Blog Optimization and Tech Tips for Traffic and Stickiness

This page is dedicated to the great technical resources I’ve found and
used as I learned how to put up a blogging site.

I’m rather biased in my opinion that WordPress is the best and most professional
blogging platform available. But depending on your blogging goals, it’s
not for everyone. But because I’m so pro-WordPress, most of the tech help
here is for WordPress blogs.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, visit this page to view and compare
all of the major blogging platforms, including WordPress.org, WordPresss.com,
TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, Expression Engine, and SquareSpace.

Compare
blogging platforms now

FeedBurner is a kick-butt Chicago company that is the pride of the city.
OK, maybe not as big as United Airlines or Pepsi, but I’m dang proud they
are from Chicago!

Anyway, their RSS tracking and subscription management service is out
of this world. It’s easy to set up and their customer support is fast
and fantastic.

I
FeedBurner. Think I’m exaggerating? Check this,
and this,
and this.

Burn a
feed with FeedBurner now

For a very reasonable amount of money, you can learn WordPress from WordPressTutorials.com.
I know Sherman Hu, the owner, and he really is a great guy who cares very
much about bloggers, businesses and people.

Sadly, I found this service after I mucked through HOURS of work
trying to figure out how to customize my blog. I would have GLADLY paid
for cost of the training, which I would have easily recouped in a couple
of months.

Click
Here to learn WordPress from WordPress Tutorials.com

I get a lot of emails from people wanting information about the WordPress
plugins on eMoms - especially the Top Commentators Plugin (HIGHLY recommended!).
Here’s a list of the best ones I have found yet:

Adsense-Deluxe
Easily adds any kind of advertising to your template

BAStats
Realtime tracking of incoming links, traffic and pageviews
from within the WP Admin panel

Feedburner
Feed Replacement
In case you don’t know how to edit and change all of your auto-discovery
feeds (I don’t), use this plugin to ensure all of your RSS tracking is
funneled through FeedBurner’s statistics.

Sociable
The row of social bookmarking links at the bottom of my indivual
post pages is generated by the Sociable plugin. When I added it, my social
bookmarking traffic increased dramatically. It’s customizable, and you
can easily pick which icons to hide or show.

Show
Top Commentators
By far, the most talked about and favorite of readers here.

WP-Cache
This plugin is a must to handle traffic surges like when you
get Dugg or Slashdotted, and to speed up performance when your blog database
starts getting big. Just be sure to turn it off whenever you need to make
changes to your blog template, or you will bang
your head against a wall for hours on end.

Customizable
Permalinks
A must for good Google Juice.

Other plugins I would recommend:

Related
Posts or Related
Entries
I haven’t been able to get this one to work due to my current hosting
setup. But every now and then, I try again anyway because I long
for the day I can get it up and running.

Fresh
Comments
Displays the most recent comments made on the site. I didn’t use this
plugin because it’s already built into my template. So drop me a line
if you try it and like it.

Any of these Technorati
Tag generators
Technorati remains in the top ten of my site referrers. It’s worth it
to tag your posts to benefit from the largest blog directory on the internet.