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Lance

About Lance

https://internetsherpa.com

Posts by Lance Brown:

WordFence: 9 WordPress Plugins Targeted in Multi-Year Spam Campaign

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I’m really happy to report that I’ve never used any of the plugins mentioned in this report on my sites or any of my clients’ sites.

Thanks to WordFence for all the hard work they do investigating things like this. As the WP ecosystem grows, there are more people looking to swindle and make a cheap buck (or cause a cheap disruption) using WordPress sites as their launchpad, and it’s good to know folks like those at WordFence have our collective backs.

People targeting a technology is an issue with any and every tech platform, really. From Android to Windows to Linux to Bitcoin, and even precious Apple. It’s not unique to WordPress. But what is unique to WordPress are the millions of users and developers in the open source community that are dedicated to making sure WP is a safe and solid platform, and that scammers, spammers, and malicious malcontents are identified, frustrated, and ultimately squashed.* Hats off to all of them for helping to cut the legs off of schemes like this one.

Source: 9 WordPress Plugins Targeted in Coordinated 4.5-Year Spam Campaign

(*I realize that other technologies, like Linux, also have large open source communities looking out for the user community. I’m simply saying WP’s community is better. ;-) Come at me, Linux people!! I’m ready!!!**)

(**Please don’t actually come at me, Linux people. I’m really not very ready. I’m in the middle of a move, I’ve got a lot of organizing to do…you know how it is.)

Google Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015  from Moz

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Here’s a basic breakdown of the most important factors for ranking on Google, and which ones are more important than others. Happy to see that quality and keywordliness of the page content is still a top factor. (#3 on the list.) That’s the factor that site owners have the most direct control over. If you build the best page on a certain topic, you still have a good chance of ranking well, regardless of your site’s popularity or other factors. However, if Google is comparing your page to competition that’s of similar quality, then links and popularity (#’s 1 and 2 on the list) might be the deciding factor.

Here’s the main infographic behind the survey. MOZ has a lot more info at the Ranking Factors 2015 main page.

MOZ's Google Ranking Factors 2015

Some key principles that guide my advice to clients

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Things I keep coming back to again and again:

  • Everyone has something worth blogging about, and anyone who is willing can gain from having a blog.
  • Small business owners should understand and control as much of their Internet presence as possible. This doesn’t mean you yourself have to do every single thing, but you should understand and control it, as much as you do with the brick-and-mortar side of your business. (If not more.)
  • The individual beats of learning technology and Internet stuff are not difficult; the number one obstacle to that learning is the idea that it is hard. It is not. 70-year-old men who have never used a computer before sit down and learn this stuff. Therefore you can.
  • The power of the Internet and the “social web” is on a par with natural phenomena like electricity, fire, supernovas, and nuclear technology. It is immeasurably and inconceivably powerful. It also has elements of magic, and miracles, and incorporates things like serendipity and synchronicity and karma. It’s the power side of it that scares you, but you can’t do much about that (beyond taking basic safety precautions). Focus on the other stuff – the fun and the magic.
  • Your experience has value. It’s up to you whether you do anything with that or not, but it’s there.

Memo to plugin developers (re: shortcode hunting)

TO: WordPress plugin developers

FROM: Lance Brown, 10-year WordPress user

CC: other CMS plugin/addon developers

SUBJECT: making us hunt for shortcodes

Dear Sirs and Madams:

Please don’t make us hunt for shortcodes or the “how to implement” aspect of your plugin.

Put them in the documentation, yes, but also put them right in the plugin interface (or settings page) if possible–or else provide a really handy link to them.

Thank you. I love your work.

[this is the shortcode for me e-hugging you right now]

21 Quick Actions for Massive Blog Success

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Think Traffic has put together a really great summary of steps you can (and should) take to develop a kick-ass blog that rocks the Internet’s socks off.

It’s not that hard to achieve success in blogging, but it does take some work. Actually, quite a bit of work–but not hard work. All of these steps are pretty easy in and of themselves, and Think Traffic even includes time estimates for each task. So start working through the list, and by the time you get through the last of these tasks, you will be noticing a difference in your blogging efforts–namely, they will feel easier and be more effective. In fact, you should start feeling those effects well before you finish all 21 tasks.

Are you still reading this? Because you should probably be reading Think Traffic’s post by now, and getting to work on the first task. Get to it!

http://thinktraffic.net/21-quick-actions-for-massive-blog-success

15 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

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This is a really solid post from Joe Foley at WPMU:

15 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

I wish I was following more of the rules here. If you’re trying to get serious about blogging, bookmark that post and re-read it every day until you have internalized the tips in it. I can’t argue with a single one of Joe’s suggestions, and while I might be able to think of some to add to the list, there’s no need to even bother–follow his advice and you will have plenty to do (and all of it wise and effective).

WordPress .com vs .org Explained

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Confused about WordPress, and don’t understand what’s up with its dot-com and dot-org variants? That’s about to end!

What is WordPress?

Basically, WordPress is a piece of software made up (primarily) of many PHP files, which work together, in conjunction with a database, to serve up pages and blog posts. (The way they display is controlled mainly by a Theme, which is made up (primarily) of PHP template files.)

WordPress runs on a web server. You access and use it via the Web. If you install it, you install it on your web site/host – – not on your own computer.

What is WordPress.org?

