There have been reports so far from two bloggers involving three blogs that after upgrading to WordPress 3.3.1 the checkbox for the GrowMap anti-spambot plugin (G.A.S.P.) goes missing.

Blogs affected so far are all using the FREE version –
not CommentLuv Premium.

Ileane @BasicBlogTips Recommends GASP Click Image to Read

Bloggers using CommentLuv Premium who have upgraded to WordPress 3.3.1 including Donna Fontenot’s (@DonnaFontenot) ebusiness coaching blog and Ron Cripps’ (@AffiliateXFiles) MakeItYourRing do NOT have the problem.

Kristi Hines (@Kikolani) – a wonderful person who supports other bloggers and wrote the Ultimate Blog Post Promotion Guide, dropped everything and upgraded a blog using the free version to 3.3.1 to test for issues.

The GASP checkbox was still visible, so the good news is there
is not a major problem with upgrading to WordPress 3.3.1.

The problem was first reported by John Rocheleau on his popular self help thoughts Zen Moments blog. He believes that “for some reason the plugin is not recognizing the presence of java even though the Java works fine on any other site and in Java tests online at sun java, etc.”.

John Lefler also had this issue just after upgrading to WP 3.3.1 on his existing Help for Tinnitus blog and his new Chameleon Lovers blog. Problems on both blogs have now been resolved and I have received no new reports of issues.

WHAT CAUSED THE CHECKBOX TO REAPPEAR?

When John @ZenMoments saw that Andy had uploaded a new version of the plugin, he upgraded to GASP 1.1.1 and his problem was resolved.

GASP MISSING CHECKBOX DIAGNOSIS:

The first thing to ask yourself is have you made any recent changes? Did you upgrade WordPress, change or upgrade your Theme, install any new plugins or update any existing plugins?

Any recent changes are the most likely cause of a new issue.

What to check if your GrowMap antispambot checkbox is not visible:

1. Are you logged out of your blog? You can only see it if you are.
2. Clear your browser cache and cookies and retry.
3. Try different browsers. Sometimes problems occur in one browser and not others: fails in Chrome but not in FireFox or vice versa.
4. Ask others to check your blog from different PCs, using different browsers, and using different Internet connections. (You want to eliminate anything your tests have in common to diagnose where the real issue lies.
5. Try deactivating and reactivating your GASP plugin.
6. If there is a new version of GASP upgrade to it.
7. If all else fails, you can delete GASP and then reinstall it – but you may want to check for plugin conflicts first.

PLUGIN CONFLICTS

The most common conflict issues with plugins involve caching plugins and plugins that use javascript (such as the Ajax edit comments plugin and GASP). Any time you upgrade WordPress or any plugin it could potentially affect other plugins.

1. Clear wp super cache caches after every upgrade.
2. Try disabling plugins starting with those most likely to cause a conflict.

Caching plugins are the place to start. They can be challenging to configure properly so if you make any changes FIRST RECORD EXISTING SETTINGS.

You may want to get assistance with configuring from someone who prefers the Caching plugin you have installed or even temporarily leave it turned off. Sometimes caching plugins cause more issues than the resolve.

WHEN DIAGNOSING ANY TECHNICAL ISSUE:

1. Record existing settings, status of plugins, and if you are going to do updates get a fresh backup.
2. KEEP A CHANGE LOG – all that means is write down each thing you do in sequence so you can reverse them if necessary – and to share with anyone you end up needing to assist you. THIS IS CRITICAL!
3. Do NOT start changing everything all at once - You don’t want to complicate resolution by creating multiple issues where you originally only had one! If something does not fix the issue, change that back and THEN change something else.

YES, you MIGHT need to change more than one thing, but multiple issues are very difficult to diagnose so don’t create them where they do not already exist.

I encourage bloggers to connect with other bloggers in their location
and/or niche so they have a built-in support network for both sharing
your content and testing and resolving any technical issues you have.

If you don’t know any other bloggers yet, do not despair. I will be working hard to put together new formal and information blogging collaborations all throughout the year.

For more details, see Blogging Collaborations and Best Practices
and add your blogs to the Promote Your Blog post.

As always, if you have tips to share or related posts please comment and leave relevant links. Thank you.

Click Image for More on WP Caching Plugins and Optimization

Another possible cause of dropping PageRank – and even worse – potential loss of organic search traffic – is slow load time.

Most WordPress blogs are not loading nearly as quickly as they can and there ARE some great tools out there to assist us in speeding them up.

GTmetrix offers a free WordPress Optimization Guide and free online Page Load speed test that provides comprehensive results.

• NOTE: a page load time of 5.29s still garners an F grade so don’t panic when you run your site!
• Test your home page and some of your posts to identify issues that affect one and not the other.

This screen capture shows most of the first page of results. There are multiple tabs and much more to see so do run your own URLs. It doesn’t cost you anything but your time.

GTmetrix Page Speed Results - Click to enlarge (Not all shown in image)

They recommend two very popular WordPress plugins: W3 Total Cache to set an expiration time and speed up browser caching and SmushIt to optimize images. (Many blogs are using images that are way too large and even I should optimize all the images here.)

WARNING: Be aware that caching plugins
are highly likely to conflict with other plugins
and WordPress or Theme upgrades or changes.

We need to identify bloggers who are particularly adept at optimizing caching plugins and make a list of those willing to assist and what they charge to help other bloggers. Any volunteers?

LOAD TIME TOOLS:

• Pingdom Web Page Load Time Tool
• WebsiteOptimization Web Page Analyzer ~ Free Web Page Speed Analysis
• Google Page Speed for Chrome Browser Addon – Special Thanks to Steve from New Customer Workshop who offers Local Business Internet Marketing.
  

PAGE LOAD TIME TIPS:

• Google Announces they will use Page Load Time in Google organic serp rankings
• David Kadavy: How to Reduce Page Load Time by 75%
• Page Load Time Affect on Conversion Rates
• 5 Popular WordPress Plugins You Need to Ditch Now (because too many plugins slows down your blog)

PAGE SPEED TIPS:

• Reduce the Number of Posts you display on your main page to speed up your blog! Go to WP admin under Settings and set how many posts will be displayed on the front page and going to 5 seems to be the best option, but this can vary from theme to theme as well, as some themes are much heavier than others causing slow speeds. Tip from JR whose Internet Marketing Blog is one to definitely be reading.
• JR also tells us that another issue with page speed is plugins like Similar Posts that drag down speed by calling the related posts for each page on the blog and can really affect page load times.
• Make sure your sharing buttons are ONLY on the post and NOT on your main page. They can really slow your blog down. Tip from Kristi Hines of the exceptional Social Media for Businesses Advice blog Kikolani.com. I make it a point to read what Kristi writes everywhere. Bloggers should seriously consider buying her inexpensive Blog Post Promotion Guide.
• I use WP-Optimize to delete post revisions and optimize databases. It is easy to run and hasn’t caused any problems. When I had the caching issue each time I published a new post I found that optimizing just before publishing DID make a difference.
• Ray from Dolphin Hosting recommends we keep an eye on is Google’s new page speed service and says another fairly decent test site that Google recommends is WebPageTest.org.

Do you have more resources, tips, or blog posts that belong here? Leave the links in the comments and I’ll move them up into the resources section of the post.

Image Credit Haden Interactive: Click Image for More on Latest PageRank Update

Bloggers are noticing changes in their Google PageRank starting yesterday.

Those whose PageRank dropped may want to check their sites for broken links.

There is an easy way to do that using a popular WordPress plugin Broken Link Checker for WordPress.

This plugin finds and lets you repair broken links and it does much more:

Broken Links Plugin Features:

• Detects links that don’t work, missing images, deleted YouTube videos and other problems.
• Periodically checks links in posts, pages, comments, custom fields and the blogroll.
• New and modified entries are checked ASAP.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any problems are found.
• Lets you edit all instances of a specific link at once.
• Gives you a list of all links ever posted on your site, with the ability to search and filter it.
• Lets you apply custom CSS styles to broken and removed links.

Here are some tips from Kelli Miller, known for her homeschooling deals, on how to use this WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin that she shared with her couponing collaboration group:

1. Install it RIGHT NOW and activate it
2. It will run and then start telling you which links are broken
3. In your dashboard it will say, “you have x umber of broken links” and that x number will be clickable
4. When you have them check marked, go to the dropdown button and choose “unlink” then apply to select all and unlink.

Deal bloggers have major broken link issues because when deals expire the links break and comments can leave tons of broken links so every blogger needs this plugin.

Do you use something else or have more tips? Share them in the comments – links to related blog posts, plugins and tools encouraged.

GOOGLE PAGERANK TIPS:

• Google new Pagerank Algorithm Update: 6 Useful Tips (June 2011)
• GoogleGuide to Improving PageRank
• SeanSEO: How to Improve PageRank (Aug 2010)

BROKEN LINK CHECKERS:

• W3C Link Checker
• iwebtool Broken link checker

Have you ever had Visual Editor disappear in your WordPress (WP) blog? When you’re editing or adding posts or pages if Visual Editor is available you will see two tabs above the box where you type your posts. One is Visual and the other is HTML.

WordPress Visual Editor

Many WP bloggers probably do not realize there is a setting to make the Visual tab disappear. This can happen when updating WordPress or when collaborating in a WordPress blog with someone who prefers to write html manually.

To turn the Visual Editor back on go to Users (in the left column when you are logged into your blog), click on Your Profile, look for Personal Options and uncheck the box that says Disable the visual editor when writing.

Visual Editor is what provides the options for formatting your posts automatically without knowing how to write html from scratch. The default only shows the first row of options in the Visual Editor.

To reveal or hide the second row click the last icon in the first row. The icon has three lines of dots on it and says Show/Hide Kitchen Sink (Alt+Shift+Z) when you point at it.

The second row contains a drop-down for adding header tags and additional options for formatting text including changing text colors, pasting tools, a remove formatting button, tools for adding media, custom characters, indent, outdent, undo, redo and help.

After you show the Kitchen Sink by clicking on the icon or using the keyboard shortcut Alt + Shift + Z you will see the second row (pictured in the image below):

WordPress Visual Editor Kitchen Sink Options

Those who use word processing programs such as Microsoft Word or the free open source alternative Open Source Word Process I prefer from OpenSource.org will be familiar with most of those options.

Something very useful that you may not be aware of are the buttons for pasting as plain text, paste from Word, and remove formatting.

How to correctly paste from Word or other formatted text into WordPress

If you have ever tried to paste anything from Word directly into WordPress you already know that it can be a mess. It can take longer to clean up the formatting than it would take to write it completely over from scratch!

These little known tools clean up the formatting and allow you to paste content into your WordPress blog. If one option doesn’t work just the way you like try the other one. Most of the time one of these will be just what you needed to turn your Word documents into blog posts.

If the text is not what you want use the remove formatting button to remove the exiting formatting and preserve the content. Then format in WordPress as usual.

My readers may have noticed that I put some information in colorful boxed that stand out in my posts. Have you ever read a long post and said, “yes, that is what I need to do” and then spent far too long skimming the article trying to find the “how-to” among the explanation?

I put the “how-to” parts, specific instructions, or mark a section of a post for reference using these boxes. I do this to make it easy for someone to quickly find the part of each post they need to implement what I am writing about. If you look at what I put in the boxes in this post to see what I mean.

I bring that up in this post because it is a function of the visual editor that allows me to do this quickly and easily. I highlight the selected text and click on the double quote Blockquote icon (Alt+Shift+Q).

The default in the Thesis Theme I used was a gray text. I asked my WordPress Ninja Derek Semmler to edit the CSS for my blogs to make my BlockQuotes more prominent. He edited the text and box color to match the theme of each site.

You can see the Thesis default in our Personalized Gifts blog and compare that to how prominent and beautiful these matching quote boxes are in our Golf Blog and in the Good Millwork blog like this one about mahogany moldings.

For those who know how, unique boxes can be created using CSS styling. If you don’t you can get someone who does to add the code and then you paste it into the html of your posts. That is how the different colored boxes in Good Millwork’s Crown Moldings post were done.

VISUAL EDITOR DISAPPEARS

• Potential Fixes for Missing WordPress Editor

USING WORDPRESS VISUAL EDITOR

• Business Blogging (Ed Bejarana) How to Use the WordPress Visual Editor
• How to Blog at Blogging Teacher (Twitter) Writing Blog Posts Using the Visual Editor
• TysTips WordPress Tips Using the WordPress Visual Editor – Excellent source for newbie bloggers; covers how to write your very first blog post
• Official WordPress Support How to Use Visual Editor
• Blog Wranglers Professional Blog Migration Services How to Change WordPress Font Colors in Visual Editor

HOW TO INSTALL WORDPRESS

• Flame Scorpion (Twitter) How to Quick Install WordPress and Start Your Blog Right Away

Image Credit: Smith College WPMU Award Nominated Blogs

NOTE: Although we use and have been recommending the obviously best for HUMANS URL format, be aware that Waqas (who shared no URL or Twitter accounts so I can’t link to him or her) pointed us to this:

WordPress recommends AGAINST
clean permanlinks saying:
Starting Permalinks with %postname%
is strongly not recommended
for performance reasons.

For further information see the discussion in the comments of this post
and also this post and their answers in the comments at WpBeginner.

For reasons I don’t completely understand, the obvious best Permalink URL format is not a default in WordPress. Many blogs have dates in the URLs or other extraneous words that make your URLs too long and hard to remember.

A clean URL should have only your domain (and possibly /blog or a subdomain) and then a SHORTENED post name which ideally would be your target keyword phrase.

You can easily change a setting in WordPress so that you your future posts will automatically have cleaner URLs.

WARNING: Changing this setting is retroactive and will change the permalinks to all existing posts. We recommend you first install Platinum SEO and then make the change because that plugin will automatically redirect all your existing links. That alone makes it a great plugin to use as the default WordPress behavior that changes your permalink if you change your post title can introduce permanlink changes you may not have intended.

How to change the WordPress Permalink default:

1. Log into your WordPress blog.
2. At the very bottom of the left column find Settings and click on it.
3. Click on Permalinks (under settings).
4. Select the radio button for Custom Structure and paste /%postname%/ into the box.
5. Click save changes.

Look for Permalink (just under your post title) when you write or edit posts or pages. WordPress will now automatically name your post YourDomain/the-name-of-the-post.

IMPORTANT: Click on Edit and shorten that name to your preferred page name, ideally your target keyword phrase and save it. You will end up with a post URL that looks like this: http://YourDomain.com/Your-Keyword-Phrase.

If you decide to change the title of the post WordPress will change your saved permalink and you will have to edit and save it again. Perhaps WordPress will give us an option to disable that behavior in the future (or maybe it already exists and someone will share it with me.

When it comes to passing Cisco certification exams, there is no doubt that 642-359 dumps are your best bet. Download 642-373 dumps and 642-383 dumps to cover the complete syllabus in days.

WordPress does make changes all the time. Have you noticed that (starting with version 2.9?) you can now convert posts to pages and pages to posts? That is a great idea I wish was available when I was first learning to use WordPress.

It is also why I am publishing this now. When you do a conversion you may have to know how to make this change if you want to be able to edit the names of your posts when converting them from pages.

OPTIMIZING PAGE URLS:

• NiceBlogger SEO Blog (NiceBlogger) Optimizing URLS: Top 5 Problems and Base Techniques
• EMarketing Matador Local SEO Information (eMatador): Local SEO For Local Niche and Small Businesses

Kristi wrote a guest blog post at TechJaws about the attack last weekend on her well known Kikolani Blog by the PHP Script Injection Exploit in WordPress 2.7.1.  Kristi explains how she restored her blog and dealt with the issue. The UnMask Parasites blog provides additional details on what is known about this particular malware which has been dubbed the Gumblar .cn Exploit.

Gumblar exploit does NOT affect only WordPress. It can target any site using .php including Drupal, PhotoPost and even the Bangalore Telecom Web site.

The resources below will assist you in assessing your risk, increasing security for your WordPress blog and removing this exploit if you are already affected.

WordPress Security Resources:

• Should You Be Concerned About Your WordPress Security? (May 12, 2009)
• Securing Your WordPress Blog (Jan 14, 2009)
• In Depth Tutorial On How To Secure Your WordPress Blog Tip 1 (Apr 8, 2009)
• 18 WordPress Plugins Plus Tips to Secure Your Blog (Mar 13, 2009)
• Dan Nedelko WordPress Security Plugins (Apr 23, 2009)
• Maximum WordPress Security Plugin Announcement (Jan 3, 2009)
• Sucuri: WordPress Hardening (How to obscure WordPress and Apache version details)
• 13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area

Security Monitoring Tools for WordPress:

• Fast, simple way to check public information for yours or any other Web site:  Sucuri Web Information Gathering Tool
• Search Engine Snark recommends these Tools for Monitoring WordPress Security

WordPress Security Audit Services:

• Performancing Services offers WordPress Security Auditing

WordPress Security Plugins:

• Maximum Security WordPress Security Plugin
• WpBeginner post about WordPress File Monitor – download WordPress File Monitor from WP plugin Directory

Learning any new skill can take time so focus on the basics and posting content at first.  Adding images and advanced features and plugins can come later. I suspect many a would-be blogger got bogged down trying to figure out all the options or how to insert an image or screen capture and gave up before they really got started.

If you’re new to blogging, start here:

1. SAVE YOUR LOG-IN URL: It is easy to forget where to log into your blog so many templates leave an Admin link for you visible to anyone. Some do not so if yours doesn’t, save the url where you log into your WP blog somewhere you can remember. If you have a free WordPress blog it will be http://yourblogname.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ OR if you have a hosted WordPress blog http://yourdomain/wp-admin. (This can be different IF your hosting company changed it; only they will know what it is so contact them.)
2. SAVE YOUR USER NAME AND PASSWORD somewhere you can remember. (I use Tomboy Notes and keep a copy in a PDA.)  As long as you can remember your User Name you can easily recover your password by clicking on the lost your password link on the log-in page.
3. There are links for Write Post when you first log in or you can click on Write and then Post from wherever you are in your blog’s Admin to get started
4. Note that there is a difference between a POST and a PAGE. Remember which one you want to use as you can not easily change one into the other.  (There is a plugin to do that if you really need it.) A “page” is something you want to always be displayed under Pages in most WP templates. A “post” will be “filed” under your categories. You will only want to have a small number of pages for your most important subjects. You may end up with hundreds of posts, so most of your writing will be “posts”, not pages. When in doubt, choose “post”.
5. Typing in WordPress is very similar to using any Word program. You can format the text in a similar manner. Point at the icons above where you type and you will see their functions. Don’t worry about learning them all at once.
6. One new function you will want to use is the Insert More Tag. It is just to the right of the hyperlink and break hyperlink icons and looks like a piece of paper with a dotted line about a third of the way from the top. This is what you use to have just the first part of your post appear on the main page. (Visit any blog including this one and you’ll see what this does.) Simply position your cursor where you want the excerpt to end and click on that icon. It puts a line and the word “more” and splits your post at that point.
7. Add tags for your new post. A tag is a word or phrase that your potential readers are most likely to use to find your posts. Give these a log of thought. I prefer to use only the one most specific word or phrase for each post.
8. Select a category where this post will be filed. Categories are important to making your posts easy to locate so give some thought to your category selection.

BLOGGING TIP: When writing the most important information belongs in the first paragraph. Writers call this your “hook”. See Top 7 Leads to Hook Readers for some great tips. I like to have my excerpt end at a point that leads readers to want more. Bloggers can also benefit from these excellent News Writing Tips.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Every blogger can benefit from this excellent tutorial on How to Write Concise, Compelling News Stories. Although written for a high school paper, this is an excellent synopsis on effective writing that applies very well to excellent blogging.