That's me. Listenly so intently.
I’ve bragged plenty about how fortunate I am to live in Raleigh, NC where the social media scene is quite hoppin’. As a result of this hoppin’ scene, there is usually no shortage of social media events, usually free. I try to take advantage of them when I can. It’s fun. It’s social. It’s people who get the “geekspeak” of blogging and Twitter.
So when I saw ramblings on Twitter of a Raleigh event with a hashtag of #WPhackathon, I just knew I had to insert myself into the conversation. What is it? Where is it? How do I get to go?
The cool thing about this town is that they don’t discriminate when it comes to social media. Phil Buckley, who most of us affectionately refer to as “1918” decided to host a WordPress Hackathon where nerds bloggers, like us, could get together and
talk about all things WordPress.
Phil was great in that he encouraged all knowledge levels of WordPress, including Wannabe, Newbie, User, Veteran, Master. I picked the boring title of User but I loved that we had all sort of people in the room. Over 80 people to be exact. Phil took us through some tips and tricks. We talked about plug-ins. We talked a lot about plug-ins. And then we had some giveaways and chatted for the rest of the night.
First of all, thanks to Phil and to Michael Torbert, who hooked me up with my fabulous prize, All-in-One SEO Pack. Secondly, I had a call for any questions you would like me to try to have answered. I can’t say I got answers but here’s the closest information I could get for you.
Question:
Melissa from Adventuroo asked about having a different column layout for different pages on her Thesis-themed blog.
The answer?
While I didn’t get to ask the question, I won’t let Melissa go without an answer. The short answer is yes, you can do it. In fact, I found a tutorial that shows exactly how to create multiple custom page templates. I took one look and decided that the same layout on all pages is just fun for me. For now.
On a related note, I also found out that you can have different widgets displayed on different pages. Currently, the default is to show everything on every page. The downside? Every time someone clicks on a page, you make a call to the database asking what widgets to display. This results in slower performance on your blog.
Question:
C. Mom from C. Mom: a day in the life wanted to know if there was a way to use “continue reading” or “read more” on pages other than your home page.
The answer?
Luckily, before I had time to answer, Phil stepped in and posted his response:
The easy way is to use a theme that has that functionality already in it, but if not, you can choose to display just and excerpt then have a “read more” link. To do that will involve changing the code on your homepage.
I’ll have more on themes at the end of this post.
Question:
Melisa from Mommy This and That had the age-old question of Blogger versus WordPress. Should she make the move and what would she lose in the transition?
The answer?
Again, Phil beat me to the punch with this one:
If you are moving from a blogger.com or tumblr type of blog, then yes, there is a chance so people will not be able to find your new address right away, but you can work around those issues.
Start writing about your upcoming move for about a month before you switch, mention it in your newsletter and if possible have people who have linked to you change those links!
If you are using the Google Webmaster Tools, you can also let Google know you’re moving so they can update their search results.
Moving from blogger to WordPress is like moving from the minor leagues to the big leagues.
Phil, being an SEO expert, knows a lot about being found and not being found. I think it’s a matter of preference truly. I moved to WordPress because my blog was so new and I knew I wanted to take it places that Blogger couldn’t go. I didn’t lose anything except my Google Friends (which was very small anyway). I did have a few formatting issues and my categories and tags were a mess (since Blogger uses on “labels”) but in the end, I like to get my hands dirty and I’m glad I made the move.
Now for my quick and dirty assessment of the hackathon. With 80+ people, it was hard to get to your specific questions. Some things flew over my head and others were too basic. I was looking forward to the open discussion time at the end but with the door prize giveaway and the desire to head to the latest watering hole, those of us left ended up socializing a bit and then parted company.
The biggest takeaway from the session was this: if you are somewhat serious about your blog, invest in a good theme. Buy Thesis or buy a Premium theme. You want something that has support and will be maintained. My blog? Free theme. It’s fine. I like the design. I’ve modified it a bit. But it is quirky. I’ve done some random behind-the-scenes kind of stuff and I’m lucky it works. Also? I have NOT upgraded to WordPress 3.0.
What that means for me? I’m looking to keep the same look and feel but move to Thesis. It’s what we use over on Lives Less Ordinary and I’ve come to like it.
Other random notes I took:
- Not sure if a plug-in will work with your version of WordPress, look at WordPress.org crowdsourced plug-in data
- To improve blog performance, check out WP Super Cache plug-in
- To reduce spam, install Cookies for Comments plug-in
- For better SEO, you can specific the title tag and meta description for each post. Better yet, some paid plug-ins can tell you what those should be based on your post content
- Also, for SEO, frontload your keywords in upper left of the post title and post content
- Genesis is a theme framework similar to Thesis that is gaining traction thanks to Chris Brogan’s recent switch
- Multiple plug-ins exists to display your most popular posts. Helps drive traffic to older content.
- For additional analytics on your blog, use the WordPress.com Stats plug-in.
Most of these things, I haven’t done or tried or tested. But I plan to. I guess I have my work cut out for me. At least I like this stuff.
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