How to Install a Spam Filter on Your WordPress Blog

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Feb 22, 2012 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

Spam is taking over our lives but there is something that you can do about catching it on your blog before your email box fills up each day with male enhancement drug offers, diet pill offers and those pesky Nigerian solicitors who drop by to let you know that your millions of dollars are waiting for you.

To block and reduce spam on your self-hosted WordPress blog, I use and recommend Akismet.

Akismet comes pre-installed on new WordPress installations so all you need to do is activate the plugin.  Do this by navigating to WP Dashboard > Plugins. You will find Akismet Plugin in Installed Plugins. Click the “Activate” button.

Now you will see a yellow highlighted message at the top of your WP dashboard asking you to enter your Akismet API key.

Go to Akismet and register for your key.

The default setting will look like they want you to pay $36 for the key. Grab the slide and shift it left until it registers $0 and then proceed with your registration. Be sure to use an email address that you have access to as they will email the key to you.

Return to your WP dashboard, click on the “Enter yoru Akismet API key” highlighted message and copy and paste your emailed key there. Click the update options button and your key will be verified. If the key is valid you will see this screenshot:

Aweber WordPress Web Form Plugin

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Nov 18, 2010 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

If you use Aweber for your email marketing you will be delighted to know that today they released their AWeber Web Form Widget for WordPress. You can use it to place your Aweber forms on your WordPress site with just a few click. There is no need to copy and paste code any longer.

With the Webform Widget for WordPress, you can easily drag and drop web forms that you have created in your AWeber account into your WordPress blog, without having to log into your AWeber account or copy and paste anything. All you need is an AWeber account and a completed web form.

Step By Step Instructions

Step 1: You can find the AWeber WordPress Web Form Widget on WordPress.org. You can use WordPress to install the widget for you, but if you’re manually installing it, make sure you upload it to “/wp-content/plugins/”. Once installed, activate it on your Plugins page by clicking the Activate link.

Step 2: To connect the widget to your AWeber account, first click AWeber Web Form under the Settings tab on the left of your WordPress control panel.

On this page, click the link next to “Step 1″.

Step 3: You will be taken to a page asking you to authorize the connection between your AWeber account and the widget. Enter your login name and password here and hit the “Allow” button.

You’ll be taken to a page with an authorization code (it will be a long string of characters) – simply highlight it and copy it to your clipboard.

Step 4: Back in your WordPress control panel, just paste the authorization code into the space provided and click the “Make Connection” button.

Step 5: Once you’ve installed this widget and connected it to your AWeber account, head over to the Widgets page under Appearance on the left side of your WordPress dashboard.

Simply drag the widget (it will show up under Available Widgets as “AWeber Web Form”) into the widget area in which you’d like your form to appear.

Sep 6: Once the widget is in place, you can choose which form you would like to appear. Expand the AWeber Web Form widget’s options by clicking the arrow to its right, then use the drop down menus to choose the list you want to work with:

And the web form you’d like to place on your blog:

Then hit ”save” to save your changes, and your form will be installed on your blog.

Make Money Helping Local Businesses Start a Blog

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Sep 10, 2010 in Entrepreneurism, Web Development | 0 comments

I read a timely and brilliant article this morning on Rosalind Gardner’s Net Profits Today blog and wanted to share it with all of you who are skilled in WordPress and are looking for additional sources of business.

by Rosalind Gardner

You already know how to install a blog.

You also know which plugins to use to make it functional and how to make it look great with a pretty professional WordPress theme.

You know which pages are must-haves on any blog.

AND you understand the benefits of blogging in terms of getting free traffic, as well as how to use PPC at the local level to reduce advertising costs.

So, why not make money using your knowledge to help businesses in your local area either set up a new blog, or improve an existing web site?

Surely, you’ve come across a few local businesses that could benefit greatly from your blogging knowledge.

I run across awful local business sites all the time.

For example, most of the small resort, motel and private RV park/campground sites I find when doing travel research are just downright ugly. Most of them look like they were designed in 1997 and haven’t been updated since.

Read the rest of the article here: Rosalind Gardner’s Net Profits Today

If you want to brush up on your WordPress skills and be able to increase the professional fees you command take a look at these two programs.

Go For Your Dream WordPress Training. The next live WordPress Website Workshop begins next month, October, 2010. Be sure to register for the case study replays from their last workshop and get on the list to be notified when the new course starts. I work closely with Ben Cope and Kimberly Bohannan on many projects and highly recommendtheir WordPress trainings!

WordPress Mastery. They offer 3 free brief, but powerful videos that will let you find out more about the complete, step-by-step, multi-video training series. This course is perfect for people who are fairly new to WordPress and need to get the basics down pat.

My web development company, Your Office On The Web builds WordPress sites for clients each month. In fact, we may have as many as 8 -11 in production at any given time. Once you are confident that your WordPress skills can be considered “expert” I would love to see your portfolio!

How to Work With Fonts In WordPress

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Apr 24, 2010 in Internet Mastery, Web Development | 0 comments

Do you have a WordPress website or blog that requires something other than the standard fonts that most computers see?

AnyFont is a marvelous plugin that allows you to automatically set any TrueType or OpenType font for your post titles, menu items, widget titles or anywhere else you want to use a custom font on your WordPress site. Ryan Peel, who is the developer of this plugin is amazinging responsive to email and fixed an issue for me immediately.

The issue that I encountered was that AnyFont was terribly allergic to the Featured Gallery Content plugin and immediately shut it down because of conflicting javascript libraries. Ryan tells me that he re-wrote the javascript to remove any conflict with the Featured Content Gallery plugin and will be including those changes in all future versions of AnyFont.

See how the font you want to use will look before installing it:

If you are on the hunt for free truetype and opentype fonts for Windows and Mac, FontSpace offers more than 13,394 free downloads. What I really like though, is the ability to type in a word in your chosen font family and see instantly what it will look like. This is a time saver!

Just type the word you want into the “customize” box, choose your size and off you go!

What it looks like when I type my name in:

Enjoy!

WP WishList – Membership Site Plugin

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Mar 13, 2010 in Internet Mastery, Web Development | 0 comments

Buy 1 License, Get The Second for $25 Until March 17

If you, or a client want to create a quick and VERY powerful membership site using your current or planned WordPress installation, I highly recommend Wishlist Member.

As more and more web development clients discover the power of WordPress, we find ourselves working regularly with  projects that integrate this membership plugin.

Right now Wishlist Member is offering a Two License Promo (this is not advertised on their site) meaning that anyone who purchases a Single Site License has the opportunity to get a second license at a whopping 74% discount. It’s the best deal they’ve ever offered and for an extra $25, you get a second license – which means you can use it on another site.

If you’ve been thinking about starting a membership site, private community or you need a way to deliver a digital course, then you’ll want to take a look at this.

Why do I recommend this plugin so highly?

Because I work in it almost daily for myself and for our Web Development and Virtual Assistance clients. It’s by far the best solution for creating a membership site and there are even 30+ videos available for free showing you how it’s being used.  Besides the huge savings, you’ll find that once you start using WishList Member, you’ll quickly see that there are many ways to use it.

For example, a little while back they released a free training video demonstrating 10 of the most popular kinds of membership sites (and some of them don’t even have content inside!). You can view that here.

My Web Development team is expert at working with this plugin so please feel free to ask any questions you like!