WordPress Backup Creator: Backup, Clone and Transfer Your WordPress Blogs


The WordPress Backup Creator takes the pain and anxiety out of three important tasks – backup, clone and transfer your WordPress blog.

If you have ever tried to backup your WordPress blog or transfer it to another web host, you will appreciate the angst involved and the complexity of the task, particularly if you want your widgets and plugins copied or transferred at the same time.

I’ve tried several WordPress backup programs but they were either too complex or unreliable.  In one case, I was issued with an update (to fix a bug) almost weekly … and this did not inspire confidence.

Recently I purchased the WordPress Backup Creator and found not only was it reliable but very simple to use, with very clear written and video instructions.  The beauty of it was that it took so few steps and these were very easy to execute (I don’t know about you, but I lose patience if the steps are too unclear or too complex).

I had wanted to transfer my personal productivity membership site because the original hosting was way too expensive.  This productivity membership site is based on WordPress.  It is fairly complex because not only does it incorporate membership details, payment options, sales page and optin page but also 50 plus lessons (blog posts) and audios.

I am delighted to report that, using the WordPress Backup Creator, I was able to transfer my whole Productivity membership site without loss of data, plugins, posts or widgets.  I was truly astounded at how easy and efficient it was (and I am one very relieved person).  The Backup Creator enabled me to save more than $20 per month hosting fees.

As a result of this success, I have been able to reduce the price for anyone who wants to access my personal productivity membership site.  The price has been reduced from $19.95 per month to $9.95, one-off payment.

Just purchasing and using the WordPress Backup program has improved my productivity no end.

Just think of all the work that you have put into your WordPress blogs and imagine what would happen if you lost your blog (and the associated comments).  This WordPress plugin is so ridiculously cheap when you think of all that pain and anxiety you can save by just using the plugin to protect your WordPress sites.

If you are into cloning WordPress sites, then this is the tool to make that task so easy and profitable.

I certainly have no hesitation in recommending the WordPress Backup Creator:

WordPress Backup Creator

Easy Video Press: Video Player for WordPress Blogs

video player thumbnail

[evp type=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln-Xbz3TgbM[/evp]

 

Easy Video Press is a WordPress Plugin that makes it very easy to play videos on your WordPress blogs.  You can play videos uploaded from Amazon S3, YouTube or your computer.

You also have the option of customizing the video player – e.g. color of the background, buttons or outline.  You can change the size of the displayed video and allow full screen playing.  If you prefer, you can set the Easy Videos Player to play immediately someone visits your blog post (… and you can change this for each video).

Easy Video Press comes with four very short videos that explain each step in the process of setting up the Plugin and creating a video player for your blog post.

Monetizing videos with Easy Video Press WordPress Plugin

Easy Video Press enables you to add a hyperlinked logo to your video and build in a redirect to a website of your choice so that you can monetize the video.  I have illustrated these features in the video player below:

 [evp type=youtube logo=http://smallbusinessodyssey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/meritsolutionsthumbnail1.jpg link=http://www.meritsolutions.com.au]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4StJfmKDus[/evp]

 

Easy Video Press: an easy WordPress Plugin for displaying a video player

This is a powerful WordPress Plugin that can open up the world of video marketing.  It is easy to use and makes video playing on your WordPress blog so much easier.

All you have to do is install the WordPress plugin, customize the default settings (e.g. Amazon S3 URL’s, color scheme, video size) and then start using the video player within your blog posts.

When you want to display a video in your blog post, you provide a few details and the WordPress Plugin creates a “shortcode” which is automatically inserted in your blog post.

The following illustration shows the control panel that appears below your blog entry as you are developing your post.  It enables you to:

  • specify the source of video – Amazon S3, YouTube or your computer
  • size of the video player
  • color scheme for the video player
  • cover image
  • logo image (if desired)
  • logo URL link (if desired).

 

easy video press control panel

 

If you want to use the advanced options available with Easy Video Press, you can do any of the following:

  • allow full screen
  • auto start video
  • hide controls/buttons or show them
  • redirect viewer at end of video

 

easy video press monetization

With either the basic or the advanced controls, Easy Video Press will generate a shortcode that is automatically inserted in your blog post when you hit the “Send Shortcode to Editor” button.  You can then locate the video player wherever you choose within your post.

I was becoming increasingly frustrated with displaying videos on my WordPress blogs until I found this simple-to-use WordPress Plugin.

Easy Video Press is, as the name suggests, an easy-to-use WordPress Plugin that will take the stress out of your blogging and enable you to professionally display, and monetize, videos on your WordPress blogs.

WordPress Websites: Policies for a Legal Website

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

If you are going to create or maintain a WordPress website, you have to ensure that you have the policies necessary to have a legal website.  While there are legal requirements surrounding websites (such as Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer), Google also takes into account the existence of the legal policies when determining the value and ranking of a WordPress website.   The absence of such policies can signal a site that lacks substance or is engaged in illegal activity (such as misleading people about potential services or earnings).

You can go the hard road and hire a lawyer to write the necessary policies for your WordPress website to make it a legal website or alternatively you can access a WordPress Plugin designed specifically for this purpose.

[Image source: Sarah B Brooks]

WP Policies:  Free WordPress plugin for a legal WordPress website

The free WordPress plugin for incorporating policies for your WordPress site can be obtained here:

 WP Policies (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-policies/)

This WordPress Plugin will automatically generate a range of policy statements to enable you to create a legal website and improve the value of your WordPress website in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

The free plugin comes with 10 policies at the moment and you can edit these to suit your own purposes:

  1. anti-spam policy
  2. disclaimer
  3. DMCA notice
  4. e-mail policy
  5. earnings disclaimer
  6. external links policy
  7. medical disclaimer
  8. privacy policy
  9. terms of use
  10. testimonial disclaimer

Often you will find that a set of policy statements will come with other purchases that you make (for example, if you purchase the software for a membership site as I did with my personal productivity site).  You can use these alternative policies if you prefer and it is just a matter of editing the ones provided with the WordPress Policies Plugin.

Installing WP Policies for a legal WordPress website

You can install the free WP Policies plugin by following the tips I offer in my post, How to Install a WordPress Plugin

You need, however, to check the permission setting for the folder where the default policies are stored before activating the plugin.  The instructions for this and for the overall setup of the legal policies are included as a text file with the plugin when you upload it.  These instructions show you how to add the variable fields for the policy statements (such as Company, address, email and phone number), that are added automatically when you ‘import’ the default policies (Step 4 in the Instructions).

You can delete or deactivate any of the policy pages you do not want to display by clicking on “Pages” in the Dashboard of your WordPress blog and either ‘trashing’ the page or changing the setting to draft (deactivates the page).

You can also display the pages in the footer by adding the code provided to the footer.php file of your WordPress Theme (Step 6 in the instructions) – see illustration in the footer to SmallBusinessOdyssey.

It is important to make sure your WordPress website is a legal website by adding the relevant legal policies – the WP Policies WordPress Plugin gives you an easy way to do this.

Tell the Google Bots Where To Go!

Lazy Bot

site map with links

 

When I discussed Webmaster Tools earlier, I mentioned the need to create a sitemap for your website and submit it to Google.  I will discuss how to do the creation and submission of a site map in this post because it is critical to the indexing of your website by Google and determines how your website will be found through search queries on Google (and other search engines).

A sitemap is basically, as the name suggests, a map or directory of your website, so that the structure and priority of the files on your website can be displayed for easy access by the search engines.   You can see from the sitemap extract above that the sitemap for Small Business Odyssey has a hyperlinked list of files, a priority rating (percentage) and a frequency rating (to tell the search engines how frequently to index that part of the website).  

Why create a sitemap and why submit it to Webmaster Tools?

Lazy BotWell, in non-technical language, it seems that the Google Bots (robots that crawl your website) are lazy ‘creatures” and do not go out of their way to properly index your site for the Google search engine.  They take the easy way out – they only go where the path is clearly laid out for them.  They don’t like deadends (broken links) or confused pathways (disconnected files randomly located).   When I look at how Google is currently indexing my Small Business Odyssey blog, I am even more convinced of how lazy the Google Bots are – it seems that they need to be spoon-fed the information, otherwise they do a poor job of indexing your website.

So the primary reason for creating a sitemap for Google is to enable the Google Bots to comprehensively index your website.   Otherwise, a lot of your website may not appear in Google’s index and will not be found by Internet searchers.  Google admits as much by this comment on Webmaster Tools:

Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.

Creating an XML Sitemap

This brings us to the creation of a sitemap.  I am suggesting that you create this sitemap initially as a .XML file because it is easy for the lazy Bots to read completely.  This sitemap format basically lets the Google Bots into the back engine room of your site and shows them around – where files are located and how they are linked by type (home page, static pages, dynamic pages, categories, tags).

If this post appears too technical for you, just make sure that your Webmaster has created an XML sitemap for your website and submitted it to Google.  

Here are the steps for creation of your XML sitemap:

  1. Download the free WordPress Plugin for the Google XML Sitemap Generator.
  2. Upload the XML Sitemap Generator to your website (via your WordPress Admin panel)
  3. Make adjustments to the default settings (if you wish)
  4. Click ‘create sitemap’ and you will very quickly have a site map and a stated location (URL) for your sitemap.

The beauty of this WordPress Plugin for creating Google XML Sitemaps is that it offers multiple options in terms of settings, automatically submits the sitemap to Google, Ask.com and Bing search engines and updates automatically when you change a file on your website.  So it is comprehensive and dynamic.

In terms of adjustments to default settings, most commentators suggest that you leave the defaults as they are – it certainly makes life simpler.  However, I would suggest that you may want to change the default for ‘priority’ – the default setting tells the Google Bots to give priority to the posts that have the most comments.  This may not be meaningful if you have a really new site.  I have set up my priorities in the following order –  home page, recent posts, static pages, older posts, categories and tags.  I will change this as the Small Business Odyssey site becomes more established and generates more traffic and comments. 

The other default setting you may want to change before you click the “create sitemap’ button, is ‘Change Frequency’. For example, the default setting tells the Google Bots to index your posts weekly.   However, if you are creating blog posts on a daily basis, you should change the ‘frequency’ to daily.  The Google Bots may ignore this suggestion (remember they are basically lazy), but it is better to at least express your wishes.  Google’s own experts, such as Matt Cutts, tell us that the more frequently you update your site with relevant information, the more often the Google Bots will crawl your site and the deeper (more thoroughly) they will index your website.

I’ve made a few adjustments to the priority and frequency default settings for my XML sitemap and you can see the result here:

http://smallbusinessodyssey.com/sitemap.xml

Here’s a YouTube video that simplifies the whole process and shows you exactly what to do (there are no adjustments to defaults and the WordPress Plugin is downloaded directly to the Admin panel via the built-in Plugin search facility): 

 

How to submit your XML sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools 

You might wonder why we need to do this extra step as the WordPress XML Sitemap Generator automatically submits your sitemap to Google (and to Bing and Ask.com).  Well, I think it comes back to our lazy Google Bots again – they don’t go out of their way to find the sitemap, so you have to put it in front of them!   If you check out the screenshots below, you will also see how Google takes up the information from the sitemap on Webmaster Tools and begins to integrate it into its index.  So submitting the sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is a way to get direct access to Google’s index (although it may take some time for all of the information to be indexed).

The process of submission of your sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is very simple:

  1. log in to your Webmaster Tools site
  2. click on the web address (URL) for your verified website 
  3. click the ‘site configuration’ menu item
  4. click the ‘sitemaps’ menu item
  5. enter your sitemap address where indicated (see image below).

  sitemap submission to webmaster tools

When you first submit your sitemap, the above image will appear with the messages ‘submitted URLs – O’ and “index count pending’ (and status shown as ‘in progress’).   Take heart, this is Google trying to identify all your files from the sitemap and integrating them into their index.   After some processing time, you will see the following image that indicates successful submission:

Google indexing sitemap on Webmaster Tools

So this indicates that Google has taken on board your website pages (URLs) and has loaded them into their index.  The actual indexing in terms of search terms (keywords) will occur over an unspecified period (you can’t rush the Google Bots).

Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is critical for small business marketing because it ensures effective indexing of your website so that Internet searchers can find your website through your targeted search terms (keywords).

Free WordPress Plugin: podPress Audio Player for Podcasts

podPress

podPress

podPress is a free WordPress Plugin that enables you to install an audio player in your blog post.  Visitors to your blog are then able to play the podcast directly on your blog.

The key thing is that you have control over where the audio player is located so that you can ensure it is near a relevant comment or resource.  All you have to do is insert a simple piece of code in your post where you want the media player to display and podPress does the rest.

podPress does a range of things that are particularly useful for small business marketing:

  • acts as an automatic media player for videos as well as audios
  • allows listeners to control the player
  • facilitates download of the podcast
  • provides stats on downloads (including graphs)
  • generates RSS (and ATOM) feed and submits feed to iTunes (on publication).

So this free WordPress plugin enables you to readily display a media player for your audios or videos as illustrated below:

[display_podcast]

 

When someone clicks on the play button, the audio player image expands to show the progress of the podcast and to enable the listener to pause the player:

podpress wordpress plugin

How to create your audio player with podPress

Once you have installed the free WordPress Plugin, you need to advise the podPress plugin of the location and details of your podcast file.  Some of these details can be completed by using the “auto detect” button provided against the relevant field, others are completed automatically by the plugin.  The screenshot below shows the fields that need to be completed either by yourself or automatically by the plugin:

 

podcast file descritpion for podPress

podPress also provides a number of fields so that you can specify the relevant details for inclusion of your podcast in iTunes.  However, you can override this option if you have some other method of syndicating your podcast.

podpress is a solid free WordPress Plugin that enables you to stream audio or video on your site and simultaneously broadcast your podcast to iTunes.