I know that popups are one of those words that bring chills to some people, but they can be an effective way of promoting a product or service your blog.

Now we’re not talking about old school popup browser windows, but rather a small CSS window that shows on top of your content. These types of popups often bring a higher conversion rate, as compared to a button or form in the sidebar, as they allow the visitor to easily focus on one thing.

Call to action (CTA) popups can be used to:

• Announce a new product or service.
• Advertise a sale.
• Obtain more subscribers.
• Promote an event.
• Call out a white paper or case study.
• Publicize company news.
• … and many more.

More than likely, you’ve just seen ours.

If you want to add a CTA popup like this to your WordPress site, grab the WP Super Popup plugin. WP Super Popup makes it easy to create and configure these types of popups.

Options include:

• Show content from:
  • a URL
  • create it with the WYSIWYG editor
  • pase in HTML
• Set height and width.
• Determine how often the popup shows.
  • Example: Every x days or for the first x visits. (based on cookie in browser)

Search is a bit part of any online presence. Most people focus on getting people to their site, but what happens after they are there? Does your blogs search perform as well as it should?

If you are using WordPress’ default search, then what you are getting is a pretty bad search experience. It seems that WordPress’ default search returns results based on date, not on relevance, which makes finding anything very difficult.

To make WordPress’ search much better, grab the Search Unleashed plugin.

Search Unleashed allows you to:

• Define what you want included in search results. IE: Pages, Comments, Posts, Authors, Tags
• Use search operators and wild cards.
• Replace category and tag archives with search results.
• Highlight matching terms on search result pages.
• Customize your type of search engine.
• See what users have been searching for.
• Search within categories.

The best part about the plugin is you just need to install and activate it. There is no need to edit your theme or worry about customizing anything. It just works.

Take your WordPress blog search to the next level with Search Unleashed. You, and your visitors, won’t be disappointed.

One obstacle that most bloggers face is spelling and/or grammar issues. The issue isn’t that they don’t proofread their work, it’s that when we know what something should say, our minds can correct spelling and grammar mistakes in our head. This lets typos and grammatical makes make it into our content without our knowledge. The good news here is that there is a new plugin called After the Deadline that will proofread our content.

After the Deadline uses “artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to find your writing errors and offer smart suggestions.”

Now WordPress, by default, has spell check and so do all browsers. A few even have grammar check, but the question is, how good is it? After the Deadline tries to make it smarter and help you avoid both spelling and grammar errors.

As a WordPress plugin, After the Deadline replaces the built-in spell check and it works really well. By default, it only proofs your content when you hit the ‘Proofread’ button, however you can change the settings to proof as you type too.

Don’t agree with what it’s suggesting? After the Deadline can educate you as to why it’s suggesting an edit if it’s got a good reason.

Have you ever wanted to have the ability to better organize your uploads folder in WordPress?

By default, WordPress organizes all uploaded media by year and month. Where this works well for some bloggers, others want to organize their uploads into things like pdfs, downloads, videos and so on. This is especially important when using WordPress as a CMS.

That’s where the Relocate Upload plugin comes in handy.

Relocate Upload allows a blog admin to setup custom folders inside the uploads folder, or anywhere on the web server, for better file organization.

Relocate Upload Settings

When uploading media, Relocate Upload is integrated into the upload window with a drop down menu that allows the user to select the folder for the item to be uploaded to.

With literally hundreds of millions of blogs in the vast blogosphere, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to develop a unique brand for your blog by writing posts that are unique, creative and entertaining. The next time you find yourself in a rut, try these 7 blog copywriting ideas for creating fresh and interesting content:

1. Start With the Headline

It might seem logical to write the body of the post first. After all, length-wise, it’s the most significant piece of the puzzle. Instead, try coming up with the most creative, most intriguing headline possible. Then design a post around that inspirational headline. Similarly, you could choose an image or create a call to action first. Whatever your typical process, turn it around to inspire some fresh thinking.

2. Tell Your Story With a Graphic

Instead of using words to convey a concept that’s perhaps been covered by other bloggers — or even your own blog — rely on a custom illustration to tell the story. This tactic can have some SEO benefits, as well. A creative, useful graphic or illustration can have the potential to go viral, with readers linking to it and sharing it.

A bloggers dream is to get noticed. That could be in the form of a post getting re-tweeted hundreds of times, hitting the homepage of Digg, shared a lot on Facebook, getting noticed by the media, or one of the many other ways a blog can get traffic. However, a flood of traffic can quickly cripple a blog and turn that dream into a nightmare. The good news here is that the WP Super Cache plug-in can help minimize issues caused by too much traffic.

The WP Super Cache plug-in creates a static HTML file of each post and serves that file up to users. This static HTML file loads faster and is a lot less demanding on the web server and database. Now if hundreds or thousands of people were to visit the same post in a short amount of time, instead of re-pulling that post from the database and piecing it all together, WordPress would just show the cached page; aka a static HTML version of the post. This page now loads faster and more efficiently.

Whether you are new to WordPress, or have been using it a long time, there are always features that are available in the software that people either forget about or don’t know exist. So I thought I’d write up 10 lesser known WordPress features.

1. More options in the WYSIWYG editor.

When writing your blog post in WordPress, there is a toolbar with items such as bold, italic, and lists. At the of that toolbar is a box with little squares on it. Click it to reveal another toolbar with options to underline, change the font colors, embed meida, undo, and more. Quite a few handy options hiding there.

2. The convenient drop down menu.

At the top of the admin area, in the dark grey bar, there is a drop down menu that lets you add a new post, add a new page, go directly to the drafts, upload media and a few others. What are a few clicks away via the sidebar may only be a click or two away with the drop down menu.

As blogs grow, and new content gets created, old blog posts can quickly get lost in the archives. As much as bloggers try to keep everything organized, it’s hard to ensure that all posts get the exposure they deserve. However, there are ways to help ensure that older posts get additional exposure.

1. Related Posts

On individual post pages, add links to other related posts. This shows visitors that there is more content on your blog that might be of interest to the reader. I’d suggest showing 5 posts as it gives a little variety without giving to many options.

Tip: Try out the Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in to integrate related posts into a WordPress blog.

2. Top or Popular Posts

In the sidebar, create a section for the blogs most popular posts. Again, pulling in 5 posts from the entire history of the blog and showcase what users feel are the best posts on your blog.

Tip: Read How To Find Your Most Popular Posts for plug-ins and ideas for obtaining posts.

There are thousands of blog posts that get published every day and your posts are competing with them. Not only is good content needed, but so is a good image. Imagery can draw users attention to the content and give your post an additional boost.

Screenshots, logos, people, and product images are all good easy ways to incorporate imagery into a blog post. Almost anything is better than a big block of text.

When considering what type of image to add, think of what’s visually appealing. It may not always be a product shot, or a picture of a smiling person, quite possibly an image of the sky or an animal can convey the feeling you are trying to get across in your post much easier.

As an example, how do you feel just by looking at the images below?

Cat

Storm

Abstract Lines

Flower

Leaves

Each image should give a different feeling. When added to the post, the images can set the tone before someone reads anything more than the headline.

It’s never any fun to follow a link just to find out the page you were looking for can’t be found. Chances are, the user may spend a few seconds trying to find the correct page or just bail on the site. To ensure that visitors stay on your site, site owners should ensure that the 404 error page is friendly and helpful.

I did some research in the WordPress plug-in directory and came up with many plug-ins to enhance the default WordPress error page. However there were only two plug-ins that I could get to work and liked. The fist is Dunstan-style Error Page.

Dunstan-style Error Page

The Dunstan-style Error Page has a really nice layout that includes recent posts, a quick error report button, and a feedback form. It’s all built into the plug-in and there is nothing that needs to be configured.

The downside here is that the Dunstan-style Error Page tries to make integration simple but actually makes it complicated. The code did not work right with my design and I had to spend a few minutes modifying the plug-in so the layout was visually correct. This may not be an issue with all themes, but I could see it being a big deterrent; especially if you don’t know code.