Mobile broadband technology has made it possible for people to blog on their smartphones. The WordPress Touch plugin for smartphones works to transfer a traditional blog into a blog that can be viewed on many types of smartphones. The administrative panel of the WordPress plugin allows users to change the appearance of their blog without having to change the original codes used to create the blog or the theme that the user originally chose for their blog. Viewers to a user’s site can alternate between the original design of the blog and the phone friendly version of the blog.

Customizable

WordPress Touch allows users to change the colors on their mobile-friendly blog to the same colors used in their regular blog. Users can also either create their own icons for their blog or choose from a gallery of icons. The first step in creating a custom icon is to create a jpeg image that is 57×57 pixels. Then upload the image to the smartphone and enter the WP Touch options menu on the phone. The uploaded icon will be added to the list of icons available on the phone. Then pull up the “Logo Icon/ /Menu Items & Page Icons” to set the logo.

With the rapid advancement of mobile broadband technology, more and more blog readers are using their smartphones and devices to read and post comments on the go. The blog owner can receive notifications on their phone if someone signs up for their blog or posts a comment to it. Users can pick and choose which information gets displayed on their phone-friendly blog, such as comments, pages, tags, categories and author’s name. Blog owners looking to promote their blog can add customized codes, statistics, and Adsense codes, which will allow the blog owner to monitor their site’s traffic and include advertisements on their blog.

Blogging 2.0

WordPress Touch is a necessary development in the rapidly changing world of mobile broadband. New electronic items are emerging every year, and our mobile devices get more and more sophisticated over time. So many people are on the go these days that WP Touch is needed for anyone who is too busy to sit in front of a computer all day. Now that people have a way to use their blog, blogging can be done anytime. With the advent of social media, people are becoming used to being able to communicate with others almost instantly. The WP Touch helps make this possible. In addition to allowing people more convenient access to their blog, WP Touch makes it easier to produce a blog because the technology is so easy to use. WP Touch can be used with all the major brands of smartphones, including Blackberries, as well as the iPhone and the iPad.

The Word Press Touch plugin is revolutionizing the way people blog. Mobile users could see a rise in the traffic to their blog due to this technology.

About the Author: Blake Sanders is a tech writer at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert where he specializes in mobile broadband and phones, as well as the latest in wireless internet provider news and information.

Note: Photo courtesy of titanas via FlickR Creative Commons.

Last month I was rewriting one of my ebooks for the Subscribe2 email subscription plugin. It had been almost a year since the white paper first came out, and it really needed revising. Matt had added many new features that made Subscribe2 easier to use for anyone wanting to send their blog posts to a subscriber list.

One of the neat features is the ability to schedule your blog posts:

WP Cron

WordPress itself has limited scheduling capabilities, and this transfers to plugins. It schedules hourly and daily. Now remember, I am not a programmer. I have heard of WP Cron before but figured it was way over my head. So, the part of WordPress that schedules is called WP Cron. (Warning: Visiting that link will increase your understanding of WP Cron even though on a geek scale of 1-10, it ranks about a 7. It is well written and easy to read.) And, I had heard of WP Crontrol, but again, figured it was also way over my head. And really, it still is.

WP Control

Hang on, I’m going somewhere with this. One of the new features Matt added to Subscribe2 is the ability to interface with the WP Crontrol plugin. So, if you want to set your daily or weekly email digests to go out at a certain time, you could use the WP Crontrol plugin to do that.

How WP Crontrol Works

It isn’t very clear in this screenshot, but what is highlighted is the entry the Subscribe2 plugin added so the user can go in and schedule when they want emails to go out. Some of the entries in this screenshot are basic WordPress functions, and one has something to do with the Akismet plugin. The Subscribe2 entry looks like this: s2_digest_cron. Click ‘Edit’ to set the time and date, ‘Do Now’ to send the digest immediately, or ‘Delete’ to remove the schedule entirely.

Other Uses for WP Crontrol

Another plugin that uses the WP Crontrol plugin for scheduling is the WordPress Database plugin. But, as you can see from my many posts about backups, I’m still not there yet. What I’m beginning to figure out is somehow, using the backup plugin like this will prevent those ‘out of memory’ errors. When I figure that one out, I’ll let you know.

Next, I’ll be starting a series on WP Meta plugins. I didn’t realize it, but there are many to choose from, and just as many uses.

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Stay tuned! Sign up! Come back! I don’t know when my posts go up now. I’m trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

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Need help with this plugin? Click here to go to my contact form.

Need virtual assistance? Contact me here: Deborah at MyWPWorks dot com.

Product launches? Webinars? Podcasts? Yep, I can do that too.

