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WordPress Chapter 12: Attracting a Crowd. BTM 395: Internet Programming WordPress: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald. 1 st edition (2012) published by O’Reilly Media. ISBN-13: 978-1449309848. Encouraging your readers to share.
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WordPress Chapter 12:Attractinga Crowd BTM 395: Internet Programming WordPress: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald. 1st edition (2012) published by O’Reilly Media. ISBN-13: 978-1449309848
Encouraging your readers to share • Sharing buttons (e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) make it easier for visitors to share your pages • If you have a Facebook page (not to be confused with a Facebook profile), you can add a Facebook Like widget to your site • You can use a plugin to let users rate or “like” individual posts
Informing readers and potential readers about site updates • You can let people who leave comments subscribe to follow-up comments for that post • You can let people who leave comments subscribe to any new updates on the site • Plugins are available to let visitors receive notifications for any new posts • You can connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media accounts to automatically create a message whenever you publish a new post • With a plugin, you can display your live Twitter feed in a sidebar
Set up news feeds • RSS is an informal web standard for automatically announcing new posts on a website • WordPress automatically supports feeds for: • The entire site: http://mydomain.ca/feed • A specific category: http://mydomain.ca/category/category-name/feed • A specific tag: http://mydomain.ca/tag/tag-name/feed • A specific author: http://mydomain.ca/author/author-user-name/feed • All comments on a post: http://mydomain.ca/full-post-url/feed • Feeds are on by default. You need to install a plugin to disable them.
Search engine optimization (SEO) • SEO is all about increasing your findability when people search for related topics on the Web • PageRank: Google's 1-10 ranking score (10 is best) • Lots of online PageRank checkers exist (e.g. http://www.prchecker.info) • SEO is a major science in web development—it is very involved • Easiest WordPress option: Use a plugin that takes care of many things for you
Site statistics • Jetpack includes a basic but functional tool; more advanced options exist • Four site stats most helpful for improving your site: • Which posts get the most views? • Who are your top referrers? • Which search engine keywords lead to your site? • Who leaves the most comments?