank this kind of cool. But since I don’t rely on these numbers to determine revenue it’s more for fun.

So, how did I manage to get a Page Rank of 3?

The big secret is… I don’t really know. I haven’t given it much thought. There are no secret SEO tactics being deployed here. At least not consciously. No keyword optimization, no secret linking strategies and no black hat tactics.

I’ve just tried to write content that I think people would like to read. Used some basic traffic generation techniques. Then got involved with the blogging community and networked with other online businesses. That’s it…

Darren Rowse over at Problogger in his video post Google Page Rank Updating… BUT… summed it up perfectly. Don’t build your blog for the page rank… just build a quality blog.

Congratulations to those who got a wonderful Christmas present from Google. And to those who got a lump of coal my condolences.

Popularity: 68% [?]

Did you see it?

WordPress released a new version 2.5.1. It is an update for version 2.5. It cool to see how quickly WordPress works on fixing bugs and security issues.

Here are some of the fixes…

In addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. If you are interested only in the security fixes, you can download these corrected copies of wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. Replace your existing copies of these files with these new copies.

If you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

I’m excited to see an update already. I have to admit is was tempting to upgrade. Many people told me it was OK… but I decided to wait.

I’ll install this new version on one of my domains, and see how it goes. Then will upgrade here.

OH, by the way we get to start this all over again in August. That’s the rumored date of the release of 2.6.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Content is King online plain and simple. Putting up good content on a regular basis gets the search engines attention real fast.  It is one of the traffic tactics that gets left off most lists.

I know some folks would argue with this. They say that putting up a lot of content with no traffic is a waste of time. And to a point they are right. If you drive a ton of traffic to a site with no content… you’ll have 1st time visitors. But will they return? Probably not.

Content and Traffic go hand in hand. You need both to have a thriving blog.

Creating content can be tough, and one of the drawbacks of blogging.  Writing posts is time consuming especially if you don’t have a plan to follow.  One way to do this is by writing posts that other bloggers have found to be popular and easy to write.

I’ve seen lists with as many of 25 or more types of blog posts you can write.  I’ve narrowed my list to 5 my favorite types of posts.  I like these types of posts because they are easy to write., and when it’s easy to do I’m more likely to get it done…

1. Lists or tips posts – This is a popular type of post. Can be a list of tips, or a resource list. People like to read lists because they can get to the information quick. This is an example of a list post.

2. Comment posts – Let’s say you are writing a comment on another blog. You find that your comment is a couple hundred words long. Instead of adding a long comment why not expand it a little and post it to your blog? This is one I wrote in February: Are Questions The Answer In Your Copy?

3. Rant posts – Want to get something off your chest? Is something bugging you? Well then write a post about it… You’ll find this is an easy post to write. Especially when you are a little riled up. Here is a good example of a rant post from Michel Fortin titled: The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity

4. Interview posts – One of my most popular posts is An Interview With Copywriter Stephen Dean. Good part about this post is I only had to write the questions & opening paragraph.

5. Meme posts – Some one writes a post about their favorite books or movies. Then they ask readers to make a blog post about the same. This is fun to write. Here is one in response to Ryan Healy’s meme: 9 Books That Influenced Me The Most…

It’s informative to read lists, but the real question is… What are you going to do with this information?

Popularity: 62% [?]

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’ve heard that the upgrade to 2.5 has arrived.  Many people have blogged about its wonders and how wonderful the new version really is.

I’ve read the posts, watched the videos and agree it looks great.  And normally I’m what you’d call an early adopter in marketing circles… but I’m holding off on upgrading.

An early adopter is someone who is the first to jump on new products.  They like to be one of the first to try out something, and usually finds it fun.  Personally I like trying out new stuff, and like to see how people solve problems in creative ways.  But this time I’m taking a pass on the early adopter program.

With most new software upgrades there are bugs to be worked out.  And you will see that people have problems, hiccups and flat out explosions.  Bugs are common with software it just a fact of life.

There are plenty of folks out there who have upgraded already, and I’m waiting to see what happens to them.  Let them be the guinea pigs, and work out the bugs.  I know that sounds callused, but this time I’m standing back and observe the festivities.

Having this site crash over some weird exception is something I don’t want to deal with at this time.  It can be a real pain to fixing things, or worse recovering the whole thing.  I know this sounds paranoid, but I don’t care.  Let others work out any bugs that might pop up.

Who knows maybe 2.5 will be one of the exceptions, but I’m not willing to take the chance.  I’ll wait for an update, or when I see people reporting no problems.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Over the past month I had been considering changing themes. The old theme had one drawback that was bugging me. The header was too large, and took away valuable space from above the fold. There was no reason to waste the space with a header that added nothing to the look of the blog.

I’ll miss using semiologic, but I didn’t like any of the other themes that are included.

I could see having a large header if there was graphic which enhanced the blog’s message. But it was a single color with just my name in it.

I had been trying out different themes on another domain, and have settled on this one. I like the clean, minimalist look and feel to this theme.

Over the next week or so I might tweak it here and there, but for now this is the theme.

What do you think of this theme?

Feel free to comment below about the changes.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Tibi Puiu over at The Lost Art Of Blogging wrote a post titled, Fighting Blog Hacks: Preventing And Eliminating Intruders. One of the problems I didn’t talk about in my post, Can Somebody Drive a Truck Through The Back Door Of Your WordPress Blog? was getting quarantined by Google.

It seems that he got hacked and infected by malware. This caused Google to quarantined his blog, lose search engine traffic & lose page ranking. Not fun!

You can read the rest of his story here Fighting Blog Hacks: Preventing And Eliminating Intruders, and what he did to protect his blog.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Here is a demo of how to set up a redirect from plugin, wp-content & wp-includes folder…

Popularity: 50% [?]