The BUM Award Back in the day, companies would come up with awards and then give these awards to certain websites. The whole purpose of the award was to stroke the ego of the website and to build links to the company giving the award out. I have decided that if I were to create my own imaginary award I would call it: Blogger Unknown to Many or BUM.

Not just anyone would receive my BUM award—for there certainly are many unknown bloggers out there. No the BUM Award would have to go to the blogger who: 1) actually really was an expert in his/her field (not just a self-proclaimed guru) 2) provided stellar content, amazing value, and knew what he/she was talking about, and 3) no matter how good their blog was or how knowledgeable they really were—the vast majority would still have no idea who they were.

trash-can So, almost a month after Yoast.com’s plugin contest I finally heard a response concerning my plugin submission—no. Actually, it wasn’t quite so direct, below is the response:

“Hi Guys,
apologies for the delay! Joost and I decided to make the eventual winner work harder for their prize, so we asked a couple of the entrants to go back and take their ideas to the point where we can release them. If we haven’t contacted you yet, I’m afraid you are out of the running, but many thanks for having a go! We expect to announce the winner and launch the plugin/theme in a week or so.”

I didn’t hear from them, so I am out. I do understand not winning the contest, WordTravel was a very basic plugin. However, I do have plans on expanding WordTravel to a more versatile plugin, so keep a watch for some upcoming releases. I wish Yoast.com’s plugin finalists the best in the refining of their plugin/theme! ~Paul W.

wordpress-plugin DOWNLOAD WORDTRAVEL
Compatible with WordPress 2.5 through 2.7.1

WordTravel was built with the sunPress plugin in mind. The sunPress plugin helps manage holiday websites by utilizing sunshine.co.uk’s travel affiliate program. Basically, by combining both plugins you have a powerful holiday website that also has the ability to highlight special deals like no other travel website on the web.

Even though WordTravel was built as a supporting plugin for sunPress you can also use WordTravel independently from all plugins for your own purposes. We wanted WordTravel to be a nice compliment for any travel blog or site.

WordTravel One of my favorite bloggers, Joost de Valk, launched a wordpress plugin contest for Sunshine.co.uk, a travel booking company. The prize he is offering is a MacBook Air, and I must admit that I have been thinking of converting to a Mac for sometime (sorry Bill, I don’t want to be a PC).

The plugin I finally decided to create focuses on the marketing side of travel. Why do you go to a travel/vacation website in the first place? Most of my friends I asked shared that they were looking for either a good deal or a particular vacation package.

The plugin I devised (with the programming help of Milan Kaneria) gives a traveling website the power to focus on their most important call to actions with their users. Whether it is cheap airfare, a vacation package, or just information about different locations around the world, this plugin offers a visual but unobtrusive solution to keeping in touch with the user while on the site.

blogging-consultant_02-09-2009 One thing that makes WordPress such a great SEO tool is its permalinks. Instead of having dynamic urls that look like they are cursing at you (?%$!), wordpress allows you to create SEO friendly urls found in the settings section. You have several options on how to structure your permalinks, and depending on what you want will ultimately be the deciding factor on how you should do it. Here are some recommendations:

1. /%postname%/ – There are several benefits in having your permalinks like this. First, your link doesn’t look dated when google indexes your page. When your post pulls up in the search engines people won’t be deterred from clicking on it because of the date in the url. The second nice thing about this permalink structure is that if you write good titles you can increase your clicks as well. This is how I have done my permalinks for years. It has only been recently that I have switched over to the next possible permalink structure.
2. /%category%/%postname%/ - I switched to this style of permalinks after reading yoast.com’s WordPress SEO. Using this structure helps me focus on both the search engines and conversion. I am a big proponent of keyword categories. Having keyword categories helps you feed the search bots sections of your website that heavily focus on your keywords. By focusing your url around a category and post title you gain a lot benefits. First, you are able to have your keyword in the url without necessarily having it in your blog post title (though, I would recommend having it there as well). If you feel that your post title will convert better in the search engines worded a unique way, you are not hindered to also include the keyword in the title. If you select your post to be in a keyword category the url will reflect that selection. Secondly, adding categories to your permalink gives just one more place to optimize your keywords. You can have the plural form of a keyword in your category and the singular form in your post title—allowing you to rank on both forms of the keyword.
3. /%year%/%monthnum%/%category%/%postname%/ - The only reason I would advocate this structure is if you are trying to get your posts into Google News. Since google’s mistake of listing an out dated article on United Airlines bankruptcy having the dates in the url have increased in importance. As mentioned in the first permalink structure you increase the chance of people clicking on an older post. However, receiving Google News traffic may outweigh this set back.

Note: All three of these structures must be used in the custom setting in the Permalink section. Just simply copy and paste the structure you prefer and you should be ready to go