Video Tutorials

1. How to do a weekly backup of your WordPress database

(Assumes you have installed and activated the Wordpress Database Backup plugin)

Share This

HMR, SoundRecordingStudioSoftware, and Ytube updated yesterday.

WPM -> 2.2.3

PheedPress

Needed to re-work:

- many plugins needed updating

- theme mods needed re-instating

- nav bar

- side bar widgets (contents ok, but had to drag back into place)

Note: Ytube has subdirectory install (ytube.com/blog/).  For PheedPress to configure ok, I installed in the root (/public_html/, not /blog/), and configured it for /blog/.

Seems to work ok

Share This

Web2Submitter: A Case Study in Traffic Building
———————————————–

Web2S: Ken, you were one of the “early adopters” of Web2Submitter. Why Did you buy Web2Submitter in the first place?
—————————————————————-

Ken: Well, in fact I didn’t actually buy Web2Submitter - it was included with my ASC Elite membership… But I certainly do make regular use of Web2Submitter, and have since the initial Beta test phase.

Web2S: So why have you been so quick to build Web2Submitter into your regular promotion operations?

Ken: Because it was easy to set up and use, and allows me to promote my web site posts…

• more frequently than I’d otherwise have time for
• to a wider range of Web2.0 services than I’d be able to do consistently
• in a shorter time than if I did everything manually

Ken: I also participate in the Buzz Group - because as someone aiming to promote my website business, I’m interested in gaining the broadest possible reach among my niche community, wherever they congregate online.

Web2S: Can you be more specific about how the The Buzz Group helps increase your site visitors?

Ken: Sure… Note that I pick one article each week - the “best” one I want to target particularly - for submission to the Buzz Group. Participating…

• helps me quickly raise visibility of my posts above the “noise”
• helps me to learn how to participate more effectively in the various Web2.0 book marking and news services. There are lots of nuances…

Web2S: Can you give us an indication of the difference in traffic levels you’ve seen through use of Web2Submitter?
—————————————————————-

Ken:

1. June graph - shows impact of Web2S only:
- great traffic spike, but quick decline to a little above “base level”

June 8 article posted; Music Software - 5 Key Factors
June 12-19 averaged 3,381 page views/day
June 20 ran Web2.Submitter promotion about 2pm: same day traffic spike to 8,976 page views, with 16,730 the on 21st - 495% growth!

2. July graph - shows impact of Web2S + Buzz Group
- again great traffic spike
- this time sustained traffic over the next week or more

July 1-9 averaged 1,667 page views/day
July 5 Post titled: Solution to Studio Monitors form Hell
July 10 ran Web2.Submitter promotion about 10am: same day traffic spike to 10,752 page views - 645% growth!

July 12-17 averaged 3,107 page views/day - a base-line improvement of 186% since July 1-9

July 16 article posted; Equalizers 101 - Solutions from Mixing Mistakes
July 18 ran Web2.Submitter promotion about 1pm: same day traffic spike to 6,922 page views
July 19 submitted to Web2.Buzz Group about 10am; same day traffic to 5,052 page views- 223% growth!

Web2S: So what’s are the impacts you’ve noted from this traffic increase?
—————————————————————-

Ken:

Personally, I’ve found it encouraging to see the rapid growth in visits and page views. While developing list building and income strategies, I monitor some key parameters to make sure we’re on the right track - page views per visitor, duration on page, exit actions, etc. Web2Submitter and the Buzz Group provide meaningful levels of activity to begin conversion testing - without the cost of a PayPerClick campaign.

It feels like progress

One thing that’s become very clear is that different traffic sources bring different visitor behavior - their motivations are different, so I need to present different information and options to meet their needs.

Web2S: What about the site itself?

Ken: Good point…Since I use a Web2.0 publishing platform, one immediate impact of growing visitor rates is that comments and participation in Polls and surveys is increasing. So the site looks more “alive”

Ken:

Also, from a business point of view, its early days yet, but there are several benefits we’re seeing:

• new types of income possibilities
• List Building is faster
• Faster market feedback
• Raises the value of the website “real estate” for advertisers
• Increased income through contextual advertising and affiliate sales

Web2S: Tell us where our readers can have a look at your site, if they want to find out more about what you’re doing?
—————————————————————-

Ken: Here’s a link to our website
www.HomeMusicRecording.com

Ken Johnstone
Dumfries’ Scotland

Files included:
case.txt
ken.png
various screen shots

Share This

Where do the descriptions which appear in the Google and other Search Engine listings come from?

I understood they were supposed to use the description meta tag, but this doesn’t seem consistent.

Today, I noticed Google’s listing picked descriptions from the 1st paragraph of my posts, including any alt tags on images I was using. In one case, this placed the name of the person in the image as the 1st words in Google’s listing entry. Not very helpful to potential readers in this case.

So I’ve altered the alt tag to place the primary keyword first in the alt tag - “studio monitor solutions from Dave Johnstone”. This should help the reader quickly see what the main topics is, and who the info source is.

We’ll see if it works.

Ken

Share This

Updated WPM with widgetized update.

Changed theme to xMark.

Will this make any difference?

Share This

Removed sticky status from home page welcome post - to see if it made any difference to Technorati.

Share This

Googlebot last successfully accessed SBG home page April 20!!

Updated Google site map settings to check - home page (was daily already) and posts daily  (was monthly)

Rebuilt sitemap, and pinged Google.

Share This

Since moving HMR to an ASC blog in March 2007, we’ve lost almost all Google rankings.

Pages are indexed fine, but new urls are in Supplementary index, and non-existant (.html) urls were still indexed (and ranked - some rising!)

This nonsense appears to be due to the apparent internal content duplication between the old (.html) and new pages (blog posts, with virtual folder urls - eg homemusicrecording.com/music/).

Based on comments on Supplemental Index from Matt Cutts (Google), the plan is:

- edit the “slug” in each post to create a new url for each post in Supplemental

- encourage inbound links to category and individual post urls through Article syndication and Social Networks

Share This

In May HMR Adsense earnings were about $15 (wow!) - from a RH column Ad Unit below the fold.

Today I added an Ad unit “below 1st post”

Share This

And what a box it was!

In contrast to the Acer, the Apple box was very “posh”.
Inside, instead of the never-ending pile of PC bits, there were three items:

• MacBook Pro - elegantly simply titanium case
• Power adapter & cables - even here Apple’s reputation for design shines - the power adapter can slot neatly into the mains plug. So if you don’t need the cable for length, the power adapter is secure, and out of the way. Then there’s the magnetic plug at the laptop end…
• Little square pack with user guide “Everything Mac” and CDs with software.

So what did we actually buy?

MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 160 GB hard disk, 2GB RAM and 17″ screen. Running OS X 10.4.9.

To give us maximum compatibility with our existing application software, we added:

• Parallels Desktop for Mac (Avanquest)
• Windows XP Pro (OEM version)

This claimed to enable us to run Windows XP and Mac OS X concurrently.

The Mac instruction were to plug in the power cable, open the case top, and press the power button.

It worked!

Almost instantly, (compared to the Acer anyway) the crystal clear screen sprang to life and the Mac went into its set up routine.

1st challenge: The MacBook wouldn’t connect to our wireless network.

Yes, it found to network ok - the “AirPort” network channel was enabled, but it wouldn’t accept the WEP encryption Key.

After a call to PC World, and a couple of attempts at reconfiguring the network to use different security modes, I found that no one mode was supported by all computers on the network. The new laptops, plus one desktop would work with WPA. The Windows machines would all work with WEP, but not the MacBook. So the only short term solution was to set encryption off, and run an open network!! Not ideal…But we live out in the countryside, so there’s probably only 1 or 2 neighbours within range.

After a brief orientation to the Mac desktop - chapter 2 of the little “Everything Mac” booklet - I went on and installed the Parallels software and Windows XP Pro. Needed to carefully follow the instructions for Parallels, but all went well, and I had a Mac running Windows within half an hour.

Now the task was to re-create my working environment as far as possible with the same applications I had been using.

But that’s for tomorrow…

Share This