Category Archives: How To

How To

Getting Started Guide: Link Tracking for Your Site

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So you’ve been putting great content out on your site, sharing it every where you can and directing everyone in your network to it. But do you know if people are actually clicking these links and when? This information is crucial to figuring out what kind of traffic you’re driving, if your content is keeping people engaged and if the links to your site are inviting.

Luckily, there are some great tools to help you track you links and visitors to your page. Gone are the visit counters at the bottom of webpages, because pure numbers don’t really tell you anything. Now there are sites to help you easily track links and clicks without having to set up an entire analytics account. Read on for how to use these tools and get results.

Link Tracking Sites

Link tracking sites are very easy to use, and most just require a quick registration. They allow you to shorten, share and track links. Unlike site analytics programs, link tracking sites allow you track links from as many different websites as you would like all at once. These sites work by creating a shortened link for the URL you copy and paste into their program. Once the shortened link is created from you original URL you can then use that shortened link, which will look something like this: http://bit.ly/h7zi7A anywhere you’d like and see real time date for clicks. These shortened links function just like regular URLs.

Link tracking is helpful for seeing how often your link has been clicked, what the most popular click times were and clicks over a longer period of time like multiple months. You can take the link data these sites share and see what kind of content you’re sharing gets the most clicks and at what time to ensure you are posting content your visitors will like. Link tracking sites are also great for Twitter and other micro blogging sites with limited space as these services can make even the longer links much shorter.

Some examples of Link Tracking sites to check out:

Bitly- http://bit.ly/

TweetBurner- http://tweetburner.com/

Tiny URL- http://tinyurl.com/

Ow.ly- http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url

Remember to be able to rack these links you must sign up for an account. Happy Tracking!

Happy Earth Day, too!

How To

Getting Started Guide: WordPress Plugins

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We’ve gone over Themes and Widgets for customizing your WordPress site, and now we move on to the most impressive facet of WordPress: Plugins. Plugins are simply WordPress add-ons and customizations that are developed by mostly by outside developers and but also by WordPress. The plugins can range from simple to very specific. You may be asking yourself why plugins aren’t automatically included, well, WordPress has left them as an extra so you have the option of making your blog or site as basic or complex as you like.

Plugins on WordPress can do almost anything you would like your site to do. You can search for a plugin to make your blogs shareable, create a custom contact form, or link your social media accounts. But this is just the beginning. Want a plug in that will email a new blog visitor? Search for it. It’s there.

To put it simple, WordPress describes their plugins as: “Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. In the directory you can find, download, rate, and comment on all the best plugins the WordPress community has to offer.”

Why do I need plugins?

Maybe you don’t: In all honesty, you may not need or use any plugins that are offered. The standard WordPress offering is quite complete and plugins are a bonus for anyone interested.

Maybe you do: But, if you want to venture into the world of plugins, simply search for what you may want to add to your blog. Looking for a way to share your blog on social bookmarking sites? Navigate to the plugin link on your dashboard and then search “share,” or for specific service, “ShareThis,” which is what this blog uses at then end of each post. Another great plugin is Akismet, which can be free or you can chose to donate a certain amount. Akismet operates only on the backend of your site and monitors your blog comments and keeps spam posts from being posted and driving you nuts. If these two offerings sound great to you, it’s time to learn how to get started with plugins.

How do I use them?

Search for Your Plugin: The easiest way to search for, download and activate plugins is right through your WordPress dashboard. Navigate to Plugins>Add New and then search for what you may need. Perhaps it is a program that will share your recent Tweets in the sidebar of your blog, like this blog has. You would Search: “Twitter” and browse through the results. Read the descriptions of the plugins to ensure you are one the right path. Also be sure to read reviews on each plugin, because most are developed by outside sources and may not be the best option. Once you see a plugin you would like, click “Install Now.”

Activate Your Plugin: If the plugin is something that will appear on the front end of your site, like the recent tweets plugin you can see on this blog, then it will show up in your widgets area once it is downloaded. Then you will treat is like a widget with the drag, drop and customizing you learned about in this past post. If the widget is something that will only work on the backend of your site, like Akismet, you will just need to activate the plugin in the plugin area as it will not appear on your front end.

Be sure to check the front end for changes and check the back end of Twitter to see if programs like Akismet are working.

Good Luck and leave any questions you have about WordPress Plugins in the comments!

How To

A Few WordPress Tips: Themes and Widgets

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WordPress has a lot to offer, which is why GDI offers it to you as part of your membership. WordPress requires a bit more background knowledge to navigate than our Site Builder, so we want to give you all the tools to create your best website when using WordPress through GDI. We will also be sharing a “How To” video for WordPress within the coming weeks, so stay posted! Until then, here a little “How To” for some of WordPress’s most powerful features.

Themes

WordPress themes are offered as way to create a great looking site with less effort on your part. Many themes are customizable and range from simple to very complex with tons of widgets and options. WordPress offers a huge number of themes and GDI now offers its own customizable theme. You can easily find the GDI theme by logging into your WordPress site and navigating to appearance>find themes. The GDI theme will be right at the bottom of the page. Just click apply and you’re ready to customize or just start posting.

To find other themes, you can easily search within WordPress or any search engine for free WordPress themes. You can search for themes in a number of ways including by color, features and columns. Many themes are totally customizable allowing you to create and add your own header and background. Themes also allow you to add widgets to make your page more functional and professional. You can also search outside of the WordPress database for free themes, simply by searching for “Free WordPress Themes,” just be sure you trust the author and site before you download.  When downloading a them from within WordPress all you need to do is activate it when the install is complete. For themes you found outside of WordPress, once your theme is downloaded, simply return to the themes area in WordPress and navigate to install themes>upload. Once your theme is uploaded, you will need to activate it before if will appear on your page and you can begin customizing.

Add Widgets

Now that you have a theme, you can get creative with customizing your page and making it easy to use with the addition of widgets. The many different widgets that WordPress offers can be overwhelming. However, widgets are there to make setting up your site even easier and they really aren’t as complicated or tech savvy as they sound. On the GDI Affiliate blog you can see down the right hand side: “recent posts,” “archives,” etc. These are all widgets.

WordPress is very user friendly and gives you many widgets to choose from and all you need to do just drop them in and activate. I will use the “recent posts” widget as an example of how to add a widget:

People will want to see past posts they missed, so the recent posts widget is a great way to give people access to this. Simply go into widgets, find the “recent posts” widget and drag it to the right hand side where ever you want it to appear. Depending on the theme you have chosen, your options may be “sidebar” “bottom bar” or more. Simply drop it where you want it and customize it before you save. Repeat this process for any widgets you may want to add. Some widgets may require a bit more work and coding, so be sure always check your site to see how things show up.

Now it’s time to for you get started with different themes and adding widgets and create your best page ever.

What other features would you like to see a “How To” blog about?