Gleb Reys | Perfect Blogger

Upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2 right away!

March 4, 2007 by Gleb Reys 2 Comments

If you still haven’t taken time to upgrade from WordPress 2.1.1 to WordPress 2.1.2 – do this right now! You can read the official explanation on the WordPress blog, but the bottom line is that WordPress 2.1.1 downloads have been altered by a hacker, and therefore may contain a security exploit.

To make sure you’re secure, it is advised that you download and install WordPress 2.1.2.

Note: this only affects users of the WordPress 2.1.1 build, any other WordPress 2.x version was not infected.

pS: if you need help with upgrading your version of WordPress, feel free to leave a comment to this post and I’ll be sure to contact you by email.

Filed Under: wordpress

PerfectBlogger community @ MyBlogLog

February 23, 2007 by Gleb Reys Leave a Comment

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to let you all (and especially RSS readers) know that PerfectBlogger has now got its own community at MyBlogLog.

If you want the community members to have a look at your blog, feel free to join by stopping by at this page: PerfectBlogger @ MyBlogLog.

Filed Under: perfectblogger

Advanced Editor Options in WordPress 2.1

February 16, 2007 by Gleb Reys 8 Comments

Since upgrading to WordPress 2.1, I’ve finally switched back to using the built-in posts editor. One of the reasons for doing this was that I’ve found the options I so needed – text justification and HTML code cleanup – available through the advanced editor options panel.

Pressing Shift+Alt+V in Firefox or Alt+V in Internet Explorer transforms your Standard Editor panel:

… into something like this:

As you can see, there’s quite a few more options available, namely:

paragraph formattion options (address, preformatted text, headings)
underline your text
full justification
color selector for your text
paste options for plain text and MS Word
messy HTML code cleanup
custom character button (charmap which allows you to click and insert any special character)

With all these options, there really is no reason to search for a better visual editor anymore. TinyMCE, which is the engine behind it, fits WordPress 2.1 like a glove, and makes editing your posts and pages a real pleasure.

Filed Under: blog, wordpress

RSS Reading Productivity Tip

February 13, 2007 by Gleb Reys 6 Comments

If you’re like me, you’ve got more than a hundred of RSS feeds in your favorite online RSS reader. If you’re also subscribed to some really active blogs like Lifehacker, which on average post 5-15 times a day, then your average number of unread posts will be around 100-120 each morning.

Now, you could try and honestly read each on of them. Will take you a few hours even if you read quick enough.

Another alternative is to skim through. Will be a bit faster, but still about an hour for 100+ posts.

Finally, you can minimize content to headlines only, and then you’ll be able to quickly run through all the posts titles and mark or open for further reading only things you’re interseted in.

But my ultimate solution to reading many RSS feeds a day is even a step further: use folders (in Google Reader), categories or tags – whatever it is called in your favorite RSS reader. Use this option which allows you group your feeds by a subject or level of importance.

The idea is this: if you sort all your RSS feeds into categories, you’ll be able to read/skim through posts on a particular subject only. This, in turn, will save you time because you don’t have to switch context all the time.

Here’s how it compares to reading all the headlines in one large list: as you go through titles of various posts on technology, productivity, graphics design, music and all the rest of your personal interests, you will automatically have to switch between subjects these titles are talking about. And it does take a few seconds for your brain to fully switch the context, recover a few latest news from the subject you’re switching to, and analyze the importance and relevance of a particular post title you’re looking at.

So my RSS productivity tip is this: place your feeds into categories, and you’ll save time because your brain won’t have to switch context when going through titles of new posts.

Aim to have 5-6 large categories with 20+ most interesting blogs and possibly another 6-10 smaller categories comprised of less important feeds.

This way, you’ll be able to run through all of them in just a few minutes, and mark stuff you’re not interested in as something you’ve already read.

At this point, you can either go ahead and read posts in each category (again, it will be faster cause topics are probably similar), or go and read all the posts from various categories in a much shorter list of only titles you’re interested in.

Filed Under: blog, perfectblogger

WordPress 2.1

February 9, 2007 by Gleb Reys 2 Comments

It’s been a bit over two weeks since the release of the long awaited WordPress 2.1, codenamed Ella, and although I had upgraded one of my blogs the very next day when it became available, it’s only now that I finally have some time to post about it.

First of all, please go and read the official announcement of WordPress 2.1. Once you learn all the new features, you will immediately know whether it’s worth upgrading or not.

If you have WordPress 2.0.5 and anything below it – don’t even waste your time: it is time to upgrade! Get at least version 2.0.7, although in most cases you should be okay just jumping up to 2.1.

There are many wonderful features in 2.1, but I personally like the following ones:

Autosave – an AJAX-powered feature to save you from losing any of your ingenious posts again. Quite often, having typed a page or two of text, you lose your text if your browser crashes or something else interferes before you hit the Save button – so this Autosave feature is a real saver (pun intended).
New visual editor for posts and pages – a much better looking editor which has a different tabbed interface for easier switching between post and its HTML code and also includes a spell-checker. It pleases me a lot that all the dialog windows appear normally in Firefox 2 now, cause they definitely were buggy in WordPress 2.0.7.
Admin area rework – it works much faster, thanks to more AJAX code and a cleaner CSS.
Upload manager – for a much easier uploading and management of your media files

Hope I got you interested in at least giving it a try? Although if you haven’t done this by now, there’s hardly anything to convince you. As a last resort kind of a thing, I offer you a 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.1 by Aaron Brazell at Technosailor. His article gives a great introduction to new features, and I think you will benefit from it even if you think you know enough.

Filed Under: blog, wordpress

Blogging Tools: Introducing 103bees

January 17, 2007 by Gleb Reys 3 Comments

I've been using the 103bees.com service for a couple of weeks now, and it's definitely a must-have search engine traffic analysis tool for any serious blogger.

From the 103bees official website:

What is 103beees.com?

It's a real-time online tool for webmasters and bloggers that is highly focused on natural search engine traffic analytics. It provides tons of detailed statistics and in-depth information on the search terms that drive visitors to your webpages.

103bees is an indispensable tool for search engine optimization and internet marketing – everything you need to know about your search engine traffic in one place!

This tool allows you to easily get various views of your search engine traffic in real time. At any time, you can view a list of the latest searches which brought visitors to your pages, as well as see your top landing pages, top keywords used or SERP rankings of the all search requests which generated traffic. All this is provided for free, and you get a 30 days of historical data to analyze for as many websites (you call them projects in your 103bees account) as you like.

I'll write a review for it in the coming few days, but for the moment just wanted to share this tool with you and point you to a great review by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger: 103bees: Search Term Analytics Review.

Filed Under: analytics, blog, SEO, tools

WordPress 2.0.7 is ready

January 16, 2007 by Gleb Reys Leave a Comment

Yet another update of WordPress has been posted yesterday: WordPress 2.0.7.

Here is what the WordPress official blog has to say:

Recently a bug in certain versions of PHP came to our attention that could cause a security vulnerability in your blog. We’re able to work around it fairly easily, so we’ve decided to release 2.0.7 to fix the PHP security problem and the Feedburner issue that was in 2.0.6.

Here are the changes which the above comment mentions:

Security fix for wp_unregister_GLOBALS() to work around the zend_hash_del_key_or_index bug in PHP 4 versions less than 4.4.3 and PHP 5 versions less than 5.1.4 with register_globals set to “On.”
Feeds now properly serve 304 Not Modified headers instead of mismatched 200/304 headers (a.k.a. the FeedBurner bug).

For a full list of changes since 2.0.6, please have a look at the original post with WordPress 2.0.7 announcement.

You can't be too secure, and with this in mind I've just updated both my WordPress-based blogs and strongly suggest you do the same.

Filed Under: wordpress

Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog, Part 2

January 15, 2007 by Gleb Reys Leave a Comment

This post is a second part of the Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog series, with the next three questions you should be asking yourself before starting a new blog.

4) Is your niche blog friendly?

With everyone blogging about something today, you probably don't want to end up being one of the invisible and rarely visited blogs about something static and not interesting.

Due to their nature, blogs are best to cover dynamic and ever-changing areas of our life. That's why it is important for you to make sure that the niche you'll be blogging in is dynamic enough. You will want to have a natural flow of ideas and news for your blog, and unless your topic is popular and dynamic, you will run out of ideas faster than you think.

5) Have you done your research?

We all are unique human beings, and quite often we get amazing ideas worth living and dying for, but please don't take it for granted that you're the first one to blog about your topic. Chances are, you're not even in the first hundred! But here is the key: being the first to blog about something doesn't mean being the best authority on the topic. What I mean by this is that there are many topics which are greatly covered by hundreds of blogs, yet only a handful of these are considered to be authorities in the field.

With great content and determination, you can always join the ranks of authorities, but depending on the niche it may take you longer than just a few months. For most niches, it takes years to become really popular and trusted.

That's why it is important for you to do your research and estimate your chances of becoming a leading blog in your niche (providing that's one of your original goals).

6) Have you got enough content to start with?

Starting a new blog is always a commitment. If it's not your first one, you will probably have an idea of how much of your time it will require for you to maintain yet another blog. But if you're thinking of starting your very first blog, your estimations are practically bound to be wrong.

In any case, it is always a good idea to have enough content to start with. Write at least 10 posts, so that you can regularly post them while working out your blogging routine and coming up with new posts. The idea behind this is that if something goes different from your plan, you will have a number of posts to cover the delay until you're ready to go on with posting new articles.

The more content you have before you start your blog, the better. Please take your time and prepare full posts, ready to be posted at any minute. Don't count raw ideas or sketches as ready posts – these will need more of your time before you can post. What you need is a number of polished-off articles waiting for you to click the Publish button.

This concludes the second part of my Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog series. Please feel free to let me know your answers to the above questions, or suggest more questions which you believe to be important for any blogger.
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Filed Under: blog

Moving To or Launching A New Domain

January 10, 2007 by Gleb Reys Leave a Comment

I've switched my Personal Development Ideas blog from greyspk.com domain to a new one – personaldevelopment.ie. It was a planned event and I do know what to expect from such a move – for instance, my Google rankings will inevitably drop and will be regained in 3-6 months, after most of my newly located pages will be indexed and available by Google search.

But SEOmoz have just posted a great article on Expectations and Best Practices for Moving to or Launching a New Domain. What I really liked about this article is not only the realistic expectations set for both scenarios, but also truly the best practices for achieving your goals.

Here are just some of the really good advices given in the article:

Submit and verify your sitemap to Googe's Webmaster Central.
Get as many links to your new domain as possible
Update all your own links to reflect the new domain and not the old, redirected one.
Monitor your logs and contact major resources linking to you to update their links

An excellent article, Rand! Thanks a lot for sharing!

Filed Under: blog, google, promotion, SEO, sitemaps

Creating a theme in WordPress

January 10, 2007 by Gleb Reys Leave a Comment

Rachel Cunliffe has started this year with a wonderful series of posts on creating a WordPress theme.

First off, she's given us a list of useful resources for creating WordPress themes, and then came the actual posts.

So far, there are two posts describing two steps of creating a theme:

Creating a layout
In this post, Rachel talks about the basics of your new theme layout. Before you get to actually code your WordPress theme, you really need to get absolutely clear about what you want your visitors to see on you blog and why.

Your layout is supposed to be a well-thought positioning of your blog elements like logo, main menu, actual posts and additional content.

Creating a theme
This step helps you getting started with actual coding – it explains how to create your theme template and CSS style definitions. Not only examples are shown and explained, but you can also download a ZIP archive with two files of the new theme.

I think this series will prove to be invaluable to anyone who's interested in creating WordPress themes of their own. I personally had never created a theme from a scratch, but have customized a number of them – so it is a good opportunity for me to understand the whole process even better.

Filed Under: blog, design, wordpress