If you missed the announcement just before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, FeedBurner Pro is now free. That’s one of those good things about a Google acquisition; things become free. All users now get Pro stats and MyBrand for feeds.

Honestly, I never quite saw why the Pro features were so great. MyBrand is a cool thing, but I prefer to promote and use my own feed URL that has been redirected to the FeedBurner version.  I do this with the FeedSmith Wordpress plugin from FeedBurner.

The two additional stats items do sound nice though. Reach estimates the number of users that interact with our feed (including feed search engine or news filter sites) and we get better click though stats.

Now everyone is a Pro at FeedBurner thanks to Google.

[tags]FeedBurner,Google[/tags]

Safari 3, now for Mac and PC, recently came out in beta form. Included in this release was the ability for users to use visual editors also know as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. No longer do Safari users have to know code to make basic formatting in blog posts.

Safari 3.0.1 Beta on Windows XP

I’ve tested it in Wordpress 2.2 and it works great.* As far as I understand, previous versions of Wordpress don’t support Safari’s rich text editing. Testing it out under 2.0.10 confirms this.

I also tested out Blogger and had no issues. They seem to be on board with the Safari 3 crowd too.

TypePad however didn’t seem to support rich text editing with Safari yet.

With Safari 3 being so new, and brand new to the Windows world, blog software creators are working in Safari support as they feel the need.

If you use TypePad, or other software that doesn’t support Safari’s rich text editing yet, drop and email to their support so they know your interested.

If you’ve ever wanted to add a contact form on your blog, but didn’t know how or thought it was to much work, then cforms is exactly what you need.

cforms is a Wordpress plugin that allows you to easily create contact forms on your blog. This is important as you want your users to be able to interact with you. This will help make the blog more personalble and friendly plus give your users the ability to contact you with items you may be interested in, problems they come across or inquire about your services.

cforms features include:

• Supports multiple forms.
• Customize each form with it’s own fields and receiver or recievers.
• No HTML knowledge required.
• CSS Themes.
• Submits via AJAX with a fall back to normal POST if necessary.
• WYSIWYG button for easy implementation into any post.
• Upload features.
• Customizable thank you message or ability to redirect to a specific page/post.
• Autoresponders.
• Email messages can be customized with variables from form.
• Easy Install.
• Spam Protection.
• Database keeps all contacts.
• Plus More…

Every have odd things happening with your Wordpress blog? Plugins work one minute but then not the next? It could be that you need more PHP memory.

I first noticed this issue when I moved a blog from one host to the next. I had three main issues:

1. The Wordpress Dashboard showed only the right had menu. No news in the main column.
2. My Google Sitemap plugin was now prompting me to download the options-general.php file when I tried to re-create it.
3. Spam Karma worked, but when I tried to manage items, it wouldn’t load anything but the main menu.

Knowing there was something wrong, I tried to contact the host of the blog. They kept telling me that they didn’t give support for third party scripts or plugins. I understood them, but didn’t feel that they were really listening to me. After a bit of searching, I found a possible fix; increase the PHP memory.

PHP is what is used to run Wordpress. It’s usually allowed a certain amount of memory to run scripts and do its thing. If your blog is big enough, or if your scripts are complex enough, it may reach it’s memory limit and quit the script. That’s what was happening in my case.

BloggerDesign just took the plunge and upgraded to Wordperss 2.2 (from 2.1.3). It was simple and easy, just as it should be. Going from 2.1.x to 2.2 isn’t as big of a deal as going from 2.0.x to 2.1 (or 2.2) is.

The biggest update I saw was the hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari. This will make a lot of Safari users happy. Of course, it’s in an up-coming version of the browser. My guess is that Safari in Mac OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) will be a nice upgrade. Can’t wait!!

Wordpress 2.2 also claims it’ll protect the user from activating a plugin or making edits that will break the blog. So far, I’ve activated a plugin that broke the plugins page so it didn’t protect me from that. I’m not sure what I’m being protected from yet.

One GREAT feature is that they brought back the ‘Preview’ post link when writing. And this time, it links out to the actual blog and not just down the page to a preview in an iFrame. I’m really happy to see this feature return as I missed it quite a bit.

The SEO Title tag is a plugin that I’ve known about for a while, but never messed with. Boy was I missing out.

What SEO Title Tag does is add the ability to customize your blog’s title tags per post. No longer are they tied directly to the post title. You can customize almost any title tag across your blog giving your site a possible edge in search engines.

One can customize individual posts, categories or pages. The default Wordpress title tags are OK, Optimal Title makes them better, SEO Title Tag makes them into whatever you want them to be.

There is also the ability to customize the separator, create a shot blog name to show on post pages, remove the blog name from post pages, use category descriptions as titles on category pages and tie the Title tags into UTW (Ultimate Tag Warrior).

Title tags are easy to customize too. They can be mass customized though the plugin options under the Manage tab or you can also create the titles as you create your post as it adds a custom ‘Title Tag’ field to the post screen.

Wordpress has launched an official stats plugin named Automattic Stats. It a stats plugin that ties into Wordpress.com to track your visitors and works well, but it’s not available for everyone.

One of the Wordpress.com exclusive features is the ability to get blog and feed stats in your dashboard. Everything from the number feed reads to incoming links, keywords, clicks and top posts. A great feature that was sadly missing from anyone who installed Wordpress on their own servers. That was until recently when the Automattic Stats plugin was released.

The plugin is a snap to install. Just upload the file into your plugins directory, then put in your Wordpress.com API. Yes, you need one of those. If you use Akismet, then you already have one and don’t need another. If you don’t have one, signup for a Wordpress.com account and they’ll give you one. After that, just sit back and wait for your stats to roll in.

There are a few downsides to the stats plugin though. The main one being that it’s not integrated into your Wordpress install. You have to go to your Wordpress.com dashboard to actually see your stats. It does add a tab on your dashboard screen though, so it’s only a click away.

The FeedBurner plugin has got a new name and a new owner. Steve Smith from OrderedList.com handed off the plugin to the FeedBuner crew. It wasn’t a multi-million dollar deal like you hear with internet companies these days, but FeedBurner did rename the plugin in Steve’s honor. It’s now the FeedSmith plugin.

If you’re not familular with the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin, what it does is automatically reidrects your Wordpress’ feeds to the FeedBurner version. You don’t need to update your template or give out your FeedBurner URL, just update the setting via your Wordpress admin and it’ll do the rest. Quite handy and works well.  It’s a must install on my list.

Congrats to Steve!

[tags]FeedBurner,FeedSmith[/tags]

Having recently moved a few Wordpress blogs from one host to another, I thought I’d write up a quick ho-to. It’s actually quite painless.

The first thing you need to know is that you are moving your blog, not re-installing it. Don’t attempt to re-install Wordpress as that may cause more issues.

Step 1 - Backup
It’s very important to backup your files and database. Files can be gotten via a FTP client and here are instructions on backing up your blog posts.

Step2 - Upload Files
When uploading your files to the new host, make sure to either upload the files you backed up, or upload the exact same version of Wordpress you are running on the old host. You can get your Wordpress version number at the bottom of any admin page.

Step 3 - Upload Database
Most web hosts come with a control panel area that gives the user access to phpMyAdmin for managing databases. Other hosts give instructions on how to connect to your database from a desktop application. Either way, connect to your new database. If you feel lost on this step, contact your web host for details on how to connect to your database.

Now that you are searching everything on your blog, it’d be a good idea to know what others are searhing for. If you are running Wordpress, this is easy enough to do with the Search Meter plugin.

Search Meter’s job is to capture anything put into the search box. This information is then displayed on the admin side of Wordpress. It also comes with the functionality to output it on the public side of your blog if you’d like to.

Knowing what your visitors are searching for is important as it’s a clue to how they are using the site. You may find out that everyone is searching for information on a certain topic. If it’s not something you post on often, it may be a good idea to post on it more often. Or maybe you’ve created a tutorial or plugin that isn’t easily accessible from your main navigation. If everyone’s searching for it, it’d be a good idea to modify your navigation so it was easier to find.