Now that I have written my obligatory, soul-baring New Year’s resolution post, I can get back to business. If you are new to this site, I’m sure you’ve noticed this plugin. I hope I haven’t offended you, and if you will read this post, you will have a new understanding of what this popup can do to build your email list. Read on, please… And by the way, I’ll be blogging every other week now. I am starting a new blog and need to focus on it during the weeks I am away. Stay tuned for more details!

How I heard about WP Super Popup

I was cruising the member forum at Third Tribe Marketing, and several members were talking about how they got their email subscription list built up quickly. They all recommended WP Super Popup. I had a very large MailChimp signup in the sidebar of my site, but still, signups were minimal. And yet, I hated to subject my visitors to a popup because I hate those things! My reasoning was: If they want to sign up, they will. But then, the people in Third Tribe (affiliate link) got to talking about how they set the timing on the popup. They set the popup to appear after 3 minutes or so with the message like: We’ve made it 3 minutes, maybe we can have a long term commitment? This generated a laugh, and people usually signed up.

The Free Version

So, I went to WP Super Popup and downloaded the popup. It worked great, and there is a WordPress support forum, but I couldn’t figure out how to connect my MailChimp signup to the popup. That was when I purchased the pro version for $39.95. I needed the support. Some basic instructions did come with the free version, but if you are a newbie to these types of plugins, the instructions didn’t get you started. They were more of a “this is what is what” rather than a “do this, do that”. I emailed support@wppluginspro.com several times. This was the email address provided with the receipt.

Plimus

After several days, I had not received a response, so I started thinking I had just thrown away $40. And then, I wondered why I’d bought anything through a company I didn’t know, Plimus. PayPal has been my online bank for quite a while. I was kicking myself for my stupidity, but decided to request a refund. Plimus must be outside the United States because of the time lag between emails. But they did come through for me and told me to contact WP Super Popup Pro support at info@wppluginspro.com instead.

WP Super Popup Working and Collecting Emails

Davide emailed me back, and he was very patient. He actually set the MailChimp interface for me. He may speak another language than English. He didn’t communicate like an English speaker, and I’m fairly certain he didn’t understand exactly what I wanted. Nevertheless, my popup is now working, and my email list numbers are climbing.

The Sum of the Matter

So, was the plugin worth $40? For me, yes. My time and peace of mind was worth that. But if I understood code better, I would have used the free version.

How is the Pro version different?

• Multiple popup graphical themes: you can choose between 5 different popup themes (strong, slim, rounded or squared border) Yes, I know that’s only four, but that’s what the plugin page had so I went with their version.
• Multiple popup types: you can choose between a standard popup (centered in the window) or a sliding layer (coming up from the bottom or coming down from the top)
• Email auto-load: your subscription form will automatically pre-load the user name and email if he previously left a comment on your blog
• Real WYSIWYG: The popup content is not affected by the stylesheets of your blog: what you edit is EXACTLY what you will see inside the popup.
• Embed everything: inside the popup you can embed custom content, a blog page content, or an external url
• Live preview: you can directly test any update before saving the configuration options
• Full compatibility with any caching plugin: the cookies are handled on the client side so the plugin is not affected by issues related to any caching plugin
• Sidebar, page and post injection: your subscription forms can also be loaded as widgets on the sidebar or inside any page/post published on the blog
• Custom thank you messages: if you use a mailing service like Aweber or Getresponse you can easily replace its standard confirmation page with your own thank you message.

WP Super Popup does have affiliate sales, but I haven’t signed up so none of their links are affiliate. The Third Tribe Marketing link that is labeled ‘affiliate’ is the only link I would receive money for, and that’s only if you join up. (It’s a great place! Chris Brogan is there, and he is an active participant.)

Stay tuned! Sign up! Come back! My posts now go up every other Wednesday around 9 am or 10 am Central Time. I’m working on a new blog. Shhh! It’s a secret.

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Click here to have my blog posts delivered to your inbox. To share this post on the Twitterverse, click the “tweet” button at the top of the post. Or use the “Share This” tool to share using your favorite social network.

Need help with this plugin? Click here to go to my contact form.

Need virtual assistance? Contact me here: Deborah at MyWPWorks dot com.

Product launches? Webinars? Podcasts? Yep, I can do that too.

Yes, I usually write about WordPress plugins, but it’s the first post of the new year, and I feel I should write something significant about my business (writing instructions for WordPress plugins) and its direction for the new year. After all, isn’t that what everyone else does?

Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail

People like to make New Year’s resolutions, but the problem is stamina. By June, life has pulled them down, and they usually don’t remember what they were so eager to do in early January. Or maybe they do remember, and then they feel guilty for their lack of self-control, and they condemn themselves silently in their minds.

Maybe we need to give things more time.

