On weekends when we are planning on holding an open house, yeah, we still hold them live as well as virtual on the net.
Anyway, as I was saying, on those weekends we will often run an ad in the paper complete with a photo of the property and details of the property and open house dates and time.
Down in the bottom right hand corner of the ad there is a cameo shot of the listing agent. We use visual branding here in Tucson a lot.
Last Saturday afternoon Barbara had a call come in when she couldn’t take it and it went to voice mail. When we were free she checked her message and the message was from a lady that saw Barbara’s open house ad in the paper and wanted her to get back to her, but since she wasn’t answering her phone she would appreciate a call, but wouldn’t be available until late Saturday night.
Barbara returned her call and left a voice message.
Sunday, Barbara returned her call and left a voice message.
Monday, Barbara returned her call and left a voice message.
Tuesday morning the lady called Barbara and said she appreciated very much Barbara talking the time to return her call.
Her urgent need on Saturday about the ad. . . . .
She really liked the way Barbara’s hair looked in the paper and wondered where she got her hair done for that picture.
I sure like running ads in the paper and holding open houses.
Who said real estate is dull.
Have you ever done a Google search and when you clicked on a link it went to the homepage of the site and not to the information you were looking for.
Most of us take 1 millionth of a second to see it isn’t there and rather than try and find navigation to the page we click back and move on to the next search result. I wanted a way to keep them from hitting that back button and moving on.
I like the site search on our blogs and went looking for something to do the same on our web site. I found Google Site Search.
Google Site Search is a great way to let people enter their search term and this time it will only search your site. There is a good chance they won’t be so quick to click away once they see this search option. I’ve tested it on our Tucson Real Estate site and it returns the exact page reference that came up in the original search taking your visitor to the page they wanted in the first place.
Here is the process to put Google SiteSearch on your Homepage:
- Go to the Google Site Search Page
- check the agree to terms of service
- click the get code button
- Scroll down to the bottom option code window
- Reread 4. There are three sets of code, you want the bottom one.
- Copy it.
Here is the catch, yeah there always seems to be a catch doesn’t there. This code will produce 35 WC3 Errors on you homepage.
I found this on a routine check of our homepage on the WC3 validator page. It took me a few minutes to clean up the code so it would validate.
Here is the process:
- Change all CAPS to lower case ex. INPUT to input
- Make all lines of code self closing including <br> to <br />
- Put all values in quotes ex. input type=”text” NOT input type=text
A rule of thumb is after = close in quotes - remove the </form> at the end
it isn’t needed you’ve made all lines self closing - change checked to checked=”checked”
Here is the code as it should changed to validate.
<!-- SiteSearch Google -->
<form action=”http://www.google.com/search”/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”ie” value=”utf-8″/>
<input type=”hidden” name=”oe” value=”utf-8″/>
<table bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”><tr><td>
<a href=”http://www.google.com/“>
<img src=”http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif” border=”0″ alt=”Google”/></a></td><td>
<input type=”text” name=”q” size=”31″ maxlength=”255″ value=”"/>
<input type=”submit” name=”btnG” value=”Google Search”/><input type=”hidden” name=”domains” value=”yourdomain.com”/><br /><input type=”radio” name=”sitesearch” value=”"/> WWW <input type=”radio” name=”sitesearch” value=”yourdomain.com” checked=”checked”/>
yourdomain.com <br /></td></tr></table>
<!-- SiteSearch Google -->
You can’t copy this code from the page it won’t work.
I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack when it comes to this code in a post stuff. Here is the googlesitesearch.pdf file.
- Once it is open
- select the I bar select function
- swipe the code
- copy it.
You can now paste it into your web page, changing the three references to “yourdomain” located near the bottom of the code to . . . . . you got it, your domain.
DO NOT CHANGE names=”domain”
Once you have added and saved you can use the validator page to check for errors on your homepage.
Assuming you didn’t have any errors before adding this code. 
I really like the functionality of this piece of code. It is just too bad that Google would provide a piece of code that is so obviously out of standard coding practices for today.
And if anyone can tell me how I can start putting code in a post that can simply be copied and applied. Please let me know.
Setting up the wp-configure.php file
Before you can install Wordpress you have to have a valid MYSQL database setup and you have to create the wp-configure.php file.
Here is the current place to go to get The latest version of Wordpress.
Wordpress comes with a wp-sample-configure.php file. You can open this using notepad if you don’t have a file editor for html or php files.
In the previous post Single Property Sites – Hostingwe had you write down the MYSQL database number for our example we are using 159 as the database number.
Here is what it looks like and the highlighted words are the ones you need to fill in.
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'mystreet'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'mystreet'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'listings'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'mysql159.secureserver.net'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = 'wp_'; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to 'de'
// to enable German language support.
define ('WPLANG', '');/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>
Once you have filled in the information for the database you just created save this file as wp-configure.php
When we set up the hosting we created a folder called “mystreet” this is where we want to upload the Wordpress files including the wp-configure.php file you just edited.
Don’t upload the wordpress folder, just the files inside the folder to the “mystreet” folder you created for the property.
Installing Wordpress
Now comes the easy part of the installation process.
Go to your browser and type in the following
“http://www.domainname.com/foldername/wp-admin/install.php”
If it is a subdomain it will be “http://subdomain/domainname.com/foldername/wp-admin/install.php”
If the configure.php file is right it will install. If not go back and check your database, username, description and password to the database. When it installs you are given the login which is always “admin” and a password to enter.
Write down the password and go ahead and login.
- Change the password
- Fill in your email address
- Change the blog description
- Save
The next thing I do is immediately delete the “about” page and “hello world” post and comment. You want to get rid of these right away before they get picked up on the web.
Here is where we are headed
It won’t be long and you can have a site up that is your time shifted 24/7 open house.
Setting up Wordpress now begins. Here are some of the things we will be covering.
- Set your category names
- Set the permalink structure
- pick a theme
- upload your plugins
- activate the plugins
For now:
- Go take some good photos of the place
- Scan the documents you want to link to
- Seller Property Disclosure Statement
- Lead based paint of if built before 1978
- Run a CMA and convert to pdf if desired
- Create a full color flyer and link to it.
- Find the places and activities of interest near the property
That’s enough for now. We will go into each of these in post to follow.
Hey, it might seem like a lot, but in just three posts you’ve learned
- why single property sites are worth the effort.
- how to purchase a domain if you need one and purchase a hosting plan.
- how to create a MYSQL database.
- how to install Wordpress.
That’s not bad for three short posts.
Have you ever heard of Ordie Tryin the Realtor? He has done a lot of marketing over the years doing his best to represent buyers and sellers in his real estate market. Ordie is one of those old ways are best kind of agent.
You know the ones, they farm their chosen area walking from house to house introducing himself. Making sure he had breakfast and coffee in his farming area getting to know as many of the people as he could. Ordie would even read the obituaries and attend the funerals of people that passed away in his farming area.
Open House, Open House, Open House was his middle name. He did the mailings; Just Listed, Just Sold, Open House and Statistical brochures of the market conditions. There were some people even laughed saying they could heat their home all winter just using the mailings they got from Ordie during the course of the year.
Ordie’s motto was:
“I am the most dedicated agent you will ever meet. I’ll do whatever it takes to find you a great home. I’ll do whatever it takes to sell your home for the best possible price Or die Tryin.”
He did, Ordie will be missed.
Remember Ordie Tryin for all your real estate needs.
This will probably be the most boring post in the series. I’ll be covering:
For the purpose of these post we are going to use the address 123 MyStreet
Disclaimer: The only association I have with GoDaddy.com is as a customer.
I’m using Godaddy.com for all my hosting. They are the only hosting company I have ever used. I’m not saying they are the best, or the cheapest, or the easiest to use. They just happen to be the only one I have ever used and I’ve been quite happy with them so there has never been a reason for me to consider any other options.
For the purpose of this post I’ll walk you through the process of setting up hosting on Godaddy and use that hosting account for your single property sites or any other sites or blog you desire to host.
Purchasing a hosting package.
Once you have your account setup you can login and select a hosting package to purchase. If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, you can do this at the same time for $1.99 for the domain instead of $7.99 for a year. Domains are cheaper if you purchase with a hosting package.
You will be offered a lot of options to add to your purchase. The only one that I use is the Traffic Facts. You can read through them and see if there are any you want to add.
I recommend the Premium package for $5.59 a month with a 2 year agreement. It allows you to create sub-domains and provides you with 25 MYSQL databases which you can use to setup at least 25 individual property listing sites.
This next item is important: When you set up your hosting account it will ask you if you want to be on a Windows server or a Linux server. YOU WANT A LINUX SERVER. Wordpress is installed on Linux servers only. Here is what it looks like on the GoDaddy screen.
