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After the Deadline – Firefox and Chrome Spell, Grammar and Style Checker

Marc — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:16:34 +0000

If your activities or work include filling out forms online using a web-browser, and you are not already using After the Deadline (AtD), you should consider giving it a try. After the Deadline is a language checker for the web with:

Contextual Spell Checking
Advanced Style Checking
Intelligent Grammar Checking

Now that AtD isn’t just for WordPress anymore it is an almost indispensible tool. It is offered free for personal use as an extension for Google Chrome and an add-on for Firefox so it is easy to use. Give it a try. I always use it.

Remember getting the word spelled right makes for the best search engine optimization and marketing opportunities

No related posts.

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade

Marc — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:03:51 +0000

Migrating from Blogger to WordPress in 7 Steps While Keeping Subscribers and Search Results (UPDATED)

Marc — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:50:38 +0000

It is easy to move the content of a Blogger blog into WordPress. But that is just the first part of moving your blog. You should really want to move all the benefits of your Blogspot blog to your new WordPress blog. This is particularly true for many photographers who have Bludomain or similar Flash websites and have been using a Blogger blog to gain better search marketing and reach more potential clients.

If you have been blogging for anytime on Blogspot you probably have many of its articles in Google’s index, readers who bookmarked your blog or articles in your blog, RSS feed subscribers who follow your blog and some level of Google Page Rank greater than 0. All of these are important benefits that are related to your blog’s marketing value and you don’t want to leave them behind in your old blog, and then start over with your new blog. It is best to move the benefits that you have earned to your new blog with your content and continue building on what you have done. So how-to do it?

The basic assumptions: 1) Your Blogger Blogspot blog is using a standard domain like yourblog.blogspot.com. 2) You promise to never delete your Blogspot blog.

Now here are the steps:

Beginning with the assumption that you have self hosted WordPress installed on your domain begin by importing the content from Blogger.

Step 0) BACKUP your Blogspot blog and template. To back up your Blogspot blog use the Export tool in the Admin panel it is in Settings > Basic > Export blog. Save the file to your computer. Template back up is done from, Layout > Edit HTML > Download Full Template. Save the file to your computer. Now if an error happens you can restore your old blog.

Step 1) Create the permalink structure that you need in your WordPress blog. To do this login into your new WordPress site’s admin panel and in the left side menu go to Settings > Permalinks. The screen looks like this –

You will need to use the “Month and name” option. It is most similar to the Blogger structure.

Step 2) Now let’s import your Blogger content. To do this login into your new WordPress site’s admin panel and in the left side menu go to Tools > Import. You will see a screen that looks like this –

Click on the Blogger option and follow the steps. Authorize WordPress to use your Google account and WordPress will display a list of blogs associated with Blogger account. Select the blog that you like to import in Blogger and click Import. Your posts, comments, categories and users will be imported into WordPress in moments.

(Sometimes, particularly for large Blogger blog with lot of content this process may be balky. If it is for you, the workaround is to go to WordPress.com and create a blog and import your Blogger blog into that and then import that WordPress.com version of your Blogger content into your self hosted WordPress. I don’t know why this works, but it does. You will also want to have the WordPress.com account to activate the spam blocker, Akismet, for your new self hosted WordPress blog, so don’t be concerned about starting a new account)

Now starts the details of moving all the related value of your Blogger blog to your new self hosted WordPress blog.

Step 3) Keep your RSS subscribers. If your Blogger blog is not using Feedburner, set it up now. This will make keeping your subscribers a simple matter of managing your blog’s Feedburner account. To burn a Feedburner feed got your Blogger blog go to http://feedburner.google.com and proceed through their steps. Once you have assigned your Blogger blog’s feed to Feedburner, or if you already are using Feedburner, just transfer your feed. Go into the feed and click on “Edit Feed Details.” Change your feed from your Blogspot feed URL to http://yournewblogdomain.com/feed/. At the same time you want to setup WordPress to use that Feedburner feed. To do this install a Feedburner plugin in your self hosted WordPress. In the Admin panel on the left side click Plugins > Add New. Then in the search box enter Feedburner and you will be presented with a screen that looks like this –

Click Install on the right side (highlighted) of the “FD Feedburner Plugin” after it is installed. Alternately you can use the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin provided by Google (Feedburner parent) it can be downloaded here and has some very good instructions if you are new to Feedburner. Still in your WordPress, go to the plugin’s configuration screen and enter your Feedburner feed.

Step 4) Now we need to make sure that when someone clicks on a search result that lists your old blog that they end up at the right place in your new blog (no 404′s). Very important. Sounds like it could be complicated and it is a little.

UPDATE December 24, 2009 – I have changed how I do it to a method that seems to be a little more consistant. =Relatedly I no longer use Amit Agarwal’s process. Instead I use the plugin and code snippets provided by justinsomnia. Much of the Steps 4-6 are edited from his blog, please visit his blog for more understanding of the plugin if needed.

Lets get started. Download and install justinsomnia’s wp-maintain-blogger-permalinks-1.1 WordPress plugin and install it on your WordPress blog. Activate it and then go to Tools > Maintain Blogger Permalinks, and click the button that says “Maintain Blogger Permalink”. Let it operate and build the list.

Step 5) Next we have to mdify the .htaccess file on your website hosting server (this will be in the base WP folder) to have the Blogger URLs which always end in “.html” are probely redirected to your imprted Blogger post now in WordPress but which no longer ends in “.html” To do this open the .htaccess file and place the following code snippet ABOVE the block of code that starts with “# BEGIN WordPress”

^?View Code TEXT

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)\.html$ $1/$2/$3/ [QSA,R=301,L]

Save the .htaccess file and upload if required.

Step 6) Install a Javascript redirect in your Blogspot blog. We do this to make sure that when someone is directed to your old blog (say for instance from another site or even a search engine) that they will be presented automatically to the correct post in your new blog. To set the JavaScript redirect, just copy the following code snippet and paste it in place of the code between your and tags in your Blogger template (under Layout > Edit HTML). Then edit the two lines that say old_domain and new_domain, replacing myoldblog.blogspot.com with your current blogspot blog name name and mynewblog.com with your new blog’s domain name. Save the template.

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

<script type='text/javascript'>
// edit the text in between the quotes in the following two lines:
var old_domain = "myoldblog.blogspot.com";
var new_domain = "mynewblog.com";
 
// do not modify this line:
window.location = location.href.replace(old_domain, new_domain);
script>

Step 7) Finally, tell the search engines to no longer index your old Blofspot blog. This will over time reduce the listings of your old blog. Go to the admin panel of your Blogspot blog, Settings > Basic and for “Add your blog to our listings?” choose “No” and for “Let search engines find your blog?” also choose “No”. Click “Save Settings”. (Note: Leave your blog “Public”, otherwise the redirect script will not work)

After you have done the all steps outlined by above, your new WordPress will appear seamlessly to your regular and new visitors who had become accustomed to your content in your old Blogger blog. As well as people visitors who click through from links on other sites or search engines. So you will not give up ground you have already earned through your blogging and can begin using the advantages of WordPress to further enhance your site’s style, marketing, social networking and SEO.

As usual, if you have any questions or want help just send me an email.

Installing WordPress on Bludomain hosting. A step by step illustrated guide.

Marc — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:49:29 +0000

There is much to like about Bludomain websites, they are attractive and well priced, but this article deals with how to put the free self-hosted version of WordPress on your existing Bludomain hosting account. All the screen captures and instructions below are from a recent Bludomain WordPress install I just completed. Bludomain makes it relatively simple.

Step 1) Login to your Bludomain hosting account. This will bring you to the cpanel account management screen. Below is a screen capture from a typical Bludomain hosting account. Scroll down the screen until you find the section titled “Software / Services”. In that section you should see an icon for “Fantastico Deluxe”. Those elements are highlighted below in yellow. Click on the Fantastico Deluxe icon.

Step 2) The Fantastico Deluxe screen looks like the one below. Fantastico is a great script that will install WordPress for you. Just find the WordPress option in the left sidebar. In the image below it is highlighted in yellow. Click on the WordPress text link.

Step 3) You should now see the screen illustrated below. Take the time to read it. (Note is there is any current WordPress installation and if there is make note of where it is installed. In this hosting account there is not. ) To install WordPress click on the “New Installation” link.

Step 4) This is where you provide the setup information. As you can see in this screen you need to tell Fantastico where on your Bludomain hosting account to install WordPress. I usually instruct it to install into a subdirectory called “wp” or “blog”. It is not important what you call it, but WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT WORDPRESS IS INSTALLED IN A SUBDIRECTORY. It it is installed in the main or root directory it may interfere with your Bludomain website. Just go through the screen.

Choose the domain name
Enter your subdirectory name
In “Admin access data” section enter the admin name and password you want to have to be able to login into your WordPress intall
In the “Base configuration” section enter the posting nickname you want to use, the email you want to have in case you lose your password, the name of your blog (east to change later) and the tag-line description of your new blog (also easy to change).

(Take a moment and save your username and password to a notebook or file.)

Now click on “Install WordPress”

Step 5) This is a confirmation screen. Read through it and if it is as you want, click “Finish installation”

Step 6) You are done! It will take just a minute or two. You now have a free self-hosted WordPress blog on your Bludomain website’s domain name.

The final screen will have your access and login details. You can copy them to a file for safe keeping, if you didn’t do already in Step 4. You can also click the URL for your new WordPress blog and login to its admin dashboard panel.

Just like any blog platform, there is a lot more to do; select a theme, style it to your preference and optimize it for security and SEO. I will touch on some of that in a future Bludomain / WordPress post in the future if there is sufficient interest.

Note: If you have any questions send me an email. Non-Bludomain hosting accounts supporting Bludomain sites should be similar, but there are often some small differences. Again if you have a question send me an email I’ll try to help.

Free Blog Websites Cost You a Lot

Marc — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:25:57 +0000

Well over half the websites I come across can host their own free blog, but instead chose to use a different website like Blogspot, putting their best marketing content on a different business’ website. Be kind to yourself and your business, keep your best content on your own site. (Photographers particularly need to consider text content as carefully as they do their images.)

For all types of business, I see it many times everyday. In an effort to build traffic to their website, increase their online marketing and client base, website owners including photographers, real estate brokers, jewelers, restaurants, personal coaches, consultants, wedding planners, florists, believe that the best solution to expand their internet marketing is to have a Blogger Blogspot blog or the like.

It is a ridiculous strategy (except for the “free” blog website service). Sending people to another website to increase the traffic to your website is crazy. Then hoping that a visitor then might read something that you wrote on Blogspot, Xanga, Live Journal, etc. and then click over to your website is in reality a dispiriting leaky system. People are resistant to clicking to other domains and blogs typically have a high bounce rate. (yourdomain.blogspot.com is very different than yourdomain.com)

“But it is free!”, you say. Well not so much. As you can see above the opportunity cast can be high. Plus your content is building business for the “free” blog service and they can make it very difficult to ever move your content to your own site or benefit from the search engine indexing of your content on their “free” blogging site.

Still have doubts? Here’s another view by Hubspot of the same problems and business cost of using Blogger, and other so-called free blog websites.

The best solution is to have blog content, but to have it on your site building your visits, conversions and clients. Which you can do in most cases for very little or no cost by adding WordPress open source software on your current hosting. Well over half the websites I come across can support WordPress at no additional cost.

TANSTAAFL even holds true for Blogspot. Know the true cost before placing your content into the websites of others.

Are you suffering from blogging fatigue

Marc — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:12:09 +0000

Do feel almost totally unmotivated to make another post to your blog? Does it seem like anything is better than blogging? Did you start blogging with enthusiasm and are now afraid that your blog is dieing?

There are a lot of thoughts about this and some time we all experience it to some degree. Robert Scoble wrote an extensive post (for him) about blogging fatigue. Problogger offers us an 8 step method to combat it, even suggesting that you exercise more. But all of this assumes that you are the problem. What if the problem is not you, but your blog? Maybe your blog just sucks.

Remember the reasons why you started your business related blog? I’ll bet the major reasons included; enhance your web presence, increase your search page rankings, build site traffic and expand your professional credibility. Is it possible you are not now so enthusiastic about blogging because you didn’t see these results? A person can easily work with continued enthusiasm and effort if they get to see results from their work. Are you seeing good results for your blog?

This week I have talked with two individuals who are suffering from blogging fatigue. In both circumstances the problem is not with them, but with their blog. Their blogs are dysfunctional. They began their blogs with the major goals I listed above and have blogged consistently for almost a year. But because of the way their blogs are hosted and configured, there is no way for the blog to meet those goals. One person related that her blog provided less than 50 referrals to her website in over six months. Another person’s blog who I have open right now has no links at all to her photography website. In both cases the blogs are also hosted as subdomains on other websites (eg. blogspot, bigfolio, etc) with a different name and url than their website. No wonder they feel unenthusiastic about blogging. They put forth good efforts and get no results.

It is time to quit blaming the victims of blogging fatigue, stop treating the symptoms and start curing the cause. At minimum, to see the results that will restore your enthusiasm your blog must be using the same domain name URL as your website and need to have plentiful, obvious cross linking with your website. There are lots of other things that can be done to produce even better results from your blogging effort, but these are the must haves. If you have any questions or thoughts please send me an email (marc at marcfuller.com) or leave comment. (and i am available for scheduled intensive blog therapy/treatment )

Blogging advice wrap-up

Marc — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:08:41 +0000

This is the final (for now) post on how to blog. Your website’s blog can make a huge difference in your on-line success, increasing your search engine result page rank, visitor traffic and presenting you as an expert in your field. Here are a few other helpful perspectives.

In his recent brief and excellent Slate article titled “How To Blog“ Farhad Manjoo provided an excellent outline from noted successful experienced blogging experts on … how to blog, outlining the specfic steps to take on a regular basis to create a satisfying and popular blog.

And for more detail on blogging from a wedding point of view, Christine Boulton of The Agency at Think has recently posted a three blogging advice items:

Out of all of this advice, the most important thing to do is to just do it. There is no perfect post, even the best blog has some bad ones. But with a little time and regular blog posting you can create a valuable marketing resource for your business and many of today’s brides-to-be.

Blog readers are not your only marketing target, but they are a sizable group (for 2006 in the USA about 36 percent of the total population) and are easy and inexpensive to effectively reach. Just do it.

Yet Another Blogging Resolution, use your blog for “look forward” marketing

Marc — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:43:17 +0000

I think too often we tend to look at the past when creating blog posts. For the New Year I will try to use my blogging to explore potentially emerging market segments.

What I mean is that blogs are supposed to be a dialog with our site visitors and too often we don’t risk advancing new ideas through that dialog. For example when we carefully craft a blog post using tools like Google’s keyword analyzer we are looking at the past. But we know the market changes with time. And the related keywords may not have developed enough to be very popular, but could be used enough in the internet to provide an edge.

Keying in on what Rebecca Grinnals noticed about the change in “Sex In The City”, I would add phrasing that includes terms related to “meaningful”, “valued”, “lasting”, “family”, “friends”, “warmth”, “permanence”. And because I am working with a couple who are paying for all of their wedding costs and bought their home in 2007 (planning on getting marrided this Spring ’09) and now owe more than it is worth, I also intend to “forward explore” using keyword terms related to “affordable”, “economical”, “wise”, “freedom”, “financially responsible” and other similar terms.

By using a few of your blog posts to explore effective evolving search marketing terms you don’t risk confusing your recognized brand position, but are still able to “see” where the market may be going by tracking the visitor referral stats for those blog exploring postings. Without committing to the unknown risk redrafting all your package and product/service descriptions.

Another New Year’s Blogging Resolution, details details details

Marc — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:32:35 +0000

Be more explicit! Totally explicit!

As I look back through my search engine referrals and the terms that brought them, I repeatedly find that it is the details and specifics that are very important. So put all the details in the blog post.

In the “old days” (circa 1996) we used to use very general search terms because there was so little on the ‘net. If you didn’t, often there would be almost no results. But, today’s internet is so content rich that savvy search engine users have learned to be more specfic. As we all have experienced the more specfic your search terms are, the more relevant the search results.

What do I mean? Well I was looking at a photographer’s blog who has a very good habit of regular posts, but I could not figure out the place where she was taking a set of photographs. They were beautiful photographs in a beautiful outdoor setting, but the location was only described as “Rochester”. Rochester what? Where? I wanted to know … was Rochester a town, in what state, or perhaps a local park or a Country Club or… . If someone was looking for a photo or wedding location in/at “Rochester”, they would include most include at least the state. But because that detail was missing in the blog post, it would be doubtful that her blog would show high enough in related organic search results to be seen.

So go ahead, put it all down in your blog. There is no additional cost other than a few more moments. You never know what locations, landmarks, colors, materials or other details (even the time of day) might be important. If you are a event planner or decorator share the material and equipment. Mies van der Rohe once said “God is in the details“, it is as true now for blogging as it was for his architecture.

And, remember a very sizeable percentage of weddings are planned (at least in part) by people who have limited familarity with the general area where the wedding and reception will take place. Your added details will be very helpful.

Share all the details and specifics in your blog posts for ’09 and benefit from more traffic.

A New Year’s Blogging Resolution

Marc — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:44:15 +0000

As I read through my own blogging, and that of other wedding professionals of all walks, I see that I/we need to makes some changes for the New Year.

PROMOTE YOURSELF! Use at least 10%-20% of your posts to:

Share your solutions.
Stress your benefits.
Promote your business.
Illustrate your work.
Demonstrate your dedication
Portray your professionalism.
Educate about your continuing education
Celebrate successes.
Quote testimonials and thank yous
Be your own hero.

Your blog posts can be your best advertising, and few of us use it to that benefit. It is often difficult to publicly trumpet what we do that is exceptional. But we must! One or two posts out of ten is not too much about what makes you and your business special. We tell our friends, in ’09 let’s tell our readers.