Are good marriages made in a year? Do lasting friendships form after only a few months? Are really great WordPress plugin blogs written in a year? The truly important things in life take time to nurture and mature into something truly great. In our fast-paced world, we want it now. Consider the story of the tortoise and the hare and reconsider your haste to move to the next big thing.

Your business is a relationship. You have a relationship with it – a person to business connection (P2B), and through it, you have a relationship with other people (B2P).

Some people compare their business to a baby. They love it and cannot see its faults. Some people say the business is about the people it serves. I say they are both right. My business has to serve me. It has to meet the need I have (my baby) to meet other people’s needs.

Stay with it!

Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

So what am I doing in 2011? I am keeping on keeping on track with the New Year’s resolutions I have made for the past two years. I am giving my business the same chance I gave my marriage. Twenty one years later, I’m glad I stayed committed.

I’m going to keep writing content – information about WordPress plugins – that helps people build great WordPress websites. I’m going to learn all I can about search engine optimization – the ethical way of doing things. I’m going to start a new blog for my virtual assistant business and focus on providing great how-to content on product launches.

Because sometimes it takes longer than a year, sometimes it takes longer than two years. I want to stick with something long enough to achieve it. I want to know that the idea I had was viable. And I don’t want to jump all over the cyberverse to the next new hot idea someone else has. I want to stick with what I have committed to, stick to what burned inside me until I made it a reality. Not to say that I won’t nip and tuck along the way to perfect the dream, but I will never be finished.

This post is harder to write because my posts are usually WordPress plugin how-tos, but this one is from my heart and therefore, shares who I am. I hope it makes sense and helps someone.

And I will keep on keeping on until this business is a success.

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Click here to have my blog posts delivered to your inbox.

To share this post on the Twitterverse, click the “tweet” button at the top of the post. Or use the “Share This” tool to share using your favorite social network.

Need help with this plugin? Click here to go to my contact form.

Need virtual assistance? Contact me here: Deborah at MyWPWorks dot com.

In all my quests for plugins, I’ve never had quite the experience as I’ve had looking for a backup plugin. Most recently, after trying several (click here to read about it), I thought I had found the PERFECT plugin to back up my entire site, not just the MySQL database: Automatic WordPress Backup. This plugin backed up everything to Amazon (S3) Simple Storage Service. I already had an Amazon account (I am a Prime member), so I used the same login. The reason I decided on the Amazon S3 service was because all other backup plugins had caused memory problems and brought my site down. Saving inside my website obviously wasn’t working, and the file was so large I think it caused problems when the plugin tried to email it.

Setting up Amazon S3

To prepare for the backup, I created a bucket, Amazon speak for a folder, that would contain the files for each website, and then went back over to my website to click the ‘back up now’ option. Then I went back over to Amazon to see the result. There was none. I clicked several more times with the same result. Off I went to the support site for the plugin, and it seems there is a delay in the backup showing up in S3. And each time you click, you create a backup, so it takes a while to transfer, so I waited.

The next day I checked Amazon S3. The two smaller sites were there, but the two larger sites were not. I waited. The next day I checked, nothing. I waited. This went on for almost a week and the two larger sites never showed up in Amazon. I gave up.

And went looking again…

I wandered over to ToMuse’s site and found this post: http://tomuse.com/wordpress-backup-plugin-service-review/. Being rather frustrated with free backup plugins by now, I began considering paid options. He recommended VaultPress and BackupBuddy.

VaultPress had a basic plan, one site, for $15. Their premium plan, $40, did not mention how many sites were covered, and the enterprise plan did not mention the number of sites either. And BTW, these are monthly charges. They seemed to offer some advanced features, but I didn’t understand what they were, so therefore, could not see the benefit of them.

And the winner is…

BackupBuddy is coded by the people over at iThemes. Their plans include one installation for $45, 10 for $75, and unlimited for $150. That is for one year of plugin updates and support. While I wasn’t especially thrilled about having to buy the plugin again in a year, it was still cheaper than VaultPress. And they do have a very good reputation. I would put up my affiliate link, but I don’t want to go look for it.

To wrap this up, I purchased the 10 installation BackupBuddy package yesterday. Since then, I’ve contacted tech support twice and been very happy with the response. And, I just sent them another one. LOL

I’m stopping now because it’s bedtime, but I’ll continue this conversation next week because I definitely have more to say about backup plugins for newbies.

Stay tuned! Sign up! Come back! My posts go up every Wednesday around 9 am or 10 am Central Time. This is a change; I’m doing a test.

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Click here to have my blog posts delivered to your inbox.

To share this post on the Twitterverse, click the “tweet” button at the top of the post. Or use the “Share This” tool to share using your favorite social network.

Need help with this plugin? Click here to go to my contact form.

Need virtual assistance? Contact me here: Deborah at MyWPWorks dot com.