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These quick tips aren’t going to get a post all to themselves, but they are worth sharing, nonetheless.

As I add more quick tips to this page, I’ll keep you informed.

#1 – PLUGINS: It’s easy to load and update plugins right in the WordPress Dashboard, but it’s a good idea to also have copies of all your plugins on your own storage. There may come a time when you need to go directly to your server and reload a plugin and having it readily available will save you a ton of time. In order to load directly to the server, the plugin has to be unzipped, so that’s why you want to have the plugin on your own storage. If you do decide to start this practice, don’t forget to update the plugins on your hard drive/removable drives when WordPress instructs you to update the plugins through the Dashboard.

#2 – PERMALINKS: By default, when you first load and begin to use WordPress, every link WordPress creates on your behalf begins with your URL and  then ends with a unique code, which doesn’t tell anyone what the actual page is about. Not only does this hose your search engine optimization, it leaves your potential visitors guessing and could cost you readers and/or subscribers. One of the first things you want to do, after a fresh install of WordPress, is go to Settings > Permalinks and change the structure of your links to at least include the title of your post/page. The choice for Day and Name is my personal favorite.

#3 – AFTER THE DEADLINE PLUGIN: If you’re looking for something more robust that WordPress’ built-in spell-checker, the After the Deadline plugin is for you. According to the plugin site:

After the Deadline helps you write better and spend less time editing. Click the proofread button in the visual or HTML editor toolbar to check spelling, style, and grammar.

I know how to hand-code (X)HTML, so making a table from scratch isn’t that big of a deal for me, even though I don’t like doing it. I definitely don’t like doing it in WordPress, because when you want to add more rows and columns to your table, you have to physically do so from the HTML tab. This was truly a pain in the rump.

I’m always telling my students and clients, “Almost anything you want to do in WordPress, there’s most likely a plugin that exists to allow you to do that.” So I finally took my own advice and searched WordPress.org to see if there is a plugin that would allow me to make tables without having to hand-code them in the HTML tab.

Sure enough. There is such a plugin: MCE Table Buttons.

So exactly what does it do?

The first thing it does is add table-editing buttons in a third row on the WordPress WYSIWYG editor. See the following image:

The first icon allows you to start your table. When you click on it, you get the following pop-up:

From here, you can define several aspects of your table before moving over to the Advanced tab in this same pop-up. See it here:

Under the Advanced tab, you can set all or none of these parameters and then click Insert.

Once you’ve inserted your new table, click inside one of its cells and the other icons on the table-icon row become active. See the following image:

With these icons you can:

• Define table row properties (icon #2)
• Define cell properties (icon #3)
• Insert a row above the currently-selected row (icon #4)
• Insert a row below the currently-selected row (icon #5)
• Delete the currently-selected row (icon #6)
• Insert a column before the currently-selected column (icon #7)
• Delete the currently-selected column (icon #8)
• Split merged cells (icon #9)
• Merge individual cells (icon #10)

Please keep in mind that this is a simple plugin which creates the third row of table-creation icons. The creator of the plugin has the following to say:

Note that this should not be used with other plug-ins that significantly alter the editor’s default behavior. It is intended to be a simple, light weight solution for editors who only want to add table management to WordPress’ included editor.

If you need any help with table-creation, let me know. I may be able to help.

Click image to go to Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to monitor the traffic to your website(s) and/or blog(s). It helps you keep track of how many users have visited, the average number of page visits per user session, the average time a visitor stays on your site and much more. It’s a great tool, but it would be nice to not have to go outside of WordPress, and open another browser window, to go to Google Analytics to check your statistics.

That’s where Google Analytics Dashboard enters. It allows you to check your stats right from the WordPress Dashboard without ever leaving your blog. See the image below:

Not only can you check stats from your WordPress Dashboard, each page and post has it’s on analytics count. See the image below:

To get started, you must first sign up with Google Analytics and register your blog. Once you’ve gotten your unique code, include it in the source code of your blog. If you’re not absolutely sure where you’re suppose to include your code, and there are no explicit instructions you can use to figure it out, try the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin. It’s really simple.

Once you’ve included your Google Analytics code in your blog, download and install the Google Analytics Dashboard plugin.

Click on the WordPress Settings option and then find and click on Google Analytics Dashboard from the list. Enter your Google Analytics (not WordPress) username and password, and you will then be taken to another screen that will allow you to make choices to customize your preferences.

That’s it.

Go back to your WordPress Dashboard and find the Google Analytics Dashboard widget box. It’s probably going to be at the bottom of the page. If it’s not in the best location for you, don’t forget that you can reorder and organize your WordPress Dashboard to fit your needs. See WordPress Tip #3: Can I Change the Way My Dashboard Looks? for more information.

Happy stats, good people.

There are several link-shortening applications (tinyurl, budurl, and bit.ly) available for microblogging (blogging in a limited number of characters, like Twitter).

One of the applications I use is bit.ly, and I did a Social Media Spotlight about it, because it allows the tracking and analysis of all the links you shorten with the application.

Well, then I discovered the WordPress plugin Pretty Link while looking for a plugin to do something totally different. It also allows for tracking and analysis of links, but I like it because it allows me to create short URLs with my own domain, which itself is a pretty short URL (myqotd.com) .

The following information is from the developer’s site:

Features

• Gives you the ability to create clean, simple URLs on your website that redirect to any other URL
• Generates random 2-3 character slugs for your URL or allows you to name a custom slug for your URL
• Tracks the Number of Hits per link
• Tracks the Number of Unique Hits per link
• Provides a reporting interface where you can see a configurable chart of clicks per day. This report can be filtered by the specific link clicked, date range, and/or unique clicks.
• View click details including ip address, remote host, browser (including browser version), operating system, and referring site
• Download hit details in CSV format
• Intuitive Javascript / AJAX Admin User Interface
• Pass custom parameters to your scripts through pretty link and still have full tracking ability
• Ability to rewrite these custom Parameters before forwarding to Target URL
• Setup Pretty Links as Tracking Pixels and track impressions
• Exclude IP Addresses from Stats
• Enables you to post your Pretty Links to Twitter directly from your WordPress admin
• Enables you to send your Pretty Links via Email directly from your WordPress admin
• Select Temporary (307) or Permanent (301) redirection for your Pretty Links
• Cookie based system for tracking visitor activity across hits
• Organize Links into Groups
• Create nofollow/noindex links
• Turn tracking on / off on each link
• Keep users on your site even when being redirected by using the PrettyBar which stays at the top of the page
• Configure the PrettyBar to mirror the look and feel of your website

Great things you can do with Pretty Link

• Clean up / mask affiliate links or merchant shopping cart links
• Track the effectiveness of email campaigns by embedding Pretty Links in your emails
• See how many times an email is opened by creating a “Tracking Pixel” Pretty Link and embedding it in the email
• Kickstart and Fuel the SEO on your site by posting Pretty Links from your site on Digg, Twitter, Facebook, other blogs and everywhere else on the Internet.
• Create Pretty Links for private special offers (to your email list) using a randomized slug to prevent the URL from being “guessed”
• Write custom scripts in PHP, Ruby on Rails, ASP or anything else that accept parameters and use Pretty Link to make their URLs “pretty” and forward on the parameters
• Setup pretty links for your zip, pdf & binary files and track how many times they are downloaded
• Use to track results of your PPC campaigns by setting your ads to go to Pretty Links
• Track Everything!

There’s also a Pretty Link Pro for which you can pay a fee to gain more features.

Let me know if you upload Pretty Link to your blog and how it works for you!

I found out this information the hard way, so hopefully it will save someone else the trouble that it caused me.

If you, for any reason, have to reload the contents of your blog from a database backup, the second thing you need to do after you install the WordPress platform, and before you import the backed up content into MySQL, is re-install any plugins you were previously using.

Some plugins make tables in your database. When you try to reconnect the database with the new install of WordPress, it’s going to be looking for the plugins that go with the extra database tables. If it can’t find them, your blog isn’t going to show correctly (or at all) in the browser.

You may want to consider keeping a file that lists all your plugins, especially if you have a habit of installing straight from WordPress and not downloading the plugins to your computer first.