WordPress Themes Has A New Home
The WordPress Themes repository has a new home. While themes.wordpress.net is still there, it is no longer active. The new theme directory is at wordpress.org/extend/themes/ which is where you also find the plugins directory, the forums, the WordPress blog and everything else related to WordPress.
This is a good move for WordPress. They are slowly but surely getting everything under one umbrella making it easier for everyone to find what they need. Another benefit for all of us is that the themes will now be checked to make sure they meet some requirements before they are added. No more falling in love with a theme only to find out that it doesn’t work!
Since it was only released 2 days ago, there aren’t a lot of themes there yet, but you can bet that it will fill up quickly with lots of great themes that work. Check it out and keep visiting for more great themes.
cathy on July 20th, 2008 | Filed under WordPress Themes | 2 Comments So Far »The WordPress Wizard’s New Blogging Course
It’s almost here - Blogging With WordPress in a Web 2.0 World!
Registration will be opening soon but in the meantime, go to WordPress2.0 to get notified when registration opens as well as getting a few free goodies just for being interested.
This is going to be a great class. More details will be released over the next few weeks but get on the notification list because seating for this class will be limited.
cathy on July 18th, 2008 | Filed under WordPress | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Articles: What do they have to do with blogging?
In a word - gobs! Articles and blogs go hand in hand. You can drive traffic to your blog through your articles. You can repurpose articles into several blog posts. You can take several similar topic blog posts and craft an article from them.
My friend, Jeff Herring, over at The Great Article Marketing Blog has a great blurb on submitting articles to article directories and is it a waste of time in his post titled Article Marketing Tip of the Week. (Hint - it is not.)
Go check it out for some excellent, realistic advice on articles, directories, and blogs.
cathy on July 12th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Promised Links from The Wizard Weekly
Here are the links I promised on the Wizard Weekly call.
Dean’s FCKEditor -
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin/
I know I said GoDaddy is the one with MCE problems but what I read was that it is ‘primarily’ GoDaddy. One of our listeners had the same MCE problem and he is NOT on GoDaddy. So - if you lose your editing icons and ‘Use The Visual Editor’ is checked in Users -> My Account, get this editor plugin.
The Advance Tiny MCE Editor is at - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/
I still prefer this one because it is so cool but if you lose editing icons altogether, use the first one!
Here is the WordPress link for WP-Sticky - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-sticky/
It might be easier to find here than at LesterChan.net. Both are the same plugin.
And don’t forget to check out the new Google Keyword tool. See the previous post for that one.
Enjoy!
cathy on July 9th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Google’s New Keyword Tool - Help for WordPress Blogs?
So, Google has a new keyword tool out today and the blogosphere is all a’twitter over it. I’ve messed around with it for a few minutes and I like the keyword part of the tool but haven’t gotten much in the way of usable results from the site url part of the tool
As with all things Google, I will investigate this more deeply and report my findings to you.
Right now I am getting ready for The Wizard Weekly - coming up in just under 2 hours. Head on over and join us today when we talk about Enhancing Your Blog.
cathy on July 9th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends, The Wizard Weekly | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »WordPress Mission Control Now Available
The WordPress Dashboard - Your Mission Control is now available as a home study course. Learn all about how to work in your admin area (the dashboard) and go at your own pace. Check it out at http://www.WordPressMissionControl.com
You’ll be glad you did!
cathy on July 7th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Back From The Dark Side
We successfully went to and returned from the Dark Side - the WordPress Database.
Yesterday’s Wizard Weekly call was about the little known about but very important WordPress Database. We had some excellent comments and questions that time did not allow to answer so I will answer them a few at a time here.
1. I wonder: is there anythng we might have to do, say if the database is messed up somehow?
You can go to the MySQL database tab in CPanel and for each database there will be a ‘Check’ and ‘Repair’ button. Click on ‘Check’ to see if any problems are reported and if there are, click on ‘Repair’ and the database will try to repair itself. Other than that – the data inside phpMyAdmin is editable but I wouldn’t go there alone! It’s a very scary place! It’s fine to go look but when you are modifying stuff in there it is frightening.
The good news is that bad stuff rarely happens to the database itself. Sometimes the connection breaks but the data is still there.
2. When hackers get into a site, is it the database they hack? And what can they do and how to prevent it?
Vulnerability – everything is vulnerable. There are hackers out there who write stuff to ‘inject’ stuff into your database. I’m always on the lookout for stuff like this and will report on it when I find it to be valid. So far – nothing earth-shaking has come up because wp itself is really pretty secure. Stuff happens when you use plugins and themes from unfamiliar (and unverified) places.
Two excellent questions - more in days to come.
I know I stressed the importance of backups so here is the url to get wp-db-backup -
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Please get this very important plugin, install it, activate it, and USE IT.
cathy on July 3rd, 2008 | Filed under WordPress | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »
TheWordPress Database - A Trip to The Dark Side
Have you ever wondered what the WordPress database is? What does it do? Where does it live? What’s in there? You now have a chance to go inside the database with me and learn about it in everyday English - NO TECH SPEAK.
