Archive for the ‘WordPress Plug-Ins’ Category

Photo by Breno PeckI recently received a comment on an earlier review I did of the StatPress plug-in for WordPress. The poster had a question regarding the discrepancy between the stats being provided on his website by StatPress and Google Analytics. I, too, use both of these traffic tools, so I was familiar with the differences he was talking about. StatPress shows an often exaggerated amount of visitors when Analytics  displays a very different lower number.

So…I began to do a little digging around to find why this might be and which of the two I should give more heed. The documentation out there on this is nil. I wouldn’t normally site forums and the like as reliable information, but when that’s all you can find…

First of all, these two tools are written on two different platforms. You can run any two, three, or four stats tools on your website, and none of them will agree with another. I’m not a coding genius, but I understand a little. Google Analytics is a javascript application. It requires that you past a snippet of code in your website to log your traffic statistics. StatPress on the other hand is written in PHP and works a lot differently. One reason these two send conflicting information is because StatPress is real time and Analytics usually logs your stats as you refresh the results. Also, some users disable javascript in their browsers which would mean their visit to your page would not be recorded by Analytics.

Discrepancies do not mean that either of these programs is inaccurate since they do work differently. It’s actually a good idea to run more than one traffic tool, especially on a marketing blog, since traffic reports on those types of sites is so important for financial record keeping.

StatPress Tips

Here are a couple tips to help you with StatPress. If you’re using StatPress, and you’re not sure what all the data you are looking at means, check out my review post.

• Make sure StatPress isn’t the 500 Pound Gorilla in your database. Consider doing a periodic download of your statistical data if you want to keep it rather than storing it in your database. You can export your data by clicking Export under StatPress in your Dashboard.
• Check your StatPress options and adjust them accordingly. Did you know that you can choose not to log Spiders? You can also set your Overview Graph to 7, 10, 20, 30, or 50 days.
• And…in case you were wondering, the StatPress Blog is useless.

This question submitted by Mark at humblings.com.

Sources:

http://beermar.ecademy.com/node.php?id=104731

http://www.webtlk.com/2008/03/09/statpress-for-wordpress/

http://www.realestatebloglab.com/blogging-in-general/statpress-the-500-pound-gorilla-in-my-database/

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-statpress-stats-dont-match-google-analytics-by-large-numbers

If you’ve ever run a blog or website, heck, if you’ve ever had an email account, you have gotten spam. I’ve been using the Internet for more than a decade, and I’m still not sure why spam exists. Somehow, these people are benefiting from aggravating the rest of us. I can’t imagine such aggravation generating sales or money, but apparently a large percentage of non-web savvy people ( I hope) click through and maybe even buy into this crap. That’s what whoever coined the term, “spam” should have called it…crap.

When I launched this site, a friend of mine said, “You’re going to want to use a CAPTCHA plug-in or the spam will kill you.” I said, “Bah, I’ll install one when it becomes a problem.” For those of you asking, “What in the world is a CAPTCHA?” You’ve seen them. A CAPTCHA is an image used on the Internet usually for site registrations, logins, and comments where you type the numbers or letters in the image into the field below it to prove you’re human. I began receiving 1 to 2 spam comments per day almost right off the bat. I can deal with 1 to 2, but it has continued to increase over the last several weeks until one day I logged in and I had 39 comments to sift through. It was time to find that plug-in.

As I’ve written before, WordPress comes packaged with Akismet. Akismet is a spam catcher plug-in that roots out the crap. Akismet is a powerful plug-in and it does its jobs by sorting your comments into the good and bad piles for you. However, Akismet isn’t enough by itself when the spam increases in volume. A CAPTCHA plug-in will catch the rest. I installed Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. Conditional CAPTCHA was designed to work hand in hand with Akismet to deal with spam. I must say it nipped my small spam problem in the bud.  It sends any comments that do not input the CAPTCHA correctly straight to the trash.

