Give each product or service it’s own space.

How many products and services you have, and how diverse they are impacts the decision on how best to present them on your website in WordPress. Someone offering one-of-a-kind handmade jewelry pieces has different needs than someone offering candles or flower essences (where there’s an inventory of each scent/size/formula) or someone offering create-them-once-and-sell-them-over-and-over-again e-books and services.

Offering an affiliate program puts another set of requirements on the whole endeavor, too, and is another reason to give each product or service it’s own space.

For any product or service, the goal is to present your offers in the most focused way possible that also gives you the most options for getting the word out and attracting customers. As in everything, there are trade-offs to consider.

WordPress has two main content containers: posts and pages. A third content container are widgets, but they are best used to highlight and get clicks through to your posts and pages, so we’ll skip them for now.

Put ‘em on Posts

Without even considering custom post types, regular old posts have a lot to offer when it comes to selling products and services. Posts, as you know, go out through your RSS feed, so if you use posts as containers for individual products or product sets, anyone subscribed to your feed would be notified as soon as you post. Think lovely, automated announcements to the world of your goods.

Posts also have categories and tags. Think categories=product types and tags=colors, sizes, scents, formulas. WordPress creates dynamic archive pages for both categories and tags, so with the custom menus now available in WordPress, you can create a menu structure that emulates a catalog directory. This flexibility allows you to have posts that are used for products as well as blog posts – all in the same site!

Best of all, with your products on posts, it’s easy to make something a sale item, mark it as a best-seller or an out-of-stock item just by changing its category or tag. Categories and tags give you plenty of creative ways to organize, present and manage your products when an inventory of some kind is involved, which is why posts – not pages – are the best choice here. Pages don’t have categories or tags.

Do it using Pages

When I create a new product or service, I write a sales page for it where that product or service is the ONLY topic on the page. This is not just because I like to create sales pages (though I do. I know…I’m weird.) It’s because I want your attention on the product or the service, NOT anything else. I know you’re busy, I know you don’t have time to be mucking around looking for my point. By removing all other distractions from the screen, it’s easier for you to discern what the heck I’m offering.

Pages work best for me because my products are digital, meaning I don’t have to deal with inventory issues because there’s not a limit on how many times someone can download an e-book, for example, unless I put some kind of arbitrary limit on it myself. Same goes for services I create.

A couple years ago, getting all those distractions (the sidebar, the header, the navigation menu, the footer) off my pages was a royal pain in the butt. I love WordPress, but back then, it was not an easy task. I struggled, I wrote and rewrote code, I monkeyed with this theme and that until it dawned on me that what I really needed was a sales page template that was independent of whatever theme I was using. So, I created WP-Sales-Page.

(Note: I was obviously not the only one struggling with that problem, because now there are sales page themes, themes that allow endless page layout configurations, and sales page plugins. That’s all fine and good, but if you’ve sunk a bunch of money into your design and don’t want to abandon that for a different theme, then my little ol’ WP-Sales-Page template might be just the ticket.)

On a Domain of its own

Sometimes, you just want to give your new creation an address of its own on the web. I don’t have any hard and fast rules about this other than to say that, for me, it depends on how much attention I want it to get on it’s own, unrelated to everything else I’ve got on my site. If I give it its own domain name, then I can go to town with SEO by getting a keyword-rich domain name and then optimizing the pants off of the content on the page, thereby helping it get more attention in the search engines.

You can certainly get a keyword-rich domain name and point it at a page in your site and then use that domain name for all your marketing. But, in my opinion, you can get a whole lot more traction with that approach if you put a mini-site together for it, separately. That’s what I’ve done for WP-Sales-Page and my WP-Free-Clinic.

On a Sub-Domain

Maybe you don’t need a separate domain name, but you do want some separation from the rest of your site. Another option to consider is a separate website in WordPress sitting on a sub-domain. This allows you to use a specialized e-commerce theme for your store without mucking up your main site.

Sorting through the options

I’ve just scratched the surface of considerations and options available to you for selling products and services on your website in WordPress. If you have specific questions, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them. If you need help putting a plan together, this might help.

Related posts:

1. How To Remove Comments from Pages in WordPress
2. Should It Be a Post or a Page?
3. Self-Hosting Your WordPress Blog

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

The good news is Matt is a funny guy – very fun to watch/listen to. (Further proof that we geeky tech people really can have interesting personalities…) Which is a good thing because this video is 46 minutes long. But you will laugh your way to learning…promise. (If you’re reading through the feed, click the title of this post to come to the site to see the video.)

