Felixberto Baguyo Jr. » Blogging

WordPress Plug-in for Faster Website

bleuken — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:15:28 +0000

It is important that your WP sites are responding well whenever your visitor visits. Not only because, Google officially announced that they’ll include site speed and performance as part of the ranking signals or factor for ranking your website on their SERP but also it is because that this will improve the user experience of your visitors. If they find it to be very easy and fast access then there’s a high chance that they will go back to your site. Thus developing a regular visitor.

Now, there are a lot of WordPress plug-ins today that can be used to increase the speed performance of your website but I shift to one plug-in that contains optimization of the site. From compressing your site through GZip to managing the CDN (content delivery network) for your website. I am referring to the W3 Total Cache plug-in. Back then, I use either Super Cache or Hyper Cache as for my caching plug-ins but these two plug-in doesn’t have any option for integrating CDN to my site.

CDN or content delivery network is used for faster delivery of contents for websites. Files are stored in different networks and rendered fast from the nearest server to the location of the requesting surfer.

Now regarding the plug-in, it contains all necessary options to improve your WordPress site and been testing it for weeks. As of today, the plug-in did very well to my sites and right now updating the remaining of my sites to use it.

- SEO Consultant from Capiz

WordPress Plug-in for Faster Website is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

How to Have A $2 to $8 Website and Setting A Custom Domain in Blogger

bleuken — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:15:32 +0000

With the different problems with the economy, we should learn how to spend our money wisely and invest it carefully. This is the reason why I like to share some tips on how to have a website that will only cost you $2 to $8.

If you want to have a website with a .COM domain then this steps might cost you an $8 but if you can live with .INFO domain then $2 would be enough.

First thing that you need to do is to register a domain. I register my domains at GODADDY and look for a GODADDY promo code (like cjc749fat which will expire this 02/28/10) so that I could register a $7.49 .COM. If you will not use a promo/coupon code, you’ll pay for $10 for a domain name.
After that, register an new account on BLOGGER.COM.
Sign Up an Account in Blogger
Go to the settings page of the Blogger’s dashboard and click Settings->Publishing->Custom Domain
Publishing" width="768" height="341" />
Settings->Publishing->Custom Domain
You’ll see the following screen. Click on the “Switch to Advance Settings”
Advance Settings
Type the domain name that you registered on step 1 on the “Your domain” textbox then Click Save Settings.
Next, sign-in to your domain registrants account then go to the domain manager of your domain name, as shown below:
Go Daddy's Domain Manager
On the domain manager, go to the “Total DNS” window.
From the Total DNS Window, click “Add New A Record” and fill-up the host name with your domain name (yourdomainname.com) and type in the “Points to IP Address” the number 216.239.32.21. Repeat this step for IP Addresses > 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21 and 216.239.38.21. See the sample configuration below:
Click on the image to enlarge
Then add or edit the WWW alias from the CNAME record and fill-up the “Point to hostname” with ghs.google.com. You can read http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373 for information about this setting.

After you’re finished with this configuration, you need to wait a couple of hours or less before the new DNS control settings are applied. When the changes takes effect, you’ll see that when you visit your new domain, it will use your blogger account. You can now modify the template of your site to suit to the niche or topic that you want to be featured by your new site.

For more question about this stuff, you can leave your comment below and I will try to reply to the inquiry. Good luck and happy blogging!

How to Have A $2 to $8 Website and Setting A Custom Domain in Blogger is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Making Your Blog to Load Fast

bleuken — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:45:08 +0000

Load Speed & Search Engines

Its really annoying if you visit a site then it really loads slow. What if you own that site well of course you don’t want your readers / visitors to ‘suffer’ this way. Do you know that search engine might consider the load speed later to be part of their ranking factor? (read: New Google Ranking Factor in 2010: Site Load Speed, for more information regarding this issue.) That’s right they are planning to consider that later next year and you should be ready for that. If you site has a low grade of E or D on YSlow or on any Speedtest then you should consider taking measures to make the experience of your users much better.

Here are some of tips that you might consider to be implemented on your site to cope with this situation:

If you are using WordPress, install page caching plug-ins such as Super Cache and/or DB Cache. This WP plug-ins create a static equivalent of your dynamic web pages making it to load fast and decreases CPU and server/disk usage on your hosting.
Use small graphics. Utilize JPG/JPEG format images. It is known to have higher quality and compression rate compared to other file format.
Minimize the use of widgets or site enhancement that uses Javascripts.
Set expiration dates for your graphics, CSS and other files. This will minimize request loads for the site for revisiting visitors.

More of WordPress and plug-ins information at oes tsetnoc blog.

Making Your Blog to Load Fast is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Customize Your 404 Page for Better User Experience

bleuken — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:09:27 +0000

Custom 404 Tips

There are some cases that visitors or even you misspelled URLs from your site when they try to visit a specific page on your website. Sometimes they use from other site that point to non-existing page or posts from your blogs or website. This happens when you delete a page or rename the permalink or URL of a page. This usually results to a 404 error response from your server or a “Error Not Found” page which is a blank page with a large text: “Error 404 – Not Found.” It will be like a dead end for your readers.

Now, for better user experience, you could customize the 404 page that will be involved for responding to this kind of situation. If you are using WordPress as your CMS for your site, the 404 page is usually part of the theme of the site which you can easily customize by editing it on the theme editor found on the dashboard. The filename is usually 404.php or 404.html for non-Wordpress sites.

You can use the following Javascript from Google to the page to provide a search functionality and page suggestions plus URL fixer for the 404 page: (don’t forget to replace the GOOG_FIXURL_SITE value with the URL of your own site).

Aside from this Javascript code, you can also list all the posts on your WordPress blog using the following code:

The code will list the 1000 posts of your site and if in case you have more than 1k, just replace it with your desired number.

Don’t be satisfied with a plain 404 page and leave your visitors with nothing for a not found URL. Provide them with something through this suggested tweak or improvement on your “Error – not found” page.

Customize Your 404 Page for Better User Experience is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Just Upgraded to WordPress 2.8.5

bleuken — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:14:06 +0000

Wordpress Logo

This morning when I logged on my dashboard, I found out that WordPress released a minor update. By then I immediately click on the automatic upgrade and update the site without reading first the reasons why I need to update. I believe that the site should be updated every time WP said so because this usually fix some security issues, DOS (denial of service attacks) and other exploits that might hit WordPress blogs. Its better to be updated than to be sorry later! Actually a friend of mine who have a lot of traffic was attacked and made his site to be blank. His problem was he is not updating his site regularly and he usually do updates whenever the problem already exist. He just lost about a couple of hundreds for days due to this issue on his site.

Here is what the major features of the latest version released as according to WordPress blog post:

A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
Removal of areas within the code where PHP code in variables was evaluated.
Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plug-ins.

I think these reasons are enough for you to update your site too, don’t you think?

Just Upgraded to WordPress 2.8.5 is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Why Your WordPress Blogs Are Not Crawled?

bleuken — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:01:21 +0000

You might wonder why your blogs that uses WordPress platform aren’t crawled by search engine spiders or included on the search results of the leading search engines (as I have mentioned on my posts on oes tsetnoc crawlability). Specially if you are using Fantastico on the CPanel of your hosting account. There are several possible reasons why newly created site that uses WordPress is not crawled. But the basic problem lies on how the Robots.txt and the meta tags are set on your site.

Let start with the Robots.txt. First check if you do have a robots.txt created on your site. If you don’t have it, just create it on notepad and save the following text on the file:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/yoursitemap.xml

This code tells all search engines to be allowed to visit all the files on your site and declare the default sitemap file. Upload this file on your site.

The next thing that you need to check is if you set the Privacy Settings of your site properly (which I failed to do on my oes tsetnoc blog). I have seen today that by default, Fantastico, the script installer of CPanel, install WordPress with a private settings. Which mean, it adds a NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX meta tag on your site. You can set it on the Dashboard -> Settings page of your WP-Admin. Here’s a video to help you find the place where to set the said settings.

Oes Tsetnoc: WordPress Privacy Settings
by oes-tsetnoc

Why Your WordPress Blogs Are Not Crawled? is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.8 Baker

bleuken — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:37:14 +0000

Wordpress 2.8

I just recently received a notification from WordPress‘ dashboard regarding the availability of the newest update of the blogging platform, which is version 2.8. I immediately updated the site and in just one click through its automatic upgrade features and I am all done. What I did first was to check if the browser still crashes whenever I upload a file using WP’s flash uploader via Firefox. It did not crashed anymore! I’ve been using Chrome lately in upgrading my blogs because of this Firefox crash issues whenever I am making image uploads via flash uploader, now its gone so I’m back to Firefox again. I’ve checked my other blogs but there’s no notification yet so I am still waiting for the said upgrade notice from WP.

According to WordPress.org, the new released version have several scripting tweaks that speed-up the system. Syntax highlighting is now on the Code editor and they have made 790 fixes on the said update. If you want to see the difference, upgrade your WordPress now.