Now you don’t have to use Conditional CAPTCHA. You can use one of the many different CAPTCHA plug-ins that have been developed for WordPress. Pretty much any one will do in combination with Akismet. This will eliminate your spam problem. Now I just need to figure out which IP address belongs to the Sexaprize bot that keeps crawling my site. No doubt that was the one leaving the rather tasteless comments on totally irrelevant posts…as I don’t have posts relevant to sex or prizes as of right now.

WordPress is known for its ability to be customized in a number of ways. There is a WordPress plug-in for nearly anything you can imagine. I have done a few reviews of plug-ins on this site and will be doing more in the future. Before I punch out too many reviews though, I want to outline how to find and install plug-ins for WordPress. Recent versions of WordPress have made this a user-friendly experience. You can search for and install all kinds of plug-ins right from your Dashboard.

Let’s get to it. There are two ways to install plug-ins to WordPress: using the plug-in tools in your Dashboard or via FTP. I’ll cover them both.

Installing Plugins from Your Dashboard

Step 1. From your Dashboard, left-click Plugins. This will open the Manage Plugins page where you can view the plug-ins currently installed. WordPress comes packaged with two plugins: Akismet and Hello Dolly. Akismet blocks spam comments from your blog. You can read a little about it HERE. Hello Dolly is a basically useless plug-in for entertainment. When activated, it displays different quotes from the musical, Hello Dolly, in the top right corner of your WordPress admin pages.

Step 2. Left-click Add New under Plugins in your Dashboard. The Install Plugins page opens.

You can search for different key terms for plug-ins, or you can click a word in the tag cloud to view relevant plug-ins. If you’re not sure what kind of plug-ins you should use or what their functionality is, read THIS POST for an overview of some plug-ins that I can’t live without. I’m going to find and install an Adsense plug-in. This will allow me to insert Google ads into my posts and pages. I clicked the ads tag in the cloud and found Adsense Optimizer.

Step 3. Left-click Install to the far right to begin the process. The Install screen opens in a lightbox format over your Dashboard. Left-click the Install Now button in the top right. WordPress installs the plug-in.

The Installing Plugin screen appears. When WordPress has completed the install, you have the option via two links to activate the plug-in or return to the installer and look for more plug-ins. That’s it! Your selected plug-in is installed and ready to configure and use.

Installing Plugins Using FTP

I need a captcha plug-in to help reduce spam comments on my site, so I’m going to use that as my example. There’s no captcha tag in the cloud, so I’ll search it.

The search brings up relevant results. I’ll search through my results for a plug-in that has a decent rating (as indicated by the yellow stars) and describes what I need for my site. I selected Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. I’m going to install this one using an FTP client (FileZilla).

Step 1. Left-click the name of the plug-in you would like to install. This will either open up the install screen seen in the previous how-to, or it will take you to a website that hosts information about the plug-in and the plug-in files. This one is in the WordPress directory, but you still have to download it.

Step 2. Left-click the Download button to download the plug-in files. WordPress plug-ins are always packaged in zip files for easy and quick downloads.

Step 3. Left-click the radio button next to Save File and then click OK. The zip file containing the plug-in will be downloaded to your computer.

Step 4. Unzip the file to prepare it for upload to your blog. This step requires a zip utility like 7Zip. Once your file is unzipped, it should be packaged in its own folder and ready to upload to your blog.

Step 5. Open your FTP client. I always use FileZilla because it’s easy and frequently updated.

Step 6. Navigate to the folder containing your plug-in, but don’t open the directory. In FileZilla, your computer files are on the left side and your hosting account is on the right once you connect to the server. I’m not going to go in depth here as this is whole new post altogether.

Step 7. Navigate to the Plug-Ins folder inside WordPress. The path will be something like this: /public_html/wp-content/plugins

Step 8. Right-click the plug-in folder and select Upload from the menu. FileZilla will upload the plug-in into your plug-ins folder.

You should see your new plug-in inside the folder when you double-click the plugins folder directory. You can see my wp-conditional-captcha in the list. You are done with FileZilla.

Step 9. Go back to your Dashboard. Left-click Plugins. The Manage Plugins screen will open and you can view and activate your newly installed plug-in.

That’s all there is to it. Once you activate your plug-in, you can configure it either under Settings or Tools in your Dashboard. Be sure to the check out the plug-in documentation to learn how to use it.

If you are not taking the minimal measures to back up your blog, you are gambling all of your work in a losing game. I’ve lost no less than 2 sites because I failed to back them up. That was upwards of 40 posts of original content down the drain. I’m just over that with this site now, and I’d be sick if I lost it all. Losing the content of your website can be catastrophic to your business. The size of your loss depends upon how much time and work you have invested. I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’m willing to gamble or lose ever again. Content takes time and time is money.

There are a several ways to back up your blog, and WordPress plug-ins can make it a simple, passive job. I practice three systems of backup. Two are automatic via email and the third is manual. My “if all else fails” approach to back up is subscribing to my own RSS feed and then archiving the emails. This has two benefits…if all else fails, I have versions that I can copy and paste and I can see what my subscribers see.

The manual method is something that I do periodically when I think about it. I use the Export tools in WordPress to download an XML copy of the content on my blog. You can actually restore your posts by importing the XML file back into WordPress should you lose your content. To Export your content:

Step 1. Left-click Tools in your Dashboard.

Step 2. Select Export from the list. The Export screen appears.

Step 3. Left-click the Download Export File button. The Save dialog box appears.

Step 4. Left-click the radio button next to Save File. Left-click OK to save the file to your computer.

In the event that your blog crashes, simply upload this file back to WordPress using Import in the Tools menu.

The easiest way to back up your WordPress site, is to use a plug-in. More specifically, WordPress Database Backup. Download the plug-in and install it. WordPress Database Backup allows you to back up your site manually, or you can schedule backups and have them emailed to you automatically. Here’s how it works:

Step 1. Left-click Tools in your Dashboard and select Backup from the list. The Backup screen appears.

WordPress Database Backup always includes a set list of WordPress tables in the backup. You can choose from a list of other tables to include.

Step 2. Left-click the check boxes next to any additional tables you want included in your database backup.

Step 3. Back up your database manually to your server, computer or email. Left-click the radio button next to the backup option of your choice. Left-click the BackUp now! button.

WordPress Database Backup proceeds with the backup:

Step 4. Left-click the radio button next to Save File and then left-click OK to download and save a copy of your database backup.

A copy of your databse backup is saved to your computer.

With WordPress Database backup, you can also set up the scheduler to back up your database automatically and send it to you via email. Here’s how:

Step 1. Select the frequency at which you want to run backups by left-click the radio button next to the timeframe that works best for you.

Step 2. Left-click the check boxes next to the additional tables you want included in your backups.

Step 3. Type the email address where you want to receive the backups.

Step 4. Left-click the Schedule backup button.

That’s it. WordPress Database Backup will automatically back up your site and send you the backup file to your email address. By using these methods, you can rest assured that you can restore your site should a catastrophe occur. It’s easier than I thought, how about you?

WordPress is notorious for its ability to be customized. Most of that customization happens through plug-ins made by developers. There is a plug-in for most anything you need or want WordPress to do including, but certainly not limited to: providing downloads, allowing users to upload photos, displaying images in snazzy galleries, tracking stats, database backups and so much more than can possibly be imagined. Here are a few basics that you shouldn’t live without.

Akismet – This one is so essential that it comes packaged with WordPress when you install it. It’s easy to configure, but you might get stuck when it asks for your API key. This post will help you out. Akismet helps you manage your comments on your blog by filtering out the spam.

All In One SEO Pack – This plug-in helps you optimize your content for search engines by providing fields for meta data like: post title, description, and tags. This one takes the leg work out of search engine optimization.

Contact Form 7 – Have you ever seen those sharp and professional contact forms on other websites and wondered how to get one or even tried to figure out how to make one and found out it was way out of your technical reach? Contact Form 7 gives you…the contact form. When someone fills out the form, it sends the data to the email you specify.

Google XML Sitemaps – A sitemap is a must if you’re trying to get anywhere on the Internet. A sitemap makes it possible for Google to index all the pages on your site and increases your search engine placement. This plug-in automatically updates your sitemap when you write a new post. It makes a chore into something you never have to think about.

Sexy Bookmarks – This plug-in makes adding your post to a myriad of social media sites easy for your readers. It has almost every social networking and social bookmarking site imaginable. Choose the ones you want to appear, where you want them and let Sexy Bookmarks do the rest.

Simple Tags – Simple Tags turns tagging your post from a typing nightmare into point and click ease. Select your tags from a list of local tags and popular tags from the Internet.

StatPress – StatPress is a powerful and informative tracking plug-in that gives you all kinds of information about your visitors. Here’s a detailed review. If you use StatPress, you will want to ban any IP address you use personally to check your site, or it will count you as traffic. Here’s how to do it.

WordPress Database Backup – This plug-in backs up your WordPress database so you can restore your site in the event that you get hacked. You can perform a backup manually, or use the scheduling tools in the plug-in to back it up automatically and send it to your email.

WP Download Manager – This plug-in allows you to easily add files to your posts or pages and make them available for download. It’s a must have if you create any type of content that you want to make available to your readers for free.

WP Decoratr - WP Decoratr makes adding images to your posts easy. Instead of having to search for stock images or find royalty free photos to enhance your posts, WP Decoratr pulls keywords and phrases from your post. It then gives you a wide array of pictures to choose from that are royalty free or available through Creative Commons.

These are plug-ins that I endorse and use on my own sites. I’ll be doing reviews of these and others as time goes on because I’m rather addicted to finding new and useful plug-ins. If you found this post helpful, drop me a comment. I’d like to hear from you.

Akismet is a standard plug-in that is packaged with all WordPress blogs. Akismet helps you manage spam comments that may pop up on your blog from time to time. No one likes spam, and Akismet will catch it for you which saves you time, and let’s face it, time is money. While Aksimet is packaged with WordPress, you still have to activate it in your Dashboard. From your Dashboard, click “Plugins” in the left navigation. You’ll see Akismet in the list. Click “Activate” to activate the plugin. Once you have activated Akismet, you get the following message:

When you click the link in the message, you are taken to a page where you can enter your API key. You must have a WordPress.com account to retrieve your API key. Create your account. You don’t have to create a blog at WordPress.com to get your key. Simply create a profile account. You will notice that WordPress.com has a Dashboard not unlike that of your self-hosted WordPress; however, it isn’t apparent where you can find your API key. From your WordPress.com Dashboard, click “My Account” in the top left corner.

Select “Edit Profile” from the drop-down menu. At the very top of the page, you will see your API key.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the key to your clipboard. On your self-hosted WordPress blog from the Manage Plugins page, click the “enter your WordPress API key” link. This will open the Akismet Configuration page. Paste your API key in the “WordPress API Key” field.

Click the “Update Options” button. That is all there is to it. Akismet is now configured to catch your spam comments.

I wrote about Statpress in this post. If you missed it, StatPress is a powerful analytics plug-in for use with WordPress. It doesn’t require a lot of set-up, but one thing you’re going to want to do is ban your own IP address from being logged. This will give you a more accurate idea of how many visitors are coming to your site without the data being skewed by your own visits as your update and maintain your site.

I highly suggest you use a couple of free applications for this:

FileZilla
Notepad++

These are both FREE open source programs. Both powerful, but simple enough for those of us who are a bit technically challenged. These two programs streamline the process of banning your IP in StatPress.

Step 1
Open up FileZilla and put in your log in information for your hosting account.

Step 2
Navigate to the Plug-Ins folder. The path is something like this: /public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins .

Step 3
Open up the StatPress folder. You will see a list of files like this:

Step 4
Double-click the “def” folder to open it and view the contents.

Step 5
Right-click “banips.dat” and select “View/Edit” from the drop down menu. FileZilla opens the file in your selected text editor. In this case, mine is Notepad ++.  You will see that banips.dat is a simple file that is only a list of IP addresses. There is only one address by default. Here, I have already added mine. You can add as many as you need. If you access your website from more than one computer or location, you can put all of your IP addresses in this file to exclude them from your StatPress stats.

Step 6
Type or copy and paste your IP addresses into the file, one IP address per line. Save the file and exit. FileZilla automatically detects that you have changed the file with a pop-up window.

Step 7
Left-click “Yes” to upload the updated banips.dat file back to your server. You IP address is now excluded from your StatPress stats.

You’re done!

StatPress is…you guessed it…a WordPress plug-in. StatPress logs information about the visitors to your WordPress site including: number of visitors, pageviews, search terms, operating system, country, city and IP address.

StatPress allows you to keep track of who is visiting your site, where they are from and how they got there. Keep track of detailed analytics without embedding hit counter codes or displaying anything at all on the front end of your WordPress site. Using StatPress is as easy as installing the plug-in through WordPress’ dashboard and activating it. Once StatPress is installed and activated, it immediately begins returning data. There is essentially no set-up. However, to prevent StatPress from logging your IP when you visit your site to update or perform maintenance, you will need to ban your own IP address.

This can be a little tricky if you don’t know what you are doing, so I’ve outlined a How To here. StatPress adds a nifty little sidebar to your Dashboard. You can view it by clicking the button usually located at the bottom under “Settings”.

Overview

The StatPress Overview give you a lot of information. The first thing you see is a color-coded table of the number of visitors to your site, pageviews, spiders and feeds. A bar graph represents the numbers giving you a visual of your traffic. The StatPress Overview also give you these number for the following time periods: total for all time, this month, last month, yesterday and today. If you’re an avid goal setter, then you’re also appreciate the Target amounts which both predicts and gives you something to aim for based on your current stats.

The Overview continues with several sections: Last hits, Last search terms, Last referrers, Last agents, Last pages and Last spiders.

Last hits tells you the date, time, IP address, country/language, page visited, feed, operating system and browser of the last 10 hits to your site.

Last search terms tells you the last 10 (if applicable) search terms used to reach your WordPress site.

Last referrers tells you from where your last 10 visitors were referred. So, if you have a signature link on the forums or a link on your Facebook profile that visitors are clicking, StatPress will tell you that here.

Last agents tells you the last agents that crawled your site.

Last pages tells you the last pages that were visited on your site.

Last spiders tells you the last spiders to crawl your site to index and syndicate your content.

Details

Left-click “Details” in your StatPress sidebar. The Details view shows you pie charts of the following stats: top days for visits, operating systems, browsers, feeds, search engine traffic, top search terms, top referrers, countries/languages, spiders, top pages, top days by number of uniques, top days by pageviews and top IP addresses by pageviews.

Spy

Left-click “Spy” in your StatPress sidebar. The Spy view shows you the IP address, country flag, date, time and pages viewed by your visitors in the order of last, first. You can view additional information including city, operating system and browser used by your visitors by clicking the “More Info” link.

Search

Left-click “Search” in your StatPress sidebar. Using the StatPress Search allows you to search your analytics by the following criteria: URL requested, agent, referrer, search terms, search engine, operating system, browser, spider and IP address.

Export

Left-cick “Export” in your StatPress sidebar to export a date range of your stats into an Excel document.

Options

Left-click “Options” in your StatPress sidebar to adjust the following settings.

StatPressUpdate

Left-click “StatPressUpdate” in your StatPress sidebar to refresh your StatPress views with the latest data.

StatPress Blog

Left-click “StatPress blog” in your StatPress sidbar to visit the StatPress blog for updates and news about the plug-in.

That’s about it. StatPress is a plug-in that couldn’t be easier to use, but packs a lot of info for your trouble.