JoeBailey.ORG

The internet and applications like this have come an extremely long way. It used to be that programmers like myself were the only ones that could edit web pages. Even though software like WordPress is easy, it still requires some technical prowess.

So, if you are in need of any help installing plugins for WordPress, I’d be more than happy to help. Feel free to contact me if you need help with the installation of anything. Keep in mind though, I’m a contractor for hire, so I’d have to charge you.

The optimal title installation allows you to change the order of the titles on your pages. To see your title, look at the very top of your browser window in the blue bar. If you’re using Internet Explorer 7, it will state something like JoeBailey.ORG > whatever page your on - Windows Internet Explorer.

This tool changes the title around to state whatever page your on > JoeBailey.ORG - Windows Internet Explorer.

So, why do this? SEO is the reason, essentially changing the title around will help search engines categorize your page. The idea is that the title of the page will state a summary of the page.

Findings. I happen to have an older version of WordPress, so I had to install it. But, the good news is that if you have a version of WordPress 2.5 or higher, you don’t need the plugin.

Experience. The installation was extremely easy.

Ok, I took a timeout. Of course, I’m not supposed to.

I found out that if you use free hosting with JoesWebShack or with GoDaddy, you can’t get RSS feeds to work. I read it in the blogs, but called to confirm just in case.

So, if you’re looking to get the full effect of RSS feeds, it won’t work.

I tried switching over to a server I have, only to find out I couldn’t install the latest wordpress because it requires some different server configurations. What to do? Well, I became caught up in domain name hell once I switched over and couldn’t figure out how to switch my domain name back to this site. Now, it’s resolved.

The problem was that I had to change my a record on the domain. I have no idea how to fix it. Here are the instructions given to me on how to change a domain record and synch the A records. Note, this occurred because I point my free hosting domain to another hosting site, then tried to change it back.

So, right now, my site is free. Hosting is only $4 a month, but I decided to make it a goal. If I can figure out how to make $4 a month from this blog, then I’ll switch. That’s my goal for now.

Thank you for contacting Online Support. It appears that the hosting account for joebailey.org is not resolving at this time because the A record is not resolving to the hosting IP address. To find the hosting IP address, please use the instructions are below.

To find the IP address for your hosting server, please use the following information:

1. Click on My Account.
2. Log into your account.
3. In the My Products section, click Hosting Account List.
4. Click on the applicable Shared Hosting account.
5. The IP address is listed on the right side of the screen.

Once you have this information, you can modify the A record for the domain name.

To change the IP address for your domain:

1. Select Manage Domains from the My Products menu.
2. Click on the domain for which you wish to change the IP.
3. Click Total DNS Control and MX Records.
4. Under the A (Host) section, click the pencil icon for the first entry.
5. Enter the new IP address into the Points To Ip Address: field.
6. Click OK.

Please allow up to 24 hours for this information to update with the Internet routing and DNS servers.

Feedburner installation:http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart

The Feedburner plugin has been adopted by Feedburner and has been renamed to FeedSmith. To see the article, you can go here: http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/05/feedburner_adopts_twoyearold_r.php For the installation, see the link above. Note, it’s different from the one in John Chows document.

I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about using it. This will allow me to track my entire feed-reading audience. Granted, I’m really in the start up phases, this is exciting. By the way, I am now seeing at least 1 new visitor a day. It’s not the best, but, it’s one more than last week!

I started the installation and things went very well until….I submitted my domain name to Feedburner. the exact message is “The URL you entered does not appear to be a valid feed. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 2: The processing instruction target matching “[xX][mM][lL]” is not allowed.” After some research, i’ve found that with free hosting, through JoesWebshack.com or GoDaddy.com, you can’t have feeds. something doesn’t sound right here.

I ended up calling tech support. From what I can tell, the automatic installation which you can do through the back end, did not install the appropriate files. So, I didn’t even have a feed directory. After an actually very informative call, I found out the only difference between free hosting and regular hosting is you can’t have feeds. So, my question now is, what to do. It appears that if I’m serious, this is the first step, figuring out how to switch this site back over to regular hosting. they also suggested I reinstall WordPress. This means, I may have to reinstall everything. I’m not too excited about that.

Start time 12:34 end time 1:48

Installation site: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin/

Things needed:
1. Google AdSense Account

Things to Avoid
I was using a WYSIWYG editor for my articles. It works great. But, when you ad this Adsense code into your blog, the editor was automatically erasing it. So, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this wasn’t working, when all along it was my editor.

