Have you read my post about Same old guy in the new era? I bet you will agree that my old blog looks like a crap. I have decided to make this blog more personal and less look like Internet affiliate marketer blog.
Personal branding is a new thing to me. Since I am networking with more like minded self-made entrepreneurs, I am often asked by them about my personal image. I don’t have a great way to brand myself. So this blog will plan an important roles.
Anyway, WordPress is my first choice to re-do my blog. In fact, it’s the only choice. Do you like the new blog?
Here is what I have done to strip out all the garbage and make it simpler. This blog is currently running the latest WordPress 2.9.1.
Theme
I found a really nice theme from WPHackr.com called This Just In. It’s a very simple theme that automatically load the header images (850×200) when you load the page. It has 1 right sidebar and it’s FREE.
However, there are some minor issues to use this theme. The header images are load based the page you are viewing. I want to randomly show the header images from many of my photos. So I modify the header image code to randomly pick the image whenever you load the page.
I also remove the sidebar for static pages (ex. About, Photography), so they don’t have the recent posts, search or categories widget crap on the right side. It makes the page cleaner.
All this modifications are done in the theme with few lines of PHP code.
Plugins
I removed most plugins and use only the followings.
- Akismet – Can’t live without this one.
- Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter – This will add a copyright notes under each post in the RSS FEED. This plugin seem to obsolete. I can’t fine that in the WordPress.org plugin library. So I copy that from my old blog.
- Exec-PHP – This is one of the most important plugin that I will on this site to dynamic show content in the pages or posts with PHP code.
- Google Analytics For WordPress - This is a life saver when you don’t want to add outbound link tracking in your blog post. It automatically does that for you. However, there is minor bug in the code. You have to turn on “Track the administrator too” in order to put the code in the <meta> tag. The drop down will still show it’s set in the footer. The other downside of using this plugin is that it doesn’t support the new Asynchronous tracking code on Google Analytics
- [Updated] WP Google Analytics – This is a better one than the above one. This one support WP 2.9.1 and with one line of code change, I can insert Google Analytics code in the <head> section. BTW, this plugin can also track where the referral page is. This maybe over kill though.
- Google XML Sitemaps – Can’t live without this plugin.
- Popularity Contest – This plugin is awesome. It tracks most viewed or popular blog posts. However, there is one small bug in the code which shows a broken images in the FEED. So made small modification to fix it.
- Popularity Contest Widget – I have to use this one to replace the widget came with Popularity Contest plugin to fix the indented layout.
- WordPress Database Backup – Can’t live without this one either.
- WP-SpamFree – Who likes spam? This plugin should do all the trick to prevent the spam comment. So I don’t have to use math or question to stop spammers.
Since I am running WordPress 2.9.1, I have a lot of room to expand my blog with some new features.
If you are my loyal readers, you probably already know that I used to have many advertisement running on my blog. I did make money, but it’s not significant enough to keep them here. So I removed them.
Anyway, using WordPress for personal branding is virtually free unless you want to buy some expensive theme, which runs slower and over kill. How do you brand yourself with your web site?
Thanks for your post. Interesting read for me.
I sometimes run into issues with a conflict between the Akismet and WP-SpamFree… I typically run Akismet over the WP-SpamFree.
We also use Ultimate Google Analytics for simplicity sake – downside is you have to go to your google account to see tracking but that works for us for now.
Google XML Sitemaps A+ … a must! Same with WP-DB-Backup.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
@Kerry:
Thank you for visiting. I did not know that Akismet and WP-SpamFree will conflict. I was reading that Spam Bot will be able to get away with WP-SpamFree with one line of code change.
I tried Ultimate Google Analytic and find it not up to speed to support WordPress 2.9.1. So I found another one called WP Google Analytic by. I also like to put Google Analytic code in the
section instead of footer. So there is a online of code change in the Plugin.If I remember right, the reason to put Google Analytic Javascript code in the <head> section is to track click. Otherwise, the click will not count right. However, leaving the code in <head> may slow down the page load.
Now there is a new version of synchronous tracking code available, but no plugin is implemented with that. So I will either write one of wait.
I embraced the concept of personal branding in end 2009 too. A great book on personal branding using the internet is by Dan Schawbel.
I have used some of the techniques outlined in that book to create my own blog and establish my own identity online.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
Thank you for the info about the book. Will check it out!
Everyone says, Akismet, Akismet, Akismet, and I say blah! I have never installed Akismet and I don’t really have a problem with spam. I use Raven Antispam plugin and it works for me.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
I check out the plug in you mentioned. It seems to be very old plugin. Not sure if it will compatible with newest WordPress.
It does sound very simple. Thank you for the info.