WordPress How To Add An Image

In this tutorial I will show you how to add an image into a WordPress post or page.

Download the how to tutorial  WordPress How To: Add An Image

What Are My WordPress How To Posts?

I am building a library of small how to tutorials to solve common WordPress issues, check out the library of how to tutorials.

If you need a particular how to just drop me a line using the contact form above.

Pictures Tell A Thousand Words

Adding images into your blog posts and pages adds a huge visual impact to your text only post or pages.  Images can be used to add a graphic into your post or   a product shot or one of a hundred different applications.

The following screen shots show you how to add images into a post

Download the how to tutorial  WordPress How To: Add An Image

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is very hard to write a ales page for WordPress group coaching so I think the easiest way to explain what it is, is to invite you to a free coaching session.

Join A coaching Session For Free

I am inviting all readers of wpdude to attend a free coaching session to get a feel for what I do inside of the WP Owners Club.

This Months Free Coaching

This months free coaching is all about configuring your site for the search engines and is called the WordPress SEO Workshop.

Join The Coaching

For full details of the coaching including how to join the session check out this page.

wpdude.com/group-coaching

Image by 34128007 Care of Wells Fargo Illinois for the Calamity Jane fans.

This is the second part of a three part series on using video with WordPress.  In part one I talked about Using Video With WordPress. Why you should use video and the benefits it gives.

In this part I would like to talk about where to host your videos.

Videos Are Big

Videos pack a lot of data into their files and as a result they are huge.  You need to give extra special consideration to where to host these very large files.

Slow loading or juddery (is that a real word) videos are very annoying to watch, and your quality video content could be impacted by poor service from your hosting choice and turn off your viewers.

Host It Locally

You could upload your videos to your local hosting account and serve them up from there, but if you have a limited use hosting service you may use up all of your space and bandwidth, worse you could incur huge overuse charges,  please check your hosting agreement before you host video files locally.

The extra bandwidth and resource you use could also slow down your entire site, so hosting your video files locally is not recommended.

Video Services

There are a number of video hosting services out there.  A far better idea is to upload your video to one of them and let them take the bandwidth hit and resource usage.  Let them stream your video smoothly, it’s what they do, their hardware is design to cache and play video correctly.

Here are some of the major video services out there.

YouTube – The big player in the video hosting world, YouTube is a great palce to host your videos.  It’s free but the downside is that you can only have videos of up to 10 minutes, if you want longer videos, you need to look at something else.

Viddler & Vimeo– these are premium video hosting services, with a free option for shorter videos.  This may be a good altenative to YouTube if you want longer videos, but you will have to pay for the subscription.

Amazon S3 – I bet you didn’t know the online retailer Amazon also sells storage and hosting solutions.  I use Amazon S3 to host my videos for the WP Owners Club.  These videos are typically up to an hour long so YouTube is no good to me, so I have opted for them.  It’s a premium service that you pay by usage rather than a subscription.  I host huge files and pay a fraction of the price for a viddler or vimeo account.

Keep Copies

If you are hosting your videos on third party sites I always recommend that you keep copies of your content.  If you break T & Cs you may find your account closed down and your videos lost to the world.

Next Up

The next post in the series will show you the plugins and tricks I use to add video to WordPres posts, pages and into your theme files.

Image by adpowers

In this three part series I will be talking about using video on your WordPress site.

In part one I will talk about why you should use video on your site, in part two I will talk about the hosting considerations of video and in the lat part I will show you how to add videos to your posts pages and theme.

Why Use Video?

There are a number of reasons why you should use video on your site, including:

• If a picture tells a thousand words, then a video is the unabridged version of War and Peace, video enables you to pack so much information so densely into a short format.
• A large percentage of our communication is none-verbal, when you appear on a “talking head” video, people can clue into your nonverbal communication and your message can be conveyed much more clearly.
• The ability to show someone how to do something should never be underestimated, here’s an example, try writing a text only blog post on how to tie your shoe laces. No images or videos, text only description of looping and swooping your shoe laces.  Not an easy thing, now consider a short thirty second video that demonstrates the process and you get an idea of the power of video.
• Video can be your unique selling point.  If everyone in your niche is creating text only content, and you start a vlog (video blog) you are going to immediately differentiate yourself from your competition.
• It’s easier to stand out with video.  There are not as many videos as there are text pages, so search engine ranking is not as difficult as text only rankings.
• It enables people to put a face to a site, this is an incredibly powerful trust tool if you are selling good or services over the internet.

Types Of Video

There are three main types of video you can add to your WordPress site.

The Talking Head

This is when you or another presenter talks at the camera to present your content, think of the classic scenario of a news show, where the talking heads tell us the days news.

