The Web Host Advisor

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems today. Because of this there are some people who want to hack into your website and use it for their purposes.

So how do you prevent people from hacking into your WordPress web site?

You will need to stay ahead of the hackers. They keep up to date on the latest versions of software. They constantly learn new ways of getting around the blocks you put into place. They are motivated by profit. Understanding who you are fighting is half the battle.

The other half of the battle is doing the things you can now and then improving your plan as new information becomes available.

Here are 6 Tips to Make WordPress More Secure

1. The first thing to do is make sure you are using a user ID other than admin.
2. You will need to create a unique user ID and give that user admin privileges. Make sure you use a unique, hard to guess password. Passwords must contain:
• A mixture upper and lower case letters
• Should include at least one number. Repeating the same number can add extra security.
• Should include other characters such as @#$%^&*_-+= in your password
• Must be at least 6 characters long, preferably 8. The longer the password the hard it is to guess
• Do not use birthdays or names in your password. This is one of the one common things people use in passwords.
3. You will need to delete the admin user ID. The admin user id is used to create new users, manage WordPress and provide all the security of the WordPress system. Hackers know that most installations keep the default admin user id and use that weakness to hack into your system. They have a valid user ID, now all they need to do s guess the password
4. Always make sure your version of WordPress is up to date. The older versions do have some security holes that have been fixed. Most web hosts will alert you to updates as they become available. If you are hosting WordPress yourself check on wordpress.com for updates regularly.
5. Backup your WordPress database regularly. There are several plugins that will do this automatically for you. Install them and use them. Keep you backups in a safe location and copy them to CDs on a regular basis. You can never be too careful.
6. Prevent search engines from indexing your admin area of WordPress. You can do this by add this line to your robots.txt file

Disallow: /wp-*

For more tips on WordPress go to The Web Host Advisor main page

When you are looking for a small business web host you may run into several different options. One of the options is what operating system runs on the web server. The two most common operating systems for small businesses are Windows and Linux.

Why choose Linux for small business web hosting?

Linux is an open source operating system. This means it can be downloaded, installed and copied to as many computers as you want for free. The web server, Apache, the most popular database, MySQL and the most popular scripting language, PHP are also free to download and install.

This means that you can setup a web Linux server very cheaply. Linux is very versatile and stable. There are also many tools that have been developed to make Linux very easy to manage, such as cPanel.  CPanel isolates the end user (that would be you as a small business owner using a webhost), from the operating system. Most of what you need to do is point and click for most tasks. Your job is made very easy.

Why choose Windows for small business web hosting?

Why run Windows on your web server if Linux is so efficient and cheap? There are applications that cannot be run on a Linux server such as asp.NET. These can only be run on w Windows web server.

Since there are versions of MySQL and PHP for Windows servers, they can do whatever a Linux server can do. Many technicians are certified in Microsoft Windows. There are many companies that only use Windows servers. Even WordPress can be installed on a Windows web server.

So which one is best?

Linux is the more cost effective operating system. In theory this cost savings is translated to the customer. You save money by choosing a Linux web server for you small business website.

If you will be developing websites using asp.NET you will need to choose a Windows web server for your small business website.

The easiest way to choose a web host for your small business is to choose the features and options you want and need. Don’t worry about what the operating system is. Find the best rated web host that offers the options you want and sign up with them.

To find the best small business web host for your needs please visit our home page. You will find tips and advice to help you make the right choice

WordPress gives you so much versatility in designing your pages and posts you are limited only by your imagination. Adding images and managing them can be difficult at times. This is why I use a WordPress plugin to help me.

I have used many different image management WordPress plugins over the year. The best WordPress plugin for images is NextGEN Gallery.

NextGEN Gallery is a fully integrated Image Gallery WordPress plugin with dozens of options and features.

If you’re looking for a plugin designed for all your image needs, NextGEN Gallery is your answer. Why?

• You can create a gallery of images to be displayed.
• You can create a slideshow using flash.
• You can also display your images in an image browser.
• You can even display a single image.
• It is easy to use
• There are lots of options
• It is well designed
• The author is constantly working on it to make it better

Using NextGEN gallery

Define a Gallery

After you have installed the NextGEN Gallery plugin into WordPress you will need to define a gallery. This is done by selecting the Gallery option in the WordPress menu and then selecting add Gallery/Images.

Give the new gallery a name and click add gallery.

Add Images to your Gallery

Next you will need to add images. This can be done by selecting the upload image tab. On this tab first select the gallery you want to add the images to from the drop down box.

You can then press the select files button.

Hold down the ctrl key while you  click on multiple images. This way you can add as many images as you want and they don’t need to be right next to each other in the file list.

Add Images or Galleries to your Page or Post

NextGEN Gallery creates an icon on your menu bar when you are in visual mode while editing or creating a page or post. Click this icon.

A dialogue box appears allowing you to choose your gallery, album or image. On the Gallery screen you have the option of selecting and Image List, Slideshow or Imagebrowser.

Select the option you want and the correct code is entered into your page or post to display your gallery.

Here are some examples

A Slide Show

An Image List

[Show as slideshow]

An Imagebrowser

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If you have had any visitors at all to your website you probably have had some spam comments posted. How do you reduce or eliminate spam from your comments?

What is spam?

Spam is commenting on blogs to get URLs posted on legitimate sites in order to increase the Google rankings of their sites. This can be done manually or automatically by using bots.

Bot is short for robot. A bot is a program that posts comments automatically.

Almost always the comment adds no value to the post and includes links to get rich quick schemes or something like that.

There are several different ways to reduce spam on your website.

