4 Great Tools To See Who Isn’t Following You Back On Twitter
If you’re active on Twitter, you fully understand that when you follow someone, they may not always return the favor, and that’s fine. Social Media can be unpredictable, and Twitter is no exception. With that said, there are some great tools online that you can use to identify which users aren’t following you back, who is inactive on Twitter, and much more. Here are four great tools that you can take advantage of, and the best part is that they’re free.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is an outstanding tool that will give you a complete rundown of those that you’re connected with in some way on Twitter. By signing in through your Twitter account, you’ll have access to lists of those who aren’t following you back, who is inactive on the network, and what accounts may be considered as spam, among other variables. ManageFlitter is very convenient too, especially in the list format, allowing you to unfollow users with one simple click. When using this tool, it’s important to see who is inactive. While these users may already follow you back, if they’re designated as ‘inactive,’ it means that they haven’t tweeted in at least thirty days. If they aren’t tweeting, why follow them?Friend or Follow
One of the great features of Friend or Follow is that it doesn’t just focus on Twitter, but it takes a look at Instagram and Tumblr as well. In terms of Twitter, you can sort users by various factors, including whether or not they’re verified, when they last tweeted, how old their account is, or how frequent they tweet, for example. While this is another great tool to see who isn’t following you back, it’s a little bit more time consuming than ManageFlitter, in that to follow someone, you need to open their profile into a new tab or window. However, great features make up for that. While you have the option to pay for additional features with Friend or Follow, the free version of the tool more than serves its purpose.Unfollowers
Unfollowers is another helpful tool that even includes a mention tracker, so that you can see who (either that you’re following or who follows you) has interacted with you in the past. Not only that, but you can set the layout to either have a list, grid, table, or button format, with the table format being shown above. Through the various layout options, you’re given informative statistics on the Twitter users that you’re following and that are following you, and just like with ManageFlitter, it’s very convenient to follow and unfollow, all with one click.TwitNERD
Another free tool, twitNERD, is great in that it has a unique feature for you to use to find people to follow. Through the ‘Follow by Keyword’ tab, you are able to input any keyword or phrase, which will introduce you to various influencers and popular users on Twitter that fit the particular description of what you’re looking for. This is a great way for finding new users to connect with. Not only that, but twitNERD has a great feature in that it will automatically generate ‘Follow Friday’ tweets for you, based on factors such as those who retweet you and mention you the most. This will save you time, while also crafting a tweet on your behalf that sends a ‘thank you’ out to your loyal followers.
Through social media, it’s important to see who is connected with you. What tools are you using to see who is and isn’t following you back on Twitter?
How to Add game in Blog
How to Build a Website with WordPress
This is not your average “Build a Website with WordPress” website…
I am going to show you how you can create your own website based on WordPress, a static website which you can manage online and which looks like a standard website.
Domain Name and Registration
The first thing you need, once you get the idea for your site, is a good domain name and get that registered.
Choosing a good domain name is hard, you need to think about a few things:
- Is the name easy to remember?
- Is it short enough?
- Is it easy to type in your browser address bar without obvious typos?
There is a difference between coolwebsite.com and koolwebsite.com - Does your site name contain Trademark words, or could you get into other legal problems with that name?
This domain name, for example, is wpsitebuilding,com and not wordpresssitebuilding.com (Read more here and here) - Is it catchy or brand-able?
- And last, is it still free? You can check that by just typing it into you browser address bar, or check it at Namecheap.com*
I can highly recommend them as a domain registrar, but you should also check the box for Auto-Renewal to make sure you won’t loose it because you missed a notification.
WordPress Website Hosting
Now you need somewhere to place your website so it is reachable by everyone on The Internet.
So you rent some hard-disc space on a large server that is maintained for you by specialists. You also need to pay for bandwidth and other stuff related to the hosting of your website (back-ups, server updates, support, etc)
Sounds expensive? With a Shared hosting account, you won’t break the bank. These hosting accounts are around 5 to 7 dollar. I recommend getting a reliable and secure hosting account from either Hostgator *
(Baby plan offers the best value for money) or Greengeeks.com * (which is where this site is currently hosted).
(Baby plan offers the best value for money) or Greengeeks.com * (which is where this site is currently hosted).