Behind The Camera

This is when you create a video shooting footage of content and provide a voice over to annotate the footage, think of a wildlife show or a sports event with a commentator

The Screencast

Record the content of your computer screen to demonstrate some process of record a presentation

Other Peoples Videos.

I have talked about the three types of video you could create for yourself, but you can also use other people’s content to enhance your own site.  YouTube and the other video hosting sites are a treasure trove of content, much of which you can use and embed on your own site.

I used to run a site called mountainboard.net, a magazine style site for the mountainboard community (think of the love child of a snowboard and a skateboard).  As a feature at the top of my site I would add a weekly video from YouTube.

I was curating content from YouTube with full attribution and presenting it to my readers in an easy to view format. Curating is the new black apparently, others people’s content is king (but don’t get me started on that one).

It Doesn’t Have To Be Broadcast Quality

Don’t get stuck up on broadcast quality content.  People are not expecting 3D/HD Hollywood blockbuster from your blog, they just want content in a

This means a web cam, a cheap microphone or a few hundred dollars on a flipcam.

Throw into the mix video editing software like camtasia and you have recorded and edited together a video you can add to your blog.  More about the hosting options in the next post.

Video As A Product

Video is not only free content, it can be a very powerful product you can sell from your site.

Many people are creating information products using video which they can sell and people can download or stream from their sites.  The density of content and the relatively easy way in which it can be produced in contrast to an e-book for example makes it an ideal tool for those of you out there who procrastinate over writing a 100 page e-book.

The Success Of YouTube

YouTube is one of the busiest sites on the net, this proves the popularity of on-line video.  I think all WordPress site owners should be embracing multimedia in their content, a combination of text, images and videos help to get your message out much more effectively.

Video Works; My Examples

I talk from personal experience that video works, here are my examples.

My Services Sales Page

People come to me cold when they are hiring me for my WordPress technical support services. They may not have hired someone to work on their site before and I wanted to show people how my services work.

I added a talking heads video of me explaining how working with me operates.  I give potential customers a chance to see me “in person” and let them know there is a real person at the other end of the site. I explain what I will need from them, what the expected turn around will be and how my payment process works.

The result, I saw a definite increase in teh number of quote requests I receive, I put this down to establishing trust with people through the video.

It’s not great quality, the sounds not great it’s jsut me talking into my webcam, but it puts a human face into the equation and we as humans are much happier dealing with people than yellow highlighted sales letters

My Coaching

Part of the service I offer my group coaching clients in the WP Owners Club is a library of recorded video tutorials.   These are screencasts from my live webinar events.  I take the recording, and run it through an editing process to add zooms and close ups to help highlight the presentation and demonstrations I am giving about WordPress.

This give my coaching clients a permanent record of the live events they attended, along with an ability to review their trainings in their own time.

I have found that video is an excellent coaching tool, far more effective than text only or screendumps.

Next Up

Next up in this series I will talk about hosting your videos.

Lets talk about your plans to use video in the comments, are you using video yet?  Is it in your plans, let me know.

Course Details

In the WordPress performance tuning workshop I will show you how to speed up slow running sites.  My methodology takes you through baselining you site, finding bottlenecks, testing themes and plugins, investigating memory and database bottlenecks and finally installing cache plugins to speed up your site.

(more…)

I have had a number of clients come to me with this problem, so I thought a case study was in order.

Here’s the Problem

When you change the permalinks from the default to something more pretty and SEO friendly, you click on a post or page link and all you get is a 404 file not found error. This is done from the settings-> permalink page.

The home page will be fine, but you cannot access any of your content off of the home page.

What Is A Permalink

A permalink is the URL of your blog post or page, the bit after your domain name for example the permalink of this post is case-study-errors-when-change-your-permalinks.

By default the permalink for a post or page is set to the post ID, so if I was using default permalinks, this post would look like this wpdude.com/?p=5770

What Having Pretty Permalinks Matters

It is a good idea to change your permalinks from the default to a pretty permalink (pretty is the technical term BTW, don’t believe me check out http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks) for SEO purposes.

You can stuff valid keywords into the permalinks of your post to help the search engines match your content with searchers.

So What Has Happened?

When you change from the default to pretty permalinks WordPress needs to setup a redirect to the new URL, it does this by adding some commands to the file .htacess.   This file lives in the root of your site.

What Might Cause the Problem?

There are a couple of reason why this might not work, the first is that mod_rewrite is not installed on your hosting,  Check with them to see if they have this redirection technology in place.  I have not seen many hosting setups where this is not in place so you can probably move onto the next point.

