Istvan Horvath - Blog

The launch date for the Dream Tool (WordPress 3.0) videos

Istvan Horvath — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:47:45 +0000

Finally, the launch date for the WordPress 3.0 videos – The Dream Tool for Internet Marketers – is here on the horizon.

We planned to launch it earlier but… I am sure you are not interested in all the details, except one: when?

Well, I wanted to make it kind of symbolic. Sometimes I have this kind of crazy ideas. As many of you may know we are moving from the Prairies, where we live now, to Ontario. We already bought a house there and the possession date is September 9.

But I came up with the idea of WordPress 3.0 being a “dream tool” for internet marketers here, in this house. And I planned all the details while sitting on our deck – presently stained with a colour called redwood…

So, if nothing bad happens – I will launch this product just before the possession date of the new house. If you are a subscriber of mine, you will know it exactly. My subscribers will be my first affiliates, too! It is easy to get into this select group – just get a copy of the free report for yourself.

Check back often, any update about the launch will be posted here!

WordPress 3 -The Dream Tool for Internet Marketers. Free report released

Istvan Horvath — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:47:04 +0000

As the title says: I am giving away a FREE Report about why the new WordPress version 3. should be considered a “dream tool” in internet marketing.

I am going through all the new features, explaining them with plenty of screenshots. Here are some of the chapters:

Are You Benefiting from All the Amazing New Features in WordPress 3.0?
The Menus You Always Wanted for Your Blog
The Hidden Gem: Custom Post_Types (and Templates)
WP Multi Sites – Install Once, Blog Dozens of Times!
Applying Themes for all Your Blogs at Once!
Adding Plugins for all Your Blogs at Once!
Another Hidden Gem: Domain Mapping – The Secret Weapon

Click on the cover on the right or get your copy of the Dream Tool Report here.
Your feedback is always welcome!

WordPress 3 – challanges for plugin authors

Istvan Horvath — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:32:01 +0000

The Setup

As I posted earlier, I started to experiment with the new WordPress 3. MultiSite version. Everything went smoothly… until I tried to play with the plugin activation in the multisite setup.

If you have WP 3 or later installed you could notice there is an improved plugin listing in the admin panel:

Besides the earlier All – Active/Inactive tabs now we have some new ones: Network, Must Use and Drop-ins.

The Network is relatively simple: if you activated any of your plugins “network-wide”, i.e. to be available on all your sites created with your central (a.k.a. main) WordPress install — they will be listed under this tab.

Next is the Must Use: these plugins are placed in a new folder wp-content/mu-plugins. There is a lot of misinformation regarding this folder, its name and its function.
Even in the Codex there is a line saying:

Global WordPress Plugins: Site-wide WordPress Plugins to be used by all blogs on the entire network are installed in the mu-plugins directory.

Actually, that’s not true. Since the merger of the “regular” WP and WPMU many people think the abbreviation “mu” always stands for ‘multi-user’ as it was the case for WPMU. However, in this case the mu-plugins folder is for the “Must Use” plugins! A fine example for the placement of a plugin in this directory is the Domain Mapping plugin – when you want to use this feature of WP 3. Plugins in that directory are executed automatically.

The next problem with the quote from the WP online manual is assuming that uploading any plugin to this folder would make it available on the entire network. (Network here means all your sites created on the subfolders or subdomins in your WP 3.x.x. installation!) The statement is not true because most of the plugins placed in that folder will never show up in your admin panel!

The mentioning of the network takes us back to the Network label. To have a plugin active for your network you don’t have to place it in a special location. Just upload it the usual way to the wp-content/plugins folder and on the Plugins subpanel in your WP admin your will see this:

Quite clearly you have the options to make it active only for the main site (where your WP install is) or for the whole “network” of your sites/blogs created from here.

A few words about the Drop-ins. This possibility was also there in a couple of earlier version (since 2.8, maybe) but is not widely used. You can drop a .php file in the wp-content directory and it will appear in the list with the following information:

Drop-ins are advanced plugins in the /wp-content directory that replace WordPress functionality when present.

The Challenge

The majority of the plugins written for what used to be the “regular” WordPress are not prepared to handle the options outlined above. I have tested a few, uploading them into the wp-content/mu-plugins but they never showed up anywhere in the admin panel. Obviously, they are missing something in their code…

Next, there is a problem with the plugins that require some kind of settings, having their own options subpanel. For those interested in the MultiSite feature of this WordPress version the biggest advantage would be to upload the plugin, activate network-wide, set its options on the main site… and have the same options/settings already in place when creating new sites/blogs.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I can understand what the developers had in mind when introducing this feature: a truly multi-site approach, meaning you have one single install and you can create multiple sites from there – all with their own specific setup: plugins, themes etc.

On the other hand, the needs of niche marketers when quickly creating different blog sites for niches or micro-niches, are completely different. Especially, when it comes to SEO related plugins and settings they would want to be able to “export” the initial settings on the main, central site to the newly created blog sites.

I have tried in all the possible ways this: first network-activating the plugin and then creating new sites. Then creating new sites and installing and network-activating the plugin. It never had the same settings “pre-set” as on the main site.

So, here is where I see the winner plugins in the future:

Make the default settings at activation pre-set for an ideal usage: no need to do it for all the sites
Make it aware of the new mu-plugins possibility and have the same settings available for all the sites simply by activation
Make drop-in plugins to replace core WP functions

Can you think of any other useful features in future plugins? Tell me about them in your comments!

WordPress 3.0 for Internet Marketers

Istvan Horvath — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:57:47 +0000

Was WP 3.0 really created with Internet Marketers in mind? I doubt it. However, this version 3.0 has quite a number of new features that can be very useful in your marketing efforts.

Seemingly, WordPress is already the CMS of choice for most of the internet marketing people. Marketers find it easy to use, easy to install and modify. Blogs with their constantly updated content are quickly indexed by the search engines, so almost everybody in this industry has a blog or two. Or hundreds…

This is where WordPress 3.0 comes in the picture. The revolutionary change in this version was the merge between the “simple” WordPress script (used for one single blog) and the WordPress MU (MU=multi user). Now the MU project is discontinued and its main feature – to be able to create multiple sites/blogs from one single installation – has been added to the original WordPress.

If you download WordPress 3.0 or update your WP install to this version – you automatically have the option to create many sites from that single installation.

There is a lot of talk among WP fans and developers, contributors and fanatics about the less known features, too; like the custom single post template, the custom post types, custom menus etc. Usually, I read a lot of those because I like to keep myself up to date with the WP development.

On the other hand I noticed that for the less techie fellow marketers the whole discussion that goes on among coders… is quite useless: it goes above their head and it doesn’t help with practical implementations.

Earlier I wasn’t interested in following or installing the WordPress MU variant but with the launch of WP 3.0 I decided to give it a try. I always considered myself not a tech-geek coder, just a well informed knowledgeable user, so whenever I go through a process (like installing the new WP and using its new features) I look at it from the end user’s point of view.

Can the average WP-user do this? Can the process be simplified and broken down into small pieces, easy to digest? If the answer is YES, I am all for it!

That’s exactly what I did with my new WP 3.0 installation. Tried to make it as simple as possible. Not only that — I even documented it capturing the screen on videos while I was doing it.

All the videos will be available soon. Stay tuned!

A day when everything goes wrong…

Istvan Horvath — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:06:04 +0000

It seems there are days when we just should stay away from the internet and computers.

You wake up early morning and with the first coffee you go downstairs in the basement and fire up the computers to check email. You notice one labeled “paypal” and you start smiling: it must be a sale. No, it isn’t. It’s a notification that you paid $517 for a yearly license for a script that you don’t want to use and wanted to cancel after the free gift period. Yes, today is the day but you were charged at 3:22am. Not good…

OK, there is a phone number for the company in the notification email, so you call it. No luck: it’s a message from a ‘sister company’ advising you to login to their helpdesk. You go to the helpdesk site and you look for that special section for this script. There isn’t any. Then you go and login to the script’s site. Ah, here we go, there is a Contact link. Click!

Oh, it’s another helpdesk site. You still don’t want to go to Paypal for a refund request – so you submit a polite ticket, asking if a refund would be possible. You go to check your email – indeed, the ticket has been submitted and a staff member will reply.

Now you feel a little bit relieved, and want to check more mail. Error. The page doesn’t display. You try the other machine. Same: no internet connection. OK, we know the routine: disconnect, wait 30 seconds, reconnect, try again. Nothing. Let’s do it again. Same error: server not found.

Call your ISP. You explain the situation and they treat you like a 5th grader. Disconnect, wait, restart etc. The only thing we figure out: the router that has 3 computers connected by wire and two laptops wireless, doesn’t work. When you connect one computer directly to the ISP modem, there is internet.

You check if there is any reply from the helpdesk, but there is nothing.

You jump in the car and you go out and buy a new router: D-Link DIR-615 (N300). It’s on sale, so you save $20 (CAD). Back home you impatiently check the email: no reply from the helpdesk. Starting to contemplate to request a refund via Paypal.

You disconnect all the wires from the old G router, insert the CD for the new one and go with the installation, configuration. Finally, it works. You check all the computers, wired and wireless – everything seems to work. Of course, in the middle of installing with five wires in your two hands… your wife calls you to have a chat: the patient is a no-show, so she has time She is not happy that you are short and ask to hang up.

Now that the internet is working again, let’s go back to the Helpdesk. Nothing. The accumulated tension begins to drive you crazy and you submit a second long – very impatient! – ticket. You call again the phone number from the morning… and you leave a message. You go to the other helpdesks of these guys (where you were directed from the phone message) and start to submit tickets asking why do you send me here if this is not the place to submit a ticket for that script…

Then checking the email notifications for all these tickets — there is the reply for the first one: you got your refund, sorry it didn’t work for you etc.

This is the moment you feel dumb for all those additional tickets. Or maybe not. Because you’ll never know whether this was the “normal” waiting time for a reply or they finally got kicked by all those messages left in every possible place.

And now it is 16:00 (4:00 pm for those that can count only up to 12) and the whole day is screwed.
At least I have a new blog post. Better than nothing…

HTML Template into WordPress

Istvan Horvath — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:24:42 +0000

It is well-known that all WordPress themes are built using PHP files. Actually, the whole WordPress engine – blogging software – is built on PHP. This post is not really about the difference between HTML and PHP files, and just for editing or manipulating your theme files (the templates as they are called in the WP terminology) you don’t need any specific PHP knowledge. I will talk about how to convert an ordinary HTML template into something usable in your WordPress theme.

The basic structure of any template file is just classic pure HTML, more exactly XHTML, which is a more advanced version of the HTML language. Then you have the occasional small PHP code snippets among the HTML code – they are called “template tags” in the WP documentation. Most users are happy with the available thousands of open source and free WordPress themes: they provide enough variety even without editing the template files.

However, there are cases when we have a nice HTML template looking different than our WordPress blog and we still would like to use it for special purposes in the blog. Such a case could be when a sales page template has a different layout and design but the WP blogger would like to use it as a Page template. (Remember, in the WordPress documentation Pages with capital P denote quasi-static entries which are not part of the chronological order of the posts.)

Quite often the novice user will try to copy and paste the HTML code of the new template into the content area of a Page – but that will never work correctly. There are easier ways to achieve the goal. The main mistake with the copy/paste approach is that the user is trying to force the blogging tool – in this case WordPress – to do something that is not inherently coded in it as a feature. More often than not they don’t even realize why their attempt is wrong: they are going against the natural work flow in WordPress. Instead, I suggest studying how the WordPress theme’s template system works and use it in our own advantage!

Let’s take the simplest case ever to implement a HTML template into your WordPress theme. Here is the starting point: we have a blog with its own theme and we got a salespage template to use. But the salespage template is all HTML. How to use it in among all the PHP files in the theme folder?

Simple: save the file with .php extension – e.g. salespage.php. Next, open it in a simple text editor and add this at the very top, before anything else:

/*
Template Name: My Salespage
*/
?>

Now upload it to your theme folder and create a new Page using this template. You just finished the “big” task converting an HTML template into a WordPress Page template.

For more complex cases you can download my free guide WordPress Page Templates Made Easy. Don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list to get instant access to my other 7 Best Tutorials!

Video for Widget Magic

Istvan Horvath — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:03:32 +0000

I thought you would like to see a short video how I do the steps described in the Widget Magic tutorial.

The size in this blog is not optimal but you can watch it at the YouTube site. Just don’t forget to come back and comment on it – or to post a reply video on YouTube.

To download Widget Magic click this link.

P.S. Feel free to share, embed or email the video link!
P.P.S. You can see it on the Video Forward site, too. The site is run by the well known internet marketer Ron Douglas – I met him last year in Raleigh at the WF event.

Widget Magic – Widgetize anything in your WordPress theme!

Istvan Horvath — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:44:52 +0000

The Widget Magic is out: I published a great guide teaching how you can add widgets anywhere and everywhere in your WordPress theme.

If you are a blogger most likely you are familiar with the most popular blogging tool, WordPress (WP) and its feature called widgets. In the unlikely case that you never heard about widgets, in WP they are small blocks of information that can be placed – usually – in the sidebar by drag’n'drop. If you look at the right, on the sidebar of this blog the group of links (My websites) or the group of square ads – are put there by widgets.

Everybody loves widgets because you don’t have to edit your template files (like the sidebar.php of your theme) every time you want to make some changes. The widgets are very convenient way to organize the content of your sidebar. In some themes the developers have placed widget areas even in the footer!

However, I have heard many times bloggers talking about their dream of being able to have widgets anywhere in their blog. Well, their dream just became true. I put together an illustrated guide to teach WP users how to add widget area anywhere in their blog.

You can download it here: Widget Magic – the widegtizer

Wish me luck! I hope this tutorial will become popular among WP users. If you downloaded it, tell me how did it work for you? Pimp your widgets everywhere!

P.S. If you know what WF is and you are member there – watch for a special discounted price!

The marketing lessons from our vacation in Jamaica

Istvan Horvath — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:56:11 +0000

In the middle of the winter we spent a week in Negril, Jamaica – Grand Breezes Resort. We simply loved it! I took hundreds of pictures, maybe I should install here a pictures album plugin to show them…

One day, while on the beach, a three member “mobile” band was walking around and stopping in front of sunbathing groups – offering to play some reggae music… what else? Well, they were not a world class group but on the beach with a cold drink in your hand enjoying the dolce far niente it doesn’t really matter. And it was still better to see them than the ubiquitous marijuana sellers.

When they got closer, I noticed the older guy with his portable keyboard instrument: his left arm was missing. You would think one needs ten fingers to be able to play that instrument. But this one-armed guy managed it with just five.

We really enjoyed their music and the sun, the beach, the blue see, the drink… all that package. I mean not only my wife and I but everybody else around us. The musicians were not “pushy” begging for tips. They just had a small wooden box placed on the sand in front of them that said “TIPS”, however nobody gave them a cent.

Then I stood up, took out a few dollars from my pocket and walked up to them. After putting the money in the box, I asked them the permission to have a photo together. As you can see, they agreed. (It is not that difficult to tell which one is the blogger.)

Before you know it, everybody around us started to put a dollar or two in the box… I hope the guys were having a good day.

And now the lessons.

1. The lesson learned from the one-armed musician: no matter how handicapped you are, if you want to do it and if you persist, you can make it! You can play the keyboard even if you have only one hand. It is your determination that counts.

2. People are like sheep… they have the herd mentality. Once a single person tipped the group – the others felt compelled to follow. Get a few leaders to ‘demonstrate’ the desired behaviour (e.g. buy and praise your product) and the rest will follow them

I am picky… about my social connections

Istvan Horvath — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:10:18 +0000

If you are using any of those social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. you probably know what I am going to say here.

When it comes about marketing yourself (a.k.a. branding) and your products – the advice is often along the lines to connect as “friend” with as many people as you can (on Facebook), follow thousands in the hope they would follow you back (on Twitter) or to follow back whoever starts to follow you.

I don’t really feel comfortable doing all that. Maybe because in real life, too, I am picky about my friends, the real friends. I am very selective and as the years go it becomes more and more difficult to make new friends. It is even more difficult to connect with people through these online channels. I just don’t see the value in indiscriminately connecting with everyone that sends you a request for “friendship”. So, I check manually every request and every follower before deciding to connect with them.

Perhaps, I am making a big marketing mistake, some would say. Time will tell.

What is your strategy?