If you already have a hosting package and it is set up on a windows server you can log into the administrative panel and change to a Linux server. It happens in minutes and you won’t notice the difference from the frontend view of any existing websites or blogs.
You will be asked to create a username and password for the hosting account. You need to write this down. When you configure the FTP program so you can upload files to your account you will need to set up a connection using that information.
Point your domain name to the hosting account. Setup for the hosting account should be complete with these steps. You can now log into your hosting account and select (open) to get to the administrative panel.
Setting up a MYSQL database.
Login to your hosting account. select (open) next to the domain name associated with the hosting account. The administrative panel contains rows of icons.
Scroll down until you find the icon MYSQL. Click on that icon and click on “Create a new Database” For the user name and description I use the same thing, the street name. ex. description=”mystreet” username=”mystreet”. Select a password for the database this is different from the account password. I suggest you select a password you will use for all your databases. This will make setting up the configure.php file for each site easier.
Once you have entered the description and username and password click create. The database will have a pending status while it is being setup. You can minimize the admin window, or close.
In about 5 minutes you can log back in to the admin panel, click on the MYSQL icon and you should see your database is setup.
To the right there is an icon to view the connection string, click on it.
This window will open that shows you a line with something like “mysql159″
Write this number down. You need it to setup the configure.php file for setting up Wordpress installation.
Unless you like playing with landmines you should close the admin panel. You don’t need anymore information to setup and install the wordpress files.
Self hosting seems like it is so technical, and it can be, there is a lot you can do when hosting yourself. You don’t have to get permission, or a tech to put a 301 redirect into place. You have options for handling 404 page not found issues, and there are a lot of plugins and programs you can setup.
One last advantage I’ve found. Our main site is old enough now at a year old that it is out of the sandbox. When I create these single property sites they are under the umbrella of our site and hosted within that site, so there is no sandbox effect for the single property sites. They receive pagerank in a few weeks, and are often found in blog searches in a day or two and on regular Google searches in a week after the first post.
I have several hosting packages and played around with a small one till I got the hang of it. There are definitely advantages to setting up your own hosting plan for your sites. Even if you don’t host your main site, it won’t take long for them to gain ground. As I mentioned I have several hosting sites and I’ve noticed no sandbox effect on those that are blog based sites. More on this when we cover SEO.
Self Hosting isn’t as hard as you might have thought. Give it a try. Knowing how to setup a hosting plan is a great piece of knowlegdge to have.
I just attended a fair housing class for my license renewal. I always love this class, it makes me never want to talk to another living person about real estate. I’m glad the work I do involves never taking a listing and never writing a contract. I do help show properties to clients and on occasion even take them out, but that is the exception not the rule.
This isn’t a post about Fair Housing issues. It isn’t about Fair Housing questions of what you can do or not do, or what you can say or not say.
If a Fair Housing issue ever arises in your practice and a complaint is filed against you for a Fair Housing violation as a Realtor, you are automatically assumed guilty and it is up to you to prove your innocence.
The preponderance of the evidence will weigh heavily in what happens to you in this situation.
It was recommended that we put the Fair Housing Logo on:
- Our Business Cards
- Our Open House Signs
- Our For Sale Signs
- All Flyers
It was also recommended we have a document we have signed at our brokerage stating we will not engage in the practice of Housing Discrimination.
Here is my point.
Do you have a Fair Housing logo oneach one of your blog post and pages as well as your website. This is especially true if you have a single property site or have listings displayed and available for viewing on your site or blog.
I would also recommend you put a statement like “Information Deemed Reliable But NOT Guaranteed” on each page of your website or blog.
I’ve added the Fair Housing Logo and the above statement in the footer.php of each of our blogs and web sites.
Is it required in all these cases, that’s not the point. If you have to prove your innocence it is easier to do if you have lots of evidence in your favor.
(We interrupt our series on time shifting open houses to bring you this mundane message about a live open house held today.)
Today we were on the way back home from holding another great open house.
We had one visitor during the three hours.
We weren’t far from home when we passed this outhouse just sitting by the road side, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
We both laughed then turned the car around. Our thought after holding hundreds of open houses over the past few year.
Open houses stink. The funny thing, when we stopped the car and I got out and was putting up the sign we had several cars slow down, some honked, some waved, some just laughed as they saw the sign.
It turned out the be one of the most productive open houses we have held in a long time. Everyone got a chuckle on their Sunday afternoon drive, no buyers though.
Do any of you think open houses stink?