Both hosting companies use the secure suPHP option o their servers, keeping you as secure as possible.
Got your hosting package ready? The go back to Namecheap.com, log in and point your domain DNS servers to the servers your hosting company assigned to your account.
The biggest benefit of this setup (domain-name and hosting separately) is that you can change hosting providers very easily if needed.
You could also create a back-up site at a different provider and change over directly if any problems occur on your main site.
You could also create a back-up site at a different provider and change over directly if any problems occur on your main site.
Installing WordPress
With your domain name and website hosting in place you can do a WordPress installation, followed by the basic setup “How to Configure WordPress.”
There are basically two way’s to install WordPress, manually or with a hosting provided script that will do the most parts for you.
If you want to do it all yourself, these are the basic steps to take:
- Create a MySql database with username and password (see the instructions of your hosting company)
- Go to the WordPress.org site and get the latest version of the Free WordPress Software.
- Unzip the files unto your PC / Mac hard disk
- Upload all the files to the www or public_html folder of your hosting account via FTP (Filezilla Client or Cyberduck)
- Go to your domain name URL (or sub folder) and start the installation, you will be asked for the information at step 1.
- Log in to your new WordPress based website and start the configuration.
If you want to install WordPress the easy way using a script, choose the Quikinstall option if you are on Hostgator or the Softaculous App installer at Greengeeks (my favorite option because you can control everything to make the site even more secure)
With the last installation option, you are running the site within 5 minutes or less.
Basic Options to Configure in WordPress
Once you have installed WordPress on your website, I will show you what settings you need to configure, including some special things.
You can reach and change these options via your “Dashboard” menu on the left side on your screen.
- First thing you need to do is to check the Settings -> General and change the Tag Line from “Just Another WordPress Weblog” to something that is fitting for your website. Now you can also change the time zone if needed.
- Change your user profile, especially your screen display name so you won’t show your log in user name. Go to Users -> Your Profile -> Type in your Name and Nickname and then select your choice in the drop-down box below.
- Set the Permalinks option (Settings -> Permalinks) to Postname, which will change your post and page URLs from /?=755 to something like /which-widgets-to-use-in-your-sidebar. Which is much more user and search engine friendly.
- Remove the sample WordPress Hello World post ->Posts -> All Posts -> Delete Hello World
- Delete or change the sample About page -> Page -> All Pages -> Edit or Delete.
- Check if you can upload an image -> Media -> Add new -> Select a file from your hard-disk and see if it works, then you now the rights for that folder are ok, and you can upload images and insert them into posts and pages.
- Replace / remove the default sidebar widgets like the meta box. Go to Appearance -> Widgets -> Open Primary Sidebar on the right and drag the Widget Recent Posts and Categories into it. If you have any others you don’t need, delete them from that sidebar for now.
You can add new ones later, see Which Widgets to Use in Your Sidebar - Change the Uncatorized category name to you main website topic Posts -> Categories -> Uncategorized -> Edit -> type in your main website topic name and clear out the text uncategorized in the slug field! Save it and WordPress will create the new slug itself based on the first field.
- Check out your site at the Frontend to see everything is working.
WordPress Themes and Layout
WordPress layouts and site presentations are done with themes, which make it very easy to change the way your website looks. There are several designs available at the theme’s site of WordPress.org, all of which are free to download and use.
There are some websites out there that sell great themes. I suggest you check the template code to get an understanding of how they work. If you buy a commercial theme, you will get access to tutorials that show you how to get the most out of your purchase.
For a true static website impressing, rather than a blog you will need to change some items in the theme.
You will see how to edit WordPress themes to take out some of the features only used for blogging…
It is important to understand that ANY theme can be used to create a Static WordPress website, but there is a difference between building a site this way and using a WordPress Magazine Style Theme*. Using a theme such as the WordPress Magazine Style Theme is not the same because you use posts to fill your site with post’s content instead of pages.
I will give you tips on how to work with both types of themes further on in the site.
You can also create your own WordPress menus for easy navigation and links into your website.
WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins are extensions for the WordPress software that can assist to overcome some limitations of the blogging software by helping extend its possibilities.
Of course, there are some plugins needed to optimize your website for search engines.
You will find the best WordPress plugins to get your site up and running in no time, as well as get you indexed in search engines.
Plugins are also essential to:
- blocking spam comments
- create a sitemap
- create a secure contact form
- secure your wordpress website against hackers
- create back-ups
- optimize your database
- etc., etc., the options are almost limitless…
Build a Website with WordPress Costs Overview
Setting up a website with a content management system could cost you thousands of dollars.
However, you are already looking into one of the better and cheaper options, WordPress!
The most valuable asset of all is your time, but I cannot start to image how much that will be!
As for as the costs are for your domain and site:
- Domain name registration – Yearly cost around 15 dollars
- Webhosting package – Yearly costs around 60 dollars
- Premium Theme (Optional) – One time cost from 35 dollars (ThemeForest*) to 80 dollars (StudioPress Theme Selection Tool*)
- Premium Plugins (optional) check CodeCanyon* for extra functionality
- Also optional is a special designed WordPress theme, which will cost you at least several hundred dollars.
- … any thing you want :)
So if you just go for the basics, your total cost per year will be around 75 dollars for your first domain.
Remember the hosting packages mentioned before? They come with the Unlimited Domains option, which means for your second domain you just pay the yearly registration fee, that second domain goes on the hosting package you already paid for. So it’s very easy and cost efficient if you want to start a second WordPress based website…
Remember the hosting packages mentioned before? They come with the Unlimited Domains option, which means for your second domain you just pay the yearly registration fee, that second domain goes on the hosting package you already paid for. So it’s very easy and cost efficient if you want to start a second WordPress based website…
Start to Build a Website with WordPress Now!
Overall, you want a website that is easy to set up and to maintain and doesn’t cost too much, right? So let’s get started!
Today is a good day to build a website with WordPress and see how far you can get creating your own place on the Internet.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
* = Affiliate Link
WordPress Setup Basic
No, this is not a WordPress Installation page, there is the installation instruction page on WordPress itself and some Hosting companies like Siteground, Bluehost, Hostgator and JustHosthave made it very easy to Install WordPress using their automated installation packages.
The following pages are about the options to set or change in the general Configuration of WordPress, so that it is optimized for creating a WordPress based website.
Let’s start with an overview of what you need to do after you did your initial installation:
1. Create a new user with administrator rights, logout from your admin account and login as that new user. Then delete the old admin user and all his posts and links. The main reason for this is security; you don’t want a user called admin in your database as it is the first account hackers will use to attack your site. Secondly deleting that user and his post and links cleans out most of WordPress example post, comments and Blogroll items leaving you with an almost empty site to work on.
2. Remove the default about page as that is all that is left from the examples that WordPress installs on your site. You will create a new about page, but this time with your own title and page url other than /about/
3. Change permalinks, my favorite option for permalinks is to use the field “custom structure” and then use /%postname%/ or /%postname%.html. This will give you search engine friendly URLs with the title and keywords in place.
4. Remove or rename the default post category. The standard post category in WordPress is set to “Uncategorized” with the same for the Slug. You don’t want that, you should have the main topic of your site reflected in that category. On this site that is set to “WordPress CMS.”
5. Delete or rename default and create new link categories. The default for links in WordPress is “Blogroll” and you can leave it that way, but I prefer to alter it, in my case into “Website Building”
6. Activate and Configure the Askimet Plugin to protect you against comment spam. You can get a free Askimet key from www.wordpress.com, but check out the Askimet site first.
7. Change the image settings. I change this for security too. The default is wp-content/uploads and I create a directory in the root called “images” and change the image settings to point to that directory. It makes it easier for me to open this directory for search engine robots to come in and index my images for image searches. You can change this under settings->Miscellaneous->Store uploads in this folder. Ps. Make sure the folder has write permissions for WordPress uploading, be sure to test this.
8. Check privacy settings to make sure you don’t block search engines to index your website.
9. Check discussion settings to reflect the way you want to handle comments, if you want to have people commenting or not. For a static business website without a blog, you should disable commenting here.
10. Change reading settings, this is where you change the settings for use as a static page or a blog page. This option may not work if you use some premium themes as they will use the file home.php for the Home page layout. In those kinds of themes, you will find a separate template for a blog page.
