Posts tagged: Google

Joomla 2.5 is Hot!!!!

February 4, 2012, by No comments yet

Joomla 2.5 is out!

With the release of Joomla! 2.5, the user community has placed a large emphasis on making the CMS installation and updates management process as simple and straightforward as possible.

This will allow users to more easily and frequently migrate to the latest version of Joomla!, and take advantage of all the security benefits associated with running the newest code. We think Joomla! users around the world will really embrace this new process.

Joomla! 2.5 Released with Extra Features and Easy Updates

Joomla, one of the world’s most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets, today announces the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5. Along with new features such as advanced search and automatic notification of Joomla core and extension updates, the Joomla CMS for the first time includes multi-database support with the addition of Microsoft SQL Server. Previous versions of Joomla were compatible exclusively with MySQL databases.

“Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organization, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project. “No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”

Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:

  • Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.
  • A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.

“We literally received thousands of pieces of input at ideas.joomla.org into what functionality should be added to Joomla 2.5, and overwhelmingly enhanced notifications and more elegant search topped the list,” said Mark Dexter of the Joomla Production Leadership Team. “In fact, the automatic notification for core and extension updates received the most votes for a feature that people wanted in 2.5. But we didn’t stop with just those two. Joomla 2.5 is a major overhaul with more than 24 new features that we have highlighted at joom.la/25features.”

Joomla 2.5 adheres to Joomla’s newly-adopted six-month release cycle that began with the previous  Joomla CMS release of Joomla 1.7 in July, 2011. Downloading the latest version of Joomla is the best way to ensure organizational and personal security needs are being met since it will have the most recent updates to protect against the latest security threats.

Joomla 2.5 is truly a collaborative community-driven software project developed with the feedback gathered from more than 2.5 million Joomla forum posts, 540,000 Joomla forum members and data from more than 8,800 Joomla extensions.  To download Joomla 2.5, go to http://www.joomla.org/download.html.

 

What’s new in Joomla! 2.5?

 

When you already upgraded your site from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 1.7 in 2011 you probably use all the new features introduced with Joomla! 1.6 and 1.7. When you scroll down and read the list of new features compared to Joomla! 1.5 then you realize that 2011 was a very interesting year for Joomla!.

But let’s have a closer look on the new features for Joomla! 2.5.

New Features in Joomla! 2.5

The shiny new Joomla! Platform

The Joomla Platform Version 11.3 is now the base of the CMS.
That means many more possibilities for third party developers e.g. image manipulation with the JImage class and generation of HTML tables with the JGrid class. A new version of the JavaScript library MooTools is used (1.4). If you don’t know what Joomla! platform is about, read Write your own App using Joomla! Platform  and the official annoucement of the Joomla Platform release.

Find more content with Smart Search

Search is “reinvented” in Joomla! 2.5 with Finder. The new finder component works with a search index (Figure 1).

Finder pre-searches your content. Search results are scored dynamically based on the context and frequency of search terms. The most relevant content will always be listed at the top of the results. It suggests alternative phrases (Figure 2) and its pluggable adapter system allows to install new search adapters which provide support for standard Joomla! content and many other types of documents. Custom search filters allows you to provide contextual searching when your visitor is looking at particular sections of your Web site.

Spread Joomla! to more Platforms by using more Databases

With Joomla! 2.5 it will be possible to run Joomla! on MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Drivers for PostgreSQL and Oracle seems to be very near (Getting Ready for Multi-Database Support).

Better Choices for Offline Mode

You can user the default offline message, disable it or create a customized message. Additionally you can select an image for the offline mode page (Figure 3). You have even a possibility to set the site to offline mode during installation so no unauthorized people can see it before you want them to.

User registrations with CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA plugin using the reCAPTCHA service can be enabled (Figure 4). Once you sign up for free with reCAPTCHA and enter your keys, you can enable CAPTCHA on new user registrations. It could also be used by other extensions needing CAPTCHA.

Easier handling for simple Layouts

You can now attach an image for the intro text to use in blog and featured layouts, an image for the full article text and up to three links for the full
article layout. This means that your content creators won’t have to fuss with an image in the text and your article format will be cleaner and more consistent.

Mobile

The Beez core template comes with mobile enhancements.

Multilanguage

You can override the default language strings in a new manager in the backend (Figure 5).

User Notes

User Notes can be attach notes to users as well as assign tracking dates to the users. You can have multiple notes per user and the notes can be in different categories (Figure 6).

Clean Up

Filtering for Categories in Article Manager

That is simply useful. Since Joomla! 1.6 it was possible to filter categories in the article manager, but you did not see the articles of the subcategories. Now the filter logic include the articles of the subcategories too.

Linking New Menus with a Module

In Joomla! 2.5 modules are NOT automatically created for each new menu type. This is not a bug, it’s a feature :)
Not everyone used the core menu module, but used instead ones from a custom template or third party module. For that reason, menus did not automatically create a module in 1.6/1.7. This change confused people and created extra work. In Joomla 2.5, if there is no module associated with the menu, there is a link showing in the Menu Manager that you can click that will take you directly into a new module that you can create. You then have the choice of saving this standard menu module or cancelling out and using a different menu module.

Custom Text Filters are moved to the global configuration. They are filtering content for black and white listed tags based on your configuration and on role permission.

You can now choose to have the administrator get a new message when a user creates an account. This is useful when the New User Account Notification is set to Self. In that case the user receives after an email after registration with an activation link (Figure 7). After clicking that link the account is activated.

The extensive options in “Select a Menu Item Type” are not loaded unless you need them.

New Features compared to Joomla! 1.5

In comparison to Joomla! 1.5 the differences are huge and there is a long list of features and improvements.

Here is a list of the most important changes in Joomla 1.6 and 1.7

  • There will no longer be any sections. Categories can be nested as deeply as you would like
  • The access concept is totally rebuilt.
    The existing user groups used in Joomla! 1.5 are still the same in Joomla! 2.5 but they can be enhanced and renamed. Unlimited access levels can also be defined there. User groups can be assigned to access levels and different groups can then be assigned to various access levels.
  • Multiprocessing
    Copy and move operations, and the allocation of access levels can now be done in a batch process
  • Updates per mouse click
    A simple feature. The system detects available updates and initiates them by clicking on the corresponding button.
  • Templates
    There have been many changes in the area of templates. There are now two administrator templates and three website templates.
  • Template styles
    Sometimes you may want to display a template with different options. You may want to create a page with a red background and another page with a blue one. Therefore, you will need template styles. Create as many versions (styles) of a template with different settings as you like and assign them to a menu link.
  • Template layouts
    Sometimes you may want to display only the output of a component or a module in a different layout without hacking the template. That’s possible with template layouts.
  • Consistent user interface
    A successful example is the general save dialogue.
    Save: content will be saved, you remain in editing mode
    Save & Close: content will be saved, you leave the editing mode
    Save & New: content will be saved; a new, empty editing mask appears
    Save as copy: content will be saved as a copy, you remain in the editing mask
  • Minimum requirements
    The minimum requirements regarding your server environment and concerning your visitors’ web browsers have increased.
    Browser: Internet Explorer, version 7 or higher, Firefox, version 3 or higher, Safari, version 4 or higher
    Server: PHP: minimum version PHP 5.2.4, MySQL: minimum version 5.04
  • Legacy Mode
    The legacy mode from Joomla! 1.5 is no longer necessary. Legacy mode allowed the execution of components originally developed for Joomla 1.0, which have ‘only’ been adapted to Joomla! 1.5. The procedure of adapting old components is offset by the development of ‘native’ Joomla! 1.5 and 2.5 components, which use the Joomla! Framework.
  • Search engine optimization
    • You can now use unicode in URLs, which means you may now use special characters like ‘ö’ and ‘ä’ or Arabic or Hebrew characters in the URL.
    • You can allocate meta text and keywords to categories.
    • A title of a site will be displayed following the name of the website in the browser.
  • Modules can be published time-controlled. The assignment options to menu items have been extended.
  • Multilingualism
    Joomla! core now offers the possibility to create articles, categories and modules in several languages. With the new language switcher plug-in module you can filter the entire site for the selected language.
  • New editor
    Code Mirror is the new editor, which is supplied in addition to TinyMCE. It is not a WYSIWYG editor but offers a convenient way to work with ‘code-like’ content, which will be displayed in colour and a structured way.
  • Components
    • The new redirect component enables redirections to URLs in order to avoid ’404 not found’ errors.
    • The new search component provides an overview of the searched keywords and display results.
    • The survey component has been eliminated.
  • New Release Cycle
    Every 18 months, a long term release of Joomla! will appear.
  • Introduction of the Joomla! platform
    Joomla! consists of two parts

    • the Joomla! platform
    • the Joomla! content management system

There are many more very nice little features like the possibility to place a background image into a module or to display articles with page breaks in a tab or slider layout.

Download

New Installations: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Full package) »

Update Package: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Update package) »

 


Source: Joomla.org

Making Money online DAY 12

October 22, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 12: First online income…

Well I checked the Adsense earnings for the bestfootballgoals site and so far I have earnt a easy £3+ which isn’t bad considering the domain only cost 99cents. Today we will start to look at how to increase the amount of traffic going to the site.

There are many theories about different traffic methods/types, just today I have read at least 10 different views on Google and what the Panda update has meant. There are several traffic methods that we can use, personally I am a great fan of social traffic. Nothing better than letting other people do the work for me! Without me going on too much, lets get started!

Keyword/Article Generation

Many people spend hours working on keywords, I personally believe that it is better to allow google to tell you which keywords you should be using…

Once you start to get visitors from Google it becomes a lot easier to decide on the titles for new articles. In Statpress have a look at the Last Search Terms, and try and write another article with each one in the title. For example these are some of the last search terms bestfootballgoals is ranking for, please remember I have not done any SEO stuff at all.

  • football penalty drills – #7 in Google
  • football penalty kick drills – #2 in Google

I will be writing an article for the site called Football Penalty Kick Drills now… Thats what google thinks my site is about, so I will add it.

Images and Copyright – Staying Legal…

Something that I do not believe is ever covered properly is the use of images on your site. Not paying attention to this can cause you big legal problems, in some cases this can run into thousands of dollars (yeah I don’t agree with it but thats life).

Basically the golden rule of images is if you do not know who owns it, do not use it. With this restriction it may feel like you are stuck, however there are easy solutions…

  • Take a photo with your own camera, or create a graphic yourself in photoshop, you then own the copyright.
  • There are free stock photo sites that allow you to use images Royalty free, my favourite is Stock Exchange here http://rfurl.net/sxc and another is here http://rfurl.net/pdi
  • If my first options fail, I head on over to the Public Domain image sites page on wikipedia here which has close to 100 sources of images to use: http://rfurl.net/wpd

Remember to check the specific terms of each site, generally the US Government cannot own copyright to anything however in the UK there is Crown copyright for government images. Hopefully with these resources you have a good library of images to use across

Note: Before you are tempted to just use images check out this blog post by a company that was sued: http://blog.webcopyplus.com/2011/02/14/legal-lesson-learned-copywriter-pays-4000-for-10-photo/


Youtube…

Well we created our youtube account days ago, now it is time to put this to use, it’s so easy to create a video now that it is untrue. It is so easy that even youtube has got in on the act providing loads of awsome tools free for you! I will demonstrate one of the tools here, however I would recommend that you spend time to try out all the different tools avaliable.

  1. First of all we need to find some images to use in our video, to prevent future copyright issues I recommend that you look on free stock photo websites like http://sxc.hu/
  2. Goto the Youtube Create sction at http://rfurl.net/yc
  3. Pick a tool, for this demonstration I will use Stupeflix – the only restriction in this tool is that the video has to be under 1 minute long.
  4. Click the upload button to add the images you found into the tool.
  5. Click the sound button to add a sound track to the video
  6. Click the More button to add title slides (text slides between images)
  7. Click the more button to add transition effects between the slides.
  8. When you are done click the Publish to youtube button.
  9. Select YouTube (FREE) in the list and click Export.
  10. Allow Stupeflix access to your YouTube account… Wait for the video to be made.
  11. Goto your youtube account menu (click down arrow next to your username at the top of the page) and goto your videos.
  12. Find the new video in the list and click Edit, edit the title and description and put your website link at the end of the description.
  13. Pick some Tags and change the video category. Click Save Changes.
  14. You now have your first youtube video… Check it out!

The video is here…

The video for Best Football Goals is here, it took me under 5 minutes to make…

Note: Personally although this method is good, when i use videos I like to go even further. If you have $47 to spare I would recommend you have a look at these pre-made ready to use animated video backgrounds (http://rfurl.net/vidbg) which you can use with something like windows movie maker. They also come with sound loops which you can also use in your videos. I will cover this in a post for you guys later!

WordPress Security

Well I just got email offering to sell me a WordPress Security Guide for only $40, it had some pretty nice copy playing on peoples fear of loosing their work. However it assumed that the person reading it was pretty naive…

We have already covered how to backup your wordpress install which I would recommend everyone does on a regular basis. In addition there are some basic steps you can take to ensure that your website stays secure.

  1. Make sure you are using a secure cPanel username and password, and try and access this from only a computer you own.
  2. Make sure your email that you use with wordpress is secure so that people can’t reset your password.
  3. Make sure you have the latest version of WordPress installed.
  4. Set your display name to be different from your Username (Goto Users->Your Profile on the menu).
  5. Make sure you use a password that has both lower and upper case letters, numbers and is not in any dictionary.
  6. Make sure you google the name of any plugins you use to see what people are saying about them, and keep the number of plugins you use to a minimum. Where possible try to use plugins from the official wordpress directory and not from random places online.
  7. If something requires that you add html or change the code of your website make sure you understand what and why.
  8. If you are using free theme’s from outside the wordpress official search function (such as http://wptmp.com) make sure you check the code for any eval statements or encrypted code.

Summary

Today’s post has been cut down a bit, I am planning to introduce a new tool to you guys, however I still have to do some final modifications to it before I feel it is fit to release. This is coming, and will be worth the wait. In the meantime I will not delay the Challenge because of it.

Let’s get back on track, Day 13 will follow in the next 24 hours…
 


Making Money online DAY 11

October 22, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 11: Multiple Income Streams…

Now I’ve said it before and I will say it again, multiple income streams are good, in fact I like redundancy all round. And my number 1 argument for not focusing on SEO is that Google can (and has) in the past made a single change which may put your site on page 100…

Same with income, I prefer to look at many different methods rather than relying on just one. In Day 10 we covered some techniques, the original plan for today was to increase the range of techniques, however I am slightly concerned about information overload. To this end I have edited today’s post to focus on other stuff, and will then be introducing 1 moneytization method per day from now on instead of trying to do it all at once.

Competition

The winner of the first Crashed Challenge was radomly selected by Random.org at midnight Sunday 5th June. They have replied to my email and their articles will be heading their way soon. Maybe they will make themselves known here, however I will leave that up to them…

A little rant…

One of the questions I am getting asked a lot is how I deal with SEO. As I am getting sick of explaining it I am including it here. For those that have wondered I do not like SEO, I do not believe in SEO, and I think SEO is totally volatile. Recently I have known people that have lost 100′s of sites from Google Rankings on page one, and with that the majority of their income. Just overnight these people have losts hundreds and in some cases, thousands of dollars from their income.

Whilst I am aware that having good SEO may make you money, it is easier to start without looking at seo. All the marketing efforts we will be covering will indirectly affect SEO, and increase our rankings. However I will not specifically look at how to improve rankings through SEO methods for at least the first 60 days of building a site…

In addition some people are getting rejected from MaxBounty, the reasons for this I’ve heard include fake phone numbers and using blogger/blogspot instead of your own domain. If you are doing the challenge you should have your own domain and hosting. And there is no reason at all for a fake phone number, sure they call you, but that call is 99% to make sure the number is you.

Money Stats…

I am aware of 5 people that have made money from their Crashed Challenge sites! Including at least two who have earnt through MaxBounty, if you have not joined MaxBounty follow the instructions in Day 9: The Magic Money Tree…

Unfollow…

Now on twitter we are limited to how many people we can follow, and we want to save it for people that are following us. Now I tend to say that people that do not follow you back after 2 – 3 days after you have followed them it is likely that they won’t. Therefore I will unfollow anyone that has not followed back after this period to allow me to follow other people instead that may follow back.

The free version of Tweet Attacks that we downloaded allows us to do this easily and this is how its done…

  1. Run Tweet Attacks
  2. Update your account statistics as you would normally (Switch Module->Account Statistics->Click Update Statistics.
  3. Goto the Follow/Unfollow module
  4. Select your account in the list of accounts, then in the Task list select the Unfollow task.
  5. If you want to add a follow task to replace the people you unfollow feel free.
  6. Click Start.

The video is here…

Amazon (& Clickbank) Money

Now there are so many ways to make money from Amazon I barely know where to begin! I guess its best to start with the simpliest methods so we will look at how we can use reviews to make Amazon Money… I should probably say here that this method also works amazingly for other Clickbank and Plimus products.


Basically all you do is write your own review for the product and add it to your blog with a link to the product at the end. However it gets even easier, and I want to introduce you to a new plugin that is an amazing help for Amazon marketing.

  1. Goto your dashboard, and click Plugins.
  2. In the search box enter Amazon and click search.
  3. You want to find the plugin “WordPress-Amazon-Associate” in the list, click install and then activate.
  4. Click goto settings.
  5. Untick the Active box for any amazon sites where you do not have an associate account (or sign up to them as each country has its own affiliate program).
  6. You then need to log into your amazon account. In the left it will have your tracking ID. You need to copy this into the settings for the amazon plugin where it says Associate Tag. Do this for each country you want to support
  7. You then need to goto Amazon Web Services at http://rfurl.net/aws and create a free account. Once you have done this Login.
  8. Click the Account link at the top of the page, and goto Security Credentials. Scroll down to the Access Keys section…
  9. You need to copy the Public Key to the plugin settings page, and then click Show and copy your Secret Key to the Secret Key box on the plugin settings page.
  10. Click Validate Credentials to make sure you have done this right, and then click Update Settings.

The video for this is here:

The Best Books For Technique…

Now we’ve got Amazon configured to work with our site, it is time to put it to good use. Just so long as someone arrives at Amazon after clicking one of our links, we get commission on whatever they buy. The easiest way to do this I find is to add a “Best Books For…” post with some colourful and interesting looking titles from that topic. Also I’ve found when people are searching in general they will use the “best books for” phrase in Google.

For the first post I have chosen to do “Best Books for Coaches”, now lets see how we do this…

  1. Login and goto New Post.
  2. Write a title and an introduction, to what your post is about
  3. Goto Amazon.com, do a search for your subject and find 5 or 6 books that catch your eye.
  4. Now you need to copy the ISBN number, go back to your Post and click the down arrow next to the Amazon Icon, click Product Link.
  5. Click on the Product Search button, enter your ISBN for your book and click Search. Find it in the list and click Select.
  6. You need to change the Link Type to Image, and in Image Size select Medium. If you are happy click Insert.
  7. Next to the image and before the “[/” type the products title.
  8. If you like you can type a review under each product… If not just repeat this for the rest of the products you’ve found.
  9. Write a couple of sentances at the end to finish your post.
  10. Click Publish. Preview your post and make sure your links are working.

The video is here…

Note: This plugin is very very powerful, I recommend that you make a test post or page to test out what the other options are for putting amazon products on your site!

Summary

Day 11 has been a long time coming, I guess I worked too hard over the weekend and made myself ill. I apologise. Today we’ve looked at using content to moneytize the site, and how we can use tweet attacks to unfollow people on twitter.

It feels a long time since I started the challenge, and we now have 5 people earning already just from what they had done until Day 10. Now it is time to ramp it up a notch or two and increase that number, and the amounts involved!

Till Day 12 my friends…
 


Making Money online DAY 3

October 10, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 3: Loose Ends…

We are coming along, just 2 days ago we had nothing, now we have our blog, with 2 pages of unique content. Social Networking accounts ready to use… It’s nearly time to start thinking about money however there are a few loose ends to tie up first.

Today is going be the last day we spend any time doing any major onsite stuff for the next week, and I will introduce a few nifty tricks which I like.

  • How to check Google Indexing
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Site Statistics
  • Youtube video plugin
  • Scheduling Posts

How to check your Google Indexing

One of the most basic things you can do online is to check if your website is included in Google. Generally the more pages you have included in google the more chance there is of gaining traffic.

  1. Goto http://www.google.com
  2. Enter “site:www.yourwebsitedomain.com” into the search box and click search
  3. It’ll tell you how many pages are included on google, or give you nothing found if Google hasn’t found you yet.

This is how it looks for bestfootballgoals.info. I’ve not submitted the site or anything, however I do have a link to the site both from this blog and BHW which may have affected the speed with which it has been indexed.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google has a set of tools which will tell you more about how Google see’s your website, and what Google thinks it is about. Even though you can add multiple websites you own into one Google account I personally will create a new Webmaster tools account for each website. This prevents Google from seeing that a lot of websites are owned by a single person and automatically thinking that they can’t be quality because of this. When you add your website you have to confirm that you own it, and I cover how to do this below.

  1. Goto http://www.google.com/webmaster
  2. Click signup, since we already created a google account when we signed up to youtube we can sign in with this account.
  3. Click Add Site, enter your website address and click Continue.
  4. We need to verify we own the website, google gives us a file to upload however I prefer to cheat (I recommend watching the video here)… Copy the name of the file google gives us.
  5. Goto your cPanel Control Panel and click File Manager, when it loads click Create File, and paste the name google has given you in.
  6. Select the new file in the list and click Code Editor, accept defaults and click Edit.
  7. Go back to the google webmaster tools, click on the download link, click open and copy the contents of the file. Goto the Code Editor and paste the file contents, click Save File. Then click close File Editor.
  8. Go back to google webmaster tools, click the confirm link (number 3 in the list). If it works, go back in the browser and click Verify.
  9. It’ll take a few days for Webmaster Tools to become useful to us, however we can goto the Site Configuration menu, and click Settings. Then we can choose to use the www.sitename.com option in the prefered address format.
  10. The search queries, keywords, crawl stats will all help us in a couple of weeks… For now we are done with Keyword Tools.

Whilst this will be empty to start, Google will start building data on your site over the next few days and it will eventually become awsome for finding new keywords. The video is here:

Site Statistics

It’s always nice to know when you are visited, till now we’ve not had no content so there has been no need. Now we are starting to develop our content it is important that we can track what people like and where they are coming from. The easiest way is the StatPress Visitor plugin which we install now…

  1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins.
  2. Click Add New, enter “StatPress” and click Search.
  3. Find “StatPress Visitor” in the list and click Install Now, and Ok.
  4. Click Activate Plugin.
  5. This adds a new option to our menu called StatPress V, click this.
  6. At the moment you will see it is blank (or 0). From now on each time someone visits your site StatPress will track which pages they look at, where they come from, and what country they are in.

The video is here:
Site Statistics

It’s always nice to know when you are visited, till now we’ve not had no content so there has been no need. Now we are starting to develop our content it is important that we can track what people like and where they are coming from. The easiest way is the StatPress Visitor plugin which we install now…

Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins.
Click Add New, enter “StatPress” and click Search.
Find “StatPress Visitor” in the list and click Install Now, and Ok.
Click Activate Plugin.
This adds a new option to our menu called StatPress V, click this.
At the moment you will see it is blank (or 0). From now on each time someone visits your site StatPress will track which pages they look at, where they come from, and what country they are in.

The video is here:

YouTube Embed Plugin

I like things being simple, and trying to use the embed code that youtube gives us on WordPress is just agony… It hurts badly so I have my favourite alternative, the youtube Embed Plugin which is so simple even a baby could do it!

  1. Log into your WordPress dashboard
  2. Click Plugins, Add New.
  3. Enter “Youtube Embed” and click search. Find Youtube Embed in the list and click Install Now, click Ok.
  4. Click Activate Plugin, goto the Settings menu and click on the YouTube Embed option to configure some of the settings.
  5. In the Style information box enter “text-align:center;” to center the video in the post. Set Show Fullscreen Button to Yes, Show Search Box to No, set Show Annotations to No, and then click Save Changes.
  6. Scroll down to preview how the video will look.
  7. Click Posts, Add New and enter a title and select the appropiate categories.
  8. Search YouTube for a video related to your post title, to include the video in your post you just need to write the Video ID in the code shown in the video below.
  9. Click Publish, and then preview the post to make sure that the video is working.

I love this plugin as it makes YouTube so easy to use, to find out how to include a video in your blog watch the end of the video below for the code to use.

How to Schedule WordPress Posts

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you can just add a years worth of content to your site, and have wordpress publish it automatically throughout the year? Well you can, and we are going write and schedule the next 5 days posts to be published automatically.

  1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  2. Click Posts, Add Post.
  3. Enter the title, write your post as you normally would, and select the category.
  4. In the Publish box next to where it says Publish immediately click the Edit link.
  5. Select tommorow’s date, and a time during the day.
  6. Click Ok, and then click Schedule which will publish the post automatically on the date and time specified.
  7. Do this for 4 more posts so that we have a new post each day until the weekend…

A video demonstration is here…

Summary…

We should now have our blog loaded with 5 articles to be published over the next 5 days. Personally I normally pay an article writer to write these for me (saves me time), however if you are just getting started they are easy enough to write. Today is the last day we will be doing these basic but necessary tasks, tommorow we will be starting to Monetize. We will look at the different options we have for earning money online and how we can tie them into our blog.
 


Making Money online DAY 2 (b.)

October 8, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 2: Getting Social…

Today is a little more interesting, there are several things we need to do including working out a bit more about what our website is about. We are still in the housekeeping phase, however what we do today will set us up well for traffic later…

By the end of todays task you will have:

  • An understanding of why I think Social Networking is important
  • Twitter set up and configured
  • Youtube set up and configured
  • Facebook page set up and configured
  • A list a keywords related to your site
  • Add the first post to your blog

Why I believe Social is important

Over the last few years the use of social networking has changed rapidly, and now everyone and their pet seems to have at least account somewhere on the social net. Major brands now find Facebook so appealing that they even base multi-million dollar TV Advertising Campaigns around people ”Liking” their page on the social network.

However what I consider key (and often overlooked) is that Social is based around human intelligence and interaction. For many years Google and other search engines have tried countless mathematical algorithms to determine the best results to a search query. The number of websites which have links to your website, the types of website that has links to your website, how many blogs meantion your website… All of which could be artifically manipulated.

Now if you picked someone of the street and asked them how they cooked a curry they’d tell ya, no mathematics involved and without being influenced. Its the same on Social networks, I’ll ask what films are good to watch, which is the best garage to use… And my friends will answer me. It fixes the problem of artifical manipulation.

Now all Google needs to do is work out just how to link the two together, in the meantime we can be prepared, and also get shed loads of free traffic. Generally a social network will allow us to link to our website from a page on an authority site and also make other users aware of that page or account.

Twitter Setup and Configuration

Google has already done great things for Twitter, and linked it directly into Google search. If something suddenly gets a lot of attention (Tweets), and someone search for it in google they will be shown the Tweets related to it in the search results!

To get set up to use twitter…

  1. Goto http://twitter.com
  2. Enter your site name, email and a password you want to use and click Sign up
  3. Now play with your username until you get one with good keywords, less than 15 characters long and is avaliable… Your address will be twitter.com/username – Click create my account
  4. Enter the confirmation captcha code and confirm
  5. Now enter your subject/topic into the Search box and click search… Look through the people that are found a click Follow on any people you think are perfect for your niche/topic
  6. Goto the email you used to sign up and open the email from Twitter. Click the link in the email to confirm you own the email address…
  7. Now if you click the down arrow in the top right corner and then click settings we can edit our profile. First thing to change is the Timezone.
  8. Click the profile button of the settings page. Enter a Location (somewhere important to your niche is always good), your website address and a quick description about your site. I usually put “owner of http://website.com” in the end for an extra link as people are curious and will check your website out. Click Save.
  9. Now click the design button of the settings page. Click on a design you like and then click save.
  10. Click the twitter logo on the top left, enter a tweet in the the What’s Happening box and click Tweet to post it to your profile. (The number next to the Tweet button is how many characters you have left for your message).
  11. Now click Profile on the top menu to have a look at how other people will see your profile.

Watch the video demonstration here:

Youtube setup and configuration

Youtube gets so much traffic that even 0.00001% of it would be amazing for us to capture. Also we get our site name and link onto another authority site so it’s all good. Many people are put off by the thought of video, however I will show you later in the series that video is simply for anyone…

Lets get started…

  1. Goto http://www.youtube.com
  2. Click on create account in the top right.
  3. Enter your email, and play with the username until you get one that matches your website. Enter the post code, DOB and click Accept.
  4. Now make up a password, untick the Web History box, and then enter the Captcha.
  5. Now go to your email account and find the email from YouTube, open this and click on the confirmation link inside.
  6. On the confirmation page click the account preferences link, when this page loads click the Profile Setup link on the Left.
  7. Enter a description about your website, and then your website address. Enter a city + hometown important to your niche. Scroll down and enter keywords related to your website in the Intrests box.
  8. Click Save Changes

Watch the video demonstration here…

Facebook Page set up and configured

Probably the monster in the world of social networks, even my friends goldfish has it’s own facebook account! However we are going go for what facebook calls a business registration which means it is seperate from our personal account.


Lets get started…

  1. Goto http://www.facebook.com/pages
  2. Click Create Page
  3. I usually limit myself to the last two options here as they seem to be the least regulated… Pick a category then enter a Page Title, accept the terms and conditions and click Get Started. Enter the Captcha…
  4. Enter in your email address, a password, your DOB and the captcha code. Tick to accept the Terms and Conditions and click Sign up now.
  5. Now goto your email to find the confirmation email from facebook, open this and click the confirmation link. This will take you straight to your new page.
  6. If you have a photo related to your topic/subject, click upload image to add your photo to the page.
  7. Click Edit Page, then click Basic Information on the left menu on the next page.
  8. Enter a sentence into the about box, a quick description and then your website address in the websites box… Click Save Changes.
  9. Click View Page, then on the page menu click Info to see the changes you’ve just made.
  10. Click Wall on the page menu, and write a quick status saying how you are launching a new website and how exciting it is!

Watch the video demonstration here…

Find some keyword ideas related to your site

I’ve never been big on keyword research, I always believe that with quality content traffic will follow. To get started I look at what google expects to find on the website based on the title…

  1. Goto https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  2. Enter your site name and a couple of variations. Do the Captcha and click Search.
  3. Scroll down and set it to show 100 rows.
  4. Click the download button, select the CSV for Excel format and click download. Save the file and when it is downloaded open it.
  5. Google gives us the competition for each keyword on a scale of 0 – 1. If you know how to sort it by this in excel do this and save it for later to make it easy to find the lowest competition keywords.

This will then be used to add posts to the site over the next few days. Watch the video here…

Add your first post to the blog

There’s no point having a site if it has nothing useful on it, the first thing that I will add to a blog is a general post on the subject/niche. And now I have some rough keyword ideas I will be able to write a quick 400-500 word post to get the blog started.

  1. Login to your wordpress and click Posts
  2. Click Add New
  3. Select the categories you want your post to belong to.
  4. Enter a Title, and then write your post below.
  5. You can click Save Draft which lets you come back to it later, or click Publish to make it visible on your blog.
  6. This will automatically ping most of the search engines to tell them that new content has been added… This is good as it encourages them to come find you, instead of you having to go find them.

Video demonstrating this is here…

Summary

Today we have also spent some time laying the groundwork to grow, not only do we have 3 very strong links into our website. We also have a way to engage with an audience, and more important for them to engage with us. I honestly believe that Social Networking is going become crucial to search engine algorithms as it provides easy access to human reviews of websites or ideas. I will cover how we can use these mediums to generate traffic later in the challenge, however now we have the basics done we will start thinking about how we can monetize and profit from our work.
 


Making Money online DAY 2 (a.)

October 8, 2011, by No comments yet

Day -2: Assumptions…

Saying that I will teach you how to make money is fine, and I will. However I have also made some assumptions…

  • I assume you have access to the Internet Every Day so that you can follow each daily task as it happens (somethings may take a while to take effect etc)
  • I assume you are comfortable using a computer and the Internet (I will also be doing video’s to demonstrate some stuff which will help)
  • I assume you want to earn money, you have the patience to follow each task, and that you believe you will earn money.

For this challenge I have used a .info domain name. Many people argue that google does not consider them as important as .com/.net/.org TLD‘s however I believe that it is the content that counts rather than the TLD.

If you already have a domain and hosting you are welcome to use that. If you already have a website there following the techniques here will help you increase your traffic and your income.


If you do not have a domain or hosting I have just brought 100 .info domains with various names and have set up hosting for them. I will give you a domain & hosting absolutely free if you cannot afford your own. I will give instructions on how to get your free domain & hosting first thing tommorow morning.

Other assumptions are simply that you have not been banned from any companies, websites etc.