I was previously using UTW to show a list of related posts at the end of each page and was concerned I would lose this feature when I upgraded. Thankfully you can preserve this feature by making use of the WordPress import feature.

Once you’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.3 follow these steps:

• Deactivate the UTW plugin if you haven’t done so already.
• Make a backup of your WordPress database.
• Within your WordPress administration screen go to Manage –> Import and select Ultimate Tag Warrior. This feature will import all your UTW tags over to the new WordPress tagging system.
• Install the WordPress 2.3 Related Posts plugin. The great thing about this plugin is that it also allows you to add a list of related posts to your feed. There is no longer a need to use a separate plugin to handle this.
• Follow the plugin installation instructions.

This whole process went very smoothly on this blog, and I’ve got the added bonus of not having to run so many plugins now

If you want to know how to migrate other UTW features like tag clouds then read this excellent article on WordPress 2.3 tags.

How has your WordPress 2.3 upgrade gone?

If you’ve got any more WordPress 2.3 tips or tricks to share I’d love to hear.

Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips has been running a blog writing project recently.

Readers have been encouraged to submit their tips and tricks and vote on those submitted by other readers. I love these type of group writing projects. It’s a great way to learn new things, connect with other bloggers and gain some new exposure for your own blog.

There are lots of really good submissions to this project. Here are my top 5.

• Vandelay Design discusses how you can leverage some of the smaller niche social bookmarking sites to gain more bookmarks on the bigger sites like del.icio.us and Digg. Well worth a read.
• Egonitron shows 4 easy way to make more money from Google AdSense. What I like with this post is how the blogger describes in layman terms the concept of A/B Testing. That’s an idea I will definitely try out later.
• Binary Moon tells us 10 ways to drive traffic AWAY from your blog. Not surprisingly, too many adverts is one of the main reasons. Inline ads are the worst offender in my opinion. That’s a sure fire way to make me leave a web site in a hurry.
• MisEntropy discusses a novel way of learning a new language – spend 2 months watching a TV news channel in the language you want to learn! It sounds a bit far fetched at first but I wonder if this works? I guess there is only one way to find out
• Reader Appreciation Project provides some good tips on showing reader appreciation. Some of these tips require more effort, but I feel a more personal touch is preferable to the automated approach provided by some WordPress plugins. This extra effort can reap rewards in the long term.

If you get some time to read the full list then let me know your favourites.

Here are my favourite 5 themes from the site.

Balloon

A clean looking theme with plenty of white space.

Preview Download

inBloom

Interesting selection of colours which I think works well.

Preview Download

Mr techie

Nice Web 2.0 look and feel to this one. I like how the design has been laid out. There is also room for ads in the sidebar.

Preview Download

newave

If you want a minimalist and clutter free home page for your blog then this one will appeal to you. The entire home page is visible without any scrolling. I like how the latest article is shown in full with previous articles shown as excerpts to the right.

There is no sidebar but I like that. No sidebar could work well on some sites, such as those which publish lengthy articles. Removing the sidebar means wider articles and less scrolling for the reader. Nice Web 2.0 rounded edges and shadows with this theme.

Preview Download

unmoving

Interesting use of headers with this theme which works well.

Preview Download

One of the things I’ve noticed is how programs often show little teasers about what is coming up later on in the show. The idea is to keep the viewer ‘hooked’ rather than switching to another channel. If an hour long program shows all the best content in the first 10 minutes, how is it going to keep the viewer entertained for the remaining 50 minutes?

Some times I find this annoying, you can end up having to wait 50 minutes to watch the piece you’re interested in! But these tactics have the desired effect, they keep you watching.

You can employ a similar tactic on your blog. If you’ve got a great article to blog about you could think of a couple of strategies:

Spread Out Your Good Content

If you have a long list of great articles to blog about, don’t publish them all at once, otherwise you could run out of ideas on what to write next. Spread these articles out over a few weeks or so, intermingled with other posts.

This provides an opportunity to build up anticipation for future articles. You could finish off an article by saying that you will go into more detail in a later post, or that you will be writing a related article next week. This encourage visitors to come back for more content.

Keeping a couple of posts in reserve can be useful too during those times you hit writers block.

Consider Writing A Series

If it is a lengthy topic, covering several subject areas, you could consider breaking it into a series of smaller articles. This keeps each article smaller and easier to digest for your visitors. It also builds anticipation as your readers look forward to the next article in the series.

I’ve used this technique on this blog before and it has proved popular with readers.

Watch Some TV Commercials

Here is a little experiment to try. Watch all the adverts during a commercial break. When the commercial break is over see how many of the adverts you can remember. When I tried this only a couple of adverts stood out. These were either funny or had a strong audio and visual element to them. The remaining adverts just blurred into one which I couldn’t remember anything about.

You could apply the same technique to your blog. Maybe showing a picture like the one above is not the best idea but you get the general idea. Something a bit different is more likely to stick in the mind of your readers. I’m sure your imagination can devise some great ideas

There are so many blogs out there that you need something to stand out from the crowd. Perhaps writing the odd funny or off-topic article on your blog, or doing a video or audio podcast could spice things up. An unusual or striking web site design might be another way to get your blog to stick with your readers.

Is there anything else we can apply to our blogs from watching TV? Let me know in the comments section below.

Photo by Balakov

Not paying attention to screen resolutions is an easy mistake. If your website displays poorly at other resolutions you could be losing out on valuable traffic. First impressions count so don’t make the same mistake as me.

My PC at home uses a screen resolution of 1280×1024 and this blog displays fine at that resolution. Last week I visited my web site from a friend’s PC who uses 1024×768. I noticed that my blog didn’t display well at that resolution. Since I was using a fluid width theme I noticed the main body of each post was too narrow to read properly.

I had a look in Google Analytics and noticed the majority of visitors to this site use 1024×768. Not good news.

Assuming you use Google Analytics, you can discover what resolutions your visitors are using by accessing the Screen Resolutions option from the Visitors tab.

For the last month this is the breakdown of screen resolutions used by visitors to this site.

38% of my visitors are using a screen resolution of 1024×768. In real terms that works out at over 5000 visitors.

I wonder how many of those 5000 visitors were turned off due to my web site not displaying properly. Quite a few I imagine. This represented a lost opportunity to gain new readers.

So what have I done to fix this? I’ve started using a fixed width theme for starters. I’ve found this works better across a greater variety of screen resolutions, especially for web sites that use a lot of images like some of my articles do. There are more design improvements coming to this web site very soon so watch this space!

I recommend you try viewing your own web site at different resolutions. It could be time well spent if you spot some mistakes.

You may also like to read this related article:
Testing your web site with different browsers

Did you know you can use this WordPress plugin for any type of Javascript, not just Google AdSense? I’ve successfully used AdSense Deluxe to implement CrazyEgg tracking code on my site. You could use it for other types of Javascript too.

For those not familiar with this plugin you might like to read my review.

Just enter any Javascript code in the usual place you would enter your Adsense code. You then manage this code just like any other AdSense block you’ve already setup.

I’ve come to this conclusion by using a free heat map testing tool from CrazyEgg. This heat map shows where users click on each web page. Nate Whitehill has written a good article on Heatmap Testing if you want to find out more.

The heat map for this blog shows the majority of clicks occur within the main body of each article. I tested a variety of blog pages to see if there was any pattern and the results were conclusive. It didn’t seem to matter what subject the blog article covered, the sidebar was pretty much ignored.

So why are there so few clicks in the sidebar? Here are a few possible ideas:

1. The sidebar theme/layout/color scheme is poorly designed and does not attract attention
2. The sidebar is in the wrong position
3. The sidebar content is boring
4. Visitors are so focused on reading the main content that the sidebar goes unnoticed
5. Non tech-savvy readers may not understand what the sidebar is and ignore it

There are lots of useful studies on web site design and usability. One of my favourites is the F-Shaped Pattern for Reading from usability guru Jakob Nielsen. It discusses how the human eye scans over a web page and how this has implications for web site design.

This study confirms that visitors tend to scan the main content area. It also shows that the left-hand sidebar gets some attention too.

Clearly my sidebar needs a makeover. What would you do to improve things?

Photo courtesy of jemwseb.
Distributed under the Creative Commons License.

Consider your readers, they subscribe to dozens of feeds. Each day their feed reader is full of new information competing for their attention. These people are likely to speed read this information, only clicking on those articles with an interesting title.

You could write a fantastic article, but if it is let down by a poor headline, it is likely to get lost in a sea of blog titles competing for the readers attention. It is no different to going into a shop and buying a newspaper or magazine. It is the headline that counts.

Darren Rowse ran a series on 31 Days To Building A Better Blog. I submitted two articles to this series. One article received far more readers than the other. The reason I believe is the headline.

Article 1: Unlock Hidden Treasures In Your Blog
This is an example of what I feel is a good blog title. The headline generates interest and intrigue. The headline is like a teaser, enticing readers to click through and read the article. This article received a lot of traffic. It ended up being reviewed on StumbleUpon too which drove further traffic to the article.

Article 2: Increase Traffic By Fixing Broken Links
The title of this post is pretty boring. It’s obvious what the article is about and there is no incentive to read the full article. This article received far less traffic than the first one.

So next time you write an article for your web site or blog, consider the headline you will use. It could be the difference between success and failure. If you need some inspiration for headlines then copyblogger has written an excellent series on how to write magnetic headlines.

Photo courtesy of MoreThanReal.
Distributed under the Creative Commons License.

If a visitor comes to your site and due to a missing link can’t find the information they need, then you’re missing out on valuable traffic. Thankfully there are some easy tools out there to track such errors.

One of the tools I’ve used for a long time is Google Webmaster Tools. I wrote a review of this a few months ago. The service it provides is free too.

One of the features offered by Google Webmaster Tools is an analysis of any errors encountered by Google whilst indexing your web site. The Google Webmaster Help Center page provides more information on what this indexing process involves.

The more Google knows about your web site structure, the greater chance there is of increased traffic being driven to your site. It is therefore a good idea to track down and fix broken links.

Under the Diagnostic tab of Google Webmaster Tools you will find a report of any errors reported by Google whilst indexing your site. The web crawl page splits any errors into several categories, such as pages not found or unreachable. The ultimate goal is to have a screen looking like this. This image shows zero errors for each category.

The categories I focus on are “Not Found” and “Unreachable URLs”. Any errors in these categories indicates a possible broken link somewhere on your web site. I use the word ‘possible’ because there are other reasons that Google may not have found the page it was looking for, such as your web site being down or the network on your web host timing out.

If you see any errors here then you can click on the appropriate link to see a detailed list of web pages where errors occurred. The Google web crawl errors page goes into this subject in more detail if you’re interested.

For months this Diagnostic page would regularly show errors for my web site. Recently I changed the theme on this site and fixed a few errors in some of my WordPress template files and that seems to have made a big difference. Since making these changes several older articles on this site are now performing very well in search engine rankings. In some cases I’ve seen spectacular increases in traffic.

This increase in traffic may just be coincidence, or it could be that Google is now able to index these older articles. Either way, it is worth keeping an eye on this type of information. You could add it to a list of regular web site housekeeping tasks that you perform once or twice the year.

Beginners Guide To RSS

How I tripled my email subscriber numbers

The importance of testing your web site in different browsers

Personalize your web site – create a favicon in 3 easy steps

How to better target your AdSense Ads

More on positioning your AdSense Ads