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Blogging on the Go With the WordPress iPhone Application

WordPress, creators of one of the most popular publishing platforms, has released an iPhone application that allows users to post content onto WordPress blogs by way of the iPhone. It is available on the 3G iPhone, first-generation iPhone, and iPod Touch. It is also free, and we all like free stuff. This really marks another forward step in mobile blogging technology.

WordPress.com and self-installed WordPress 2.5.1 or higher can take advantage of the WordPress iPhone application. You can embed pictures and do many other popular functions that is available on the web-based interface. Early reviews seem to give praise to the application, but one of WordPress’s main competitors, TypePad (by the folks who brought you MovableType—Six Apart), has also created an iPhone application, which has been highly praised as well.

It would be very interesting to see how many people actually take advantage of the WordPress iPhone application. Perhaps WordPress will reveal some numbers in the future.

I still have a few questions: can anyone accurately type on the iPhone’s keyboard, and will this be used for anything other than short blurbs on WordPress blogs?

There is a great FAQ available on the official site, but I guess you’ll just have to try it for yourself.

I, unfortunately, cannot comment heavily on this, but if any of you have an iPhone, let us know if the WordPress iPhone application is any good.

Does Your Content Creation Workflow Contain High ROI Activities?

The term ROI (return on investment) is from the finance world. Basically, it calculates how much return you get on your monetary investment.

Other niches like business management took the term and applied it to time. I’ve applied the term to blogging activities. How well are you using the time invested for your blog? Is your blogging workflow conducive to bringing you a high return or a low return?

I’ve separated blogging activities in two categories: content creation and marketing.

Monetization is another vital category, but I think you don’t need to spend as much time on monetizaton as content creation or marketing. This is especially true for new blogs. New blogs need traffic before they can focus on monetization. And Content creation and marketing are the necessary activities to drive traffic to your site. Some bloggers have gone as far as saying not to monetize a site unless you have 1000 daily visitors.

Anyways, back to content creation and marketing. You definitely want high ROI activities in both categories. If you ignore content creation or marketing, you blog will be unbalanced. Marketing helps you get new visitors while content creation helps you get return visitors.

Let’s look at a couple content creation activities. Tomorrow I’ll deal with marketing activities.

Blog posts (medium ROI)

These are the 200-400 word posts that are a dime a dozen on the blogosphere. Every new blogger starts off writing these type of posts.

The reason they have a medium ROI is because they don’t really differentiate your blog from other blogs. Still, if you consistent create these posts for at least a year and add good marketing, you’ll slowly build a following and improve your branding. These posts are like the pawns on a chess board – not very powerful but with a good number of them, they provide a stable blogging foundation.

Linkbait (high)

Linkbait is usually content that takes you a much longer to create than the average blog post. It’s a product of researching your niche well. It contains other elements instead of just text like images and video. Occasionally, it’s a useful or entertaining web application.

Linkbait is a high ROI activity because it sets your blog post apart from the crowd. Most blogs in your niche are probably not doing any linkbait, so you’ll capture a lot more attention from your linkbait than your normal blog posts. Also, linkbait is much more likely to attract links, which then increase your search traffic.

To learn more about linkbait, check out these posts:


Guest posts (medium)

This activity could also go under marketing. However, I put it under content creation because most of your time in this activity is spent writing.

Your ROI goes up if you find a popular blog to guest post on.

The reason I don’t think it’s a high ROI activity is because you only get one link and you’re spend time creating content for another site instead of your own. Compare this to linkbait, which can get you multiple links from different sites and the content is published on your site.

Article submissions (low to medium)

Your ROI depends on how well you can find a low competition keyword that still has a good amount of search volume. If your niche is very competitive, it may be hard to find those type of keywords.

In my experience, these three article submission sites have done a good job sending traffic:

The advantage of this activity over guest posts is that article submission sites accept all quality articles. With guest posting, you have to spend time looking for a quality site willing to publish your article.

Your Turn

What content creation activities occupy your blogging workflow?

Screencast: ScribeFire FireFox Extension Reviewed

Long time readers of Performancing will certainly remember a FireFox extension which went by the same name as the site. The extension underwent a name change in 2007. Instead of being called Performancing, it is now called ScribeFire and serves as an external blog management tool. This is the editor I’ve been using for quite some time now to create posts, as well as manage my own blog when I’m on the road.

This video is my second screencast and goes over the abundant amount of features and possibilities this extension provides. I’ve changed a few exporting features in Camtasia and I’m hoping those changes have reflected in better video quality. Enjoy.

NOTE: You may see things better if you view it in full screen mode. Looks like I still have to figure out the magic formula.

Reader Question: Is WordPress Safe To Use?

Terri recently sent me an email and wanted to know some precautionary steps as well as advice on how to keep WordPress safe from being hacked. Terri also wanted to know the differences in security between a self hosted version of WordPress versus the security risks of using WordPress.com

I have been doing a lot of research about the pros/cons of different blogging platforms and CMS. At the same time, I have come across a lot of information related to WordPress sites being hacked and other security issues. When I read about the pros/cons of self-hosted vs hosted solutions for blogs, it is interesting that I don’t read too much about security vulnerabilities being a huge disadvantage to using a self-hosted solution. How concerned should bloggers be about being hacked? Is the threat big enough for someone not to choose WP as a blogging platform or CMS? Besides backing up your database (which could be infected also) and upgrading WP to the most recent version, what other precautions should you take to keep a WP blog safe? Also, I heard that the upgrades that WP makes makes it more open to attacks. Your thoughts?

Well Terri, I’ll first start off by pointing you to a post that Matt Mullenweg published a few months ago which goes into detail on how to keep your blog safe.

The article boils down to a couple of simple points:

  • Upgrading WordPress ASAP to the newest release.
  • Changing Your Password On A Regular Basis/Using A Strong Password

The majority of times it’s discovered that a WordPress powered site has been hacked, that site was using an older version of WordPress. This makes sense given that newer versions patch previously discovered security holes.

Hosted / WordPress.com

When deciding if you should go the hosted or self hosted route because of security, using WordPress.com is going to come out on top. This is because Automattic runs a tight ship with WordPress.com. Generally, the only thing you’ll have to worry about is using a strong password. WordPress.com doesn’t allow users to upload third party widgets, nor do they allow javascript from being executed in a Text Widget.

Self Hosted / WordPress.org:

When going the self hosted route, it’s a different ballgame. There is an awesome article on the WordPress Codex which goes into detail on how to harden your WordPress installation ( Hardening_WordPress ). At a glance though, this is what you’ll have to worry about:

  • 1 Vulnerabilities on your computer
  • 2 Vulnerabilities in the WordPress package itself
  • 3 Server vulnerabilities
  • 4 Network vulnerabilities
  • 5 Passwords
  • 6 File permissions
  • 7 Database security
  • 8 Securing wp-admin
  • 9 SSL Encryption Security
  • 10 Plugins
  • 10.1 Security Plugins
  • 10.2 Plugins that need write access
  • 10.3 Code execution plugins
  • 11 Security through obscurity

As you can see, there is plenty more to worry about using a self hosted version of WordPress rather than letting Automattic do the worrying for you. However, after going through each section of the Hardening WordPress article, you should be ready to go.

Security Through Plugins:

Alternatively, you can step it up a notch by using a variety of different plugins which are available to help make WordPress that much more secure. Here is a list of plugins/resources to help you along the way.

WP Security Scan – This plugin acts like a spyware/virus scanner in that it scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Login Encrypt – Login Encrypt appends a snippet of javascript to the wp-login which generates a unique DES key each time a user logs in. Using that key, the password of the user is encrypted.

AskApache Password Protect – This plugin makes it easy to put up a virtual wall around your WordPress installation. This plugin allows you to create a username and password to protect your entire /wp-admin/ folder and login page. Plugin can only be used on Apache based webservers.

Admin SSL – Secures any WordPress URL using Private or Shared SSL. Once the plugin is activated go to the Admin SSL config page to enable SSL and read the installation instructions.

Login Lockdown – Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. A good way to protect against brute force attacks.

Resources:

Noupe showcases 10 WordPress security tips/tricks/hacks

BlogSecurity released a Whitepaper specifically about WordPress security. The whitepaper is at version 1.2 and was released back in April of 2008.

Speckyboy gives you his list of the best 10 security WordPress plugins to use

Is the threat big enough for someone not to choose WP as a blogging platform or CMS?

In my opinion, no. WordPress is the most popular blogging/publishing platform on the web which means it’s a prime target for hackers. It doesn’t matter which publishing platform you decide to go with, each one of them has or will have security vulnerabilities. To make things worst, you could have a perfectly hardened WordPress installation and discover it’s been hacked thanks to something like an SQL injection via a plugin you installed. It’s a constant race between good and evil. If you make it a routine to keep ahead of the game and keep your blog up to date, more often than not, you’ll be safe.

Also, I heard that the upgrades that WP makes makes it more open to attacks. Your thoughts?

This is what I would consider to be FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Upgrading WordPress from one version to the next does not make it more prone to security vulnerabilities. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. There is only one scenario I can think of where this might be an issue and that is, if you were to upgrade to a newer version of WordPress and that version had a 0 day exploit within the code that no one knew about, then you could be at risk. But considering no one would know about the exploit, what could be done about it? Nothing.

So rest assure that upgrading your blog as soon as you can after a new version has been released is one of the best things you could do to keep your blog safe. Not doing so is a recipe for disaster.

Conclusion:

Terri, I hope that answers all of your questions. You now know the differences in security between using a self hosted version versus a hosted version of WordPress. With the Codex article along with the resource links and plugins, you now have a better grasp on how to ensure your blogs safety against malicious attacks.

Your Turn:

If you had to answer Terri’s questions, what would have said differently? Do you disagree with anything I’ve said? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any more tips and tricks in terms of making WordPress more secure, share those as well.

How to Create User Generated Linkbait and Build Relationships at the Same Time

As I’ve realized the value of time, I try to look for ways to save time in my blogging.

One of the ways to increase blogging productivity is to do something that covers more than one necessary blogging activity.

Here is a way to create linkbait, or linkworthy content, with other people in your niche while at the same time buiding relationships with them.

A couple months ago, Distilled published a great article about creating user generated linkbait through forums.

Here’s their method step-by-step:

  1. Find a forum with a decent traffic level in your niche
  2. Spend some time contributing to the community, get your name respected and ensure the mods don’t see you as a spammer (having a trusted profile in your niche community/forum is worth it’s weight in gold – treat this as a serious investment and don’t ruin it for a one-shot chance at linkbait)
  3. Start a post on the forum with the seed of an idea, and a couple of examples from you
  4. Let the forum community chip in their own ideas and funny comments and let them grow the idea for you
  5. Wait for the thread to die down and compile all the best bits from it
  6. Write this up into a piece of linkbait for your site
  7. Social media success!

This idea is excellent because you make yourself known to other members in your niche while leveraging their input to create quality content.

One thing I would add to the post is to give credit to the forum where you got the information. You can link to the forum thread at the end of your linkbait and even mention the contributors by name.

Two Performancing Examples

I know this method works because we’ve done a similar thing and it has worked for us.

A couple months ago, our paid forum, Hive, was an invite-only forum. Ahmed asked the members of the forum for our best blogging tips. He compiled them and created 27 Tips for Building a Kick-Ass Blog.

We marketed it on Digg and it got on the front page with over 900 diggs. This led to a ton of links.

I did the same thing on my post: Onpage SEO: 7 Tips That Are Easy to Implement.

It did not get as many links or hit the front page of Digg (SEO is a bad word for Digg users). However, it did get links from two top SEO blogs, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch.

An Awesome Time-Saving Tip for Checking Your Blog Posts’ Grammar

Many operating systems have wonderful text-to-speech features included by default—ironically enough, this entire article revolves around this feature. Long forgotten and unused, it is now an important part of my work flow. I only began exploring this feature around a month and a half ago on my Mac OS X Leopard system, and I have been using it ever since. It has saved me from having many errors that I would not have noticed otherwise. It is exactly like having someone else read your work for you, but the only difference is that it is now a computer doing it for you.

Enabling Text-to-Speech on Mac OS X

There are only a few steps required to enable text-to-speech shortcuts in Mac OS X Leopard:

  1. Open up your system preferences.
  2. Under the “System” subheading, click on the “Speech” option.
  3. Navigate to the “Text to Speech” tab.
  4. Enable the check-box for “Speak selected text when the key is pressed.”
  5. Click on “Set Key” to open up a dialog box that will allow you to set a key combination to set when you want to have your computer read the text. (I have it activate when the Shift key, Option key, Control key, and ‘S’ key are all depressed.)

After you have done all those steps, try selecting any text on your screen, and press the key combination to see if it works. You should know before you attempt this that text-to-speech synthesis requires a decent system to operate correctly. Apparently it uses up a lot of memory and CPU cycles to calculate the process. Keep this in mind.

An Alternative Method

If you want a different way to access this feature, you could try selecting some text, navigate to the “Edit” menu, and then scroll down to the “Speech” item, and, finally, select “Start Speaking”. However, this method only works in applications that display the “Speech” item under the edit menu. For example, Firefox does not have this menu, but you can still press they key combination set (as explained above) to have the computer read the text back to you.

It’s Not Perfect

Now, I will be the first to admit that it is not a flawless solution. There are times when that monotonous voice will put you to sleep, but I have been fairly impressed overall. The default voice, Alex, works the best for me, but you should try the alternative voices to see if they work better for you.

I would really urge any of you who have a Mac computer to utilize this feature. It might sound silly, but it really does work, and I’m not afraid to state that I use it on a regular basis to help me ensure that my posts are of great reading quality.

Using Something Else?

For those of you on Windows and Linux operating systems, you are in luck. Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux have text-to-speech solutions available. I can’t comment on any of these methods for Windows or Linux, but I am sure they work just as well.

Have you tried this before? Are you willing to incorporate this into your work flow? Do the voices sound too weird? Let me know in the comments section!