Go Beyond MLS » WordPress

Optimize Your WordPress For Smart Phones With WPTouch

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:55:04 +0000

The cell phone I currently have is not exactly what you can call a “smart phone”, but every so often I like to check and see how my websites and blogs look on my phone. According to Google Analytics, I am not the only one to try and access my blog on my cell phone. During last year there were 83 attempts to access Go Beyond MLS using number of mobile devices:

While the above numbers are not something to brag about, I still was surprised to learn that there were attempts to view this blog on mobile devices.

I am sure that the experience of the above users was not the best one. Navigating this blog from a mobile device has probably proven to be a complete nightmare… Until a few days ago that is.

If I have implemented changes correctly, this blog is now optimized for mobile browsing and users should see it in manner shower in the picture to your right. How did I do it? Simple. I used a plugin called WPTouch (developed by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey of BraveNewCode). You can also download WPTouch at WordPress plugin repository.

The reason I decided to go with WPTouch is that it offers easy way to customize the feel and look of the “mobile version” of your WordPress, if you like to keep the color scheme that resembles your website for example. Currently the plugin allows you to customize colors of title, header, sub-header and links. I wish however the developers would also allowed changing the background image/color right from the plugin’s dashboard:

The plugin also offers an easy implementation of AdSense mobile ads. Just enter your AdSnese publisher ID and your AdSense channel and you all set:

Your AdSense ads will be published on every “single post” of the “mobile” version of your website:

WPTouch is the most advanced way to optimize your WordPress for mobile phone users and visitors that I have seen so far. It does not seem to conflict with any of the other plugins I use on this blog. The developers, however, included a list of plugins that are not supported and may not work well with WPTouch- you can see that list in the plugin’s dashboard.

A special thanks goes to Zac Johnson for introducing me to WPTouch.Similar Posts:

Thesis Theme Supercharges Your WordPress

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:21:27 +0000

As a WordPress user, I have come across many premium themes. Some were good, some were not so good. Several tims I was close to buying at least one of the premium themes (I believe it one of them was called “Revolution”) but none of the premium WordPress themes satisfy my website’s needs. So instead of going with a premium one I used to chose a free theme, and then tweak it, and tweak it, and tweak until I was satisfied with what I saw. The problem of course was that some WordPress theme developers have their own style (an some have no style at all) when it comes to coding the theme. The end result is that in many cases, one can waste considerable amount of time looking for example at CSS files and trying to figure out what controls what.

When I first heard of Thesis, I pretty much dismissed it as one of those premium themes that will not do much for my websites. However I was fortunate enough to have a closer look at this theme on a website of a friend of mine. Needless to say Thesis is on the top of my shopping list. The video (subscribers might need to visit this post to see it) bellow explains better than I ever could why I am falling in love with Thesis.

Click here to see more videos about Thesis, including video about it’s Design Flexibility and SEO benefits.

When trying Thesis on the website of a friend of mine, I immediately realized how easy and intuitive Thesis is. Most of the changes I made for example to the original theme that powers this blog, can be done via “options” in theses without need to modify themes files nor CSS. In addition it also can eliminate number of plugins you might be currently using. If you are looking for a suitable theme for your WordPress site, Thesis should be given serious consideration.Similar Posts:

20+ WordPress Plugins I Use And Recommend

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:38:58 +0000

I may have inspired Andy Beal to start using TweetMeme plugin on Marketing Piligrim, but he certainly inspired me more. Every time I come across a great plugin I promise myself to give credit to the plugin’s author as well as share with my readers how a particular plugin helped. Of course day passes by, then another and after a few days my desire to write about particular plugin slowly withers out. “It just a plugin”, I tell myself -”some one has already written about it anyway.” The truth is however that many of the plugins I use on my blogs make my life so much easier.

So here are some 20+ plugins that help this blog tick….

Akismet- some say this is the best anti-spam plugin. I use this plugin, however I will always miss Spam Karma. Unfortunately Aksimet relying on “collective intelligence” has flagged on occasion people whom I would never consider spammers.

WP Audio Player – this is a nice little plugin that allows you to embed audio files into your posts and pages making them playable. I think many podcasters use this plugin. While I love this plugin, I have it on my blog only because of one particular post. I still recommend it.

Broken Link Checker – this plugin might be very useful if you are worried that some of your old links point websites that no longer exist. Yeah, I know! But you would be surprised. I actually downloaded this plugin to test it and see if it would find broken links in the comments (authors url + urls in comment’s content)- unfortunately it does not do that, it only checks for broken links in the posts, pages, blogroll and some custom fields. So for now it is disabled- but I will keep an eye on it. I really would love it to be able to check for broken links in the comments.

cforms – if one of the best form builder plugin I have ever seen! This one is a must have!

Contact Form – a plugin that allows you to publish (in a post or a page) a contact form. I used it on all of my blogs before I became acquainted with cforms. If you do not need complicated forms but would like to offer your visitors and easy way to contact you this plugin is just for you.

Dean’s Code Highlighter- nice little plugin for some of us geeks who like to show off and tell you how much better we are than rest of you by pulishing tidbits of code.

Do Follow – enough said. This plugin magically attracts swarms of spammers both automated and human. But it rewards nicely those who have something good and valid to say on my blog.

Google XML Sitemaps - this plugin helps me to keep the big 3, but mostly Googe, informed about my blogs.

Maintenance Mode – I love this plugin. It creates a splash spage for those times when you are making major changes to your blog- such as testing new plugins or new theme. Visitors see a page that explains to your visitors that your website is undergoing maintenance/updates. Logged in users can see the the blog as usual.

NextGEN Gallery- is extremely useful plugin for those who like to take a lot of pictures. It maybe difficult to get used to it since the WordPress’ default media library has been improved over last few years. But NextGen Gallery offers features as tagging your images, giving them descriptions e.t.c. Among many cool things it also creates an additional RSS feed of your pictures.

OIOpublisher Direct 2.0(aff link) – this is a paid plugin I use on this blog to manage advertising purchased directly from me. This is not a free plugin, but if you use my affiliate link you may get some discount!

Redirection- allows you to create different redirects without need of modifying your .htaccess file. One of the cool features of this plugin is that it can automatically create a redirect if you need to modify post’s slug. I found this plugin to be extremely useful if you need to move a blog to a new domain. You can create hundreds of redirects in spreadsheet and import them using the plugin’s import/export feature.

SEO Title Tag – this plugin takes care of the title tags allowing you to have to have different title tag and post title.

Similar Posts- This plugin allows you to display related posts and pages. It is highly configurable, but it needs another plugin called Post-Plugin Library to work.

Subscribe To “Double-Opt-In” Comments – allows people to follow the conversation on desired post. It attempts to solve the issue you might have with sending unsolicited e-mails as it requires confirmation before updates are sent out.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – this plugin makes it easy to share posts on Twitter via TweetMeme Button which you can see in the top left corner of every post on this blog.

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger – this plugin replaces the built-in ping/notify functionality. Pings only when publishing new or future posts, not when editing.

WP Greet Box – This plugin recognizes where do your visitors come from and displays a customized message. For example if some one visits your blog from Twitter, you can configure the greeting to say something like this “Hey Tweep! Would you mind following me on Twitter?” or something like that. You can customize each greeting to different visitors the way you find it fit.

WP Super Cache – for this plugin I will just rip Andy’s description- is all about “legalized speeding”. I may also add that WP Super Cache can save you some Cash…

So there you go, my 20+ plugins. Do you use any of them?

Similar Posts:

Tips On Keeping Your WordPress Less Vulnerable To Hackers

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:12:50 +0000

WordPress, being one of the most popular publishing platforms and content management system also is the most frequent target for spammers. Google reacts quickly to identify the hacked sites – as a result your traffic and sales can drastically drop. The good news is that Google will try to make reasonable attempts to notify webmasters about potential problems via Google Webmasters Tools. However if you do not act quickly, it can be truly a devastating blow to your online presence.

So how do you prepare yourself for the event such as your blog being hacked by injecting code into your theme files or even database? Here are the steps that I would recommend to anyone using WordPress as their publishing platform or CMS:

Register with Google Webmasters Tools. Not only Google Webmasters Tools can be useful in identifying the attack. You can also use the tools to resubmit your website for reconsideration once your dealt with threat and cleaned up the mess.
Create Google alerts to notify you of a possible threat. While it is impossible to foresee every possible spam keyword you can create alert for the most common ones such as “viagra” or “port”. How do you create such an alert? Simple. Lets presume your domain is “yourdomain.com” your Google alert the will be for the search query “viagra site:yourdomain.com”. Of course relying on Google Alerts alone is not a good idea.
Check the code yourself. It does not really take that much- right click your mouth and view the page source. Generally when attack is carried out the code is injected somewhere in common files and will be visible on every page of your website.
If you modify your theme yourself- keep the back up of the version that includes your most recent updates. It is always good idea to keep a back up of your theme files no matter what.
Keep the latest back up of your database. I find that WordPress Database Backup Plugin (HT: Andy Beard) – is one of the most useful plugin to have. You can tell the plugin to mail you the SQL file to the e-mail of your choice on a regular basis. I am doing it on a daily basis if you publish many posts per day you can chose for the back up to be made every couple of hours.
Do not broadcast to the world the version of WordPress you are using. I have seen WordPress theme developers inserting a code that displays the current version of WordPress, most of the time it that code is found in the header.php file loog for the code and remove it. There is no reason for anyone to know what version you are using.
Keep your WordPress and plugins updated. Current version of WordPress allows one click updates from withing your dashboard- there is really no excuse for us any longer.
Keep your files in a directory that no one besides you knows about it. You can install or move your WordPres files to a directory that only you will know about- I will try elaborate on it in future especially on how to move your WordPress to another “secret” directory.

I have cleaned several WordPress installations for my friends over the period of last year. The hacker attack can be devastating if your are not prepared to deal with it. And yes it can happen to any one- even to the best of geeks.Similar Posts:

LeadPress: Ultimate Lead Generating Solution For Mortgage Professionals

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:36:27 +0000

A while back, hen I’ve heard about development of LeadPress, I was both happy and skeptical about the final product. Happy because a dear friend of mine was the mastermind behind the project. Skeptical because I knew very little how the final product will look like. All I knew is that LeadPress will be based on WordPress, my favorite blogging and content management software. Of course the question I had about the future LeadPress was how can it benefit mortgage professionals versus just using your own WordPress installation.

Now that LeadPress is live, I am certain it will become an ultimate solution for lead generation for mortgage professionals. LeadPress is far from just another WordPress. While it uses the flexibility and power of WordPress it is specifically designed to meet the needs of mortgage professionals.

Video Tour of LeadPress

Watch the video tour of some key features of LeadPress.

With LeadPress you are in control of your website’s lead generating capabilities and no third part lead generating companies get a piece of the action.

Disclosure: I am an active affiliate with LeadPress. If you sign up with LeadPress using the links in the above portion of this post, I will receive a commission for referring you to LeadPress. If for some reason you would not want me to earn this commission, here is direct link to LeadPress: http://leadpress.com/Similar Posts:

Appointments Made Easy With Appointy

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:28:24 +0000

Have you ever considered allowing your client to schedule appointments with you right on your website? In search for such solution for my and for my friends and clients websites I came across Appointy, a Florida based startup. You can see the implementation of Appointy scheduling feature on my other website where I allow clients to reserve my interpreting and translating services online.

While Appointy offers an easy integration for WordPress websites via a plugin, their system can be implemented just on about any website through an “ifame” code.

Appointy comes “PayPal ready” allowing you to charge a fee for the appointment at the time of scheduling- either full amount or partial. You are of course free to not charge your clients for appointments, as it would be the case with most real estate agents I know. But if you would like to prevent “no shows”, you might want to implement a minimal fee refundable at the time of the appointment.

Currently Appointy offers four different plans:

FREE plan- this basic plan has some limits and you have no option to charge your clients for the appointment at the time of scheduling. Appointy also will inject some ads into your calendar – hey they need to pay their engineers and developers.
PLUS plan comes at $9.99 per moth and is ad free but it does not allow you for branding nor accepting pre-payments.
PRO plan will set you back about $19.99 per month- the plan I am looking forward to use. You can brand your calendar and accept pre-payments with this plan. This plan includes e-mail marketing tool that allows you to send different e-mails to confirm, remind or even cancel the appointments. The best thing of course that when you sing up for Appointy, you get to try this plan absolutely free for 30 days.
Finally the BUSINESS plan wich comes at $39.99 is the top level plan from Appointy. I would recommend this plan for businesses that have several staff members accepting appointments, the plan allows a separate logins for administrator and for the staff.

If you are looking for a solution that would allow your clients to book an appointment with you right on your website, Appointy should be given frist consideration.

As I have pointed out, I am using Appointy myself, although I am only beginning to test many of it’s features and probably have not seen yet what Appointy can really do for my business. I will report on the results about one month from now, so stay tuned.Similar Posts:

Spice Up Your Listing’s Photos With NextGEN WordPress Plugin

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:14:22 +0000

[slideshow id=2 w=300 h=200]
Photo Ceredit:
The Harriman Team of Wallingford, CT
Besides branding themselves with a watermarks on pictures they never took, your local MLS is probably resizing the images you upload to accompany your listing, messing them up in the process or at least greatly affecting the quality of your pictures. Fortunately many agents today have their own website and at least one place where they have control how the photos will appear.

If you are operating a WordPress powered website, you might want to take a closer look at NextGEN WordPress Gallery Plugin by Alex Rabe. This plugin has already been integrated into variety of WordPress themes and even other plugins. There is a learning curve in in figuring out how to use this plugin effectively. But it is well worth the trouble.

Possible Problems With Installing and Configuring NextGEN Plugin.

Not sure if any one else experienced the similar problems, but when I attempted to install NextGEN plugin uploading it via FTP client, it would never work properly. I believe it may had something to do with file permissions (CHMOD) configuration of the particular files withing the plugin folder. Apparently my FTP client messes them up. If you come across the same problem, consider installing the plugin through the user interface of your WordPress (presuming your are using WordPress 2.7 or later). Installing the pluging through the WordPress interface fixed my issue and as you can see in the upper left corner of this post, NexGEN plugin is working well.

The NextGEN also requires JW Image Rotator – an important component for the sideshow function of the plugin. You should follow carefully the instructions on how to tell NextGEN plugin where to find JW Image Rotator- another problem I ran into trying to configure the NextGEN plugin properly.

Have you used this plugin? What do you think about it?Similar Posts:

Facebook Connect Solution For Your Blog

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:37:04 +0000

Ever since I saw the implementation of Facebook Connect on TechCrunch, I wanted to look into implementing it on my blogs as well. However since I was not very active on Facebook, I did not start digging into it until a few days ago. There are are number of solutions available for bloggers today should they decide to take advantage of Facebook Connect.

For now I have settled with the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin by Sociable. The Sociable plugin requires Facebook API so before you start using it, make sure to create new application in Facebook developer section of your account. You may also want to hack this plugin- see in the bottom of the post where described how I did it.

Once installed and configured the Facebook Connect plugin will allow your visitors to logging into your blog using their Facebook credentials. They choose to allow the Facebook Connect application (your blog), to post the comments they leave on your blog to their Facebook account as well.

The Facebook Connect plugin by sociable has a widged that you can place in the sidebar of your blog where the visitors can login as Facebook users. Once logged in, they will also have an option to invite their friends to visit your website without actually leaving your blog.

Another unique feature the plugin provides is the community page, which is hosted right on your blog.

There is however one huge downside wit the plugin. It does not word that well with WP Super Cache plugin. Unless of course you can hack WP Super Cache plugin in such a way that it would serve dynamic pages to Facebook users once they’ve logged in on your blog. If you come across such a hack, please let me know.

Hacking the plugin to display the facebook login button somewhere around your comment box.- do this at your own risk.

Another shortcoming of the Facebook Connect plugin by Sociable is that the sidebar widget is the only place where the login button is displayed. Unfortunately the sidebar is not exactly the first place your visitors might examine when visiting your blog. They many leave a comment without realizing they could have shared it on Facebook. Placing the Facebook Connect login button in vicinity of the comment box can serve as a reminder that they could use their Facebook ID to comment on your blog. Unfortunately I had to come up with my own hack to accomplish that- copy and paste to code below into your comments.php file:

echo "\"".$loginbutton."\" onlogin=\"window.location = ‘".$uri."’;\">\n"; ?>

This is how my comment box looks now with the code above inserted:

It is probably my worst ever attempt to hack anything. Hopefully some one can come up with a better hack. With the above hack, after successful login, the page if refreshed on the very top. Bringing the visitor back down to the comment box would be so much better- but as I said, I suck at coding.

For the list of other Facebook Connect plugins and solutions for other blogging and content management platforms make sure to visit Facebook Connect Plugin Directory.
Similar Posts:

New Design Courtesy Of CodeScheme

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:19:06 +0000

Choosing a new design for your blog is not my favourite activity. However, once in a while you might have to do it to accommodate the need of your website. When choosing a new WordPress theme one of the factors I look for is for the theme to be simple and easy to modify.

Outgoing Theme- Cleaker
For the past two years Go Beyond MLS was powered by a WordPress Theme called Cleaker. Cleaker is one of those themes that any WordPress beginner should consider using, especially if you are interested to learn how to hack your theme to modify your website’s look and feel. Cleaker has such clearly defined CSS and meticulously grouped so that an average user can understand it.

Incoming Theme StayPressed
The new theme that powers this blog is developed by CodeScheme. I have decided to go with StayPressed WordPress Theme for the same reason I have chosen the former theme- it’s simplicity that allows me to easy modify the look and feel of my blog. StayPressed is a very light theme and uses very limited number of background images, which was always a concern to me. It is a “widgitized” theme, with widgets defined for both left and right sidebars.Similar Posts:

Formbuilder Plugin for WordPress- A Must Have Companion For Real Estate Websites

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:00:07 +0000

If your real estate website is powered by WordPress, chances are you have been looking for a good way to implement contact froms on your website. There are number of plugins that can help you with this task. However one particular plugin deserves special attention- Formbuilder Plugin for WordPress.

Unlike other plugins, the Formbuilder gives you the freedom to create contact forms where you can customize every field to your liking, while giving you complete control over the number and the types of the fields you want to use in a contact form. With Formbuilder you can also create number of different contact form that would serve completely different purpose. For example you can have one form designed to capture buyers, another one to capture sellers yet another one to capture renters. Which can be very useful in creating separate landing pages for each of the above mentioned groups.

The plugin also allows you to create auto responders that can be linked to a particular contact form.

The form you see bellow was created in under 10 minutes. It is fully functional and you can take if for a spin if you wish. The form is linked to an auto responder, so if you decide to use the form you will get a feeling how the auto responder works as well.Similar Posts:

Is Your WordPress “Viagra Spammers and Hackers” Proof?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:56:04 +0000

I often wonder what is worse? Having a server down time or having your blog hacked by a spammer? I would prefer a server down time over having my blog(s) hacked by spammers any time of night or day.

Recently I have been helping a friend of mine after her blog was hacked by a viagra spammer. I am sure some of my readers can benefit from the things I have learned.

How Do You Know If Your Blog Is Hacked?

It can take days or weeks before you can discover that your blog was compromised. But following are red flags you should pay attention to:

Your blog’s performance suddenly decreases. It takes forever for pages to load in your browser. It can be due to the fact that a PHP scripted inserted in your blog’s theme files is trying to “pull in” hundreds and even thousands of slinks. Your blogg may appear to you and your visitors the same, but if you take a closer look at the source of your pages you might see the link spam.
The number of regular daily visitors suddenly drops. This can be due to two factors:
- Visitors become impatient that your pages take so long to load and move on.
- Your search engines raking and position may be affected resulting in less
traffic.
If you are regularly using an FTP client, pay attention if there are any suspicious files on your server.

Things you can do to help you out to make you blog less attractive to “viagra spamers and hackers”.

Always have the latest version of WordPress. Yes updating WordPress in the past was rather painful task. But there is no longer excuse not to update it your software since you can do it straight from your Dashboard.
If you still are afraid to upgrade your WordPress on thing you can do is to stop publicizing to the entire world which version you are actually using. Many theme developers please a code in the header of your blog that produces following result:

You can fix this rather easy by removing following code from the header.php file of your current theme:
bloginfo(‘version’); ?>" />
In my opinion, it would be better to show your love and appreciation for WordPress by linking to them.
One of the ways you can find out your blog has been hacked is to set up a Google Alert for the following query “viagra site:www.yoursite.com”. Of course you can substitute keyword “viagra” with any other keyword you think your site might be targeted with.

It is probably impossible to prevent your blog from being hack at certain point, but there are few things you can do to make your blog less attractive to spammers and hackers.

If you need more advanced approach to dealing with spam hackers, I highly recommend to read “New WordPress Hacking Strategy Using Cloaking to Target Google IP Addresses” by Aaron WallSimilar Posts:

Twitter Tools: Synchronize Your Twitter With Your WordPress

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:55:42 +0000

Twitter users may find Twitter Tools very useful. It eliminates the need of services like TwitterFeed, and offers array of other feature that will help you to synchronize your Twitter activity with your blog(s).

Once installed you can configure the plugin to do following:

Create a tweet when you publish a new post. For me this eliminated the need for TwitterFeed, and is probably the only option I will use for now.
Create a blog post from each of your tweets.
Create a daily digest blog post from your tweets
Create a weekly digest blog post from your tweets

In addition it has a widget you can use on the sidebar of your blog which you can use to create new tweets.

If everything goes well and I have configured this plugin properly, it should notify Twitter about this post. If you are using Twitter Tools already, let me know what is your impression about this plugin in the comments below.Similar Posts:

WP Super Cache Can Save You Some Cash!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:26:03 +0000

About over a week ago Go Beyond MLS was down for several days. In fact my entire hosting account was suspended. Evidently my websites were overloading the server and exhausting the server resources.

As attractive as shared hosting is, keeping low prices and all, every serious web master and/or blogger needs to look ahead and plan for a dedicated server solutions… eventually.

As much as I love WordPress as blogging platform, it uses good amount of server resources to evidently cause serious enough trouble for my web host to have my account suspended. So I had to do something. Optimize my sites so that they would not over load the server or move to dedicated web hosting solution (which would cost me about $1200 a year even with the least expensive solutions out there). So I opted for optimizing my websites (at least those powered by WordPress) with WP Super Cache plugin.

WP Super Cache along with it’s parental plugin WP Cache, where aimed primarily at allowing WordPress blogs to survive heavy loads of traffic resulting from websites like Digg or Slashdot. However, as it was in my case, you don’t have to hit the front page of Digg or Slashdot to cause some server issues.

So how does WP Super Cache do it? After you install and configure the plugin, it saves individual pages from your WordPress site and serves them to your visitors as plain old html as long as they do not leave comments. Statistically over 90% of your visitors are passing by without ever leaving a comment. Therefor it is save to presume that over 90% of your visitors will be shown the cached hml versions of your pages instead of heavy PHP scripts.

I know that down the road I will have to revisit the possibility of purchasing dedicated server. But if WP Super Cache can buy me a year, it will end up saving me about $1,200.00.

Side note: If you do not have your custom (“pretty”) permalinks configured on your blog, you will have to configure them- WP Super Cache requires that configuration. It is also good idea to backup your current .htaccess file before configuring WP Super Cache Plugin should things go wrong.Similar Posts:

Go Beyond MLS Forum

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:48:49 +0000

Ever since I begun blogging and falling in love with every aspect of it, I also wanted to try managing forums. Copyblogger has recently addressed few important reasons why every blogger should have a forum. It took me quite a long time to make my own conclusions.

My previous attempts to implement forums on few of my websites ended up in disaster. One particular forum was left unattended for a few weeks. It grew incredibly big- however 100% of those registered were spammers. Some times we bloggers complain about spam, but to be completely honest I think we have seen nothing in comparison to the owners of the forums. The spam on forums can really deter the owner from moving on.

For the last 3 years, after the last unsuccessful attempt of starting a forum, I have decided to concentrate on blogging. But the more I blogged the more I realized the need for a forum.

While my intention was to launch the forum on January 1st, an urgent reputation management issue stopped me from formally announcing the Go Beyond MLS forum. It did not however stopped few of my friends to join the forum and “take it for an extensive spin”: Matt (aka The Geek LordMatt), Matt Keegan (aka The One and Only Freelance Writer), Dennis Pease (aka Oregon Realtor)- thank you so much for taking a look at the my new forum.

I will be writing few follow up posts about the forum and what I will be trying to accomplish with it in 2009. For now I feel compelled to thank you for testing it so far. The forum is powered by Simple Press Forum Plugin for WordPress- just in case you wonder.

Note: I you have joined the forum but have not yet configured your profile, take a few minutes to do so. At minimum it will be good if you provide your web site’s address.aSimilar Posts:

Dealing With Splogs: Make Them Link To You!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:13:52 +0000

If you are a blogger, chances are that sooner or later you will come across a phenomena called “splogs”. These blogs republish your content without your permission and without giving your a proper credit for your work. Some times they do link back to you but dressing up your links in pink colors of “nofollow” attribute. So how do you deal with them?

I came across an interesting discussion on AgentGenius.com on how to deal with splogs. Tom Royce of Real Estate Bloggers suggested a plugin called RSS footer- this plugin allows you to ad an extra link into your feed with a custom message, which can be used to expose and embarrass the splogger.