This one was a little tricky, but I finally figured it out. The installation goes very smooth. You copy the files over as normal and activate the plugin.

Once the application is installed, you must configure it. Before we get started, here’s the overview of what you would do on a daily basis.

1. When writing a blog, you can insert an ad anywhere in the article. Very neat, excellent for seamless placement. So, keep that in mind when writing the blog.
2. I would write the blog first, then perform the “Save and Continue Editing”
3. Go to the Adsense Deluxe area and choose the adsense you would like to use and copy it, this will prevent spelling errors.
4. Go back and edit your article to include the appropriate ad

If you follow that main format, you will be able to produce a blog pretty quickly. Otherwise, you may end up jumping around a lot. I haven’t tried it yet, but I would suggest creating an ad for each type. You may need them later on. A little time spent now creating several ads may save you some time later on.

To edit the plugin, you have to go to the Options | Adsense Deluxe area. In the Plugin area, you can create ads at the top of the page, and will find instructions on the bottom of the screen. You can pretty much feel your way through it without any issues. Once you create your ads, you can place the ad directly into your blog. It’s a pretty neat tool. But, I can easily see where becoming a pro blogger does take a lot of work.

It also appears as though you need to manage multiple things at once. For example, just to write this blog, (I’m using Internet Explorer 7) I have a tab open to write this article, one with the Adsense Plugins, and another for Google. Yikes, that’s a lot of shifting around.

But, it works and that’s what counts. Below is an example of what it looks like. Later on I’ll write an article on setting the adsense options. It seems to me that the best idea would be to create a couple of sample pages to use as references.

Installation link referenced: http://www.nosq.com/blog/2006/01/runphp-plugin-for-wordpress/

I visited the installation link, but the page stated, “The Webpage cannot be found” Because of this, I skipped this step. I may come back later. Chances that I do are slim, unless I see a need for it. There is a site that references it, but all links produce the same results. Here’s the other page I used to find some more links: http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/RunPHP

Time to complete: 1 hour ( I had some knowledge issues)

Installing the Digg this plugin sounds like an awesome way to advertise the blog. Little did I know, I had to learn just a little bit more. The installation here also gets a little technical. So, if you’re not used to what FTP does, it will take some time.

This option seemed to take longer than any other option. I think it was due to not reading and understanding everything thoroughly. Also, I wanted immediate results to show what I had done worked correctly.

Here’s a run down. I followed the instructions on how to install it. I went back to my site to see something. Guess what? nothing was there. So, as a programmer, I played a little with the code, added some debugging text and still nothing. So, I had to find another solution. I soon discovered there is a more in depth description of how to install the “digg this” plugin. My main issue… this link does not display unless someone has already “dugg” an article! That was my big mistake. So, I went to digg.com, registered, and submitted a digg for my article. So far, I haven’t seen anything yet. Hopefully, I will see something soon.

Next step… Find the code or a plugin to allow someeone to Digg my article. Once I find it, I’ll post it.

Best.

Main Installation link: http://www.aviransplace.com/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/

In Depth instructions link (Recommended): http://blog.patyuen.com/lessons/howto_install_diggthis_plugin/

Installation link: http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

Total time 45 minutes (I had to make a database adjustment)

The installation went like normal until…. I set it up, activated the plugin. Then I wasn’t sure what to do.

So, I looked at the site, and didn’t see anything. So, I explored a little to see what was actually changed. Under plugins, I found a new navigation option called “Related posts options.” I started to make some changes and noticed that at the bottom of this page, I had to update my sql index table. Specifically, there is also a message stating “If this is your first time installing this plugin you will have to run this script (opens a new window) in order to create the index table required by the plugin. If this fails, please refer to the readme on how to create it manually.”

So, I had to do it manually. It’s not a good feeling to do this manually. Essentially, I had to login to my database control tool and run the following sql statement. The script succeeded, but I was unsure when making edits to the database.

ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ADD FULLTEXT `post_related` (
`post_name` ,
`post_content`
)

Well, I didn’t really have to install recent comments. It is installed. In order to actually use it, it only took a couple of steps.

1. Log in as the administrator
2. Click on the Presentation tab at the top
3. Next, click on the “Widgets” option
4. At the bottom of this page, I dragged the “Recent Comments” widget over to my sidebar.
5. Hit Save

That’s it. A little voice in the back of my head is thinking that I’ll be here more often. I also noticed that the sidebar does not show on every page, so, something is missing from my configurations.

I held off on this one until I get associated with Text Link Ads. I have a funny feeling that this type of interface may already be incorporated into WordPress. I’ll find out at a later time.