Tag Archives: URL

Magic Moment: How to quickly edit the headline’s permalink

Posted on Tuesday 2 October 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Content, CopywritingThis is a small time-saving device I picked up that I use all the time. Really in the scheme of things it’s miniscule, but I love it when I come across a wacky bit of doing something new!

Writing headlines is quite an art. This is the part of the post you really should spend time concentrating on (and it’s obvious that I don’t), but during your brainstorming sessions you may try out a number of headlines to see how they scan, where you can place that all important keyword, whether it would grab the attention of your readers, does it reflect adequately the subject matter of the post.

Often I put a headline in and then start writing, and I realise half way through my post I’ve gone off on a totally different track. Rather than edit what I’ve written to fit the headline, and upset my creative juices, I put my first concept aside and adapt my headline to suit the post.

But then that means I have to change the permalink. Each post is allocated its own page, which therefore needs to have a URL, called a permalink. These are automatically created as soon as you’ve finished writing your headline in its editing field, or if you are dallying for too long will create it half finished anyway.

Therefore if you edit your headline (or are too slow in writing it), and you want your permalink to match your post’s title, it needs to be edited. It is a very simple process (especially since I’ve found out this quicker way) and can be done in a trice.

Take my first attempt at this post’s headline:

First headline attempt

But I realised that adding in the word ‘headline’ might be a good idea. And after editing it, so does the permalink needs to be edited.

In the past I would have copied my new headline and the opened up the permalink editing field (in yellow) via the ‘Edit’ button, pasted it in, added in all the hyphens and then pressed ‘OK’. But you don’t need to copy the headline any more. Just access the editing field via the ‘Edit’ button:

Opening permalink editing field

and clear it by highlighting and deleting:

Deleting old permalink

And then just press the ‘OK’ button:

Pressing OK button in Permalink edit

And if it’s not immediately obvious the new headline has been incorporated into the permalink, click on the ‘Edit’ button again to make sure:

Checking edited permalink

And this can take about a second to do. Trivial, yes, but a nice little touch I enjoy doing every time!

But you know what? I think I’ll change the headline to something else now… Oh, how I enjoy changing that permalink!

Filed Under: Blogging education, Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

Magic Moment: How to show tweets within posts

Posted on Monday 2 July 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Click my logo to ask me a question!

Whenever WordPress is updated, there is usually a nice new feature to explore and marvel at.

In the latest version (3.4), WordPress allows us to display tweets in posts (as shown below). When you mouse over it, you’ll find that it is also interactive, so you can follow the twitterer, retweet or reply to the tweet, or even mark it as a favourite.

(It’s so nice when I get complimentary comments – maybe I should show more of them…)

And it’s easy to do this yourself. Go to the twitterer’s timeline, find the tweet in question and click on it.

Tweet details exposedIt will then expand. Look for the time and date in light grey just above the reply field, and click on the word ‘Details’. The tweet will open into a separate page with its own URL.

Copy that URL and then paste it into your blog page you are writing. Although you only see the URL in your text, when you preview your post the tweet will be shown in all its glory!

–oo0oo–

And now I’ve just found another facet within this feature. While preparing another complimentary tweet, after I clicked on ‘Details’ the tweet expanded to show the conversations before and after, with the light grey link ‘Embed this Tweet’ appearing in the same place. This resulted in a menu that provide me with the HTML code for the tweet:

Embed this tweet

HTML tag(remember to pull the field down with the little arrow in bottom right hand corner to reveal the whole of the code, or highlight it all via Ctrl A before copying) which, when copied into my post (click on the HTML tag at the top of the posting field for pasting in HTML), appeared as this:

After HTML tweet pasted

but when your preview or publish, it appears like this:

which in spite of the typo I think this is pretty cool!

And hopefully without going overboard, here’s another example:

Happy tweet-blogging!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Want to know another way to put images into your post?

Posted on Friday 13 April 2012 by Alice • 2 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Click my logo to ask me a question!

Over Easter I tried to help a blogger from the States with placing images into her posts.

At first it was simply telling her she couldn’t cut and paste images from another source and place them amongst her text. All images that go into your posts need to become part of your blog first. They need to be given their own identity within the blog, properly saved to get their own URL, and a position within the blog’s space in the internet, which is called the server.

