Technical Tips for Blog Traffic, Optimization 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. Compareblogging 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. 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.