Lights, Camera, Action, Sound . . . Yeah I added sound, don’t want to be completely cliche ridden.
We are in a video world. One of the amazing things to me is the acceptablility of very poor quality video when viewing it on the net.
All I hear is “High Def” this and “High Def” that. The stores are filled with HDTV flat panels that look so clear you are afraid to step to close to the screen or you might be sucked right in.
And then you go to YouTube and see page after page of very poor quality video, and people love it, they just can’t seem to get enough of it. To me there seems to be a hugh disconnect here.
This can be to our advantage, if we can provide good quality video on their screen when they are used to crappy video I think they will take notice.
Here are some video display options.
Let me add here, I’m really new to this video stuff, I’ve always hated the visual quality I see so didn’t look into it until just recently, so I’m no expert on any of this by any means. I have found a way to put video on a listing site that looks pretty good, and cost virtually nothing to produce as long as you have access to Microsofts Photo Story 3.
There are several things to consider when putting video on your single listing site.
- Creating the video
- Choosing a video format
- displaying the video
- size of video file/bandwidth requirements
Creating the video will be looked at in a separate post. Today we will focus on displaying your video on the property site.
I’ve looked at several ways to display the video on the blog page.
I’ve used:
- The Windows Media Player Plugin
- The CoolPlayer Plugin
- Youtube embedded code
- Link to a Virtual Tour
I have considered the WordTube plugin, but so far haven’t had the time to install and test it. It looks like a lot of steps to setup to me and the instructions are not very clear. The CoolPlayer Plugin works so well I haven’t taken time to look further.
Our video example was created using Photo Story 3. It saves all files created as .wmv or windows media files. I like .wmv files because they display like high definitions and they are small in file size by video standards. I’ll do another post on Photo Story 3 it’s FREE.
Here are examples of all three of the above methods of displaying your video.
This first one is an embedded YouTube video.
Of course you have to have a YouTube account set up, you need to upload your video file to have it converted to the Youtube format. I suggest you start with an original file size of 400 X 300 if you go this route. It will convert much quicker.
Three things I don’t like about this route:
- The video appears to show a frame from in the middle not the title frame
- The video is now very poor in quality compared to the original
- Oh yeah, you have to turn off the visual editor and use the code view only or else it will wipe out the code when it saves. Nice feature don’t you think?
[wmv width="440" height="330"]http://www.realestatebloglab.com/MacenroeTour1.wmv[/wmv]
The only drawback is the computer playing the video has to have Windows Media Player version 9 or higher installed on their machine.
Here is the Coolplayer display
++CoolPlayer_BLOCK_1++
The coolplayer has a button placed on the code editor which makes it easy to insert a coolplayer display. At the bottom you will notice a title which appears as a link. If you click on that link it will open the player for that type of file in full screen (at least it was full screen on my system).
Here’s the cute thing, if you quickly double click on that link it will open a small field where you can enter the url of any video you want to play in the player.
There are lots of programs out there for creating and displaying videos on a blog post or page. The display options I’ve shown here are just a few of the possibilities.
CoolPlayer is a coolplayer. It is my choice for display. You don’t have to be in code editor to keep it from being wiped out like YouTube embedded code. And you Don’t have to have the Windows Media Player installed. There are lots of options for autoplay, looping, size of window, etc. and it displays just about every kind of video file format.
Finally, I’ve been working on all the post in this series at the same time. Adding snippets here and there to each post as I thought of something I wanted to be sure to cover. It wasn’t my intension to publish this post just yet, but since I can’t open this post using the visual editor without wiping out the YouTube imbedded code I’m going to go ahead and publish it now.
And if you have money in stocks or mutual funds, I’m sorry, I hope you have a better day today.
Domain, sub-domain, folder, that is the question whether it is better to suffer the slings and arrows . . .
One of the first things you will want to decide is how to handle your domain name for the property site. Your decision might have to be based on your particular hosting options. If you are hosting your own site, or have access to the hosting platform of your site, meaning you can point domain names, add sub-domains or create folders inside the root directory of your hosted site you can pick any option you prefer.
Domain Name
The first option is to purchase a domain name for the property address. It is going to be pretty easy to get the name you want. The chances of someone already having the domain name that is the street address are pretty slim.
If you chose to go this route I would suggest you purchase your domain from GoDaddy.com. I know some people have strong feelings about Bob Parsons and Godaddy. I first purchased software from Parson’s Technology when I lived in Iowa, I was always impressed with the quality of the software and the reasonable price. I feel the same way about Godaddy.com today. I’ve been finding and purchasing domain names through them for years. I have numerous hosting packages with them as well and have always had a good experience with them. When I did have a situation the tech support was 24/7 and always very helpful in resolving the situation, even if it was caused by something I did.
If you purchase a domain name from godaddy it is $8.95 a year, if you purchase a hosting package at the same time it is $1.99 for a year.
There are a couple of things you will need to decide or consider when picking your name.
- Are you going to put in the street direction and/or address designation (St. Ave. Dr. Lane, etc.)
- If the street is a number are you going to spell it out or use the number in the address.
- Examples:
- 3149 E Macenroe = 3149emacenroe.com
- 3149 E Macenroe Lane = 3149emarenroelane.com
- 3149 Macenroe = 3149macenroe.com
- Examples:
- Which one are you going to pick. (Don’t spend a lot of time on it I found it doesn’t matter much if you do a few things when setting up your blog site to maximize the variations)
You face the same decision on the naming convension with all options. I’ve tried a variety of these and found it does make some difference. I’ll be leaving the direction of the street out of the name unless it is a major street with duplicate house numbers. (We don’t have that situation in Tucson but I know it does exist in some towns and communities.)
Sub-domains
If you choose to use a sub-domain name the key difference is in the way the URL is put together. The above example as a sub-domain would be 3149maecenroe.barbaralasky.com.
One thing I learned about the syntax of a subdomain is how it is put together. sub-domain.domain.com/folder of sub-domain/ When we get to hosting I’ll mention this further. I suggest you create an images folder in the directory in which you place the single property site files. I keep the images and pdf documents for the property in that folder.
If you decided to use a subdomain name the process for activating this on GoDaddy is as follows:
- Create a folder in the root directory with the address name exactly the same as the subdomain name.
- Go to your hosting package and create a subdomain and select the folder option”same as subdomain name”.
At the same time you are in the hosting dashboard I would set up a new MYSQL database with the name of the street as the database name, in this case macenroe.
I’ll cover more of this in the post on Hosting.
The only perceived advantage I can see for a sub-domain is, the address for the site is first in the URL.
Folders
The use of a folder is the simplest approach.
- You create a folder in the root using the address for the name.
- You set up a MYSQL database using the street name for the database name.
- You copy the Wordpress files to the folder
- You create the config file for the MYSQL database and copy it to the folder
- You run the install.
Don’t worry about the details missing if you don’t follow these. I’ll go into detail in another post.
This is the way I set up our example the url is: http://www.barbaralasky.com/3149Macenroe/
Don’t Worry About the Name
Here is why I don’t worry about the domain name.
- No matter which you choose the address is in the URL.
- I don’t type in URL’s I do searches.
About the only sites I type in the url’s for are mine and I have shortcuts set up for everyone of them including the single property blog sites.
This morning I did a google search on “Macenroe” the forth result down on the first page was the property address site. That was one of the reasons I chose this as the example. The sites usually take a couple of weeks to come up in google that high. They pop up in blogsearch.google in a day. Here is Macenroe Tucson on blogsearch.google. When I just tried the search again on google the site wasn’t anywhere to be found. It was in Yahoo.com, searching Macenroe Tucson. This is a pretty common google experience.
One of our single property sites that has been up a few weeks now is in Pontatoc Canyon Estates. Here is the google search on Pontatoc Canyon we are currently #1.
Here is an example of doing a post on a single property site that can bring traffic to your site. blogsearch.google for “Tucson Racquet Club“ Currently the fourth post down is from the 3149 E. Macenroe site.
I think getting your site found has more to do with the links you provide to it, and the post you create once the site is ready to go live. We will cover more of this in posts on SEO and Pages and Posts.
If you want to see examples of some of the single property sites I’ve created here is the link to the first post in this series with examples toward the bottom. Single Property Sites.
The next post will cover Hosting. I know this might be the hardest part of the process. It used to scare me thinking about hosting our sites where we had total control as well as total responsibility to maintain it. Once I finally moved our main website to our GoDaddy hosting package we really saw a dramatic change in our PR and traffic (for the better).
For me this is the way to go. If you don’t want to host your website or blog I can understand completely. If you want to learn how to do this so you have the knowledge then stick with me. I’ll walk you through the hosting process on GoDaddy. Believe me, if I can do this you can do it too.
One of the greatest things to come along is the ability to see some of our favorite televisions shows when ever we want. Time shifting isn’t new, with VCR’s people have been practicing time shifting for a couple of decades. Tivo came along to the cable crowd and now we have on demand movies and TV shows we can see whenever we want. I hear it won’t be long and most of what we want on TV won’t even have a broadcast time, we will simply pick the show we want to watch when we want to watch it. Time shifting seems to be manditory for the fast paced, fully active packed days many people live now.
Now time shifting has entered real estate as well. Gone are the days when you have to call a realtor and have them look up available properties in their MLS book, treated by many as a holy book, and others as the treasure chest of power and riches. No longer do consumers have to set an appointment to go with a realtor or agent to see what the inside of a home looks like. The time of planning your Saturday or Sunday around the open house schedule no longer exists.
Now buyers go to realtor.com to look at listings. They google local mls information and view web sites in those areas they are thinking about moving to in the future.
They can take a virtual tour of a home on the other side of the world. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is. They don’t have to make an appointment to see the home. They click the mouse a couple of times like magic they are granted a view into their prospective new home. They can see the mountains from the backyard, view the pool and spa, and see what kind of light fixtures are in the great room.
The open house has traditionally been when the “public” could see a house without a realtor, no need for “The Book” either. But you have to read the papers or just drive around town between 1 and 4 PM on most Saturdays or Sundays to find the signs with arrows on them and the magic word “Open” displayed somewhere around a directional arrow.
Now we can time shift many open houses. We can make it so buyers can google an address, location, or event and find an entire website dedicated to the property.
This is the beginning of a series of post that will outline the process of creating and setting up single property sites. Here is some of what we will be covering.
- Hosting your sites
- Wordpress themes
- Wordpress plugins
- SEO for the sites
- How to get them found in the Search Engines
- Layout
- Category names
- Maps for the site
- Photos & Video
When the series is done you will be able to set up single property sites and learn some thing you can do to your regular blog or website to help it along the way as well.
Here are some examples of these types of single property open houses.
http://www.13237mortarpestle.com/
http://5378wdesertflora.barbaralasky.com/
http://62235esandlewood.barbaralasky.com/
http://4241epontatoccanyon.barbaralasky.com/
http://4875windsongcanyon.barbaralasky.com/
http://www.barbaralasky.com/3149Macenroe/
There’s a variety of URL’s, different themes and various pages and posts for each. They are listed from earliest creation to latest.
If you have any questions or comments along the way please ask. I’ll be glad to answer question as they come up. I’ve been looking forward to writing this series for some time. I just keep doing more and more research on the topic and learning along the way, but it is now time to start the writing.
I hope it will be of interest to all that read this blog and everyone will get something out of it for your own blogging experience even if you don’t plan on using single property sites.
UPDATE Here is a great plugin for changing your Permalink structure. It creates 301 redirects when you change the permalinks.
I’ve noticed lately that Google was showing a lot of missing URL and URL’s not found and HTTP errors.
I thought most of those were due to the change in domain names mentioned in other posts here.
Today I noticed that when I installed Wordpress 2.1 it set my custom permalinks back to default. This causes the search engines to get errors when looking for pages previously indexed.
If you have used any permalink structure besides the default structure and have upgraded to 2.1 you should check your permalinks structure.
Personally, I like the custom set up described in this Permalinks Post. If you chose carefully the names of your categories using keywords and use the custom setting of /%category%/%postname%/ you should recognize a boost in your search engine results.
I would also recommend you check your google account diagnostics summary page.
I catch a lot of things by looking at that page, unfortunately there have been too many changes lately to domain names and the Wordpress 2.1 upgrade.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
Comment Spam Trap – Wordpress Plugin
By Dave Smith Sunday February 25, 2007
When I first installed the plugin I set up the plugin to email me the trapped comments. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t trapping and deleting comments I wanted. It doesn’t. It is very slick in how it works, getting the spam bots to fill in a field that isn’t visible to a regular commenter.
I’m still using Askimet on all the sites. Since putting the Comment Spam Trap into place I’ve only had one comment come through.
Yes, there are still some spammers that like to do it themselves, go figure. This is where Askimet comes in to put the final death grip on the slippery human touch spam.
It is a simple concept and one I’m surprised someone hasn’t come up with before. SEOlogs.com is who we have to thank for the Comment Spam Trap Wordpress Plugin.
I think if you take it for a test spin, you won’t want to unplug this very handy plugin.