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An update on the status of the podcast, and I show you how to add a super simple click to call button to your web site. I also show you how to redirect a page to an external web site! Fun stuff. Please be sure to fill out the listener survey at teachmewp.com/survey.

First I want to thank all of the viewers from the past year. I really appreciate you sticking with the podcast, through it’s on again off again, variable video size and quality and everything. If you want to know how many people viewed the podcast, be sure to watch this week’s episode.

For the first tutorial, I walk you through adding click to call to your web site. This is basically an icon a user can click on, and they will receive a phone call – so will you, and you will be talking to the user. This is great for marketing, but I also use it on teachmewp.com and point it directly to voicemail so that users can leave feedback on the show, from their phone, just by clicking. Be sure to watch the video for the details.

In the second part of the tutorial I show you how you can make a page link to an external site using the redirection plugin. Check out the “Discussion” tab along the top of this site, which started life as a page, but now links to the discussion forums at teachmewp.ning.com.

There are now many ways to give feedback on the show.  First, you can just leave a comment on this post! That’s probably the easiest way.  You can also use the click to call button, you will receive a phone call and be able to leave a voice message that I can play on the next podcast episode.  You can also go over to the discussion forum at teachmewp.ning.com and start a discussion, or you can email podacst@teachmewp.com or you can even get ahold of me on twitter @dholowiski

I look forward to hearing from you! Enjoy the podcast!

034 – Free Click to Call, Page Link Redirection and a Podcast Status Update

I just installed the Socialite plugin for wordpress. This plugin should automatically update Twitter, and the TeachmeWP.com Facebook Fan Page. This post is basically to test and see if this is really true!

I just found this cool plugin – the JanRain plugin. It basically allows users to sign into your web site using multiple authentication methods – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open ID, Windows Live, and Yahoo!
Pretty cool, and it reduces the barrier to entry, making it much easier for users to leave comments and interact on your web site.
I might do a tutorial on this in the future, what do you think?

WordPress › JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID « WordPress Plugins: “JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID”

(Via Wordpress.org.)

Also, today I just recieved two books to review for the podcast. Of course it will take me some time to read them, but I will be doing book reviews on the podcast in the future. Yay!

Check out this great article that lists a bunch of Facebook plugins for Wordpress. I will probably do an episode of the podcast talking about these plugins, especially JanRain RPX, which allows users to sign into your Blog using one of 6 different accounts (including their facebook account).

8 Top Facebook Wordpress Plugins – WebM.ag | Web Design Magazine

Social media is probably one of the best ways to promote and drive traffic to your blog, with the numerous API’s and sharing features the social media outlets are releasing it makes your job that much easier.”

(Via WebM.ag.)

Yes, it’s difficult to admit it, but I went over to the dark side yesterday. I’m setting up a new web site (teanoob.com if you must know) and going to be doing a podcast over there, and I thought I’d try out something different for a change. WordPress is fast, WordPress is easy, and I easily have 20 different WordPress sites running right now. But there are other CMS’s out there, and some of them are very popular, so I thought I’d find out why.

I did use Drupal once in the past but I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know any PHP or even what MySQL was so I was totally lost. This time, I came prepared. I selected Drupal pretty much at random – it was either Drupal or Joomla.

So the Installation of Drupal is fairly easy – pretty much the same as WordPress. You create a MySQL database and user, then run an installation script and it does the rest for you. I did this via SSH (command line) and I suspect if I had done it through cPanel it would have been much easier. I did run into two speed bumps. First, I had to change the configuration file to be world writeable (yikes!) and the same for a folder. I did make quite sure to change the permissions back when I was done.

Second, I had to go set up a cron job. Actually I haven’t set up the cron job yet, so I’m sure my site will explode in a massive firewall any minute now.

Once it was set up, I went on to select a theme, and had to add some modules (think Plugins). This was relatively easy, but there is no ‘one click install’ in Drupal like there is in WordPress, so I had to download and unzip the files by SSH (I could have used FTP too).

It did surprise me that I had to install a non-core module (think ‘third party plugin’) just to get pretty URL’s with the post name in the title. It was also kind of tough to wrap my head around modules, and blocks which are almost like plugins and widgets, but just different enough to make my head explode.

What I did like is that it is highly customizable. Once I installed the ‘Views’ module, I was able to build almost exactly the type of site that I want, actually I was able to build something in Drupal that I’ve been wanting in WordPress for quite a while. Have a look at the layout of teanoob.com (not the content, because there is none yet).

It will always show a box with the most recent video podcast episode, with normal posts going below it. There is also tons of extra places to put ‘blocks’ and a very configurable hierarchical menu system. All of this without touching any code. I am kind of enjoying it, although I’m sure I will have to get into some PHP coding once I try to figure out how to post Podcast episodes, and who even knows how the RSS Feed will work.

Anyway, I am enjoying using a different CMS for a change. I certainly wouldn’t recommend Drupal to anybody who doesn’t decide they need it on their own. It is much more “hands on” thank WordPress and definitely requires some Unix, PHP, and Apache skills that you can easily get by without in the WordPress world.

So that is my Drupal adventure. Stay tuned… once I get a working podcast I will post some more. I might even do a podcast episode about that. Nah… you don’t want that, do you?

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URL Shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl are very popluar right now, why not have your own? In this episode i show you how to use a PHP script to create your own URL Shortening service.

To accomplish this I use the PHPURL script from: http://blondish.net/resources/scripts/phpurl/

It’s a pretty easy script to install.  First you download the file from the above URL, then extract the files using winzip or any other file compression software

Then you can FTP the files up to your web server.

Once you’ve done that, you need to create a database, and a user, and give that user access to the database.  I do this from the MYSQL command line, using the following commands:

• create database databasename;  (I used a database name of ‘tinyurl’)
• create username@localhost identified by ‘password’;
• grant all on databasename.* to username@localhost;

Once that’s done, you edit the config.php file and enter this information, as well as entering a admin username and password (make sure to change it from the default password of password!)

Then you run the install script at yourdomain.com/install.php

That’s it!  Once that is done you have a fully functioning URL Shortening service that anybody can use.  It works great.  Enjoy!

Download the episode here

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Wordpress security can be confusing and even a little bit scary. In this episode I show you some simple things that you can do to secure your wordpress blog and prevent it from being hacked.

First thing I cover is a article that talks about some great tips for securing your wordpress site: bit.ly/7sKOJE the most important thing from this article is choosing a secure password.

You can go to grc.com/pass to get a very secure randomly generated password, or if you choose to create your own, make sure it’s 8 characters or longer, with numbers and letters and some upper and lower case passwords.

Next up is the “Secure Wordpress” plugin which does several of the things shown in the article above, but in a convenient plugin.

Last but not least is the Login LockDown which automatically locks a IP address out if it tries to log in unsucsesfully 3 times within 5 minutes.

So that’s the end of the show, please check out the new discussion forums at teachmewp.ning.com, and be sure to fill out the listener survey if you haven’t yet, because it really helps out the podcast.

Thanks for watching!

032 – Wordpress Security

Well, featured under the Education:Training – Video Podcasts section, third row down far right, Secudond row, First in line! but still it’s pretty cool!

Finally, there is a teachmewp.com community.  I’ve set up a group for teachmewp.com at ning.com.  There is a discussion forum so you can talk with me, and with other members of the community.  Feel free to introduce yourself and give your blog or podcast a plug, and if you have any ideas or comments about the show you can post them here to.  If you have any wordpress questions feel free to post them there too, and I will do my best to answer them or find someone who can answer them.

Also, I use delicious.com to bookmark sites of interest and resources for the podcast, so if you want a preview of what next week’s episode might be about, check it out.

I’m still working on new episodes, trying to release a new episode each monday. Next week’s episode will be about wordpress security. A bit scary but something we all need to think about.

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Automattic just made it possible to post to Wordpress.com and read Wordpress.com blogs using the Twitter API. I show you how to configure Tweetie to post and read Wordpress.com, and talk a bit about the implications of this – which are huge! Enjoy.
Links from the show:
Matt’s blog entry – Post and Read via twitter API
API Root: https://twitter-api.wordpress.com/
And please fill out the listener survey.
031 – Post to Wordpress.com using the Twitter API