Central Perk

vineri, 18 februarie 2011

How to Create a Dynamic Footer Carousel Graywolf's SEO Blog

Posted: 18 Feb 2011 07:44 AM PST

In my piece on How to Build an Effective Footer, one of the tips I mentioned was making your footer more dynamic by including links to posts that are currently popular on your website. It’s something I do on the bottom of this website. I’ve gotten a few emails asking how, so I figured I’d turn it into a tutorial.

One method you could use is selecting the most recent posts from a specific category. I covered how to do that in my How to Add a Carousel Post. However, for my footer, I wanted something with a date aspect to it. What I really wanted was to display the most popular posts from the current day. Since I’m pushing out 4-6 archived posts on twitter per day, this does a really good job of keeping the footer from looking active. Additionally if I have a really popular post that links to another post, it’s pretty likely to populate the footer as well.

Most of the heavy lifting is done via the WordPress popular posts plugin, which does all the calculating for you. It can spit out the code for you via widget, but chances are it won’t fit nicely into your theme. You’re going to need to do a bit of customization–thankfully the plugin has that functionality built in. You don’t have to use Thesis to make this work, but it is a lot easier (see Thesis Review).

We need to open up our custom functions file and, if you don’t already have a footer function, you’ll need to add one like this:

// Footer output function my_footer() {

}
Inside of that function we’re going to add the code that tells the plugin to pick the most popular posts for the past day along with a bunch of other info like this:

// Footer output function my_footer() {

get_mostpopular("range=daily&limit=6&order_by=avg&pages=0&title_length=35 &thumbnail_width=140&thumbnail_height=140&thumbnail_selection=usergenerated& stats_comments=0&cats_to_exclude=209,210,217&post_start='<div class=caroselu>'&post_end=</div>&do_pattern=1&pattern_form={image}{title}");

}

I’ll step you through what each of the parameters means

range=daily – Use the daily time frame. You can also use weekly or monthly.
limit=6 – I want 6 items. You can choose more or less (see warning at end of post).
order_by=avg – What order you want the post in. I want average views.
pages=0 – I only want posts, not pages.
title_length=35 – How many characters are in the post, which keeps the formatting neat.
thumbnail_width=140 – the width of the thumbnail image (see below for more).
thumbnail_height=140 – the height of the thumbnail (see below for more).
thumbnail_selection=usergenerated – The theme generates a new file based on the Featured Image for the post.
stats_comments=0 – I’m not using comments so I tell it to ignore them.
cats_to_exclude=209,210,217 – I don’t want some posts to appear, so I use this to ignore them.
post_start=’<div class=”caroselu”>’ – HTML to put at the beginning.
post_end=</div> – HTML to put at the end.
pattern_form={image}{title} – What format I want the individual output in.

Once that’s all done make sure you are calling the footer.
add_action('thesis_hook_footer', 'my_footer');

At this point you might see a bunch of empty boxes. That means you aren’t using the “featured image” field for your posts. So you’ll need to edit some of your older posts and put that in. If you’re images are stacked one on top of each other, you’ll need to float them by adding something like this t your CSS file.

.caroselu {float:left;padding:3px;text-align:center;margin:0px;}

The code can also be adapted and expanded; for example my Most Popular Posts page uses a variation of the code with a longer time frame and larger number of posts.

The Bad News

There are some downsides to implementing this code. As some hosting companies have explained to me, this is a very resource intensive plugin. If you are on shared hosting you may go over your CPU limits if you have a busy website or include a lot of images. Secondly, the more images you use, the slower you make your pages, and page speed plays a small role in rankings (see How to Speed Up WordPress). Lastly I haven’t been able to get the plugin to generate rectangular shaped images. I can make them wider but all it does is stretch the square image out. If the featured image is a rectangle it won’t just use the rectangle.

How to Build an Effective Footer Footers are one of the most often underused, misused and...
How to Add a Carousel to Your Thesis Blog If you’ve spent any time visiting blogs lately chances are...
How To Make Your Homepage More Dynamic One of the problems I encounter on large client websites–or...
How To Silo Your Website: The Footer This post is part of a series on How to...
WordPress SEO: How to Create Living URL’s If you watched any of the congressional hearings about the...

Advertisers:

Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
Link Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295
KnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How to Create a Dynamic Footer Carousel

West Wing Week: "Goodbye, Gibbs"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, Feb. 18, 2011

West Wing Week: "Goodbye, Gibbs"

West Wing Week is your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This week, President Obama released his federal budget and discussed the need to take responsibility for our deficits while investing in education, in order to prepare our children to be competitive in the global economy and win the future. He also responded to the situation in Egypt, chatted with some Boy Scouts, and honored some of our greatest Americans.

Watch the video.

SEOptimise

33 Quora Q&A Resources: get actual ROI out of using it

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 06:26 AM PST

The hype of 2011 is Quora, the new Q&A site that attempts to become much better than Yahoo Answers by aiming at high quality replies. Everybody and his mum is on Quora it seems, especially SEO industry leaders like Rand Fishkin or Danny Sullivan. I’m not very active at Quora yet but I watch it closely. While at it, I collected so many resources and opinions that I wanted to share them with you. As usual in such cases, I have compiled one of my 30+ lists that you all love so dearly. So here it is: 33 Quora Q&A Resources to get actual ROI out using of it.

Before I throw the links at you, I’d like to summarize the most obvious current uses of Quora. You can:

Ask questions you’d usually have to pay consultant for
Answer questions to show off your expertise
Use your real name to get high in search results (ORM!)
Not use other languages than English, as they’ll be deleted
Vote up answers by others to forge relationships
Sync your Quora account with Twitter to autofollow all your Twitter friends
Follow questions of interest to gain additional insights
Blog directly from Quora’s interface by adding your blog to it
Share questions on Facebook, Twitter, and of course via email
Find experts on every conceivable web related craft or occupation

This post is not an affirmation of Quora as “the next big thing”. That’s why I added both pros and cons to the list. Every responsible business person has to consider the cons before spending a significant amount of time on Quora, as it’s a site that needs constant attention.

Why use Quora? (pros)

Why not use Quora? (cons)

How to use Quora

How to use Quora for SEO purposes

Quora Tech Resources

Miscellaneous Quora Resources

At the end of the day, Quora might indeed be much more useful than Facebook, Twitter or even Wikipedia because it’s not private in nature like Facebook, ephemeral like Twitter or anonymous like Wikipedia. On the other hand, the time spent on Quora can spiral out of control very quickly and thus harm your business. Also, Quora exploits your expertise to create content for them that you’d otherwise could capitalize on your own site.

Facebook and Twitter are mostly gateways, while Quora is a final destination.

So the actual ROI of using Quora must be considered before investing time and other resources into it. Will you get more out of it than you invest in? That’s not clear yet, as it’s the initial goldrush right now. Those who are fast enough may get the best claims to earn money later.

* Image by Milos Milosevic.

Seth's Blog : Two paths for successful group events

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Two paths for successful group events

I'm talking about trade shows, SXSW, street marketing...

There are two ways to be glad you went:

1. An overwhelming show of force. When you have the biggest booth, when you are the buzz of the event, when you are everywhere people look, you reinforce your position as the leader.

2. Powerful personal interactions. Not with everyone. Just with people who want to talk with you, who will benefit from a powerful exchange. Not mass, but high in value. Even better, designing these interactions (and your product) so that this small number of people set out to evangelize their peers on your behalf.

The mistake almost everyone makes is to do both. Or to believe that they know a cheap shortcut on their way to #1. Or to get too busy chasing (and failing) at mass that they don't have time to do the personal.

Years ago, the company I worked for spent millions at various venues of the Consumer Electronics Show. We were there, we were sort of big and we sort of won. But not really. Too much noise, too much competition, we were neither. By trying to reach as many as we could, we were never intimate enough to generate conversations that mattered or ideas that spread...

Once again, it comes down to scale. If you staff and invest appropriately, you don't have to 'win' the show to make it worth the trip. On the other hand, if you're setting out to win and investing at the appropriate level, you better win.

• Email to a friend •

•

joi, 17 februarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

European Sovereign Debt Crisis in Pictures; Nothing Solved Yet, Credit Stress Close to All Time Highs

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 12:28 PM PST

The ECB and EU want everyone to believe there will not be haircuts on sovereign government debt. The market refuses to believe that and so do I.

