Locoed Web Development

You have questions about Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress and I have answers. While these FAQs address some of the most common concerns users of the Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin face, if your case is unique and is not addressed in these FAQs, please leave your question in the comments below. I will answer at my cat’s earliest convenience.

• Can’t See Any Codes on My Page!
  Codes are only generated for pages that contain attached images. If no images are attached, no codes will be generated.
• I Still Can’t See No Darn Codes!
  If you’re using a caching plugin, make sure you reset/delete cached files.
• What The Heck – Still No Codes Showing!
  Seriously, video is not the same as pictures. Embedding videos in your post may enhance it with media, but it still does not equal having pictures attached to the post.
• It’s Not a Video I Have in the Post. It’s Pictures, I Swears on the Precious!
  Using free image hosting services (such as PhotoBucket.com or ImageShack.us) to host your images will not get the codes generated. You must host the images and have them attached to the post. Don’t be a cheap donkey and host your own images to have full and thorough control over your entire site’s content.
• Got Attached Pictures, Dumped the Cache, But Still No Codes!
  Please go to your Plugins page and click on Activate button associated with the Intelligent Traffic Generator plugin.
• This is Dumb! Why Exactly Are Codes Only Generated for Pages with Images?
  Because internet users are busy browsing through many sites and majority won’t read everything your post contains. They will only scan through it hardly getting a glimpse of what you wrote, but they will always see the images. Internet is a visual medium and pictures are not only what gets noticed the first, it is also what gets noticed the most – aka gets most attention.

  There are many WordPress plugins that contain a “Link to This Post” properties. This is not one of them. Offering a link to your post simply doesn’t entice internet users enough, but offering them a way to hotlink your picture, clearly indicating that you will host the image and will make posting the image on their site easy by offering a ready to use code is a major invitation to make them do it.

• Got the Codes Working, But Where’s My Traffic?
  Internet is an unlimited marketplace. You have millions of webmasters to compete with. They are all trying their best to get the surfers to visit their sites, not yours. That makes surfers very spoiled and unless you provide them with content that doesn’t suck, no one will consider taking any steps that involve using anything from your site. This plugin is not a magic fix all potion. It works great with website that have quality content, but does nothing for those that don’t.

Unless you’re one of very few webmasters who only run their blogs for their own personal gratification or only for their friends and family to see, then you certainly understand the importance and challenges associated with traffic building. It is estimated that there are more than 250 Million active websites on the internet right now. That’s more than a quarter of million online real estates doing all they can to snatch as much of the internet’s traffic for themselves as possible.

Right amount as well as right quality of traffic can turn an internet enterprise of any size from money eating to money making. And let’s face it, unless you’re one of those few “rare breed of webmasters” who really only keep a website for themselves or those close to them, then you more likely than not really want to make some decent cash out of all that time and effort you put into your sites.

Money is much easier to make when your website has right traffic so when speaking about easy and free way to increase it, most webmasters listen twice as fast as anyone can speak. This being said, let me quit with all that introductory talk and get right down to business – introducing free plugin for WordPress that’s specifically formulated to intelligently assist in increasing traffic to your website through natural growth of backlinks generated by your visitors. Introducing Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress by Locoed Web Development.

Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress Generates Codes with Backlinks

Why Intelligent Traffic Generators Work

Iconic LOLCat website I Can Has Cheezburger is perhaps the best example of why intelligent traffic generators like the WordPress plugin I have developed work. Icanhascheezburger.com skyrocketed from being an unknown, new blog into being one of the busiest and most recognizable WordPress powered blogs on the internet within months. Page Rank™ grew into numbers most webmasters dream of but never see and traffic of epic proportions kept rolling in from both search engines and popular high traffic forums and social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.).

The secret to their success was a combination of witty content with a generated code that encouraged internet users to share the pictures they posted by just cutting and pasting the code. The code didn’t just contain a hotlink for the image to be displayed, but also a backlink pointing back to the post with desired anchor text. This instantly generated direct traffic to the website and also served as unlimited SERP booster.

Icanhascheezburger.com Used Intelligent Traffic Generators to Skyrocket Its Success

Any webmaster wishing to grow traffic to their website would be smart not to miss out on the little trick that made Icanhascheezburger.com (as well as many other website) a major success and a huge money maker. Think about it – many people who make it to your website would probably share your pictures on the forums they frequent or on their Facebook profile or their own blogs, but they don’t know if they can and even if they could, there is so much hassle involved in getting the URL of the image and turning it into workable code that they either give up, or put it off till later but later never comes. There is always something more important to do later and your site gets forgotten. By simply offering the visitors a reminder that the picture can be posted on their blogs and generating a code for them which they only need to copy and paste, you are encouraging them to do it, setting yourself on the way to gaining that backlink and you didn’t even have to move your finger.

How Does Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin Work?

The Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin checks whether your WordPress post has an embedded image in it and if there is one, it generates both HTML Code (for blogs) and BBCode (for Forums) so people who are reading that post can copy the code and share the image. Remember – internet users are very visual so pictures always get attention. Even if you make a post about something very general, such as a celebrity who cut her hair, there could be many internet users who would like to share the picture on a forum they are members of or their Facebook profile, etc. Give them a reminder that they could do it and make doing it easy for them and you will have greatly increased your chances of someone going ahead and sharing it along with the backlink that’s part of the generated code.

Because forums can be a source of great traffic and offer unrivalled exposure, I have enhanced the plugin with the ability to also generate BBCode, which is something that Icanhascheezburger.com doesn’t offer but should not be missed out on. HTML code is useless to most forum users and forum users are far more likely to share pictures found on other people’s blogs than blog owners who could perceive yours as “competition”.

Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin and Keyword Density

As a busy webmaster you are likely well aware of the importance of Keyword Density on the pages of your websites. However if you focus too much on stuffing your text with keyword phrases, the readability suffers and surfers won’t like your site. The Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress can help here too. Through the use of dynamic elements that are easy to integrate, you can add the title of your post, and/or the title tag of the image into the content area of your page increasing keyword density without compromising the readability of your text and without stepping over keyword stuffing line which when picked up by the search engines, could get your site penalized and result in SERP drop.

The Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin fixes this issue and bypasses it in the most intelligent way, allowing you to increase your keyword density without anyone ever entertaining the possibility that you are keyword spamming. Extra keywords will appear right below your text but since they will be there as part of the generated code, to a human eye they will appear as an independent part of the page while to a search engine they will still be there as the content of the page continues on towards the comments.

How to Use The Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin

This plugin works under WordPress blogging platform. Download the plugin from the link below and upload it into the /wp-content/plugins/ subdirectory of your blog (where all other plugins are) using an FTP program. The plugin consists of a single file named intelligent-traffic.php, it should be uploaded directly into the /wp-content/plugins/ directory as it won’t work correctly if you create a subfolder and place it in there instead.

Once uploaded, go to the admin panel of your WordPress blog and click on the Plugins button which is on the main menu (the one along the left side). Locate the Intelligent Traffic Generator plugin in the list of installed plugins and activate it by clicking on associated Activate button. The administration page for the plugin can be accessed by clicking the Intelligent Traffic button under Settings.

Setting Up Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin

At present time, Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress allows you to set the size of text areas to fit your blog and to set what text should appear above the codes. Number of columns value is set to 25 by default, while number of rows value is set to 3. These will work reasonably well on most blogs but if you use a rather narrow theme, you might want to decrease the columns value or increase it if your theme is rather wide.

Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin Settings Page Under WordPress

To customize text that will appear above your generated codes (to introduce the codes), you can either “hard wire” it to use the same text on each page, or use any (or both) of the dynamic elements I have incorporated into the plugin. They are Post Title and Image Title Tag.

Adding Post Title to Your Intelligent Traffic Generator

To increase keyword density by displaying your post title in the text that appears above the codes generated by the Intelligent Traffic Generator, add following string into your text:

%%post_title%%

Wherever this string appears in your text, it will be replaced in the post by the title of your post. For example, if you are writing a post titled “John Travolta Sporting New Moustache” and your “Customize Text to Go with Codes” section is set to:

Don’t forget to share this “%%post_title%%” picture on your blog or forum.

…then on your actual post page it will appear as the following text:

Don’t forget to share this “John Travolta Sporting New Moustache” picture on your blog or forum.

I used double quotes in an example above and they will be displayed as double quotes as only %%post_title%% will be replaced with the title, regardless of what characters appear directly before or directly after it.

If you really wish to keyword spam your blog, then you can use the string repeatedly in your generated text, but this is not advised as then you will be stepping over the line and could actually get yourself penalized for keyword stuffing.

Adding Image Title Tag to Your Intelligent Traffic Generator

Aside from Page Title, you can also add Image Title Tag to the text. Image Title Tag is what you assign to the image by using the Add an Image form – an internal WordPress feature. Image Title Tag is the text you see when you hover your mouse over an image. To display an Image Title Tag in your text, use the following string:

%%img_title%%

The use of this string will work in exactly the same way as described in the Post Title section above. You can use both Post Title and Image Title Tag at the same time. The plugin will automatically replace each instance of the string with the text they represent.

Image Title is a Mandatory Tag Under WordPress

Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin on Live Blogs

You can see Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin being used on following live WordPress blogs:

• Imbecile Entertainment Blog
• Beer Steak News Blog

Bandwidth Usage Concerns

I know what most of you are thinking right about now – if I use the Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin and allow other webmasters or forums users to publish images I’m hosting on their websites, won’t it do me a disservice by increasing my server costs? Afterall, if I allow and encourage direct hotlinking, it will be me who’ll have to pick up the bandwidth bill.

This is a legitimate question and a legitimate concern. But consider this – have you ever enquired about how much money it costs and/or how much effort it takes to acquire a legitimate backlink? Webmasters spend thousands of dollars trying to increase their SERP and dedicate countless manhours to obtain legitimate backlinks to their websites.

If you do get your image hotlinked on a – let’s say – super busy forum, that could actually result in an extra charge for extra bandwidth usage by your webhost, but a link from a super busy forum would likely result in hundreds of new references many of which could click on your CPR ads or turn into subscribers bookmarking your site and a value of those cannot be enumerated. Those few extra bucks you may have to shell out for extra bandwidth burnt will likely result in increased revenue that will outgrow the extra cost many times over.

All successful webmasters know that extra exposure that could cost you a dollar in increased bandwidth costs, could result in ten dollars in increased revenue which is exactly what webmasters want. Furthermore, if you really want to see your website grow, you must be prepared to cover for the cost of a more powerful server that busy websites require. If you’re only willing to spend the amount of money the cheapest server space available mounts up to, then you’re not prepared to own a mega website and will likely never see yours grow into one.

WordPress Version Compatibility and Known Issues

Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin is compatible with, and tested on WordPress 3.0.1. It was also tested to work on all previous versions of WordPress down to v2.3. I do not recommend using the plugin on any earlier version of WordPress and frankly, if you are a WordPress user, do yourself a favor and upgrade your blog to the latest, most stable and most secure version as soon as possible.

There are currently a few issues with the plugin I am aware of and will be addressed in future releases:

More Than One Picture in a Post

Plugin is programmed to check whether a post contains an image (attachment). If an attachment is found, it will generate and display the codes at the end of the post. However, the plugin can only generate a code for one image so if you upload more than one images to a post, it will pick a random one to use it for code generation. Future releases will have an option to choose whether you want to disable the codes from being generated for multi-image posts.

Future release of the plugin will also have the ability to disable the code from being displayed on single post pages, but will display it on attachment pages so multiple-image posts will have codes for each separate image, but not for the post with the gallery of images.

Download Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress

Are you ready to take your blog to the next level? If so, download the Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress by clicking on the banner below and use it.

This is my first WordPress plugin I have developed and is still in Beta phase. I welcome all feedback and suggestions. There are new features and improvements planned for the plugin so please stay tuned. I’m releasing this plugin as pre-release for Beta testing so remember – use at your own risk.

LICENSE

Locoed Intelligent Traffic Generator Plugin for WordPress is released under GPLv2 license.

DISCLAIMER

This plugin is not a magic wand. It is meant to encourage the visitors to your website to create backlinks to your post by reminding them that they can post the image they see on their website, blog, forum, Facebook, etc. – and offering them an easy way to do it with just a few clicks of a button. However, the plugin can in no way guarantee the visitors will in fact do that. Using a compelling text to go with the codes would increase your chances of conversion, but most of all – unless what they see is engaging and captivating enough, they may not consider sharing the image with anyone. All the plugin does is encourage the visitors to do it, reminds them of how easy it is to do it and offers them a way to do it with zero hassle. If you look at the websites such as icanhascheezburger.com, you will see that a key to success is a combination of engaging content with this type of plugin. Now plugin is ready and available for your use for free. The rest is up to you.

Update August 2011

I’m taking part in an expedition that will take me off civilized world for 2 years. I will have no internet access and will not be able to offer any support or updates for this plugin. As new versions of WordPress are released, the plugin may become incompatible. Use at your own risk.

Link building is one of the most important elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that can help you rank higher in the search engines which can result in more traffic to your site. There are several strategies one can implement which could lead to one way links to your website. In order to gain search engine juice, you want those links to be DoFollow as NoFollow links don’t pass on link juice and don’t help you improve ranking with most search engines.

Commenting on authority blogs is one of the ways to gain one way links. Below is the list of some of the best DoFollow blogs with Page Rank 6 (PR6) which is a high Rage Rank and a sign of a authority website. All of these PR6 blogs are DoFollow guaranteed – at least they were at the time of this post and for many years prior.

Please remember – links from PR6 websites can vastly improve your search engine ranking, however you have to put an effort into obtaining that link. Your effort consists of writing quality comments that expand on the topic discussed. Do not ever spam any blog. Always post relevant and well researched comments. It’s good business and it can also prevent your website from being blacklisted by spam fighting scripts. Let me rephrase it one more time – below is a well researched list of some of the best PR6 blogs with DoFollow comments. Do not ever spam these blogs. Only post quality comments and contribute to the topic discussed. Afterall, if you’re really trying to build a quality on line presence, you do not want to have your website associated with spamming, do you?