11. Install “must have”plugins. There are several WordPress plugins that I consider “must haves” like of course Askimet, but also a Sitemap page generator and a Google Sitemap generator and other things like a Database handler, a page sorting plugin and an SEO Plugin like Headspace2.
12. Install a new theme as you really don’t want to use the standard WordPress themes. And there are lots of themes that you can choose from to select a theme that will suit your site. You can search http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ for a nice free theme. If you use the option “Add New Themes you will be taken to that site to choose your theme from.
13. Choose and configure your widgets. Once you have a new theme you can change the behavior of your sidebar and other elements by placing and configuring those widgets.
14. Start writing! This is the most important part as you now have nothing left to show on your website… create your first posts and pages and start building your website!
I hope I did cover all the mayor aspects of a post WordPress installation, but if I missed something, please tell me and I will add it to the list. I will also start writing about all these different aspects in more detail and once each of them gets done I will link to the relevant post or page.
P.S. Make sure you set the following files to read only (chmod 644) for security reasons after you’re done with your configuration, .htaccess, robots.txt, index.php, wp-confing.php and the files in your template directory.
7 Tips to Customize WordPress Twenty Eleven Theme
A lot of WordPress websites are built upon, and still use, the previous default WordPress ThemeTwenty Eleven. I will show you 7 tips that you can use to customize the Twenty Eleven Theme.
With most of the tips you don’t even need to know much about PHP coding, just how to install a special Twenty Eleven plugin.
Tip 1: Install WordPress Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions
Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions is the plugin you want as it can solve most of the problems people are facing with Twenty Eleven.
To install this plugin go to Plugins -> Add new -> Search Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions and select it from the list.
Click on install and confirm that you want to install it. After installation make sure you click the active option.
You should now see an extra option under Appearance called Theme Extensions. We will go though the options in this post as most of the options you want to change.
Tip 2: Twenty Eleven Sidebar on All pages
If you look at the default layout of the Twenty Eleven theme you will see that the sidebar is only visible on the Home page.
But you want to have that sidebar on all pages, including posts. If you only want it on pages, you can select that option via the Page Attributes in the right side menu of your edit screen.
Unfortunately that means you have to do that on every page and you still wouldn’t have the sidebar on posts. To change this, click the upper two options in the extensions plugin settings.
Tip 3: Change the Header Image and Size on Twenty Eleven
The default header size for the Twenty Eleven Theme is 1000 width x 288 pixels in height. Which is pretty high and takes a lot of space on your screen. You can easily change that with the extensions option Change the height of new images.
If you already have some headers installed, make sure you check the second option as well.
Better would be to create and upload new images in the right format or crop them upon upload.
You can upload new header images via Appearance -> Header -> Choose or Upload a new header file. Once you uploaded more than one header file you can switch the headers automatically by selecting the Random option.
Note: Did you know you can set a special header for each post or page? Create a special header in the same size as the standard one (here it is now 1000 x 175 pixels) 1000 x 288 is the Twenty Eleven standard format.
Now go to the page or post you want that header to show up and select the option Featured Image, upload or select the header and update the page / post.
Tip 4: Twenty Eleven Theme Change Menu Color and More
One of the most asked questions on Twenty Eleven is how to customize the Menu Color and other items like the link colors and text color. With the extensions plugin you need to check the Custom Color option to get this done.
Once you activate that option you get new selections in the the Appearance -> Theme Options. You ahd a few options on that in the standard theme options, now you get a big list of things you can change.
For the menu color change look for Menu Background Color, Menu Highlight Color and if needed Menu Text Color.
For the menu color change look for Menu Background Color, Menu Highlight Color and if needed Menu Text Color.
You can select the colors from the button next to the color, or put in the hex (#de000a). If you want color suggestions, check out http://www.colorhexa.com/ and http://www.colorcombos.com/
Tip 5: Remove Search from Twenty Eleven Top
As we have the last option in the extensions called Custom Style we can used that directly to remove / hide the Search Option in the top title area. Activate the Custom style option and place this code in it:
/* Search Form */
#branding #searchform {
display: none;
}
So you should end up with this:
Tip 6: Remove / Hide Twenty Eleven Topmenu Navigation
Some people don’t like to have the Top Navigation menu below the header image and only want to use a custom menu in the sidebar.