That software described above is available for free download at WordPress.org (and via various “one-click”-style installers at many/most web hosts). To use that, you need to own a website domain that is already hosted somewhere. (Thus, this version is sometimes called “self-hosted”.)

If you install “dot org WordPress” at your own web site, you can use it for free and do whatever you want with it. But just as you have full power, you also have full responsibility for operating and maintaining that WordPress installation. You might need to do some online learning to really get underway, and while there are lots of WP support resources on the web, no one would be around to hold your hand. (Your host will almost certainly offer little to no help with WordPress, beyond maybe helping you get it installed.) A lot of business owners in this situation will look to a WP professional like myself to help them get squared away, or get their theme tweaked, etc.

WordPress.org is backed by the WordPress Foundation, and its mission basically is to spread WordPress across the globe, and to keep making it better while making sure it remains free and open source forever.

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is a free blogging service as well as a for-pay WordPress host. It uses basically the same software as above, but it’s hosted by the WordPress.com people. (Which makes this the “hosted” version of WordPress, vs. the “self-hosted” dot org version.)

With the free account, you get a blog at something like yourname.wordpress.com. It’s not as pimped-out as it could be if you had it hosted on your own site, but you can definitely get off and running with it.

If you pay for their hosting, you can use your own proper domain name–basically getting you to the state that a “dot org” version user is in, except you have the creators of WordPress as your hand-holding guides and hosts. But you also get less control over your actual WordPress installation. (You can’t add plugins, for one thing…you’re stuck with their handful of widgets.) Those WordPress.com people have to manage a gazillion blogs and sites, so they have some limitations in place on their WordPress installations. And they are a for-profit enterprise, so they will definitely hit your wallet a bit, especially if you want to get more features or control.

WordPress.com is run by Automattic, a for-profit company started by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg.

 

Which one to use

Which one you should use really depends on your situation and your priorities, as well as your access to tech help and/or your willingness to learn new things and get your hands dirty.

“Self-hosted” WordPress.org is infinitely more powerful than its commercial cousin, due to having full access to all features, plus the ability to use plugins. (And I don’t mean it’s a lot more powerful–I mean it is literally infinitely more powerful.) But it might be scary or confusing to dive into; you could end up daunted just trying to get it installed, and you will probably have lots of questions early on. Push through that, and you could end up with an awesome slick site with hundreds of pages and tons of neat features for essentially free.

“Hosted” WordPress.com is convenient and turnkey, and you get “24/7 support” from the people who know WordPress better than anyone else. Of course, since their WordPress installations are relatively limited, most support probably deals with basic issues involving their limited set of tools and features. But if you’ve seen (and been freaked out by) the full WordPress menu set, you might prefer a more scaled-down version. And your ambitions for your web presence may be such that a WordPress.com might be the perfect simple solution for you.

I’m such a huge fan of what the WordPress folks have brought into the world that I’m more than happy to see people spend money on their dot-com services, even though it’s a limited version of WP, and even though I generally make my bacon from business owners who are forging into the denser forest of dot-org WP. ;-)

If you want some advice on which way you should go, you can always tweet me at @freeWPadvice–I’d be happy to help you figure it out (and as the username suggests, I’ll do it for free). If you’re not on Twitter, hit me up some other way and I’ll talk to you there.

Cool tool for cleaning up CSS stylesheets

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Every now and then I come upon a stylesheet that someone created which is hard to read–sometimes, even hard to look at. (Like when everything is all jammed together with barely any line breaks.)

Call me spoiled, but I like to see my CSS styled like this:

.prev {
width: 225px;
padding:7px;
float: left;
}

.next {
width: 225px;
padding:7px;
float:right;
}

#headerimage {
position:absolute;
left: 425px;
top:4px;
width:270px;
}

not like this:

html,body,div,span,object,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,pre,a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code,del,dfn,em,img,ins,kbd,q,samp,small,strong,sub,sup,tt,var,dl,dt,dd,ol,ul,li,fieldset,form,label,legend,table,caption,tbody,tfoot,thead,tr,th,td{margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;outline:none;font-size:100%;background:transparent;border:none;text-decoration:none}b,i,hr,u,center,menu,layer,s,strike,font,xmp{margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;outline:none;font-size:100%;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;background:transparent;border:none;text-decoration:none}font{color:#333}center{text-align:left}body{line-height:24px;font-family:Georgia,Times,”Times New Roman”,serif;color:#333;background:#fff}h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;margin:0 0 21px 0}h1{font-size:1.8em}h2{font-size:1.7em}h3{font-size:1.55em}

Luckily there is a sweet-ass tool on the web that will take something like the messy block above and pretty it up, a la the pretty bit above that. This CSS Formatter/Optimizer has all sorts of settings so you can fine-tune your results, and it can go both ways…if you want to condense your pretty, spaced-out CSS into the solid-block format (for a smaller file size and quicker load time), you can do that too. There are a lot of neat specific options, so you can auto-modify your stylesheet to suit your taste.

I’ll be using this any time I run into a stylesheet that someone else created in their own wack way–which happens a fair amount. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from ~10 years of PHP/CSS template-based work, it’s that every template/theme creator does things his or her own way. This CSS Optimizer tool will go a long way toward bringing things to my standard–or yours.

It’s not 100% clear who made the web tool, but I had to guess, I’d say credit goes to Florian Schmitz, the creator of CSS Tidy (the desktop software that the web tool is based on). Thanks Florian – great tool!

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