Another reason I have seen 404 problems is when the .htaccess cannot be written to.  This might be file permissions or the file does not exist and WordPress cannot create it.

The Fix

Connect to your site using ftp and open up the .htaccess file.  NOTE some ftp client do not show hidden files by default so you may need to enable this. anything starting with a period/full stop is marked as hidden.

Edit the .htaccess file and see if it contains the following set of commands:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

If they are not present, you probably are having problems writing to the .htaccess file you can either change the permissions of .htaccess and try to regenerate the permalinks (you do this by setting it back to default, then setting it to pretty permalinks again) or you can manually edit and add the commands.

Please note if you are running WordPress in a subdirectory, you will need to reflect this in the command you add to the .htaccess file. Upload the file again and the 404 errors should be gone.

Wrap Up

So if you get 404 file not found errors when you change your permalinks, you need to manually edit your .htaccess file, if that doesn’t work check mod_rewrite with your hosting company, you can always roll back to the default permalink structure until you get this fixed to get your site back online

Image by everdred

WP Owners Club Webinar

Here is a replay of the webinar I ran yesterday introducing the WP Owners Club.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

[flowplayer src=’https://s3.amazonaws.com/WP_Owners_Club/sales_videos/wpocjuneintake.mp4′ width=640 height=480]

 

wpdude.com/signup

 

Conundrum, it’s a great word isn’t it. Here is the definition “A confusing and difficult problem or question.” Here’s the WordPress Support conundrum as I see it.

Free Software => No Formal Support

WordPress is free to download and install on your server or hosting, but there is no formal support arrangement in place.  All support is from volunteers in the forums at http://wordpress.org/support/. You take your chances with WordPress, if you get a problem, you may or may not get a reply.  There is no guarantee you will.

I am not attacking the great folk who provide support in the forums in their own time and for no reward.  This is not a WordPress issue, it’s an open source issue.  All open source platforms supply the software as is.  Some have a paid option, others such as WordPress do not.

Premium Software & Support

When I was working in the corporate world, it was not uncommon to pay huge annual maintenance fees just so the company had access to software support.  Support that was fairly similar to the support forums at WordPress.com (just saying IBM), the difference is that there is a guarantee that someone will investigate your issue and elevation and service level agreements on how your problem will be addressed.

This is a huge stumbling block to many companies thinking about adopting open source software, there is no-one to go to (read there is no one to blame and ass-cover) if something goes wrong,

Volunteer Support

The support available for WordPress is from an army of volunteers, people who monitor the forums and give their advice.  They do this for the love of the platform, to display their expertise and to raise their profile in the community.

There isno service level agreement, no 24 hours to reply and start working on the problem. There is no guarantee that you will get a reply (but you probably will).  It is not some bodies day job to answer your support queries.  There is no formal support. When I have gone to the forums myself I usually get support but it can take a couple of days to get a reply.

It Goes Two Ways

I see users of WordPress and free plugins lambasting the developers if a solution is not forthcoming within three minutes of them placing a support request.  They seem to think that they are owed support for using someone’s free software.  They are not.

Plugins, free themes and WordPress  are provided as is with no support implied, but the majority of people writing WordPress core and plugins and themes provide very good support to people using the software they have developed.  BUT it is not their day job, they are not getting paid, this is a labour of love.

A Certain Level of Expertise Is Expected

This is not a WordPress only problem but many open source projects support sections are “staffed” by people who assume you need a certain level of expertise to be allowed the privilege to use the software.  If you are not up to speed with the jargon beware.

I see many support requests starting “I’m a newbie be nice to me ..” or other such phrases, people are aware of the sometimes harsh replies people get if they are not up to speed with the technicalities of WP.  This annoys me, we were all newbies once and expecting everyone who uses the software to be a php developer and to understand a MYSQL database is wrong.

I would estimate that 80% of all WordPress functions can be done by noobs, it’s the last 20% that is complex and requires technical skills, so why not accommodate the 80% in the forums without ridicule.

The Rise Of The Premium Aspect

The reason why we have seen a rise in premium themes and plugins is to offset the conundrum.  People are more invested in supporting and helping people if they can make it a priority by charging for a product and creating a customer support function.

This means that you CAN expect support if things go pop,

This Is Why The WP Owners Club Was Created

I created the WP Owners Club to solve this problem.  By creating a premium solution to the training and support conundrum, I can provide my expertise and experience to members whilst paying my bills.

What Is The WP Owners Club?

It’s a members only training and support community where you can learn WordPress and request support from me amongst a community of like minded site owners.

Would you like to know more?

I’m running a webinar to explain more about the WP Owners Club, if you would like to join this free event click on the link below

The webinar is on Thursday 2nd June at 11am-12pm Pacific, 2pm-3pm Eastern and 7pm-8pm UK Time.

Seats are limited so book your slot now by clicking on the link below.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/847311041

I look forward to seeing you on the webinar.

 

Has Your WordPress Site Been Hacked?

Do You Need Help To Recover And Secure It Again?

 WordPress Hack Recovery Course

I’ve developed this WordPress hack recovery course to teach people how to qiuckly fixed their hacked site, and to secure their site to stop this happening again.

I will take you through a detailed ten step process to methodically and quickly recover your site from a hack attack.

About Me

My name is Neil Matthews, and I’m a WordPress consultant.  I’ve been brought in by clients to fixed hacked WordPress sites on more times than I care to remember.

This course is real world experience transformed into a video course to show you how to fix your hacked site.

Why I built This Course

WordPress sites get hacked, FACT, I’m called in all to often to clean up hacked sites.  It’s very costly to clean up and the act leaves the site owner feeling violated and upset.  I want to combat this problem.

WordPress is not inherently insecure, rather it is a victim of it’s own success.  It is estimated that 13% of the net uses WordPress so there are millions of sites for the hacker to practise on and find vulnerabilities.

There is no hack recovery course on the market, your options are to search the web and piece together a solution, or hire in a consultant for a high cost, this course will fill that gap.

I’m aiming to give you the skills and knowledge to fix your site if you get hacked, or to have the tool set to fix your clients site in the event of an attack.

My Methodology

I will be teaching you the step by step methodology I use to clean up and secure a hacked WordPress site.

This is not a theoretical process, this is what I do when I am called in to clean up a site.  It works, it has been tested many times in the field after real hack attacks and it works.

Course Modules

There will be ten modules in the course, it is incredibly in-depth, this is what you will learn:

Module One: Understanding A Hack Attack

This is the introductory module where I give you a background on why hacks occur, what the nefarious people hope to gain by attacking your site. I will look at why WordPress is so often a victim.

Module Two: Identifying Hacked Files

Module two will show you how to identify that your site had been hacked, and diagnosing the type of hack you have been the victim of.  Once you are armed with this information you can move onto cleaning the site up.

Module Three: Cleaning Up Your WordPress System Files

The first phase of the clean up process is to clean up and re-install a fresh set of WordPress files.  I’ll show you how to ensure you have a clean version and how to remove the old infected version

Module Four: Cleaning Up Your Theme

Malware is often injected into your theme files, I’ll show you how to clean up your sites front end.

Module Five: Cleaning Up Your Plugins

Many hack attacks go pretty deep into your site and find often called plugin files to infect and help spread their malware or hack signature.  I’ll show you how to find and remove these back doors.

Module Six: Cleaning Up The Database

A couple of hacks I have seen also infect the database.  I’ll show you how to spot these hacks and tidy up the database.  As part of this module we will give your database a spring clean to remove any unwanted tables.

Module Seven: Misc Cleanup Items

There are several other small areas where hacks live, these include the .htacces file, wp-config,php, permalink settings, your uploads directory and certain third party scripts like timthumb, I’ll show you how to find and close these loopholes.

Module Eight: Hardening WordPress Security

Now that your site is clean, we need to harden security so the hacker cannot get back in.  I’ll take you through several techniques to make your site a much more difficult nut to crack.  I’ll show you some useful plugins and services too.

Module Nine: Keeping Google Happy

If the malware or hack has been spotted by Google, you can be blacklisted and have your site marked as dangerous.  There are also hack signatures out there that change  your index and list pharmaceuticals instead of your real content (the pharma hack).  I’ll show you how to clean this up and get a thumbs up from Google.

Module Ten: Monitoring for Future Attacks

At this point your site is secured and recovered, but hacks are constantly evolving, I’ll show you how to monitor and be vigilant of your sites security moving forward.

Delivery Method

The course will be delivered via ten self paced video tutorials.

Students will be given instant access to a members only site, where the course modules will be made available to you.

Ongoing Support

I realise that recovering a hacked WordPress site is difficult, that’s why I also offer email support to all courses members.  If you have any issues with your recovery, drop me a support call from the members area, I’ll help all I can.

Cost

This course costs $99.

For that you get ten detailed hack recovery modules plus the on-going support during your hack recovery.

Guarantee

If you are not 100% happy with the hack recovery course let me know for a no quibble refund.

Enroll Now

If you want instant access to the hack recovery course, click on the button below.

IMPORTANT: You will be taken to my members only site to create a login ID once you have completed the Paypal checkout.

SORRY THIS COURSE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE