Ben Cope | Internet Mastery Marketing Blog

Weekly Recommended Resources

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Feb 26, 2010 in Internet Mastery, Virtual Assistance Industry | 0 comments

I get so many requests for tips and advice on the resources that my Virtual Assistance and Web Development companies use that it seems a great idea to publish a weekly resource.

These are online resources that will help you develop, gain knowledge, find new information and absorb new ideas.

Enjoy!

This Weeks Recommended Resource

WordPress Tip of the Day is a free video podcast from the “Internet Genius” Ben Cope that delivers high-quality video training for WordPress in 5 minutes or less every day in a format that is easy to follow, easy to understand, and always free!

Your Partner In Success Radio Show Welcomes Back Ben Cope

Posted by Denise Griffitts on May 16, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

Table of contents for Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Yesterday I interviewed Ben Cope, “The Internet Genius” for the second time on my BlogTalkRadio show. The response was tremendous and as usual, we simply did not have enough time to cover even a fraction of the information that we wanted to impart to our audience about WordPress. If you didn’t have an opportunity to listen to the interviews live you can hear and download them here:

Ben Cope Interview, May 1, 2009

Ben Cope Interview May 15, 2009

Ben referenced several things in the call that I have been asked to post here. One of them is the permalink code that you need in order to create tidy page url’s for your blog. The detailed instructions for inserting this code will vary depending on your what version of WordPress you are running. However, it is a simple matter to navigate in your control panel to “Settings” and then to “Permalinks”. Choose the Custom Structures option and type the following code snippet: /%postname%/. (Without the period, of course).

Ben also shared his Del.icio.us bookmarks where you will find a wealth of information about WordPress. He also offered to share an excellent video about installing WordPress on a GoDaddy Hosting account.

Ben Cope’s Top 5 Recommended Plugins for WordPress

All in One SEO Pack – Anybody who knows what they are doing with their WordPress blog will have this plugin installed! This is by far the most popular plugin for optimizing WordPress blogs for the search engines. This plugin allows you to add the ability to create unique title tags and descriptive URLs. Though WordPress is optimized for the search engines, there is no easy way to add meta data to posts and pages in the CMS. All in one SEO pack adds a field where Title, description and keywords can be placed. This should be the absolute first plugin you download and install.
Google XML Sitemaps – Another plugin that will help you with search engine visibility! It helps Google keep tabs on your valuable content. The XML file that is generated will automatically be updated every time you post and give search engines a single place to look for new content. Once you’ve enabled this plugin you’ll want to make sure you register your sitemap with all of the major search engines using their various webmaster registration tools so that when they crawl your site, they can utilize your XML sitemap for new indexable content.
Akismet – Absolutely essential to have this plugin activated! It comes preinstalled whenever you setup a new WordPress site. All you have to do is register for a new wordpress.com account to get your API key. It rarely takes more than a couple of weeks before spam-comments starts to drop in. Comments filled with scattered text and links to bad websites. When WordPress has little to protect your blog against this kind of spam, Akismet is a must. It automatically detects spam-comments, placing them in an archive for you to moderate.
Sociable – Adds RSS feeds and social bookmarking links to your posts. Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us and several other bookmarking sites. A good-looking, professional feature that enables the reader to directly credit your post.
WP-DB Backup – Most people who have experience of WordPress can understand the delicacy and dependency of connecting databases. Vital data is stored there, fetched every time a post or page is loaded in a web browser. If your databases crash, data closely connected to your website’s content will be gone forever. Backup is important for any site and so even for a WordPress blog. With WP-DB-Backup you can make database backups to just some or all variables directly from the admin. You can then choose to store the backup on the server or on your own computer.

Additional Plugins Worth Installing:

Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin
pageMash
Related Posts
cForms II

Enjoy and be sure to connect with us on Facebook if you have any questions!

Denise Griffitts on Facebook

Ben Cope on Facebook

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Your Partner In Success Radio Shows Welcomes Back Ben Cope

Posted by Denise Griffitts on May 14, 2009 in Your Partner In Success | 0 comments

Table of contents for Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Do you want to chat with a WordPress Platform expert? You can tomorrow!

Ben Cope, “The Internet Genuis” will be re-joining me on BlogTalkRadio tomorrow as we continue to delve into WordPress and the business benefits of using WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) to power your static html website.

Ben will explain why you don’t have to have web development or html experience to use WordPress as your website or blog. These days most hosting companies provide the ability to install WordPress on your website with a single click of the mouse and we will furnish you with a link to a step-by-step Godaddy installation video after the interview. WordPress is an Open Source software which allows it to be used free of cost and you can use it on any kind of personal or commercial website.

We will also discuss the top five essential WordPress plugins that you must have running on your blog. Do you know what permalinks are and why they are important? Ben will tell you about them.

Please join us tomorrow for this expert call!

When: Friday May 15, 2009

Where: Blog Talk Radio – Denise Griffitts. “Your Partner in Success”

Time: 9 am PST / 10 am MST / 11 am CST / 12 pm EST

Call In Telephone Number: 347-843-4988

We look forward to “seeing” you on the call. Be sure to join us in the chat room (or the Green Room as Judy Peebles, “The Journaling Jenius” terms it) Ask as many questions as you have. We are here to help!

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How Can I Get On The Internet Without Breaking My Budget?

Posted by Denise Griffitts on May 2, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

One of the questions I am often asked is, “How can I get the word out about my business or services without breaking my budget or losing my mind?” I am not kidding, that is often how the question is phrased.

I can think of two things immediately that will help you launch yourself into the incredible world of social marketing.

Are you an expert on something? Cat nip toys, Library operations, power of persuasion? No matter what your area of expertise you can create a Squidoo lens. What’s a Squidoo lens? It is a free, single page online – which translates to a popular way for you to be found on the web and possibly make some money for yourself or a charity. Squidoo lenses are a cross between Wikipedia and a blog. You can sell items on your lens, link to Amazon and much more. So whether your passion is politics, the internet, or enterprise content management, you too can Squidoo.

Are you blogging? If not, you are quite literally standing still on the internet. If you are not blogging, you are not getting your message out. I recommend WordPress as a blogging platform. WordPress is more than just another blog tool, with a little effort you can use WordPress as a fully functioning content managed website. This means that to build an attractive site you won’t need to enlist the help of a web designer or learn any scary languages like PHP or XHTML. Sites can be built on their domain name (http://yoursite.wordpress.com) which I do not recommend if you are serious about your online career, or installed on your own server with your own domain. The best part: the installation and thousands of templates are free. As they say on their site, WordPress is “just a group of geeks who are passionate about enabling people to publish on the web.” I interviewed Ben Cope, “The Internet Genius” yesterday about this very topic. Ben has so much information about WordPress to share that we have to have a second interview on May 15. If you missed the call you can hear it on BlogTalkRadio. You will hear Ben discussing Premium WordPress Templates in the interview and you can view that information here: http://wpdreamtheme.com