The Make Your Own Website Blog

I was looking at my site using Google webmaster tools and noticed that I had duplicate title tags on some of the pages of my consulting site. Here is what I saw

You should notice that the pages like contact have additional pages with ?wpcf7=json added on.

Further investigation showed that it was probably the contact 7 form plugin causing the problem and the only course of action was to deactivate and un- install the plugin.

I also (using webmaster tools) requested that the duplicate pages be removed and edited my robots.tx file to exclude pages with ?wpcf7=json in them.

here is the new one:

——————————–

# All robots will spider the domain

User-agent: *
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /blog/page/

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*/?
Allow: /

—————————————

I checked that it was ok using the robots.txt checker in the Google Webmaster tools.

Hopefully in a month or so it should sort itself out as Google  drops the other pages.

If you are using the contact 7 plugin you may want to check your site. I moved to the cforms plugin.- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cforms/

Resources:

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
• the-unusual-string-wpcf7json-will-it-hurt-my-seo

cbrown550@Yahoo.co.uk is the contact email address I saw on the white Van in front of me on the school run the other morning.

The van belonged to someone who sells and installs log burning fires. That was easy to tell as it had some very nice (and probably expensive) signwriting on it.

Why do I mention it? Well this tradesman was willing to spend hundres of pounds getting his van professionally done and yet not prepared to spend £2 on his own domain name.

In fairness to the tradesman he is probably unaware that domain names are so cheap and that you can use them for email addresses and not just websites.(see Hosting and email addresses)

It also goes to show that if you have local business then getting a website and a domain name will put you well ahead of the competition as most local businesses just haven’t got it yet.

One of the main areas new website owners have problems with is using FTP. FTP (file transfer protocol) is one of the original protocols developed with TCP/IP back before the Internet became the Internet.

Although the software (clients) that use this protocol to move/copy files between machines have become much easier to use it still seems to cause difficulty.

However ftp is not the only way to add /modify content on your website, and  you may want to consider using a hosting package/solution that doesn’t use ftp.

Find out how in 3 ways to add content to your website

  The June Newsletter  is online, if you are not already a subscriber then you can subscribe here.

You may also like to know that Sitesell are having a summer special if you buy one you can get a second for $100. So if you’ve been considering SBI as your hosting provider then now is a good opportunity to get it here .

If you’re new to SBI then take a look at my site build-it review .

WordPress makes it easy to build  your own website not just a blog. If you are thinking about using WordPress  as a website then you may want to take a look at my WordPress basics Course.

Here are the contents:

1. WordPress Installation 
2. Logging in to WordPress
3. Adding Content -Pages and Posts
4. Adding Images
5. Understanding tags and Categories
6. Laying out WordPress as a Website plus Blog
7. Page and Post Title- Why they are important!

Should you build a blog or build a website? You may have already my article on websites and blogs in which I try to explain the differences between the two.  Sitesell.com on a recently launched site  titled Blog Or Build? think most of us should be building websites, not blogs, and I must say I agree with them.

They  go into detail as to why a blogging only solution is only for the
small minority,  and make some very valid points. What they don’t seem  to mention is that most use blogs as an add-on to a website, and not instead of a website.

At the end they go on to compare WordPress and SBI in a manner that reminded me of the Microsoft rants against Novell and then Linux, which seems to me that someone is worried about WordPress, and its time for a bit of FUD (Fear,uncertainty and doubt ).

WordPress can be used as a website, I use it and so do many others. Not only that but you not only get a website but a blog as well.

SBI is a totally different solution- It is not just a hosting package, its a complete website building process. I use it ,  it works just as they say it does, and I’m happy to recommend it, but it is not a universal solution, just as WordPress isn’t either.

If you’re unsure as what you should be building- A blog or a website, then
I’d recommend you read Ken’s article. If you want to see how easy it is to build a website with WordPress then I’m in the process of putting together a short 10 part course- Building websites with WordPress ( not finished yet).

HTL 4.01 was supposed to be the last release of HTML as HTML was to be replaced by XHTML. It now seems that there will be an HTML 5.

 You can find the story over at information week.

So if you were thinking of converting old HTML pages over to XHTML then  you probably shouldn’t bother.

If you’re just starting with HTML then you may want to take a look at my short starting HTML tutorial.

One of the most popular types of personal sites is the wedding website or “wedsite”. In this case study I am going to take you through the process of building a wedding website, and then at a later date converting it into a family website.

This will be an ongoing exercise but the main part should be complete after a few months. After that I will continue to add functionality to the site and rearrange as necessary.

You can follow the progress here on the blog and also ask questions, make suggestions and provide feedback.Because most potential builders of this type of site are non technical in nature I have decided to build the site using WordPress and in two parts.

WordPress is very flexible, free and requires no web authoring tools to use. It also allows for multiple authors and provides secure areas which will be important later as it transforms into a general family site.

Starting With A free Website

I’ve decided to start building the site with using a free WordPress hosted blog as it will give you a chance to follow along by building your own site at the same time.

Although you can develop the entire site using the free blog there are things that I want to include that are not possible using the free hosted blog. Therefore I will develop a basic site using the free hosted solution in part 1 and then in Part 2 I will switch over to a self hosted blog.

However by that time you will hopefully be feeling comfortable using WordPress. and will then be able to decide if you want to invest in a host and domain name or whether you will continue to develop your free hosted blog.

What we Will be Doing

Part 1

1. Wordpress Overview
2. Registering for a blog
3. Adding a Blog
4. Choosing the blog theme
5. Initial setup
6. Site Layout
7. Making a few blog posts to see how they work.
8. Putting content on Home page and linking in the blog posts
9. Adding A few more Content Pages.
10. Wrapping up.

Part 1 is online here. Please come back here to comment and make suggestions.

Part 2

1. Moving to a self hosted WordPress blog. ….coming soon

I almost forgot to tell you that Sitesell are having a spring special until 21-march 2008 (first day of spring). If you buy one you can get a second for $100. So if you’ve been considering SBI as your hosting provider then now is a good opportunity to get it.

If you’re new to SBI then take a look at my site build-it review.

Both WordPress and blogger.com provide a hosted option. If you use this option your blog is hosted on the WordPress/blogger server which means that you don’t need to get a hosting package.

In addition because the blog is hosted on their servers you don’t need to buy
or register a domain name as you use a subdomain of WordPress/blogger.

The hosted option I find good for learning how it works, and I often recommend beginners to get a free hosted blog ( I prefer WordPress) and see if they like it.

However the hosted option has its disadvantages. They are :

• You don’t control the domain Name
• You don’t control your data

Therefore if you are blogging as part of your business or are monetizing your blog via Google Adsense/or affiliate programs then I recommend that you use a self hosted blog.

I also think you should consider the self hosted option even for a personal blog, especially if you want to keep the blog over a number of years.

In this scenario you will need to get a hosting package and register your own
domain name. This isn’t as difficult or as expensive as it first sounds. It costs around $7 per month for a host and they usually include a domain name for free. (UK hosts are usually more expensive).

The ones I’m familiar with are: