It’s been a long time since themes.wordpress.net stopped accepting new themes. Since then most theme authors have been distributing their themes from their own sites, without a good centralized place for people to browse, search, comment on, and rate themes. With the success of the plugins directory, we’ve wanted to have those same benefits in a theme directory. Today is the day we start making that happen, with the introduction of wordpress.org/extend/themes/.
Bringing the new theme directory under the WordPress “extend” umbrella allowed us to take advantage of all the infrastructure that has already been built up to support WordPress.org. If you’ve browsed through the plugin directory, you’ll feel right at home in the new theme directory.
We’ve gone through great lengths to make this as painless as possible for theme authors. You don’t need to know anything about Subversion (our back end magic takes care of all that for you), just login with your WordPress.org username and password and go to the upload page. From there you upload your regular theme zip file and we take care of the rest.
Once you upload your new theme we do a few automated checks for some of the requirements for each theme. If we find one that you missed we’ll provide you an error and description of what needs to be fixed. When a theme upload has been accepted we’ll send you an email and put it in the queue to be reviewed, to make sure we didn’t miss anything. After the theme has been approved you’ll get another email letting you know that the theme is now live.
That catches you up to where we’re at today. When you finish that theme you’ve been slaving over, upload it to the new directory and let us know what you think. Since so much has changed since the old theme directory we’re starting fresh from zero. If you’ve got specific questions or suggestions contact us and we’ll do our best to get them answered.
I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.
We’ve prepared a brief video tour of 2.6, if you have 3 minutes and 29 seconds to spare, it’s worth a watch:
If you’d like to embed the tour video in your blog, copy and paste this code for the high quality version:
<embed src="http://v.wordpress.com/mARhRBcT/fmt_dvd" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="385" flashvars="blog_domain=http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26/&width=640&height=385"> </embed>
And here’s a smaller version, 400 pixels wide:
<embed src="http://v.wordpress.com/mARhRBcT/fmt_std" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="250" flashvars="blog_domain=http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26/&width=400&height=250"> </embed>
Here’s a more textual overview of what’s hawt in 2.6:
Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits
With the power of modern computers, it’s silly that we still use save and editing metaphors from the time when the most common method of storage was floppy disks. WordPress has always respected the importance of your writing with auto-save, and now we’re taking that to another level by allowing you to view who made what changes when to any post or page through a super-easy interface, much like Wikipedia or a version control system.
This is handy on any blog in case you make a mistake and want to go back to an older version of a post, and it’s super handy for multi-author blogs where you can see every change tracked by person.
Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web
A few months ago on my blog we started a conversation about the posting bookmarklet in WordPress and which systems we should look to for inspiration, like Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious. From these suggestions and the Quick Post plugin by Josh Kenzer, we developed a Press This bookmark you can add to your toolbar that provides a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog:
For example, if you click “Press This” from a Youtube page it’ll magically extract the video embed code, and if you do it from a Flickr page it’ll make it easy for you to put the image in your post. On my blog I’ve been experimenting with using different categories and the in_category() function — such as video, quote, aside, et cetera — to create a more tumblelog-like format.
Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging
Gears is an open source browser extension project started by Google that developers like us can use to give you features we wouldn’t normally be able to. There are a lot of things we can do with Gears in the future, but in this release we’ve stuck to using what’s called a “Local Server” to cache or keep a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WordPress works just fine without it, you just get a little extra juice when you have it installed.
Theme Previews: See it before your audience does
Now when you select a theme it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content, instead of immediately making it active on your site. This is great for just test driving themes before making a switch over publicly, and it is also helpful when you are developing a theme and need to test it but don’t want everybody to see your ongoing mistakes development.
Here are some of the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:
- Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
- Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
- Bulk management of plugins.
- A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
- Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
- Plugin update notification bubble.
- Customizable default avatars.
- You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
- Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
- Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
- You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
- Ability to move your
wp-configfile andwp-contentdirectories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts. - Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
- You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
- A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
- Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
Developer Notes
WordPress.org had over 75 people contributing code to WordPress 2.6. In addition to the core commit team we had contributions from Dion Hulse, Austin Matzko, Otto42, Benedict Eastaugh, and pishmishy. AaronCampbell and Marco Zehe provided more than a few patches. Back among the top code contributors is Jacob Santos. Alex Concha continues to have WordPress’ back. Joining bug reporting and gardening elite are hakre, Simon Wheatley, mtekk, and Matty Rob. Finally, congratulations to our Peter Westwood on your recent wedding! I’m also proud to announce we’re adding a new core committer to the team: Andrew Ozz (azaozz) has been a huge help to the core team this year, particularly around TinyMCE and making the WYSIWYG something that works for you, not against you.
Because of the new capabilities to make WordPress a clean SVN checkout, plugin and theme authors should do their best to handle forms and posts through WP rather than trying to post to their files directly, here’s a quick Codex article about how to do it using our forward-compatible APIs.
Upgrading
2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless. The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade. Our standard 3-step upgrade instructions apply to this release. There were at least 1,984,047 downloads of the 2.5 series, the fastest growing release we’ve ever had, and I think all of those people will find 2.6 adds a level of polish that really makes WP a pleasure to use every day. (At least I do. :))
Easter Egg
There have been rumors and allegations that there was a so-called “easter egg” added to 2.6 early in its development. These rumors and allegations are completely false!
Last week I read The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan. It’s widely considered a “bible” for golfers. The use of the word “modern” in the title strikes me as interesting. This book is hardly modern. It was first published in 1957…over 50 years ago. Yet 51 years later, these are still considered the fundamentals of golf. Without these fundamentals it simply isn’t possible to be a good golfer.
The same concept applies to an information business. The Internet might be a great new media enabling you to literally reach the world instantly…but at the end of the day it’s just another media, another way to generate leads or make sales. The fundamentals of building a successful information marketing business have not changed.
The media used has changed over time (direct mail to telemarketing to fax to email) and new obstacles emerge over time like the lists of people who don’t want calls from telemarketers, don’t want broadcast faxes, don’t want “junk” mail delivered by the postman, and soon probably a list of people who don’t want “junk” email delivered to their electronic inbox. The playing field changes constantly but the fundamentals do not.
So what are the fundamentals? Well, you need a widget to sell (or to give away if you’re using a two-step process). Then you need traffic. You could use PPC, SEO, banner ads, etc. but traffic is essential because if nobody visits your “virtual store” then you won’t sell any widgets.
Third you need to convert the traffic into leads and/or sales. What good is all that traffic if nobody buys a widget? Conversion hinges on copywriting aka “words that sell.” That’s a broad topic but it involves an attention-grabbing headline, an irrestible offer, and often a guarantee that takes the risk out of buying. There’s a lot more to it than that but that’s a good start.
There’s more to conversion than copywriting though. The only way you’ll know which sales letter or lead-generation ad (aka “squeeze page”) is most effective is to test and track the results. Test headlines, prices, offers, bonuses, etc. to see which combination of variables produces the best results. You can use a free tool like Google Website Optimizer for testing. If you’re not testing and constantly trying to beat the “control” then you’re making a mistake.
Finally, you don’t want to find a customer to make a sale. That’s a short-term strategy. A better strategy is to make sale to find a customer. Then you can maximize the lifetime value of that customer by offering other products and services through upsells, cross-sells, etc. It’s exponentially easier to make another sale to an already satisfied customer who’s already predisposed to buying from you than it is to constantly be looking for new customers who don’t know you and have no previous relationship with you.
If you want more detailed information on the fundamentals, check out Jim Straw’s Power Tools for Entrepreneurs. Jim has been making money offline (and now online) probably since before Ben Hogan figured out the “modern” fundamentals of golf…so I’d say Jim is well-versed in the modern fundamentals of making money.
Tags: Domain Names, Testing & Tracking
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Last week I was strolling through the aisles of my local public library and stumbled upon a book titled “Rules for Renegades” by Christine Comaford-Lynch. I had never heard of her before I saw the book, but with a title like that I had to check it out. I haven’t even finished the book yet but I love it. I’ve just gotten to the point where she sleeps with Bill Gates. Does that have you a little more interested?
Christine has accomplished quite a bit so far in life. She ran away from home at 16 to become a model in New York City. Six months later she talked her way into college without a high school diploma. She didn’t care for either fashion runways or college so she became a Bhuddist monk. At 24 she broke her vows. At the age of 25 she got a job with Microsoft despite the lack of a college degree. At 27 she decided to become a millionaire. Ten years later she had made over $10 million and consulted to 700 companies in the Fortune 1000. And she retired at 40. I’d say all that qualifies her to write the rules for renegades. What do you think?
Remember, she doesn’t even have a high school diploma proving once again that formal education is over-rated. She says an MBA is optional, but a GSD is essential. GSD stands for “gets stuff done.”
She started her first company on the spur of the moment while she was a contractor at Microsoft. Something happened such that Microsoft could no longer pay them directly so 300 contractors were called into a big meeting to announce the change and encourage the contractors to become employees of Volt Technical Services who would then pay the contractors (forgive me if the details are not exactly correct but that’s the basic idea…it had something to do with taxes).
Of course Volt takes a percentage off the top of all the contractor’s wages and makes a killing. Quickly doing the math (as Christine did), if Volt makes $10/hour for each contractor, they make $3,000/hour (300 contractors x $10/hour) which is $24,000/day assuming an 8 hour day and $120,000/week. And all they really have to do is handle the payroll & tax withholding. How hard can that be? Not much work for $120,000 per week.
Christine realized this, recognized an opportunity, and more importantly quickly acted upon it. She stood up in the middle of the meeting and announced she had a company providing the same service and would take a smaller percentage of the contractor’s earnings than Volt.
She had no idea how she was going to accomplish any of this, but she would figure it out as she went along. After the meeting she passed out her email address, made a phone call to register a corporation, rented office space, and outsourced the payroll to another company. By the end of the next day she had 35 employees. Her plan was to take 5% less than Volt. So if she made $9.50/hour for 35 contractors that’s a bit less than $350/hour, $2,800/day, $14,000/week, and $900,000/year. She created a business on pace to gross nearly $1 million/year in little more than 24 hours. Not bad. Sounds like a classic reptile brain.
That little excerpt is from the first 10 pages of the book. There’s plenty more and like I said I haven’t even finished the book yet. I recommend you read it. You’re bound to get some good ideas.
Tags: Domain Names, Monetization
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Carl Ringwall listened to my SEO interview with Fred Black last week and here’s what he had to say:
“Robert, this is one of the best guides to getting more traffic and general SEO that I have received. Fred has a great site, and the advice he gives is top-notch. You did a great interview. I encourage all to get this - it really cuts through the ‘hype’ of SEO and traffic issues.”
If you need more proof, read the post Fred made last week: SEO: #1 & #2
In this intervew, Fred & I cut though all the crap and tell you in plain English how we rank #1 & #2 in the most popular search engine for this highly-competitive search term. You can do it too. All you need to do is follow the simple plan we share in the interview.
Click Here to Download the SEO Interview
Tags: Video Products, Traffic
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Over the weekend I read Broken Windows, Broken Business by Michael Levine. The title is based on the Rudy Giuliani’s clean up of New York City when he was mayor in the 1990s. In a nutshell, the theory is that if there are broken windows in the buildings of a neighborhood, it sends a message of tolerance. And if the broken windows ar not cleaned up quickly, the neighborhood will decay and more serious and violent crimes will become commonplace.
It all starts with a single “broken window.” Giuliani and the NYC police chief implemented a strict “zero tolerance” policy on crime. Even simple things like jaywalking were not tolerated. Many ridiculed the policy and said it would never work but within a few years, the violent crime rate in NYC had dropped dramatically. Giuliani’s policy was widely praised for this success. (The authors of Freakonomics attribute another factor the drop in violent crime but that’s not the point here.)
Levine argues that the “broken windows” theory applies to any business too. He cites several examples of companies, like K-Mart & American Airlines, that tanked as a result of “Broken Windows Hubris” which means they failed to address (or in some cases even recognize) the broken windows in their businesses.
This is not only about large, behemoth corporations. The author cites bad customer service as the “ultimate broken window.” And that applies to an Internet or Information Business too. Levine talks about expectations vs. realities. Any customer of your business has certain expectations…most of them reasonable and some not so reasonable. But if you fail to at least meet those expectations, your business is headed for disaster. That means in some cases employees or you (if you do your own customer service) can be the biggest “broken window.”
There’s even an entire chapter dedicated to the Internet. Of course simple things like broken links are considered “broken windows” but on a larger scale a website might be the first (and only) exposure a prospect or customer has with your business. If there are “broken windows”, the likelihood of losing that prospect or customer for good are increased…and the worst part is that you probably won’t even know it. For example, if someone is looking for contact information or FAQs, they should be easy to find.
It’s a short, easy-to-read book (162 pages). I recommend you march on down to the local public library and check it out like I did.
Tags: Success, Create Your Own Products
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For the next 48 Hours, you can get the SEO Interview I did with Fred Black for $19.
Fred’s site, PQInternet.com, has consistently ranked #1 for a highly competitive search term…and you can use his simple strategies to do the same. I know this because several of my own sites have risen to the first page of the rankings for very competitive search terms…and all I did was follow Fred’s advice.
Click Here to see Proof of our High Rankings
If you have any interest in top 10 search engine rankings in the biggest search engine (and the traffic that comes with it), you’ll want this interview because Fred & I cut through all the crap and tell you what’s important…and what’s not.
Click Here for the SEO Interview
If you follow the simple process laid out in the interview, don’t be surprised if you find your own sites ranked on the first page of the most popular search engine.
Tags: Create Your Own Products, Article Marketing
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I just finished reading Dan Kennedy’s latest book, No B.S. Ruthless Management of People & Profit. Personally, I don’t want employees but I read just about everything Dan writes and this book is worth reading. The title of Chapter 36 is “The Speed Imperative”
This paragraph is written in bold type on page 248…
“Just about everybody I’ve ever met in business frequently has good ideas. CEO’s of big companies, owners of small companies, solo entrepreneurs, and my own peers in the information marketing field, like authors, speakers, conference promoters, and publishers. All these good ideas are useless and valueless until they are DONE. Compressing the time between idea & action, and between action and completion, is where all the profit is.” - Dan Kennedy
Last week I described an example of how I followed this speed imperative to create a product by interviewing Fred Black about how to rank highly in the search engines. You can read that post here: How to Create An Audio Product Practically for FREE
How many good ideas do you have that haven’t been acted upon yet? They don’t even have to be your ideas. Copywriters have huge “swipe files” full of sales letters and advertising materials written by other people. In other words, the “swipe file” is full of other people’s ideas. Ideas that can be “swiped” and used again in your own sales letters. Please note: I said “swiped” not plagiarized. It’s not very difficult to see a good idea and figure out a way to alter it a bit or add your own unique twist to make it apply to your situation.
I can think of several recent examples of where I’ve done this myself. Another good idea is to keep your eye on what known-successful people do and follow or “swipe” their example. Last month I saw another marketer having a sale based on tax stimulus rebate checks so I had an Internet Business Stimulus sale. Last week, I got a message from someone offering a discount on their information product through Father’s Day and I decided that was a good reason for me to have sale too. Incidentally, neither of these people is in the “make money online” market but their ideas can easily be applied.
Back to the Father’s Day Sale. Having bought in to “the speed imperative,” I immediately announced a Father’s Day Sale of my own, constructed several offers, wrote up a sales page, and launched. It all took less than 24 hours. However, in my haste, I didn’t realize Father’s Day was June 15th, not June 8th. Heck I just figured somebody else was having a week-long Father’s Day Sale but apparently it’s two weeks long.
Friday morning I was talking to a married friend with children and asked her if she had any plans for Father’s Day. She informed me that Father’s Day was not in 2 days as I thought but the following Sunday. Whoops! So I made a mistake. So what? Big deal. Shoot me. I’ve made lots of mistakes in the past and I’ll make more mistakes in the future. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things and you’re not learning. Yes, I realize it would have taken about 5 seconds to figure out Father’s Day was the 15th and not the 8th…but oh well, lesson learned. It’s commonly said that an expert is someone who’s made all the possible mistakes in a certain field. I’m getting there.
