Create a Watchlist of Favourite Posts

The ‘My Favourite Posts’ plugin lets your audience save a list of their favourite posts with one click. They can then login at any time and view their list as well as add/delete items.

Download ‘My Favorite Posts’ Plugin…

When you have hundreds of tutorials, property listings, shopping cart items and other types of blog posts on your website, it becomes more and more difficult to ensure that your readers can find the post they need quickly and easily. This way people can save relevant posts and listings as they browse, then review and link to them again whenever they choose.

Screenshot below shows Watchlist link and saved posts as seen by logged in user.

View Watchlist in Action [Read more]

Create WordPress Posts from Flickr

Linking your Flickr account to your WordPress blog means you can turn any Flickr image into a blog post without even leaving Flickr. Just create a photo category on your website and make it the default category, add your blog to Flickr, then click on the ‘Blog This‘ button above any of your images to create a new post.

You can also add your Twitter account for tweets directly from Flickr. If you take lots of photos but aren’t much into writing blog posts, this could be the perfect way to keep your blog fresh and up to date. It is also a great way to bring your readers attention to your images.

Step #1 – Create a Photo Category

1. Login to your WordPress website/blog
2. Create a new post category for photo posts
3. Go to Settings/Writing and select this category as the dafault post category
4. Further down the page, tick the XML-RPC remote publishing
5. Save Settings

[Read more]

Media Player Inside WordPress

Wordtube is a WordPress plugin which works with the JW Flash Video Player allowing you to embed videos, music and other media files on your website. It is easy to use and looks clean and professional.

Website visitors can view the files without leaving your website or having to download any special software. Your website could be playing:

• your own music
• Your own video clips
• audio/visual presentations
• graphical presentations

Media Player with Custom Skin

The file above was created by Los Chicos as a learning aid for children learning spanish. I have added the Comet skin to change the look of the player.  See the standard player layout at www.loschicos.co.nz.

Like Your Own ‘YouTube’

Once you have activated the plugin on your WordPress website, you can upload all sorts of files including streaming video formats (Format .flv or .swf), sound files as MP3 and JPG, GIF or PNG graphic files. Sort the files into playlists, then insert the individual files or playlists into your sidebar, a post or a page.

Customizing Your Player

Below are just some of the add-ons available to make your media player really work for you:

• Skins – purchase separately to change the look of your player
• Advertising – monetize your site by showing ads or display your own ads
• Sharing – allow others to share your files on social media sites such as Facebook & Twitter or embed your video on their own websites
• Analytics – see whose viewing your video content on your Google Analytics account

Wordtube Setup

1. Download the Wordtube Plugin for WordPress
2. Add to your plugins folder and activate
3. Go to Wordtube under Settings and enter preferred screen sizes
4. Under Layout tab, add link to custom skin if you have downloaded one.
5. Go to Media section at top and click on Wordtube link to add files

If your website is for profit, you need to purchase a JW Player commercial licence. You can do this after setting up the plugin on your site.

Upload a new media file

1. In website admin, go to Media, then wordtube
2. Click Insert New Media File button under list of files
3. Give file a title and add author
4. click on browse to select file from computer
5. Tick relevant playlists
6. Click on Add media file button at bottom

This can take a few minutes depending on the size of the file. Once successfully uploaded, you will see it in the list on the main wordtube page.

Create a new playlist

If you have a lot of files, you will want to group them into playlists before adding them to your pages. The Los Chicos website has a playlist for each term of spanish lessons and each adult learning module.

1. Login to website
2. On the left sidebar, go to Media, then wordtube
3. Click on Edit Playlist link at bottom of the page
4. Give new playlist a title and decription.
5. Click on Add Playlist button.
6. You can preview all your playlists at the bottom of the Wordtube admin page

Insert file/playlist on a page/post

1. In Website admin, go to Pages/Posts
2. Click on title of relevant page/post or add new
3. Click on green icon on same line as bold, italic etc
4. Choose playlist tab & select relevant playlist to insert
5. Save page or click update button on right

Integrating WordPress & Twitter

To keep your website really fresh and your readers/followers up to date, use the Twitter Tools Plugin to completely integrate your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Some of the best features of Twitter Tools are:

• New blog posts automatically tweeted on your twitter account
• Add your latest tweets to your website sidebar or a page of your choice
• Automatic weekly digest post of all your tweets
• Send tweets to your Twitter account from inside WordPress

Download the Twitter Tools Plugin…

My Latest Tweets

Create a Latest Tweets Page

Once twitter tools is activated and your Twitter account details are entered on the settings page,  show your latest 5 tweets on any page or post on your WordPress website (like mine above)  just add this code where you want the tweets to display. Just change the 5 to show a different number of tweets.

[Read more]

Screenshots + Notes = Blog Visuals

Jing is a really easy way to capture an image on your computer screen and write your own notes and visual cues on it. Add coloured boxes, text and arrows to explain or enhance your screenshot, then email it, tweet it, post to Flickr or on your website.

A blog adds personality to your website content, Jing adds personality to the images you post.

Ways to Use Screencasts

Use Jing for Instructions -You will see from the screenshot below that it is a great way for me to show you an aspect of WordPress,then explain visually how to use it. This took me 3 minutes to create and save. You can also view here – http://www.screencast.com/users/CreativeWebIdeas/folders/Jing/media/74c805d0-8eb0-4027-8924-2a3093abae31 on screencast.com.

• Add notes to a design project (multiple users can add to same file)
• Show customers how to use your software
• Share a snapshot of a document
• Add comments to your holiday photos
• Turn your blog photos into cartoon-style images
• Comment on employees/contributors/syudents work
• Post visuals of things you like on Twitter & Facebook [Read more]

Add Subscribe to Comments Option

Everytime you write a WordPress post, you have the potential to turn it into a discussion by allowing people to comment/ask questions then reponding or replying yourself. Your comments and readers comments you have approved appear on your website below the post they relate to. The dilema is always whether you should email the commenter with the answer to their question as well as posting the answer in your comments or just hope they will return to your post to check if you have answered.

Keep Readers Up to Date on Posts of Interest

The Subscribe to Comments plugin solves this problem by adding an option to your comments form so that readers can receive email notification of any comments added to a post they are interested in. From the reader point of view… you write your comment/question below a post and tick the subscribe button if you want to be emailed the answer.

Why Use Your Comments Form

The comments you receive on your posts and the answers you give go a long way to building your website’s credibility and establishing yourself as the expert. In addition to this relevant comments can attract search engine listings in their own right. I often use the comments form myself to add updates and additional info to my WordPress posts.  Readers can then keep up to date with changes to a plugin, a better technique or a link to another relevant article by subscibing to comments. [Read more]

A Facebook Fan Page for your Business

I recently realised that my business needed a Facebook Page rather than a regular account on Facebook. There are lots of reasons to do this but these 3 motivated me most:

• So people could see the page without logging into Facebook first and so that I could link directly to that page from my website
• So that people could become fans without needing me to approve them first
• So that there would be no restriction on the number of fans I could have in the future (once word spreads and my Page becomes hugely popular!!)

You can create a page through your personal Facebook account but I decided to set mine up as a separate entity in case we sell our business at some stage in the future. I want my marketing to be easily transferable to new owners. After trial and error I realised that the account should have a different name from my business to avoid confusing the Facebook Search engine (and to avoid confusing myself in regards to whether I am looking at the account or page when making updates). [Read more]

Social Media Plugins to Spread Your Words

The internet today is all about easy access to information. By adding social media buttons to the posts on your website, you ensure that your readers can share/spread your information easily by whatever means they prefer – whether it be by email, Twitter, Facebook, Digg etc.

How many times have you read a blog post or online article and thought ‘I must tell a friend to read that’ or ‘I must share that with my customers/subscribers’? With a WordPress website, you can easily add social media buttons by adding a simple plugin to your site. Here are my 2 favourite social media plugins and how to add them to your website…

1. Sociable Plugin by Yoast

This plugin gives you a huge number of social networking sites to choose from as well as:

• Email this Post
• Print this Post
• PDF this Post (great for backing up your posts or offering an alternative delivery method)

Download the Sociable Plugin (You should be able to do this inside your WordPress admin by going to Plugins/Add new and searching for sociable).

Once you have uploaded the plugin to your plugins folder and activated it, go to the Sociable settings page which will appear under your admin Settings menu.

1. Tick the buttons you would like to appear on your website and drag them to the top of the stack in the order you would like them to display.
2. Enter the wording you would like above them in the Tagline box
3. Tick what type of pages you would like them to appear on (I usually choose posts only but if you have a large site with lots of pages of info, you might also tick pages)
4. Tick the open in new window box and save your changes. [Read more]

Twitter Alert – Who’s Talking about Me?

Be pro-active and start using Twitter as part of your marketing strategy? Find out who’s tweeting about you or your topics of interest and join in the conversation with tweetbeep.

One of the most common questions people have when they first start using Twitter is how to actually find people interested in or tweeting about your topic of interest who might become followers and/or customers.

Twitter alerts email you hourly or daily to show you converstions involving your choosen words or phrases.TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter. You can click on anything to see more updates from the twitterer, reply or retweet. See sample email below. [Read more]

Create a Video Blog with WordPress

This basically boils down to posting video clips on your website instead of (or in addition to) writing blog articles. These can be your own videos shot on your digital camera or relevant clips filmed by others and sourced from YouTube or similar sites.

See a Video Blog in action at www.schoolschoralfestival.co.nz;

Why Video Blog?

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then video speaks millions. Think of the time you could save…

• Instead of a detailed product manual, upload a video showing how to assemble or use your product
• Instead of writing about an event/gig, video it and post to your website
• Instead of descriptions and photos of a finished project, video it and post
• Instead of writing about how beautiful your local area is, video it and post

Use a Video-Friendly WordPress Theme

If you’re planning on posting many videos to your blog, this is the way to go. The best video-friendly theme I have found is Tubular Theme by Studio Press.

See Tubular theme in action at www.schoolschoralfestival.co.nz [Read more]

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