While you do not have web traffic or you have an unknown blog you don’t have to worry about being the target of unwanted comments or spam, but as the movement begins if you don’t have Akismet you can get comments like this:

In the image to the left we see a comment that consists of a high number of links to pages that I would never visit because the anchor text tells me the sites they point. And this is an example, I have other comments two or three times bigger. Other spam comments sell pharmaceuticals or personal loans. Never mind, the goal is to practice spam.

Here is where Akismet, a plugin that comes installed by default with WordPress and I consider essential in a blog. This plugin filters all the feedback we receive on our blog and separates those it thinks could be spam. Despite of having a couple of false positives I must admit that Akismet does his job very well.

To start using this plugin you only need one thing, you have to have an API Key for Akismet. This is a unique serial number for you, but do not worry because Akismet is free as long as it is for personal use, if you pretend to use it for other purposes you have available different types of commercial API Keys.

To activate Akismet just have to go to your control panel and follow the same steps you have done for other plugins. To get the API Key you have indications on the control panel that basically leads you to this address: http://wordpress.com/API-Keys/

If you liked it then share it with others

This plugin, All In One SEO Pack, is one that I have been wanting to try out a few weeks ago because it makes certain changes in order to optimize the blog in some SEO points. Well I have to admit that I tested before in the Spanish Binary Ant and I’m totally happy with the results. The necessity of a plugin like this comes from the policy adopted by WordPress developers about Meta tags. The default WordPress installation does not include any Meta components like Meta Tags or Meta Description.

What are Meta Tags? These are lines of code that provide additional information to the search engines. Meta Tag for Keywords is something like:

<meta name="keywords" content="business, entrepeneur, solutions, development" />

and it indicates which are the keywords for the website.

Meta Tag for Description can be something like this:

<meta name="description" content="John Smith's Company provides solutions in
web development." />

and it provides to search engines a description they can use to associate with your website when is part of the result of a search. There are more tags but these two are enought, at least in this post. Are they necessary? Meta Tag for Description is recommended because if you don’t have it the search engine will take the first words that appear in your web as a description. And Meta Tag for Keywords depends on the search engine. Some put more value on it than others, but it takes you only few seconds to put it and also provides more information so I can’t think in a reason for not using it. Having said that let’s continue.

To solve this lack of Meta Tags in WordPress I investigated various plugins until I reached the conclusion that this is most valuable for solving this problem and also it gives solution to other points. The solutions offered by All In the SEO Pack are:

1. Meta Tags for Keywords and Description for your home page,categories, articles…
2. Optimizing titles (in terms of SEO), eliminating unnecessary words of the title and giving preference to the title of the article opposite the name of your blog. It decrease the number of words in the title of the page to give greater value to each, and it locates first the title of the article. Perhaps it’s a bit fuzzy. One example, first the original title and second the optimized one:

• Binary Ant Dot Com » Blog Archive » Plugin All In One SEO Pack
• Plugin All In One SEO Pack | Binary Ant Dot Com

3. Control of duplicated content by the use of “noindex” modifiers in categories and archives.

The installation as simple as ever:

1. Download and unpack the plugin on your computer.
2. Upload to the plugins folder on your server.
3. Activate it.

And the access to the configuration is through the path Settings> All In One SEO Pack. The configuration options are simple and the control panel for this plugin is quite clear. It is a very highly recommended plugin.

If you liked it then share it with others

Installing WordPress es really as easy as it is said. Is easier than other CMS I tested before (PostNuke, PhpNuke, Joomla) if it is correct to catalog WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System), but this is another subject.

Before beginning it’s recommended to check if your host has the minimun requirements , whatever you paid for it or you got it for free . These requirements are:

1. PHP 4.2 or greater.
2. MySQL 4.0 or greater.
3. The mod_rewrite Apache module.

The good news is that almost with total probability your web host carries out these requirements because WP is an quite spread out system . PHP in its 4.x version goes by 4.4.7, MySQL in its 4.x version goes by 4.1.22 (also it has 5.x version, the same with PHP), and the mod_rewrite Apache module usually is active in its default settings. The bad news…¿Did you thing there was a bad news?

After said that you have to download WordPress, you can do it from WordPress.org, and its needed to rename the file wp-config-sample.php with the name wp-config.php. Then yoy have to open it and change some data to put your database configuration. Don’t be scared, it is easier than you think. You can use any text tool to edit this file, for example the notepad. Look for this information:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘wordpressdb’); // your database name
define(’DB_USER’, ‘root’); // your database user name
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ”); // your password for that user
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); //probably you will not need to change this
define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);

IMPORTANT: this setting is my localhost setting, not my public web host setting. You must not leave the database user password in blank,

After editing you have ti upload all files to your server. There are several free ftp tools you can use.

And finally let’s start the “5 minutes installation”, and you have to enter this url in your web browser:

http://mysite.com/wp-admin/install.php

Note that where it is said “myhost” you have to write the url of your web host. Then you only have ti follow the steps that appear on the screen, simple steps like putting your email address or your blog tittle. Be careful of writing the password provided during the last step of installation because if you forget it you can’t enter to manage your blog. Once in the admin panel you can change your password if you want it.

Said that you can login in your blog writing this url in your web browser:

http://mysite.com/wp-login.php

And one last thing, it is recommended to remove the install.php file. Unlike other CMS systems you can’t run again the installation process if you don’t clear the data base but it is good to be cautious.

If you liked it then share it with others

A Sitemap? What is that? Well it seems that you didn’t read paragraphs 3 and 4 of my article Basic Errors I See In Other Blogs. A sitemap is a file which indicates to the spiderbot all the pages (well depends on how updated the sitemap is) that compose your blog or website. Thus the robot does not have to follow all the internal links it finds on your blog to index your pages. With the sitemap the robot gets all the information faster. Remember that every article you wrote in your blog is a page. Using a sitemap is highly recommended by the search engines.

If you use WordPress you’re lucky because there is a plugin that do it all for you. This plugin is the Google Sitemaps Generator. The installation instructions are the same as for any other plugin, but beware that the plugin creates sitemap in the base directory of your blog so you should give the right privileges to write in it.

Once you have installed the plugin a new tab appears in the settings menu, XML-Sitemap. The options listed by default (I think) are most recommended. I checked Notify YAHOO about updates of your Blog for which you need an Application ID but don’t worry because it is free and you can ask for one clicking on the link that appear below the box where you have to write the ID.

In Sitemap Content I checked only the following options to avoid creating too unnecessarily duplicate content:

1. Homepage.
2. Posts.
3. Static pages.

If you have a robot.txt file you have to indicate in it where is the sitemap, add the line

Sitemap: http://www.tusitio.com/sitemap.xml.gz

This file ends with .xml.gz because it is compressed to take up less disk space. If you don’t have one mark the option Modify or create robots.txt file… so the plugin will create one automatically. Basically it contains the location of the sitemap.

As I told you the default options are the recommended, without getting into too much complication. Once finished with preferences at the top you have a link whick says “Build sitemap.” By clicking on it the file sitemap.xml is generated. If you find some problem probably is that you didn’t apply the correct privileges on the base directory. That’s all :D, from now this plugin will update your sitemap.xml file every time you write or update an article.

If you liked it then share it with others

If you use WordPress probably I do not think I need to tell what is a database. But everyone should know that every database must be saved periodically. I’ll speak about a plugin very useful and that any blogger should have installed, the WordPress Backup Database, which helps you to make and schedule your backups automatically. The installation is very simple, as I explained before, you should download it from the following address, the blog of the author of WordPress Database Backup, Austin Matzka. The steps are as follows:

1. Download and unzip it on your computer.
2. Upload to your server, and place it in the directory /wp-content/plugins/
3. Active it in the plugins panel.
4. Now you have a new option in the Manage panel called backup, enter in this option.
5. You’ll see all tables that compose your WordPress database and in case you have created extra tables also you’ll see them. All these tables will be included in the backup file.
6. Select how you want to save the file: stored on the server, downloaded to your computer, e-mailed to you.
7. Finally… press the button BackUp!

It leads you to a page in which you see the progress of the process. At the end you should have a new directory for backup files in /wp-content/. If there is something wrong and it can’t create it maybe you have to change the directories privileges on your server. Change privileges of /wp-content/ to 755 (CHMOD 755) and tray again. If it doesn’t result then try CHMOD to 777, this should work.

Now you have made your first backup. Set the process to repit automatically every day and send the file by email. This way if someday you have problems in your server you will have all your data perfectly saved.

If you liked it then share it with others