A couple of months ago, I heard first from Joy. Not only did she get me to sort-out her WordPress challenges, she also persuaded me to run some workshops in London, to help other small business owners start selling online.

We did the first workshop just over a week ago and it went very well (in a very prestigious historic building, on Piccadilly). So we are now planning the next for October 19th.

Would you like to come along? I can promise a very helpful, hands-on few hours, showing how to use WordPress to publish strongly on the internet.

So reserve a specially discounted ticket now (only 6 available). This password protected link will be taken down soon.

[link removed]

Hope to meet you in London, in October.

So I thought I should take a look and install the latest WordPress 3.0 Release Candidate (RC1) as a demo site.

To install WordPress, I almost always use the automatic Fantastico service included with my hosting. It makes the process very quick.

But as 3.0 is available only as a Release Candidate at present, I had to do a manual install.. (and it took me a little while to remember what to do!)

My first impressions of 3.0 are very good. I’ve not really got into it yet, but it seems to have some useful customization facilities built-in

And I really like the new default theme (and note that the old default Kubrick-based and Classic themes, are no longer distributed in the package).

The new “Twenty Ten” default theme includes a horizontal page menu, which I always prefer because it helps visitors find your WordPress pages, plus a modern, clean, white appearance (although I see it does have the facility in the admin area, to easily use an alternative background image, if you want).

I think many people will really appreciate the built-in customization facilities, such as easy header and background image customization, that you can do without having to touch any css stylesheet code. This may mean that many people will be happy to stick with the default theme, avoiding the effort of searching for another theme having a more individual appearance.

I look forward to testing WP 3.0 properly and giving it some serious exercise!

UPDATE: Here is the official WordPress video tour of brand new Version 3.0 (released yesterday)

So it will come as no surprise, I write an astronomy blog… Using the internet delight WordPress (of course).

I do use basic SEO strategies, but mainly, I just try to produce good content which visitors will enjoy and find useful.

Today, the traffic to the blog (well, one single post in particular) has gone THROUGH THE ROOF. Like nothing I have seen before.

It’s been helped GREATLY by a logo change on the Google homepage today, but you will see from the image below, visitor numbers have been very good all week. So, I must be doing something right?

Niche Blog Traffic Spike

Is this a “High Traffic WordPress Blog”? lol

I hesitate to mention the site url, because it doesn’t need the publicity at the moment! But the linked event will be over soon (for another year) so I will.. It’s IYA2009.com

Big thanks to Goscomb Hosting, who have worked with me over the past 24 hours to keep the site available for most visitors (it had to be turned-off at one point and comments are still unfortunately disabled).

So what was the single biggest change, that kept the blog going through this traffic onslaught?

It was installation of the magic wp super cache plugin.

This plugin enabled more than 180,000 extra visitors, to view the blog! Thanks Donncha.

‘You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes’

Here’s a short video on how to solve this problem, by setting the theme file permissions so editing is allowed.

IMPORTANT: Once you have finished editing your theme files, make sure you reset your file permissions to say 644. Just do it the same way, as shown in the video. It will help protect your website, going forward.  

PS..  It’s also the first time I have used the Viddler video hosting service, so I am trying that out, too.

I was not writing new posts… Just editing existing posts to add new images I’d found, plus tidying a few bits to improve readability.

Then it struck me.. the DATE at the top of the posts, still showed the original creation date. For some of my posts, this was more than 12 months ago..

Not very fresh-looking!

On your blog, you may not show the post date at all (like here on kevinsbrown.com).

But, IF you recognise this problem, here’s a quick freshen-up fix, which I found today and implemented. It can transform the fresh look of your blog.

Login as the administrator and go into the Theme editor (hold on, I have to say take a backup of your existing theme first, just in case it all goes wrong…)

Select the template, such as “Main Index” (index.php) or “Single Post” (single.php), or both..

Find a line of code containing <?php the_time(

and replace it carefully with something like..

last updated: <?php the_modified_date(

Then, when you save the edited post, instead of the original post date showing, the last edited date will display – making it look so much more fresh and up to date.

Just like the major, online news websites…

This one quick change has certainly improved the look of the blog in question. It now looks current again and emphasises the worthwhile updates I made today.

It’s the sweet-looking, small speech-bubble image, with the letter “K” inside. [now different]

And if you add this blog to your favorites or bookmarks (and I hope you will!), you’ll also see the image appear in your list of bookmarks,

This should help my blog to stand-out from the other sites.

If you would like to add a favicon image to your WordPress blog, here’s how to do it.

STEP 1

Make a 16×16 pixel image and save as an “ico” image. Call it favicon.ico

You can use the free graphics program GIMP to do this, if you don’t already have suitable graphics editing software.

If you don’t want to make your own image, you may download and use this favicon I’ve made.

Just right-click and choose “save image as”, to save it to your desktop.

STEP 2

Upload the favicon using an FTP program to your server, at the top level of your blog.

Rename it to favicon.ico if necessary.

STEP 3

Login as admin for your blog. Ensure this line of code is in the header.php file, of the theme you are using.

Add this line of code line (below) using the theme editor, if it’s not there already.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/favicon.ico” />

Here’s an image, showing the theme editor being used to edit the file header.php … (CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE)

WordPress Favicon needs this code in header.php file

STEP 4

Refresh your blog and check the favicon shows as expected.

Hope you like it!