• Pagerank – what it is and how to get more of it
• Keywords – how to pick ‘em
• Permalink structure – which one to use and why (oh, I feel so confirmed!)
• How to get more people to link to you
• and the real, true, deep secret of blogging!

Related posts:

1. The Easy Way to Put YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Site or Blog
2. 13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round
3. Upgrade WordPress Yourself? Yes, You Can!

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

So far, you might be thinking, “Ok, Suzanne…what’s this got to do with me? I can see just fine. Why are you telling me this?”

This particular accessibility feature just might be of handy use to you if a) your theme has several sidebars or b) you have lots of widgets in your sidebar or c) both. Drag and drop is great, but drag, scroll and drop gets a little out of hand and hard to manuever sometimes. So read on…

So, go to your Widgets page (Appearance => Widgets). See up there in the upper right hand corner of your Dashboard…’Screen Options’?

Click it.

You’ve got only one screen option for this page: ‘Enable accessibility mode’.

Click that link. It’s a toggle link, which means it’ll turn into ‘Disable accessibility mode’, so that if you want, you can turn that option back off.

Say you clicked on the ‘Add’ link for the calendar widget. The screen would then display the calendar widget options, and ask you which your sidebars you wanted it in, and in what position.

So you see? In this case, accessibility mode makes it easier for me to add widgets to my sidebars without have to scroll for miles on my widget page. If your theme is rockin’ this many sidebars, then you might find it easier to add widgets to them this way, too.

After playing with it in accessibility mode, I’ve determined that it’s much easier (at least for me, with this many sidebars) to add widgets this way and to move widgets around from one sidebar to another, but if I just want to reorder them within the same sidebar, it’s easier to do with drag and drop, so I just disable accessibility mode and do it that way.

Thanks again, Reagan, for the handy tip!

Related posts:

1. WordPress 2.8 is Available! (and my list of plug-ins that don't like it)

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

While you can add both categories and tags on the fly, it’s a good idea to have at least a category structure in place at the outset. This requires some planning and forethought, yes, but hopefully you have done your foundational work before jumping in, so it shouldn’t be all that difficult to come up with a basic category structure for your content.

WordPress requires that every post be assigned to a category and comes with a default category called ‘Uncategorized’. If you don’t assign a category to your posts, WordPress will automatically assign it to ‘Uncategorized’. This looks kind of cheesy, to be frank, so it’s a good idea to rename the Uncategorized category to something else that is more appropriate for your content. Alternatively, you could leave it as is, and if you ever see ‘Uncategorized’ show up in a category listing, you know you’ve missed assigning a category to one or more posts and can fix them then.

Adding Categories

There are two ways to add categories. You add Categories beforehand by clicking ‘Categories’ in the Posts menu.

Category Name is exactly that. Category Slug is typically the uncapitalized, hyphenated version of the Category Name. So, for example, if you create a category called WordPress Tips, the Category Name will be WordPress Tips and the Category Slug will be wordpress-tips.

Unlike tags, categories are hierarchial. You can create sub-categories of any of your categories by assigning a parent category. All posts assigned to any sub-category of a parent will show up in the archive listing for that parent category, but only posts assigned to the sub-category will show up in an archive listing for that sub-category.

Category descriptions do not display by default, though some themes do display them. If your theme does not display category descriptions on the public part of your site, you can still use them as “notes to self” and enter a description as a reminder of what kinds of posts belong in that category. The category descriptions do display in the category listing, so this can be a quite handy way to document your thinking when creating your category structure.

Categories can also be added “on the fly” by clicking the ‘Add New Category’ link in the Category section of the post edit screen. Note: When adding categories this way, the slug is created for you, and the description is blank. You can, however, assign a parent category.

Use only one category per post. This is considered best practice for two reasons. First, it is less confusing for your readers, and second, you avoid potential duplicate content issues with the search engines.

Adding Tags

There are two ways to add tags. You add Tags beforehand by clicking ‘Post Tags’ in the Posts menu.

Tag Name is exactly that. Tag Slug is the uncapitalized, hyphenated version of the Tag Name. So, for example, if you create a tag called Must-Have Plugins, the Tag Name will be Must-Have Plugins and the Tag Slug will be must-have-plugins.

Tag descriptions do not display by default, though some themes do display them.

Tags can also be added “on the fly” by typing the tag and clicking the ‘Add’ button in the Post Tags section of the post edit screen or by choosing from the most used tags in Post Tags. Note: When adding tags this way, the slug is created for you, and the description is blank.

Use multiple tags per post. Use tags to identify sub-topics covered in the post. Tags can cross Category boundaries and provide additional ways to “drill down” into your content and keep your visitors on your site longer. You can still do effective SEO on your site without using catgories or tags.

Related posts:

1. Sticky Posts and The Six Ws
2. Should It Be a Post or a Page?
3. DIY SEO: Step 5 – Make Navigating Your Site Easy

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

(By the way, you really help me and a whole bunch of others when you send me questions I can answer this way. If you’ve got a question, send it to me.)

How Posts and Pages are Alike

• They both have titles.
• They both have content.
• They both can have pictures and other media embedded in them.
• They both have individual URLs through which they are accessible.
• They both can have comments (though many times, comments are turned off for pages.)
• They both use your Theme to maintain a consistent look and feel throughout your site.

How Posts and Pages Differ

• Pages are not posts and are not cycled through your blog’s post page chronologically. (Posts are.)
• Pages can be organized into Pages and Sub-Pages. (Posts can’t.)
• Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. (Posts can.)
• Pages are for content that is less likely to change over time. (This last point is a little murky…read on.)

How to Decide

Think about the library. Pages are the books in the reference section that you’re not allowed to check out. Posts are the books you can borrow. (This speaks to the ‘permanence’ of pages vs. posts.)

Think about your old, HTML website. Pages are like the pages there. Posts are like the newsletters you sent out each week or month. (Which begs the question…if you’re blogging, do you still need to publish a newsletter? Hmmm…that’s a post for another day.)

Think about the timelessness of the content you’re trying to place. Pages are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages are often used to house information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless – information that is always applicable.

So, yes, it does matter whether you put your content in as a page or a post, but the decision is up to you and how you’ve organized your content, overall.

Related posts:

1. DIY SEO: Step 2 – Page Title, Page Description and Keywords
2. Turn Off Post Revisions for Single User Blogs
3. 8 New Colors Added to WP Sales Page!

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

Why?

1. Word’s hidden code overrides your theme settings
2. The code shows up in your RSS feed and looks horrible
3. WordPress saves you time and steps

(Note: All the images below can be clicked for a larger view.)

Word’s Hidden Code Overrides Your Theme Settings

Maybe you didn’t know Word has hidden code in it. It does. When you copy and paste from Word, a WHOLE LOT more than what you’ve written is coming along for the ride.

Here’s part of a Word document:

If you were to highlight that text, copy and paste it into WordPress, here’s what you’d really be pasting:

What’s highlighted in yellow is what you THINK you’re bringing across. All the rest of that stuff in blue is coming along like a stowaway, just waiting to cause you problems. Ewww, right? Who wants stowaways?

When you paste this into WordPress, WordPress is smart enough to recognize it for what it is: directions on how to layout and display the content that’s contained within. Groovy, except that your theme already handles that, and now here comes this bossy-pants code from Word that overrides everything. Depending on how you formatted your content while it was in Word, it may or may not look entirely different than the rest of your site’s content. For those of you who are thinking, “Well, Suzanne, I do this all the time and my posts don’t look wonky…what’s the problem?”

Read on…

The Code Shows Up in Your RSS Feed and Looks Horrible

The problem is, your post becomes part of your feed…and if you’re now at the point where you’ve realized you can get more exposure for your blog by feeding your posts into your Facebook account, for example, and drive traffic back to your site that way…well…the potential exists for all hell to break loose over at Facebook.

Here’s an example of what a post fed into Facebook Notes looks like when the MS Word code is present:

Not exactly what you’re after, right? So much for automation and additional exposure.

So, can you strip out all that gobbledegook code Word wants to bring along some way? Yes, but…

WordPress Saves You Time and Steps

If you absolutely insist on writing your posts in Word, then you can avoid the whole stowaway code problem by using the Paste From Word button in your Visual editor in WordPress:

Copy your content from your Word doc, then come over and open up a new post in WordPress. If you don’t see two rows of buttons initially, click that last button (the one I’ve boxed in blue) and the second row will appear. Click the Paste From Word button (the one boxed in red) and a popup window will open. Paste your content from Word in that window and then click the button to insert your content. Now you’ve got just your content in your post, minus all the stowaway code from Word! Yay!

Except…any formatting you might have done in Word is gone now, too. Why? Because that’s what the stowaway code was doing…formatting things. So, if you had things bolded, for example, you’ll have to make them bold again using the formatting buttons available in WordPress.

So, do yourself a favor and just skip writing your posts in MS Word. Save yourself time and extra, unnecessary steps and avoid the drama of that gobbledegook code from Word…now and wherever else your content ends up!

