My Love-Hate Relationship with WordPress

I love WordPress, but I hate it too!

I love WordPress because it is easy to use, install, and configure. I also love WordPress because it is updated 2-3 times a year so I don't worry about it not working with the next version of php or mysql.

I hate it because it is getting fat. This last few weeks I've been busy optimizing my own PHP scripts for better perfomance because i noticed some pages loading slowly. I've even redistributed my mysql tables and optimized mysql database table indexes. I also turned off and deleted many WordPress plugins thinking that work help. Yes,  they all did help. Unfortunately they didn't help enough. WordPress too often ends up in my "slow queries" log generated by my shared hosting.

After several months of integration of my php shop scripts with WordPress, I cut the cord!  I commented out the include file that loads the Wordpress backend so I could use the Supercache page caching plugin.

I saved around 10-18 queries!  I don't know why WordPress needs to do around 10-18 queries (depends on the version) just to let me load a plugin on an external page, but that is what Supercache was showing and I finally decided that it wasn't worth it.

Why did it take me so long to do it?  I had to set up my own page caching first.  Fortunately there are several php output or page caching script samples online. I tried one and after finding all of the bugs in the script that kept it from working I fixed it up and have it installed and working.

How much faster are external pages loading?  Comparing the processing time between the supercached versions of my external pages and the time with my own caching script. Some pages are loading between one third and one sixth of the time it took before while others are loading in about the same amount of time.  Page processing time is a good metric, but it isn't precise because it varies according to current server load. If the server is under more load, a script will take a little longer so you have to compare averages.

Another motivating factor in my decision to cut the cord to WordPress on my external pages are the somewhat recent changes to Supercache.  I'm sure Donncha has very valid reasons for doing so, but he removed the notice in HTML comments that a cached page was being served, so I couldn't easily tell if the cache was working or not ( often times it didn't appear to be serving the cache even though the files were being created).

Not really being able to tell if the cache was working or not was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I don't like working on blind faith when it comes to my web hosting and server stability.

Don't you love it when fixing one problem helps solve another? By setting up my own separate cache, I was able to disconnect the WordPress backend and speed up pages. It made me want to do a dance of joy.

What's next in caching?  I am thinking about setting up a menu cache for dynamically created menus on the shop category and shop discount pages.  If you notice an additional speed up in the next few days on those pages, now you'll know why.

Do you cache your php output or menus?  If you haven't already set up caching today!

Heavy Serverload? Add a bad bot trap before you upgrade.

Reduce server load by blocking bad bots (and help stop spammers and sploggers)

If you're like me you are probably on a shared hosted server because

1. You don't have a static IP or extra computer from having your sites server from home
2. You can't afford a dedicated server.

I've noticed on my second hosting account, HostGator, that I was using many files, but many more than I really have in my website folders on my computer  and I realized that those extra files were mostly from my website cache. The cache files are created when a dynamic page loads so the next time it is called the cache is used instead of calling the database for everything.

What is a Bad Bot?

I had read in several forums that it is a good idea to block "bad bots" bad bots are internet spiders that read and copy your content for Splogs (Spam Blogs) or to steal e-mail addresses to spam. Obviously neither are good, so  I ...

1. Added my robots.txt
2. A few days later added my trap which points to a path blocked in my robots.txt

How does a Bad Bot Trap work?

You add  some code to your pages to a page that is blocked in robots.txt but you hide the link from human visitors. When a "bad bot" visits your website it will ignore your robots.txt instructions and follow the link. When it lands on your forbidden page, your script registers its IP address in your .htaccess file to deny access to your website.

Does a Bad Bot Trap block all Splog and Spam Bots?

While a bad bot trap does not block all spammers and sploggers using bots, it does get rid of many. Spammers and sploggers aren't very ethical so most never bother  to update their bots to check your robots.txt file to see what is allowed or not.

Because I had added some code to e-mail me whenever a bad bot was blocked, I got regular notices.  I found many sites sending me an e-mail per day about a bad bot being blocked!

About a week after adding my bot trap, I needed to go to my Hostgator control panel to open Phpmyadmin to make some changes to a database  and I noticed the sidebar showing a huge drop in files.

Although I have been trying to eliminate unnecessary files and I have combined a few include files into one with functions, It wouldn't explain the huge drop I saw.

I don't have exact numbers, but my files according to Hostgator went down by about one third. The only explaination I can think of is that blocking bad bots kept many pages from being loaded into cache.  That saves plenty of space and significantly reduces server load without hurting real visitors or reducing features.

Before you upgrade your hosting account, add a bot trap, perhaps it will be enough.

Recover Your Online Websites Quickly with Backups

Frequent backups the necessary "evil" for your online business website

I know, it is something we hate to do in real life with our computers.  I know this because every so often you'll read in a forum something like "my harddrive crashed and I lost everything!".  How often have you read "My website was hacked so I had to start over with an empty site?".

Although we hate backing up our websites as much as our computers, doing so will save you much heartache as well as time.

Backing up HTML only sites

If you have a simple HTML only website then your backup is very simple, just download everything in your webhost's directory and save it to a CD, DVD, USB drive, etc.  In reality, you should already have all the files on your computer which you've been uploading via FTP, so you could just save the off line version.

Backing up dynamic sites that use databases

Backing up a dynamic site, for example one with PHP pages and a MySql database, takes just a little more work.  In this case, you should still save the contents of your webhosting directory (which you should already have a copy of on your computer as a best practice).  You will also need to export the contents of your database.  If you have a MySql database, just go to your webhost's control panel and find PHPmyadmin. It is usually on the main page, but some hosts make it a link inside a "database" page. Once there, it is just a matter of selecting your database from the menu and the the "export" tab.  You'll want to select gzip so it will be compressed and save downloading time. Don't worry, you won't have to uncompress it to later import the backup if the need arises.  If your website uses more than one database then just repeat the process with the other databases.

Reuploading your website after being hacked or server error

If your site gets hacked or files get damaged by routine server tasks, you'll have your back up ready and you'll be running like normal as soon as everything is uploaded back to the server.

Uploading HTML sites

Uploading HTML sites is very easy just upload all the files by FTP back to your webhosting directory. If a page doesn't load, upload it again.

Uploading dynamic sites

First upload the backup of your webhosting directory via FTP.  If your databases were damaged or hacked, go to PHPmyadmin, select a database delete its contents then go to the "import" tab and import your backup. If you get errors, first try uploading your directory backup. Often those are caused from a file being skipped when uploading by FTP.

Don't just upload your backups

Obviously you should do more than just upload files. You should try to figure out what was hacked. It is possible that your database wasn't hacked at all and all you'll need to do is upload your files.

You'll also want to check your web hosting directory for files that don't belong there and delete them before you upload your backup.

Share your thoughts

Have you been hacked? What backup and recovery tips can you share?  Tell us in the forum.

Social Features: Keep in Touch with Website Visitors

How social is your online business?

If you are like most companies, probably not very.  I've been helping one of my friends who has a medium-sized traditional service based company.  He's been relying on old fashioned methods until just recently. He's making great improvements to expand into new technologies and so can you.

Most old fashioned businesses think of a website as just a static information page to say what they do, where they are, and a contact form.  In reality, it can be that and much more.

Your website should become an opportunity for two way communication.  Another friend with a very successful site, actually uses the community he formed as the major focus of his website.  The transition from a traditional site to a community isn't easy, but with some planning and effort you'll get there eventually.

Let visitors comment on your posts and articles

I was so frustrated with spam that I had disabled comments on most of my sites, but you might have better luck.   You can try requiring registration and use spam filters and CAPTCHAs and see if that helps reduce spam to a comfortable level.

Let visitors blog

Some may want to write about the same topic as your site, so let them blog if you don't mind checking for spammer blog registrations.

Let visitors discuss issues in a forum

A forum provides an opportunity for visitors to discuss the issues you mention in your posts and articles.  The difficulty here is to get it started because no one wants to be the first. On the other hand, forums seem to be easier to sustain once they get going.

Offer Chat discussions

A chat room is fun, but unless you have a high volume website, most people will complain that no one is there even if many people join. This is human nature. Everyone wants to join and find people there. No one wants to join and actually wait (not even a few minutes) for others to show up.

