I also wanted to point out that there are a lot of WordPress courses out there, some good, some bad, some over-priced. But did you know that WordPress lessons are free for the taking? Yes, right from the developers of WordPress at the WordPress Codex. Where else are you going to get the most up-to-date info about WordPress, than from the developers themselves?

Don’t get me wrong, some people who need more help with specific areas of WordPress, or who for whatever reason, choose not to teach themsleves more than the ability to create blog posts, would benefit greatly from various WordPress courses, or coaching. Just be careful what you pay for. Before you invest any money on courses or coaching, ask if the course or coaching sessions are going to be teaching you about the most current version of WordPress. After all, why should you pay for outdated information?

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He who hesitates is a damned fool.

Mae West

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A good deed is never lost: he who sows courtesy reaps friendship; and he who plants kindness gathers love.

Basil

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I belong to an internet marketing forum, the Warrior forum. I joined because I needed to learn some marketing strategies and I wanted to network and contribute. For the most part, I’ve gained a lot of valuable knowledge, made some friends, and it’s been a great experience.

However, recently there was a heated debate about the selling of backlink packages. Backlink packages contain lists of mostly high PR site links so that the buyer can go and create profiles at the sites’ forums and get a good backlinks from authority sites which in turn gets them ranked better in the search engines. This practice may sound harmless to some. But the reality is this: the forum owner is now left with an inflated membership where the majority of “members” are actually only profile spammers who have zero intention of ever contributing to the forum!

So imagine if the forum owner ever wanted to sell advertising space on his or her forum? How do they accurately disclose their membership totals? How to they retain their advertisers when there is no activity in the forums because most of the members are profile spammers?

And the backlink package sellers are saying it’s perfectly fine because it’s not breaking any TOS. It’s not breaking any TOS because many forum owners never edit their forum’s TOS and leave a generic one up which is useless.

So my suggestion to webmasters is this: secure your websites, protect your assets. Create a very clear TOS expressly stating that spam of any kind will not be tolerated and if you run a forum include profile spamming as a practice that won’t be tolerated, and state in your TOS that members who haven’t contributed in a set period of time will be deleted. That coveted backlink that they got is now gone once you, the webmaster, deletes their profile, and rightfully so. Poof! Serves them right!

In a future post I’ll discuss the different ways to get backlinks legitimately, legally, and for free.

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Speaking of WordPress, I’m still so impressed with WordPress 3. It’s no wonder it’s been downloaded over 300 million times! Wow!

It’s never been easier to get a web presence using the power of WordPress. You don’t have to have any technical skills to get up and running. You can basicly learn the ropes in an hour or two. But, if you really don’t want to learn and you need some help installing and managing your WordPress blog, I’m happy to offer my WordPress Blog Management Services. I look forward to helping you with the successful launch of your blog.

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So I looked for a video of a song that would express what I’m feeling today. Here’s one by Jon Anderson of the band Yes called “Hurry Home” which struck a chord with me. I hope you enjoy it.

Take care out there and stay safe.

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Oh joy, oh bliss! WordPress 3, I already love you! Oh, and the dashboard is nice and slick. I like!
Can you tell I’m excited?

So, do you want to know the secret to a painless upgrade? It’s quite simple:

• Get rid of all the plugins you don’t use and upgrade the ones that need upgrading.
• Backup your WordPress database.
• Optional: deactivate all plugins. (I didn’t deactivate any plugins on 6 blogs and it pretty much worked.)
• Click the WordPress 3 upgrade link and wait until you see the message that it has been upgraded successfully.
• If you deactivated the plugins, now you can reactivate them.

That’s it. You’re done.

Now, if you run into any problems, and you didn’t deactivate any plugins and you are having problems, deactivate all plugins and reactivate them one by one until you find the one giving you problems. Sometimes it could be just one plugin that can cause a blog to fail and as much as it is annoying, if you follow the steps I’ve outlined, you can usually pinpoint the problem yourself as long as you don’t panic. Remember, if something does go wrong, all is not lost if you backed up your database!

If a plugin fails, you can always see if the plugin author is going to upgrade soon. If not, try to find a replacement plugin. Sometimes you can find a great plugin that does the same job or better than the one you had to discard. WordPress is so flexible and there are many WordPress developers out there coming out with new stuff all the time. If you are patient, you can find some real gems of plugins and themes that you”ll want to keep forever.

What if it’s not a plugin and it’s my theme that fails? Honestly, that is so rare to see. I mean, I’ve yet to see too many nasty things happen to the themes I’ve had to work with except once with Thesis and it was easily fixed by the client logging into their account at DIYthemes and grabbing the latest Thesis version and that was it.

From what I’m seeing so far, WordPress 3 rocks. It’s been worth the wait.

If you need my help with any upgrade issues, I would be pleased to offer my WordPress consulting services to you and you can request a quote here. I also welcome your comments about your experiences or concerns.

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What ever happened to gracious acceptance of a gift? What ever happened to manners? I was always taught if someone wants to help or give you something, you are gracious even if you decline. As in saying something like “I really appreciate your offer, but no thank you, I’m okay” or “yes, please, and thank you for your kind offer”.

Maybe I expect too much from people. After all, I am a “boomer”. Most of us “boomers” were raised much stricter than later generations. Most of us were taught manners and if we were rude to anyone, and our parents heard about it, we were promptly put in our place.

Anyway, I doubt the experience will make me change the way I am. I am what I am and if some people don’t like me, that’s ok with me. So I will continue to do random acts of kindness now and forever, and not expect everyone to react the same. And I’m okay with that.

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