Even my logo has its special place within my blog. I am able to bring it up each time because I have stored it in the media gallery, which you can access by clicking on the image icon above the writing post area. This is the first way of bringing an image correctly into your blog, to place in your post and amongst your other images to use again.

As this poor blogger couldn’t do this (there seemed to be something preventing her from uploading images into her blog’s server), all I could do was to recommend asking help from the WordPress.org forums. I hope one of the technicians provided the answer, such as turning off the plugins first or typing in a special code into the Settings area.

FileZilla

Puzzling over this, I realised there is another way to put images into the server and then into the posts, by-passing the media icon and gallery. This is only possible if you have access to the FTP of your blog, and I use an application called FileZilla for this purpose.

FileZilla reveals the contents within the blog’s server. There are quite a lot of files that go towards making a blog happen properly. If you know your way around, within ‘public_html’ you will find a file called ‘images’ where you can upload your pictures. This will give each picture its own very simple URL, such as yourblog’sURL/imagename.jpg, without any extra files or dates clogging it up.

You can upload your pictures by simply dragging them into that file (once you’ve opened it up in FileZilla) or via the uploading mechanism recommended by your FTP provider. Be careful about naming your images, so you can access them later when there are a lot of other pictures stored there, even though they are placed in time-sequence.

The only problem is that you won’t be able to see them in your media gallery, so make sure they are the exact size you need, and you have a record of the image names (and make sure these are absolutely correct) to save you having to search them out in FileZilla later.

And now you go to your post-content page, place your cursor where you want your picture to go, click on the media icon, and now select ‘From URL’ instead of ‘From Computer’:

Make sure the Image radio button is checked.

The URL field is where you type in yourblog’sURL/imagename.jpg, which is why it needs to be exactly correct, or it won’t match with what’s uploaded into your server. WordPress will let you know if it is correct with a green tick or not with a red cross.

The ‘title’ field is marked as required (shown by the red asterisk) to show a yellow tag when moused over. Ideally the ‘alternate text’ field should also be required (you can use the same description) so that the search engines can read your images, as well as partially sighted visitors.

The rest of the menu is pretty standard, except for the ‘link image to’ field. This is where you can link your picture to another webpage or an email address (by adding mailto: immediately before the email address) like my logo. This is particularly useful if you have created a button image as a call to action.

Once you have confirmed by clicking ‘Insert into Post’, your picture should appear as you desire. Happy blogging!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

How to make pictures look better

Posted on Tuesday 3 May 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

In my last post you learned how to put a picture into a post. But there’s a lot more to pictures than you think, how they are positioned, creating padding around them, making them readable for the search engines – even understanding how to prepare your pictures beforehand.

When I started working for my boss and her newsletter provider, I was astounded how her staff struggled to prepare the pictures so they were suitable to be inserted. Her newsletter system was very particular, and could only cope with jpegs that were below 30MB, and the software available to use was Paint, which didn’t even work on my computer!

It took me a while to persuade my boss to buy Photoshop Elements, but once purchased, transforming pictures became a doddle. I taught my colleagues about dots per square inch, and that 72dpi is the most suitable for the web. I showed them how to crop a picture to show the best subject matter, how to reduce it in size without distortion, and how to to save it within the required size-frame. I even showed them how to collect images from different sources and convert them into jpegs so they could be used appropriately.

Suddenly the newsletters started to brighten up, look more interesting and attract more attention. And the same can be for your blog.

Click on your newly inserted picture, and you’ll get these icons:

It’s obvious that the red circle on the right means delete, but if you want to edit your picture, click on the left icon and you’ll get this menu:

Here you can change the alignment of your picture, whether it is placed left, right or centre within the page (from where you place your cursor) and the text will be automatically wrapped around it. (If this doesn’t work, which might be the case in some WordPress.org blogs, then you’ll need to add in a caption because then the image will be placed in a caption box which the text can wrap around.) If you don’t need to worry about your picture’s alignment, leave it as ‘None’.

I explained about alternative text in my previous email: alt tags describe the pictures for the benefit of the search engines who can’t read images, so use appropriate and relevant keywords, and for blind people whose computers read the alt tags.

Below that you can see the picture’s special URL, which will link to the picture’s allocated page within your blog. But you can edit that field to any other URL destination, internal or external to your blog, or to your email by typing ‘mailto:’ immediately before your email address.

If you’re happy with these changes, click on ‘Update’.

However, there is an ‘Advanced Settings’ tab at the top:

Here you can change the size of your picture to whatever you want. A tip: change either the width or the height, and then leave or make the other field blank, WordPress will adjust the picture accordingly without distorting it.

I use the image properties for creating ‘padding’ around my pictures. (This isn’t necessary if you have a caption, as padding is automatically created for your caption box.) Padding is the white space in between the picture and the text, preventing them from jutting against each other, and using this can make a big difference when presenting your pictures. I generally put anything from 5 to 10 in the boxes (vertical and horizontal), but you can experiment to what suits you.

The border box obviously provides a border for your picture, but be lenient – use between 1 to 3 unless you want to make a statement!

Again, once you’ve finished editing your picture, click on the ‘Update’ button.

So to sum up, make sure your picture is the correct size, is 72 dots per square inch, is aligned within your text, has alt text added to it, has a link added behind it, and has appropriate padding for ‘breathing space’ within the text. Then you’ll see a difference between professional picture placing and those that don’t know…

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, revised e-courses, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

How to place pictures into your post

Posted on Monday 2 May 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

One of my blogging ‘guinea pigs’ asked me about how to ‘do’ pictures correctly. This is quite a big subject, so I’ve broken it up into two posts – here is the first one:

There are three ways to put a picture into your post, whether its straight from your computer, from your media library or if you know its URL. Go to the picture icon above this field you type your post content into:

You’ll get a menu sitting on your blacked-out screen:

If you are uploading your picture from your computer, once you’ve clicked on ‘Select Files’, it will bring up your computer’s browser for you to find the picture you want to use. Select it by clicking on the right file, and your picture will be uploaded into your Media Library for use:

Now you can give your picture a title (for recognition), add in alternative text (this is the words you put behind your picture for the search engines to read, and is usually as a description for blind users to ‘hear’ it), a caption (this puts the picture in a box with the caption underneath), a description (for the search engines), the picture’s own URL (for HTML use and for the second uploading option) and the alignment and size of the picture. After this has been completed you then choose to either upload it into the post (it will appear where you put your cursor) or save into the Media Library.

The second uploading option uses the picture’s URL, which is either provided for you by the Media Library with each picture’s storage menu, or if you have uploaded your picture into the blog’s server, to be accessed like a document:

A URL of a stored picture from the Media Library looks like this: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/4/P-computer2.jpg and it shows the picture has been automatically stored away in the uploads file and given a date. It is wise to highlight and copy these URLs to paste them correctly to make sure you don’t miss anything.

A URL from a picture you’ve uploaded into your server will look like this: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/images/C-FormDashboard1.2.jpg which shows I have uploaded this picture into my images file in my FTP provider – ideal if you have a lot of pictures that might clutter up your Media Library. When you type this URL into its field, you don’t need to include the full URL, just /images/C-FormDashboard1.2.jpg will do.

Whatever URL your picture has, remember to fill it in appropriately. If it is correct, a green tick will appear next to it, if wrong, you will see a red cross, which means you have typed it incorrectly. You need to be scrupulously accurate. Don’t forget to click the ‘Insert into Post’ button.

The next option is to upload your picture directly from your Media Library, which will be if you have used it previously for another post, or if you saved your picture rather than placing it in a post:

Select the picture you want through the ‘Show’ link, and after you’ve added in all the necessary data, click the ‘Insert into Post’ button.

My next post will show you what you can do with your pictures once you’ve placed them in your post, to make them look good or perform appropriately for their chosen task.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, revised e-courses, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

What does a forward slash signify?

Posted on Thursday 12 August 2010 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

Driving to work today, a relevation came to me. For years I had just accepted the forward slash as being parts of a URL or web-address which I didn’t need to question. They seemed to be like the mortar that held the bricks together.

But now I understand them as gateways for the server (the hosting area where your domain name is held) to direct visitors (or spiders) to another portion (file/section/page/post) of your blog.

For example, the URL for this post http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-does-a-forward-slash-signify/ shows the domain name (the web address of this blog) followed by a door (the forward slash) to go to the page (the blog post) which contains the above title. (Don’t forget that each post has its own page and therefore a URL allocated to it.) The forward slash also allows these elements to be separated, comprehended and archived.

Let’s look at this URL for the beginning of my WordPress.com blog course: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/com/create-a-blog/.  First is the domain name of this blog, with a door (slash) leading to the parent page ‘com’, with another door/slash which leads to a child page ‘create a blog’, with another slash ready should a grandchild page become available.

If you wrote the full URL without slashes, the server wouldn’t understand that a) the information was separated and b) which areas (page or file) it was to go to, and there would be no methods of conveying the blog user in the right direction.

Well, that’s my interpretation of the forward slash – what’s yours?

Filed Under: blogs and blogging

What and how important are permalinks?

Posted on Friday 4 June 2010 by Alice • 3 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

There is a industrial and successful marketeer called Ed Rivis who has acquired some creditable acclaim through his online marketing prowess, mainly in the use of online campaigns and the art of the landing page, but what astounds me is that he doesn’t optimise his permalinks on his blog!

But more of that later… so what is a permalink?

WordPress allocates each post with its own URL, created from the headline you give it:

Both kinds of blog

As you can see, this post has been given a permalink of http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-and-how-important-are-permalinks/ which WordPress has automatically created for me underneath the headline field. I also have the option to edit my permalink should I decide to change my headline while writing my post, or if I want to create a shorter, more memorable one. (There is also the more advanced option of a ‘shortlink’ if you want to use this permalink in social networking, such as Twitter.)

Most blog permalinks include the date within them, and look like this: http://successnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ – so let me break it down for you.

• Note there isn’t www after the http:// because this is a blog, not a website;

• Next you’ll see the username of the original author of the blog: ‘successnetwork’;

• Followed by .wordpress.com because this is a WordPress.com or a ‘free’ blog (WordPress take control of your blog’s URL because they have provided all the software and programming for you, if you have a WordPress.org blog you can choose your own blog URL);

• Next is the date of the post: /2010/06/01/ (presented backwards) which is automatically calculated for you;

• And then you have the headline or title of the post: 5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ separated by hyphens so it’s easier for the spiders to read and for humans to quickly recognise.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you have the chance to change how your permalinks look in Settings > Permalinks:

And you will see a number of options for how your permalink could look:

• Default = URL/?p=123 (post number)
• Day and name = URL/year/month/day/post name
• Month and name = URL/month/day/post name
• Numeric = URL/archive/post number
• Custom = whatever you want.

I have chosen ‘URL/post name’ as it makes it much easier to remember my permalinks and to write them in posts and browsers. If your categories are important to your search engine optimisation then these can be put into your permalink: ‘URL/category/post name’ for example. In fact, SEO is an important factor when considering your permalinks, but if stuffing it full of keywords and other goodies as well as what’s in the headline of your post is important to you, then go ahead, but take into consideration the length of your permalink and its practicalities, and that shortening it into tinyurls isn’t always the answer.

Oh, and another tiny point, it’s the permalinks that are live in RSS feeds, and when you are posting your latest blog contribution into a LinkedIn Group news section, the programming automatically recognises your permalink and everything associated with it for you!

So what of Ed Rivis? His latest post was http://www.edrivis.com/?p=517 – which means absolutely nothing to me except that he has probably written 516 more posts before this one. I have no idea what the subject is about (it is, actually, 77 ideas for great email and blog content) but I wouldn’t bother reading it because I only managed to glean about 8 that were worth considering! You’d think that an online marketing chap that is so famous and rich would have optimised his blog better – but no matter, it probably isn’t important to him.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

How to put a video onto a WordPress.com blog

Posted on Tuesday 1 June 2010 by Alice • 2 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

One thing about a WordPress.com blog is that generally it doesn’t accept HTML code or script if you want to add in special features such as a sign-in box for your newsletter in the sidebar, or a coded badge for your Twitter-stream, for example.

refers to .com blog

But there are exceptions. One is for the chicklit logo for RSS so subscribers can follow your posts through a search engine reader, and another is to post in videos from YouTube.com.