Related posts:

1. NoFollow, DoFollow – Do You Know or Even Care?
2. How To Remove Comments from Pages in WordPress
3. DIY SEO: Step 4 – Keyword Density

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

photo credit: Hammer51012

What’s DoFollow, you ask? Read NoFollow, DoFollow – Do You Know or Even Care? first. Then you’ll understand Tom saying he’d heard that by being a Do Follow blog you somehow get less of a ranking with Google. If you’re willy-nilly about it, yes, you can hurt your page rank.

Page Rank Is Like Your Reputation

Your page rank is, among other things, a numeric representation of your reputation in Google’s eyes. When you link out to other sites and allow the search engines to “follow” the links, it’s like putting your reputation on the line and endorsing those sites you’re linking to. Allowing the search engines to “follow” your links is like saying, “Yeah, they get my vote cuz I think they’re good.” Endorse a bunch of crap out there and what happens? Your reputation suffers.

There are many, many things that increase your page rank (your ‘authority’ or ‘reputation’) and you work hard to achieve it. But you don’t have to be in an all or nothing situation when it comes to putting that reputation at risk in order to help other bloggers.

NoFollow Case By Case

Though there are other plugins available, I use the NoFollow Case by Case plugin on my sites so I have control over whose comments I give “Google juice” to, and whose comments I don’t. You won’t catch me endorsing every stranger who crosses my path in real life, and I don’t do it online, either.

As this plugin’s name suggests, you can decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to allow the search engines to “follow” the links left by your commenters. The plugin’s default is to allow following, but let’s say some dork comes along who leaves a decent enough comment, but his site is tacky as hell, or a porn site, or screams SPAMville. Do you want to cast a vote of confidence to the search engines for this site? Uhhh…NO. And with this plugin, you don’t have to. You can, for just that one comment, put the NoFollow back and not sully your good reputation in the eyes of the search engines. Everyone else’s links will get your vote, but this one won’t. See? No all or nothing required.

DoFollow Is More Work?

Some of the people I’ve told about DoFollow, once they understand it, come back with the complaint that it sounds like it’s a whole lot more work. That’s only true if you’re not monitoring your comments well in the first place. If you are, then it’s not much more work to selectively reapply the NoFollow to the links that don’t cut the mustard. I mean, you’re usually looking at the sites of your new commenters, anyway, aren’t you? (Hint: You should be.)

Join the DoFollow Blogroll

If you’d like more exposure for your blog, you can join DoFollow bloggers and let the world know you reward substantive comments at your blog with “Google juice” for the links.

Related posts:

1. NoFollow, DoFollow – Do You Know or Even Care?
2. 13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round
3. Link to Your Own Content Without Mucking Up Your Comments

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

NoFollow refers to code in an HTML link that tells search engines not to follow that link:

i.e. <a rel=nofollow href="http://www.yourwebsite.com">Your Website</a>

We humans can still click on the link and be taken to the site it refers to, but the search engine robots see that and skip it.

Ok, so what’s the big deal with that?

Well, the big deal is that’s how search engines count “votes” for your site to (help) determine both your site’s popularity, positioning in search results and sometimes your page ranks. The idea is that the more links out there that point back to your site (otherwise known as backlinks), the more “authority” your site has. By having the nofollow code in there, it’s effectively telling the search engines, “Don’t count this link as a vote.”

Because of the ability of visitors to comment at your blog (which means site owners are no longer the only ones in control of links at their sites), blogs default to using the nofollow code in the links created by visitors leaving comments.

If you don’t use Akismet or some other spam comment filtering plugin and don’t have any kind of moderation settings in place for comments at your blog (which means anyone from anywhere can leave a comment and any kind of link along with it), then you’re better off leaving the nofollow code in place, because having links from your site to spammy sites or sites with “bad reputations in the eyes of the search engines” will actually hurt your site more than they will help.

But, if you do use spam comment filtering of some kind and you do at least look at the links left on your blog by commenters, then you might benefit from using a plug-in that removes the nofollow code from the links in your comments. Why? Because savvy bloggers know they can improve their own search engine rankings by creating backlinks to their sites through commenting on other blogs. And what do we all want for our own blogs? Comments! Interaction! Traffic!

If you make it known that you remove the nofollow code from your comment links, over time you’ll get more comments on your blog, which means more traffic, which means more people are reading what you’re publishing and your message has more reach. It’s called link love and the best way to get it is to give it first. Using a DoFollow plug-in for your WordPress blog is an easy way to give link love and reward your visitors who leave comments at your blog. A way to say an immediate, “Thank you for commenting here.”

In addition, you can join the DoFollow Blogroll and a) sport that cool “You Comment, I Follow” badge you see in my sidebar on your own blog, and b) get more exposure for your site.

