Shane’s SEO Plugin List

My list consists of 3 amazing plugins. The first is All-In-One SEO, second is Google XML Sitemap, and third is SEO Smart Links. These three are great and are always kept up to date. Below is a image and small description or each.

1) All-In-One SEO

All In One SEO is by far the most used SEO plugin that WordPress offers. It is really great and simple to use. You have a tab on the left of the dashboard. This is where you can do everything you need for the home page. It lets you do everything from keywords, description, title, canonical urls, title formats, additional headers for post/pages, and much more. The really great thing is that you can do SEO for each individual page and post right inside the pages or post you are working on. You can also set it up so that it takes your tags as keywords. This is by far the best SEO plugin WordPress has to offer. You can find All-In-One SEO on WordPress.org or go to the creators website at Semper Fi Web Design

2) Google XML Sitemap

As my second pick I feel this is just as important as my first pick. This creates a XML sitemap that is browser friendly. Now just because it says Google in the title I dont want you to think it just is for Google. Nope this plugin creates a sitemap that will work for most search engines and it also submits to the major search engines for you. It also lets you set a priority on stuff like posts, pages, homepage, and others. Besides doing that it lets you exclude certain categories, individual posts, and lets you select the frequency of change to your content. This lets search engines know how often they need to crawl your site. You can download this plugin on wordpress.org or go to the creators site at Arne Brachhold

3) SEO Smart Links

My third pick is not necessarily the most needed but it comes in real handy if you want to inter link word to pages or want to do external links every time a word is used. It makes it really easy to build links between friends and/or sites you own. This plugin is pretty cool it basically lets you choose words that you want to link to urls. It also automatically makes inter links to all words that are pages and posts. So for instance if you post something that has contact and that is the name of your contact page it will make a inter link. This plugin be downloaded at wordpress.org or you can get it at the creators site at Vladimir Prelovac.

Other SEO Plugins

Here are some other great SEO plugins for WordPress. These are not bad plugins by no means, they just did not make my personal best list. All of these plugin can be found on wordpress.org and below they all link to their creators website.

• Automatic SEO Link
• Head Space 2
• Meta Robots WordPress plugin
• Nofollow Case By Case
• Platinum SEO plugin
• Redirection
• SEO Blogroll
• SEO for Paged Comments
• SEO friendly and HTML valid subheadings
• SEO Friendly Images
• SEO Post Links
• SEO Title Tag

Shane’s Keyword Tool List

1) Google Keyword Tool
Well to start the best tool hands down has to be Google’s Keyword Tool. Not only is this tool free but it give you a good ideas of the amount of people that are using certain keywords based on your page or word that you input.

2) Google Trends
Google Trends really isn’t a keyword tool to say but can be used the same way. Really in order to get traffic to a article, you need to find out what is getting talked about. So I personally use >a href=”http://www.google.com/trends”>Google Trends to find keywords about topics that are popular at the time.

3) Word Stream
What can I say about Word Stream. I personally don’t use it that much because of Google’s wonderful system but if I am in need of a second opinion, so to say, I go here.

4) Word Tracker
Let alone Word Tracker has a great keyword system, it has other tools that are also useful. Word Tracker is not free but they do offer a free trial.

I know that my list is not the biggest but I don’t believe in using a ton of different systems that might work. I aim to get a few system that work for me and keep using what works. If you might have any suggestions to what I should add to the list or even what I should try out please comment with your suggestions.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and some all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

Placing The Tags and Attributes

Well lets start with our main title tag and meta tags. These tags go in the head area of your web page. This is located at pretty much the top of your page. Example:

<head>
<title>This is your title tag</title>
<meta name="description" content="This is your descriptive sentance">
</meta><meta name="keywords" content="These, Are, Your, Keywords,">
</meta></head>

With these tags there aren’t really limitations to them. But most search engines have limitations to them. For instance your description should be no more then 120 characters because most search engines only use 120 characters. With your keywords really you should have between 8-12. With your title tag it should be at least 60 characters.

On to the other tags/attributes. Your alt and title attribute for images and links. The alt and title attribute can be used for the image but only the title attribute can be used for the link. These are pretty simple but sometimes easy to forget to do. Example:

<a href="" title="This is Your title attribute for a link">for a link</a>
<img src="" alt="This is your alt" title="This is your title" />

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and some all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

Creating The Template File

In you are new to Magento then this will be kind of fun for you. First you need to create your .phtml file. In order to do that you need to navigate to your themes template pages folder. How to find that? Well if you are using the default Magento theme then you would first go to app -> frountend -> default -> default -> template -> page inside of there you will need to create you template file. So let say we want to create a 4coulmn template. You would just add a 4columns.phtml or whatever you would like to call it. Now you may be thinking you are all done. Nope if you go into your Magento Admin Panel or Dashboard and go under cms pages. You will see that you can not select your new template as a layout. Well this is because you need to first tell the Magento xml file to use the template.

Editing The XML

Lets locate those xml files. If you are still in the template -> page directory then all you have to do is go out one directory to layout. If you are not in the directory anymore you will have to navigate to app -> frountend -> default -> default -> layout. Inside this directory you are going to be looking for the page.xml file. Open it and navigate to the bottom. You should find some code like this

    <!-- Custom page layout handles -->
    <page_empty translate="label">
        <label>All Empty Layout Pages</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/empty.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_empty>
    <page_one_column translate="label">
        <label>All One-Column Layout Pages</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/1column.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_one_column>
    <page_two_columns_left translate="label">
        <label>All Two-Column Layout Pages (Left Column)</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_two_columns_left>
    <page_two_columns_right translate="label">
        <label>All Two-Column Layout Pages (Right Column)</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-right.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_two_columns_right>
    <page_three_columns translate="label">
        <label>All Three-Column Layout Pages</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/3columns.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_three_columns>

Now you need to add your page teamplate to the end of the. So you would do something like this.

    <page_four_column translate="label">
        <label>Four Column Page Layout</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/4columns.phtml</template></action>
            <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
            <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        </reference>
    </page_four_column>

Once you have added that you should be good to go. If you do not see the layout in the drop down in the cms page area, you may need to refresh your Magento cache. To do this go the Magento Admin Panel or Dashboard and go to System->Cache Management. Refresh all the cache. If that does not work then you need to go back and make sure you have named everything correct.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and some all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

How To Break The Top 500000

Really to be honest breaking the top 500000 is not as hard as it might seems. I am going to give you a 5 step way to get your site closer breaking the top 500000 in Alexa. This will start you on your way to getting closer to the harder mark of 200000.

Step One – Content Is King

The biggest way to get more people to your site is to make it bigger. Now I don’t mean go out and find the biggest image you can and put it on your site. I mean make more articles, more posts, more pages, and more places for people to interact. A great way to start this is to build a blog. Most people hear blog and think well am I going to have to post daily. NO, you could post one article a month and it would be good enough. The worst part about blogs is getting a blog that is hosted by another site. For instance Blogspot. Getting a Blogspot account is not a bad thing but it will not help your site much. You need a blog that is built into your website like WordPress.

Step Two – Sitemap Submission

What is a sitemap? It is a easy xml template of your site. It makes it easy for search engines to crawl your site. You can make one of these really simply by just going to Google and type in Free Sitemap Builder. Once you have your sitemap you will need to put it somewhere on your server. Most of the time it is in the root directory of your website. After that you can submit it to all different search engines and then they will know what is on your website.

Step Three – Meta Tags

Your meta information is not the easiest thing to do because you have to get creative and it takes time. But, if you just put up the mere basics, like title, keywords, and descriptions. Your site will start to grow rapidly. A really good place to start with meta tags is Search Engine Watch.

Step Four – Social Media

One of the easiest and fastest ways to get traffic to your site is with Social Media. Everyone knows that Social Networks are the big thing. I really only know a few people who don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. The easiest way to get peopel to your site. Submit each page that you want people to find to StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Reddit, and many more. This is simple and takes but 30secs per submittion.

Step Five – Content Content Content

I know I mentioned this already and it is the number one way. But it is also the number 5 way because it is the best way to get people to your site. Really SEO, SEM, Submitting, and Social Media cant come close to a site that has a ton of content. If you don’t have content then you will not get many people.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by chance need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me, or, you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are gaining popularity in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for individual/private clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

With the release of Internet Explorer 9 there will be a lot of advancements to the IE browser. Now as a web developer does this mean that finally we will be doing away with IE6 and all its problems. While we are at it, it would be nice to see IE7 gone also. If Internet Explorer 9 is everything that Microsoft is making it out to be then as developers and web engineers we should finally be let loose from the IE constraints.

