Video Tutorial: Getting Started with WordPress

Seems like I’ve been talking to more and more people lately who are just getting started with WordPress, so in order to put a few materials together for you so you don’t have to search all over the bloody internet I’ve compiled the following WordPress Video Tutorials. I consider all of these good enough that I wouldn’t even bother remaking them because they really can’t be improved upon.

So let’s get started learning how to use WordPress, shall we?

Tutorial: How to Use the WordPress Dashboard

The first thing that happens when you log into any WordPress installation is that you are taken to the Dashboard. So we might as well start out by learning what’s here and how to customize the Dashboard.
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.CO Domains Launch and Here Are the GoDaddy Coupon Codes to Get ‘Em!

I have a lot of friends who have been trying very hard to come up with a really good or really specific domain name for a while without any luck. It seems like all the good ones are taken, doesn’t it?

Well, if you are one of those people you need to know that there is a brand new top level domain that ends in .CO (as in Company or Corporation, etc.) which was just released in the last 48 hours. This are still a HUGE number of awesome .CO domains available, so if you are thinking about registering anything ANY time soon you need to head over to GoDaddy and try and snag some of these good ones NOW!

Top Reasons to Go Register a .CO Name Now:

  • Get it for branding purposes
  • Protect your main URL by getting the .CO (for when people accidentally forget the M on the end of your .COM)
  • Plan for future websites, promotions or projects you might ever want before the domains are gone!
  • Get it to sell later

Remember, if you don’t buy these domains now you will be at the mercy of people who want to sell them to you for thousands of dollars each once they are snagged. Personally I bought $1,200 worth of domains in the last 24 hours and I’m thrilled with the ones I got. So invest in your future by snagging some good domains today!

I recommend GoDaddy for registrations so here is a link that will take you straight to their .CO registration page. HURRY!!!
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Mark Ramsey’s Top 10 List for Attending OpenCamp!

Mark Ramsey is so smoooth. So here is his Top 10 List of Reasons to Attend OpenCamp!

By the way, you ARE coming to OpenCamp right? I mean… if you don’t show up you are instantly disallowed from ever asking me for blogging, Web authoring, or other general advice of this nature. :-) Seriously, you’ll learn more in two days than in at least a year on your own. For $99!!! I mean holy crap, other conferences with inferior speakers will charge you $1,000+ for two days OR worse yet, make you sit through sales pitches! AAAaarrrgghh!
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The John P. and Frederick V. Show – SEO Interview Galore!

Hey folks, a couple of weeks ago the very eminent, most gracious, and quite handsome (the invoice is in the mail) Frederick Van Johnson and I sat down at opposite ends of the Internet table for a cozy discussion geared towards photographers.

We talked about life, love, Woopra and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for photographers. I will point out that much of the discussion was applicable for just about any website you have although the intention was to answer specific questions that appeal to the needs of those of us who have a thing for lenses. Feel free to take a listen…

Listen to

OpenCamp: The Conference for ALL Webmasters!

Well folks, I’m extremely excited to finally unveil the new OpenCamp Conference that I, and a team of volunteers, have been secretly working on for months. (BTW, follow OpenCamp on Twitter and Facebook!) For those of you who were waiting on the announcement for WordCamp, well consider this it! We’re taking it to a whole different level this year by inviting WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and everyone else to the event!

OpenCamp!

Now, some of you may have been to WordCamp Dallas in the past, and some of you may have seen me lecture on blogging and other related topics, but I assure you – nothing you’ve seen in the past will compare to what we’ve got planned for OpenCamp!

We’re going to bring together about 1,000 bloggers, webmasters and podcasters all in one spot for an entire weekend of lectures, entertainment and networking. I promise you, it’s going to be absolutely amazing. And best of all, while other people are charging $1,000 for conferences half this good, we’re keeping OpenCamp CHEAP!

Here is a little intro video we put together to explain the concept:

Now, hurry up and get registered! Attendees are going to be listed by order of registration, so trust me YOU WANT TO BE FIRST ON THE LIST! Of course, there is a little issue at the moment with the automatic feed, but get registered anyway because the clock is already ticking and there are people ahead of you now!

Comment Spammers Get Sneaky, But You Should Delete Them Ruthlessly!

You guys have heard me drone on and on about my hatred of Spammers. I really mean it when I say I want to shoot them. Like with a real gun. In Texas. (Yee-haw)

Anyway, some people seem to think that they are not spammers as long as they leave a nice sounding comment along with their spammy “made-for-adwords” website link. And I guess they even think it’s ok for them to use different names on different comments… and different spammy MFA website links.

Another Spammy Example

In fact, here is an example of someone who used 4 different domains and two different names when leaving comments. Of course, they didn’t take into account the fact that they have the same damn IP address on every comment (all of which have now been deleted).

Oh, by the way, normally I would feel bad about putting someone’s name or email address up in an image, but since I don’t believe the names are real anyway, I have no sympathy.


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Simply Enable PHP’s GZip Compression to Speed Up Your Blog

As you may know, I use WP SuperCache on all of my blogs to enable them to handle the rather high loads the server runs at occasionally. One of the things that WP SuperCache does is enable compression for all of the cached pages. It’s an option in the control panel, which I ALWAYS enable. This saves a lot of bandwidth and makes pages download much faster for readers.

Well, what I didn’t realize was that the compression is only being performed on the cached files apparently. Because I did some testing and on the non-cached files there was no compression. So, I’ve got a really, really easy trick that anyone can do on their PHP blog to enable GZip compression.

Of course I’m going to show you how to do it in WordPress because that is what I know – but a simple one line addition to your theme file will enable it on any PHP based system (Drupal, Joomla, or whatever). If you have instructions for another CMS please let me know and I’ll add them here too.
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How To Automatically Convert Videos To Images

Guest Post by: Charles McKeever of OpenSourceMarketer.com.

Creative ideas are everywhere, if you know how to listen.

In this article I’m going to show you how you can automatically split videos into images and then use those images to generate traffic for your website. When John Pozadzides (aka the man behind One Man’s Blog) did this, he got 10,000 pageviews on a single blog post in just 7 days.
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The 8 Best Ways to Earn Money With Google Adsense Alternatives

Ok. You’re a blogger. You want to earn money from your website (don’t we all). I realize there are a lot of folks trying to tell you how to make money with Google AdSense (even though most don’t make jack squat), and even though I certainly make a lot more than average from Google AdSense, I actually spent a lot of time researching and testing Google AdSense alternatives in order to see if we could do a little better than simply putting Google ads on our sites.

Below you will find the best Google Adsense alternatives I could find, complete with a little description and a link to the provider, in the hopes of helping you put a little more cash in your pocket.

If you have any first hand experience with these please drop a comment below and let us all know. Especially if you can share some light on actually getting paid by these advertising providers. How long it takes, how much you made, and what your general impression of working with them would be most valuable! Also, please help me spread the word on this particular post since I know it’s something a lot of people are looking for.
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