• Blog Settings – In WordPress under the settings screen, choose discussion.
• You can choose whether people are allowed to post comments.
• You may want to require your users to be registered or logged in to post.
• Most importantly, check off the “An administrator must always approve the comment” checkbox.
• You should check off the “Comment author must fill out name and e-mail ” checkbox
• If you have followed these guidelines you will need to approve all comments.
  • Spam comments always include URLs. If they look funny (i.e. http://tinyurl.com/7eqw4uj) delete the comment.
  • The email address may also look strange (i.e. Tom.JJ@googlemail.com). Delete these comments as well.
  • The message will often just include praise, but have no substance such as “I love your post.” Delete these comments.
  • When in doubt mark it as spam and delete

• Use a plugin such as Akismet
• Akismet is WordPress plugin that is installed by default. It does an excellent job of marking comments as spam. You can then delete them or approve them.

• Use a plugin to implement CAPTCHA such as Blue Captcha.
• CAPTCHA adds a box on your comment form that requires people to enter the characters that they see on the screen in order to be able to post the comment.
• This is an excellent defense against bots. Bots are not able to read these characters so it stops them dead.
• The downside to CAPCTHA is that most human users find it really annoying.

• Place a hidden field on your form using Javascript or CSS.
• Bots usually just look at the code of your form. They do not check to see if the field is visible or not. So they will fill out the field with some kind of information.
• Check this field to see if it is empty. If it is most likely the commenter is human.
• This requires some knowledge of coding.

All of these methods work to some degree. Akismet is the easiest to implement and does an excellent job. Most of all it is free. I have changed the comments options in my settings to reduce some of the spam and also to force me to moderate all comments before they are posted. I also use Akismet.

For more information on customizing WordPress visit our other WordPress pages by clicking here. There are also a WordPress plugins page here.

Free Vs Paid Web Hosting

If I can get my website hosted for free why would I pay to have it hosted? It seems like a straight forward question, but the answer is anything but simple.

First we must understand what you get and don’t get with free hosting. Most free web hosting providers give you enough space for a fairly small sized website. This is enough for some small businesses.

Then you usually get some kind of webpage creator software that lets you fill in the blanks and it creates the pages for you. Who wouldn’t want that? It’s the best of point and click. Google does a great job with their implementation.

Many free web hosting services don’t even force you to host their advertising. By this I mean that there are many that force you to have their banner across the top advertising whatever they want on your website. More and more, free web hosting sites are doing away with this.

This all sounds great doesn’t it? Why would anyone pay for web hosting?

What do you get with paid web hosting?

1. The first and most important thing you get with paid web hosting is your own domain name. Most people know what a domain name is, but may not realize it.

A domain name is the name you type in to get to the website. For Google it is google.com. Microsoft has microsoft.com. You have been typing domain names ever since you opened a browser for the first time.

Your domain name is your brand on the internet. This makes you look professional to your customers. It gives you credibility with the search engines. We all know that people go to search engines like Google to find websites. Without people coming to your website it does nothing but look pretty.

Free web hosting companies provide you with a URL that looks more like http://sites.google.com/site/testsite/. This is the URL that Google Sites would create for you if you wanted to call you website testsite. As you can see Google gets its name first.

Most paid web hosting companies provide you with a free domain name for the life of your website, or as long as you host it with them. Free is good, right? Right!

This is not the only thing you get with paid web hosting:

2. You also get more space,

3. More reliability,

4. Excellent customer service and support,

5. Versatility in what you can do,

6. Unlimited email addresses,

7. And the ability to have many more people connected to your website at the same time, this is called increased bandwidth.

I think the best thing is the support that you get with paid web hosting. I host my website with BlueHost. They have phone support 24/7. The people who answer the phone are among the brightest people in the industry. They are responsive, intelligent, available and professional.

I have broken my website on more than one occasion because of my own negligence. I reluctantly called support and they were able to help me in just a few minutes. It’s nice to have that safety net when you really need it.

Paid web hosting provides you with the versatility to do whatever you want to do with your website. Do you want to create a blog? They have point and click options for that such as WordPress. Do you want an ecommerce website to sell your products? They have all the tools you need.

Why would anyone pay for web hosting? Because they are in business, they love what they do and care about how their customers perceive them. They want to look as good on the internet as they do in person.

If you want the most professional website you can afford signup for BlueHost today. They are offering their services for only $4.95 per month for a limited time. See for yourself by clicking here.

A database is a collection of information. Data is information. It can be names, addresses, locations of other information such as URLs. This website uses a database to store all the information you see, including the links.

A database management system is a piece of software that allows you to communicate with the database. The database is just the information stored in a computer in some structured file or files.

The database management system used on this website is MySQL. Other examples of database management systems are PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL server, Microsoft Access, Oracle, IBM DB2 and SQLite.

A database is useless without a database management system. It is just information sitting in files on your computer. A book is useless if you can’t read it.

Why is it important to know about databases for a small business website?

Choosing the web hosting service provider for your small business involves evaluating what needs you have. For instance, you will need to be sure that you have MySQL if you will be using WordPress. There are many web hosts that provide multiple options for database management systems.

Before you decide which web hosting company to go with you really need to sit down and decide what you plan on using the web host for. Will you be using it for a blog? Will you be using it as a way to advertise online specials? Will your website be your only form of business such as selling eBooks?

BlueHost provides MySQL and PostgreSQL. BlueHost is the web hosting company that I use to host this website and others. I chose BlueHost because they offer more options for content management systems than I can ever need. This means I can grow as my needs grow.

I can begin with something fast and simple like WordPress and progress up to a very complex website using Drupal. There are applications for education websites such as Moodle or help centers using Help Center Live. They even offer website builders such as Weebly or eCommerce applications such as OpenCart.

BlueHost is the best small business web host available today.

For a limited time you can sign up for only $4.95 per month!! See for yourself.

What is bandwidth and why is it important to you when choosing a small business web host?

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information you can communicate at a given time. What I mean by this on a website is how much information your visitor can get all at once. This also means how many visitors can come to your small business website at the same time

In the old days of using dial up modems the bandwidth was 56 kilobytes per second. Many businesses today use a T1 line. A T1 line has a bandwidth of 1.544 megabits per second. A very large corporation may use an OC3 line. An OC3 line has a bandwidth of 155 megabits per second.

What does bandwidth translate into for your visitors?

It is speed of downloading your web pages and pictures.

Many web hosts confuse bandwidth with their monthly transfer statistic. You will usually have to dig to find out more about bandwidth.

BlueHost claims to have unlimited file transfer per month. This means that as long as your visitors can get to (Bluehost is up 99.9% of the time)  your small business website they can download all the information they want.

BlueHost uses an OC-192 as their backbone. An OC192 can transfer 9.6 gigabits per second. This is about 9,000 times more information than a T1.

This bandwidth is shared among all the websites hosted by BlueHost. Speed is especially important to BlueHost’s business and ecommerce customers.  Those customers need bandwidth solutions that can handle high volumes of traffic.  They need websites that load quickly and that are accessible as close to 100% of the time as possible.

BlueHost has responded well to their customer’s needs for a fast and reliable network at an affordable price. This is why I chose to host my website with BlueHost and continue to stay with them. To find out more about why I chose BlueHost click here.

BlueHost is the best web host for small business websites. Click here to sign up today.

Disk space is a term used to describe how much information you can store on a computer. When you are considering a web host you will want enough space to store all the information you want on your website.

Most web hosting providers will quote the amount of disk space that you will have in Gigabytes. So how big is a gigabyte?

About 114 minutes of uncompressed CD-quality audio can be stored in 1 gigabyte.

Most web pages are very small. They are usually measured in kilobytes.  A page out of an encyclopedia will be about 10 kilobytes. There are 1 million kilobytes in 1 gigabyte. You could store 100,000 pages of an encyclopedia in 1 gigabyte.

Most images, or pictures that you will see on the internet are less than 1 megabyte. There are 1,000 megabytes in 1 gigabyte.

A 1024×1024 pixel image with 256 colors is about 1 megabyte. Most images on web pages are much smaller. The images on most of my posts are about 300 X 200 pixels or less. These files are less than a third of a megabyte.

I can store about 3,000 high quality images in 1 gigabyte.

You will need to look at what type of information you will provide on your web page. If you will only be providing web pages and images you will be fine with 20 gigabytes.

If you plan on providing high quality videos you will want as much space as you can afford. Another option for providing videos is to use Youtube.com to host your videos. They are free and almost everyone knows them. You can also embed your videos in your web page so that people do not leave your website to view the videos.

Many shared server web hosts provide unlimited disk space. Bluehost is one example of this.

To find out more about the offerings of various web hosts visit my web hosting review page by clicking here.

In short the answer is yes. The key to hosting more than one application on your website is to install them into 2 different directories. Moodle and WordPress are applications that can be installed on many websites using simplescripts.

BlueHost provides a very simple interface for installing your applications.

By default WordPress gets installed into your root html directory. This means that when a person visits your site they will see your WordPress managed website. So when they type www.yoursite.com into their browser they will be connected to WordPress on your site.

You can change this default behavior when you install WordPress. You will need to install WordPress into a different directory such as myblog. So for people to see your WordPress website they will need to type in www.yoursite.com/myblog. You can also provide links to this site from your other pages.

In the same way Moodle, by default will be installed in the root html directory. You can also install Moodle into another directory when you install it such as classes. Then your visitors will need to type in www.yoursite.com/classes to see your Moodle website. You can also provide links to this site from other pages.

Moodle was originally developed by Martin Dougiamas to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative. Moodle is very similar to a learning management system. Moodle can be used in many types of environments such as in education, training and development, and business settings.

WordPress is the easiest and most popular blog software available today. A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. This website is a good example of a blog.

WordPress has just released a new version (December 12 2011), 3.3. It has been named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt. Before you upgrade you may be interested in some of the new features. While it is always a good idea to be running the most recent version of WordPress, there are five great reasons to upgrade to this version as soon as you can.

All of these reasons can be seen in the administration screens and will make you job of updating much faster and easier.

Uploading files is easier.

There is no longer a different icon for each type of file you want to upload. There is only one. The system detects the type of file that is being uploaded and creates the correct code to insert it into the post.

You can now drag files from your desktop into the media uploader. You can add files one at a time or many at once. This speeds things up for most of us who already drag and drop in most applications.

Menus have been updated.

When you allow your mouse to hover over the menu on the left side a flyout menu appears. This improves speed of navigation quite a bit. There is no need to click and wait and then click and wait.

The header and menu bar have been combined and streamlined. What this means is the system is faster and more efficient. When you hover over an item in the header you will see other available options.

The way WordPress deals with permalinks has been improved.

Up until this release it has been necessary to use a numeric value as the first value in your permalinks. WordPress has improved the way they deal with permalinks so that you can use postname. This makes your post names search engine and SEO friendly. In the past this caused a performance issue with larger sites.

