Bradley Spencer makes WordPress Simple.
Bradley Spencer makes success with WordPress simple. Improve your website or learn how to get more traffic today with a free estimate by email or phone. Or just keep reading below for tips and tricks for WordPress and SEO.
by Bradley on August 18, 2012
Don't be as confused as this pooch about WordPress Backups!
Backing up a WordPress site is very important and very simple, yet many people don’t realize this until it is too late. The intention of this article is to provide a reference for people new to backing up WordPress websites without the bias of pushing a particular backup product. Let’s dive in…
Emergency Blog Recovery?
Before we dive into the reference guide, if you have lost your website and do not have a working backup already then we strongly suggest reaching out to your web host to see if they have a backup handy. Backups from web hosts can be deleted quickly (sometimes within 24 hours) so act quickly.
Reasons to Backup Your WordPress Site
Creating a backup process for your WordPress site can seem unnecessary, so it’s fair to want some compelling reasons to do it.
These are common reasons people make backups, or wish they had made a backup:
1. You upgraded WordPress and now your website is broken
2. You installed a plugin, and now the website is just a white screen
3. You accidently deleted a file, page, post, and it’s gone for good
4. Your site gets infected with a virus and you don’t have a clean backup to revert to
You really don’t want to deal with rebuilding your site when something bad happens, right? So now that you understand the importance of backups, let’s take a look at how to make them. read full article….
by Bradley on June 1, 2012
Rob Ftizpatrick
After writing this post about the 10k Pound Boostrap Challenge, I decided to reach out to Rob Fitzpatrick and see if he’d like to answer a few questions about his project. He was kind enough to agree and below is our conversation:
What made you decide to start this Bootstrap Challenge?
I was spending too much time talking and not enough time building. I was feeling a bit cynical about how I made my money and unexcited about my days, so I decided to get back to products.
As for why I chose to publicise it… So it’s definitely a perk that more people will hear about what I build. Visibility is always good. But at the same time, I just want to leave an honest case study of how it went, regardless of whether I succeed or fail.
Lots of people have bootstrapped successful companies, which usually happens behind closed doors. If I can peel back some of the hand-waving and mysticism about starting a company, then that’s a win. read full article….
by Bradley on May 31, 2012
Google is usually very coy when adressing SEO, so it was really refreshing to see a simply-worded response from Google Employee, John Mueller, about how the search engine uses the sitemap.xml file.
Mueller starts out by explaining what the sitemap file does:
A Sitemap file helps search engines to discover new and updated URLs on your website. In particular, if your website is fairly large, then this can help them to be able to focus on the new & updated content, instead of having to blindly crawl through everything to see if anything has changed. That can result in new content being found much faster, which can be quite noticeable especially if the site is larger or more complex.
None of that information is especially interesting. But it gets a bit more interesting… Read the rest of this article…
by Bradley on May 23, 2012
A captivating new website I’ve been checking out each day is called the 10k Bootstrap Challenge. The website is an online journal written by an entrepreneur living in London who has decided to give himself until his cash reserves are gone (10k Pounds or about 4 months) to build a business that sustains him. Each day he has an update of what he has accomplished and his thoughts from the day.
What makes the website so unique is how very condensed the experience will be.
Plenty of people dream of starting their own web startup, fewer people give startups a try with a big safety net, and then there are the handful of folks like Rob Fitzpatrick (the entrepreneur) who purposefully paint themselves into a corner so their only option is to succeed. It’s truly inspiring to see someone stare the potential of failure directly in the face and keep going. No hedging there!
Check out the 10k Bootstrap Challenge if you are interested in starting your own web business. I think you’ll like it a lot.
by Bradley on February 12, 2012
Have you noticed lately that sometimes the author’s face will show next to a blog post? This post will show you how you can have your own lovely face show next to your website or blog!
We’ve talked about the importance of Click-Thru Rate in the SERPS and Rich Snippets in SEO before, but this is the best tip I’ve had yet for you guys.
I was delighted this morning to see the Search Engine Results Page showing this:
New Search Engine Results Page
See my face next to the Search Result? Now it’s one thing if it shows when people search for you by name. That’s cool but it’s not going to help much because people are already looking for you. What if it showed in a more competitive search? read full article….
by Bradley on February 12, 2012
We are lucky in the US that we are able to use Akismet to help cut down on comment spam and contact form spam. Yesterday, I had an email exchange with a German citizen who isn’t able to use Akismet because of German privacy laws [Correction: This is not against German law, but is a sticky issue because German Citizens' data is held on US servers]. He had to find another way to cut down on all of the contact form spam he was receiving. read full article….
by Bradley on January 16, 2012
I was working with a Squarespace site recently and needed to put some tracking code on the success page after a contact form.
I’m not as familiar with SquareSpace as WordPress and had to write some javascript code to run on a contact form tracking page. Since no PHP was available to write, Eric and I did it strictly in Javascript. Here’s the final code:
<script type="text/javascript">
if ((location.href)=="http:www.yoursite.com/trackingpage") {
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = xxxxxxxx;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "1";
var google_conversion_color = "000000";
var google_conversion_label = "xxxxxxxxxxx";
var google_conversion_value = 0;
/* ]]> */
}
</script>
Naturally you’ll need to change these three values:
- Change http:www.yoursite.com/trackingpage to the exact URL of the transaction URL.
- Replace the xxxxxxxx after google_conversion_id to whatever your actual conversion is is.
- You’ll also need to change xxxxxxxx after google_conversion_label to whatever your actual label is, too.
That’s it! Now this code can be included on every page but will still only trigger on the conversion page.
by Bradley on January 15, 2012
Without the proper protection, comment spam is an absolute nightmare in WordPress. Fortunately, the proper protections are very easy to come by.
As a primer, comment spam is any comment left on your blog that adds nothing to the conversation and was likely mass posted. These comments sometimes look like:
Great post! This makes me really think.
Or something like….
Wow, I couldn’t have said it better myself!
You can spot spam comments because they are usually positive in vibe and could fit just about any blog post. The spammers do this in the hopes that the link behind their name will help their website rank better. So if you aren’t sure if the comment is spam, a good way to tell is to look at where their name links to. If it looks fishy, then you’ve got a spam commenter on your hands. read full article….
by Bradley on January 12, 2012
Google released a breakdown of thirty changes to their search algorithm on January 5th. If you didn’t make it to the bottom of the list, you missed something special:
Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename “old possum”, project codename “Skip Redirect”] Many websites redirect smartphone users to another page that is optimized for smartphone browsers. This change uses the final smartphone destination url in our mobile search results, so you can bypass all the redirects and load the target page faster.
In other words, if Google sees you are searching from a mobile device, they’ll send you directly to the mobile version (if there is one) of a website first. This is huge news if you really think about the logistics behind this change. This change means…
- Google is taking note of websites with mobile versions of their website.
- Google acknowledges that mobile users prefer a mobile version of a website. (How long will it be before websites with a mobile version will get a boost in rankings for mobile users?)
- Google sees a future in mobile and is preparing for it already.
I think little changes like the algorithm change above, and the new
How To GoMo initiative by Google are hints of what’s to come with Mobile. It’s exciting to see the avalanche begin, especially since I’m working on a
DIY mobile builder. Finally, as an SEO, it’s exciting to find a potential leg up on competitors by having a mobile website.
What do you think? Do you think Mobile is going to take off? Do you have a mobile version of your website?
by Bradley on September 30, 2011
by Bradley on July 5, 2011
Found some better code to pull your latest tweet:
<?php
$username='thatbradleyguy'; // set user name
$format='json'; // set format
$tweet=json_decode(file_get_contents("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/{$username}.{$format}")); // get tweets and decode them into a variable
echo $tweet[0]->text; // show latest tweet
?>
by Bradley on June 30, 2011
I love RackSpace but was frustrated by how hard it was to set up automated backups for WordPress. If you find yourself in the same boat, I’d really suggest checking out Automated Cloud Site backups.
And if you are frustrated by your current webhost, I’d really suggest you try RackSpace. They are awesome, knowledgable, and have amazing uptime.
by Bradley on May 16, 2011
There are 2 excellent new web applications I came across recently that solve real problems. They are:
PintPay.com:
Pintpay is a payment processor that is beautiful, easy to use, and is very inexpensive. I’ve been looking for something like this for a new service I’ll be launching soon. Charging a monthly recurring fee was starting to look like a huge project before PintPay came around. Two thumbs up!
Help Scout:
I absolutely love LightHouse for working in groups. The idea of using tickets to communicate really jives with my GTD mentality. So when the makers of Lighthouse released TenderApp (basically a public-facing ticketing system), I was in heaven. But until we have enough customers that we need to pay for TenderApp, Help Scout has a free option that is simple to set up and quite lovely.
Both of these have simplified my life. I hope they do the same for you.
by Bradley on March 31, 2011
One of my favorite parts of starting a new project is choosing a domain name. You want it to be memorable, maybe have a few keywords, and be something you are able to stick with for a few years.
A new plugin for WordPress lets you (and your readers) search for available domain names right from your sidebar. The plugin is called Domain Name Search.
read full article….
by Bradley on March 14, 2011
A typical SXSW panel
All the hype that SXSW Interactive gets is well deserved. Or at least that’s my opinion after spending the last 4 days here.
It’s been a very inspiring few days. I’m really excited to get home and put some of the things I’ve learned to use.
Steve Blank is responcible for my favorite panel this week. The slides he used are here, though I doubt you’ll get 1% of the experience. Sorry.
The gist of Steve’s presentation is that a new tech bubble is underway. Based on the variety of startups with silly amounts of investment I’ve seen this week I’d have to agree. He said that the rules are different in a tech bubble, and this bubble is different than the ones that preceded it. Check out the slide deck to see the rest.
Most of my assertions about conferences based on Affiliate Summit didn’t end up being true of SXSW. Overall I think SXSW is a way better conference and would suggest you go if you get a chance.
by Bradley on March 5, 2011
A suggestion for recovering from burnout from the lat Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman:
Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference. I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Read more here…
by Bradley on March 3, 2011
That's my kind of farm!
I’d like to contribute my personal two cents to the hot topic of the last week: Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Change.
The Background:
Google makes algorithm changes a few times per week. Usually their effects are pretty small, but this latest change was relatively big. Google makes a big show of it and lots of webmasters feel wrongly targetted.
But why should this algorithm change be any more public than the others?
I believe Google intended to make a big public statement with this change. It was a PR move as much as an algorithm change. There have been grumblings over the last few months that Google’s results are bad and getting worse. The allegation is that SEO’s are building pages specifically to rank high, and they are doing so successfully. The grumblings got loud enough that Google’s Search Quality group stepped in and made some comments.
The Algo Change:
So Google made a big scene with a ‘Content Farm’ algo change. The search results shift and push ‘content farms’ out of the top rankings.
What exactly is a content farm anyways? We might want to define ‘content farm‘ because good SEO writing looks surpringly similar to what everyone is calling a content farm.
SEOBook.com make an excellent point about the similarity between content farms and all other SEO writing:
“a lot of SEO content in not that different, and any algorithm that targets Demand Media’s [an alleged content farm] content isn’t going to see any difference. Keyword traffic stream identical to title tag? Yep. A couple of hundred words? Yep. SEO format? Yep. Repeats keywords and keyword phrases a few times? Yep.”
What makes these guys a content farm and the rest of us just followers of Search Engine best practices? Is it funding? Our SE ranking success? At what point does a ‘well-SEO’d site’ turn into a content farm? read full article….
by Bradley on February 28, 2011
Updated Code Here!
Many thanks to Nick Heer and his code for using php to pull your most recent tweet.
Unfortunately my host does not all File_Got_Contents() so that left me with curl:
<?php
$username = "thatbradleyguy";
$feed = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:" . $username . "&rpp=1";
function parse_feed($feed) {
$stepOne = explode("<content type=\"html\">", $feed);
$stepTwo = explode("</content>", $stepOne[1]);
$tweet = $stepTwo[0];
$tweet = htmlspecialchars_decode($tweet,ENT_QUOTES);
return $tweet;
}
//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();
//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $feed);
//Execute the fetch
$twitterFeed = curl_exec($ch);
//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);
//$twitterFeed = file_get_contents($feed);
echo('"'.parse_feed($twitterFeed).'"');
?>
by Bradley on February 17, 2011
I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to call phpBay from a theme file rather than by using the shortcode. After sending a quick email over to the developer, he eventually gave me this code which works like a charm:
<!-- start of ebay-->
<!--?php $text='[phpbay]"", "", "", ""[/phpbay]'; echo phpBayPro($text) . ""; ?-->
<!-- end of ebay -->
I hope this helps anyone else who is trying to figure this out.
