An Interlude for WordPress Bloggers

Posted by Dave on 08 July 2007.

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I recently emerged from my blog design hiatus to make many exciting updates.

Major Updates

Upgrade to WordPress version 2.2.1 – I was awaiting the follow-up to 2.2 before upgrading from 2.1 because I knew there would be bugs to fix. While it meant waiting another 30 days for the follow-up release, it saved me from having to upgrade twice in such a short period of time. I am happy to report the upgrade went perfectly, and all of my plugins continued to function properly.

WP Plugin to Change Font Size (upper right sidebar) – This was one of the earliest plugins I tried to install, however I couldn’t get it to work. It allows visitors to increase or decrease the font size of the content text of each post (what you are reading right now). I gave it a second try after the aforementioned WordPress update, and it went up without a hitch. In addition to changing the font size, it is suppose to set a little cookie on your browser so you don’t need to adjust the setting each time you visit.

Ultimate Tag Warrior Customization (tags at bottom of each post) – I installed the UTW a few months ago. I’ve found a consensus of WordPress bloggers consider it to be the most robust plugin available for tagging. It also has a complicated installation process. The easy approach has the tags link externally to Technorati, which is OK for attracting search results through that site, however terrible from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint. The reason being you have hundreds of outbound links, rather than pointing them to pages within your site.

Following Courtney Tuttle’s installation and customization instructions, I was able to update the tags to point within my blog. Now, instead of leaving the blog to see every other blog in the world using that tag, you’ll be taken to a results page for other posts (on this blog) which touch upon the same topic. This had always been my intention…it just took Court’s superior post to show me the way.

Minor Updates

Added new products, which I have personally purchased recently, to the Travel Store. Everything in the store is available through Amazon.com.
Deactivated the Forum as I must face the reality that I do not have the traffic to support it, nor the energy to promote it and keep up with the spammers.
Experimenting with the layout of the left and right sidebars.
Stopped setting external links in posts to open in a new browser window.

Please try out the new tag linking scheme, and share any comments on these updates (good or bad)!

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This post was written by:

Dave - who has written 994 posts on Go Backpacking.

Dave Lee (Editor-in-Chief) blogged his way around the world from 2007-2009, and then started Travel Blog Success to teach others how to do the same. When not writing, he can be found salsa dancing, and lamenting his untimely departure from Medellin. Follow him on Twitter @rtwdave

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Stu

I tried upgrading once and the whole install crashed. Luckily i did have a backup and everything worked out ok in the end. Would love to get more Firefox users, simply the best page renderer!

nina

Hmm, that's odd. I installed UTW as is, and it points internally. Actually, I was wanting to make it link to Technorati (but after reading what you said, I decided to leave it as is).

Anyway, for some reason, your content is pushed way down when viewed in Opera on a 1024x768 resolution. Then again, I just may be the only one using Opera on 1024x768. But I thought you'd want to know ^_^ One of your sidebars is too wide, I think.

Dave

I think the default for UTW is to point inward, however I didn't fully install it (by setting up a new page template) at the start, and just had the tags point to Technorati (thinking I'd see a lot of traffic that way). I didn't really get a lot of new visitors though, so perhaps I can improve my Page Rank by making the switch.

Thanks for letting me know about your experience through Opera. I think less than 5% of my visitors use Opera. I'm more concerned with those using IE 6 as they get similar problems. I know I should do more to improve the design across multiple browsers because I'm likely losing visitors, however I find it very difficult.

Alas, I've decided to just wait for everyone to see the light and use Mozilla Firefox! :)