WordPress is a great simple content management system, but when looking at the Google Analytics for a site I implemented entirely in WordPress I noticed that a significant percentage of people were clicking on the link to the page they were already on.

I was concerned about the impact this might be having on visitors to the site – how much confusion was it causing, whether it had a negative impact on the bounce rate, where would the user have gone if they hadn’t tried to go to the page they were on, and so on.

I scoured the web for a solution to remove the link to the current page, but to my amazement found none. I contacted John Blackbourn who developed this plugin for me – which I am now sharing with you.

John Blackbourn came highly recommended by both Conor O’Neill of LouderVoice and Damien Mulley, and I can now also highly recommend him.

I think this simple little plugin will be especially handy to people like me who develop sites entirely in WordPress for small businesses and monitor the Analytics.

Please check out the ‘Remove Link to Current Page’ plugin page for more details.

The articles stress the importance of making as easy as possible for people to digest your content.

There are three articles, and I highly recommend reading them in full.

1. Writing for Conversions – Part 1 of 3: Structure
2. Writing for Conversions, Part 2 of 3 – Tone
3. Writing for Conversions, Part 3 of 3 – Format

If I were to pass on some key points in the articles for writing blog posts they would be:

• Open with your key points
• One idea per paragraph
• Keep pages short - I’d add that for blogging many short posts and some longer posts is a good mix
• Write in fragments or short sentences – don’t worry about grammatical correctness if you have made yourself clear
• Highlight in bold important information-carrying words
• Be clear and concise
• Use bullet lists instead of paragraphs where possible

Do read the full articles for a more in depth understanding of writing for the web.

Starting a new blog can feel like you are writing in a vacuum. And that’s when you are writing, what about the times you have no idea what to write about?

The following is by no means a complete blogging strategy, but rather a way to

• find inspiration for your blog posts
• become more involved with the blogging community

Step 1: Monitor blogs for relevant subjects
You will need:

• Google blog search
• IrishBlogs.ie popular topics (for Irish bloggers)

Set up searches relevant to your field/business in Google blog search – Google blog search has handy links at the bottom of any search you do that allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds or set up email alerts.

Email alerts are good because they serve as reminders to blog, as they are more intrusive than RSS.

Don’t forget to include in your search terms your name and the name of your business & website so you can also see and respond to what others are saying about you or your business.

Check out IrishBlogs.ie popular topics – along the top of the site they show the trending topics, with more information below. Under the heading for each trending topic there are links to the blog posts about the topics. There is an RSS feed available for the popular topics so you can keep up to date with popular topics easily.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, read my article on Google’s easy to use RSS reader.

Step 2: Watch for items of interest to you
Once you are monitoring topics using the above tools, watch for posts on subjects you feel strongly about. The ideal is to find posts where you agree with the blogger, but have your own slant on the topic.

Step 3: Respond and engage!
Write a blog post on the subject and be sure to reference and link to the original post.

“Blogger X wrote recently about Topic Y and made some very good points, my own perspective is that…”

Of course, you can link to a number of different blog posts on the subject matter throughout your blog post, you don’t have to limit it to one.

This technique will raise your own awareness of like minded bloggers out there, while letting them know of your existence. When you link to a blog post a trackback will be sent to that person’s blog letting them know about the link.

The extra tip:
When you’re monitoring blogs, if you find posts that interest you but you don’t have a whole blog post about it in you – leave a comment.

Like the blog posts, this is best done when you have a perspective to share on the subject. Most commenting forms include a field for your website, be sure and include a link to your blog – people will often follow that link to get a better sense of who is behind the comment.

I recently had reason to search for one and thought I would share some of my findings. Here are four I tried after researching, along with what I feel are their shortcomings.

If you don’t feel like reading all of the below, the essence is cforms II is an incredibly powerful tool and the clear winner for me, but if you’re looking for something really simple Green Beast’s contact form might be a good choice for you.

Enhanced WordPress contact form plugin

This plugin will send an email alright, but you can’t customise it much and there doesn’t seem to be any good validation/feedback to the user if they try to submit the form without completeing it properly. Really didn’t like this one.

Enhanced WordPress contact form plugin

Contact Form 7

I came across several people recommending this one so I had a look. It’s got an odd interface but once you get used to it it’s very customisable. The main issue I had with this form was that once you submitted a form the thank you message was down the bottom and a bit too subtle, and there didn’t seem to be any way to change that without actually digging into the code of the plugin itself.

I feel it’s better to present the user with a page which looks significantly different once they have submitted. Overall I wasn’t crazy about this plugin.

Contact Form 7

Green Beast WordPress-Ready Contact Form

This is a good and simple to use plugin. The only problem I have with it really is that it includes what I feel are some unnecessary form fields such as the ‘Subject’ dropdown which you are required to choose from, however, having said that you can contact the author to get a quote for a customisation to be done on the form for you. Worth checking out, it might suit you perfectly out of the box.

Green Beast WordPress-Ready Contact Form

cforms II

cforms is an incredibly versatile and powerful contact form plugin, which allows you to create complex forms and style them using CSS.

I had some trouble getting this plugin to work on a blog which was not installed at the root, but there was plenty of documentation on fixing this issue in the FAQ.

This plugin might be a little daunting because of it’s feature rich nature, but the amount of control is impressive. I love it. Clear winner. Gold star.

cforms II

Thanks to the Twitterers who helped in my quest: @donncha, @gavreilly and @paulmcclean. Apologies if I left anyone out!

We bloggers get so used to blogs, we sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees, and forget that there are plenty of internet users out there who may not distinguish between a web page and a blog, but simply between pages they can find their way around and pages they can’t.

You should go and complete Sinéad’s survey, and then come back if you like and read through my comments that the questions inspired.

Q1: On a scale of 1 to 5 how easy do you think navigating a blog is? (i.e. Finding information, moving around the site)

I can usually navigate a blog quite easily, but I appreciate that I’ve been blogging a long time, and am very familiar with the interfaces of popular blogging platforms. And to be honest, usually I will use the search feature if there is one present.

Often though, there is simply no requirement to navigate a blog.

The average internet user may be more aware of blogs now due to their proliferation, but most users turn to the internet for information and don’t make any distinctions between types of pages – the information is either there or it isn’t.

If your blog does not lead users to further information they are interested in, they won’t even attempt to navigate. In my experience bounce rates on blogs are very high. Most traffic will arrive at a blog through long tail google searches, scan the page and either find what they are looking for and leave, or realise it’s not what they were looking for and leave.

Improving the stickiness of a blog design is an artform, and one that is hard to master. However, it is somewhat easier if you have a highly focussed blog, for example a business blog which is designed for one purpose and attracts traffic of a specific nature for a narrow field of search words and search terms.

Defining the goal of your blog, and it’s purpose within your larger website (or general web strategy) will certainly help you implement a design strategy which can help guide users where you want them to go next on your blog/site.

Q2 On a scale of 1 to 5 how important is it to you that a blog is easy to navigate?

Taking the above thoughts into consideration, from a users perspective it is often not important that a blog be easy to navigate, because often they are not looking for anything other than the information contained in a single blog post.

personally, if a blog really captures my imagination I will add it to my RSS reader and occasionally notice something of interest there again through the RSS feeds.

That doesn’t mean that blogs shouldn’t strive to be navigable though – from a blog owners perspective the navigation should aim to be as simple as possible and lead me to the next desired page or action. From the owners perspective you presumably want people to stick around, have a nose around and preferably come back soon!

Q3. Do you prefer navigating a webpage or a blog?

It’s true, often a well laid out website will be so much easier to navigate than the murky logic of categories or tags, particularly when you take into consideration blogs which do not even clearly identify tags or categories, but simply dump them in the sidebar somewhere!

However, there’s no real reason a blog shouldn’t be easy to navigate, it just takes a little more attention to the design of the template. We sometimes don’t see the wood for the trees, and don’t put the effort in to make it as simple and understandable as possible.

Q4. On a scale of 1 to 5 how important is it to you that the overall design of a blog is visually appealing?

Oooh, this is an interesting one. I would say it is important to me, Sabrina Dent’s blog, for example originally caught my eye due to it’s appealing design and ever since I check back regularly – however though the design caught my eye, if the content did not deliver I would soon abandon the blog.

However, then you have a blog like Damien Mulley’s, another blog I visit regularly, and yet he has an out of the box WordPress template for his design. Does that bother me? not at all.

Just recently I was involved in a project which replaced an out of the box design for a new blog with a prettier custom design. Early analysis would suggest that the bounce rate decreased and pageviews went up after the new design was implemented.

Unscientific conjecture? Over time you can establish yourself as an authority with a standard blog design, but a more appealing custom design may help you get a headstart if you’re a new blog on the block!

Q5. On a scale of 1 to 5 how important is it to you that the CONTENT of a blog post is visually appealing?

Very important – unless of course I read the blog via an RSs reader, in which case it’s not at all important how the content is styled on the web

However I would argue that you want to retain as many readers as possible, in all possible formats – so clear, clean and legible presentation is of great importance. Pretty pictures etc help, but legible font sizes and good use of space are vital.

In Summary

Overall I agree with Sinéad that blogs often neglect the casual internet user, who may not be familiar with the concepts behind a blog. Too many assumptions are made in standard blog templates that users understand the linear or reverse chronological nature of blogs.

We should strive for clarity and simplicity in blog designs and make the interfaces as intuitive or explanatory as possible.

It is important to bear in mind what the purpose of your blog is when designing your template, so that you can guide your users where you want them to go next.

Remember the nature of the majority of blog traffic is fairly transient and do what you can, where possible and without affecting the integrity of your blog, to increase the stickiness of your blog.

Even if a unique and attractive blog template is beyond your reach for now, make sure your content is clear and legible.

What do you reckon?

If you haven’t already, please go and do Sinéad’s survey, and if you have any thoughts on these matters, leave a comment on Sinéad’s blog, or here!

In his first email newsletter he asks ‘is blogging dead?’ and answers his own question (tongue in cheek) ‘Yes, it is. Officially’.

He goes on to make some very interesting points about the state of blogging, including discussing how people are putting so much time and energy into promoting their blog posts as well as writing them, and how the quality of blogging is suffering from a desperation to get your blog posts read by as many people as possible. He also briefly looks at how blogging puts you in the public eye to a degree, and as people’s online (and often anonymous) behaviour can be fairly appalling you can end up under attack for things you say or do on your blog.

And so Jason is moving to an email newsletter instead of publishing on his blog. I can understand his motives and I think he makes plenty of valid points – have a read of his full text.

But he doesn’t actually argue that blogs are dead. Just that there are new challenges arising for the ‘blogging community’, and particularly those who are considered successful bloggers… or ‘A list’ bloggers.

That didn’t stop the discussions about the current health of blogging, and whether a flatline was imminent though, and the ever increasingly wise Hugh MacLeod then blogged about whether blogging was dead, where he boiled the whole question down to what blogging has always been about, by quoting Clay Shirky:

the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower

I understand why someone like Jason Calacanis, in his position, would favour moving to an email newsletter, but blogging won’t die that easily. For many small businesses (and large businesses for that matter) blogging is an incredibly useful and simple tool to publish to the online medium – whether you have global aspirations or not. Take this humble blog. I’m not trying to become an A-Lister. I’m not even trying to generate international clients, but I’m generating relevant content on a regular basis. And Google likes that.