So how do you add a video to your post in a WordPress.com blog? Well, first you need to upload your video into YouTube.com because once this is accomplished, you will be given a URL for your video and code for your website (and also your blog).

I’m going to use an old video I made for my business many years ago, which I have buried away in YouTube.com.

Click on ‘Edit’:

And then ‘View on Video Page’:

And click on the ‘Embed’ button:

This is where you can get the code for your video. If you are posting it into your website, you can play around with the colour scheme and screen size too!  But now we need to go into your blog’s dashboard (see ‘How to accessing a blog’):

Here is the WordPress.com blog I use to show the examples in my visual blogging e-courses you can access from the Free Resources Library in my sidebar. Let’s create a post (see ‘Writing Posts’):

I’m going to concentrate on using your video’s URL given to you by YouTube.com first. You can upload that via the Video icon at the top of the post-writing box:

Once you’ve clicked on that, go to the ‘From URL’ tab:

And you will see a space for your video’s URL. Go back to YouTube.com:

And copy your video’s URL from the browser at the top of your webpage. Then go back to your blog and post it into the URL box:

Click on ‘Insert into Post’:

Where you will see the URL correctly displayed. (If you just paste the URL directly into your post-writing box without doing this procedure, it will just become a link that goes directly back to your YouTube.com page which contains your video.)

Now click on ‘Preview’ to see the video window:

If you would like to use the code given by YouTube.com as an alternative method, here’s how. Go back to YouTube.com:

Highlight and copy the code of your video, and go back to your post-writing box in your blog and paste in the code where you want your video screen to be:

Here’s when WordPress.com allows HTML script to happen properly. Click on ‘Preview’ to see your video screen:

Although it looks the same, you’ll see the sentence before reminding you I’ve used code instead of the URL.

Now all you need to do is to finish writing your post, add in your tags and allocate your categories, and publish!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, social networking

Automatic archiving in a blog

Posted on Monday 17 May 2010 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

One client asked me whether she should have additional pages added to her blog in order to house archives of the posts she had written. She had visualised doing this manually every time she posted.

Both kinds of blog

I reassured her that this was done automatically, and far more extensively than she had imagined. This is where categories and tags come into play (see my e-course ‘Creating tags and categories’ to find out more) as these are the preliminaries to archiving your posts. Categories are the topics your posts are allocated to, and tags are the keywords used to focus the search engines onto your posts.

But let’s start at the beginning. Every time you write a post, it is published straight onto the main blog post page, which acts like a news roll with the newest post positioned at the top:

Here is the previous blog post I published to this one. The URL for my news roll page is http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/blog/ (because I have a separate homepage):

But if you click on the headline of that post, you will find that it has its own separate page:

And URL (http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/5-top-tips-for-a-successful-post/):

You may have noticed that the page title is different from the post’s headline, as that is the result of using the ‘All-in-one-SEO-pack’ plug-in which allows you to create more appropriate page titles for SEO purposes than your post’s headline.

Now, if you have read my ‘Creating tags and categories’ e-course, you will understand the importance of allocating your post to appropriate categories and relevant tags:

The bottom of each post lists which categories I have selected, and you will see they are live links. They are also listed in their separate widget in the sidebar. Click on any of the categories used (in this case Increasing Business Visibility) and you will see a separate page that contains the post:

and its allocated category URL: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/category/visibility/

and page title Increasing Business Visibility | Fairy Blog Mother.

The same goes for the tags:

These tags are listed at the bottom of their allocated post, and listed in a ‘cloud’ within their respective widget on the sidebar. You can see that the most frequently used tags are larger than the others.

Let’s look at the tag ‘Keywords for SEO purposes’ that I chose for that post, and the page URL and title automatically created:

Note the /tag/ in between the URL and the tag name.

But it doesn’t stop there. There is an additional widget on my sidebar that shows my archives allocated to each month I post:

I have opted for the pull down menu which shows each month and the number of posts I have published. There is a separate page for each month with its own URL (http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/2010/05/ for May) and page title:

So for each post, there is a total of five pages it is allocated to once it is published. None of these are obvious, but the links are there at the bottom of the posts or within the widgets on the sidebar. And it’s a good thing it is automatic – could you imagine having to do all this by hand?

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs