If you use WordPress to power your websites, there will be times you need to upgrade. Luckily WordPress lets you know this right in the back office of your website. You will get a notification that WordPRess is ready to be updated, and a handy link you can click on to do it. Should you click it as soon as you see it? I am not so sure about that, here are some things to think about:

1. Is the release brand new? If the latest WordPress release is brand new you might want to hold off for awhile. They do a great job of testing and re-testing their releases. Going live always brings up a hiccup or two, it is just the nature of the beast. If you hold off a week or two that will give the WordPress development team time to address any bugs. So for example, instead of upgrading to WordPress 3.0 maybe wait a couple days and see if WordPress 3.1 is going to come out.

2. Backup! Yeah i will admit I have upgraded WordPress before without backing up, and nothing happened. Why tempt fate though? Why take the chance. I know I never want to be the guy on WordPress support forums saying “I didn’t back up my site but…” Make sure you back up your site before an upgrade.

I usually use the cPanel of my host to create a database backup. You will have to figure out how your host handles back ups. I also back up my wp-content folder by downloading it via FTP. I zip it and create a copy to store a couple different places. Lastly, I do an export from the back office of WordPress. I navigate to Tools and then Export. This way I get a small XML file that will cover all of my pages, posts and comments.

3. Plugin Compatibility – One of the best reasons for waiting to see if a release is stable is that it gives plugin developers a chance to catch up. When you upgrade there is always the chance your plugins won’t make it. If you have a certain plugin that you find indispensable, you might want to monitor it to see if it gets updated to match the WordPress upgrade. Some plugins will work fine anyways, and if you keep an eye on the plugin homepage or forums you will find that out as well.

If you remember these three steps or rules, you will have no problem with your WordPress updates. The biggest key is to back up! Years of hard work can be flushed down the toilet if you don’t! Enjoy your WordPress site and may all your updates be smooth and trouble free!

When you are constantly creating content for your blog it can become a tiresome and mundane task. You have to think of topics everyday and it can get a bit overwhelming at times. Even when you are talking about your passions, the constant need for content can get a bit boring. What about having some fun? Have you ever thought of injecting some controversy into your blog?

The power of controversy can lead to spikes in your traffic. People feel a need to respond to things that aggravate them. Even better than that, these people who respond will want to share your blog post to people who will be equally outraged or also feel the need to respond.

How do you inject controversy into your blog though? First I would suggest not going overboard, outright racist, sexist or homophobic blog posts are indeed controversial, but they can also hurt your personal brand. There are other polarizing issues that can inject curiosity at less of a cost. Politics, religion and sports all fall into this category. You can’t play the fence though you have to take one side of the above issues and go for it.

Basically anything people feel strongly about you can exploit. On my blog my most successful post in terms of views and comments was an album review I did. I took the opposite stance of most other online reviews and it paid off. People were expressing their outrage in droves. My website views went up big time. In fact I noticed a 234% increase in my 30 day totals.

Another bonus of using controversy is that you will find people that agree with you. Regularly, these people might read your blog post and just keep it moving. Now that they see all these comments attacking you – they may feel the need to stick up for their viewpoint, which happens to be yours.

Controversy isn’t a guaranteed traffic spike, but if you are able to promote your controversial blog posts to the right audience, you are sure to get some interaction. This interaction won’t always be positive, but it could lead to viral opportunities. I suggest starting out by sharing some of your own controversial beliefs. Just be yourself, you surely have some opinions that go against the norm. That way you can passionately defend them. If you notice your traffic is at a plateau, break out some controversy and see what it can do for you.

I am very passionate about WordPress. It is an open source web publishing tool that is completely free and flexible. Out of all WordPress’ benefits, the fact that Google seems to love it so much might be my favorite.

What is up with Google’s love affair with WordPress anyways? Why do WordPress sites seem easier to get to the top of Google with? From my experience I think it comes down to a couple of factors:

1. Power of Posts – Every time you create a post on WordPress you have the chance of getting another web page indexed in Google. The way WordPress works is that it creates a separate page with it’s own link (permalink) when you make a post. If you are posting regularly that means you are getting more pages indexed in Google.

When people had old HTML sites they might have a handful of pages, with sub pages they might have a couple dozen. WordPress makes it easy to have hundreds and even thousands of pages indexed in Google. The more pages you have indexed in Google means more authority in Google’s algorithm.

A real life example is a business directory my team and I created. At first when we added our businesses they weren’t showing up at top of Google for very low competition local terms. We ended up buying a database of local businesses and adding them as posts. After we added the hundreds of posts we noticed that any new company we added would now be on first page of Google for the local search terms..and quite quickly.

2. Dynamic Content – WordPress makes it very simple to add content. This is another big factor for ranking well in Google. Google loves fresh content and WordPress makes that easier than any other web publishing platform. If you are constantly adding new contenet to your WordPress site – Google will notice this.

In Google’s eyes fresh content is important for two reasons. First off it means a site isn’t stale and possibly outdated. Secondly, fresh content seems more relevant in Google’s eyes. This is especially true now that they update their index in almost real time. To Google a fresh new post will be weighted as more relevant because it is closer to what is happening right now.

3. Plugins – WordPress has so many handy plugins that are deisgned for search engine optimization. Plugins like All-In-One SEO will cover most of your on page optimization. This plugin will cover all your meta tags at the very least. There are also other plugins that will make sure your internal linking structure is favorable to google. Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that will create a sitemap of your site and submit it to Google. If you use Google Webmaster Tools you know that this is important, because Google says so! It is especially important for dynamic sites like the ones that can be built on WordPress.

These three facts ensure that WordPress is and will probaly always be one of Googles favorite web publishing platforms. The google love is only one of the reasons why you should be using WordPRess but IMO there are few factors more important. The best traffic creation techniques you can do is to rank in Google for your keywords – and WordPress makes that task even easier. Why not give it a shot?

I would never claim that blogging could cure depression. Depression is a serious issue and should be dealt with by a doctor. That said, are there any therapeutic benefits to blogging? I think there are. If you have been feeling down or overwhelmed then starting a blog might be just the thing to let you channel your frustrations. A blog allows you to release your emotions, interact with other people and it can be a consistent and stable factor in a hectic world. I believe the following three benefits are proof that a blog can be therapeutic.

1. Release of Emotions: Everyone says you shouldn’t bottle up your feelings. Some people have no problem releasing their emotions while other people have a tough time talking about their issues. A blog allows someone to release all of their emotions through their daily posts. You can get a lot off your chest in a blog post. Most importantly for some people, you can do this anonymously. This is a big plus for some people. If you are suffering from some negative thoughts, or anger then it might be easier for you to express that knowing you are anonymous. A blog offers people the perfect forum to share their thoughts and release any pent up emotions that might be harmful for them to keep inside.

2. Social Interaction: Of course nothing beats getting out and meeting people, we all know this. The problem is that not everyone is a social butterfly. They might naturally be shy people who would rather stay in, or they might have an issue that makes face to face social interaction stressful. Blogging and micro-blogging allow people to interact with other people online. It doesn’t beat the real thing but it is a start. Interaction can come from people contacting you based on your story or from comments to your blog. One of the great things is when you share a personal story and you get a comment from someone going through similar things. A blog allows anyone to interact with other people, and is a great tool when trying to reach people with similar interests or problems.

3. Consistency and Stability: This might be an overlooked value when it comes to blogs, but I think it is important. Some people live in a chaotic world that helps keep them feeling the way they do. A blog offers some consistency and stability. The blog is always there, stays pretty much the same and just waits for you to post. There are no demands or pressure. You have a blog that is always there and ready for you. It is also great to have that routine for people. A blog could be something that people look forward too each day. Outside of technical difficulties, it isn’t likely to let a person down.

I am not a doctor and I would never claim that a blog is a cure for any level of depression. That said I am a blogger, and I do have some insight into that world. I think I can safely say that blogs do have some therapeutic properties. If you are looking for stability, social interaction or a way to release your pent up feelings, then try out blogging. It doesn’t cure problems, but it might help you cope.

I can not guarantee success for your WordPress website. I can not guarantee traffic. I can not guarantee you will make any money with your WordPress site. However, I can guarantee you will get spam comments. Not long after you start adding content, and even before you add content sometimes, you will begin to receive spam comments.

There is software out there that does nothing but search out blogs to comment on. Once you have been discovered the spam will begin rolling in. How can you spot a spam comment?

1. Brand names and Medications – Anytime you get a comment that mentions popular medications (think Viagra) or brand names in either the Name field or the actual post – most times it is spam. If there is a link that is titled by a med or brand name then you can be assured it is Spam.

2. Foreign Language – Foreign language doesn’t always mean Spam but it is a warning sign. Again this is especially true if you notice a foreign word (not name) in the name field. If you are writing a completely English blog but you are getting Polish comments it doesn’t add up. A real life example is I was getting badly written comments with what I thoguht was a Polish name. When I checked out the “name” in Google Translate it was roughly the Polish term for Search Engine Optimization. A popular keyword no doubt, when i realized that I knew I was being duped.

3. Lousy Comments – Again this isn’t a definite sign, but it can be a good warning. If you are getting comments that are irrelevant and poorly written..check the URL that the commenter added. If it is something to do with ecommerce, medication etc.. then it is probably a spam comment. Lousy comments includes ones like “Great article” “Good post” etc… Sometimes the comment won’t make sense at all – like it was meant for another post. This is definite SPAM.

Even if you can spot SPAM though how do you fight back? Well I suggest 2 ways:

One, you better activate Askimet. It comes with the WordPress installation and does a great job blocking spam comments. It has a huge database and it will run checks against your comments to figure out if it is SPAM or not. It isn’t 100% effective but it does help a ton. It is also kind of intelligent. It will learn when you correct it (ie. it marks a message SPAM that isn’t.)

Secondly you can look at some of the other comment plugins available. DISQUS is a popular one and it will add a lot of flexibility to your comment moderation. It won’t put an end to spam but it will cut it down a significant amount.

The more you use WordPress the better you will be at spotting SPAM comments. Plugins can help you in the battle, but most important will be your savy-ness is spotting SPAM comments. Good luck and I hope all your comments are positive!

I have strongly urged parents to allow their children to blog. I believe it can help develop their technological, social and writing skills. In a world that is becoming smaller everyday due to technology like the internet, it is important our children have a strong basis in it. That said, you have to be careful because blogging by children can be dangerous. Follow these four tips and you will make blogging a safe and fun activity for your children.

Make Rules: You need to sit down with your child and set up some rules. Whatever rules you decide on you should explain them clearly to your child and explain why they are important. Set some consequences as well, let them know what will happen if they break any of the rules. You don’t want to be lackadaisical when it comes to online rules. Stay firm and your children will understand.

Strong Passwords: Make sure that your children’s accounts are all protected by good passwords. “12345″ is not a good password. You should use number, letters and symbols. It might be impossible for them to remember, but if it means you have to log on for them – even better.

Screen The Content: Encourage your child to create their blog posts on the computer before they go live. This way you can check them out and ensure they don’t give away any sensitive information, or have any objectionable content. Another bonus with this method is you can help your child get used to word processing software. You can also teach them about grammar and spelling with this method.

Monitor Blog: Check your child’s blog everyday and make sure they haven’t snuck any objectionable content on to it. Also make sure no one has been leaving weird comments. Even some spam comments can have dangerous links so make sure you have access to delete these. Install Akismet if you use WordPress and most of them should be caught. Also check out any links your child puts up, who knows where they could be linking to.

If you follow these four tips you will ensure that your child’s blog will be a great learning experience and not a potential danger. Commit to strong passwords, screening and monitoring and your child can benefit from blog ownership!

If you are a blogger and you want to do the best you can then this article will help you avoid five costly mistakes. No one is perfect but everyone should be able to cut down on the mistakes below. These are not accidents, they are willful transgressions that will hurt your bottom line. Clean up these mistakes and you will already be far ahead of the pack.

1. Not proof reading: A simple mistake but it can definitely make you look bad. Spellchecking is great, but you can’t rely on just that. You have to read your blog post 2 or 3 times to make sure you catch all your grammar mistakes. It might not seem like a big deal but here is one example of a mistake I have made. I wanted to write “now four styles to choose from” and I wrote “no four styles to choose from.” Spell check didn’t catch anything, but that one sentence means a big difference to the reader. If you want to take it to the next level, get someone else to proof read your blog post. They will catch things you miss every time.

2. Plagiarism/Spun Content/PLR: Alright if you have an adsense bait autoblog, ignore this mistake. Put up whatever crap you want. However, if you care about your personal brand and your blog, then at all costs avoid this type of content. Creating content can be a pain in the butt, but stealing someone else’s’ can hurt you dearly in the end. If you get caught (and you will) you lose all credibility instantly. The same thing goes for PLR content or articles you have spun. If you want to use these elsewhere to build backlinks OK, but keep them off your personal blog. It just looks tacky and people will notice.

3. Not being consistent: This might be the biggest mistake. If you are committing to running a blog then it is a commitment. Treat it as such. Don’t fire out 5 articles your first week then sit back and relax. You have to constantly create content in order to engage your visitors. Fresh content is also good in the eyes of Google. We don’t want to make the Google Gods angry do we?

4. Not marketing: I was guilty of this mistake. When I first started blogging I hid it from people! What the heck is the point of that? I posted away and hoped people came, but never worked at marketing it. I didn’t start to see success until I sent it out to my Facebook and Twitter lists. I began using Digg and Stumbleupon. I talked about it at social gatherings. I even got some business cards made up that had nothing but the URL of my blog. It began to work and I finally got to see some significant traffic. You can post all you want, but what use is it if no one sees it?

5. Not responding to comments: If you are lucky enough to get comments on your blog posts, then you should reply. For one it is the polite thing to do. Secondly it will engage web visitors and make them more likely to come back. Also people who haven’t commented will be more likely to comment if they see people getting responses. A blog full of active commenters is the start of a potential money making machine!

Cut out these five mistakes and you will definitely notice a traffic increase to your blog. You will also notice you have more interaction with your visitors and in the long run it will offer you more chances to monetize your site. If you have to only choose a couple from the list above, please post consistently and market yourself. Curing these two mistakes alone, will mean great things for your site.

If you are looking to make your WordPRess blog stand out from the pack then you need to consider using widgets that aren’t standard. WordPress comes packed with a ton of useful widgets, but there are many more out there you can add through the use of plugins. Add these widgets below to make your blog more fun and original!

1. About Me 3000: You can easily add an about widget using the standard text widget but this plugin adds an easily customizable about widget. The widget has all the styling included so it will always look good. You simply add your email and it will use your current Gravatar for the pic. It also offers you the ability to add your social networks which are displayed in a neat row of icons under your picture.

2. Most Popular Posts: There are widgets that will rank your posts on page views, but that can be exploited. This widget will rank your posts (any number you set) by comments. This is a great idea because then your posts are ranked by community interaction, which I think is more telling than simple page views. It can also encourage people to comment so they can get their favorite posts ranked.

3. Random Posts Widget: This widget will randomly show any number of posts you set. This is an interesting widget because it exposes your older posts to new visitors. A recent posts widget will show you the most recent posts, while your old ones are buried. This widget will make sure your old posts aren’t forgotten and that people who regularly come to your site won’t see the same old posts always showing up in the sidebar.

4. KB Countdown Widget: This widget will let you add a countdown to your sidebar. You can use this for products launches (My eBook price will be going up in….). You can also sue this for personal countdowns on more personal blogs (Our wedding is in…). If you want to add a countdown on your site, this is an easy and effective way.

These four widgets are a drop in the bucket. You can visit WordPress.org and find a huge list of widgets that you can search as well. If you want your WordPress site to be more user friendly and unique you should consider non standard widgets.

If your website is powered by WordPress, then you know the adminstrators panel is full of different options. I know people who run their blog and barely touch their settings at all. WordPress is pretty much good to go out of the box, but there are a couple settings you should think about tweaking.

1. Privacy – You definitely want to check out this setting. I have heard rumours of people installing a fresh WordPress and their privacy settings are set to block search engines. It is worth a shot just to go into this setting really quickly and making sure that search engines can crawl your site. This is the only option to tweak in this particular settings menu so it is easy stuff. Most people will want to allow search engines because that is where most of your traffic will be coming from.

2. Discussion Settings – You can leave these settings alone if you want but there are a couple things I like to tweak. FIrst off I make sure the top option “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article. ” is clicked. This means when you have a link to another blog you will send a trackback to that blog. If the person allows trackbacks that could count as a back link for you. Back links are good things!

I also like to change my gravatar picture. This is a small step but it can add a lot to the aesthetics of your site. A lot of people who comment on your site will not have a gravatar, so the default will show up. The “mystery man” might be good enough for most, but if it looks bad on my blog I will want to change it. Sometimes I will go with blank and sometimes I will just pick the one that matches my site colors and theme.

3. Writing Settings – In here I like to set my own Default Categories and Link Categories. You can easily run your blog or website without doing this, but I feel it saves me time and effort. I hate having “Ungategorized” show up in my list of categories. If I change my default category to something else, it means I will probably never have to see uncategorized again. Sometimes I forget to categorize my posts and when that happens I won’t have to worry about Uncategorized showing up all of a sudden. Same goes with Link Categories. I only have one category of links that I use in my sidebar, so it makes sense to make that category the default.

This is truly just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of settings you can tweak for your WordPress site. The above three are just a couple I make sure to do right away when I set up a site. These simple settings save me some time and I hope they can do the same for you.

If you have children you probably encourage them to be the best they can be. You want them to learn and grow and be happy. Helping your child create their very own blog could be a great learning experience. Your child will develop their writing and social skills with a blog. If you are wary of allowing your child to blog, here are some great reasons that might change your mind…

1. Develop Their Writing Skills – Some children don’t like to read and write. This might change if you help them set up their own blog. Kids seem to gravitate towards technology at an early age these days. If they don’t find traditional writing enjoyable, the added touch of technology inherent in a blog might excite them. You can help them develop their writing skills by encouraging them to post regularly to their blog.

2. Develop Technological Skills – The world we live in is becoming more and more technological everyday. Many parents feel overwhelmed themselves. You do not want your child failing behind. Having them regularly using a blog will introduce them to the internet, computers, typing and email. All of these skills are pretty much essential, especially for the next generation. There are a lot of pitfalls and dangers incorporated with these technologies so teaching your child how to avoid these early will be tremendously helpful.

3. Develop Social Skills – Having a blog will allow your child to get more comfortable expressing his/her feelings. Responding to comments can also help them develop their social skills. Some kids are shy and might be able to express themselves more fully online. Eventually those skills can translate to the real world.

These three reasons alone should be good enough for any parent who has thought about allowing their children to blog. You need to help them navigate the internet pitfalls, but it will all be a learning experience. Make sure you monitor your children’s online activities and blog. You also need to talk to your child and explain the dangers. Once you have done that, and considering the vast benefits, I think your child having a blog is a wonderful idea.