If you also want to remove that menu, then this simple trick is for you. First create a custom menu, lets call it Blank. You leave that menu empty, so not even a Home link. Now set that Blank as the primary navigation option and check your website, you should not see the navigation anymore.
Example, Twenty Eleven with smaller header and no main navigation bar.
Tip 7: Remove the Comment Function from Twenty Eleven Pages
On Twenty Eleven pages you can see that there is also the possibility to comment on that page.
If its a real static pages, like a contact form or a sitemap, you don’t want people to comment on the content of that page.
I only want comments on my posts, not on pages. So the option to disable all comments is not an option. Instead change the screen options display when you are in the edit screen for a page.
Start with the screen options tab (upper right corner)
On that screen enable the Discussion option by checking it, this will display the Comments option below your main content edit screen.
Un-check both options and the comments form will be gone from your page. You need to do this on all current and new pages!
On that screen enable the Discussion option by checking it, this will display the Comments option below your main content edit screen.
Un-check both options and the comments form will be gone from your page. You need to do this on all current and new pages!
Bonus Tip: Remove / Customize Proudly Powered by WordPress from Twenty Eleven Footer
In this case we do need to work on a core file from the Twenty Eleven Theme, specially the file called footer.php
It would be better to do this on a Child Theme, but for this purpose it will not be such a problem. You just need to make sure you do it again it there should come an update for the Twenty Eleven Theme.
Go to Appearance -> Editor -> Open the file Footer (footer.php)
Search for <div id="site-generator">
You need to replace the code between that code and the first </div> after that code. replace the code:
<?php do_action( 'twentyeleven_credits' ); ?> <a href="<?php echo esc_url( __( 'http://wordpress.org/', 'twentyeleven' ) ); ?>" title="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Semantic Personal Publishing Platform', 'twentyeleven' ); ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'twentyeleven' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a>
With
<p>Copyright © - <?php echo date('Y'); ?><a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow"> Special Example Link Website</a></p>
Change www.example.com with your own URL and the text for the link to fit your website. All done, you should see your own text in the footer and it should link back to your homepage.
Other Twenty Eleven Theme customization’s?
Above are the most request changes for the WordPress Twenty Eleven theme. Did they work for you? Or do you have extra needs or idea’s or suggestions?
Please let us know in the comments below!
How To Make WordPress Look Like a Website
WordPress has come a long way since its beginning, it was created as a blogging platform but is now way beyond that. You can easily make WordPress look like a website with just a few configuration and theme options.
With the latest versions, especially version 3.0 where the custom menu feature was introduced you can use it for any kind of website.
Using WordPress custom menu’s you can really create a good navigation for your website.
So how do you get from this:
To something like this?
WordPress Theme Layout
If you have your WordPress website installed, it’s now time to have it look like a regular website.
The first impression people will get when they visit your website is essential. They will either see a blog, or a website.
The way you make WordPress look like a website determined by the theme you choose and how you configured it.
Do you use a standard theme or a theme that has a special homepage layout?
Do you have a static homepage or do you show the most-recent posts?
There are several options for choosing a special theme for your WordPress website.
You can search the free WordPress theme repository right from within your own WordPress installation. Go to Appearance -> Themes. It opens with a search function that lets you select some search criteria. Upload your own, select one of the other options like Featured, Newest or Recently Updated.
The featured themes currently show:
There are themes like:
Or you can go for a, very affordable, premium theme from ThemeForest.net, ElegantThemes.comor my personal favorite, but more expensive, themes from StudioPress.com.
Most of these themes will start with a featured image or an image slider on the frontpage, make sure you capture your visitors and keep them on your site.
Some of these themes require an extra plugin to show a slider on your homepage. Those plugins could be wp-cycle or http://www.featuredcontentgallery.com/
There are several others, and you can find a good selection athttp://speckyboy.com/2010/06/30/top-10-content-slider-plugins-for-wordpress/
Static Front-page or Blog Posts
If you want to use a regular theme, you can still make you WordPress site look like a website.
The first thing you need to do is to create a page that will become your homepage.
Just one small warning, do NOT call this Home! If you call it Home it will create a permalink /home/ and that could become a problem.
If you ever want to switch to theme that does work with a special homepage layout. They will use a theme file called home.php and that might cause you real problems.
And please, don’t call this page Welcome or start with Welcome to my website! That is such a waste of your homepage function.
I might have searched the web and found your website, it might have been mentioned in an advertisement or was referred to my by a friend. So, unless you blocked you site for normal visitors, I know I am welcome.
Just give your visitor really good information about you, your service or your interest, tell them what your website is all about. Lead them into your site and show them where your most valuable content is.
Tell them what you want to tell them!
And don’t forget to show some good images, a good picture can make a difference. Your website visitors are more attracted to images than text. If they scan your website to get a first impression an image can help to keep them on that page so they start reading.
Your theme might show the option to get comments on that page, in that situation you need to un-check the comments and trackback functions. Look for these options.
If you don’t see those options active the Discussion and Comments check-box in the screen display options (upper-right corner of your edit screen, just above the Publish option)
Once you created that page, you need to make a separate one that will be used to show your posts. You don’t need to use posts, but it is a good thing to have your setup ready in case you want to start writing posts.
You can call this page anything you like. You can call it Blog or News or something that might add value to your website. Ramblings, Thoughts, Special Articles it doesn’t matter what you want to call it. Just name is so you can use it if you want to start using posts.
Now here is the best thing about this page: Give it the Title you want and publish the page. Do not write anything on that page! Leave it blank.
If you get those two pages done it’s time to configure WordPress so it will show your homepage and it knows where to show your posts (if any).
In your Dashboard go to Settings -> Reading and chose Front page displays option A Static page.
You can select the page you just created via a drop down menu when you click the left arrows.
Save your settings and check your website, you should see the intro page you created as the Frontpage of your website.
If you don’t see the new version, try to refresh your browser via Ctrl+F5. That will get the latest version of your site instead of the cached one that your browser might show.
Getting Your Sidebar in Shape
Once you get your site’s basic layout ready it’s now time to look at your sidebar.
Your default sidebar is very likely to show things like Recent Posts, Archives and Meta or it says Primary Widget Area. It all depends on the theme that is active on your site.
Now Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, Archives and Meta are a dead give away that this is a WordPress blog. Yo you need to get rid of those widgets and replace theme with a good navigational menu.
You can read How To Use WordPress Custom Menu’s and create a good menu that will show the basic navigation items for your website.
Place that Custom menu in your primary sidebar via Appearance -> Widgets and drag the Custom Menu widget into your Primary Sidebar screen.
You can see below that it will warn you if you don’t have a menu yet and guide you to get one done. If you have one, you can select it.
The best part of these custom menus is that you can have several of them. I like to split my menu’s in two separate ones. The first one will contain the navigation into the meat of my sites and the second one contains informational links like the About page, a Sitemap, Contact page and a Privacy Statement page.
Where I want to show these Menu’s depends on the layout or the theme. You want your primary navigation menu on the most prominent place in your website. It should be the first thing your visitor can see if they want to browse through your website.
The second menu should not be hidden away in some obscure place, but it should be less prominent.
Once your placed this widget in your primary sidebar, the other widgets will disappear. Those widgets where there to act as placeholders to show you where your sidebar is located. There might be some widgets already in the sidebar, simply delete the ones you don’t want. Search might be one to leave active.
Your theme choice will also determine if your primary sidebar is located on the left side of your screen or on the right side.
Choosing Your Website Theme
For a blog it is most likely to show the sidebar on the right side, if your theme has that option to switch it to the left, use that. It will also make your WordPress site look more like a normal website.
If your theme does not support it via an option, your might need to change it in the index.php file or in its style sheet.
How you can change that is a completely different subject, the best option to get to know how to change that is to ask in the support forum of your theme.
For the website shown above I used the new default Twenty Twelve theme from WordPress with the plugins One Click Child Theme to make sure my customizations will stick after a Tweny Twelve theme upgrade. I also used a Custom Headers plugin because with this new theme, there is no custom header function for pages.
So now it’s up to you to get the layout that makes your WordPress website look like a website instead of a blog.
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