Now what exactly is Microsoft promising IE9 to have. Well, it is said that it will finally be able to handle all the CSS2 and most of the CSS3 functionality. Another thing that they are working on is to make IE9 HTML 5 complaint. There are many more changes that they are looking to make to IE9, if you would like to know more about IE9 you can find some good information on Wikipedia. I have been talking a lot about how Microsoft has made Internet Explorer 9 better for Web Developers and Designers. If you would like to see what IE9 can do you can go to Microsoft’s Test Drive site to download the Internet Explorer Platform Demo. You can also go there to see how well IE9 will measure up to the current browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Apera, and Safari.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by chance need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me, or, you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are gaining popularity in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for individual/private clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

Shane’s Opinions

I personally think that every person should have a blog or a place where they write about what they like. With this it should be a place that anyone can read and comment on. This is a great way to share your opinions about what you blog. This can create conversations that can lead to friendships and even job opportunities. Business owners don’t normally have a lot of time to read different sites but you will find that once they find a site they like. They will keep coming back. Let alone everyone should have there own blog. I feel that with everyone having a blog it will let them share everything they want with the world. If you are looking to get a blog or start a blog. There are a ton of different free sites out there that you can start blogging (blogspot, wordpress, and more). I think the best thing is to not only have a blog but have a website that houses your blog. This should be a personal site that is just about you. What I would recommend if you are in need of a website is to contact chosen. Chosen is a small company that looks to grow individuals and companies.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

Step One – Adding Code To Your Functions.php File

I am going to try and make this quite simple so that you really don’t have to understand what it does you just have to understand where it goes. Inside your WordPress Theme file you should add the code below to your functions.php file. Make sure that the code is inside of your < ?php ?> code.

$meta_boxes =
  array(
    "image" => array(
      "name" => "image",
      "type" => "text",
      "std" => "",
      "title" => "Image Options",
      "description" => "Upload an image with the add a image button 
      and paste the URL here. Images will be auto resized.")
    );
function meta_boxes() {
  global $post, $meta_boxes;
  echo' <div>';
  foreach($meta_boxes as $meta_box) {
    $meta_box_value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $pre.'_value', true);
    if($meta_box_value == "")
      $meta_box_value = $meta_box['std'];
      echo'<div>
      <p align="center">';		
      echo'<input type="hidden" name="'.$meta_box['name'].'_noncename" id="'.$meta_box['name'].'_noncename" value="'.wp_create_nonce( plugin_basename(__FILE__) ).'" />';
      echo'<h2 class="alignleft" style="padding: 0 1.5em 0 .5em;">'.$meta_box['title'].'</h2>';
      echo'</p><span>';
      echo'<input type="text" name="'.$meta_box['name'].'_value" value="'.get_post_meta($post-/>ID, $meta_box['name'].'_value', true).'" size="85%" /><br />';
      echo'<p><label for="'.$meta_box['name'].'_value">'.$meta_box['description'].'</label></p>';
      echo'</span></div>'; 
  }
  echo'</div>';		
}
function create_meta_box() {
  global $theme_name;
  if ( function_exists('add_meta_box') ) {
    //This adds the option to your posts
    add_meta_box( 'new-meta-boxes', 'Image Post Options', 'meta_boxes', 'post', 'normal', 'high' );
    //This adds the option to your pages
    add_meta_box( 'new-meta-boxes', 'Image Page Options', 'meta_boxes', 'page', 'normal', 'high' );
  }
}
//This saves your data when entered
function save_postdata( $post_id ) {
  global $post, $meta_boxes;
  foreach($meta_boxes as $meta_box) {
  // Verify
  if ( !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST[$meta_box['name'].'_noncename'], plugin_basename(__FILE__) )) {
    return $post_id;
  }
  if ( 'page' == $_POST['post_type'] ) {
    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post_id ))
      return $post_id;
    } else {
    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post_id ))
      return $post_id;
    }
    $data = $_POST[$meta_box['name'].'_value'];
    if(get_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value') == "")
      add_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', $data, true);
    elseif($data != get_post_meta($post_id, $pre.'_value', true))
      update_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', $data);
    elseif($data == "")
      delete_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', get_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', true));
  }
}
//This adds your meta boxes so you can use them
add_action('admin_menu', 'create_meta_box');
add_action('save_post', 'save_postdata');

Step Two – Adding The Image To Your Theme

This is where the fun part comes in to play. With this part you need to decide if you are going to have the image pulled in with a auto size and maybe a resizing function like timthumb. Timthumb is a great function because it resizes your image and crunches it down to a more web useful size. For instance most people don’t know that image are most of the time to big to have on a website. You must re-save a image so that it is web quality. What that means is so that it isn’t so big that it makes your website slow. I will be showing you how to do this with the timthumb function.

< ?php $values = get_post_custom_values("image_value"); if (isset($values[0])) { ?>
<div class="image">
  <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" style="float:left;">    
    //Your Image With Timthumb function
    <img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?/>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=
      < ?=$values[0];?>&amp;w=283&amp;h=120&amp;zc=1" alt="< ? the_title(); ?>" 
    />
  </a>
</div>
< ?php } ?>

This code can be recreated to your needs. In order to set the size of your image you will see w=283 and h=120 that is your height and width. Now if you were to not want to use the Timthumb function all you would need inside the image field is src=”< ?=$values[0];?> alt=”< ?the_title(); ?>“. With that finished let go to the next step to get Timthumb working correctly.

Step Three – Finishing Timthumb

In order to finish Timthumb you need to setup your folders inside of your theme you will need to create a folder called scripts. Inside of there you will need to create a folder called cache. You will also have to download the Timthumb file here Timthumb (114). Add this file to your scripts folder. You will need to make sure that your folder permissions are 755. After you have finished this you will be done. Again the code to get the image can be placed where ever you would like it.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

However if you are looking to make more money and grow to a national level you need to do something bigger. There are some great ways to market yourself on a national or even a global level. Probably the best way is to build yourself a website. With a website you can reach out to everyone that has a computer. So you are looking at almost every household in the US and a lot in other countries.

Building A Website

Almost anyone can build a website. You could just ask your neighbor if they know anyone who builds a website. More times than not, they do, but very rarely can that person build you a professional one. But, if you are really serious about making yourself and your website known you need to find a professional. A company that I work for is Chosen. We are not just a business but we are a small business of experts. We do not charge high prices that you would get at a bigger company or even with a bigger name. Our prices are inexpensive, but our work is of high quality.

We also develop all our customer sites. So you are not getting something from someone halfway around the world. We pride ourselves in helping to build small to mid businesses not just with their website, but with business development altogether. We don’t just build you something and then walk away. We make sure that you are happy with what you get and periodically do checkups with our clients to see if there is anything that needs changing or updated.

Marketing Your Site

Once you have yourself a website you need to market it. Now some people wonder what this means and ask “isn’t getting a website marketing.” Well yes but if you don’t market your site then no one is going to see it. This is where SEO, SEM, sitemap building, PPC and other means of trafficking come into play. I will offer brief descriptions on each.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your site more visible by search engines. This is done with keywords, title tags, alt tags, heading, and other web elements. SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the process of marketing your site with the many different search engines. This takes place by letting these search engine know that you exist. Sitemap Building is the process of creating a sitemap for search engines. A sitemap is a easier and quicker way of showing search engines your site. So the faster they see your site the faster they bring people to your site. Probably the fastest way to build traffic to your site is with PPC or Pay Per Click campaigns. What these are, are the little ads that you see all over sites now. Most of the time they are Google Ads solicited through Google Adsense accounts. The process by you submitting your site with whatever company you are using. Most of the time Google. It also involves you select catchy keywords that best describes your site, and applying them to the account, and in time these words show up in engines, and lead visitors to your site. If someone clicks your ad, you pay for that click, but this can get expensive with the more keywords that you have or can be really cheap.

Probably the next most notable way of marketing your site is through Social Media network sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others. There are many more ways to market your site and thus ensure it gets seen.

Summary

So if you are a company that would like to become a global company all you have to so is get on the web. Once you apply some of the above measures, talked about and you will see your sales climb. Who knows maybe they will climb enough that you can retire and have others run the business.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

Please check out Chosen. If you need assistance with web design, web development, search engine optimization, editing, content creation or marketing done to one of your sites please feel free to contact me or Chosen. Chosen is a small, but growing national-based firm offering Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Editing, and Web Marketing skills. We have done work for clients and companies, by preference, but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you. Please mention that you came from shanestrong.com.

Add Your jQuery Scripts

We are going to use Google’s AJAX Library to add our jQuery library to our header. You may ask why we would do this well including the jQuery library from a external source will make less stress on your server and we all know that Google’s servers can handle the stress.

<head>
//Google Hosted
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.0/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
//Your Script
<script type="text/javascript">
   jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
      $(".cornerpeel").hover(function() { //Hover Over
         $(".cornerpeel img , .message").stop()
	 .animate({ //Expand the Message and the Hover Image
	    width: '138px',
	    height: '138px'
	 }, 600);
      } , function() {
         $(".cornerpeel img").stop() //Hover Out Go Back To Original
	 .animate({
	    width: '50px',
	    height: '50px'
	 }, 200);
	 $(".message").stop() //Hover Out Go Back To Original
	 .animate({
            width: '50px',
	    height: '50px'
	 }, 180); //This should be a tad faster than the image because IE is known to glitch
      });
   });
</script>
</head>

Create Your Styles

These are your styles and can be changed up depending on where your image is and what size you want to start out with.

.cornerpeel {position: relative;}
.cornerpeel img {
  width: 50px; 
  height: 50px;
  z-index: 101;
  position: absolute;
  right: 0; 
  top: 0;
}
.cornerpeel .message {
  width: 50px; 
  height: 50px;
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 100;
  right: 0; 
  top: 0;
  background: #fffcf9 url(http://www.shanestrong.com/jQuery/cornerpeel/rss.jpg) no-repeat right top;
  text-indent: -9999px;
}

Create Your Corner Peice

This is were you create your hoverable corner piece. This will be placed somewhere in your header area or right inside your body tag.

<div class="cornerpeel">
   <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShaneStrong">
      <img src="http://www.shanestrong.com/jQuery/cornerpeel/corner_img.png" alt="" />
      <span class="message">Subscribe To My Feed</span>
   </a>
</div>

Your Finished

Well that was it, that is all that you need to create your self a corner peel. If you would like to see this in action you can download my script at the bottom. There is a ton of things that you can do with jQuery that can make your site seem more flashy without having to find a flash developer. jQuery is one of the fastest growing languages around. If you have any tutorials that you would like to publish on my site please go to my contact page.

jQuery Corner Peel: Corner Peel Trial

Download: jQuery Corner Peel (339)

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

How to use jQuery Accordion

You do not have to use this for WordPress, you can use this on almost anything to make more space. Here is how you would go about using the Accordion widget.

Include your scripts

These should go into your head section of your web page.

<head>
//Default jQuery Style Sheet
<link type="text/css" href="http://jqueryui.com/latest/themes/base/ui.all.css" rel="stylesheet" />
//Google Hosted
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.0/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/ui/ui.accordion.js"></script>
</head>

What happens next?

Now you have to create your accordion script. This is going to be hard for anyone who has never worked with jQuery so get ready.

//Your accordion script
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    $("your_id or your_class").accordion();
});
</script>

That code can either go in your head section or your footer. Ok so I kind of lied about that part being hard to do. But this next part is going to be even harder yet.

//This is where you create you info
<div id="your_id" class="your_class">
//You only need either a class or a id.
//What ever you want to use the Accordion widget
//should have the same HTML element after your class
//or ID.
    <h3><a href="#">This will be the first area's heading</a></h3>
        <div>
            <p>This is your content in area 1</p>
        </div>
    <h3><a href="#">This will be the second area's heading</a></h3>       
        <div>
            <p>This is your content in area 2</p>
            <img src="http://www.shanestrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/jQuery-hover.jpg" />
        </div>
    <h3><a href="#">This will be the third area's heading</a></h3>
        <div>
            <p>This is your content in area 3</p>
            <p>Another paragraph</p>
        </div>
    <h3><a href="#">This will be the fourth area's heading</a></h3>
        <div>
            <p>This is your content in area 4</p>
            <ul>
                <li>List Item One</li>
                <li>List Item Two</li>
                <li>List Item Three</li>
            </ul>
        </div>
</div>

That is all there is to jQuery Accordion

The only thing left to do is check it out for yourself I have created a page that has all the code. If you would like to just see jQuery Accordion in action you can go to the link below. If you would like to save the page you can just go to it and (Right Click and go to Save Page As).

jQuery Accordion: jQuery Accordion Trial

Download: jQuery Accordion (310)

jQuery Accordion Extras

If you would like to learn more about this great jQuery widget just go to Here

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you by change need web design, web development, search engine optimization, or marketing done to one of your sites you can get in contact with me or you can contact Chosen. Chosen is a Lansing based Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Web Marketing firm. We are a small business but are growing in the Lansing Area for our Web Design and Development skills. We have done work for clients and companies. We prefer client work but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

Getting Started with Your Blog

If you haven’t yet gotten a web hosting plan, then it’s time to take the first step in making your blog public. Assuming you have a domain name, it’s time to decide how much you want to pay and for what services. The good news is hosting plans for blogging purposes are relatively cheap and easy to use. Look for a plan that offers some sort of advanced tool as like site builder or metrics reports, for instance.

Getting the WordPress Software

It is easy enough to obtain the WordPress program. Simply visit the website www.WordPress.org. It is a free program that is written in open source programming language so cost is not an issue and there is plenty of advice out there to help you. After you have downloaded the WordPress files, make sure you get them over to your file structure through your hosting FTP. That information should have been provided when you secured your hosting plan. When selecting a plan, keep in mind non-technical features like customer service and the ability to use special payment plans or promotions.

Setting up your WordPress Site and Blog

After the program file is on your site via FTP and you have selected your favorite theme via the control panel, go ahead and get acquainted with the point and click posting process so that when you have an idea to blog about you can quickly get it published with no delay. Try a couple of test runs and remember to go out and find some great themes to use as you refine the look and feel of your blog.

As you become more familiar with WordPress and the blogging process, you may wish to enhance your experience and learn about the more advanced functions involved in posting to the net, like managing videos and podcasts, for instance.

Introduction to WordPress 2.9 Part 1

WordPress 2.9 Part 1

Download Part 1 – WordPress 2.9 Part 1 (133)

Introduction to WordPress 2.9 Part 2

WordPress 2.9 Part 2

Download Part 2 – Wordpress 2.9 Part 2 (158)

Introduction to WordPress 2.9 Part 3

WordPress 2.9 Part 3

Download Part 3 – Wordpress 2.9 Part 3 (132)

Google Ads

Google everyone knows them and probably everyone has seen multiple ads by them. They will accept every site. Not just because they have the money to do so but they can measure where the person who clicked on the ad came from. For instance If you put ads up on your site by Google. You have to register where you live with them. Now not saying that you should but yeah you could go to a neighboring town and click on your ads and yes you will probably get money for it. But, Google is smart if it finds a pattern in clicks and area of the clicks then it will suspect something and you can get prosecuted for it. What does this mean you will loose your ability to use Google ads and could be fined and possible jail time. In order to setup Google ads on your site all that you have to do is register with Google Adsence it is really easy to find just go to Google and search for Google ads or ads. You do not have to have a Google email to register. Once you setup your account then all you have to do is go through the tutorials inside Google Adsence to get the feel for how to go about making money. The really tough part about making money with Google is where to put the ads. For instance you want the ads in places that people are going to click them and they dont look like ads. There are different kinds of ads and ad sizes that you can choose from. I am using there rss feed ads and there regular ads.

Other Ad Companies

There are a ton of other really good ad companies but the two that I like the most is Chitika Ads and Text Link Ads. Both of these ad companies pay pretty good especially Text Link Ads. The only problem with these ad companies is you have to have a high amount of traffic to your site before they will accept you. A really good way to increase your traffic to your site is with Optimization. This can be done in many different ways the best is to get everything optimized. This includes SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Title and Alt Tags, Content Emphasis, Creating Ads For Your Self, and much more. The best is to do all of them but if you are looking for some quick traffic. Then you best bet is to create a ad with a high end company (Google). Google is extremely cheap for creating ads it would only cost you around $50-$100 a month for good ads and it goes up from there. Now even with creating ads for yourself this doesn’t mean that your site is going to get enough of a boost that it needs. That is why I said that it is best to get everything done. That way you are building traffic from multiple areas. Whether it be Search Engines, Advertising, or Keywords.

SEO Packages

If you are in need of any Search Engine Optimization I do have packages and I can teach people how to do SEO. My monthly packages for SEO all depend on how much you want done. I charge $25US an hour. With that my recommended package would be 20 hours a month this will give you the best outcome. Of course the more hours you do the better outcome you will get but at 20 hours a month I can really get enough done to your site that it will show improvement a lot quicker and will make you more money faster. I also have a bunch more different packages and prices for web based projects, you can go to Work Prices.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you need assistance with web design, web development, search engine optimization, editing, content creation or marketing done to one of your sites please feel free to contact me or Chosen. Chosen is a small, but growing Lansing-based firm offering Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Editing, and Web Marketing skills. We have done work for clients and companies, by preference, but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.

The first thing you have to do is find out what is making your site slow in the first place. If you have no clue on how to do this, find tools that will tell you your issues. For instance if I was going to make my site faster for instance, I use Firefox as my main browser and it has many different tools/plugins that you can tell needs to be changed. So, open up your browser and download the Firefox plugins Firebug and YSlow. Firebug really doesn’t help with making your site faster but it is a great tool if you are trying to learn things about coding. With YSlow you can test your site and see what is making your site so slow. It grades everything involved with your site. The only problem with this is if you dont understand what it is telling you then it really won’t help you. That is why it is sometimes better to get someone else, who knows what they are doing, to make your site faster for you.

What I Would Do

The first thing would be to go into YSlow and see what is causing your site to be so sluggish. If you aren’t using Firefox there is a lot of different tools all over the internet that you can use. Here is a good place to start Faster Web Page.

How Old Is Your JavaScript Files

If it was a javascript issue then I would minimize the amount of javascript that is being used and compress it so that the browser can read it faster. Having multiple javascript and/or old javascript files will make your site load much slower than having them up to date and compressed into one file or maybe two.

What About My Stylesheets

If it is a stylesheet issue then I would combine as many stylesheets into one as I could and compress them also. I find that the best thing to do is to have a compressed file and another copy of the file that is not compressed. That way if you need to make changes it is easy to change. Then you just make a new compressed file.

How Many Images Do I Have

If there is an image issue then I will take a look at what images are on the site and how large they are. Some persons don’t know that if you are making an image for the internet, and you don’t have a auto compression system in place then your image is going to be huge, most of the times. This will slow down the browser a ton. The best thing to do is to save the images ready for web. If you dont know how to do that then we can go back to YSlow and they have a great tool that will do it for you. If you go under tools at the bottom you will see All Smush.it. This compresses your images down to there compression rating and then lets you save them to your computer and all that you have to do next is upload them to your site.

Who Is My Host

My last and most important issue for most sites is who you have hosting your site. If your site is slow because of the company that is hosting it then you need to go somewhere else. For instance some really good companies to buy a server from are Hostmonster, Bluehost, Hostgator and many more. But some persons are getting hosted from neighbors, friends or uncles. What kind of hosting do you think that is. If you are not looking to spend the money to buy a server for your self you can find companies that can host your site for you at reasonable prices. For instance my company Chosen has different hosting packages. Our lowest is $25 a month which includes support and up to 3 emails. We have servers from Hostmonster. They are in my opinion the best hosting company out there. They have the best support and they have very little to none down time.

Final Thoughts

So that were a few different things that you should check into if you have a slow site. If none of these work for you 9 times out of 10 your site is too large, and, you need to think about a remake or paying someone to go through and tell you what need to be done to make the site faster. Your site should be updated about every couple of years if not every year. This doesn’t mean a new design to the site. No this means having someone go into the code of the site and optimize whatever they can to bring your site up-to-date.

Website Design , Development, and SEO Marketing

If you need assistance with web design, web development, search engine optimization, editing, content creation or marketing done to one of your sites please feel free to contact me or Chosen. Chosen is a small, but growing Lansing-based firm offering Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Editing, and Web Marketing skills. We have done work for clients and companies, by preference, but we also take contract work. We have worked with most of the biggest web companies in the Lansing Area and all the way out to California. We would love to hear from you.