Another must-see event this year is the Search Engine Marketing Conference (SEMCON 2010), which is now on its 4th year. I attended this event last year and I learned a lot but this year they will have more foreign speakers.
Event Date: October 7-8, 2010
Location: Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City
More information at http://www.attendconferences.com/events/semcon-2010/
For beginners who are not familiar with WordPress but may have encountered websites/blogs that use WordPress, here’s a simple WordPress page structure screenshot based from the Twenty Ten default WordPress Theme so that you will be familiar with the terms that I use in my tutorials like when I say sidebar, widgets, post meta, etc.
This may not be the same with each WordPress Theme since some themes or pages do not have a sidebar or a comments section. Some have two menus, one on the top for pages and one below for categories and many other customization.
As announced by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, “Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity.”
This means that WordPress and its trademark is no longer owned by a company (Automattic) but will now be handled by the WordPress Foundation. This is actually great news for the WordPress community and is a step towards the continuity of the WordPress software. Great move by Matt and Automattic, this is why I love the WordPress Community and idolize Matt Mullenweg, I am excited to see him on WordCamp Philippines and congratulate him on this move.
From Matt Mullenweg:
“I know in my heart that this is the right thing for the entire WordPress community, and they followed me on that. It wasn’t easy, but things worth doing seldom are”
About Automattic
Automattic Inc. is a startup from a handful of people passionate about making the web a better place. So far we’re best known for our work on WordPress and other projects but we have a lot of other interesting things in the pipeline as well. We are strong believers in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under licenses like the GPL.
Automattic Projects:
- wordpress.com
- PollDaddy
- Akismet
- Gravatar
- wordpress.org
- bbPress
One of the largest Web Projects that I had was for a Real Estate Company last year. Most of the promotions used was Internet Marketing only meaning promoting the product (House & Lots and Condominiums) and the brand on the internet using different strategies like SEO, PPC, Web Advertising, Social Media, etc ,the project was for 6 months and a sales quota was set to target by the end of the year. Of course, quota was reached with the help of great sales people. And now we might do this again but for the last 3 months of the year only and it is a big challenge again.
It was different from my usual projects where you sell a physical product or digital product, here you sell real estate properties and believe it or not, we sold some properties even without the customer seeing the actual site, just pictures and plans for the project.
Some of the things that I did for this project:
- Make the website SEO friendly including re-writing some of the content (Their website was actually de-indexed before because of duplicate content but I was able to fix this)
- Create a blog with updated info about the projects
- Link Building in directories, forums and blogs related to real estate
- Have an updated pictures of the projects
- Create HTML Email Responses
- Create and Maintain social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, etc.
- Advertise in High Traffic Sites with different banner ads weekly/monthly
- Advertise in Google/Yahoo/Facebook
I will have a Seminar about Blogging with WordPress and SEO Tips to a group of Wedding Photographers next week. My topic includes how to Optimize WordPress and generate traffic with Search Engine Optimization plus How to Analyze Google Analytics Data.
I am excited about this talk and share my knowledge with them.
Did you know that I was once a Wedding Photographer for more than 2 years?
While upgrading the WordPress version of a friend from WordPress 2.7 to 3.0.1, I encountered a PHP error “Call to a member function add_rewrite_tag() on a non-object in …/taxonomy.php on line 289″, which terminated the site including the wordpress admin.
Being a PHP Programmer, the instinct was to edit the taxonomy.php file, but thinking about it made me realize that WordPress core files are thoroughly tested and seldom makes a PHP error, the culprit may either be the wordpress theme or a wordpress plugin. And while searching online, my guess was correct, this error usually is caused by an old wordpress plugin which either was not updated or needs an update.
Steps that I took to fix the problem:
1. Login to FTP or your Web Hosting Control Panel and rename the plugins folder inside wp-content to another name like pluginsx or _plugins
Note: This will automatically disable all plugins and you can now access your wordpress admin.
2. Rename back the plugin folder to its original name
3. Login to your WordPress Admin and click Plugins, Update the plugins that needs updating and Activate the plugin one at a time to know which plugin is the cause of the error
Note: If there is no update on the plugin and it was the one that was causing the errors, just leave it deactivated and choose a similar plugin or contact the developer or author of the plugin.
WordPress Tips: Backup the whole database and the wp-content folder before upgrading your WordPress version.
Lessons Learned:
Update all Plugins to their latest versions and deactivate all Plugins before upgrading your WordPress version
Did you know that it is prohibited to use “wordpress” in a top level domain name?
From: http://wordpress.org/about/domains/
“For various reasons related to our WordPress trademark, we ask if you’re going to start a site about WordPress or related to it that you not use “WordPress” in the domain name. Try using “wp” instead, or another variation. We’re not lawyers, but very good ones tell us we have to do this to preserve our trademark. Also many users have told us they find it confusing.”
Using wordpress in subdomains is fine (Like this blog wordpress.gmtan.com), I actually bought a couple of domains already with wordpress in it before I read this but decided not to use them anymore or redirect them until they expire in order to show my support for WordPress.
I have seen many websites still using wordpress in the domain name and it is difficult for the the WordPress Founders to take action with these websites but we can do something to show our support for the WordPress community, I hope we can all follow this simple rule and not use any domain name with wordpress or show our support by not patronizing these websites.
According to this article titled “WordPress Top Demanded Skill on Elance” posted in the WordPress Publisher Blog, there is a significant increase in demand for freelancers with wordpress skill in elance.com and 1 WordPress Expert named Ron Z has made $170,000 the past 2 years.
The use of wordpress has really significantly increased the past few years and I know I made a right choice in which niche to focus.
I am attending WordCamp Philippines on October 2, 2010, 8am to 6pm at College of Saint Benilde, Manila.
I actually volunteered to be a Speaker but slots were already filled up maybe next year!
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will be there, excited to see the man who started WordPress.
About WordCamp
WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress.
WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.
With WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg
Donate to WordPress
WordPress Philippines
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Jaja (jajasamaniego.com)Mike in our first meeting fixed almost 90% of my blog problems.. If you’re scared with html and css like me, Mike is the man for the job. Can’t wait to learn more in our next sessions
Shayla (shaylasanchez.com)Worpress was like an online forest I would usually get lost in and working on my website usually left me feeling helpless. I didn’t know where to go, what to do or how to start. I’m no expert yet but Mike really helped me figure things out and make things a lot easier for me. And what’s great about him is he didn’t just fix my web problems for me, he’d teach me how to do it so i can figure them out on my own as well. It does make a lot of sense too if you got your own web host, there’s just so much more you could do with your blog that’ll show your personality more. I love my current website, all thanks to Mike!