Crumb Trail Navigation in WordPress
A website with blog building project I have been working on recently is Modern Eco Homes, and again it is a WordPress as CMS solution. For this project we wanted to give the existing site a usability makeover. As well as navigation problems, we also wanted to give a little SEO lift.
Back in the day even my hard coded sites would often feature a crumb trail. That is where you can see where you are in the site hierarchy from Home -> Parent -> Current page.
Even though WordPress features the concept of page parents and children, it doesn’t have crumb trail built in.
Luckily Yoast has a plugin that is perfect.
All you have to do is install the plugin and drop in a tiny piece of code into your page template and ta-da, nice and easy crumb trail navigation. I am sure you will agree, it works well …
I love WordPress, but the WordPress community really rocks!
Twitter Timer Sends Timed Twitter Reminders
Twitter has rapidly grown far beyond the original “what are you doing” status service idea. More and more wonderfully creative ideas are surfacing around Twitter, such as this reminder service called “Timer“.
The idea is you send Timer a direct message in the following format:
So the number of minutes, followed by a space, followed by the reminder message, eg.
This would send me a reminder in 5 minutes saying “call Peter”.
You get the reminder as a direct message in the following format:
So my previous example would look like this:
Not only that, because it is sent as a direct message, you also get an email. I don’t have my Twitter hooked up to my phone number, but I would assume if you did it would send a SMS text message also.
Now providing I remember to add a reminder I have no excuses for forgetting things 
Pretty neat isn’t it?
RSS to Email MailChimp
If you have a blog then you need to provide email access to your content. Very few people outside of blogging and tech audiences understand RSS but everyone understands email.
Up to now most people have used Aweber, Feedblitz and FeedBurner for this, but now they have a new competitor.
MailChimp is a commercial service that takes the idea of “blog to email” and builds it out to be a professional email software tool.
Yes, if you have more than 100 subscribers you have to pay for it. So already it is different to Feedburner and Feedblitz. There are more features though, so it is really more in competition with Aweber.
Now I love Aweber. I have written about how bloggers should use Aweber before. That said, MailChimp is really going for it with additional features that Aweber do not have. Some very cool, but more advanced like an API for programmers.
MailChimp starts at $15 for 500 emails so is competitively priced with Aweber, and there is a free trial.
You can see the full details of what you can do at the MailChimp site.
WordPress as a CMS
I have been on a bit of a love-fest lately about my favorite blogging software, WordPress.
This is because I have been using it more and more as a Content Management System for traditional sites, rather than just as a blog platform. Combined with the fantastic Thesis theme I have never been so productive as a website builder.
It really is a delight to use, both as a developer and as an end user. If the client can use Hotmail then they are sure to be able to edit their own site in WordPress. This sort of functionality used to cost a lot of money (and still can) but WordPress is capable, flexible and free.
Some people get confused though thinking what I am suggesting is to have a blog look and feel, but that is not the case.
A traditional website can be built very quickly and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a WP based site and a hard coded one, on looks alone.
Whites Recycling Solutions is a site I am working on right now (excuse the lack of graphics, it’s a work in progress). The client has already been in and tweaked the content before I even got around to teaching them the system, how is that for ease of use?
You will see the home page is static content, while the “blog” style page is in a tab, under “news“.
No technical fancy work was required, it’s just a settings/reading option:
People who are used to hard-coded or traditional CMS systems often worry about being able to cater to the sorts of request clients often have, such as “I want it to look like this apart from on that page”.
No worries there either, you can have custom page templates which are then selected from a drop down when editing the page, or you can do what I did on me and my friend Ryan’s Credit Card Pundit site and introduce a little WordPress logic.
We wanted the banners for the various types of credit cards to appear on every page apart from the credit cards page, which would have just been ugly duplication.
It couldn’t have been easier!
Translated into English we get “If this is not page ‘8′ then do the following” - easy, eh?
The one problem with WordPress is keeping up with the upgrade cycle, I just wish they would release patches separate from functionality upgrades so people could keep up.
Other than that, I LOVE WordPress … can you tell? 
Social Bookmarking Tools
I have been looking around for tools to help me with social bookmarking. You know the kind of thing, instead of manually adding my link to Delicious, etc one service at a time, these tools will add your link to them all, at once, no muss no fuss.
That’s the idea.
It doesn’t take mad Google skills before you find OnlyWire. Looks like just the ticket.
The only bookmarklet you’ll ever need, it says. Sure looks comprehensive too. Doesn’t quite do them all, but it’s a start.
But, and isn’t there always a but? But, those mad Google skills come in handy a bit more.
It seems there is a sneaky little clause in the small print that everyone agrees to when you blithely sign up. Yup, you guessed it, accusations of spam, no less.
Could be people are leaning toward tin-foil-hat brigade, or maybe they have a point. It seems when you add your registration you give the company carte blanche to link up, using your account, anyone they choose to. Without your confirmation or even being aware. Hmmm … is that right? Could that be true?
Enough people are accusing them of it that I am worried, but so far nothing has appeared in my lists that I didn’t put there.
Anyone have any experience of this service, or can recommend a better one?
Woopra Review
You might recall earlier in the year a flurry of reviews of an analytics service called Woopra. They made a splash at WordCamp Dallas, which led to appearances on TechCrunch and the fantastic Geek Brief (got to love that show).
Woopra is a real-time stats service for websites and blogs. Unlike traditional analytics solutions, you can actually see people arriving at your site, and even chat with them in an IM/IRC-like chat window.
Sounds neat, huh?
I originally heard about it from Lorelle at SOBCon (Lorelle interviews the founders of Woopra here). She was handing out invites, but I didn’t get one, but wasn’t upset as I am a Mac user and was “reliably” informed by a fellow attendee that it wouldn’t work for me anyway. Or maybe it only works on 64-bit Macs, or something. Or maybe it did work and I was just misinformed.
Anyway, a couple weeks back Jamie Horrop introduced the northern UK bloggers meet-up to the service and gave me an invite. This time I was informed it would work, so of course I was eager to try it out.
Woopra provide a WordPress plugin so I signed up, used my invite and installed the plugin … then forgot all about it. Little did I realize, it was not for some reason recording visits.
Today I did an email giveaway to my subscribers, a special report in PDF for free download. Seemed like a good day to have some real-time analytics. Ooops, no data!
Luckily as well as the plugin there is your bog standard javascript copy and paste, which worked a treat.
As you can see, the interface is lovely. This java based desktop application looks fantastic, and is a credit to them, and an example for anyone else who thinks they can design a UI.
Is there more to it than gloss and glamor?
Yes, and no.
Other than the real time stats, which to be fair you can get at PMetrics, there is little here that you can not get at Google. Let’s face it, real time is not going to be something you need every day.
The chat part? Not convinced. I couldn’t get anyone to chat with me. Perhaps it is a popup blocker problem or a browser issue? Or perhaps nobody wanted to chat.
That all said, it could replace your current favorite stats package, it is pretty much all there.
It’s really cool to see your stats grow and change as you watch. Quite hypnotic.
For business users though there is one GLARING omission; no support for online BUSINESS. Conversions. Advertising tracking. Custom filters …
Consider your standard, default, business with an online presence. Someone who is using the web for sales, not just for attention. Where are the features that help those guys?
Luckily there is an API, perhaps someone will be adding something for us folks who care about making money and stuff. It must be said too, this is still under development.
So in summary, it looks great, and it blows the little guys like statcounter off the web, but you will want to keep Google for a little while yet.
Save Web Pages for Later with Iterasi
A perfect combination of events today. The first is an unhappy event. I feel ripped off by an online merchant. The second is an online service that will help me in my dispute.
I bought a product with a membership continuation program as a “backend”. You know the kind of thing, you buy the download but to get the download you have to be plugged into a “free trial” of a membership site, but cancel soon enough and in theory you shouldn’t get billed.
Well I tried to cancel. Twice. Using the email information provided in the support knowledge base. Today I got billed.
Of course I tried (again) to contact the publisher, but I was worried he will change the information on the site. I was going to take a screenshot but then I saw on TechCrunch that Iterasi was now available for Macs.
This service allows you to grab pages exactly as they are, store and tag them for later retrieval. Just what I need!
First you sign up and download the toolbar. Then when you come to a page you want to store, you hit the appropriate button.
Unfortunately the “Quick” option stores pages available to the public. Not good if you want to keep receipts, booking details and login information.
To keep something private you have to use the more detailed form. I’m guessing most people will quickly find the longer route more useful when it comes to retrieval time anyway, you will be glad of the folders and tags.
Once you have filed your stuff away, you can browse and get your info back out quite easily. No, I am not showing you my account!
Think this might be useful to you? Please share in the comments …
Protect WordPress Logins
As WordPress gets more and more used for non-blog type roles there becomes a greater need to protect your security and content privacy.
Unfortunately WordPress out of the box makes it easy for multiple people to share one login.
This isn’t so bad when you share a login between authors, although a better idea would be to give each author their own login and only the permissions they require.
The problem comes when the login is provided to gain access to paid and premium content or when the WordPress install is for private and confidential information, for example a company extranet.
Luckily a plugin has been created to help with these issues, restricting one account to a single login session and booting off anyone found to be sharing accounts.
The product is called Your Minder and is from the same people as the membership plugin previously reviewed.
- Flexible Logic system allowing you to specify the number of IP address able to access the same user account within a given period
- Chose between Soft or Hard Lockouts
- Soft Lockouts - log both parties out and redirect the user to a page of the admin choice
- Hard Lockouts - Logs both parties out and prevents re access until certain conditions are met
- Timed Lockouts - If using the hard lockout options a time delay can be placed before the user is allowed to login again.
- Email Re-activation - Using Hard Lock out the lock can remain in place until the user reactivates the account via a link sent to the email of the account holder.
- Wordpress MU 2.6 support!
I think well worth the $15 charge. Check out the plugin page for more details.
Reputation Management Software Tools Roundup
In my last post I put out a call for Reputation Management sites and software tools. Here are the recommendations that came back.
Andreas Gohr suggested a fun site called EgoSurf. It’s probably not going to tell you much that a simple Google search wouldn’t, but it is a nice way of presenting the results
Joel Falconer uses Summize to search Twitter then serve up the results in a feed
Tom recommended his own tool, Distilled which has free trial available.
Melissa let us know about a tool that allows you to search multiple sites called keotag.com. Results can be saved as a feed too.
Wagner Fontoura uses a blog search engine called blogblogs.com.br
Mark linked to a honking big list of sites over at linkbun.ch that will take you all day to get through!
Stefan Deak found this list over at mashable
Finally a great suggestion by Dean Hunt
create an “about-me” or “media” page, and link to all the mentions of yourself that you like.
If you see stuff in the searches that are not what you want people to find, then you need to create or promote the good stuff. Dean reminds us that linking out to the best stuff as much as possible is a good start!
Software Tools for Managing Your Online Reputation
I just got tipped off about a new reputation management helper developed by Strategic Profits.
What it does is creates an OPML file containing search feeds for popular online services based on your search terms.
This is pretty cool because setting up the feeds individually is a bit of a chore, especially if you have plenty of phrases to monitor. And monitor them you should if you care about your online reputation.
Feeds featured are your pretty standard fare:
- Google News
- Google Blog Search
- Technorati
- Del.icio.us
- Furl
- Flickr
- Yahoo!
… along with some I didn’t recognize. Sneakily they also add in Rich Schefren’s own blog - naughty! Nice way to pad his subscriber count, heh
If you really want to monitor your reputation though you also need in addition at least Google Alerts, and a good Twitter search. In fact you need to be involved in the social media in an active and engaged way.
You can try the Reputation Monitor tool here.
Any more tips for how you might monitor your online reputation? Please share in the comments and I will highlight the best comments with links.
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