Notes from Word Camp Chicago 2011. Blog tips, Blog Security, SEO, Plugins, Resources!
Word Camp Chicago was a 2-day event packed with great information resources and blogging tips. Some very successful bloggers and developers attended and here are my major takeaways out of near 20 pages of notes.
15% of the World Wide Web runs on WordPress.
Web/Blog Security: Dre Armeda, taco lover and security guy, had a great tip on FTP. He suggests that you don’t store your FTP password in your FTP client – that you should submit it manually. There are virus’ that look for website passwords. If you access more than one website, this could be a major “Gotcha!” He recommends that people use password apps for other applications and logins, such as 1Password, Keepass, Lastpass or Roboform.
He also shared a link to determine how many infections a potential web host has had in the last 30, 60 or 90 days. I’ll use Godaddy in this example: www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=godaddy.com You should replace “godaddy.com” with your web host domain. This information may help you find a secure web host or give you insights on your current provider.
You must update your WordPress themes and plugins! 70% of hacked sites were not updated. Did you know that when a version goes from, say, 3.2 to 3.3 that the functionality has changed? Minor revisons (3.2.1 to 3.2.2) indicate patches and those may affect security. If you’re interested, you can view information to changes to plugins by clicking on the Changelog tab.
Another recommendation is to change the database table prefix from “WP_” to something else when you set up your blog. You’ll find it in your wp-config.php file.
I did not know that you can limit (or specify) IP addresses that can access a blog’s login page. That’s awesome!
Here’s something to bookmark: Enter a URL and the Sucuri SiteCheck scanner will check the site for malware, blacklisting status, and out-of-date software.
WordPress/Blog SEO: Mert Sahinoglu is a Chicago SEO and delivered great information on blog SEO. One point that he and others made at Word Camp was that inbound links seem to be waning as an SEO factor and “Likes” and sharing are becoming more important. Mert says Google likes to see both. I agree and think that links will always be a measure of popularity, but Likes and shares may be a little harder to manipulate and may get more emphasis in algorithms.
He claims that Google gets to know you and will serve MSNBC to Democrats and Fox News to Republicans for some news-related searches. (Kinda creepy) He said that’s great for 95% of the people, but not so great if you’re doing research. He like the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, in partfor it’s ability to generate sitemaps. He recommends standard and mobile sitemaps. (Many people discussed the importance of sitemaps, including video sitemaps)
He shared some links to plugins and a list of blog directories:
- Broken Link Checker will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.
- SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.
- WP-Cache is an efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive.
- Top Rank’s list of RSS/Blog Directories is an ever-growing list of places for you to list your blog for increased exposure.
Mert recommends using custom permalinks.
Google is working to develop links connecting page content to author, so savvy bloggers are using the “rel=author” tag to link to their author page and Google Profile. If you haven’t set up your Google Profile, please do so now. For more on this and information on easily adding the Profile button to your site, go here. There are specific instructions for WordPress too.
Search engines cannot see Flash, CSS, Java script, share buttons, author links and links from page A to page B. But they can see HTML text, alt-text and meta tags. All of this affects your search rankings.
Blogrolls are problematic and leak link juice and kill Pagerank. If you want to interview someone, link to them from the post. If you want a blogroll, put it on one page, not every page on your site.
Comments are great, but you should have visitors register to comment and continue to monitor their comments. 3rd party comments still count, such as Foursquare, Yelp, etc.
I’ll post my notes from Word Camp Chicago Day 2 later. If you liked this post, I’d appreciate a comment, Stumble, DIGG, etc. See sharing buttons below.
Thanks!
Photo credit: Kurt Scholle (See more Word Camp Chicago pictures)
Kurt., many thanks for this summary. Looking forward to Part 2.
Missed the security session; wishing now I hadn’t. Great tips!
I was really impressed with my first Word Camp. I might consider going to others, like Detroit or San Francisco. Most of the presenters were excellent and approachable. I got an idea from one of the presentations that, alone, made the time and modest money worthwhile. Met some great people and made great contacts.
Looking at the picture of Dre Armeda nad me above, I think I’m going to shave my beard like he does (may need some Grecian Formula – LOL) and get a fedora like his.
Sounds like a great learning experience. Too bad I couldn’t make it but we are trying to finish this shed so we can do the home gym garage space design. I pray it’s all done by Sept. 1 but we’ll see.
Looking forward to hearing more about Wordcamp.