Fear stops many people from being as successful as they could be. It stopped me for many years. I might still have a slight fear of failure but I’ve gotten over it for the most part. Most mistakes are easily fixed. I changed my Father’s Day Sale into a Pre-Father’s Day Sale and since I screwed up, I’m extending until midnight tonight. I bet few people even remember this mistake in a few days or a few weeks. I’m not dead. I’m not injured. I’m not embarrassed. I’m laughing at myself. It’s not a big deal. I’m over it.
Remember: “Compressing the time between idea & action, and between action and completion, is where all the profit is.”
Do you have an idea about starting an Internet business? If so, you have a good idea but it’s a useless idea until it’s done. If you’re ready to compress the time between idea & action, and between action & completion, click here to discover tools & information that will help you get started today with: Product Creation, Link Building, Webmaster Basics, & Internet Business Basics.
These tools will be available after today but they’re only deeply discounted until midnight tonight. Why not get started now? That’s where all the profit is.
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This morning I was talking to a married friend with children and asked her if she had any plans for Father’s Day this weekend. She informed me that this was NOT Father’s Day weekend. Father’s Day is next Sunday. Whoops!
So I made a mistake. So what? Big deal. Shoot me. I’ve made lots of mistakes in the past and I have no fear of making more mistakes in the future. Why? Because if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things and you’re not learning. It’s commonly said that an expert is someone who’s made all the possible mistakes in a certain field. I’m getting there.
I’ll have more to say about this on Monday…but for now all I can do is change the Father’s Day Sale into a Pre-Father’s Day Sale and extend it until Monday at midnight.
You now have an extra day to take advantage of useful tools & information on:
Creating Information Products
- How to Create Your Own Profitable Online Video Courses & DVDs & Choose Slam Dunk Markets
Building Links to Your Sites
- How to Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings More Quickly With Less Time & Effort…
Webmaster Basics
- For Anyone Who’s Sick & Friggin’ Tired of Technical Alphabet Soup Terms Like PHP, HTML, & FTP but Still Wants to Make Money Online…
Internet Business Basics
- It’s Like a 2-Day Seminar on How to Run a Successful Internet Business…at a Fraction of the Cost
BONUS: SEO Interview
Invest in any of the above and you’ll get my recent SEO interview with Fred Black. It’s 2 hours & 6 minutes of two guys who’ve figured out how to rank in the top 10 of the search engine rankings for highly competitive search terms. We cut through all the crap and tell you what’s important and how we did it.
Click Here to Build an Internet Business
Tags: Domain Names, Create Your Own Products
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A message with that subject line arrived in my inbox yesterday. I didn’t know who Kristi Lynch was or why I should meet her but the headline (or subject line) was good enough that I opened the message. The message was short and contained a clickable link. It was from the Indiana University Foundation (IU is my alma mater) as part of their fund raising campaign. Here it is:
Robert,
I’m struck by the fact that every Hoosier has an IU story that is carried for life. Kristi Lynch has a remarkable one, and it is my privilege to share it with you.
Please click here to meet Kristi.
It’s a short message but it made me curious enough to click on the link. Who doesn’t want to learn more about this “remarkable” story? I did. Remarkable must be a powerful word to use in copywriting. That may have been the word that prompted me to click the link. It wasn’t just any old story. It was a remarkable story.
They usually just call & ask for money saying it will benefit students. This short video personalizes that and shows the story of one particular student. Then it asks the viewer to renew their donation and jumps straight to a form where you can fill in your information & make a donation.
How could you use something like this? Instead of saying how your product or service helps people in general, you can create a video with the unique story of how it helped one person in particular, then jump to the order page. Camatasia has a feature that will do exactly that. I think it’s called “jump to URL”.
Or you could make a video walking prospects through a real life example of what can be accomplished if they buy your product. I did this with a real estate investing information product here: Real Deal #1 It’s not as fancy as the IU Foundation’s video but it’s an example of what you can do with Camtasia.
Don’t have to a product yet? No problem. You can quickly & easily create either an online video information product or a DVD. And you can get both of those products plus two more as part of the Product Creation Special Offer that expires on Father’s Day…Sunday at 11:59 PM CST
Tags: Domain Names, Article Marketing
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