There are many plug-ins available to remove the nofollow code from your comments, but the one I use is Nofollow Case by Case. Instead of summarily stripping the nofollow code from all links, I can choose which ones I want to remove and which ones I want to leave. It also allows me to control nofollow in areas other than just my comments.

Related posts:

1. Using DoFollow Is Like Signing a Letter of Reference
2. Link to Your Own Content Without Mucking Up Your Comments
3. 13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

For example, my sister started a sewing business recently and I wanted to create a website for it so her customers could reach her online, so she’d have a place to show off her work, and so she could harness the power of the Internet to generate new customers.

A blog is not what she would have had me create, and even up to a year ago, a blog would not have occurred to me, either. But that was before I had immersed myself in WordPress.

What she needed was a couple of reference pages and a way to show off her completed pieces, be they children’s clothing, bridal gowns, or curtains.

One of the drawbacks of sewing for others is that your completed work goes with your customer, so when new customers want to see examples of your work, they and you are out of luck unless you’ve taken pictures and have an easy way to show the new customer the pictures.

One option would be to create a physical photo album, but then you have to lug it around and it can get beat up in the process. Another drawback to a physical photo album is zeroing in on specific types of projects – how do you categorize? By type, color, budget, fabric…what? You pretty much have to pick one and then you’re stuck with it. A much better option is to have a web home for your pictures – one that looks professional, is not distracting, shows off your talents well and allows you to zero in quickly to see the types of projects your new customer is interested in.

So, we need a website, but one that’s easy for a non-programmer to update and maintain, one that will handle displaying of completed projects by all different sorts of criteria and is professional in its presentation. Enter WordPress! Once I do the programming that is necessary and get everything set up the way she wants it, I can hand the site over to her to update and maintain and go forward with. Then, the only time she’ll need me is when she wants something done or added to the site that requires technical know-how she doesn’t possess. Perfect solution for her and for me!

So, if you have a business or a project for which you’d like a web presence – think outside the box and consider what WordPress has to offer!

Related posts:

1. Turn Off Post Revisions for Single User Blogs

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

The biggest misconception he had about moving to a self-hosted installation was surrounding the issue of paying for a hosting account. My friend already has a website, in addition to his blog, so he already has a hosting account. He thought to move his blog away from WordPress.com, he’d have to get ANOTHER hosting account, and pay another monthly hosting fee. Not necessarily so!

For him, there will be no additional expense to self-host his blog, because he’s already paying for hosting for his website, and he can host his blog in that same account. For someone who has a blog on WordPress.com, but does not already own a hosting account, there will be the additional expense of a hosting account to move the blog away from WordPress.com.

Another question he had was about the order in which you do things to have a smooth conversion. Here is the order I recommend:

If you do not already have a hosting account:

1. Get a hosting account (I can recommend Stribling Consulting or Everlast Hosting, as I use both.) You’ll need at least 1 SQL database, so keep that in mind when you’re selecting a package.
2. Purchase a domain name, and set the nameserver information to point at your hosting account (if you don’t, you will have difficulty installing and setting up WordPress – it uses domain names, so that has to be working.)

If you already have a hosting account and a separate domain name for your blog:

1. Add the domain name to your hosting account (if your hosting account will allow hosting of multiple domains.)
2. Set the nameserver and IP address information for your separate domain name to ‘point to’ your hosting account. (If your hosting account won’t allow hosting of multiple domains, you can usually upgrade your hosting package to one that will.)

If you already have a hosting account and do not want a separate domain name for your blog:

1. Create a subdirectory (usually called ‘blog’) on the root directory of your hosting account.
2. When installing WordPress, be sure to identify that subdirectory as where you want WP installed.

Then, proceed as follows:

1. Install WordPress
2. Install your theme of choice
3. Install and activate any plug-ins you want to use
4. Log in to your WordPress.com blog and use the Export function to create a WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, will contain your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags and save it to your computer.
5. Once you?ve saved the WXR download file, login to your self-hosted WordPress blog and use the Import function import your blog. Now all your content from your old blog resides on your new blog! Cool, huh?
6. Begin blogging!

Finally, don’t be afraid! The nice thing about all this is you can ‘mess up’ without the earth shifting on its axis. And with all things computer – back up what you’ve got before you start!

If this looks like too much for you – contact me for a free consultation. I’ll be glad to answer your questions and help you determine the most expedient, cost-effective way to self-host your WordPress blog. There are many, many options at almost every step of the process, so don’t be afraid to ask for help sorting it all out.

Related posts:

1. The Easy Way to Put YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Site or Blog
2. Make Your WordPress Site/Blog More User-Friendly for SmartPhone Users
3. Measure Your Blog’s Success

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne