If you are missing your editor icons after updating WordPress, you might want to check out the following thread. I use Firefox and had this problem. I updated a second time and then closed Firefox and cleared the cache, and refreshed the blog post and this did resolve the issue for me.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/278484

If this doesn’t work for you the until the problem is fixed you might want to download an alternative editor as suggested until it is.

I have had a few issues recently with Firefox. Another is that Firefox crashes when I try to upload an image. It has been suggested that gears may the issue there. Disabling gears should make it work properly again, but I have not yet tried that fix myself. Hopefully they’ll sort it all out soon and we can go back to taking WordPress for granted.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Find out how you can use free christmas pictures for your blog – it’s really easy!

The All in One Seo Plugin

All in One Seo Pack

Seo is a core principle of RNB training so that you can get free search traffic and there’s not much point in doing the keyword research if you can’t place the results in the right spots on your blog. So this plugin is considered to be an important addition and we recommend it’s use.The advice from the plugins page is quoted below.

Meta Titles
The text that you see in your browser’s window bar (at the top of internet explorer or firefox) is the most important thing that doesn’t appear to be on your page! You may not have realized it was even there at all.

Make sure these titles are getting rewritten and relate to your post titles which always come next, before anything else. You can leave a few words in here from your blog title if you want to do some branding but don’t overstuff the title.

If your post titles don’t contain your most precious phrases you want to rank for then tweak them. Leave the post titles as it is (for the people) but change this meta title.

Meta Descriptions
Once your pages rank in search engines your description makes a potential visitor want to click through, or not.

It is these meta descriptions, that some people have mourned for dead and moved on from, that can decide your site’s fate. If you don’t want to invest the time and write a description for every post at least let them be auto-generated. The preferred source for your post description is your post excerpt. Especially use this when you want to tweak your description.You can find this under the input box for the post on the write page.

Meta Keywords
All in One SEO Pack can generate keywords in three ways.

It can use your categories ( the original way of tagging posts in wordpress). It can use Ultimate Tag Warrior if you have been using this excellent plugin. Or, starting with WordPress 2.3, it can use it’s built-in tagging system.

Using your categories is optional (meaning you have to tell it to), the rest is auto-detected and, if it’s there – it’s used, so be careful what you are tagging with! WP 2.3.x tags are now the preferred keyword source. If you have updated, the new tagging system can import in old Ultimate Tag Warrior Data.

Duplicate Content
Shout Hallelulyah and do the chicken dance! You can have “noindex” and the like generated for archive-, category- and tag pages if you seem to have trouble with duplicate content ( or can’t get your head around “noindex”, “nofollow” etc and where to put it)

I particularly liked the following quote from the plugin page.

“That was about the 20% of effort needed by you to achieve 80% of results with on-page factors. Of course you also need incoming links, no plugin can do this for you in a safe manner”"

Note: Quote marked “descriptions” are taken from the page at the link under the title.

Popularity: 22% [?]

The hidden advantage of WordPress Custom Fields

I’m not one to rewrite the book when someone has already done a fantastic job, so this is a short post to introduce you to a WordPress feature that most people are unaware of. This is the WordPress feature called custom fields.

Custom Fields enables you to expand your options for what you can include in posts and their content. Things that the WYSIWYG editor that is in your Write Post area doesn’t provide itself. By customizing WordPress itself to enable you to this, it’s more convenient as you don’t need to leave that area to add your new content.

And as you are doing it using a WordPress function, your changes should transfer easily over when you update the software, which when you make manual changes, they may not, as WordPress will overwrite some pages.

If you use the fantastico update function, you may be unsure when it gives you a message to only do this if you have not made modifications. Generally speaking – and there are always exceptions when code writers mix code – but generally, if you have modified a theme or modified functions of WordPress using the software itself, these changes will not be overwritten as they are protected in dedicated folders for this purpose.

Only if you edit the core code of WordPress itself should your changes be at risk of loss. To be safe either way, always keep that backup link handy so if you do run into problems, you have the option to reverse the changes and recover.

Many people use WordPress “out of the box” so to speak, some never bother to even change their theme. Of those that do – they choose a theme and use it as it is, without delving into the code to make it more suitable for them. There is nothing wrong with that. A blog was designed to be simple enough to use this way. KISS is a fine ambition.

Many people never install a plugin or even update their software once it’s installed. Again, there’s no problem, a blog is an easy website and if all you need to do is add text – then I’m all for it.

But just as there are mobile phone users who only use the dial out and answer functions of their phone, there are people who take learning the new functions of their phone in their stride and enjoy the benefit of photos, music, movies, mobile blogging and all the other joys of upgraded multi function mobile phones.

If you are the type of blogger who likes to explore and use different settings and functions, then custom fields for WordPress will appeal to you. Visit this link to find out more about it and see if you would like to add these functions to your blogs using custom fields. To take it further head on over to the codex.

http://www.redswish.co.uk/the-power-of-wordpress-custom-fields/

These few examples of custom fields include adding a subtitle, meta tags, and accessing thumbnails and pictures.

Maybe that doesn’t sound radically life changing when written so simply, but when you read the post itself, you’ll begin to see that WordPress custom fields are not limited to these few examples. Use your imagination and leave me a comment if you have tried something new and want to show it off. I’d love to see it.

As a side note, this blog (referred to above) also has a discussion going on about the new chrome browser from Google. I think I’ll stick to firefox for now, but it bears watching. People are saying its very fast and clean so far. Somehow I like the variety of choice different browsers offer, I like to be surprised to find something new and interesting that I didn’t exactly search for – so long as what I did search for is there too. The current Google is the master of this and in my opinion doesn’t need improving. (Except perhaps to make it easier to get my own sites on the first pages more easily! )

http://www.redswish.co.uk/google-set-to-launch-browser-called-chrome/

Popularity: 26% [?]

Chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks but probably you don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog. Many bloggers don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for their blogs. So we’re going to go over
trackbacks—what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually placing a link in a post to
that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to may not pick up that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. Under the post while you are writing it is a trackback box. So as well as placing the link in the post also place the url into the box. If you are using several urls, leave a space between them so the program will know they are separate urls. The trackback program will then notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do trackbacks work?

WordPress has a system incorporated in a new install but an older install may not and you may need a plugin. A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post but you may need to actually open the single post to see it.

What I mean by this is to click on permalink or the title of the post (if that is a link) so that you can see the whole post with comments. Then to enable trackBacks in WordPress , go to Options > Discussion.

Check the checkbox “Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article”(for sending a trackback) and also check the checkbox under it ”Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) “ (for receiving a trackback)

When these are enabled the person who posted the original blog will then be notified that their blog posting has been linked to. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it may say “Trackbacks: 1”. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur. Or it may place a trackback excerpt in the comments field.

If that all sounds a little complicated watch Jack Humphreys Video Tutorial on Trackbacks in the library for more clarity.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

When a person makes a trackback on your blog, they have made a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what else you have and you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! So it’s worth doing, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one(and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post(2-3 times a week), good quality content.Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a decent sized article or rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), and you get a bit of traffic, eventually you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. Trackbacks are a wonderful thing for every blog. You are able to know when your blog posting has been posted about at another blog, plus you potentially gain more visitors.

It’s a win-win situation for both you and the other blogger! In fact if you have friends blogging, try to exchange trackbacks regularly, it will help both (or all) of you a great deal.

Popularity: 62% [?]