Here’s the video from WP regarding the new version:

Upgraded to WordPress 2.8 Baker is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

Supporting Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009

bleuken — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Another SEO competition in the country was released but this is only exclusive to the native of Capiz. The competition targets the key phrase “Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009” in Google.com. I am one of those who are currently supporting this event. Here are some of the entries that I am currently giving my full support:

My Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009 entry. This is hosted in Blogspot and I personally created the theme derived from the Simpla theme of blogger.com. I am writing about different blogging tips on the said blog as part of the topic that I want to spread around the province. I only write it just to give some tips and winning on the competition will be a bonus but as I have said on my other posts regarding this entry. The possibility of making it rank is too low because I can’t really make anything of it in full “power” because of the current job / schedules I have – I’m working as a SEO Consultant in a company. I am not justifying my defeat on this or trying to be very defensive but people around me are expecting too much from me that’s why the pressure is on but I can’t do anything about the relieve this pressure and the only way to deal with it is bit by bit activities to push my entries.

Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009 by Habitually. This is one of the most creative content I have ever read in the competition. He uses a fictional story about it telling about a different events derived from his wildest imagination. The guy behind this is really very creative and uses his all might to grab any prize from the challenge. This 3D specialists do really have some skills on him. (Update: change the URL of this to a different one because the original link here give-up already)
Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009 by Clawid and Gurlie – Magkasamatayo, that’s what the domain of the blog is. It is a Filipino phrase which means “we are together”, which is an indication of the join forces of my two students who is practicing search engine optimization. These are champions by heart and skills who were previously champ of a local skills competition in the province in the field of IT. Now, they are fighting for a prize to win the challenge slowly and with the hindrance of a lot of obstacles of activities in school. But their entries have great potentials and this only requires a little bit push.

Later, I will feature other entries of my collegues who are wishing to prove something. My advice to those who are participating, don’t stop what you are doing right now. If you stop, you will definitely loose that grip and you will be very amazed on how other entries jump above your entries. What important on this challenge is the skills and knowledge you will gain from it. Good luck everyone and have a nice day!

Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009 Update:

03/14/2009. Some of my collegues stop from optimizing their entries just because they focus on their Adsense earnings which is sure and higher than the prize ($30-$40 per day). I can’t blame them, they are just being practical. Me, well I am focusing on my projects and giving about 30 minutes or less of time to check and do something for my entry. That’s what left of me due my different online activities. I will not stop from doing something for it because my attitude is that whenever I started something, I always make sure I will finish it.

Update: As part of the competition, I made a video specifically for it. See it below:

Supporting Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009 is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

WordPress 2.7.1. Released but I Can’t Update!

bleuken — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:27:22 +0000

When I open my dashboard today, I seen this yellow bar on my screen informing me about the new minor release of WordPress which is the 2.7.1. I immediately click the Please update now hyperlink and I am glad that they have this feature for this new version. But in my surprise, the upgrade does not continue successfully it just stop on the part where the WP package was decompressed for deployment on the server. I tried it for several times and it is not working. I don’t know yet what’s the problem about this. Actually the Automatic Update Plug-in, which I previously used to upgrade my WP installation was not able to detect this new release of WordPress and it says that I have an updated installation, which is an indication that the plug-in have no really idea that there’s a change on the core of this blogging platform.

I also tried the same feature on my other WP 2.7 blog and I got the same reaction from them. Maybe the patch of WP will include the fix for this update-core feature. Oh well I might update it manually later if I will find time to. I just can’t still find any problem yet with my current installation so I might wait for the 2.8 instead. How about you, did you encounter the same problem in upgrading your current WP blogs?

Update: I successfully updated my blog to the newest upgrade version after I deactivated the auto-upgrade plug-in. Read the comments below on why I figure it out.

WordPress 2.7.1. Released but I Can’t Update! is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.

PWA Finalists Announced

bleuken — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:48:47 +0000

After a week of delay of the actual declaration of the PWA finalists for this years best websites, the list of finalists were finally released. I actually did not receive any information from them regarding the lists even they informed me that they will definitely send me an email regarding the said event. Maybe they just forgot about it, who am I to be informed such information. I am just a semi-finalist who inquired for the delayed announcement, hehehe. Well, I found this information from their website highlighted in red orange text.

Unluckily, I did not qualified for the final round. I am already expecting it. Oh well this is my first participation and definitely my last time to join this kind of award thing on the net. I am just not that good on this.

Here are the finalists for the blog category of the 11th Philippine Web Awards:

Eliseo Soriano Blog Site

Congratulations to all the finalists!

PWA Finalists Announced is a post from: Felixberto Baguyo Jr.