WordPress 3.3 makes working in the admin screens faster and easier than before. It has also been tested with many of the most most popular plugins and themes. Today is a great day to upgrade. Remember to make a backup before you upgrade.

For more information on small business websites click here.

What are the top 3 open source content management systems?

The top three Content Management Systems open source are Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. All three are very established, have many features that make it simple and convenient to enter information and are extremely dependable.

Open Source means that they are free of charge and the source code for the software is included. This means you can modify the way the programs work. Since they are open source there are many people using these systems and developing supporting applications to enhance the basic installations.

All three of these are easy to setup on a web server. Most web hosts provide them as options to install free of charge. It’s as easy as point and click. They begin to set themselves apart when you look at ease of use and their ability to create very complex websites

WordPress

WordPress is by far the easiest to use out of the three. The interface is simpler and follows the way many people think. If you will be creating a website yourself and don’t have a lot of HTML experience then WordPress is the choice for you. Especially if your website is relatively small, less than 300 pages.

There are many predefined graphic themes available to customize the look and feel of your website. To find our more about the best small business WordPress theme click here. Updating and editing text and images is very easy. There are also many plugins or add-ons to enhance the basic functions of WordPress. To find out more about WordPress plugins click here.

Joomla

Joomla is a close second on ease of use, but is not as intuitive as WordPress. It does provide better search engine optimization options right out of the box and provides better security than WordPress. WordPress would require a plugin to equal Joomla in both these areas. It is better at creating more complex websites than WordPress, but not as well as Drupal.

There is a steep learning curve with Joomla in learning how to use the menus and how the structure and content work together. Once you’ve got it Joomla provides a very well organized environment that is able to create some fairly complex websites.

You will need to be more of a techy to create a website with Joomla, than WordPress.

Drupal

Drupal is not as user friendly as either Joomla or WordPress. It is the best out of the three options for creating different structural types of websites. It is very flexible and well built for more complex websites. If you will be having a large website that needs quite a bit of flexibility in structure than Drupal is your choice.

Most people will want to hire a consultant who is familiar with Drupal to set it up and configure it for their particular needs. There are a huge number of options in the configurations screens that can be overwhelming to the beginner.

Which CMS is best for you?

That depends on your needs, your resources and your abilities. For a relatively small website that you will be creating and maintaining WordPress is the best choice. For a very complex website that will be developed by a consultant then Drupal is the best choice. For the small business owner who loves technology, needs a complex website and is able to learn new technologies quickly, Joomla is the right choice.

To find out more about small business websites click here.

Comments in WordPress are where your visitors have an opportunity to talk with you. Comments are one of the most important aspects of blogs. Some website owners don’t allow comments at all; some invite all comments and are very active.

Why should I allow people to comment on my website?

Comments are the place you build relationships. People go out of their way to post a comment on your website. As you respond to their questions and suggestions you build relationships. This is what your main objective is with a small business website, build relationships.

Comments also show involvement. It is an indication that people visiting your website want to be involved in what you are doing.

How do I get people to comment?

The easiest way to get people to do anything is by asking them. In your posts ask people to make comments. When people do make comments thank them and respond to their questions. Everyone wants to be valued. When you respond you are showing that they are of value to you.

Your writing style can also encourage or discourage comments. If you write in a way that engages your readers to respond they will. What do you think?

How do I keep people involved?

One way is to encourage people to subscribe to your blog feed. There is a widget that comes with the Jetpack plugin that allows visitors to subscribe via email. This is very useful for keeping people engaged. Subscribe to my blog here!

How do I show my comments in a nested threaded format?

Nesting and threading are features that were introduced in WordPress version 2.7. You most likely have at least this version. Your theme will need to be thread enabled in order to show your comments in threaded and nested format.

Threading and nesting allows you to show comments and replies to those comments. The replies are added immediately below the comment and are indented.

If you are experienced in modifying your theme files you can add threading to your comments by modifying your comments.php file. You will need to modify above the line that reads

<?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

Here is a section of code that will create nesting of comments and also alternating shading

<?php if ( have_comments()) : ?>

<h3 id=”comments”><?php comments_number(‘No Responses’, ‘One Response’, ‘% Responses’ );?> to &#8220;<?php the_title(); ?>&#8221;</h3>

<div class=”navigation”>

<div class=”alignleft”><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>

<div class=”alignright”><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>

</div>

<ol class=”commentlist”>

<?php wp_list_comments(); ?>

<div class=”navigation”>

<div class=”alignleft”><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>

<div class=”alignright”><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>

</div>

<?php

/* Changes every other comment to a different class */

$oddcomment = ( empty( $oddcomment ) ) ? ‘class=”alt” ‘ : ”;

?>

</ol>

Your code may look different than this. Remember to make a backup of your comment.php file before making any changes. Do not modify this file if you are unsure of how to do a backup. Have someone help you.

Conclusion

Small business website owners need to engage their visitors by encouraging comments on their blog. The more involved your visitors are the more likely they will be to return to your website. The more they return to your website the more opportunities you have to develop a relationship with them. This is why you have a website, to build relationships.

WordPress plugins are great ways of extending the way that WordPress works. Plugins can make your website more secure or spam free. Do plugins affect anything else other than what they are advertised to address?

The answer is a resounding YES. How do I know?

How to determine what the problem is

For the past day I have been trying to fix a problem with my website. My comments have been password protected, so that nobody but me can post a comment. This is not what I wanted. So what was wrong?

I had installed a few different plugins to try to take care of some spam that I have gotten in my comments. One of them was Spam, Free WordPress. They claim 100% accuracy. I can tell you that I did not receive any spam while this was installed.

I also did not receive any comments, but thought nothing of it. Then I finally got curious. I tried entering a comment and I got a message telling me to hit back and input a password. There was no place to enter a password.

I knew something was wrong, but what? After many trials and errors, I was still no closer to a solution. Then I thought about all those nice plugins. Could one of them be the problem?

How to approach the problem logically

I went to my plugin page and looked at all my installed plugins. I targeted 3 plugins. I deactivated the first plugin, logged out of WordPress and tried to enter a comment on one of my posts. I still got the error.

Finally I got to Spam Free WordPress, deactivated it, logged out and entered a comment on a post. Bingo! My comment was accepted.

Conclusion

What have I learned from my experience? Plugins have affects that they do not intend to have. Free plugins are worth what you pay for them. Always test a plugin before using it live. Do more research before installing a plugin.

Professional WordPress by Hal Stern, David Damstra and Brad Williams is a great book for people wanting to know more about what goes on behind the scenes in WordPress. If you are anything like me, you have been asking yourself how can I use WordPress to take my website to the next level. This book will help you to see the possibilities of where you can go and how to get there.

To get more information or to buy now on Amazon.com

Managing, Adding, Upgrading, and Using the Theme Editor

WordPress uses themes to define the look and feel of your website. There is a whole chapter devoted to installing themes, customizing themes and creating themes. It takes you from what a theme is to the intricacies of formatting the pages to create a professional website. A beginner will find useful tips and the more advanced user will find guidance in creating their own themes.

Crafting a User Experience

Once you have your website up and going a person visits your site you will want to provide them with an easy to navigate, content rich and pleasant website. This chapter focuses on how to deliver a consistent website through using standards; mobile standards, HTML standards, and security standards. It provides guidance on how to ensure a secure site for your peace of mind, how to provide a site that mobile users can access and one that can be viewed in just about any browser available.

What is covered in this book

• Creating and Managing Content
• Categorizing Your Content
• Working with Media
• Comments and Discussion
• Working with Users
• Managing, Adding, Upgrading, and Using the Theme Editor
• Working with Widgets
• Adding and Managing New Plugins
• Configuring WordPress
• Installing a Theme
• Creating Your Own Theme
• How and When to Use Custom Page Templates
• Getting Your Site Found

To get further details or to buy now on Amazon.com

Customer reviews

Professional WordPress is a very well-organized and written book that will help most WordPress website owners. I found 29 reviews as of the writing of this review that give this book a 4.3 out of 5 stars. The reviews are mostly positive. However, one reviewer pointed out that “the book is almost unusable as a reference, because the index.” I am not sure if this book was designed to be a reference manual.
Another reviewer said “I like this book a lot, because it provides a good introduction to most of WordPress, while keeping a good balance between basic and advanced.” It is a well-balanced book that just about anyone can benefit from.

To buy now on Amazon.com

In summary, if you are looking for a book to help you take your website from average to shining then this book will provide the tools you need. It is well worth the investment

People coming to your WordPress website are looking for answers to questions. Your small business website must be able to provide these answers and lead them to more information to engage them further. Widgets are one way to help you do this.

Most WordPress themes make use of sidebars. Sidebars are the narrow columns to the left or right of your blog posts. Each section in the sidebar is known as a “Widget” that you can add or remove, and move up or down. A widget is a feature that can be added to some WordPress themes that are enabled to use them.

You add or delete a widget through the WordPress appearance menu, then select widget. The widgets that are available are all those that you have installed. Some plugins create widgets. Jetpack is one of the most common plugins that creates several widgets. There are also many widgets that are available by default in a standard installation of WordPress

Various types of widgets

• Archive – displays an archive for each month that has a post entry.
• Category – displays a list of categories that you have defined for your posts. With the current version of jetpack you can display the number of posts in each category.
• Links – displays a list of links separated by the categories that you have defined
• Pages – displays a link to each page you have defined
• Recent Posts – displays a list of the blogs most recent posts.
• Search – display a search box to search your blog pages
• Text – this is used to enter HTNL, javascript or just plain text.
• RSS – displays an RSS feed

You can choose whichever widgets you want to use. Many of them have options that you can configure. Widgets can be used more than once. This is helpful if you have more than one sidebar. They allow you to fully customize the look and feel of your website to fit your needs.

Highlight: Blog Subscription Widget from Jetpack

This widget adds an email form to allow people to subscribe to your blog. When people sign up they can then manage their subscription through email.

Once this widget is added to your sidebar you can configure the title of the widget, optional text to help your visitors to know what to do, the text that will appear on the button and whether you want to show a total of the number of people who are subscribing. Once you have defined these you will need to save your changes by pressing the save button

People who have signed up will receive an email with any posts that are added to your blog. They can manage their subscription by using a link at the bottom of the page.  You can define how often you receive emails and also unsubscribe from the subscription.

The nice thing about this new widget for your visitors is that they can manage multiple subscriptions from this one service. WordPress is providing more and more features that make webmaster’s lives easier and more productive. They are also making the internet easier for visitors to maintain control over their viewing

WordPress Widgets make your visitors experience easier and more engaging. They provide you with a way to engage the people who visit your website.

One of the most neglected pages on many small business websites is the about page. Many business owners don’t know what the purpose of these pages is, or what they can be used for. I hope after reading this article you will see that this is a vital part of your well organized web presence.

What should you include on your about page?

There are 4 basic questions you need to include on your about page.

1. Who you are
2. What is your expertise
3. What problem or concern of your visitors are you able to solve
4. How can they contact you and what is their next step

Hopefully in answering these questions you will be able to express what the purpose of your website is. It is amazing how many about pages do not answer this question. Many about pages say nothing about the website.

You need to include information about the people who are responsible for the website or the business. The internet is about connections. If you are not making connections with real people you are failing at creating a good website. You need to include your accomplishments.

You must address the need that will be met by anyone who visits your website on your about page. How can they add value to their life by coming to your website? You need to be specific about how you will meet those needs.

You also must have a way for people to contact you. Email is the way we communicate on the internet. The least you must have is a way for people to email you or possibly sign up for your newsletter or blog. Links to your social networking pages are also becoming indispensable.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkdIn are all standards in the business world. If you have a page on these sites it is a great way to stay in contact. You will also want a way to post your blog entries to these sites are part of our web presence plan.

Copy blogger is one of my favorite about pages. http://www.copyblogger.com/about/ It addresses all of these issues.

Most of all, your about page must tell your visitors why your website is different from every other website. It must be factual and truthful.

Here are some other examples of About Us pages:

http://www.tschmeisser.com/about

http://www.markmcgall.com/me.shtml

I have been asked several times how to make your WordPress website more secure. I have provided a few articles describing ways to do that. One of the ways that I have not mentioned is by using  WordPress Plugin. There are many that claim to be the best, but only one of them have I found to be the best.

WebsiteDefender WordPress Security – WordPress is easy to use and very popular, but there are some security issues you need to be aware of. This plugin scans your site and provides you with advice on how to make your website more secure.

One of the best features that I found is the ability to rename all the table prefixes in the database without affecting your ability to get into the database. This ensures your visitors are not interrupted from viewing your website. Why would you need to rename your table prefixes?

Hackers use this technique called SQL injection to gain access to your database. They know the names of the tables in WordPress and can get around the password protection built into WordPress using this technique. Renaming the tables makes it more difficult for them to perform their dirty work.

The changes that are recommended are very useful. Some of them are more advanced and will take more planning. Some of them should only be undertaken by an experienced web developer. Most of the tips are easy, straightforward and done through their interface or through File Manger.

An added feature is the ability to monitor your website. You will need to sign up for their monitoring, which is free. They monitor security risks and availability of your server. They email you when there is a risk detected. This provides peace of mind.

You can find out more about them at:

http://www.websitedefender.com/

To find out what the best small business web hosting provider is click here

Transferring files from your PC to your web has needs to be done using some utility such as an FTP program. Your web hosting provider should provide several options for you.

I use Bluehost to host my website. Bluehost provides cPanel as the interface for managing my web server. In cPanel I can do everything I need to do on my web server including uploading files and managing the files on my web server.

Here is a video describing how to upload, download and modify a file using File Manager in cPanel

File manager allows you to see a visual representation of your files on the web server.

1. Log into your Bluehost account.
2. Scroll down to files in cPanel and choose File Manager
3. Select the directory you want to upload your files to and double click with you mouse
4. Click on the upload button at the top of the screen.
5. Click browse to browse files on your PC and select the directory and file you wish to upload. Then press open.
6. You will see the file being uploaded in the bottom right of your screen.
7. When you are done you can close this window.
8. In the File Manager window you will need to press the reload button to verify that you file hs been uploaded
9. Navigating in File Manager is fairly easy. In order to go to the directory above the one we are in press up one level.

In File Manage you can also download files, edit files and change permissions on files. All of this can be done through pressing one of the buttons on the tool bar. If you allow your mouse to hover over these icons the description of what they do appears, so that you can tell which button does what.

For more information about small business web hosting click here.

Small business owners running WordPress managed websites receive many comments on their blogs. Some of these posts are valid users, some of the posts are just spam. How do you discern the spam from the real posts.

I recently received a comment that I wanted to alert people to. Here is what the visitor wrote:

When I initially commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thanks!

Is this spam or a real post from a visitor with a real problem? In order to determine that you must know your own website. In my case there is no checkbox for “Notify me when new comments are added” on my comment page. This is spam. The visitor wants me to post their comment so that their link appears on my website.

1. Know your own website. If you know your own website then you won’t have to hunt for answers. You will know if the claim is real or not
2. Test out what your commenter claims. If you are not sure go through the same process your visitor claims caused the problem. Do you see the same results?
3. Visit their website. Most comments include a website link. Visit their website to determine if their link is just an advertisement for some product.
4. Email their email address. If everything else seems to look good, email them. If their email comes back as user unknown then the this comment is most likely spam.

I have been asked about my website design. Did I design it? Am I using a theme? I use the SmallBiz WordPress Theme that was created by Don Campbell and Thomas Hasch from Expand2Web.

I have developed quite a few themes on my own, but I was looking for more. I wanted an easy to use, fully customizable, SEO integrated and well designed theme to bring my site to the next level. I found the SmallBiz theme to be that and more.

The one thing that was most important to me about this theme was that it was designed for the small business owner. The most important features for small business owners are built in. Your business location, map, driving directions and hours of operation are integrated into the theme.

The colors, headers and layout are fully customizable. The interface is so easy to navigate. It is so intuitive that most people who is semi computer literate can use this theme right out of the box to create a professional website in a couple of hours.

The theme is Facebook integrated and mobile enabled. I read an article today that said up to 15% of all eCommerce traffic this holiday season will come from mobile devices! Our small business websites must be able to be viewed on mobile devices appropriately.

Your website will automatically detect when visitors are using mobile devices, and deliver special touch-enabled landing pages making it easy for them to call you or visit your business.

Think about it. A potential customer is driving down the road and is using their iPhone to look for a business in your area that sells widgets. They find your company after searching in Google (since your site is search engine optimized you appear on the first page of results). They click on the link and it loads perfectly on the iPhone. With the directions and map loaded on your site it your website directs them to your door.

If you are a small business owner looking to create a website for your business and want the best WordPress theme available for you, then the SmallBiz WordPress Theme is it. You can find more information by clicking here.

Why Content?

The one thing that I have learned about what makes a great website is that content is king. If you have a fantastic design with no content, nobody will come to your website. You need quality content, period. That is why you have a website in the first place right?

You want to communicate with people what your small business is all about. Content is about taking your knowledge and expertise (or borrowing someone else’s) and using it to support business goals.

What makes great content?

1. First of all engaging articles are the meat and potatoes of great content. You need up to date, accurate, insightful and entertaining articles that relate to the topic or your website. You need to know what your visitors are interested in and provide that information. This may entail doing loads of research or it may be what you already know. It may also mean hiring a copy writer.
2. Content can also be videos. You can either make and upload videos to Youtube or you can link to videos that have been produced by others. The idea is to provide benefit to the people who visit your website.
3. Content can be graphics and images. These can be tables of information, charts, pictures or diagrams. Whatever helps your visitors to see the value of your company or products must be included.
4. Content can be links to relevant websites. It’s important to connect your visitors with resources that help them in some way. Just make sure that the links you provide are not to competetors.
5. Content can be eBooks. eBooks are electronic books that are either sold or offered for free. They are longer than a regular article and more informative. They can be a few pages to hundreds of pages long.
6. Content can be lessons or classes. If you have some quick lessons on your products that you can offer for free it is very helpful. Be creative.
7. Content can be a buyer’s guide. Create a buyer’s guide on the area of your business. Offer as much information as you can.

Keep in mind that whatever you choose to include on your website must provide added value to your visitors. If it doesn’t provide value don’t include just to be fancy or trendy.

As always there are more articles on small business web sites here.

Other resources: Content Marketing Today.

Yesterday morning I was trying to make my WordPress safer by changing some permissions on my files. I had read that I should change the permissions on the .htaccess file to prevent anyone form being able to read this file except the owner, which is the administrator for the server.

When I did that I could no longer access any of the panels in WordPress. I tried to set the permissions back several times, but for some reason I was still unable to fix the problem. I was getting desperate.

It was 4 AM EST. I called Bluehost technical support. They answered right away. Within 2 minutes I was able to get back into my admin screens in WordPress. All I can say is these guys are there when you need them.

They are knowledgeable, competent and courteous. They are the best web host I have ever dealt with. If you are looking for a small business web hosting service Bluehost is the one to go with. They have never let me down.

To sign up for bluehost click here.

They are the best web host in my humble opionion. But what is a web host? Click on the question to find out more. In short they provide a place for your website to be connected to the internet.

If you want to know why I chose bluehost click here.

By the way don’t change the permissions on your .htaccess file to be 640. That was my problem. You will need to set up password protection on the directory first. This automatically sets the permission to 640 and allows you to have access via a password. Always do things the way the system wants you to.

Links are used in WordPress to create links to other websites on the internet. The internet is like the highway and roads system in this country. There are a huge number of interconnected roads that lead from one place to another.

There are intersections that you come to that require that you make a choice of which way to go. We often stumble upon new places on the way to our final destination. Links are ways that visitors can find added value on their way to their final destination.

When creating your website you need to be connected to other people. They need to link to you and you need to link to them. You must choose wisely which links you include on your website. Choose links that provide added value for your visitors.

Your small business depends on providing value to your customers. Your small business website should also provide value to your visitors.

If you are in the dog grooming business you would not have links to horse farms. You may want to have links to other business owners who will also link to you.

This video walks you through the process

There are two things to look at when creating links.

1. How to create a link
2. How to use link categories

Link categories allow you to organize your links. You may have only one category or you may have many. The name of the category will appear on your website, so make sure the name of the category is meaningful and specific. You may want a category for other blogs and another category for resources.

How to create a link category

1. Log into WordPress
2. Choose Links from the menu on the left, and then choose Link Category.
3. Enter a name, slug and description. The name is the name that will appear on your website. The slug is a shortened version that will appear in the URL. This is usually only letters, numbers and hyphens. The description is usually not displayed in most themes, but you should use it to provide a good description of what you will be using this category for.
4. Press add new link category button on the bottom of the screen.

How to create a new link

1. Choose Links from the menu on then left, and then choose Add New.
2. Enter the name, web address and description of your link. The name will be the text that appears in your link. The web address is the URL for your desired link and description will give more information about the link. Not all themes display the description. You can also decide if you want it displayed or not in some themes.
3. Next select the category you want your link to appear in.
4. As you scroll down the page you will come to some more advanced features of links We will look at these at another time
5. Press add link in the upper right corner of the screen and you link will be added to your system.

Of course you can’t create links is your don’t have a small business web host hosting your site.

Setting up permalinks in the settings screen for WordPress is very important for 2 reasons. The first is that you want your website to be as efficient as it can be. The second reason is you want your links to look good to your potential visitors. When the link looks good it is also good for Search Engine Optimization purposes. In order to do his I suggest using the one of the following as a custom permalink structure:

/%minute%/%postname%/

Or you could also use:

/% post_id %/%postname%/

Here is a video of how to set up the permalinks.

The reason to use one of these is that they are unique numerical ids. The post name can be anything at all. It is the title of the post that you have typed in. The first part is easy to index. Numbers are easily organized by computers. This provides efficiency. The second part will give you a nice looking link name. You can have the best of both worlds, efficiency and meaningful text links together. Always make sure that the first variable is numeric.

According to the WordPress documentation, “For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID”

Here is a list of possible variables that are numeric that you can choose from:

• %year% – The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004
• %monthnum% – Month of the year, for example 05
• %day% – Day of the month, for example 28
• %hour% – Hour of the day, for example 15
• %minute% – Minute of the hour, for example 43
• %second% – Second of the minute, for example 33
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post, for example 423

For more help on setting up your website visit The Web Host Advisor

Deciding whether you use a page or a post depends on the type of information you will be including in the text. Will it be dynamic or static.

Posts are the meat of WordPress. This is where the bulk of the content is usually entered onto your WordPress site. The posts usually appear on your home page or your blog page in a reverse chronological order.

The most recent post is usually the first one that you see when you come to your website. I say usually because you can set up your WordPress website to do things other than this. This is just the way most people use WordPress. Posts are dynamic. So if this is where you want your information, you can create a post in WordPress.

Pages are like permanent posts. They are not organized chronologically. They do not scroll down the page as you add more content. Pages are used for information about your company that is static. The about your company page should be relatively static. The products and services page may be mostly static. These are examples of what you would use pages for.

The theme you use will define how your pages are displayed and organized. The nice thing about pages is that you can link pages to other pages and create a cascading menu. Again the theme you use will have to be able to handle this type of feature. You can find more information about themes here

How do you choose the right domain name?

A domain name is the address that people will type into the browser to find you on the internet.  There are some things you need to keep in mind.

The first thing to do is to sit down and describe your business in short statements. Using two to five word phrases describe what you do. This will help you to determine the key words that describe your business. It will also provide a starting point for your domain name.

If you have a company then the company name.com should be your first choice. If you have a long company name then if you use some abbreviation commonly in your industry then that would be best. A good example of this is bbb.com for Better Business Bureau. There are times when your company name may already be taken. In this case you need to look in some other area.

Maybe you are starting a business and are looking to drive some web traffic to your new website. Choosing a name that includes your target keywords may be useful here. If you have a new video store perhaps watchvideoonline.com may work.

Four Things to avoid:

1. Don’t end one word with the same letter as the beginning letter of the next word such as tagginggnattoday.com. People will misspell your domain name more often than not.
2. Don’t make the domain name too long. Try to keep it down to 10 characters or less.
3. Don’t use other characters for letters, such as the number 0 for the letter o or hyphens.
4. If you must shorten your company name down, don’t truncate words. Use the common shortened form of your company name.

Five Things to remember:

1. Make your domain name relevant. If you are in the painting business your domain name should say something about painting.
2. Make your domain name memorable. It should be easy to remember.
3. For business web sites choose only .com as a domain extension. As a last resort you can settle on .net, but most traffic goes to .com and people will assume the .com anyway.
4. Make sure your domain name is unique. You want to stand out. You don’t want to look like all your competitors.
5. Make sure your domain name is easy to type. The letters on the corner of the keyboard are the most often misspelled. I would think these would be “q”, “z”, and “p” .

With these tips you should be bale to narrow down the options. You need to find out if you chosen domain is available. You can go to one of many sites like Ajaxwhois that will help you find out if the domain is available. Just remember you don’t have to register your domain there. It is fast and easy and good for your process.

The next step is to select a web host.

I use WordPress to manage the content on my website. I have been asked why I chose WordPress, so here is my answer.

I was looking for a way to keep my website updated without having to write code every day. I had ideas for new content, but didn’t want to get into the coding on a daily basis. WordPress allows me to easily add a page whenever I want. All I need is the text and graphics.

1. They have a visual editor that allows me to add whatever text features I want. I can see exactly what the post will look like before I post, so there is no second guessing.

2. WordPress can be enhanced using plugins. I have heard there are over 7000 plugins to add functionality to your website. I use a grammar checking plugin. It seems to work well for me.

3. The look and feel of my website can be changed easily just by changing the Theme. A Theme defines the layout, text characteristics and data handling of your website. In short it gives you control over what your visitors see when they visit your site. There are many themes that are free, but the paid ones are worth the extra money.

4. Google loves WordPress. If you want your website to be ranked well on Google it is wise to star with WordPress. Google likes the format, understands the data and gives preference to sites developed in it.

5. Most importantly WordPress is free and used by many people. It is constantly being updated and improved. Any security holes are immediately fixed. So if you are looking for an easy interface with loads of features that will grow with you as you grow, then WordPress is the platform for you.

In order to use WordPress you qill need to choose the best web host for your small business

So what is the difference between Shared Hosting and Dedicated Hosting?

First we need to know what is a web host? A short answer would be a web host is a place that stores your web site.

A dedicated host means that the actual server that the hosting company is using is dedicated to your website alone. Nobody is using your processor, hard drive, memory or bandwidth. In the case of a shared host, the actual hardware is being shared by you and other customers of the web hosting service provider.

You might be saying why would you want to go with shared hosting.

The answer is usually financial in nature. With a shared host you may pay $5-10 per month. With dedicated hosting you will pay at least $150 per month. If you are a small business with not much anticipated traffic you don’t need the speed and exclusivity of a dedicated server. If you are a medium to lager sized business you will need a dedicated server for your needs.

So what is the best web host for small business?

In my opinion it is bluehost. They provide both shared and dedicated servers. There is no better customer service and support in the industry. I have never been disappointed in them since I began using them 5 years ago.

To explore more you find find information about the best small business web host here.