Big Foot Web Marketing

I quite like the Daily Top 10 Posts Plugin. I find it quite useful to take a quick peel at what posts are doing very well or breaking out. The plugin keeps track of post page views in a 24 hours day stating at midnight.

You can display post count for all to see as well as place code in sidebar or widget to show the top 10 posts. I don’t do this and set the daily top 10 post to “noshow” in the snippet of code in readme file for the plugin.

You can view your “top 10 posts” in the dashboard it will list them in descending order as well as give you view count.

I have found it useful on a couple of high traffic sites to show more than my top 10 posts using the Daily Top Ten plugin and set it to show me the top 50 but you can set for any number quite easily.

How To Increase Number of Posts to Show Using Daily Top Ten Plugin

Go into the the plugin to edit. Find two snippets of cod that define the number of posts to display:

The first set of code displays the numebr of posts in your dashboard:
$widgets = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * from $table_name inner join $table_posts on $table_posts.ID=$table_name.postnum WHERE time = '$nowisnow' and postcount > 0 and post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY postcount DESC LIMIT 10");
and change the DESC LIMIT 10 to DESC LIMIT 25
or whatever number you like.

Find the next snippet and do same:
Thsi snippet dispalys posts on your site for all to see .
$widgets = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * from $table_name_all inner join $table_posts on $table_posts.ID=$table_name_all.postnum WHERE postcount > 0 and post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY postcount DESC LIMIT 10");

Change the DESC LIMIT 10 to DESC LIMIT 25 ( or number you choose)

When you go to you dashboard you should see your new top 25 (or 50, etc) listed.

You can also reduce the number of posts to display with Daily Top 10 plugin. You may only want to show you top 3 or 5 posts to visitors in your sidebar. Just change the second number to the value you want to display in sidebar.

Why would knowing your top posts be useful to you?
Take your top 10 posts an expand on the idea. If your page one best brownie recipes is ding well try best squares or best cookies.
If you are aware of what people are looking for then you can use this information to expand your blog and your traffic/readership.

Tags: SEO Tools, WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
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Last year my top performing blog started reporting unusual numbers. Adsense click through rates (CTR) went down from about 6-8% to the 3-4% range. I normally do very well on the blog with affiliate marketing and those numbers seemed wonky as well. I chocked it up to slow winter until a few days later I was at another computer and had to make a change on the site.. When I typed in the URL to login I waited, and waited. and waited. I thought for second something was wrong with server and left it but it bothered me all day.

When I was home later that night and had some time I went to investigated more. I used one of many free an online tools to check site load time. BINGO.

My site was talking a long time to load- upwards of 8 seconds. That is an eternity on the Internet where people want it fast and want it now.
A few months earlier I had hard coded all my sidebars ( used static html for my pages and categories) . I had thought about then to install some kind of cache plugin but figured since I hard coded everything it wasn’t a big deal (!) and besides my speeds were fine.

I checked few things before I went into full blown panic. I had a ton of scripts running on the site and other plugins that were hard on sever- like Related Posts , AdSense , Daily Top 10 Posts, affiliate scripts and ads, etc and disabled those those to see if it helped. It did but only slightly. The site pages were stil taking 5-6 seconds to load. This was really bad.

I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try a plugin that cached pages on my site. This means that when a visitor comes to your site instead of the server database working at producing a “new” page every time it will store or caches it as a static html file for next visitors.

I installed the the popular WP-Cache for Wordpress. It was simple to install and user friendly. By default it will “store” pages for 3600s or 60 minutes. This will be too long for some sites and you should change it. Also be aware that when you make changes to your site you may not see them because page is cached. You can go into WP-Options and clear cache or if you are making major changes disable the plugin in while you work.

You can also try WP Super Cache which works the same way; however it will not cache files for users who are logged in ( like you, the admin) and users who have left comments. I have not used it but keep meaning to switch over.

Did installing WP-Cache Work?

Yes, instantly. The load time went for 7 seconds to .1 second. A HUGE difference.
Load time is one of the top reasons visitors leave your site. How can they click on your ads follow affiliate links or read your posts if they leave?

I used to think that just hard coding pages would be enough but clearly I was wrong. I installed WP-Cache on all my sites that week. My CTRs went up across the board and affiliate links levelled out and went back to a “normal” range.

In hindsight I should have installed the caching plugin when my traffic started creeping up. The site went from about 1-2,000 visitors to 50,000 visitors that year and was not on a dedicated server. A link to the site as on CNN main web site on week and I had constant sever issues that week could have been avoided if I had wp-cache installed.

WP-Cache is now one of the first plugins I install on a new blog. Great posts and original content will not be read if visitors abandon the site before the page loads.

Tags: Free Tools and Utilities, Internet Marketing and Blogs, Tuesday's Tool, Web Site Accessibility, WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
1 Comment »

Adding a Flash gallery to your blog can really make your pages and posts pop. If you are a small or home based business a flash gallery can really step things up a notch and breathe life and visual interest to a page. They add a professional look and give blah pages pizzazz. You don’t have to be an expert programmer or know anything about Flash to create a slick Flash slideshow – here’s how.

[Read more →]

Tags: Free Tools and Utilities, Internet Marketing and Blogs, Tuesday's Tool, Web Site Accessibility, WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
1 Comment »

Has WP-Amazon Plugin has Stopped Working In Your Blog?

I love the WP=Amazon plugin. Its one of the first I ever installed. I have used it for several years. If you are not familiar with WP-Amazon plugin- it lets you EASILY search and insert amazon content – using your affiliate ID- into your blog. Without question it is the best Amazon affiliate plugin available for WordPress. Over time the plugin has had some problems working with newer versions of WordPress and as developer has tried to make it compatible with other platforms.

Despite the efforts of developer Rich Manalang – who admittedly has very little time to support it- this Amazon plugin for Wordpress has more and more problems with every Wordpress upgrade. The plugin itself is brilliant I in no way intend to degenerate Rich!

After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 this week I thought there has to be a way to get this to work. Other people seem to still be able to use it. I did some digging around and found that you could add some java script files, offered by Jacob Lundberg to get it to work. Getting the files was a challenge in itself. I just added them to the original 2.2 version WP-Amazon plugin so I could simply upload to my other blogs.
You are welcome to download the fixed and working WP-Amazon Plugin .

Also available- a hacked version of WP-Amazon- the one with the ” add Amazon content here” link at bottom of post. Please read some of the disclaimers.

Potential Problems with WP-Amazon Plugin

Using the modified WP-Amazon plugin fixes the problems listed below.

Amazon Button for WP- Amazon Doesn’t Show Up

This problem with plugin is also fixed.

The Search Button for Amazon in WP-amazon Doesn’t Show Up

Fixed.

I can Only See 3 Products In Search Results using WP-Amazon

There doesn’t seem to be a fix for this, unfortunately. HOWEVER you can download a hacked version of the plugin here, It works on the old pre- Grease Monkey non- Ajax version of WP-Amazon but will work with newer versions of WordPress, including WordPress 2.3 and 2.5. This may be the version I end up suing across my blogs. I will have to test some more.

if you are NOT using this plugin- it is FANTASTIC - don’t; be scared off by some of the problems mentioned above. You can very easily search and add Amazon content using your affiliate ID to your blog with a few clicks.

Tags: Internet Marketing and Blogs, WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
2 Comments »