OMNINOGGIN

The goal of this post is to help you increase visitor activity on your blog.  First let me define the term “activity” as anything your visitor does to interact with your blog.  An activity can be a variety of things, but the ones I want to focus on (which are also the most important ones) are: clicking on advertisements, donating to your cause, subscribing to your blog, sharing/voting for your blog posts, commenting, and navigating deeper into your blog.  To increase these activities, I to use the following 3 guidelines:

1. Make it easy (and obvious) to interact.
2. Ask them to interact.
3. Do not nag.

So without further ado, here are some strategies on increasing visitor activity on your blog.

Read on…

Today I would like to announce the release of “WP Greet Box” WordPress Plugin. A plugin that can help you increase your blog exposure and build loyal readership.

Description

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they
will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Professional bloggers know that having these targeted suggestions on their blog increases their blog exposure and loyal readership. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins so you do not have to sacrifice speed.

Currently the following referrers are supported, but you can easily create your own if your favorite referrer is not on the list!

• del.icio.us
• digg.com
• google.com
• yahoo.com
• stumbleupon.com
• technorati.com
• twitter.com

Read on…

WordPress 2.6 was officially released yesterday so I upgraded this blog immediately. Here are some things you need to know about WordPress 2.6:

1. New features in WordPress 2.6
   
2. Plugin authors should read over PlanetOzh’s quick tutorial on how to make your WordPress plugins WordPress 2.6 compliant and upgrade their plugins. This shouldn’t take too long at all. I have already updated and released NowThen Photo Display and AJAX Force Comment Preview. As always, please notify me of any bugs that you run into via the comment form on these plugin pages.

Read on…

Weekend Links for the week ending on 07-11-08

• WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide: This is the best consolidated WordPress functions reference guide I’ve ever seen. Not only does it have a slick interface, the page shows available functions, its parameters descriptions, and example usage. This is a golden bookmark for anybody who works on WordPress, WordPress Themes, or WordPress plugins.
• How to Stop Being Invisible: Writing is a difficult task for most, but getting readers for your articles is even more difficult. This post gives insight on why readers read blogs and gives advice on how to make your content more noticeable.
• 7 Ways To Stay Informed And Up-To-Date Online: Do you ever run out of things to talk about on your blog? I’ve found that I get a lot of blogging inspirations from staying informed. These are a list of tools that you can use to help you stay informed of the latest happenings in your niche.
• PHP Speedy Turns WordPress Into Speed Demon: Looking for another way to uberize (read as optimize) your WordPress blog? This post talks about the benefits of PHP Speedy and also links you to other how-to-optimize-WordPress posts.

Read on…