Scheduled Posts 101

Upon completion of a new blog post on the “Edit Post” page, the most common next step is to click the blue “Publish” button in the right hand column. This instantly places the new post on your blog for all to see. The drawback of publishing this way is that if you wish to publish, say, every Friday morning, you must remember to click that button on that time and day. Often, you will want to put together several posts at once to be released on the blog at intervals of, perhaps, a week apart. You have written a long piece with several sections and wish to break it into a series of blog posts. You could save the later posts as drafts and post the by hand later or you could schedule them at intervals of a week each.

The usual way to schedule is to look in the “Publish” box to the right of the entry area and click “Edit” (beside “Publish immediately”). The blog lengthens and reveals an entry area showing the current month, date, year and time. To schedule the entry for later posting, change the date and time to what you prefer and click the “OK” button. Now instead of “Publish” the blue button says “Schedule”. Click it and your post will not appear until the set date and time.

Mass Scheduling

You can also schedule a post from the Dashboard’s “Edit Posts” list page. When you hover your mouse pointer just below the post title, you’ll see an link appear called “Quick Edit”. This can be useful if you have several drafts you wish to schedule without opening the editor. To schedule a post, click “Quick Edit”. Change the date shown to the date you wish it to appear. Now change the status (to the right) from “Draft” to “Publish”. Click the blue “Update Post” button and the post is scheduled.

A Scheduling Calendar

If you like to mark your future postings on a calendar, you’ll have to do that offline or outside WP. I’m hoping some helpful programmer will create a handy calendar-format editing interface plugin at some point (it would be nice to be able to simply drag the posts around from date to date). The closed I’ve found to that so far is this free plugin: Future Calendar. It displays a small calendar on the post edit page with the days that already have scheduled posts highlighted. This way, at a glance, you can pick a date on a different day and even see what day of the week it will be. I’ve been using it for awhile and wouldn’t want to do without it now.

Strategies for Scheduled Posts

If ranking well with the search engines is important to you, you want to update your blog with some regularity. This is more important in the early months of a new blog, but it’s a good idea thereafter, too. How often? I’ve heard many opinions on this. The general consensus seems to be that a blog needs to be updated at least once a week (a rule I admit to not always following with this blog). The search engines use “crawlers” to check websites from time to time. The crawlers learn the intervals based on how often the site is updated. Thus, if your site is updated weekly, it will be crawled weekly and new posts will appear in search listings weekly. The can crawl much more frequently. Once while answering a question for Yahoo Answers, I looked up the subject of the question in Google. The question had already ranked #1 in search– 3 minutes after being posted!

Here’s a few more ideas for using Scheduled Posts:

• Research and write an entire blog series at once, then schedule over the coming weeks.
• Break down a longer work into shorter posts for a blog series.
• If you run across some good material for, say, Christmas in July, go ahead and write the post now and schedule it for December.
• You could schedule several similar event-related posts in advance to appear monthly or even annually in conjunction with a repeating event.
• You could put in a long day and write a month’s worth of posts to schedule over your vacation.
• When starting up a site, you often have many pages to start the site. Rather than posting them all and launching the site full, post a few essential pages and schedule the other posts to appear a rate of one per day for the first few weeks.

I hope this has enlighten you if you haven’t been scheduling posts and stimulates your imagination with ways to make it improve your WordPress business.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Mastering Scheduled Posts

One thing to consider even before you install WordPress is whether there is any particular plugin your blog must have. If this is the case, scrutinize the plugin’s web documentation for any mention of what WP versions with which it has been tested. Rarely, a plugin will not function properly with a later WordPress version. Still, you are generally better off with the latest version of WordPress on a new install. If you should require an earlier WP version, check my previous how-to post on this.

Here is the list of essential plugins I use of my new business WordPress installs. All are available as free downloads from WordPress.org:

• Akismet    This one ships with new versions of WordPress and is your basic defense against comment spam.
• All-In-One SEO Pack    This is the most widely used optimization package. It manages everything from meta tags to post descriptions. Don’t think that this will automatically push you up the search ladder, though—it won’t. Be sure to customize permalinks to show title text and, always optimize each post with keywords.
• AZIndex    This is great for any informational site. It creates a comprehensive index of all you posts or pages on it’s own page. I like features that make websites function more like books and magazines.
• Easy Contact    There are several good (and not so good) form plugins available. I like this one because it lays the boxes out neatly and allows a confirmation email to be sent to the user.
• Google Analytics for WordPress    Many WordPress users just paste their Analytics code into the footer of their theme. The problem is if you change themes, you loose the code, too. This plugin keeps it around no matter what.
• WP SuperCache    I always install this, but only enable it if I think the site may receive a large amount of traffic. It will keep your site from crashing if you luck onto page 1 of Digg, but it also can be at conflict with some other plugins.
• Recently Popular    Rather than showing the usual “Recent Posts” on the sidebar, this plugin/widget will filter popular posts by hours/days/weeks/months.
• Robots Meta   This is a useful SEO plugin that lets you fine tune meta tagging, but the thing I like most about it is that it gives you handy  access to the robots.txt and htaccess files from boxes in your dashboard settings.
• RSS Footer    This allows you to make sure you have site info in your RSS feed, thus insuring credit if your entry is published elsewhere from it’s feed.
• Search & Replace    A huge timesaver, this one’s saved me many hours of work. It will find any string of text in your blog and replace it with anything you wish (or nothing). You can confine the search to content, titles, comments, or any of a dozen other criteria.
• WP Super Edit    This adds many button features to WordPress’ rather sparse entry editor. While I must use WP’s editor at times, I normally edit offline in the free Windows Live Writer, which offers onscreen underlining of misspelled words and other MS Office-like features.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Basics: Essential WordPress Plugins for the Business Blog

The answer is to install an older version. You can download any past version of WordPress from the WordPress.org Release Archive. Then you can simply install it in the normal manner. You won’t be able to use Fantastico or one of the other automated installation systems, though. It is easy enough to install WordPress manually, though. Just check one of the many manual install tutorials, such as WordPress’ own.

If you’ve already upgraded and want to downgrade, it’s a bit trickier. The surest way is to delete the current version, then reinstall with the older version. First, back up your database (refer to this tutorial). As a precautionary measure, I like to regular make a copy of my blogs’ XML file, too, which could be used to restore the blog if the database somehow fails. You can do this in the Admin Dashboard at Tools>Export. Next, use a FTP client to delete all the blog files and folders, then upload the earlier version. During install, point WordPress to the previously used database as explained in this tutorial.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Installing an Older WordPress Version

All of these blog editors attempt to improve on the stock WordPress entry editor and they all do in most respects. All can be used with several different blog platforms, usually allowing easy switching between. All allow you save posts locally or upload to your blog. All allow you to work on a much larger text area than the WordPress editor. With any of these, you can prepare you blog offline for later download, which is nice for travelers.

While most of the following charts are self-explanatory, you might note that: “More” means the capability of continuing an entry to a second page. “Image Insert” means the capability to insert an image. “Catch” notes something you should know about “free” programs. “Multi-Blog Posting” means posting the same blog entry to more than one blog at one time. “Overall” ranks my preference for these programs with “1″ being the best.

* A default setting for Zoundry Raven replaces your business links with their own affiliate links. This can be disabled.

Conclusion
I had actually never used a special-purpose external blog editor before testing these. I am now convinced this is the best way for the serious blogger to manage blog entry. While all will publish an entry directly, I prefer to use the editor to prepare a draft or programmed publish, then give it a final check from the WordPress interface before publishing. WordPress’ own Preview feature is still the best way to know exactly what your entry will look like before publishing, though Windows Live Writer Preview may win me over eventually.

My favorite overall editor is Microsoft Windows Live Writer. I found text entry is a pleasure compared with the WordPress editor. You work in the same page formatting as your final post and it is the only editor on the list to feature misspell underlining, which I really like. However, you cannot transport it on a thumb drive, as you can with Raven or w.blogger. Zoundry Raven has two important features that could make it preferable. It features an Explorer-style tree that allows easy management of blog entry features and it allows for posting to multiple blogs at one time. Raven has recently gone open-source so we may see special-purpose versions appearing with even greater utility. The HTML editing of w.blogger is the best of any, though it lacks WYSIWYG. ScribeFire offers the advantage of being a browser plugin, but little else. Since they are all free, you might want to try more than one until you find the one that best fits your blog entry style.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Free Blog Editors Compared

What is Windows Live Writer?
Windows Live Writer is Microsoft’s entry into the supplemental blog editor market. Available as a free download, it is part of the Windows live group of services. I found it a very capable editor for readying WordPress entries. While not Microsoft Word, it has some nice features, such as underlining spell check, that could win you over.

Installation
This ran quite smoothly, but you will have to uncheck several options to install Writer alone. You will need to download a 136MB file to install a program only a fraction of that size. Configuration of my first blog was a snap. You need to be sure you have the XML-RPC setting checked in you WordPress Dashboard under Settings > Writing. In addition to WordPress, Writer can be used with Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint blogs, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Community_Server, PBlogs.gr, JournalHome, the MetaWeblog API, the Movable Type API, and all blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability).

Interface
This is the prettiest blog editor interface I’ve seen. The text entry window is excellent. Writer will actually download elements of your blog’s theme/template so fonts and formatting look the same in the Edit window. Unlike any other editor I’ve seen, the Preview window shows you what your entry will look like on your blog’s main page—complete with header and sidebar. The Source tab shows an HTML version, which is adequate, though it doesn’t have color coded tags, as some editors do.

There is a small, but adequate selection of editing buttons across the top. One unique feature, though, is and “Insert” pull-down with several special buttons, such as Maps and Video. Maps allows insertion of a map or aerial image from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Video allows for easy video or embed insertion. It also features a preview window, but I could not get it work. Maps and Video are two of the 117 (and growing?) plugins you can install into Writer. This offers great potential and is unequaled among similar programs.

The right hand column seems underutilized to me, but repeating the plugins there is helpful. The list area at the top seems ill-conceived. A file tree, such as the one in Zoundry Raven would have been nice. Buttons at the top make it clear whether you are saving locally or uploading as a draft or publishing. Some programs are a little ambiguous about that. Instead of a “More” tab to add text not on the first page of your entry, Writer has a “Split” button that allows you to segment off a portion of the text.

The normally innocent “Open” button offers much more than usual: You may open a locally saved draft or download an entry from your blog for edit. The programmed publishing feature is the best I’ve seen: one click brings up a mini calendar and you simply click your chosen publish date.

Image insertion is simple and offers choice of local or online files. Plugins are available that make for easy insertion of material through Flickr, Zamanta, Picasa and others.

Recommendation
A few thing about Writer haven’t been thought out quite well enough. You might find yourself closing the program when you just wanted to close a file (apparently you don’t close files). Overall, however, I liked it a great deal and will probably be my blog editor of choice most of the time. It’s strength is in it’s text editing, but if you want features like multi blog file management or multi blog posting, you’ll want Zoundry Raven instead. But since both programs are free, there’s no reason you can’t use both, as I do.

Windows Live Writer Can be downloaded at Windows Live.

Previously reviewed blog entry editors:

Zoundry Raven
w.blogger
BlogDesk
ScribeFire

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Blog Editor Review: Windows Live Writer

What is Raven?
Zoundry Raven is a free program that expands the capabilities of a blog editor to become more of a multi-blog management system that allows you to create new entries, edit existing entries, and manipulate your blog in various ways. Though it’s useful for managing a single blog, it can easily manage multiple blogs– you can even publish a new entry to a several different blogs at once. This feature alone makes it worth using for many web business bloggers. Unlike any other blogging tool I have seen, Raven is based around a Windows Explorer-like “Account Navigator” interface that makes the basics of blog management a snap.

Installation
Raven is currently available for Windows 2000 and later. During the setup process, Zoundry Raven gives you a choice of a normal Windows install or a portable install, normally to a thumb drive. This way you can carry your blog settings and not yet uploaded entry files from computer to computer. With a self-hosted WordPress install, you will need make sure you have your XML-RPC box checked in your Dashboard under Settings > Writing. This enables external control of of the blog. Setup will take you directly to configuring your first blog, which I found very easy. You may add additional blogs by clicking the Add Account button in the Account Navigator. In addition to WordPress, Raven can be configured for Drupal,TypePad, Xaraya, Live Journal, Movable Type, Blogger, and several other platforms and services.

Interface
Upon install, you find yourself in Raven’s Account Navigator, which features an Explorer-style file tree down the left column and on the right a list space at top with a preview window below. The tree seems to distinguish a WP blog’s entries from pages as separate “blogs”, but this doesn’t seem to matter. At first you find the “Zoundry Raven Raven Dashboard” occupying the large right panel, with three links allowing you to create a new blog account, change settings or set up media storage.

The Account Navigator divides an individual blog into Posts, Links, Images, and Tags. Clicking any brings up a list on the top-right window. The Links view is interesting. It organizes all the links on your entire blog site into alpha order. Clicking one shows you every location of that link on your site. Double clicking a location allows you to edit the pages/entries. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to edit the links alone so multiple entry editing is not necessary. This would have been a nice feature. You can also view all images and tags. Tags are displayed in colors and sized according to use. I found the image viewer useful for locating hidden image files that had sneaked in with links.

Double-clicking a blog entry title in the Post view downloads the entry for editing and brings it up in a separate editing window. I found this window a more than adequate word processor for blogs and far preferable to the WordPress stock editor. Multiple entries can be up at once with convenient tabs to switch between. Using the “+” button on the right allows you post a single blog entry to an addition blog. I got it to bring up spaces for a total of 3 blogs, even though the Navigator had me set up for 4. Still, that’s a nice feature. You have a choice of working in three views: Design, XHTML and Preview.

The XHTML view color code tags and separate paragraphs, which is handy. I found the Preview view superfluous, since it looked exactly like the Design view. The Design view offers about the best blog entry experience I’ve found. It has a reasonable selection of editing buttons, including Undo/Redo. Image insertion is very easy. You can align the image to left-right-center and see it aligned in the Design window. Publishing just takes pushing a button.

Be Sure You Read This
Here something important to know about Raven: In order to generate revenue for Zoundry, by default all of your product links (Amazon, etc.) are converted to affiliate links benefiting Zoundry. To disable this, go to the Account Navigator Tools > Preferences > Affiliate Links and uncheck the box. I suggest doing this whether you intend to post your own affiliate product links or not. The presence of affiliate links in your website coul be a hinderance to your search engine ranking. Sacrificing ranking or site revenue could make this a very expensive blog editor, indeed.

Recommendation
I like it. It adds great ease and utility to the blog writing experience, with great control over multiple blogs and blog files. The abilty to post to multiple blogs at once could be quite useful. If you are blogging for income, however, certainly remember to disble the link-switching, though.

Zoundry Raven can be downloaded free from zoundryraven.com.

Previously reviewed blog entry editors:

w.blogger
BlogDesk
ScribeFire

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Blog Editor Review: Zoundry Raven Beta

Installation
Installing w.blogger is not quites as intuitive as some blog editors. I had to double back a couple of times, but install completed OK. To allow the program access to your self-hosted WordPress install, you make sure you have enabled the XML-RPC setting under Settings > Writing in your WordPress Dashboard. It will install an icon in your system tray by default, but you can remove this in the Options settings if you don’t want more clutter down there.

This program can post to a greater number of platforms and services than any I’ve seen: In addition to WordPress, w.blogger will post to MovableType, Nucleus, b2, b2 evolution, Blog:CMS, .Text, BlogWorks XML, Drupal, LiveJournal, pMachine, Xoops, E-Xoops, PostNuke, blojsom, Roller Weblogger, Domino, YACS, Xaraya. Also, it posts to services: Blogger, MSN Spaces, TypePad, BigBlogTool, Blogalia, TheBlog, Blog-City, EraBlog.NET, Upsaid, UBlog, SquareSpace, BlogWare, DearDiary.Net.

There is no manual for w.blogger, but it does have a help topics feature that only appears in the full install version. With the portable version, you’re on your own, but for the experienced blogger, it’s not difficult the figure out.

Interface
The first thing you notice is the full-width text entry area, which is nice. The text area has threee tabs: Editor, More and Preview. Unlike any other blog editor I’ve seen, w.blogger lacks a WYSIWYG entry interface. Your only option for text entry is an HTML view, which can be hard to get used to for those who are used to seeing actual bold text, italics, etc. instead of code tags during entry. The default text size it 8pt, which I found a bit small, but that’s easily changed in the Options settings. The Preview tab serves well enough for checking how the code will come out, but I miss WYSIWYG.

A nice selection of editing buttons are positioned at the top. I especially like the inclusion of the Undo/Redo arrows, not always found on these editors. There is also a Custom Tags button that allows you to set up special code tags, such as those specific to your blog system. You can also drag the lower row of buttons to the top for a larger work area. W.blogger includes a spell checker and separate buttons for upload as a draft or to directly publish. Just be careful not to hit them by accident, since they are not buffered by a dialog check.

Multimedia
Image insertion is a bit odd. The Image Insert button brings up a dialog requiring you to enter the address of an image already on the web. However, there is a file upload button that will allow you to find an image (or other) file on your computer, then upload it to your server. It also will automatically insert the file at the cursor point. This method looses points for intuitiveness, but works well enough. Also, any positioning of the image after placement will have to be in code.

Recommendation
While everything works smoothly and ample editing features are included, I would only recommend w.blogger for the hardcore coder who prefers to avoid “sissy” WYSIWYG interfaces. While there are merits to seeing the exact code that will go to your web page, I prefer a blog editor that comes close to the MS Word-style I’ve used for years. I can’t say as I would give up BlogDesk for w.blogger, but try it if it sounds like your style.

W.blogger is available for download at wblogger.com

Previously reviewed blog entry editors:
BlogDesk
ScribeFire

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Blog Editor Review: w.blogger

What is BlogDesk?
BlogDesk is a free stand-alone that runs in Windows 98+. I reviewed version 2.8. You configure it with your blog’s details and you can easily make new posts without even opening your browser. You can also create new blog posts offline, a great plus for laptop users.

Installation
Installing was as simple as a Windows program install can be. Once downloaded from blogdesk.org, click the install file and it’s over quickly and you have a handy icon on your desktop. You can actually start using it before configuring for your blog, but configuration is the logical next step. You go to File > Manage Blogs, click New, then go through a few steps. In order to allow BlogDesk to access your self-hosted WordPress install, you will need to log into your Dashboard and enable the XML-RPC setting under Settings > Writing. I found configuration for my WordPress 2.7.1 blog was super easy. In additon to WordPress, you can post to several other blogging platforms: ExpressionEngine, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity, dasBlog, Blojsom, Blogg.de, Myblog and Twoday.net.

BlogDesk offers a nice 34 page PDF format manual with all details needed. Freeware programs seldom seem to have that kind of documentation. This program’s so easy to use you almost don’t need it, but it covers all the features well.

Interface
The first thing I noticed was the familiar MS Office-style editing buttons across the top– and not a confusing number of them. It has all the essential editing tools, with no confusing jumble of extras. One little thing I like here are the easy-to-find buttons to change text color. Layout is simple and obvious: a large text entry window, a column on the right listing different blogs and categories, settings boxes, and trackbacks, space for the title, editing buttons and the menu bar.

Text Entry
I found text entry in BlogDesk a real pleasure– a word I’ve never used to describe WordPress’ entry form. Expanding the program window to full page gives you about 4 times the work area you have in WordPress. There is a nice spell checker, though it does not underline misspelled words as you go, which would be nice. There is no button for HTML view, but you can do this from the View menu. There is also an Insert HTML button brings up a dialog box allowing you to insert HTML code when needed. I found this worked fine for inserting embeds.

There are three tabbed work screens: Post, More, and Excerpt. You normally work in Post, but for some blogs, you will want to continue a longer piece on the next page. You can simply enter the remainder under More and BlogDesk will create a link to that. The Excerpt panel allows you to create an alternative to the usual first paragraph lift for your Archives pages.

Multimedia
A simple image insert button fetches images from your computer, a web address or directly from the clipboard (a very nice feature). This brings up BogDesk’s handy image editor which does a fine job with such basic tasks ast cropping, sizing and rotation. It features such fun perks as shadows, rotated snapshot-style and paper tear (my favorite).

Other Features
Blogdesk also features a Notebook utility that allows you to prep text before copy-pasting into the blog. I probably will not have much use for it, but you might. The same goes for the unusual Frequently Used Phrases utility, but both are nice to have.

Recommendation
BlogDesk is a worthwhile alternative to the WordPress WYSIWYG entry form. Anyone seriously persuing blogging will find it far preferable. I liked it’s reliability and ease of use over ScribeFire, which I reviewed last week. While it lacks multimedia bells and whistles, it facilitates the basic tasks of typing and posting a blog very well. You may repost an entry to different blogs easily, though not multiple blogs simultaneously. The ablility to prep your blog offline alone is reason enough to used it for many bloggers.

Find BlogDesk and download it’s manual at blogdesk.org.

Previously reviewed Blog Entry Editors:
ScribeFire

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Blog Entry Editors: BlogDesk

What is ScribeFire?
This week, we will look at ScribeFire.  I reviewed version 3.2.2. Unlike the other editors we’ll be examining, ScribeFire is a free addon for Mozilla Firefox and operates entirely inside the Firefox window. A handy tablet icon in the lower right Status Bar brings it up across the bottom half of the browser window. Once set up, it’s about the quickest and easiest way to blog I’ve ever seen. ScribeFire holds your blog’s password info so you can upload a new entry without entering the WordPress Dashboard or even logging in. Talk about convenience!

Installation
You install ScribeFire as you do any other Firefox addon, by going to it’s addon.mozilla.firefox page and clicking the download button. Firefox makes you click a few buttons, reboots and Scribefire is installed. Now you must set it up with your blog’s site specifics. You will probably need to log into your Dashboard and enable the XML-RPC setting under Settings > Writing. You will get a choice of several sub-site blog hosts, including WordPress.com. Skip them and click “Custom Blog” at the bottom to set it up for your self-hosted WordPress site. After that, there’s little more to do than enter your site’s url to get it going. The program should generate a version of your url with “xml-rpc” at the end.

Interface
You will find the ScribeFire editor occupying the lower half of the browser screen, with the white text entry area on the left half of that. On the far right are 5 tabs that serve littler purpose for regular use: product info, settings, a “Share This Page” that attempts to notify a few social media sites of your post, and a “$” tab that has nothing.

To the right is a tabbed space that allows you to add/remove blogs to the editor and to easily switch between blogs with the click of a radio button. This is a great convenience. It also shows you a list of previous entries and allows you to edit them with a quick click. You can set the blog’s categories and tags, set the timestamp and so forth.

Entry
You should find blog entry easier in ScribeFire than in the WordPress WSIWYG form. Just like the stock version, you can switch between a more-or-less normal appearance and the HTML code. It has a “Live Preview” button gave me an Javascript error that did not go away until I closed the program. The same thing happened with the Zamanta app. I keep scripting in Firefox disabled by default and enable web scripts individually, so this might not happen on a less secure browser. Once up, though, ScribeFire’s Preview feature is no substitute for the full page version WordPress provides.

I found the text entry space worked best when dragged to span the full width of the page. This gives you access to more controll buttons and eliminates a tendancy to cut off the last two letters on the right, when narrow.

Here’s one nasty issue I ran into.  After I changed the text window width during a session, the carriage return settings got fixed narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. I had to copy the text out and reformat in my word processor to undo that. There was no problem when I left the window the same during a session.

Multimedia
ScribeFire offers some multimedia options not found in the stock WordPress entry box. It makes it very easy to upload and insert images from your computer or draw them from the web. It makes insertion of YouTube videos a snap. It does a search, then offers a choice of thumbnails and titles. This is a great feature, but you do not get any other info on the video, so be sure to preview it before posting.

It will search and insert still images from Flickr the same way that it does with YouTube videos. I’m sure this was included with the best of intentions, but I do not recommend ever posting an image to the web this way. While all YouTube videos are embeds offered per the creator’s agreement with YouTube, this is not the case with Flickr images. Most Flickr images are not legally available for posting on your website. A great many are available through the Creative Commons license, but this utility does not distinguish between the usable images and the unusable. Also, you are always required to credit the creator when using Flickr images and the utility does not provide this.

ScribeFire also has a utility for accessing images through the interesting Zemanta system, though this, too, sort of crashes the program if you have Javascript disabled.

Recommendation
Overall, I like the convenience of  ScribeFire and intend to keep it in my browser for quick blog prep. I probably won’t publish with it directly, though. I will upload the entry as a draft, the preview it later in the WordPress interface before posting. It’s shortcomings shouldn’t interfere with my style of use. For convenience, it’s hard to beat.

Update
After checking out other blog editors, I’ve uninstalled ScribeFire. I find it a bit too rough around the edges and smoother operating editors for Windows users like Blogdesk and Raven are far preferable. For instance, I don’t care for the way it locks up your browser until you enter the password.  I would only really recommend this one for non-Windows Firefox users with fewer choices.

You can find additional information on ScribeFire at the ScribeFire website.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Blog Entry Editors: ScribePress

WordPress vs. WordPress
I’ll start with by briefly commenting on what WordPress is and is not. WordPress is a software application that must be run from your own web server space. This software manages a database of information you post and display on the web. It also contains a password-protected user interface that facilitates the process of entering new data and aids in many setting and adjustments for the way your website looks and functions. A surprising number of web creation novices mistaken the wordpress.com free web space service for “WordPress”. WordPress, based at wordpress.org, is a freely available open-source software system that you download, then install on your own (or shared) server. This distinction is especially important to the business user, since free space setups like wordpress.com typically have restrictions on commercial use. The serious business will almost always want a website on paid server for reliability and control, among other things.

Installation
Originally, you could only install WordPress by downloading it from wordpress.org, the uploading it to your server. Now many web hosts allow easy installs directly from the host’s server. Some hosts, such as Host Gator, offer a system called Fantastico that will automate WordPress installation. Dreamhost, where I host this site (at it’s inception) has “One-Click Installs” that makes WordPress installation almost too easy. If you do install manually (and there situations in which it is preferable) it is not too difficult and there are many good tutorials for this.

Documentation
Like many open-source packages, documentation for WordPress is written by programmers who don’t necessarily look at computer programs quite the way newbies do. WordPress.org has a wealth of useful (and less than useful) how-tos by users that cover most of the questions you’ll have, but I always start with a well phrased query in Google. And there are plenty of forums full of people eager to help if you have a tough one. Widespread peer support is what I consider to be the second best selling point of WordPress. When your business is on the line you must finding an answer immediately. WordPress’ popularity pays off big here. Still, even while setting up this site, I ran into an obsticle for which  I could find no discussions.  The editing control buttons failed to appear. A forum entry brought no help in one day. I only overcame the issue after switching from a manual to an automated install. For the web creation novice or the busy business manager, it still pays to have an expert to call, if not on staff.

Logging In
During install, you will be asked to create a password. You will save a web address at http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-login.php., where you will log in. The first thing you see is WordPress’ “Dashboard” control page. It can be configured various ways, but the stock view shows you the number of posts, comments and other numbers along with a good bit of WordPress news items you usually will not be interested in. The important part is the left sidebar, which hold navigates you through the control pages. The top one “Posts” will show you a list of all the entries you have made, and you may open any for editing. Of course, you can also easily begin a new post by clicking “Add New”. Here you can create a post, starting with a title.

Entering Text
The main text entry box for WordPress has many great features, but does take a bit of getting used to. You can create your post here but I only do so for very short posts. The spell check feature is of fairly poor quality and I prefer it use a full-featured word processor such as MS Word for text creation. You do not want to paste text into the WordPress box directly from Word because it does not handle Word’s special formatting features. The WordPress entry box does have a button for copying in MS Word text, this is not always reliable, either. The surest way is to buffer text between Word and WordPress by dropping it into a simple text editor like Notepad, then copying that into WordPress.

Image Insertion
The rectangular box symbol beside “Upload/Insert ” (over the text box) brings up an elaborate (and sometimes very slow) system for uploading images to use in your posts. Be careful about image size. Sometimes WordPress seems to want to set your image to a smaller size. You can also set the left-right orientation of the image. Some themes will be at conflict with this feature, so you will need play around with these features a bit to get your illustrations where you want them on the page. I always use handy “Preview” button (upper right) a couple of times per post while checking and tweaking image position and the general appearance of the post. This shows you exactly what your post will look like, so don’t ever post without previewing first.

Categories & Tags
It’s easy to set categories and tags for posts (these sort similar posts for visitors). You optionally enter an excerpt and format the post for custom fields, use by many “news” style main pages.

Dashboard
Also on the Dashboard sidebar is the “Media” button, which shows thumbs of all uploaded images and allows management of them. You can also view and edit external links, comments and static pages here. These pages are permanent and independent of the blog pages. Static pages can be especially useful to the business user.  In fact many WordPress users create the entire business sites using them.

Appearance & Widgets
Be careful with the Appearance section. You’ll see a nice page of template thumbnails. Just remember that clicking any of them immediately changes the entire look of your site to a new theme. Widgets are one of the chief selling points for the WordPress business user. These are subordinate programs that can perform a variety of functions, but most commonly place functions in the sidebars. Widgets control such things as Calendar, Recent Posts and others. A vast number of Widgets are available, as are plugins. Some people check the code on these before installing, however. One downside of WordPress is that scripts can be hidden in seemingly innocent widgets, plugin or themes that can redirect traffic away from your site or worse. Always use well reputed supplemental addons. I visually scan the scripts of everything I install, deleting any apparently unneeded links or JavaScript.

Users & Settings

WordPress can also be set up with additional user names with 5 different permission levels. The General Settings section is one you’ll rarely visit after initial setup, but it is important to do so. This is where you set the Blog Title, date format, and the permalink structure (important for SEO).

Content Management
As I’ve said before, the biggest selling point of WordPress is the vast amount of theme designs (page templates), and add on functions from plugins and widgets. Add to this the great number of experts and support information available and you have the safest choice in blog-based web management systems. WordPress is sometimes referred to as a “content management system”. This will get you an argument in most any group of web programmers, and, while it has many content management features, these features have been designed around the blog concept. Fully configured content managers have greater versatility, but also greater complexity, calling for more (and often more expensive) expertise. If you can do everything you want in WordPress, there is no need to waste effort or money on a more complex system. With inexpensive or free supplements you can use the platform for web commerce of various types and many other business applications. You will be seeing me try out many of those here in the coming weeks.

See my Links page for more on WordPress features, setup and more.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

WordPress in Review: A Close Examination

OK, you say. WordPress may be great for college kids and hobbyists. What does it have to offer for a business? A lot. As a blog, it can be used for a variety of business communication purposes, from inter business communication to customer relations to networking. These days, business success is about networking and a WordPress blog is THE place to start for the networker. A blog becomes your home base, which you can link to from other locations on the web, bringing your following to your products and ideas. For internal use, it can be set up to allow password entry and separate user accounts. The platform can be modified to look and function in many different ways, taking it beyond the restrictions of a blog platform, though. WordPress can easily be transformed into an easy-to-manage direct commerce site using free plugins. It can be modified to allow affiliate marketers to sell items in a variety of ways. Display advertising is commonly used within WordPress. You can even set up a version that will allow you to host hundreds of individually customized blogs. Many businesses are converting their existing websites to WordPress for simplicity and economy. WordPress proponent  Joost de Valk recently described working with a Holland newspaper that was able to discard a CMS component costing them 2.5 million Euros a year– for a free WordPress plugin.

The purpose of this website will be to provide you with resources for using WordPress to meet your business needs, whatever your business, be it a large corporation, a small business, brick-and-mortar or web based. There will be things here for the established business looking in transition or the casual blogger looking to take first steps toward monetization.

I’ll hope you will make this site a regular stop.

Post from: WordPress Business Review

Why a Blog About WordPress for Business?