WordPress released version 3.3.2 today.  The new version contains 12  bug fixes and address some security issues.   You can read more about it on the WordPress blog.

Remember to back up your WordPress installation before you update.   If this is your first update, prepare to be amazed. It’s really easy!

One of my customers recently emailed me about a problem he’s having on his WordPress blog.  Visitors to his site are unable to leave comments.  He wanted to know what was causing the problem and how to fix it.

There are two types of settings that deal with commenting, site-wide settings and individual post settings.

WordPress Site-Wide Comment Settings

To see the site-wide comment settings log into your WordPress dashboard.  Then hover over Settings and select Discussion.  There are a bunch of comment settings, but the likely suspects in this case are at the top of the screen.  Here’s how the discussion settings are set for one of my sites:

The most likely suspect is the “allow people to post comments on new articles.”  That needs to be checked.

WordPress Post Specific Comment Settings

The site-wide comment settings can be overridden by settings on individual posts.  To see these settings log into your dashboard.  Then edit an individual post.  Below the post editor you should see a box that looks like this:

If you don’t see the Discussion area then look at the top, right of the dashboard and click on Screen Options.

Next  you’ll see a box with different options for what will show on your dashboard.  (Some of the options depend on what plugins you have installed.  So your choices will probably be a little different.)  Select Discussion so that you can change the discussion settings.

Conclusion – WordPress Comment Settings

Like most WordPress issues, the problems are easy to deal with once you know where to look.  Most commenting issues can be resolved by checking the comment settings in these two areas.

Last month I had a  speaking engagement in Montana.  The audience members had a lot of questions about social media.  So here’s some quick information about blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

Blogging

Blogs started out as a sort of online diary.  Now businesses use blogs for a number of purposes.  Some of the ways that blogs can be used include:

• new product announcements
• promote sales and specials
• give answers to frequently asked questions
• gather emails via contest entries
• customer interaction and feedback

This blog uses WordPress software.  There are other blogging platforms, but I recommend WordPress.  It’s free, easy to use and has a lot of great plugins.  Please contact me if you’d like WordPress coaching or if you need some work done on your WordPress site.

While I specialize in creating WordPress sites and adding WordPress blogs that fit seamlessly into existing sites there is a free alternative. Go to http://wordpress.com/ to get a free WordPress blog.

Facebook

Click on the Facebook icon above to see my Facebook page.  Note that my blog posts go into Facebook.  Why have both?  People may not visit my blog every day, but they will visit their Facebook page.   

Facebook is also useful for announcing new products, talking about specials and is a great way to reach out to your customers.

If you’d like to make a Facebook business page start here – http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

Twitter

Click on the above link to see the Twitter page for one of my other sites, LitQuotes.com.  The big difference here is that the messages are REALLY short.  The messages are called tweets and they can have a maximum of 140 characters.

Twitter works really well for sharing a daily quote with my Twitter followers.  I also use it to share interesting links and announce new LitQuotes blog posts.  (Yes, I’m a true geek.  I have multiple blogs.)

Go to http://twitter.com/ to get started on Twitter.

What to Do?

A lot of small business owners I’ve talked with feel like they should take part in social media.  The problem is that they’re already pressed for time and social media can seem really confusing.

Two Questions

Start by asking yourself two questions.

1. Do you have the time? – Using any one of these tools will take a time commitment.  You’ll need to spend one to two hours a week initially to get your account set up and blog, tweet or work on Facebook. 
2. Do you have the interest? – If you’d rather have a root canal then spend more time on the computer, maybe you should just skip the social media.

If you have the time and interest pick just one of the three types of social media.  I find Facebook and blogging to be the most useful, but pick the one that interests you the most.   Jump in and give it a try.  After a few months you’ll have it figured out and you’ll know if it’s right for you.

The latest version of the book I co-authored on working with WordPress is now ready to go!  Yay!! How to Make Money Blogging From Home is written by myself and online sales expert, Skip McGrath.  Skip wrote the chapters on making money online.  I wrote the chapters on working with WordPress.

My section of the book includes:

• Blogging Basics: Domain Name and Hosting
• Installing WordPress
• WordPress Themes
• Post Editor
• Working with Widgets
• Plugins
• Updating and Backing Up WordPress
• Blogging Equals Networking

You can learn more at Skip’s website.

The latest version of the book I co-authored on working with WordPress is almost ready to be released.  How to Make Money Blogging From Home is in final stages of being edited.  Lissa, the editor, noticed this sentence that I wrote in the section about picking out WordPress themes.

Other organizations make WordPress templates, but WordPress.org is the best and safest place to get your first theme.

Why safest? This word jumps out at me and probably will do so for readers too. Thanks, Lissa

Excellent question!  Here’s the scoop.  Themes that are available for download at WordPress.org  have gone through a review process.   You can also read the comments that users have left about themes.  People are not shy about discussing the  problems that they’ve had with themes.

Downloading free themes from other sites is a whole other ball game.  I have seen free WordPress themes offered that:

• Contain malware
• Place their own ads at the bottom of pages
• Are badly coded so that they don’t work correctly
• Use old code that’s not compatible with newer plugins

That’s not to say that WordPress.org is the only good place to get themes.  There are a number of reputable companies that sell themes, but until you know what you’re doing I’d recommend just using the themes at WordPress.org.

One of my clients just received the following  inquiry:

We are looking for new advertisement platforms and we are interested in your site. Is it possible to place a banner on your site on a fee basis?

I’m seeing this more and more.  Marketing companies are approaching the owners of small websites and presenting them with advertising offers.   The advertising might be as simple as a text link.  Other companies, like the above, are interested in placing banner ads.   Why would marketing companies do this?  Often they’re trying to get good search engine position positioning for their clients via this method.  One of the metrics that search engines use to score websites is the number of incoming links.  The thinking is that the more incoming links, the better a site must be.

I receive these offers for my own websites.  Most of the time the advertising isn’t appropriate to my site.  For example they may want a link in the middle of a website page  that’s driven by a database.  That just isn’t possible.  Or sometimes they want to put an ad on a website that doesn’t feature advertising.

I have accepted one offer.  The website in question already had paid advertising.  Also,  the link is clearly labeled as a sponsor’s ad. My website is really popular and I received about $250 for a year’s placement.  Not too bad for the time it took to make a quick text link.

Other clients have accepted offers like this and received anywhere from $30 to $60 for their trouble.

If you get an offer and are interested here are the questions I’d ask:

• Ask to see the text or images that will be placed on your website. If the ad is an image, download it to your website and link from there.
• Visit  the site you’re being asked to advertise.  Do you feel comfortable with that site?  Do you feel comfortable recommending it to your website visitors?
• Specify the time that the link should run.  I’ve usually heard that the link agreement is in place for a year.

The Collaborative Professionals of Washington (CPW) is a non-profit association of independent professionals from the fields of law, mental health, and finance.  They recently asked me to help them update their website.  The group needed a new design and a replacement for their membership software.

My graphic designer came up with a header graphic that captured the mood that the group wanted.  She even gave their logo a little update.

I replaced their existing membership software with aMember membership software.   With aMember the system automatically sends out expiration emails and collects payments via PayPal.  The CPW membership pages are created with data from the aMember system.  No manual updates are needed!  It’s all automatic.

If your group is looking for a membership software solution I heartily recommend aMember.  Feel free to contact me to learn more about aMember and its capabilities.

This Valentine’s Day Google Doodle put a smile on my face.  I hope you enjoy it as well.

The other day I moved a customer’s website from GoDaddy to BlueHost.   As you may know, with a BlueHost account you can host multiple websites on one hosting account.   The customer is taking advantage of that fact and is having me move his sites to BlueHost.

I logged into the customer’s BlueHost account and went to the cPanel.  Then I clicked on Domain Manager and assigned the new domain to the account as an Addon domain.  So far so good.  Then I made a mistake.  I made a typo when I named the Addon Directory for the account.  The Addon Directory is where the files for the website reside.  Yikes!  What to do?

Since I hadn’t yet moved any of the website files to BlueHost the fix was simple.  I un-assigned the domain name from the account.  Then I reassigned it, this time typing the correct Addon Directory. Problem solved!

Periodically studies come out about shopping cart abandonment.  Shopping cart abandonment is when people start to buy from an online store and then leave the site before they complete the checkout process. The percentage of customers that abandon their carts during the buy process was calculated to be 63.83% by the Baymard Institute.  It’s a really discouraging fact of life for people selling things online.

Take a look at this study of  the issue.  Some of the top reasons for the behavior are high shipping costs, customers aren’t ready to buy, the customer was just checking prices and the prices are too high.   There are many other reasons for cart abandonment including a complicated buy process and forcing people to register for accounts before making a purchase.

One of my customers took this data to heart.  We worked together to make some changes to her Zen Cart shopping cart.  She added a plugin from Numinix.com that cuts down on the steps in the checkout process.  The plugin also added the option of checking out without an account.  It’s early days and her sales are small, but the changes seem to be working.  From the first to the 15 of this month she had two sales from her online store.  The plugin was installed on the 16th.  From the 17th through the 25th she’s had five sales!   That’s over a 100% increase and the month isn’t over yet.

OK, statistically this isn’t a big enough study to come to any conclusions.  Just don’t tell that to my customer.  She’s one happy online business owner!