Without further ado, best PR6 DoFollow blogs commenting on which can significantly aid your SEO and link building campaign is below:

PR6 DoFollow Blog of a UK Journalist www.currybet.net
PR6 DoFollow Career Professionals Blog www.brazencareerist.com
PR6 DoFollow Travel Blog www.sirpi.org (expired/dropped domain, but Search Engine still treat is as valid PR6)
PR6 DoFollow Democrats Political Blog sayanythingblog.com
PR6 DoFollow International Socialism Blog links.org.au
PR6 DoFollow Market Predictions Blog www.midasoracle.org
PR6 DoFollow New Zealand Green Party Blog blog.greens.org.nz
PR6 DoFollow Economics and Infometrics Blog www.tvhe.co.nz
PR6 DoFollow Politics and Opinion Blog www.illinipundit.com
PR6 DoFollow WordPress and Blogging Blog weblogtoolscollection.com (mostly not worth it since they will keep your comment, but remove the link)

Important: I do not own nor control any of these PR 6 blogs. I’m merely sharing valuable information that most webmasters keep as top secret. Please don’t abuse this information and don’t ever spam any of these blogs.

I was once like you – a newbie webmaster trying to make things work by learning the basics but the amount of information as well as misinformation was overwhelming. I understood the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) immediately, but when does one start when they want to learn all it’s tricks? Many years have passed since and I have gained thorough and comprehensive understanding of all aspects related to Search Engine Optimization and started dominating search engines for keyword phrases of my choice with ease.

True enough – I’m a real SEO expert with verifiable track record of success – my own website that are ahead of the game, not some dubious third party owned sites with questionable search engine ranking. As such, I do not offer search engine optimization services to anyone. Think about it for a second: if someone is truly a SEO expert, why oh why would they promote somebody else’s website? SEO requires lots of work and is an ongoing process. If I’m gonna put so much work into dominating a particular keyword phrase, I better make sure it is my own site that reaps the benefits, not somebody else’s. That always leads me to question true intentions behind all of those SEO experts who offer their services for insane amounts of money. It just makes no sense someone would build a business against their own.

Enough theory though – the fact that you have landed on this page means that you are looking for a free tutorial and free tips on Search Engine Optimization for newbies. And I will gladly share the basics with you. Because sharing is the essence of life. I would like to however stress, that my tutorial and tips will only and solely include facts, no fiction. There will be only and solely proven and verified information shared herein. I am in this for the long run; I do not need to and want to trick anyone. You can count on the information provided 100%. Let’s quit blabbering and cut to cheese, shell we? I just need you to note one thing – there is so much to SEO, it would be impossible to cover everything I know within one tutorial. This SEO tutorial is meant to introduce Search Engine Optimization basics. Experienced webmasters will still find many valuable tips here, however the premise is built around the basics, so new webmasters who do not know where to start have a place from where to take off.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

The basics of and idea behind SEO are simple – to attract quality readers and potential clients to your website. Afterall, if you invest all that time, effort and money into launching a beautiful website, you want to see it grow and do well. And as webmaster I know that there is nothing frustrating than having a better website with better product than someone else, but that someone else gets all the traffic and reaps all the benefits of it, including financial profits. That’s where SEO, or Search Engine optimization comes in – SEO is a set of tricks and techniques you utilize in order to help your website rank higher in the search engines. The higher up your website ranks for relevant keyword phrases, the more qualified traffic you could get for free, without advertising.

There are currently estimated 1.3 billion internet users. 85% use search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo to find websites of interest. Online spendings of these internet users have been growing year after year exponentially. That means that these internet users use search engines to find products they are looking to purchase and the websites that have the best search engine visibility (aka the websites that are listed on the first page) have the best chance of earning this business. Here’s the rub:

• Less than 25% of surfers go past top 10 results returned by the search engines
• Websites listed on first page of search engines get 80% more traffic that website listed on page 2

From above listed facts it is apparent that high search engine rankings for keyword phrases related to your niche can mean a lot of business for your website. Since you are likely competing against thousands or millions of similar websites each striving to get that customer, unless you have properly optimized your website, your competition is likely ahead of you and harvests all the business driven by the search engines while your sites stoops there with hardly any traffic.

Immediate business as result of high search engine ranking is however only one of several positives SEO delivers:

• If you rank high in the search engines, your website immediately gets recognized as “authority website” which helps branding immensely.
• If you rank for relevant keyword phrases, you know that traffic delivered to your site by the search engines is already prequalified and as such these are potential customers. Imagine you have an online store that sells equipment for mountaineers. If you properly optimize your website for search engines, then you could rank high for keyword phrases such as “mountaineering supplies”. So if you rank high for this phrase, you’re gonna get a lot of visitors sent to your website by the search engines who are on the internet searching for mountaineering supplies. That prequalifies them as potential customers. The would be worthless to you if your website was about BMW exterior accessories, but proper SEO delivers traffic you want.
• ROI can be easily tracked – there are free tools available that allow you to see how much business you’re getting from people sent by the search engines as result of proper search engine optimization
• and perhaps the most powerful aspect of SEO – cost savings. Once you have achieved high search engine ranking, your site will continue receiving pre-qualified traffic for as long as your search engine ranking is retained. If you were to get this traffic through means of advertising, the cost could add up to insane numbers

Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

Search Engine optimization is a complex and ever changing science. To succeed, you will need to combine several elements that must work together with each other. Some of the most important and most basic, but fundamentally essential will be covered below. They are: SEO Keywords, SEO Writing, SEO Link Building, SEO On Page Optimization, Measuring Results. It is beyond the scope of this article to describe each of the elements in full detail, however let’s take a bit closer look at each of them anyway:

SEO Keywords

Good Search Engine optimization starts with keyword research. Remember how I mentioned above that surfers who use search engines to find websites about Mountaineering Supplies would be worthless to you if your site was about Exterior Accessories for BMW Vehicles? This is of course an over the top example that’s not very good. Bottom line is – for your search engine optimization campaign to be successful; you must research your keyword phrases thoroughly. You want to make sure you are targeting right keywords – you must know what phrases exactly people search for and what phrases deliver most prequalified customers.

SEO Writing

SEO Writing, also referred to as Copywriting is a skill on its own. Even if you get pre-qualified customers to your website, the sale is not guaranteed. Your page where the surfer has landed must contain text that will make the surfer feel confident that this is the product they want and this is the provider from which to purchase. However ability to write sales letter is not the same as SEO writing. SEO writing is called SEO writing for the reason and the reason is that the text is especially tailored to make your website look to search engines like it is relevant to the keyword phrase a surfer is searching for.

Search engines strive on the fact that they provide surfers with “relevant results”. The moment a search engine starts displaying results that are NOT relevant, the surfer will lose confident in search engine’s ability to offer service they are after. There are several criteria search engine’s algorithm checks to determine whether this particular page is relevant or not. Proper text which contains phrases surfers search for may make this page look relevant. Hence if you write your text for the page in a way so as to make it look like it’s relevant to a particular keyword, it may help you get ranked higher by the search engines. Besides, search engines love text. It’s one of the fundamental aspects that determine relevancy of pages. Always make sure your writing reflects that.

SEO Link Building

SEO Link Building is also referred to as Off Page SEO Optimization. It’s called Off Page because it has nothing to do with the content of the page itself, yet it can affect your search engine ranking. The premise is simple – the more pages link to your page, the higher your page climbs on the authority scale in the eyes of the search engine. Number of links is just one part of it – it also makes difference what authority the page that links to you has. One link from an authority page could boost authority status of your page more than 10 links of low authority level.

Link Popularity (a mixture of how many links your page has and how authoritative these links are) can make or break your SEO efforts. Search engines generally consider pages with many incoming links “trustworthy”. It’s a popularity contest, if you will and just as in real life, also search engines like popular kids. Links can both drive traffic to your site and can help you rank higher. Getting links can be a tedious and long lasting process but a good way to start is by submitting your website to directories, social bookmarking sites, or asking other webmasters for link exchange. The number of ways you can get incoming links are countless – some work better than other. You will often be against established websites that already have many links and it will be a tough task to outdo them, but nothing is impossible in the online game.

Aside from how many links point to your page and how authoritative they are, search engines also look at relevancy of the links. A link from related website can boost your search engine ranking more than a link from completely unrelated website, even if that unrelated website has higher authority status.

On Page SEO Optimization

While Off Page SEO Optimization is essential in order to boost the authority status of your page, On Page SEO Optimization is also important to make sure search engine spiders (small programs that scan your website for the search engine to know what it is about) can penetrate all content properly. If your coding is too messy for a spider to index your page, it’s gonna leave it before it’s properly cached. This means search engines will not know fully what your page is all about and if they don’t know what it’s about, they will not return it when someone search for something, even if they search for stuff your website is related to.

If your page has a relevant title tag, a relevant high level heading, if pictures have relevant alt tags and your HTML structure is clean and descriptive, search engines will know what your page is all about and will not feel afraid to display your website in their search results.

SEO Analytics

Measuring performance of your SEO campaign is as important as the campaign itself. You must know what performs and what doesn’t, otherwise you could be focusing your time and effort in directions that bring no results. Some strategies work better with one demographics and don’t work with another. Free scripts developed by experienced companies can help you keep track of your SEO campaigns. Google Analytics is a good way to go – I use it on each of my websites. However there are other scripts as well which may work better for you – ClickTracks, Woopra, or any other could work for you.

Search Engine Optimization requires complex approach. Each of the elements described above is essential for success. The article would be way too long if I were to describe each element in detail so keep that in mind. The tutorial was meant to introduce the basics of Search Engine optimization to new webmasters or webmasters who are just starting to learn the secrets of SEO. There are other SEO strategies, some more advanced than other and each can deliver results. I hope this tutorial was helpful and will get you started on your way to becoming a SEO expert. Even the most experienced SEO guru started from nothing. It would have been an article like this one I had read when I was first introduced to SEO. Just keep in mind, search engine algorithms which determine results always change and as such, SEO changes with them. It’s a never ending process. Once you start with it, you can never stop. That’s the beauty as well as the curse of it all. Ahh well….

It is astounding how much worthless advice can be found on the web. If you are not a seasoned coder, you can find yourself facing simple dilemmas which can turn into a nightmare if solutions offered on various websites don’t lead to actual solution of your problem, only cause more problems and frustration. And that’s what I found to be the case with excluding posts from one particular category (or more categories) from your WordPress powered blog’s main page. I have been contacted by several people asking me for help excluding category posts from their WordPress blog, each of which was tearing their hair out as their tried many suggested solutions you can find across the web, but they either don’t work at all, or exclude the category, but break something else (mostly bust your title tags which are the most important part of your on page SEO).

Why Exclude Categories in WordPress?

There are several reasons why you may need to exclude category posts from your WordPress blog. One of the WP blogs I have built used a “Video of the Day” feature. The blog normally focused on different subject matter, but the owner wanted to offer his readers an extra feature to keep them entertained so he introduced the Video of the Day page. He would be posting one cool video each day and had them all listed on a dedicated page, however he didn’t want these Video of the Day posts mixed up with main topic of his website. So he was looking for a code to add to the WordPress theme which would exclude all posts from Video of the Day category from his main blog page. It turned up being a pain in the neck finding out the tutorial or ready to use code that would safely and reliably exclude that category.

How to Exclude Category Posts in WordPress – Tutorial

To exclude posts from a particular category in WordPress you first need to create that category and then mark down the category ID. It is very easy to do, just follow these steps:

• go into Posts > Categories
• create New Category (skip this step if you are excluding a category which already exists)
• click on Category you want to exclude
• mark down the ID number of the category – you can see it by taking a look at the ULR of the page in your browser’s address bar. It is the number at the end of the URL, right after the equal sign. The URL should end with something like this &cat_ID=xx where xx is a number (note, it could be a single, double or triple digit number, depending on how many categories your WordPress blog has. Some blogs could get four or five digit number. Just mark down the number in full as it appears after the equal sign)
• go into Appearance > Editor and click on the file called “Theme Functions” (functions.php) listed under the Templates on the right hand side
• paste the code below into your functions.php theme file, right before “?>” part at the end of it, replace “xx” with your category ID you have made note of and click “Update File”.

Code to Exclude Category Posts in WordPress

Use this code to paste in your functions.php file. It should be pasted right before the ?> part which should be the part of the exiting code. Replace “xx” in the code provided with Category ID you have made note of before hand. This is absolutely essential as you must let WordPress know which category you want to exclude for it to work. If you forget about it and paste it as it is provided below with xx instead of a Category ID, your category poses will NOT be excluded! Make sure you keep the minus sign (-), only replace “xx”, nothing more.

function exclude_category($query) {
if ( $query->is_home() ) {
$query->set('cat', '-xx');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

Excluding Multiple Categories in WordPress

Sometimes you may wish to exclude more than one category from your main blog page. To do it is again very easy, you just need the Category ID of each category you wish to exclude. Post that Category ID along with the minus sign right before it in the same space as other category IDs, but separate them with spaces. So the final code would look something like this:

$query->set('cat', '-9 -53 -98 -484');

An example of code above would exclude posts from categories with following IDs: 9, 53, 98, 484

How to Exclude Categories from Archive Pages in WordPress

Sometimes you may also want to exclude category posts from archive pages. Or you may wish to have a category excluded from both Archives and Main Blog Page. Both of these are easy. The code for it would be as follows:

To exclude category posts from Archive pages, replace second line of code with following code:

if ( $query->is_archive ) {

To exclude category posts from both Archive pages and Main Blog Page, replace second line of code with following code:

if ( $query->is_home || $query->is_archive) {

That’s it. I have written this post in a way so even a new blogger could understand it and hopefully it helps. These codes definitely work with WordPress 2.7 through 2.8 but will also work on most older versions of WordPress.

Check out this video tutorial with great tips on how to build a high traffic blog without killing yourself. That “killing yourself” part is the most interesting one. With millions upon millions of bloggers out there busting their nut to capture a reader, blogging is a highly competitive venture. So how does one build a high traffic blog without killing oneself? You will be able to find many answers and great tips in the video tutorial above.

The video is 50 minute long and features a presentation speech by Tim Ferriss, owner of The 4-Hour Workweek blog and an author of the best selling book with the same title. The video tutorial covers a wide range of topics, including frequency of blog posts, through use of blogging tools all the way to building a community. It’s well worth the watch, it can teach you a lot and definitely serves as great inspiration tool.

For your information, this video tutorial was recorded at the WordCamp San Francisco, which is an event put together by the WordPress community.

You know good design when you see it, but what exactly makes good website design? What do you as a web designer need to keep in mind in order to make sure your design is “good”? It’s easy to pinpoint a well designed website once it’s complete, but where do you start when you’re building a website from scratch? Let’s take a look at some important points a designer should keep in mind in order to make sure his/her design is a good one:

Proximity

Proximity is one of the fundamentals of good website design. All elements that are related to one another must be placed within the same area. Human brain associates information it perceives based on proximity. A viewer will be able to categorize the information on your website better if elements that are related to each other are placed close to each other and vice versa – elements that are NOT related to each other should NOT be placed close to each other.

If you keep your website design organized with proximity principle in mind, you will help viewers to understand your website. If surfers can’t clearly comprehend information your website provides, they are less likely to read the content and respond to it. Disorganized information is also information that will be forgotten. Proximity helps keep information organized which can ultimately lead to engagement of the viewer.

To better understand proximity, take a look at any website and focus on your eyes. See how many different parts of the website your eyes will have to fall on in order to understand how the website is organized. If you can immediately recognize main areas of the website, such as:

• Header and Main Menu
• Sidebar with Additional Navigation
• Main Content Area

then the website is well organized and each part has elements that belong to it in good proximity. Some websites are more complex so there could be more than 3 areas to focus on, but it still should be easy to recognize them and be clear what their purpose is. If let’s say part of main menu is here but some important elements of it are at a totally different spot – that’s not a good website design.

Repetition

Repetition is consistency. Well designed websites use many of the same elements throughout the site. Whether it’s the color scheme, the font, the way corners are rounded – having these elements repeated throughout the website ensures that the pages “belong” with each other. Consistent pages appear professional and trustworthy.

You can take the rule of repetition a step further and adjust the aspects of your design to your company logo. For example if your logo uses red and black font, have the website designed so titles are in red and articles in black font. Or if for example your logo contains what appears as X and Y axes of a graph, built your website with elements of X and Y graph axes integrated into the design. Just keep in mind that overdoing it with repetition is not good either.

Alignment

Elements which are in alignment with each other appear cohesive to the eye. We have all seen websites with the text and/or graphic placed randomly within the layout. If you aim for good website design, you must never place anything arbitrarily. The connection between visual elements of your website must be apparent. That human brain naturally appreciates if items on a page layout are aligned.

Take a look at any website that naturally strikes you as well designed. You will notice that elements on it are aligned with each other. There usually is one main elements and several smaller ones that complement the main one. Those smaller elements will always be in alignment with the main element both horizontally and vertically.

Proper alignment adds to solidity of any web design. This principle of alignment applies in many other aspects of industrial production, not just web. You can see it in furniture, electronic devices, automotive designs, etc. Good website design needs proper alignment of elements the same way everything else does to be appealing.

Contrast

Contrast makes design “interesting”. Two elements that are not the same should be distinguished from each other with the means of contrast. For example – title of your article should be significantly different from the text of the article itself. It could be different in more than one way, for example a title could be bold, while text is light, the size of title could be larger than the size of text and it also could be a different color form the text. Adding contrast to your design will help organize the content into easily navigable hierarchies.

If you’re going for contrast, go for a lot of contrast. Contrast will make the page more interesting and easily scannable. This is important as it helps the reader to understand how the information on the page is organized. If reader doesn’t have to work hard to figure this out, they are more likely to stay and read what you have to say.

Good Website Design

Proceeding were four of the most important aspects of good website design. Websites that follow these principles have cleaner, more professional look. Check it out for yourself – next time you stumble across a website that strikes you as well designed, remember these four principles and notice how they are an inconspicuous, but solid part of that website. Good web designers know it and follow it on every bit of design they are a part of. Now you know it too. Apply it to your websites and see your readership base grow and retain.

Vast majority of websites is created with profit in mind. Let’s face it – it costs money to create a website, it costs money to host a website and it costs time (time is money) to maintain the website and keep it updated with fresh content. As such, webmasters who enter the online game face this important question – how do I make money with my website? How do I at least break even? What do I need to do to start generating revenue out of money and effort I put into my website(s)? To answer these questions, let’s take a look at some of the most fundamental ways to make money with a website:

Contextual Ad Networks

Contextual ad networks provide simple ways to start making money with your website right away. Once you are accepted as a publisher (publisher is a website owner who will be displaying ads on their website) to a contextual advertising network, you will cut and paste a code provided to you by the program on the page(s) of your website and that code will start displaying relevant ads without your need to do anything more.

Contextual Advertising Networks have teams of experts working to attract advertisers who pay them money to drive traffic to their website. As a publisher, you will be used to dedicate space on your website where these ads are displayed and each time a visitor to your website clicks a link that is displayed, that visitor will be redirected to a website of an advertiser who paid money to the Contextual Ad Network to get traffic and now that you have sent a surfer you will get a share of the revenue that the advertiser had paid.

There are several Contextual Ad Networks that a webmaster can sign up for. They each work differently and have different advertisers but they are all basically the same. As a publisher, you would simply place the code that was generated for you on your website and the program takes care of the rest. These codes are programmed to analyze the content of your page and will attempt to display the ads that are most relevant. This way you don’t have to do anything as relevant ads will be displayed automatically.

The most used Contextual Advertising Network is Google AdSense ™. AdSense is used by millions of webmasters worldwide and is generally regarded as one of the best Contextual Advertising Networks available. There are dozens of other Contextual Advertising Networks, such as AdEngage, AdBrite, BidVertiser, Clicksor or other. It’s often a hit and miss situation so it’s best to try a few of them and see which one performs the best for you.

Affiliate Programs

Using affiliate programs is another of many ways to make money with your website. While Contextual Advertising Networks pay webmasters based on clicks they deliver to the advertisers, Affiliate Programs work strictly on “per action” basis. That means that you will get paid a commission each time someone you have referred to advertiser’s website makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is popular with advertisers because they get promotion and traffic which could result in sales without any initial cost. As we have discussed above, advertisers who use Contextual Ad Networks must pay for the traffic they will get. Affiliate websites don’t pay anything up front, they will simply cut you a share of the money they had made out of the surfer that was referred by you.

Depending on what type of website you own, Affiliate Programs can make you more money that Contextual Ad Networks, but can also make less (or none). With Contextual Ad Networks you get paid for each click a visitor to your website makes, regardless of whether that visitor buys something on a website to sent them to or not. This often ends up being only pennies per click. Whereas with Affiliate Programs you always get a cut from what the surfer you sent to advertiser’s website spends. So if it’s an Affiliate Program with 50% shared revenue, and you refer a person who spends $100 on advertiser’s website, then you could get as much as $50 by just referring this one person. However you could also end up sending 100 people and none of them makes a purchase, in which case you won’t make not even a measly penny.

As with all ways to make money with your website, it’s worth giving it a try and see whether Affiliate Programs work for the type of traffic you get to your site or whether you’re better off sticking with Contextual Ad Networks.

Amazon.com or Ebay.com are one of the most popular Affiliate Programs. Many webmasters are able to generate thousands of dollars a month referring surfers to Affiliate Programs. If you have a niche website with niche traffic, signing up for an Affiliate Program which offers products in your niche would likely make you more money than by just using Contextual Ad networks.

Direct Sales of Advertising Space

If you are able to get advertisers to purchase ads on your website directly, then you end up keeping 100% of the profit. Direct Ad Sales are the most profitable way of making money with your website, however getting advertisers to spend money on your site, out of all can be more challenging than it seems. Once you have established your web presence and are considered an authority, getting Direct Ad Sales becomes fairly easy and can make you a lot of money.

There are many ways you can make money by selling advertising directly. You can sell banner sports on your website, you can sell text links, you can sell paid reviews – the possibilities are endless and for as long as you offer good value for money and advertisers see return in revenue, this could be a highly profitable way to make money with your website.

As an alternative, you can join TextLinkAds.com which is a website that will assist as a middle man between you as a publisher and an advertiser. TextLinkAds.com takes care of all communication with advertisers and can help you determine attractive asking price for your “website’s real estate”.

CPM Advertising Networks

CPM Advertising Networks are very similar to Contextual Ad Networks, however in case of CPM you get paid per impressions you deliver, rather than per click (per click advertising is referred to as CPC – Cost Per Click). CPM stands for Cost Per Mille and refers to cost per 1000 impressions. Depending on quality of traffic, you could make around $1 per 1000 impressions however sometimes you could only get $.10 but sometimes it’s $10. How much you can make per 1000 impressions depends on the position of your ad, the size of your ad and what network you’re using.

If you have a website with high pageviews (forums tend to have high page views, for example) CPM Advertising Networks could be a great option. However most quality CPM Advertising Networks are very picky about their publishers and unless you have a very high traffic website, you may not be able to get accepted. Following are some of well established CPM Ad networks you can try to apply with to be a publisher:

• Tribal Fusion
• Casale Media
• Right Media
• Burst Media
• Advertising.com
• Value Click

Selling the Website

Selling your website is one of the ultimate ways to make money off hard work you have put into making it a success. When your site grows in popularity and gets steady flow of traffic and starts generating revenue, it becomes an asset which has value. As such, you can sell it for profit. When it comes to websites, the value of a website is often determined by monthly profit which is then multiplied by 12 (in other words, you could see your website for the amount of money it would make in a year).

However, profit a website generates is not the only indicator of website value. YouTube was an operation which cost millions of dollars per month and was making none. Yet it was sold to Google for $1.65 Billion. Even though it wasn’t making any money, YouTube had a lot of steady traffic and popularity was undisputed. The owners sold it in the right time and made nice nine figures.

There are other ways which can be used to make money with your website but they are outside of the scope of this article. I will get back to those at a later time. This article outlines the most used and the most popular ways to make money with your website because they are easy to implement and you can start generating money with some of them as soon as your website has been launched. Monetizing your website is a whole science which requires constant studying of the market trends and of your traffic. I hope this article covered the basics of making money with your website and can get you started with earning your first on line dollars.