My favorite validation tool is Is My Website Working
A Great Site for Checking Your WordPress Compression and Caching. Here is what the results look like on my personal blog uber.la.

And let’s run it on FluentSearch as well.

So if uber.la is SLOW at 1.12 seconds, then Fluent is WAY SLOW at 4.39 seconds. I have not migrated Fluent from my old servers. Uber.la was really hammering my old host and causing not only problems for my visitors but problems for the host as well. Doesn’t seem possible, but my little ol’ neck of the web was being punished my constant stream of 3 – 5 concurrent visitors. Even with caching on I was getting timeout errors.

But the move was not easy. Anyone reading Fluent here, have any good tools for migration, besides the old export/import process? I couldn’t get the target URL to resolve to the actual domain until the DNS servers had been updated. So a lot of my uber.la images were pointing to something like this 128.33.3.33/uber.la/images…  and that little IP address string was wreaking havoc on my site. But I can’t figure out how to do the import, into a live WordPress site, unless the WordPress site is UP. And I could only access the pre-DNS transferred site with the IP address included. UG! There’s got to be a better way.

Okay, next tool.

+++

Compete’s Site Profile Extension
See what Compete Sees for Any Site

This information is displayed in the bottom edge of the browser. I’d like to know what “Neutral” is. And at the moment I DON’T accept ads on uber.la so my “Deals” and $$ sections are grayed out.

And from the looks of the preferences panel they need to update for BING.

+++

Google’s Page Speed Extension

This is a variation on the Y-Slow from Yahoo. They are both FireBug additions. So you have to have FireBug installed first.

Here is what Page Speed reported about FluentSearch.

Yikes! I’ve got a little work to do.

And here’s how Y-Slow runs the same report.

Double Yikes!

Let’s run them on uber.la just for comparison.

Page Speed

And Y-Slow:

Well I guess I don’t always do what I say. I will look over these reccomendations this weekend and see if I can improve both sites.

+++

The BING and GOOGLE Comparinator (sounds like something from Phenias and Ferb, but okay)

One of the best ways to understand Bing’s new humanized-search function is to compare it to the Google results.This little tool does a bit of the work for you. The first screen is merely a search entry box. But when you do a search here’s what you get:

I’ll do a deeper exploration into Bing in a later post. But go poke around and see what you like and what you don’t. It’s a new dawn in search. Certainly not a Google-killer, but perhaps a Yahoo-hurting-2nd-tier search option.

So that’s 5 tools for today (plus Firebug, makes 6, so even a Bonus Tool!)

Go have at it.

Let me know if you have other favorites in the comments or by contacting me directly.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/SEO-Tools

So if you get this far, and I need to listen to the full Ad Sense one, then it is time to put these ideas into practice.

And then really… Focus on your content. Even writing for an audience of 10 gets your blogging muscles flexing. And the more you blog the more you will come up with ideas and ways of expressing your passions.

Thanks to copyblogger for putting these out, for free.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/wordpress-training

The video links on CopyBlogger:

1. How to Get More Search Engine Traffic With One Simple Tweak
2. How to Make More Money With AdSense
3. Feedvertising: Make Money With Your RSS Feed
4. More Feedback, Less Spam: WordPress Contact Form Plugin
5. How to Increase Comments and Page Views With One Quick and Easy Plugin
6. How to Stop Comment Spam without Lifting a Finger
7. Back Up Your Blog or Risk Losing It All

So we met for coffee a bit ago and at the end of it he said. “So this is the ‘fire everything at once’ strategy you were talking about. Okay, I think I get it.”

“Yes, my idea about social media is this. If you are going to be working in social media you have to jump into everything you can. Only through participation can you understand how it works. So when I wanted to learn about open source development, that’s what I had to do, I launched an open source project.” (see SocialWiki.org)

And so as I was writing this email to my buddy, I figured this was a few bytes I should share.

Here’s what you need.

An app for FTP uploads (I use Cyberduck on the Mac)

Themes from wordpress.org >> put these in the wp-content >> themes folder

And plugins wordpress.org >> put these in the wp-content >> plugins folder

Must have plugs:
All in one SEO Pack
google analycator
google-sitemap-generator
wassup – the traffic thing i showed you
wp-recaptcha (spam killer)

And a couple posts that might be of interest.

Doin Social Media – WIIFM – Whuffie – Creating Beauty Online and WIIFY

Fire Everything! – Twitter Facebook LinkedIN Convergence – What’s Okay What’s Not

TOP 21 WordPress Plugins – Workin th’Press for All It’s Worth

Milestones for Launching a New WordPress Site In 30 Minutes

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/free-wordpress-howto

1. The idea. (tbd)
2. Domain and hosting setup. (7 minutes - according to godaddy)
3. Install and add plugins and themes to taste. (5 minutes)
4. SEO and SEM everything (10 minutes)
5. Measure and probe with Analytics and WebmasterTools (6 minutes – setup accounts)
6. Write (2 minutes – cleanup, edit your hello world post to actually say hello)
7. Comment (tbd)
8. Respond (tbd)
9. Promote (tbd)
10. More funtionality and plugins (tbd)
11. Join Forces! (tbd)

This blog is meant as a launching point, a free training center, a social experiment in showing EVERYONE how to do it for themselves.

<inner dialogue>

Q: What’s the business model you have in mind with this project?

A: Does there always have to be a business model, an ROI? Isn’t a vision enough?

Q: Business first.

A: Well, okay, I hear you, but I am going with vision on this one.

Q: And that means…

A: Think of the education as a gift.

Q: Oh. Okay, thanks.

</inner dialogue>

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/wordpress-milestone

[And here's a funny thing: these days I don't open Word much, I just start and finish within WordPress's Tidy editor. It's now where I take notes. I have access to it where ever I am. I can share it quickly. And I can switch back and fourth between HTML and Visual Layout quickly to make adjustments to the display. Just a moment of reflection: WordPress is becoming my word processor and GTD capture system of choice.]

1. A domain and hosting provider that will allow you to make edits to the code.
For my domain purchase I used GoDaddy. They are reasonably cheap and though their site is way too cluttered and tacky, I have been happy with their service. They are quick and I have not had any disputes or errors with my account in two years.

My hosting provider is a small local company, Noise.org. It is run by a friend of mine, and while not perfect, the price is great, I can muck and blow up the code as often as I like and… When I really scramble something I’ve got a friend I can call to help me out. I’m not sure about Go Daddy’s hosting service. Often large discounting companies will have terrible support options. Before you use them for your hosting try calling Go Daddy for support on your domain registration and see how long it takes. It’s always best to be informed.

2. An FTP client to transfer stuff up to your website.
I use Cyberduck on the Mac and Core FTP on Windows.

3. The free install package for WordPress. After you get your WordPress site up you will need to pick a design (WP theme gallery) and gather any plugins/apps you need to do your work. (WP plugin page) And if you want a quick eye opener about where we are headed, check out this page of Google-Related plugins. All free for the taking. All with developers continuing to improve their funtionality on a regular basis. It’s like our own SEO IT lab working on tools to make our jobs easier. [Maybe I should go make a few paypal donations to these folks. Okay, more on that later.]

4. An idea that you would like to promote. (It really helps if this is an idea you are passionate about, because you will need to be writing about it in your posts.)

5. A txt editor to modify the php and html files. I like TextWrangler on the Mac and Wordpad on the PC.

6. High-speed internet connection (low-speed will drive you nuts for this)

Using WordPress and all the free SEO+google analytics+SEM optimization plugins and tips available, we are going to market Fluent Search Marketing, as a SEO and SEM service and information provider. The results will be tracked and presented as we go along.

So let the spiders begin.

permalink for this study: http://bit.ly/google-seo