WordPress is easily the most widely used blogging CMS and the extension of WordPress plugins has allowed the functioanlity of WordPress to expanded tremendously by the development of plugins by independent developers looking to solve a problem and contriute to the community. The quality of the plugins vary a bit, but a little bit of searching and testing should uncover a plugin that solve the problem you need.

The challenge with plugins is detemining if they work properly and what problems it may cause to your website. Depending upon the skill of the developer of the plugin and the testing that was done, it is not uncommon for plugins to crash your site or cause other parts not to work properly. The other challenge is that the core WordPress software is constantly being upgraded which requires the plugins to be upgraded depending upon the compatability with WordPress.org update. When the two are incompatible, it can cause problems with you website.

This recently happened to my site with a Linkedin plugin that was being used to populate the About page with the information from my Linkedin profile. The plugin simply imported your experience, education, and bio sections from Linkedin and updated the page of your site that you requested. If a page was made to your Linkedin profile, then it would also be reflected on your website.

The plugin that I was using must have failed with the recent upgrade to WordPress 3.0 which caused the Linkedin profile of the plugin developer to be displayed on my about page instead of my Linkedin information. The unfortuante thing about this is I am not sure how long this problem existed before it was pointed out to me. Vry frustrating, but also the downside of open source software that is rarely talked about.

Take some time and review your site and ensure that everything is working properly. It should only take a few minutes, but could find some issues that you did not know existed due to problems with plugins. Although I am appreciative of the effort and quality of most Wordpres plugins and the WordPress platform in general, I will routinely take a few mintues to review my site. It will be definitely be time well spent.

If you are an image fanatic that needs the functionality to make volcanoes explode and other amazing actions that are available within Photoshop, then this post is not for you. But if your requirements are simple image editing and some intermediate layer type functions without the need to pay the high price tag of Photoshop, then this post is for you and I would recommend that you give Paint.net a try.

This free software was developed by a few former Microsoft employees and is very impressive software that handles most of the editing, special effects, and layers that are available with Photoshop and in many cases is not the system process hog that Photoshop can be. I have been using paint.net for a few years and there have been dozens of improvements over that period of time and continues to offer more than enough functionality for the basic image needs.

Paint.net also is significantly better than most of the image handling programs that come pre-installed on computers which typically just have the ability to resize, crop, brighten, and sharpen images. This software blows those programs away. There is not too much more that I can say about the software because of the price point of free should make it an easy decision to give it a try. This will not work for all people especially if you use a high percentage of the functionality of Photoshop. If you decide to give it a try, I would be interested to hear your feedback.

Cloud computing has been the transition that most software platforms and services have made in the last few years which is driven by the cost savings, ease of upgrades, and the ability to scale. The most notable cloud computing companies are probably Salesforce with their CRM platform, most of use use e-mail in the cloud(Gmail, Hotmail, etc), and also many business apps like company e-mail and HR systems are switching to cloud computing. Now what happens when the cloud suddenly disappears? What happens when your business has become dependent upon a service that resides in the cloud and you get an e-mail or even worse, read a press release, that the business that supports your application is either going out of business or is already out of business. Can your business recover?

Many businesses are using Software As A Service (SAAS) cloud computing programs, but are not prepared for what would happen if the service suddenly disappeared. What brought this to my attention was the announcement earlier this week that Ning was discontinuing their free offerings and reducing staff by 40%. Now my first thought is that it is not a problem because business owners should expect to pay a certain amount for the services that enable them to run their business and this will only affect the people who do not. If you are not familiar with Ning, it is an application that allows you to create your own niche social network in minutes and manage your community without the need to maintain a site, deal with security issues, or manage member details. All of that is handled by the Ning platform. Their are a number of different options available where you can(or could) set up a free network or upgrade to some of the options that are not free, but have more functionality included and do not display ads.

According to reports from Ning last year, they were 12,000 networks paying the $55 per month out of over 1 million active networks. That is just over 1%. Many of the networks are setup by people who have no other members to their group and who have not been back to the site after setting up the network, but it is safe to assume that there will be A LOT of active, regularly used networks that will be affected. Should they immediately start paying the $55? May be, may be not.

The point is that for businesses to used cloud computing and at full mercy of another company has to make many nervous. You are not only hedging a bet that you are choosing the best application for your business, you are also betting on the viability of the company. That the service that is being provided by the company will last as long as you need it to.

A few things that businesses should do to decrease the pain in the event this happens to a service they use:

Back up your information – Most applications have a export tool or an API that allows your business to regularly backup your information to a location that is not on their servers. Take advantage of that! If the business that is supporting the software fails, it will cause some pain, but you have a much better chance of recovering quickly if you have all of your information.

Review company information as well as application details – It is not enough to just choose your cloud computing service based on the bells and whistles of the application. You also have to review the company history and financial data that is available to make sure the company has a chance of surviving. If you a comparing a 5 person startup that offers the same service as Microsoft, but is a little bit cheaper, it may be in your best interest to pay the little bit extra for the sanity an security of knowing that the support is available in the event your application has problems.

Evaluate how essential the application is to your business – You can afford to take more risks with parts of your business that are less essential and that you could function smoothly without in the event of a hiccup. For your essentials like e-mail, CRM, phone system, you must take extreme caution hen choosing your vendor as the pain that is caused by these applications failing is not easily solvable.

The cost savings and continuous improvement in quality of cloud computing services make them very attractive resources, but consider the full cost of the software including disaster recovery costs and make sure that you are making the best decision for your business. If you are not comfortable with the solutions that are available or the companies that are providing it, then it would be worthwhile to keep those functions in-house until your comfort level increases. There are enough tasks to keep you busy as a business owner without worrying about your core business applications failing. Choose wisely!

A little more than a month ago, I wrote a post titled, “Top Resources For Google Analytics Training” in which I referenced some resources that I thought were quality training documents and offered the level of detail that was necessary to use Google Analytics effectively. One of the resources that I mentioned was a book  titled “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” by Brian Clifton. Well in less than 8 hours I received an e-mail in my inbox from Brian regarding my post and that he was publishing a new edition of his book that was due to be released in March of 2010 that was almost a total rewrite of the first edition due to how much has changed in the industry in less than two years. This response from Brian Clifton in such a short period of time makes it clear that he is using Google Alerts or some other form reputation management software to manage his online reputation and he is taking it very seriously. Impressive!

I was given a preview of the intro, Chapter 1, and Chapter 10 of the book and very solid information. Depending on your level of understanding of Google Analytics or any other analytics software, then Chapter 1 will be a refresher on many topics you already know, but a good refresher because often when are so close to topics on a daily basis, some of th basic fundamentals can be taken for granted. The first chapter focuses on why web metrics are important and the reports that are available in Google Analytics. This chapter also highlighted some of the limitations in Google Analytics reporting which has always been a problem for me. Several times throughout the chapter, Brian demonstrates calculations that are valuable to assessing your traffic, but the calculation must be done in Excel because it is not available in GA. That has been my gripe is that most of the reports require some manipulation in Excel in order to format and calculate the data in a way that is most meaningful for your organization. Obviously, Google can not create a custom dashboard with custom metrics for every user and the custom reports that were made available last year have helped a lot, there are still some calculations that would be really valuable in GA that are currently not available. Brian walks you through which calculations may be important and how to perform them.

Brian also sets the tone for preparing different metrics for different levels of your organization as the webmaster should not be concerned with the same metrics as the CEO and vice versa. To get buy-in on investments in your web properties, it is necessary to speak to each level of the organization with the level of detail that will interest them and allow them to make solid, data-driven business decisions. When ideas are supported with verifiable data, then it is much easier to make decisions because results are quantifiable. The value in all analytics is the ability to measure behavior and adjust accordingly and arguably most importantly is the ability to communicate those successes throughout your organization.

Chapter 10 was the other chapter I was provided and it was very helpful for me as it focused on a few aspects that I believe are the keys to valuable analytics information which are visitor segmentation, goal setting, and then the actions that you take based on the data that you have. Not to go into crazy detail because I would not do the book justice and Brian has covered this topic in great detail, but the overall theme is that every visitor is not created equal. Measuring visitors in buckets based on how they arrived at your site, how frequently they visit, and the actions they performed on your site will provide valuable insight into what is working properly on your site from a user experience perspective and what needs to be improved. Segmentation also helps to focus resources so that the most time and money are directed at the segments that offer the most ROI. Brian details how to measure this using goals and key performance indicators(KPI’s). Building on the theme from the first chapter, which I am sure continues throughout the other chapters, is using the data and KPI’s for different parts of your organization which is no easy task. The organizations that can communicate this effectively and gain support from all of the stakeholders in a organization typically make changes and the proper investment in their web properties to be most successful. Those that simply measure all visitors the same, never dive much deeper than pageviews and visitor counts, and refuse to set goals and values on actions that are completed stagnate their growth and lose valuable business from the website every day.

Needless to say, I appreciate Brian Clifton giving me the opportunity to preview his book an I look forward to it’s release in the coming weeks, but don’t buy this book until March 2010 when the new version is released. Brian Clifton is an ex-Google employee that worked closely with Google Analytics during his stint at Google and that experience coupled with his passion for web analytics has helped him produce another great book. For anyone truly interested in how to use Google Analytics effectively and go further under the hood than just viewing the dashboard, I would definitely recommend this book. I would also recommend Brian’s blog , Advanced Web Metrics, be added to you reader for good information as well.

I decided to pick up one of Dan Kennedy’s books when they were put on my radar a few months ago by my friend, Justin Goff, who had read a couple of them and thought that the content and message were good enough to recommend. The book that Justin first referenced was Wealth Attraction for Entreprenuers, but as I looked at the several titles that Dan Kennedy has written, the one that appealed to me most was “How to Succeed in Business By Breaking All the Rules: A Plan for Entrepreneurs,” although I ordered a couple of other titles that I have not had a chance to read, but will get to in the coming months.

I think the reason this title appealed to me is because it matches some of my beliefs about how business works which is that there are rules and policies that are followed by about 90% of the employees and then there is about 10% who are doing almost whatever they want and running over everyone else as they do it. This was very obvious when I worked at Ameritech/SBC/AT&T as the people that were progressing through the company and being promoted or being given positions of increased responsibility didn’t follow the rules in the same way that everyone else did. They much of what they wanted and manipulated the rules to fit their desired outcome. And usually this worked with great success. So it was a nice validation to read this book and find that many of the beliefs that I have are in line with what Dan Kennedy has written about, but explains and develops these actions in much more detail than I previously had considered.

One of the better parts of the books for me was when he described how Deion Sanders changed the rules for defensive backs in the 90′s so that he could be paid in a way that was similar to quarterbacks. Deion realized that simply being the best defensive back was not going to be enough, so he created a persona that went along with his play that was arrogant and over the top, but caused him to be noticed in a way that was uncommon for defensive backs. Although Deion has on over the top the personality, most would assume that he is the life of the party and that his persona in front of the camera mirrors the rest of his life, but that is not the case. Deion is a homebody that does not drink, but he realized that to attain the level of success that he wanted, he had to break the normal rules and present himself in a different way which was obviously very successful.

Dan’s book is a very good read, but at times he can offend someone that is sensitive to borderline(or over the line) statements. Dan describes himself as “to the right of Rush Limbaugh” which most would deem impossible. Most of his writings reflect this mindset, but he offers very practical advice for success in business.

Dan closes each chapter with a contrarian view to conventional thinking that helps to view things in a different way.  Here are a few good quotes from the book that I think apply very well to both business and life in general:

“Stop letting lack of money imprison you. There’s abundant evidence all around you that you can turn your ideas into a successful enterprise without having a lot of capital. Access to plenty of money will not “make” a business. Having to fight its way into existence without money will not kill a really viable business.”

“Avoid seduction by technology. Ask yourself tough questions to determine whether the technology you let into your life is genuinely working for you, to your advantage, or against you, to your disadvantage. Have the courage not to use the trendy, popular technology if it is not right for you.”

“You cannot afford to be humble. If you wait to be discovered and rewarded based on merit alone, you had better bring a lunch and several good books because you’re going to be waiting a long, long time. The bigger your ambitions, the more likely you are to offend people while achieving those ambitions. And your opportunity to have meaningful impact will be in direct proportion to your willingness to offend. What others perceive as arrogance may very well be the level of confidence, self-promotion, and pushiness necessary. Also, arrogance magnetically attracts more than it repels because many people prefer association with an individual who is absolutely certain of himself and his convictions.”

Dan’s book is definitely worth the read and I am sure that his other books provide just as much useful information. I will get the some of the other books very soon, but am satisfied with the amount and detail of the information that was in this book. Now I must apply the information to gain the real value of the reading.

Google announced last Wednesday that they were entering the broaband service provider market and would be offering service with speeds of up to 1gb per second to 50,000 customers with potentially providing service to up 500,000. If successful, they would expand after that. Similar to when Google entered the free e-mail service with Gmail and provided 2GB of storage while Hotmail and Yahoo offered 10mb(how did we survive), Google is proposing a broadband offering that is many times greater than the 5-10mb some of us currently receive. Most modem tests would reveal that we do not receive downloads speeds that fast, but that is what our providers tell us.

So how would can Google offer broadband speeds so much faster than the phone and cable companies and offer the service at a competitive price? They can build it an offer it offer it at competitive price because their goal is to offer the service as a trojan horse that is subsidized by advertising that will offset the monthly costs.

I know from my several years working in Telecom that the build out of a broadband network is very very expensive and depending on the penetration rates among the customer base, projections of ROI can vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. Also with the high cost of construction, it is very likely that your estimated build costs will be much less than actuals. So here is where I think Google will focus to build fast and cost effectively:

Purchase Dark Fiber – Dark fiber is fiber that was placed in the ground(or Aerial) over the last 5-10 years that is not in use, but the capacity is available. The name is dark because there is no equipment on the ends of the fiber to “light it up.” Many companies bet on the growth of networks and user consumption faster than actually happened, so many companies put lots of fiber in the ground, but did not survive and this allowed other companies and many venture capitalists to purchase this capacity for pennies on the dollar. Fast forward 10 years and consumption is starting to catch up with capacity which presents a great opportunity for others to compete. Well sort of. Dark fibre primarily was placed in large urban areas or down large busy streets throughout suburban areas. Those rural areas that still struggle with broadband service today will still struggle with broadband under Google’s plan because the real expense is not in the placement of fiber on the main streets, although that is expensive too, the cost really skyrockets when you have to go through every neighborhood and backyard. The cost per foot of burying cable in residential areas is so high that most companies make decisions about what neighborhoods they will serve and how many homes they can serve from the same cable based on assumed adoption rates. If your nearest neighbor is a half-mile away, Google’s plan will not help you. Your only hope is your telecom service as they are the provider of last resort, but this does not apply to broadband services. It has been speculated that Google has been buying dark fiber for the last 5 or 6 years.

High density buildings – Google will be able to hit their mark of 50,000-500,000 relatively easily because they will focus on very dense urban areas where there are large, multi-tenant buildings. Think of cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. These are the cities where the population is dense enough and close enough to dark fiber, that Google can reach them quickly and cost effectively. Multi-tenant buildings only require a one time build-out and can usually service everyone in the building and if there is growth, the cool thing about fiber is you can typically just change the equipment at the ends and multiply the capacity. So you should not expect Google to be offering service in many residential neighborhoods  as they will have to focus on dense populations for their model to work.

Disruption of the industry – Much like many other industries that Google enters that does not seem like a good fit, my assumption is Google does not want to be a real broadband provider, but has a goal of reshaping how phone and cable companies offer the service today. Google know the faster the speeds that consumers and businesses have accessibility to, the increase of consumption. This translates to growth for Google and greater ways to track and target consumers from an advertising perspective. When Google bid on wireless spectrum a few years ago, it proved true that they did not intend to build out a wireless network, but what they did do was get the FCC to rewrite the rules in their favor. That push several years ago has opened the door for the Google phone and VOIP on mobile devices which over time will circumvent the wireless provider networks for minutes and all will become simply data. When that happens, then no one is at the mercy of AT&T or Verizon and they will simply become a pipe and the functionality will all be in the device, not the network.

Government Subsidies – The other way that Google will make the service affordable is because they will pressure the municipalities to cut them deals on franchise agreements  that are far and away more affordable than the telecom and cable companies pay today. My bet is Google will almost force them not to charge any fees or taxes and Google can do this because they are not required to offer the service anywhere. So all they need is a few cities to play by their rules and the others will have to adjust and play that way if the service gains critical mass. Since many of these cities are struggling financially, it is the perfect time for Google to form some partnerships that create some positive press for local politicians.

Previous Google Failures – Google has not always succeeded with it’s aggressive attempts to enter new markets. Their foray into municipal Wi-Fi is an example of a plan with large potential that never materialized. The plan was for Google to partner with Earthlink and offer free Wi-Fi service to the City of San Francisco. The plan had large political support, but as setbacks and price grew, the support faded and the build-out failed. So although Google’s plans for broadband sound good right now it is proven that the implementation is the more difficult part.

No matter what route they take, the plan is probably pretty far down the road already since they have made an announcement. It will be interesting to see how it turns out, because I can tell you from experience that building a network is far more simple on the drawing board than it is on the concrete. Things that make sense from a consumer and business perspective can be held up by local politicians, internal disagreements, and an inability to control costs. These are all challenges that Google faces and many more. Hopefully, they can pull it off, but would not be surprised if this does not make it.

WordPress is a terribly easy platform to use, but it requires installing some additional plugins to activate the functionality that you need to make your site run smoothly. Adding plugins is only an option if you are using the self-hosted installation of WordPress from WordPress.org and not the hosted option at WordPress.com.

Here is a list of 10 plugins that I believe are necessary for your site. This is only a small list as there are thousands of plugins available that can perform almost any task that you can think of. All of them do not work perfectly and mainly this is due to them being open source and anyone can create a plugin, but they do not always work correctly. Especially if you are on a version of WordPress that is higher than the plugin was created for. Fortunately, most of the developers are very good about upgrading their plugins to work with the latest version of the software.

The ten essential WordPress Plugins are:

Akismet

Akismet comes installed with your WordPress installation and only requires an API key for activation. Akismet prevents your blog from being overwhelmed with spam as it checks the commenters information against their database to determine if it is spam or not. You still have to go in and manually approve/disapprove spam though. If you do not have Akismet active, you will quickly find out how much spam your blog will receive very quickly. This plugin is a must have.

Tweet This
This plugin adds the “tweet this” widget to each of your post so that your visitors can share your story with their twitter followers if they are so inclined. This plugin works well and what I like most is that you can set which URL shortening service that you want to use. TinyURL is used as the default, but the plugin supports several other options.

All in One SEO Pack
All-in-One SEO pack is the most widely use SEO plugin for WordPress blogs. It adds fields to your admin panel where you can easily add custom title, description, and keyword tags to each of your posts. It also has an option where you can have the plugin use your tags and categories as your meta tags. This is definitely a must-have to get your site optimized for the search engines.

Brian’s Threaded Comments
Have you ever seen a comment on a blog that you wanted to respond to, but there would be twenty other responses between your response and it would not be clear that you are responding to that commenter? This plugin solves that problem so that you can respond to someone else’s comments and the comment will be listed right below the previous comment. This is a great plugin for making your comments section more conversational.

Comment Relish
Comment Relish sends a short e-mail to users who comment on your blog for the first time to say thank you. You can customize your message to say whatever you like so that it matches your writing style and fits your readers. The downside is that if you have a lot of comments, it can cause your site and server to run more slowly. For smaller sites, it should not be a problem.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

Feedburner is a RSS platform that lets you customize how your feed will appear, monetize your feed, and track readership statistics for your feed. Every blog should have a feed and since Feedburner(owned by Google) is the best RSS platform, this plugin should be used.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Instead of simply adding Google Analytics through your theme editor, this plugin makes it simple to add the code, but also gives the functionality to allow you to track extra search engines, click outs, and downloads. It makes some of the stats understandable for people that may not be very knowledge about Google analytics.

Google XML Sitemaps
Generates an XML sitemap for your blog used by search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. What’s an XML sitemap, you ask? Basically it’s a file that tells the search engines which pages on your site are most important and which they should crawl on a regular basis.

Subscribe To Comments

Allows commentators to receive e-mail notifications of new comments on an article (checkbox option in the comments form) on which they have posted a comment.This is a great way to get people back to your site and continue the conversation.

WP Contact Form III
Adds in a simple contact page on your blog with a form for name, email, website, subject, and message. This one isn’t as fancy as the other contact plugins out there but it’s simple and easy to use and most importantly works properly. You also have the option of adding multiple forms to your site using this plugin.

This is just a short list of plugins that I have found very useful. I use many more and may detail them as well at some point. By visiting the WordPress Plugins directory, you should b able to find any plugin that you need. If not, discuss it in the forums and most likely there is someone out that will develop it pretty soon.

Living in the Midwest and paying close attention to business news, the reports are very clear that the economy and the employment situation are not very good. Although I recently questioned how these reports added to the situation, I know from real life interaction and the stories that I hear that people whom have lost jobs or that are out of work are having a very difficult time finding employment. This also creates a challenge for hiring managers as they are being overwhelmed with job applications and many of the applicants do not meet the requirement of the job description, but it is left to the hiring manager to weed them out. A good example is a recent listing for 250 jobs at Office Depot yielded 4,000 applications, which is now up to the human resources department to choose the best 250.

In most cases, hiring managers will take the natural course of reviewing resumes and determining who is the most fit based on an applicants work experience detailed in the resume. There are other processes that are sometimes employed like pre-application surveys and personality tests to determine how well a candidate may fit a job, but after all of those processes that are developed to weed out applicants are used, someone still has to make the decision on who is the best candidate to hire.

That makes me wonder if in these trying economic times, with the overwhelming number of resumes that are received, if it has created an environment that has caused hiring managers to make hiring decisions based solely on past work experience more than evaluating the person, their work experience, and their natural instinct to succeed in a position.

My guess is that although many companies are down-sizing, this is also a great opportunity for many companies to upgrade their talent as many talented people are now searching for employment. But if their work experience does not closely match the requirements, will they get the opportunity? For instance, if a person has a history of success with increasing responsibility in a variety of positions and has the natural instinct to handle direct reports, communicate with clients, successfully direct teams, effectively manage upwards, and quickly adjust to changing business needs, would that person even make it through the screening process of the many job applicants. My gut feeling says probably not.

I am not totally discounting experience because it is very important, but I have often seen successful people succeed in whatever situation they are placed mainly due to attitude, work ethic, effectiveness, and approach. Although there is a learning curve to their new task or position, they typically ramp up very quickly and excel by the way they approach the situation.

I really don’t know how to best solve this problem because the challenge for a hiring manager is always tough to select the right person even before the complexity of stacks of resumes were added. I just think that there are so many talented people who could probably improve the quality of a work team who will never get the opportunity because their career path does not exactly match the requirements. There has to be some value placed on a person’s natural business instinct and how they handle situations and when combined with work experiences and successes, that separates them for the rest. Companies should use this time not to just piggy-back the recession and down-size because it is acceptable, but to use this as opportunity to improve their workforce and set themselves that much further in front of their competitors when the economy does turn around. I can almost guarantee, that the companies that take advantage of this opportunity and focus on the level of talent that is available during the recession, will benefit ten-fold when economic times improve. It only requires going one step further in your evaluation and using the natural instinct to determine if a candidate can be successful outside of limiting the evaluation to the items listed on a resume.