There is also another similar solution to the above plugin. I have been using it for quiet sometime without realizing it has a potential to insert additional links each of your RSS feed item- Similar Posts Plugin. This plugin undergone husge transformation since I first began using it, if you have it on your blog an kept with plugin’s updates make sure to look at every set of settings to appreciate more what this plugin can do for your blog. You can specify the links to similar post in RSS feed under “Placement” option in the latests version of the plugin.

Since many of the splogs are automated, the extra links to your website will begin to show up on these splogs. There is one more benefit from using the above described plugin- but revealing it means giving away a simple solution to the “developers” of these splogs.

So to all of you who think splogs are fun I am begging you: please go ahead and scrape my blogs.

Note: Above plugins are for WordPress.org powered websites only.Similar Posts:

Go Beyond MLS Is Now Powered By Coltrane

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:14:42 +0000

Updating your blogging software may not be the most pleasant experience. I know that many WordPress users have been apprehensive upgrading their versions because some times the update can be quiet painful. My personal biggest concern before updating WordPress is always associated with plugins I have active on my blogs. I always hope that on the other side of the update somehow all my plugins continue to function. I have to say that since the time we are able to update plugins straight from our dashboards, not even once did I encounter problem with plugins when updating WordPress.

So Coltrane is here. I have been using the latest version for a few days now and have to say so far this is the most awe-inspiring version of WordPress I even seen. Take a look at the following video to fully appreciate whats in store for you as far as the latest WordPress version is concerned:

Needless to say that this Coltrane version is becoming most popular- 516,311 downloads as of writing this post.

So the first par of some changes on this blog has been accomplished- I have updated the blogging software. Now it’s time moving the comments to IntenseDebate.Similar Posts:

Moving To IntenseDebate

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:52:02 +0000

For good number of months this blog’s comment were managed by Disqus- a useful third party comment management system. It allowed me to moderate comments on multiple blogs from one place- most of that moderation was actually done straight from my e-mail.

After the recent update of WordPress to the latest 2.7 version, thanks to a friend in affiliate marketing, I have decided to also to move the comment moderation on this blog to IntenseDebate.

This is a good and a bad news at the same time. Since I have grown to love Disqus quiet a bit, it is hard to say goodbye, since it truly served me well.

I also have some logistic issues of moving several pages that with comments numbering above 50 comments per post. Some of them were saved as a plain old HTML pages (it is a long story), so I will have to move at least several hundreds of comments manually- one by one. As a result of it, you will most likely to see a splash page that will tell you that my site is temporarily unavailable- this will be done with Maintenance Mode Plugin. I sincerly hope to accomplish the move before Christmas.

On the good note I am looking forward to IntenseDebate. You have to love the name of the plugin, as many of you may remember that on occasions some truly intense debates have taken place on this blog- so the even the name of is befitting. I also think that IntenseDebate will have a great future among WordPress bloggers. IntenseDebate is now owned by Automattic- the company behind WordPress. They of course offer the integration of their system through plugin if your blog is powered by WordPress.

I also would like to assure that if you commented on my blogs in the past, they are saved and will appear in the same place on this blog (plus on the IntenseDebate website) where you left them after the move is over.Similar Posts:

BlogCatalog Introduces New Search Widget

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:52:58 +0000

Just spotted today (on Andy’s Blog) a new search widget by blog catalog. With it you can replace your blog’s default search option. Until recently I have tried to use Google’s Custom Search on this blog with some mixed results. It produced some glitches with the older browsers and it took some time to load as well.

You can try the new BlogCatalog‘s widget below:

If you are member of BlogCatalog and would like to connect with me there please visit my profile. Also make sure to check (and join) Real Estate Group of bloggers while you there.Similar Posts:

30 Minutes of SEO Goodness With Stephan Spencer

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:07:55 +0000

If you have 30 minutes of free time, you can probably benefit by watching the video below from the WordCamp 2008. The presentation below is made by Stephan Spencer the founder and president of Netconcepts and the author of SEO Title Tag Plugin for WordPress, which I might add should be #1 plugin on your list to install if you are just starting to use WordPress.

(HT: ProBlogger)

UPDATE: To benefit from the above presentation download the PowerPoint Presentation that Stephan mentioned at the start of his presentation.Similar Posts: