Wordpress

[WebDesignHome]

I keep hearing this name crop up. Is it a major place for blogs?

[Dan Schulz]

It is, and so much more. You can get a free blog (with hosting) at www.wordpress.com while the script can be downloaded (and hosted on your own site) at www.wordpress.org

It also makes a neat content management system as well if you're interested in using it to create a regular Web site.

[WebDesignHome]

Thanks for that. I downloaded what you said from the .org site and also created a blog. I was wondering how you put "tags" into your blogs. For example if I was talking about a Ford Mondeo in my blog, how do you tag the word so it is picked up in peoples searches for Ford Mondeos?

[Dan Schulz]

If you're using WordPress 2.6, you'll find the tags field right underneath the post box (where you type your blog entry) in the posts page.

[ArtDeco]

Wordpress.com (free blog hosting) runs the same core software that you can DL at wordpress.org, but doesn't allow much monitization. Use it for practice and maybe links to a WP blog on your own server.

[ryanhellyer]

For example if I was talking about a Ford Mondeo in my blog, how do you tag the word so it is picked up in peoples searches for Ford Mondeos?

If you're using WordPress 2.6, you'll find the tags field right underneath the post box (where you type your blog entry) in the posts page.

My understanding of your question was different from Dan's:

Dan's advice was for adding 'WordPress tags' which are used to help navigate around your site as well as being used by some search engines (Technorati is one of them I think). However the major search engines don't care about your WordPress tags beyond them adding a few extra relevant links to your page.

I assume what you were wanting to do was regular SEO in WordPress to help users access your site via search engines. WordPress tags aren't particularly useful for this. Perhaps you were meaning Meta tags? In which case there are various plugins available to help you do this, in particular the very popular 'All in one SEO pack'.

[shayne54]

I have roughly 35 free wordpress blogs, and 5 wordpress blogs hosted on my various websites. I love them!

[ArtDeco]

Setting up my first wordpress MU (multiuser wordpress for over 100 domains) tomorrow. I love Wordpress. Actually I love open source, but WP is the best example.

[WebDesignHome]

I was thinking along the lines of SEO, by trying to build up page rank of a blog then linking this to one of my websites to help push it up the rankings. Would tagging my blog so Technorati picks up links help with the PR of my blog?

[Dan Schulz]

I don't recommend using Technorati to try and increase your rankings or PageRank. Instead, I'd use it to send traffic to your site.

[WebDesignHome]

But doesn't increasing the level of traffic to your site ultimately help with your page rank?

[Dan Schulz]

No. PageRank is affected by one thing and one thing only. Links. The better the incoming links, the higher your PageRank. And I hate to say it, but social bookmarking and networking, forums, article and press release submission sites are NOT great places to get quality incoming links. They're "the dregs of the link world" so to speak.

[ryanhellyer]

No. PageRank is affected by one thing and one thing only. Links.

Traffic leads to views of your site, viewers of your site tends to lead to links. So the original poster was kindof correct ... well, sort of ... it depends on how you think about it.

[Dan Schulz]

I was being technical. You're being pedantic.

[WebDesignHome]

I was looking at wordpressdirect last night. Does anybody have experience of this?

[ryanhellyer]

I assume you are meaning the site at wordpressdirect dot com?

It looks like a pile of junk to me. All it seems to do is scrape content from other sites and insert it into a WordPress powered site. At worst it may be illlegal, at best it's a waste of time.

[mirisaamali]

I keep hearing this name crop up. Is it a major place for blogs?

Honestly i never heard about that in my experience. NOR any mention of it in any forums i participated earlier. is it new?