On top of customer support, my family and my day job, I’ve been working with Alex Shalman and John Chow to build an awesome plugin for comments on WordPress sites. Standout Comments is now up to version 0.95 and has been quite popular with those who use it.

As with most things WordPress, it’s been a community effort. Not only with John and Alex helping me get it done and marketed, but also with the awesome users of the plugin sending in bug reports, feature requests and suggestions. It’s truly amazing in a way I hadn’t imagined.

It’s also quite challenging as the number of variations of WordPress themes and installation situations start to emerge. Wow. Talk about “I hadn’t thought of that.”

StandoutComments generally let’s you integrate your marketing efforts into your comment form and take advantage of the fact the user is entering their email, but not in a sneaky way. The user is given the option to opt-in to your auto-responder and/or your Feedburner email feed. They can also follow you on Twitter.

StandoutComments features:

• Full integration and customization with any WordPress theme
• Subscribe to notifications of new comments on posts
• Integrate with any auto-responder to grow your list
• Integrate with FeedBurner email to notify users of new posts
• Integrate with Twitter:
  • Users enter Twitter ID to show Twitter avatar instead of Gravatar
  • Display Follow site owner on Twitter below comment form
  • OR Integrate with Twitter’s @anywhere to display a Twitter Follow button
  • Use Twitter’s @anywhere to link Twitter IDs in your entire blog with hovercards (@installedforyou)
  • Use popular short url providers to display a Tweetback URL
  • Track Tweetbacks and integrate them as comments
• Nearly all text and styles can be customized to suit your blog.

Anyway, version 0.95 was just released today and expands on the features we have, and finally includes the Unsubscribe option. Yeah, it should have been there from day 1 but wasn’t.

Next up I’m making sure it’s ready for WordPress 3.0 in general (ie: still works), enhanced features for 3.0, and also the WordPress 3.0 multisite option, which may be important now that WordPress mu is integrated with core.

Click here to get your free eBook.

When I first looked at this eBook I said to myself “Oh no, not another How to WordPress eBook” but to my complete surprise this eBook actually got my attention.

As I sat back and read Blog Setup Tutorials to my surprise I found myself drawn right into the eBook soaking up all the information it was providing. The information which I was reading provided a good few WordPress Golden Nuggets that even I had overlooked, I was also surprised by the level of detail provided so much so, that I would think even if you had never heard of WordPress before, you would be confident that by end of the 90 Pages you would have your WordPress Blog fully installed and personalized.

I think someone forgot to tell Tommy most FREE Products span only 30 pages!

Although Blog Setup Tutorials is 90 pages of pure content and no fluff, so I take my hat of to Tommy for that.

This information may be common knowledge to some people. However it was the in depth explanations, the how’s and the why these ways worked so well that I found truly unbelievable.

After reading on I found the information provided very helpful. I also found it easy and simple to follow.

You will find in this eBook a great step by step guide to creating and setting up your own WordPress Blog in a couple of Hours. It has been written in a clear and concise manner and all the step by step screenshots were easy to follow as well.

Blog Setup Tutorials does not stop there either. Once you have your WordPress Blog up and running, it would be simple as rinse and repeat in any niche to maximize your earning ability if that is what you wanted to do.

Blog Setup Tutorials will show you how to:

• Research and find your Niche
• Keyword Research
• Find the best WordPress Themes for FREE
• Which WordPress Plugins to install
• Adding Video & Pictures to your WordPress Blog
• Build an opt-in list
• Drive Traffic to your WordPress Blog for FREE!
• And much much more…

Blog Setup Tutorials does not tail off there either. This is one giant of an eBook packed to the brim of excellent no fluff content. 90 pages of pure information you will be returning back to again and again, I guarantee it. This eBook really is a blueprint to your success.

I mentioned earlier in this post “Yeah you can tell I don’t like How to WordPress products! Like hell I do!” I officially retract that statement after reading Blog Setup Tutorials. With the right content and the right sources, you can be as professional and productive as the top marketers in the world, churning out top quality WordPress Blogs at break neck speed.

Blog Setup Tutorials has officially earned itself a place on my printed book shelf with pages bookmarked and pages highlighted.

Excellent eBook Tommy!

Thank you for reading,

Jeff

Click here to get the free eBook now.

The upcoming WordPress 2.9 Upgrade is going to be full of some great features and of course everyone will have their favorites. A lot of the new features will focus on Media, such as basic image editing inside WordPress, easy thumbnails with each article and easier embedding of shared media (ie: YouTube et al).

The 2.9 upgrade features lots of new things for developers to hook into, but my favorite feature is one that may get little attention.

Due to the number of WordPress sites I run, manage or maintain, I sometimes don’t get back to my own sites for a while, and when I do there are inevitably updates to a bunch of plugins. On one site, I just spent 20 minutes (mainly due to a slow connection for some reason), updating 7 plugins.

WordPress 2.9 will now feature a “Bulk Update” option which would have allowed me to update all 7 of those in one click instead of 14 (update, then return to plugin page = 2 clicks per update). At that 14 is conservative because some I clicked into the details to see the changelog.

Yep. I’m thinking “Bulk Update” will be my favorite new feature. What feature are you looking forward to most?

This paper is about the brand strength and market share of 20 open source web content
management systems. As such, it provides you with important information relevant to selecting
a CMS, but it should not be read as a final judgment on the feature quality, stability, or a
particular system’s suitability for your project. With that said, our goal is to provide a body of
useful data which will help you make a more informed decision about which product is the
best fit for your next project.

As expected, the “big three” continue to dominate the market, with some shifting of their respective positions in different categories. Newcomers face some significant work to crack into the top spot.

As relates to WordPress, it was at the top of the list when they looked at Average Weekly Downloads, but came in third when analyzing their “current or most common use,” suggesting a lot of people download it, but don’t use it as a CMS. It should be noted that 13.7% of respondents said they used WordPress most commonly, whereas the next one down, Alfresco, has only 4.4% usage. A signifcant margin. The top 2 products were Joomla (20.6%) and Drupal (14.0%). This ranking holds true for overall “Rate of Adoption”

WordPress came out far ahead of both Joomla and Drupal in Brand Strength, which is an accumulated rating covering social media mentions, bookmarking, search queries and several other factors.

The report is well researched and founded, explaining their methodology and pointing out discrepancies where they exist or may be perceived. I highly recommend reading it as it highlights 20 different CMS platforms, including some you may not have heard of. One caveat – to receive the report, you need to fill out a form and give them some information, however the form does redirect to the download immediately, so you don’t have to be 100% truthful.

CMS Wire – Open Source CMS platform report

ReviewAZON

A while back I purchased a WordPress plugin, which I had never done before. With such an abundance of good plugins available in the repository, I’ve never felt the need. Part of doing this website and consulting with various clients in various fields, I am asked regularly to evaluate a plugin or to recommend a specific one for a given task.

I purchased the ReviewAZON plugin by Brad Hanson and started building a few sites with it. I’m pretty impressed over all.

Generally, what it does is insert content from Amazon into WordPress posts or pages. You can do single product posts, multi-product inserts and even bulk important entire ranges. In fact, the book reviews on InstalledForYou.com are being auto-posted over time by the plugin.

Here’s the feature list as posted on their site:

• Get Lifetime updates – Pay once and get lifetime updates and product enhancements for the life of the product.
• Use ReviewAZON on UNLIMITED Domains! Buy it and use it on some or all of your domains.
• Access to the ReviewAZON Support Forum: Join our community of ReviewAZON users and get the latest product updates, support information as well as user tips and tricks to make your blog a success!
• ReviewAZON allows you to display over 25 different pieces of product content such as average customer rating, product description, customer reviews, pricing, brand, manufacturer, product details and more!
• Detailed product user guide helps you every step of the way when it comes to installing, configuring and using the ReviewAZON Wordpress plug-in. Also learn how to make your own custom templates quickly and easily.
• Build complete blogs in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks allowing you to focus on other things such as promotion and creating additional blogs.
• Easy to use and intuitive administrative tools make configuring ReviewAZON a snap!
• Ajax driven product search dialog screen allows you to search by product category, custom sort parameter and product keywords to find just the products you are looking for quickly to add quality content to your blog in just minutes.
• Support for all the Amazon Affiliate programs including Canada, United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.
• Flexible HTML templates let you control the output of Amazon data to your users with virtually unlimited ways to display pertinent and meaningful content to your blog readers.
• Custom YouTube video search screen allows you to search for YouTube product reviews and add them to your blog to enhance the reader experience.
• Display Product Accessories and Similar Product listings along side your product post pages by showing them in-line or by using the custom sidebar widgets that come out of the box with ReviewAZON.
• Use the built in Custom Template Manager interface to make custom template changes on the fly and update all your blog posts with a single save!
• Custom Template Token Reference tool allows you to see exactly what tokens are available for use with that particular template without having to reference the manual each time you make a change.
• eBay integration with PhpBayLite or PhpBayPro enables you to display eBay listings along side the products you are promoting to help increase your ROI and affiliate commissions.
• Built in custom Sidebar Widgets helps you to display information such as product Brands, Price Ranges and Featured Products to your customers to better help them find the information they need on your blog.
• Use the built in Tabbed product listing interface to display product information to your users in a tab layout instead of the normal vertical layout.
• SEO friendly image and product URLs can be configured to display human readable links that not only help your readers but also boost on page SEO for your blog.
• Output Caching allows you to speed up the rendering of product content to your blog readers by reducing the load time and the number of calls to the Amazon web service.
• Make your blog product content stand out by providing your readers with timely and informative customer reviews on the products you are promoting.
• Continuously add product posts to your blog by “Drip Feeding” them over a defined set of time by using the Bulk Product Post feature of ReviewAZON. You can have products automatically post to your blog over the course of days, weeks and even months allowing you to focus on promotion rather than content creation.

I’ve got 3 sites right now running the plugin and although I haven’t made any money from them, the plugin does work spectacularly as advertised.

ReviewAZON is easy to setup and does offer several configuration options. You will need to have Amazon Affiliate keys in order to access the Amazon web services. These keys are free, and just about anyone can get them.

Posting can be done manually, instantly or automatically using what is called “drip feeding” meaning that content is posted overtime. This allows search engines to gradually find new content and it appears the site has grown more naturally. This feature works brilliantly. A few of the options on this page could use a bit of clarification and may be overwhelming at first. The plugin comes with a good manual and the support and support forum are first rate. Brad is quick to respond and fix problems for his clients.

The plugin also allows for inserting a single item into a post, so if you have a product you’re talking about or a topic, and Amazon has something that matches, you can include it. The single item insert is nicely formatted, as are all of the plugin’s features. ReviewAZON also comes with a few different template options, all of which you can change, and also uses short-codes so you can include parts of it’s content anywhere.

It also allows you to integrate Overstock and eBay listings for even more affiliate power.

ReviewAZON is currently priced at $79, which sounds a bit pricey. Depending on the market you enter via Amazon, you could easily make that back in a month or much less!

As with any affiliate method, this plugin itself WON’T make you money! You still have to drive traffic, get the search engines looking and work on other methods of getting conversions, but this will allow you to quickly get up and running before the holiday season.