Do you have a Wordpress blog that needs to be updgraded to the latest version? Are you aware that you should keep your Wordpress based blogs upgraded to take advantage of the latest features and also to avoid the risk of people exploiting the security bugs that some of the earlier versions have?

While wordpress is a great content management system and the most popular blogging platform, a large number of users find it very cumbersome to upgrade their blogs. If you are a techno-shy user or just don't have the time for these upgrades, we can upgrade your blogs at a nominal $25 per blog per upgrade.

Just send us the FTP details (preferably the control panel details so that we can back up before the upgrade) and your payment by Paypal to arun AT ebizindia DOT com. I highly recommend you to take a backup of your blog - we take all precautions before and during the upgrade but it never hurt to take preventive measures.

This is a case study of a blog I recently moved from a sub-directory (/wordpress) to the root directory (/). You can get some interesting tips by reading this or better still, assign the move to us at a nominal cost and save yourself all the hair-pulling

Step 1: The site was on Cpanel, so I took a full backup of the site to avoid chances of a major disaster happening if something went wrong (you know the Murphy's laws, don't you?).

Step 2: I upgraded the current blog (at /wordpress) to the latest version so that the database structure will be up to date.

Step 3: I downloaded all the files in the root directory to a local folder so that I can replace the overwritten files, if any are required.

Step 4: I then uploaded a full copy of the blog software to the root directory (public_html folder as this was a cpanel site). If there are any special plugins used, you should download the software from the previous location and then upload this in the new location so that the plugin files are also uploaded.

Step 5: I uploaded the wp-config.php fie in the root directory so that Wordpress will refer to the same database.

Step 6: I accessed the database through PHPmyadmin and opened the wp_options table. Updated the values of the site_url and home options to http://www.domain.com by replacing http://www.domain.com/wordpress.

Step 7: Now I accessed the blog through the root URL and it opened fine. However I noticed that the posts were still being linked to www.domain.com/wordpress/postname/id. 

Step 8: I accessed the admin console and recreated the Permalinks so as to update all the post URLs. 

Now the whole blog was working fine without any issues.

Lastly, I needed to make sure that Google and other search engine would redirect the old indexed /wordpress/post URLs to the new ones. For this, I edited the .htaccess file in the root directory.

Inserted the following code before the # BEGIN WORDPRESS section (if you don't keep this code out of the WORDPRESS section, Wordpress will remove this when you update Permalinks or do any other act that works with .htaccess file).

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
rewriterule ^wordpress(/.*)? $1 [L,R=301]

This effectively creates a permanent redirect for all files with /wordpress/something name to /something names.

Bingo! The blog is now accessible from the root directory of the domain. You may like to rename the /wordpress directory to /oldwordpress directory and keep it for a few days, then delete it when things have stabilized.

Now you can move your blogs around as and when you wish. However if you are techno-shy or don't have time to play with all these wordpresses and PHPmyadmins, feel free to assign your "move my blog" cases to us. You can write to me at arun AT ebizindia DOT com (you know how to convert that to a working email address).

So you don't want to login to your blog's admin panel and create a new blog post? And you don't want to bother with uploading images and linking to them? You will take none of the nonsense related to embedding YouTube videos in your posts? Not even thinking of multiple images and image galleries and all that techno-geek stuff?

Have heart. You can still blog - just by sending an email. Here's how:

Just send an email to post@posterous.com. Put your headline in the subject and write whatever you want to post, in the body. Want to embed a YouTube video. Just include a link. Need to include images? Attach them. PDF, Word, MP3 - all accepted. Send and your post is done. How's that for ease?

Check out my ebizindia.posterous.com blog. Put a comment if you like the idea and free reports. Subscribe by RSS and you will be informed the moment I make the next post. Enjoy! Life is simple. So is blogging - by email.

 

I recently got this interesting question from a client: "I have an ecommerce site. Should I blog? If yes, what can I write about?" Here are some interesting tips about blogging for ecommerce etailers:

By now, it is clear that I recommend blogging for people who own ecommerce sites. A client owns multiple blogs which act as the funnel to his main site and he has been very successful in increasing his online sales with blogs. Let us see what you can write about on your blog.

• You can make a blog post if you have introduced a new range of items on your site. Discuss why you introduced this range (there was a popular demand, customers frequently asked me to carry this range etc), what is the special feature of this range and who can buy and how will they benefit.
• You can announce your periodic promotions through your blog.
• You can answer important and frequent customer service questions on your blog. Of course, you should also include them in the FAQ section.
• You can highlight some recent testimonials received from satisfied customers. This is a powerful social proof (others are liking this range, so it must be good).
• You can blog about how to use a complicated or uncommon aspect of your products. Some of your customers might not be able to take maximum advantage of your products because they cannot use a particular feature easily. You can create a short video or carry some snap-shots that will show how to use that feature.
• You can publish important industry news with your take on it. This positions you as an industry expert. You may comment on some government policies affecting your trade. Generally you should add your opinion and not just report the news.
• The ecommerce sites are quite mechanical generally without much human element. As you might know, "people do business with people and not companies." If you talk about a few key people of your company, post their photographs, highlight some personality traits (don't get too personal, just talk about how he serves insistent customers with a smile, how he solves complicated service problems in a few minutes), some prospects and customers may find an increased traction towards your company.
• You can highlight any awards or recognition you got recently. This will increase the brand value and increase customer confidence.
• People love stories. Why don't you make some posts about how a customer averted a major crisis in his life (personal or business) by using your products or because you shipped same day despite receiving the order late in the evening?
• You can run periodic customer surveys and ask them what part of your products and company they like most or use most. You will be surprised at the answers you get - it may not be what you thought and will give you an entirely new aspect to highlight in your marketing.

With a little bit of publicity like a link from your main site home page and submission to some top blog directories, you can stake your claim on another ranking position in the search engine results page. I strongly recommend you to link to your internal and most relevant pages rather than link to the home page always.

If you want to get some help in setting up an optimized blog for your site, please check this out.

Jeff Johnson, a reputed marketer and SEO specialist has released a customized copy of SEO enhanced Wordpress blog software, wherein he has included some nice plugins and settings for getting together a SEO optimized blog so that you can make money while writing about your favorite industry and products. The blog should get good rankings and traffic quickly.

While he does include easy to understand instructions, we appreciate that you may not be feeling adventerous and excited about doing all that work. If so, you can take advantage of our hands-free setup service for a nominal $40 per blog. You just need to send us the details of your domain name and hosting account and we will setup your blog exactly as Jeff recommends. Write to me at arun AT ebizindia DOT com (you know how to write that address in your email) and I will send you instructions for payment.

I came across this interesting concept while going through the new book by David Meerman Scott - The New Rules of Viral Marketing. While most of the job seekers are writing the resumes where they are talking about what degrees thay have, the recruiters are looking for real world experiences, domain expertise and are analysing how you can help their organisation.

If you setup a blog where you share your experiences with handling complicated situations, demanding customers, technical challenges and whatever else that matters for your position, your prospective employers will definitely treat you in an entirely different way. You will quickly stand out from the crowd with the polished resumes. Yes, you need to have your resume too but include the vital details and refer prominently to your blog - and see the jobs rain on you. Stop looking for that job and start posting on your blog. The jobs will start looking for you!

If you are at a loss about how to setup that blog, you can contact Rentablogger, the blog setup professionals.

Clickbank, a very famous Internet marketplace carrying 100,000+ products for sale and more than 10,000 affiliates promoting them, finally gets a blog. They plan to communicate to the affiliates and customers about the various policies and upcoming things through this blog.

They opted for Wordpress, a highly popular and free blogging platform for this blog. I noticed that they have turned off the 'URL of the poster' feature to discourage users who just post comments to get a valuable back link to their own sites. This should help them in cutting down on spammy comments. At the same time, I was surprised to see links to some other blogs and sites from the sidebar. I am not sure if they have linked to them because of their blog quality or any other criteria.

If you have been blogging with Wordpress, you might be aware that Wordpress 2.5 has been released. Seeing the large number of new features, you are drooling to get your blog upgraded to the latest version but do not want to get your hands dirty with all the FTP and other related hassles. Here's help!

We can upgrade your Wordpress blogs to the latest version (currently version 2.5) for a nominal $25 per blog. We refund 100% of the payment if the blog upgrade cannot be carried out for any reason. You can pay the fee by Paypal to arun AT ebizindia DOT com and send me the FTP information. The blog upgrade will be carried out within 1 business day (much sooner mostly).

Happy blogging!

You have just released a shiny new widget. Or launched a cool information product. Now you want to know what people think about it. Why not blog about it and invite feedback?

A blog is a cool way to talk about some uncommon uses for your products and increase consumption. Launched a new software that makes cool Flash videos? Why not make a blog post that explains how people can use it to increase their sales or tap new prospects? What do the people think about it? Are they liking it? Do they find a particular option confusing? Have they located a bug?

If you invite people to post comments about their opinion on your shiny new product or service, they may let you know what they find great about it or what needs fixing. Take the feedback openly. It is OK if they have discovered some bugs. As long as you fix the bugs promptly, it is not very bad to have problems. This is the cheapest way to get frank opinion and feedback from the market. Incredibly cheaper than appointing some survey agency to go out and interview users, compile a report and then send to you after may be, months. Try it!