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Upgrading to WordPress 2.7

Screen shot of WordPress 2.7
Screen shot of WordPress 2.7

I just upgraded my blog from WordPress 2.6.1 to WordPress 2.7. Whew it was hairy and took 1.6 hours to do, but I have successfully upgraded my blog platform.

You the user can most likely see no difference, but in the control panel, the differences are huge. For me the reason that I wanted to upgrade was (1) so many clients are asking me should they upgrade? and (2) Flash Player 10 has broken my ability to easily add photos to my blog and I wanted to see if upgrading would help to get me back in business.

Well I am here to say that yes for images I am back in business, thank goodness. Darn that Flash Player 10 for making it so hard for me with WordPress.

So do I like the interface of WordPress 2.7? Well, it is very different than 2.6 that is for sure.

So far for me all my plugins have worked and my settings have carried over. Do I recommend doing the upgrade? If you have the time and money, I would recommend it. One of the improvements I see is the ability to block specific users from commenting, I have one guy who spams me all the time, and the ability to from now on auto upgrade WordPress as new versions come out. I liked WordPress version 2.6 but I think that I will like version 2.7 better.

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Don’t Leave Your Pocketbook Open for Google

I have to say that even though I have seen some businesses be hugely successful using Google AdWords, I have also seen some who have not. Based on this, I strongly advocate not leaving your pocketbook open to Google as they will try to spend every cent you allocate for clicks.

These are my tips for business owners:

1. If you are new to AdWords set aside a budget of $500 to $800 for clicks for a 30 day period for a testing time frame of at least three months.

2. Don’t start on AdWords until you have conversion tracking in place to measure leads generated by AdWords.

3. If you do not have a website analytics program installed, install free Google Analytics at least two weeks prior to hiring your account manager. Help them do a better job by identifying what is happening on your website in regards to traffic and keywords.

4. Use a professional account manager for your AdWords keyword research, ad text creation, and account management. The input that a professional manager can give you will help you to better understand how to market your business more effectively based on click activity and trends that they see happening from the activity in your account.

5. Don’t give up after just 30 days of traffic. Plan on really giving it a go for three months. Then if you do not see results from an increased number of leads, close your pocketbook and move out of Google AdWords and try another marketing approach. You may want to consider organic optimization, email marketing, blog advertising, or even print media advertising depending on your product or service.

It simply makes good business sense to feed with your cash investment things that provide a return for your business. Do not fall in the trap of paying Google for clicks on AdWords if the activity is not providing results, but be realistic about the results you can expect from your AdWords program as well.

AdWords can really work for you, I’ve made it happen for clients, but for some, AdWords is simply not the most practical approach. You will however not know if AdWords is for you unless you really make an honest try.

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Google Friend Connect New Easy Interaction for Your Website

I am not a programmer and simply do not aspire to be one. I consider my expertise to be in other areas, but that does not mean that I do not want to add cool new interactive features to my website that typically require a strong knowledge of web programming. This is why I am so interested in checking out Google’s new Friend Connect.

Created just for people like me, Friend Connect lets Google do the heavy lifting for you. You can now install into your source code cool little mini applications that allow for users to become members on your website, add comments about a page or your website, and to rate your content. It is the beginning of a very neat interactive component that I am sure many will actively embrace. More applications and sharing tools are sure to be created as Friend Connect allows people to add programming-like elements into their static website without programming or database integration.

Friend Connect allows users with a Google account (which Google early on nearly forced on everyone who advertised in AdWords and when Gmail was initially introduced, so many users already have one), Yahoo accounts, and even AIM accounts. You can visit our website today to check out what we’ve done with Friend Connect integration. Just visit our resources section and click any top tip link to see just a bit of how we are using Friend Connect.

Although every page in our website is not using Friend Connect, we see it as a content interaction tool and so on some of our content pages which are really focused on teaching or sharing we want to help others to share our information and leave comments.

Friend Connect is easy to install for users who understand HTML, but not for the person who does not update their own website. You can find out more about Google’s new Friend Connect by visiting the official Friend Connect website.

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Google’s New Friend Connect

Finally I have finished integrating Google’s new Friend Connect into my website content pages. If you don’t know what Friend Connect is, it is a new programmer-free social interface that allows any website to use hi-tech programming features to allow site visitors to interact with the content. The key is that with Friend Connect you do not need to have any programming skills.

I have used the page review rating and comment module in many pages of my website. You can visit our instruction section to click through the various pages to see how it looks and how it works. Click into a few pages and you can see how the modules act and work on the page. Leave a comment, mouse over the stars and leave a rating and you can do so anonymously.

Personally I found the application after a few dry runs, extremely easy to work with and simple to install. There are several modules you may want to consider for your use. You can install a comment module that even allows video upload, a website rating module, a page comment and rating module, and a friend network module. For my needs, I am only using the page rating.

One thing that I have found is that it is best to only have one comment or rating module on a page otherwise the application gets confused.

It is easy to style the modules anyway you want from inside Friend Connect and then style the <div> that contains the content back in your source code. Implementation of Friend Connect is still best for webmasters or people who know their way around source code.

I consider the application a new exciting way to interact with website visitors. Take a look and tell me what you think by clicking comments below.