WordPress blog basics

Some good WordPress tips & tweaks:

http://lifehacker.com/5365600/the-beginners-guide-to-tricking-out-your-wordpress-blog

Web Analytics primer

If you're looking for a simple primer to web analytics, especially Google's, look no further than the acclaimed Occam's Razor blog and in particular this post that distils analytics down to the 5 basic tenets:

#1 Get the Basics Out of the Way.
#2 Understand Traffic Sources.
#3 Fix Stuff and Save Money
#4 the value of using the Site Overlay
#5 Focus on Outcomes

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/12/web-analytics-demystified.html

Why Businesses Should Use Social Networking

"In a piece this year for the insider's technology blog, TechCrunch, entitled "Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet", Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that the way that we're using the internet has shattered the whole concept of advertising. We need no encouragement to share our opinions online regarding products and services and offer them star ratings; as a result, we're much more likely to look for personal recommendations from other customers than wait for a gaudy advert to beckon us wildly in the direction of a company website or online store. He claims we don't trust online advertising, we don't need online advertising, but above all we don't want online advertising."

And this is why we use social networking.

Using your Facebook vanity URL

If you use Facebook you'll probably be aware that they recently allowed ther users to register a 'vanity URL' (username is their name for it). Bigwigs have always been able to boast of an URL such as facebook.com/u2 , but this feature has been opened-up to (almost) everyone else.

The value, especially if you're a big user of facebook, is simply to be able to send people to your profile with an easy to remember URL. So I can now say 'check me out on Facebook at www.facebook/com/stevemccabe'.

But to fully utilise this feature, you'll need to make changes to your Facebook privacy settings. Because it's no good boasting of your new FB address if, when someone goes there, there's no infornation showing about you. So in your Facebook privacy settings, make sure you enable the Search Visability to 'Everyone'.

This way your new Facebook URL will say at least something about you, especially for non-Facebook users visiting the URL.

10 Ways to energise your blog

Blogging is not dead.. but you might have neglected it for Facebook or Twitter. This article suggest 10 good ways to re-energise your blog! Don't forget, you can also automate your blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

A Better Surfing Experience

Surfing in Dominica, we tend to use all the default settings our ISP provides us. The problem is, their Domain Name Servers lag hours behind the rest of the world. So for a better surfing experience, use OpenDNS.org.

You can sign up for an account on OpenDNS.com (it's free), or simply start using their DNS right away. Go into your Network Settings, and change your Domain Name Servers to:

208.67.220.220
208.67.222.222

If you have a small home/office network, you can do this on your hub/router/modem.

Using OpenDNS will pull up a search page if a domain doesn't exist (rather then a 404 page) but it's worth the switch for the faster and more up-to-date DNS resolution.

Conficker what?

There's a good article about the Conflicker 'virus' that never appeared on April 1, like many pundits said it would. Scares like that should merely amuse you, knowing that you do have an up-to-date anti-virus package and your Windows is updated too.

In terms of anti-virus protection, there are two free options worth checking out: Avira, and AVG. For a good comparision of the merits of these products, also read this.