If there was no risk of default, then government bond yields would all be the same. Instead, please follow this progression of current yields on 10-year government debt.

click on any chart to see a sharper image

Germany 3.237%

France 3.615%

Belgium 4.23%

Italy 4.731%

Spain 5.455%

Portugal 7.41%

Ireland 9.148%

Greece 11.859%

In spite of all the yapping by ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet and others, the European sovereign debt crisis remains near its most stressed levels, and the above set of charts proves it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Gallup Survey Pegs Mid-February U.S. Unemployment at 10%; Analysis of the Jobs and Unemployment Situation

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 09:34 AM PST

Gallup says the unemployment rate is 10.0%. However, that is a "without seasonal adjustment". On the same basis, the BLS has the January unemployment rate at 9.8%.

The "official" unemployment rate from the BLS is 9.0%, seasonally adjusted.

Please consider Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Up to 10.0% in Mid-February

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, hit 10.0% in mid-February -- up from 9.8% at the end of January.

Numbers reflect rolling averages for the 30-day periods ending on the 15th and last day of each month from January 2010 through February 15, 2011.

The percentage of part-time workers who want full-time work worsened considerably in mid-February, increasing to 9.6% of the workforce from 9.1% in January.

Part Time Workers Wanting Full Time Jobs

Underemployment Surges in Mid-February

Underemployment, in which Gallup combines part-time workers wanting full-time work with the U.S. unemployment rate, surged in mid-February to 19.6% -- mostly as a result of the sharp increase in those working part time but wanting full-time work. Underemployment now stands at basically the same place as it did a year ago (19.8%).

The Jobs Situation Now Versus a Year Ago

The unemployment rate in mid-February is 0.8 percentage points lower than it was at this time a year ago, compared with a 1.1-point improvement at the end of January. This suggests that jobs are less available now than they were in January.

More troubling, however, is the surge in underemployment. On this broader basis, current job conditions are barely improved from what they were at this time last year. Essentially, what has happened over the past year is that some people who were unemployed got part-time jobs but are still looking for full-time work. This is not much to show for a year in which many macro-economic indicators showed improvement.

This is likely why Gallup's self-reported spending remains stuck in "new normal" even as consumer optimism continues to hit new highs. Jobs remain the key to getting the U.S. economy moving, and mid-February underemployment results suggest little or no progress is being made in that regard.

Analysis of the Jobs Situation

The best comparison of statistics is non-seasonally-adjusted numbers to the same month a year ago. I added blue circles on the charts to show.

While the BLS and Gallup both have non-adjusted unemployment rate dropping nearly a percent from a year ago, the Gallup results suggest that much of that drop is from part-time hiring. To be more precise Gallup shows a .8% drop year over-year in unemployment and a rise of .6% in part-time workers wanting a full-time job.

Gallup notes the year-over-year trend in unemployment is rising. This should not be surprising. Many retail companies did not let go workers in January that they hired for the Christmas season.

It was on that basis I suggested last November and December we could see a couple of "hot months" at the beginning of the year. We did not see it in jobs, but it sure showed up in the large drop last month in the BLS seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate.

Now, unless corporations are about to go on a hiring spree, (and I doubt they are), I would expect unemployment rate to at least tick up to the 9.5-9.6% area again. Moreover, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be 11%.

Here is one final thought. How much taxpayer money is wasted by thousands of BLS workers putting out constantly-revised results when we can easily get results of high quality from the other places for far cheaper?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

vineri, 18 februarie 2011

How to Create a Dynamic Footer Carousel Graywolf's SEO Blog

How to Create a Dynamic Footer Carousel Graywolf's SEO Blog

The Bad News

Related posts:

Advertisers:

West Wing Week: "Goodbye, Gibbs"

SEOptimise

SEOptimise

Seth's Blog : Two paths for successful group events

Two paths for successful group events

More Recent Articles

joi, 17 februarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

vineri, 18 februarie 2011

The Bad News

Related posts:

Advertisers:

More Recent Articles

joi, 17 februarie 2011

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

Subscribe to