Archive for October, 2009

Quick WordPress Theme Tip

Friday, October 16th, 2009

This is just a quick WordPress tip for you.

I’m fairly new to WordPress, but have been working away on various blogs trying to learn everything I can.

You may already know this tip, but here it is anyway. I only learned this this week…

When I setup my first few WordPress blogs, I manually edited the code of the standard blue Kubrick theme files to customise the look and feel of the blog. Last week, I updated one of the blogs to WordPress 2.8.4. I backed up what I thought was everything first, but completely lost my customised theme!!

I was devastated. However, from every error there’s a lesson! So I looked into how to resolve this. This time, using my built-in file manager, I copied the whole theme folder into a new folder (calling it a name relevant to that blog). In the styles.css file within the new folder, I edited the first few lines to give this new theme a name different to the Kubrick one.

From within the admin area of the WordPress blog, I activated this new theme, then customised it. After I’d finished, I downloaded it onto my PC (copying the whole folder). I actually wanted to have another identical looking blog to create a blog network, so just uploaded this new theme to a new WordPress installation and activated it.

Voila! An instant customised theme.

Hope you find this tip useful. I’d be glad to hear from you if you do.

3 Great Twitter Tools – Auto Unfollow, Auto Tweet and TwitterFeed

Friday, October 16th, 2009

twitterIf you use Twitter to any great degree, you’ve probably already seen the potential it can create for you.

The problem, as with most blogging and microblogging platforms, is making time to write tweets and get involved. Here are some techniques I’ve been using to keep my followers occupied with regular tweets.

Twitter Tool #1 – TwitterFeed

I am going to have to assume that you run a blog (any platform, Blogger, WordPress, self hosted etc.)(if you don’t why not??). Using the TwitterFeed system connected to your Twitter account, you can have every post that you write for your blog, added to your Twitter page as a tweet. This is perfect as you will be writing for your blog anyway. It keeps your Twitter account fresh and will inevitably mean you get more followers. You can setup multiple blog feeds into Twitter to gather even more momentum.

Go to www.twitterfeed.com to setup your account.

Twitter Tool #2 – TweetLater

This second Twitter tip is to do with keeping in touch with your new followers. If you’ve setup your TwitterFeed account, and your Twitter account is gathering followers, wouldn’t it be nice to send each new follower a message, maybe just saying hello, or offering them something for free by visiting your blog or web site. What about if you automatically followed them too?

Again, Twitter is about momentum. The more people you follow, the more people will see your profile on profiles that they follow, and you will gather more followers. You follow ;0)?

TweetLater is a service that you can setup to do exactly that (and more, but that’s for another post). Each time someone follows you, you can send them a welcome message, and autofollow them. This is fantastic to build up your twitter followers reasonably quickly.

Go to www.tweetlater.com and explore the other features the site has, such as schedule tweets.

Twitter Tool #3 – Auto Unfollow Twitter Followers

The one problem with autofollowing is that you are only allowed to follow more than 2,000 people if you have 2,000 or more people following you. When I first set this up on my Twitter account, I reached following 2,000 quite quickly, but only had around 1,700 followers. I couldn’t follow any more. After doing some searching, I found a few sites that offered the option of unfollowing people not following you. The best one I found was FriendorFollow. Enter your Twitter account details, and it will respond back with who’s following you and who’s not. You can select multiple people and bulk unfollow them (if you wish). My Twitter account is now back on track and I’m following an even amount of followers.

www.friendorfollow.com will help you sort out your followers list.

Obviously, your Twitter model may be different to mine. I have other Twitter accounts that are much more conservative and dedicated to niche topics, and I use different techniques for those. But my main account is to generate traffic to my sites, so this process works for me.

Do you have any Twitter tips to share?

By the way, how do you like my new bookmark icons below? Neat huh? Stay posted here and I’ll tell you where I got them.