Blogging may be undergoing changes, the blogging cluture may need to seriously examine the amount of negativity that prominent bloggers seem to have to deal with, but as long as regular, relevant content = better search results = increased traffic, blogging will live on. In the last month, 70.73% of all traffic came to this site via the blog.

You don’t have to be king of the blogoshpere, you don’t have to sparkle with ingenuity and brilliance in every post and you don’t have to kill yourself over every post and kill yourself a second time flogging said post.

A solid blogging strategy and a level of persistance will reap benefits.

It was a good idea, one which was the result of various conversations on various blogs – I can’t take credit for the concept, I think lots of people came up with the idea around the same time.

My article was liked by several people and can be seen even today on the site of friend and social media guru Tom Raftery.

Over time I lost sight of the importance of this approach, falling prey perhaps to echo-chamber-itus as RSS usage became standard in the tech industries. People who spend long hours chained to their computers for various reasons are now familiar with RSS, however recent conversations with people who use computers on a more casual basis have reminded me that RSS is still not widely understood.

And so I have updated my article and the buttons, and I am once again encouraging anyone who would like to edit and use them to do so. A link back to this site would be appreciated, but not obligatory

I decided that for the revised edition I would focus on Google Reader. I thought long and hard about this, but since a) it is the reader I currently use, b) it is extremely easy to use and the article is aimed at beginners in RSS, it just made sense.

So please have a look at the new article on subscribing to blogs, and my new buttons, and let me know what you think…

When I say Wordpress I mean the self-hosted WordPress solution, which ensures that all the value I build up from inbound links and content generation is bound to my domain, if you are blogging for business I would strongly advise you do the same such that your blog address is www.mysite.com/blog or something similar. If your site does not have a blog, and you are wondering if it should, please feel free to contact me to discuss whether, and how, your site might benefit from having a blog.

Here are my tips for improving your WordPress blog once it’s installed:

1. Page Titles.

You used to need a plugin for this, but now you just need to tweak a little code. This is really important as it can make a big difference in your search engine results.

If you are using the default template you will need to open header.php and change this:
<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

to this:
<title><?php wp_title('&raquo;',TRUE,'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_home() ) { ?> &raquo; <?php bloginfo('description'); } ?></title>

2. Permalink structure.

Set up permalinks. I am a firm believer that these help with search engine results, and they also look better to humans! I use a simple permalink custom structure: /%category%/%postname%

3. Add description tags to posts.

Add meta tags to your blog posts plugin – this is an absolutely invaluable plugin which allows you to add keyword and description tags to blog posts. While keywords are of limited, if any, value, I find the description tag to be important, particularly for providing meaningful snippets in search engine results pages.

4. Caching.

If you happen to get a load of traffic to your blog, and it can happen unexpectadly trust me, you would be well advised to have either the wp-cache or the wp-super-cache plugin installed to keep your blog running smoothly and avoid the wrath of your hosting provider!

5. Highlight author comments.

I realised from reading blogs that often the conversation in the comments is as valuable as the post, and I like to be able to quickly identify author responses, so I always ensure author comments are highlighted on my blogs. Read this post by Max Cutts but be warned, I had to modify the code he gives to get it to work on my blog:

If you’re using the default template, open comments.php and replace this:
<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

with this:<li <?php if( $comment->user_id == $post->post_author) { $oddcomment = "class='authcomment'"; } else {}; echo $oddcomment; ?> id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

You will also need to modify your css file to include a .authcomment class. In the default template, open style.css and add something like this:
.authcomment{background-color:#000000; color:#FFFFFF;}
Change the colours to suit – the above will make the background black and the text white.

6. Subscribe to comments.

Subscribe to comments plugin – when someone leaves a comment on your blog, this plugin allows them to choose to be alerted via email when someone else leaves a comment on that post.

I find this plugin brings people back and keeps conversation going in the comments, which in turn helps build a community around your blog, makes your blog more vibrant, and generates further content on your blog.

7. Feedburner & RSS prominence.

Feedburner & RSS prominence – it’s a good idea in your design to ensure you have a reasonably prominent link to your RSS feed, which both serves as a reminder to people to subscribe to your blog and provides a link to the RSS feed for them to do so. Feedburner allows you to keep an eye on your RSS stats, how many people have subscribed etc, and also provides links you can use for prominence.

8. Create an archives page.

Create an archives page. I don’t like to clutter my blog sidebars too much, and I don’t believe anyone browses blogs by date, so I hive off my archives into a page called archives. This also reduces the amount of internal links on each page of my blog.

With recent versions of WordPress this really couldn’t be simpler. Assuming you are using a fairly standard template you can create a new page (not post) and call it something like Archives, don’t insert any content into the page, then in the sidebar open the ‘Page templates’ box and select the Archives template. That’s it – once you save your archives will be inserted into that page. You can now delete the archives code from sidebar.php: <li><h2>Archives</h2><ul><?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?></ul></li>

9. Tackling comment spam.

There are two main ways you can tackle comment spam, I use Akismet which now comes with Wordpress, you just have to get a WordPress.com API key to enable it, so do this as soon as you get up and running.

The only drawback is that you can have false positives, which means that valid comments sometimes end up in the spam bin. The other option is to use something like a captcha to deter spam bots, but captchas can deter some users too, however I think captchas are becoming so prevalent it’s becoming less of a deterrent. If you would like to explore using a captcha on your blog, here is the best captcha plugin I have come across for WordPress.

10. Use single categories.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I belive quite strongly that you will get better search engine results if you categorise wisely in WordPress. Before you ever beging blogging try to create a fairly definitive list of categories you would use. I advise trying to limit yourself to in or around ten categories, but this is flexible, and of course you are not prevented from adding to your categories once experience has informed you further.

Once you have your list, add them to your blog – remember category links will only show up in your blog sidebar once they have some content. My strategy is to then assign each blog post a single category. This makes for a very clear information hierarchy both for your visitors and the search engines, which I have found to be beneficial in search engine results.

And just for the hell of it here are two more tips, for once you have built up your blog a little:

11. Recent comments.

Once you have built up traffic to your blog, and begun to have people comment on your blog I recommend highlighting recent comment activity – it can attract more visits to posts that have ongoing conversations, and it can encourage fresh comments. I like the Recent Comments Widget/Plugin for this.

12. Better paging navigation.

Once you have built up a body of content you may find you need better navigation between pages, I like this Paging plugin which uses a fairly standard format of paging, making it easy for visitors to navigate and spreading some internal link love while not adding a gazillion internal links to each page.

So that’s my list of WordPress tips…

I hope you find this list useful, particularly for newer bloggers, as there are so many plugins and approaches it sometimes helps to see what others are doing, and why they’re doing it to develop ones own approach.

If you are a seasoned WordPress user, what plugins and techniques do you use? Let me know in the comments!

However, there is the chance that you will suddenly find yourself thrown into the deep end of a much more negative experience – something called a ‘blogstorm’…

You suddenly find you have posted about something which seems to have enraged or outraged a section of the blogging community, and you find yourself at the wrong end of a lot of shouting and pointing of fingers online. It’s not a nice experience and can be quite stressful and worrying to someone trying to build an online brand.

Firstly, let me tell you that a blogstorm always seems bigger than it is when you are at the center of it and secondly, let me tell you that blogstorms blow over – they may feel interminable and insurmountable, but when you’re out the other side of a blogstorm you realise that most blogstorms occur in a flash, and in a teacup.

How you should react to a blogstorm you seem to have initiated will depend on the scale and nature of the issue – there is no single approach which will fix everything, but I hope this article will help newer bloggers weather their first blogstorm.

I’m going to go through five steps that are worth considering when you encounter a spate of negativity aimed at you online.

1. Never argue with a blogger – he’ll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Generally it is good to respond to negative criticism, but I would warn against getting dragged into long protracted point for point arguments – nobody ever comes out looking well from a public brawl.

2. Take time to consider your position.
If you have posted something on your blog which has resulted in either negative comments or negative blog posts on other blogs, it is crucial to take the time to truly consider your position.

Try to objectively assess whether there is any truth in any of the allegations which may be leveled against you. You may find that the comments or blog posts aimed at you feel personal, or even inflammatory, or just plain get up your nose. It’s a tough one, but you may find that despite not liking the tone or attitude of your ‘attackers’ they could still have some valid points.

3. Don’t go negative.
No matter how personally attacked you feel, remember you don’t have to go negative. Take a deep breath, take the hit to your ego, and remain positive.

After you have tried to look objectively at what’s going on, thank people for their feedback and let them know you are taking it on board.

If you need to defend certain positions, that’s fine – but don’t respond with a counter attack. In the short run a counter attack may make you feel better, but in the long run and from an outside perspective you’re counter attack is likely to look petty and small.

Stay positive and professional. It will stand to you in the long term.

4. Write your response, but pause before publishing.
Once you decide to respond, take time to write a considered response to those you have incensed. Don’t rush into an angry response. It’s not easy, but it’s vital – my advice would be to write your response and save it to review a little later before publishing, give yourself a couple of hours or even overnight if at all possible.

You will most likely find that no matter how calm you thought you were, a second look reveals a more emotional side to your response than you intended. Coming back to your response after a break allows you a second chance to ensure the professionalism of your response.

I would also recommend having your views sanity checked by those you trust. Try to get a few points of view and, if possible, from a couple of seasoned bloggers who have experience in dealing with blogstorms.

5. Walk away (but continue to monitor).
Try to write your response bearing in mind that once you have written it, you will walk away. Your position will only be weakened by constant updates to your response, and you can come across as flustered, stressed and unsure of your position – which may be how you feel at the time, which is why it’s all the more important to take time and wait before publishing a response.

It is difficult sometimes to restrain yourself from responding to every new comment/blogpost on the matter – you may feel you have to defend your position. The fact is, usually, you will be able to respond and leave it at that. Yes, you may have people shouting and wondering why you are not responding to them, but if you have written a considered response addressing the major issues, you should be able to step away from the keyboard.

Trying to defend every single point from every single commenter can result in prolonging the blogstorm and making you look defensive, petty and even desperate.

Of course, you need to continue to monitor the situation, and there are cases where you will need a follow up response – but be sure it’s necessary. Leave time between responses and go through the points above again for each response – if my experience is anything to go by, you will find that responses you felt at the time were urgent, critical and necessary look silly in the cold light of day.

Oh and one other thing… where should you respond?
Where you should respond depends on the nature of the blogstorm. You could respond on your blog with a new post, but it’s not always the best option. You may not wish to add fuel to the fire, or to raise awareness of the blogstorm by devoting a new post to it.

Posting comments might suffice – usually a good old fashioned blogstorm will be happening in comments on your blog and on new posts on other people’s blogs – so you can usually comment your response on your own blog and if necessary comment on the other blogs with a note pointing out your response.

In some cases you may feel it is necessary to address the issue with a new blog post clarifying your position, or changing your position if you feel you have made a mistake or an error in judgement. In this case you can write your post and then trackback or comment on others blogs letting them know you have done so.

Summary
Blogstorms can feel like personal attacks, and if you respond in the heat of the moment in a defensive mood you can find you have said something you wish you could take back. But it’s the internet, there’s no ‘retract’ button – it’s out there and it’s out there until they turn off the internet.

So that’s my advice, and it’s not always easy advice to follow. The next time I find myself in the center of a blogstorm I will be visiting this post and trying to make sure I follow my own advice:

1. Never argue with a blogger – he’ll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
2. Take time to consider your position.
3. Don’t go negative.
4. Write your response, but pause before publishing.
5. Walk away (but continue to monitor).