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Archives for March 2007

Some great webmaster forums that you should join

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I’ve been keeping my eye out for great web, technology and webmaster discussion forums. I’ve been a member of some of these forums for quite a while but I’m discovering new forums regularly.


If you want to keep track of the latest tech news and search engine optimization techniques it’s a great idea to join webmaster related forums. Even if you are still rather new to owning a website or blogging. The more you learn, and the more that you can do on your own the better.

Posting and interacting on webmaster related forums is also a great way to meet others that share your interests and possibly gain links to sites that are similar to your own.

I found a post over on WebGeek that lists a number of top webmaster forums and communities. The numbers listed beside each forum listing is the number of registered members on the site as of the time of writing.

I was aware of, and a member of many of these forums and communities already, but there are a few that he’s listed that I must go and explore.




Page rank update or just backlink update?

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It seems that Google’s been busy doing something this month. A number of people on one of the forums that I hang out in have said that their sites suddenly dropped in PR. In some cases they went right down to PR0.

What’s going on?

It seems that not enough people are seeing changes in their site rank for this to be called an early page rank update. The consensus seems to be that Google is updating backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. Apparently Google does mini updates of these frequently, but when they do a large back link update they are likely removing duplicates and or spam or splog site links. Perhaps that’s why some people’s PR ended up going down. it’s possible that they had a lot of splogs or spammy sites linking to them.

It’s hard to say what’s going on because Google doesn’t announce it’s updates, and tends to keep it’s formula’s for determining page rank and other things related to a sites listing in their search engine secret.

Aligning image and video code in blog posts

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Earlier in the month I did a series of posts about preparing and adding images to your blog posts. I think the only thing that I failed to discuss in much depth was the tags that you can put around your image or even embedded video code.

WordPress has to modes – Visual (Rich text) and Code (plain text). You can add images to your posts while in either mode. However, you should only add embedded video code or even javascript code (say for a blogroll) while in code or plain text mode as it messes up the code when in rich text mode.

For the purpose of this discussion I’m going to discuss the coding that you can added around embedded images, video and other code while in plain text mode. I will just say that it’s easy to center or move an image to the left or right while in visual or rich text mode simply by clicking on the alignment icons near the top of your wordpress post writing area.

To center an image in your post you can use this code (removes spaces):

< p align=”center” > image code < /p>

and to have a photo to the left or right of a paragraph have the paragraph tags around the particular paragraph that you’re sticking the image in:

ie < p >text of paragraph < /p>

with your image code beside the first paragraph tag

< p > < image code > text < /p>

Unfortunately you need to do a little bit more to the image code to make the text of the post wrap around the image. With the code that I’ve listed above the image will still be higher than the text. However, if you want to have the text wrap to the right or left of the image simple include:

align=”left” or “right” near the img tag like this:

< p > < img align=”left” rest of image code ….> < /p>

radia_phone.jpg To illustrate the full code, in order to place this thumbnail image to right of this text, and have the text wrap evenly around it I had to use the following code. Remember, you must remove the spaces for this code to work on your site. I’ve only put spaces between the code here so that I could actually demonstrate the code:

< p > < img align=”right” src=’https://thewebfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/radia_phone.thumbnail.jpg’ alt=’radia_phone.jpg’ / > < /p>

Tips on how to get more comments on your site

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One great way to get more visitors to your site is to visit other sites. You have to give comments to get comments.

Over the last year I’ve spent at least an hour each day if not more going around to my favorite blogs and commenting on their posts. They in turn come back and visit my sites.

When people come to your site and leave a comment you should try to respond to them in someway. Whether you reply to their comment by email, or respond to their comment on your site – do respond. It helps keep the posts conversation flowing.

Think about it. When you go and visit a blog are you more likely to click and leave a comment if there’s already some comments there? Often that is the case. I know that I’ll sometimes click on a posts comment area specifically to read the other visitors comments. If I choose to leave a comment of my own it’s not always directly about the post as it might be in response to one of the comments that I read.

Another way to start to get some response to your posts is to make them interactive. Write in a way that your readers will be compelled to leave a comment.

Ask questions of your readers in your posts.

“Has that ever happened to you? Tell me about it.”

If you’re writing a post about an old friend ask your readers when the last time was that they bumped into an old friend on the street.

If you’re writing about something ask your readers their opinion.

-what would they do in that situation?
-What item would they have purchased?
-How would they have responded when someone said that to them?

In one post that I wrote recently on my other blog I was talking about a shopping trip to Walmart. It’s a new Superstore Walmart. It replaced the smaller Walmart that we used to shop at. The old one sold food – but only dried and canned goods and frozen foods. Nothing fresh. This new one has a true grocery store section with fresh meat, and produce. I checked out the meat while I was there but I was leary about purchasing meat because from past experience I know there’s some stores that it’s just better to not buy certain types of food from. In my post I decided to ask my readers if they ever purchased fresh meat at Walmart and if it was quality meat. Several people responded with the majority answering that the meat is really good.

I made my post interactive, got a question that I wanted answered and got a lot of great comments.

You can even throw a poll into your posts every now and then. Try to word the poll questions and answers in a way that your readers want to expand on their answer in your comment section.

Just keep trying different things like that and I’m sure you’re readers will start to respond and leave comments. When they do leave comments respond to what they say in your own comment area, through email and or by visiting their site.

It can be a lot of work but I guarantee that it will work.

Why you should add images to your posts

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My last two posts discussed how to prepare and then place an image into your WordPress blog post. I didn’t discuss why you might want to add images to your posts on a regular basis.

There are several reasons why you might add images to your posts, but the main reason is that it makes your post and your blog visually more interesting to anyone who happens to visit your site. You want to attract visitors to your site and get them to stick around for a while? Put an image in your posts every once in a while.

A photo says a 1000 words, and the addition of an interesting image, or one that helps illustrate the topic of the post might actually make a person choose to read your post, whereas if it hadn’t had an image in it they might have skipped over it.

Adding an image to your post might also save you some time. Instead of writing an extra paragraph or two to describe what a place or object looks like you could add a photo and let it do some of the talking for you.

You can use the occasional video in the same way that you’d use a photo or image. Video’s can go even further to enhance the topic of your post. I have found that it’s not always a good idea to place long videos on your site. Short videos are more likely to be viewed.

Can you think of other reasons why adding an image to your post is a good idea?

Adding an image to your WordPress post

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If you read the last post you now know a little bit more about preparing photos and images prior to including them in a post on your blog or an article on your website. Now you are ready to include the image in your post.

For the purposes of this article I’m going to tell you how to put images in WordPress blog posts, as that is the blogging platform that I use and to which I’m most familiar. I think that some of the methods might be slightly different on other blogging platforms but the theory should be the same.

As I said in the last post there are at least two ways to get an image into your post. You can upload them directly from your computer, or you can upload them to a free photo hosting service first.

Let’s discuss uploading an image into a WordPress post first:

While you are in the post writing area of WordPress you’ll see an upload section right below the writing area. When you want to add a photo that you’ve already prepared for your post simply scroll down to the upload area and:

Find the Browse button in the upload section. Browse through the files on your computer to find the image that you’d like to upload.

Once you find the image that you’d like to use in your post click on the Upload button in the bottom section of the Upload area.

Once the file has uploaded you’ll see a thumbnail of the image on the left. If you are using a version of WordPress that is less than 2.1:

– you’ll have to click on the image to choose either thumbnail or full size

If you are using WordPress 2.1+

– Beside the thumbnail of the image you’ll be able to select between full size, thumbnail, or title. I believe title will just be a link to the photo on the server. Below that you’ll see that you can link to the file, the page or none. I tend to use full size images in my post so I usually select full size and none.

Now, before you click on the Send to Editor button place your cursor in the area of the post that you’d like the image to be located. Ok … now click on send to editor.

If you are in rich text or visual mode you’ll see the image. If you are in code or plain text mode you’ll just see the code for the image in your post.

If you are in code mode you can use < center > or < p align="center" > to align the photo in the center of the post. You can also use the paragraph tag to align the photo to the left or right side of the post. The text will come up and wrap around the photo if you set the photo to the left or right.

In Visual or Rich text mode you can simply click on the alignment icons near the top of the post to move the photo from left, center or right.

Then TA DA you have a photo inserted into your post.

If the photo is still a little bit too large for your post you can click on the photo and you’ll see points in the corner that you can drag to make the photo larger or smaller. You’ll only be able to do this while in visual or rich text mode.

The other way to get photos into your posts is to get the photo links from the free photo services that you’ve already uploaded your photos to – ie Flickr or Photobucket. Simply visit either of those sites, upload your photos if you haven’t already, and then depending upon which service you choose to use, select the photo and get the link for the approximate correct size of photo that you need for your post.

Once you have the image link, you can use the link button at the top of your WordPress post writing area to add the http link to your post.

Now you’re all set. You can create great posts with photos and images in them to illustrate whatever topic you happen to be discussing in your post.

Preparing images for your WordPress Posts

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So how do prepare an image for a blog post anyway?

I know that a lot of people have trouble figuring this out. I see a lot of sites out there with huge images in their posts that overlap the edges of the post section, or who’s photos must be so large that they slow the site down as they load.

There are a few ways to get an image in your post. You can upload your images to a free image hosting service like Flickr or Photobucket, or you can upload them directly to your post using the WordPress interface.

If you are going to upload your photos directly I would strongly suggest that you get some easy to use photo editing software. You do not want to upload huge photo files to your server and then include them in your post. Large file sizes will slow down the loading time of your site and frustrate your visitors.

Now when I suggest that you reduce the size of the photo I don’t mean the dimensions. I mean it’s actual size in kilobytes.

Think of it in human terms. There are tall people, and short people, slim and heavy. That’s dimensions. In photo terms you want to make a photo small enough to fit within your post without over-lapping the edges.

Then there’s the weight or kilobyte size of the photo. In human terms if you are getting a little pudgy you need to lose some weight right? Well, so do photos if you want them to load quickly on your site.

Using photo editing software you can keep the size of the photo but still make the actual file size (Kilobytes (KB)) smaller by lowering the quality level of the photo or converting it to a different format. For example if you have a jpg file you might try converting it to a gif to see if the file compresses and gets smaller in “weight”.

Ideally, you probably shouldn’t upload photos that are anymore than 20 to 25 kilobytes (KB) in size.

Now as to the size or dimensions of the photo – well you can change that directly in wordpress or you can use your photo editing software to make a wide file a bit smaller. The posting area of most blogs ranges from 300 to 500 pixels (px).

You can go into your blogs template – usually the CSS stylesheet, and read through the coding to find out how wide the body of the content area is. Use that information to determine the maximum width of a photo in a post. If you discover that the content area is 400px wide then you should try to make sure that any images you insert into your posts are no more than 400 px.

Now that you know a little bit about editing a photos size and dimensions prior to inserting it into a post, it’s time to learn exactly how to get that image in your post. Please read the next post in this blog for those instructions.

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