Please join me tomorrow on The Wizard Weekly. Sign up just to the right of this post to get all the details. Or if you see this on Twitter - go to http://www.TheWordPressWizard.com for sign up details.
cathy on July 1st, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Weekly, WordPress Wizard | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Blogger Block: The Four-Step Program
Annie Binns over at Life in the Fun Lane has a great post called Blogger Block: The Four-Step Program.
What is it? The paralyzing inability to write one more word on your blog.
How do you know if you have it? Here are some of the symptoms she lists:
- You wonder if you have enough plug-ins and start surfing the web for more.
- You Google everyone who leaves a comment on your blog to see if they are incarcerated.
- You read your spam folder. Twice.
- You Google relatives you haven’t heard from in a while to see if they are incarcerated.
- You follow every Twitter link
- You subscribe to more RSS feeds than your total number of blog posts.
- You hand-write encouraging letters to your incarcerated friends and relatives.
Go to her blog to read about the four-step program that “has been proven effective in reducing or eliminating the symptoms of Blogger Block.”
Laugh every day!
cathy on June 30th, 2008 | Filed under WordPress Fun | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Blogging Tip: ‘Get Smart’ With Your WordPress Blog?
My good friend, Jeff Herring, has an interesting post over on The Great Article Marketing Blog. Here is part of what he says - “imagine what it would it be like if you could have a 300 to 500 word sample of your expertise spread all over the internet working for you 24/7 all over the world”.
Of course, he’s talking about articles but go read his post with your blog in mind too. And - your blog post doesn’t need to be 300 to 500 words! If you have a 300 to 500 word article, you have a LOT of fodder for blog posts. Depending on how many ideas are in those words, you can get from 2 to 5 blog posts!
Head on over to:
Read it thinking about articles AND your blog. Leave a comment. And come back and tell me what you think!
Blog On!
cathy on June 22nd, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »The Wizard on the AP Blogging Policy
The blogosphere is all abuzz about the Associated Press and its arcane policy decision about controlling what bloggers can and cannot publish on their sites. TechCrunch had an excellent take on the ‘controversy’. The AP is BANNED from TechCrunch. No ifs, ands, or buts. No legaleeze mumbo-jumbo on what is and is not acceptable use.
This blog isn’t about news but in this case, I cannot remain silent. This ‘ruling’ by the AP affects many bloggers and since it appears that the AP’s rules are tighter than the law, it cannot go unnoticed. If laws are in place, enforce them but don’t put yourself above the law, enacting rules and regulations that are beyond the law.
Having said that, let’s not even engage them. Just ban them from your site. There are plenty of other news sources to quote. You just have to go out and find them.
Let’s get behind TechCrunch and ban the AP from our world.
cathy on June 16th, 2008 | Filed under blogging | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »The Wizard’s Favorite WordPress Plugins
If you’d like to know my favorite, can’t live without plugins, join me tomorrow on The Wizard Weekly. Look just to the right and you’ll find the form to fill in to get all the dial in details.
The calls are every Wednesday at 3PM, Eastern. I’d love to see you there!
cathy on June 10th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends | 1 Comment So Far »Virtual Book Tour Systems and The WordPress Wizard
As a faculty member of Alex Mandossian’s Virtual Book Tour Systems, I’d like to tell you about something very special happening on Friday of this week. If you sign up for Virtual Book Tour Systems by midnight Thursday, you will be invited to a special strategy session Friday morning where you will learn from Jeff Herring and me about how to use articles and blogs to promote your book or information product.
Remember in my last post I told you that this course is NOT just for authors who have or want to have published books. This course (I know, I took it last year) is for anyone with any kind of written or spoken product. Learn how to get your message out and create buzz about whatever you have.
But remember, to get in on the strategy session, you must sign up for Virtual Book Tour Systems by midnight Thursday. And that will be easy once you hear Alex’s preview call Thursday evening. You will learn so much just on that one call alone that it is worth way more than the cost of the call, which is only $20.00 rather than $99.00 due to the discount I’ve arranged with Alex. All you have to do to get the discount is click here and enter the discount code “gabe1025″.
cathy on June 4th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends, WordPress Wizard | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Hoping everyone has a wonderfu…
Hoping everyone has a wonderful weekend!
cathy on May 30th, 2008 | Filed under WordPress Wizard | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »Virtual Book Tours - For Bloggers?
POP QUIZ: What do Donald Trump, Mark Victor Hansen, Julie Andrews, Stephen
Covey, Jack Canfield and David Bach all have in common?
ANSWER: They’ve done Virtual Book Tours with my friend and colleague,
Alex Mandossian. Alex charges up to $5K for doing a Virtual Book Tour with an
author these days, but you can get access to his teleseminar training on how
to “do it yourself” on June 5th.
I’ve even made special arrangements to save you $79 on your tuition if
you utilize this code: “gabe1025″.
Click here to get private phone access to Alex’s tele-training
on June 5th at 6pm PDT/9pm EDT and remember to use the discount
code above to save $79!
So what does this have to do with bloggers? Alex’s training is not just about books - you can utilize this training for any information product you have. You do have information products, don’t you? If you are a blogger you have a lot of fodder to create information products. If you don’t do it, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
So join Alex (and me) on the preview call and learn just what this concept can do for you.
cathy on May 30th, 2008 | Filed under The Wizard Recommends, blogging | No comments yet, your thoughts are welcome! »