Offer Chat support

If you have national and international customers and clients, online chat support will be very helpful. They can avoid long distance and international call charges and get the help they need in a way that is more dynamic than e-mail.

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What to Do When Traffic to Your Online Business drops

You may find that everything has been going well for your business. Google and the other search engines have been sending you traffic and you've been making money selling or referring products or though advertising.

Then one day, it happens, Google changed their algorithm and your flow of traffic has become a trickle and you're making a fraction of what you were before.

What are you doing to compensate for when this happens to you?

Possible solutions

Send people to your landing pages with PPC campaigns

Start PPC campaigns to send people to your landing pages. While I abhor this option many people go this route.  PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising, is where you place advertising on other sites. When someone clicks on the advertisement, they're taken to your "landing" or presales page and you pay a fee for that click which is usually between a couple cents and a dollar depending on the keyword and the advertising network used.

I don't recommend this option because this is very intensive and it requires plenty of work to have a positive ROI (return on investment).

Write articles for Article sites, Squidoo, Hubpages, related blogs, etc.

A good writer could get quality traffic to his or her website by writing articles and submitting them to the most popular article sites.  Some visitors to the e-zine sites would click on your website link in the article or in the author credit.   The few website authors who use those articles and include your link as required would also give you good backlinks which search engines often consider when determining search engine result page placement.  Squidoo, Hubpages and Blogger (Blogspot) also allow you to make some money through ad revenue share. Write guest blog posts or guest articles for other websites that are related to your own.
All the extra backlinks from quality websites should improve your rankings and increase traffic.

E-mail past visitors

If you don't have a list of visitor e-mail addresses, it is time to start one! If you sell products you can ask for the e-mail address when you get shipping information. If you have an informational or affiliate site, start a newsletter.    While it is tempting to spam people with your list (I just got a spam this morning from an ex-employer), it is much better and if you live in the USA, more legal to only send e-mails to those visitors who have given you approval to do so.  A simple checkbox allowing e-mails will work for most merchants. The rest of us can have sign up forms.  To be extra safe, you should validate any submitted e-mail addresses with a confirmation e-mail which requires a click.  This is called double-opt-in.  They opted in when they gave permission and the opt-in was doubled when they clicked on the link.  That is also nice because you get rid of mistyped e-mail addresses with this process. The bad side is that many people will never activate their subscription.

Social bookmarking

Make sure visitors have a way to easily add your articles to social bookmarking websites.

Make your website stickier

Give your visitors a reason to come back, by adding social features, regular new content, and fun activities like contests (with prizes).

Start a Blog and make constructive comments on related blogs

Start a blog related to your business and share links to your blog posts on Twitter and on your Facebook Page. Link to your main website in the blog. Interact with those who leave comments on the Blog and your contact form.

Add an XML Google Sitemap to Your Online Business

Keep Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other Search Engines informed with an XML Sitemap

If you are like me, you wonder what's with Google. Google seems to find blog posts with out much trouble, but when it comes to other pages, it seems to just ignore them and let them languish.  If Wordpress is only a small section of your website, then a sitemap becomes an essential tool for informing Google and other search engines that your pages exist and should be indexed.

Google will index your content sometime before the cows come home

While Google's bots will eventually find any content on your website linked by other pages, you'll find that Google will not quickly index non-blog content especially without a Sitemap.

You can find information on the structure and coding for an XML Sitemap which works for Google at http://www.sitemaps.org/

Consider an XML Sitemap written in PHP using your database

You can write your sitemap file with .php extension as long as the Sitemap content uses XML as shown. Making a script to create your Sitemap is a good idea because as your website grows, it will become harder and harder to keep a manually updated sitemap current. Basically you query your database's posts and articles and then echo that information in XML.  What? Your website is just plain HTML pages?  You could probably use a script that spiders your site and makes an XML file, but you'd have to run it frequently.

A Sitemap script that is the same file that Google fetches is the best choice because it would be current everytime the search engine requests it.

Consider an online XML Sitemap creator

A third option would be to use a free Sitemap spider service online. They will spider up to 500 pages as they are found from the homepage of your website.  This, like other "spider" script sitemap creators, has the weakness of just adding what they find which could easily be duplicate content due to variables and search options and other URL issues that will also give you sitemap errors and warnings.

Avoid duplicate content

When creating an XML Sitemap remember that you don't want to include duplicate content, so if there is more than one path to a specific post, article, or product on your website, just include the best path where the content is going to be found more long term.

Consider making a Sitemap Index

you'll also find on the above mentioned site, information regarding the creation of a Sitemap Index. The Sitemap Index is also XML (but you can have a php script make it). You can submit the Sitemap Index file to Google Webmasters Tools as your Sitemap and Google will then check every sitemap listed inside that file.

There are a couple great benefits to using a Sitemap Index. First, you can make modular simpler Sitemap files and list them or not as needed. Second, you only have to submit one Sitemap file per site.

There is a limit to the size of a sitemap index as well as the number of links, so even if you have a small website now, it wouldn't hurt to start off with two files, your Sitemap Index which you'll submit to the search engines and your actual sitemap file.  It will only take a couple minutes more to start off right, and you'll save plenty of time you'd have lost later submitting separate files to each search engine.

Ready for the next step, add your Sitemap to your Robots.txt file

While you should submit your Sitemap or Sitemap Index to Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, consider also including it in your robots.txt file.  It is very simple. Just add:

Sitemap: http://yoursite.tld/sitemapfilename.xml

If your website is mywebsite.com and your sitemap index is   sitemap.xml then you'd add:

Sitemap: http://mywebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Unfortunately you cannot use relative URLs, so you can't just say /sitemap.xml

I really wish they'd allow relative URLs for those of us with multiple websites, but I guess they just didn't think that far ahead.

Selecting a color scheme for your website or blog website

Color preferences by age and gender for web pages and website color schemes.

Color preference tendencies by gender

Women tend to dislike dark or black web page backgrounds. I am commenting out of my personal experience. When I went through multiple color schemes on my first website in 2006. I started with bolder colors with a dark background. All of my friends who are men told me it looked fine and some of them liked it a lot. Almost all of my friends who are women said that it was too dark and that the background had to be white or very pale. Of course once I switched to a light background, my other colors no longer matched. After several color scheme changes I got stuck with white background and not-very-bold colors for everything else. The women I know don't complain and the men I know don't either.

Color preferences by age

Children prefer bolder and brighter colors, so a site with beige, light blue, and gray would probably lose their attention extremely fast. As we get older we start to prefer fewer warmer and bold colors and start to prefer cooler, paler, and more neutral colors so beige, white, black, pale blue, pale green, and pale yellow are great for websites for those over 55.

Choose your website's theme colors or color scheme according to demographics and other criteria.

Now when I design a new website, I try to imagine the largest demographic as a combination of young, old, men, or women, and I try to make it more appropriate for them without alienating the other groups.

• A site for children will have bolder colors. A site for 55+ will have mostly beige and other pale colors.
• A site for women will have lighter colors with a touch of either pink, or purple.
• A site for men will have gray, blue, or red added.
• A site with Very mixed demographics will have a mix of colors that are not too strong and typically cool like green and blue. I might add one neutral color for balance.
• If a site is about a holiday, I might use that holiday's colors in my design o help put the visitor in a holiday mood.

General color scheme considerations

Light on dark or dark on light?

In general, you should stick to darker text on a lighter background like black text on a white background. Many people say it is hard for them to read light text on a dark background like white text on a black background. Artists and more creative types are less likely to have this complaint.

The colors should allow the visitor to read the website without squinting or getting a headache.

Color schemes that have colors that don't match will cause frustration or sometimes a headache. If the text color and background colors don't contrast sufficiently, it makes it difficult to read. For example: Dark brown background with light brown text. It can be done but there has to be a significant difference between the two shades of brown or it will tire his or her eyes.

A color scheme should not have garish colors.

Another way to annoy your visitors is to have garish color combinations. I remember one fascinating site with pink text over a vomit-green background and purple header text. I couldn't concentrate on the content. All I could think of was how hideous and repulsive that site was.

A website's theme shouldn't have too many colors

While having just back and white is boring, having too many colors in your site's color scheme will be distracting. Try to have between 2 and 5 colors. This includes tonal variations. A site with light blue, medium blue, dark blue with a white background has four colors.

SEO - ALT tags vs Title tags - what are they for?

When should I use ALT and TITLE tags on my websites or blog websites?

Many people want to do SEO, Search Engine Optimization, but they don't put into practice some of the basic tasks that will often benefit greatly. Here is one of them. If you use images on a website and the images are related to the topic of the pages that they are on, you need to add both ALT and TITLE Tags to them, so that the search engines and people using text-based browsers know what they are for.

Alt tags show whatever text that is added to the HTML code when the image doesn't load whether it is corrupt, missing, or if the visitor has a text-based web browser. In Internet Explorer these tags will normally show up as hover text however this use is not covered by standards. When has Microsoft ever followed standards? On web browsers that follow standards, ALT tags correctly show only when an image does not.

It is important that any and all images that are related to your content contain ALT tags, otherwise a visitor will be very confused when an image does not load.

Title tags according to web standards and most web browsers are for hover or tool or tool tip text. The image loads and the text appears when the cursor is over the image. This is very useful for SEO because the search engines, like Google, know what your image is about and use the text like keywords which in the end can bring you more relevant traffic.

Title tags are also very useful because they allow you to add descriptions, or more description, to your images without taking up more space, so you see there is also an educational benefit to adding TITLE tags.

Examples of ALT and TITLE tags

Here are some examples of ALT and TITLE tags used for website images.

Notice Images 1 and 2 contain both ALT and TITLE Text so the information will be viewable on Text-browsers and the description will appear as hover or tool tip text. If you see "relevant ALT text" with your image then your web browser is not standards compliant.

Sample Image 1:

HTML CODE USED:

Sample Image 2:

HTML CODE USED:

Sample Image 3:

HTML CODE USED:

Notice how Image 3 (which doesn't exist) does not load and therefore the ALT text is displayed. Normally, the ALT tag would be the name of the image.

Consider adding content description meta tags to each of your webpages for better search traffic (SEO)

Would you like more traffic to your website?

Whether it is a blog or a shopping site you need traffic for your website to be a success. One way to do so is to work on your SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Typically people optimize for Google, but it is also good to consider traffic from Yahoo and ask.com as secondary targets.

Content First, SEO Second

Once you have good original content on your website, it is time to consider SEO. There are many different tasks involved in SEO, and I admit that I still need to do many tasks on my websites as well, so I've added the webmaster and SEO category and a SEO series for these articles that any website can use to improve its results.

The main problem is that it is a lot of work! SEO is not yet automated. If you use a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla, you might find special plugins and modules to help you, but you still have to type in the information that the system needs.

The focus in this post is in adding a Meta content description tag to each page of your website. Meta tags are nothing new. Meta tags are informative HTML tags placed in the header of a web page's code. There are many meta tags used for many different reasons.

Adding meta page descriptions to static HTML is simple

Add the following to each of your page headers describing that page:

<meta name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of your page.">

Add a description of that specific page instead of the 'informative description here'. If you use static HTML pages on your website then simply go into your code with your favorite editor and add the code in between the head tags. You should be concise and descriptive. You should not repeat the title since that is going to be seen in the search result above the description.

Dynamic pages often require coding or SEO plugins

If you use a dynamic header through a CMS or website template using PHP then it is trickier, since one header is used for all of your pages. In this case you could perhaps make your own PHP modification if you are a programmer, or you could search for a plugin or module to add that information for you. Even with a plugin, you will still have to add that data in your CMS software. In a wordpress blog, you'll probably see it as an extra field in your writing admin. page after the plug in is activated. Once you activate a plugin with this functionality you'll have to go and add meta data to each page, post, and article you have.

Meta page descriptions improve search click through rates

You won't see results until Google's webcrawler rechecks your site. It doesn't matter if your pages are static or dynamic. This could take between hours and weeks. After Google's search engine updates your information and a page on your site appears as a search result, your description will appear after your page's title. By giving a more detailed description of your page, your page will be more interesting to the person searching and you should get more clicks. It should also lower your bounce rate, since people know what your page really contains.

What meta descriptions won't do for you

Adding meta descriptions will not improve your page ranking. Your web pages will appear at the same rank. This optimization is for increasing clicks on your pages when seen in the listing. You will need to do other optimizations to improve page ranking.