Jul
17
WordPress White Screen of Death
Filed Under WordPress SEO | 4 Comments
We have all heard of the Windows “blue screen of death”, but when it comes to webmasters and marketers the most feared problem is the WordPress White Screen of Death. This happens usually after you upgrade a plugin or make a change within the WordPress design manager and all of a sudden your screen goes white! Another symptom is if FireFox asks you to either open the php file or save it to disk rather than just let you work on the damn file!
Why Does WordPress Have White Screens Or Ask You To Open Or Save a PHP File
This isn’t a WordPress problem, but really a MySQL - PHP function or rather failure. When a PHP page is loading or trying to load and either an error occurs or a script can’t load, it just dies rather than blowing out bad code. Within the backend of WordPress this causes the WordPress White Screen of Death.
Even though your website will still be displaying content to visitors, you have no access to the backend which is about as bad as it gets next to your site being down. Most of my themes rely on a plugin called Limit Posts and if that isn’t activated, my sites look down right wrong and incomplete. So what do you do when this happens?
Well the first thing is to ascertain where the problem is. If you just installed a plugin and all of a sudden your system is no longer working then it is pretty easy to figure out that the problem is the plugin you just installed! When you are upgrading either your entire WordPress system or a single plugin, the game plan is the same. Always activate our plugins ONE AT A TIME. If you are using the automatic plugin updater, deactivate the plugin prior to updating it.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. Again:
- Deactivate the plugin that you are upgrading first - if you use the WordPress auto-upgrader, deactivate the plugin before updating.
- Activate plugins one at a time - after you activate a plugin after a WordPress upgrade, go to settings or mange and hit a couple of links to make sure that your system hasn’t crashed. The problem is if you log out and log back in after a plugin upgrade, you might get the WordPress white screen of death and not be able to see your backend. If that happens, you will have to remove the plugin from your plugin directory. Another reason to activate your plugins one at a time is so you know which plugin is causing the problem. You can delete it from your plugin directory then you can log back in and see your backend.
I know I am repeating myself here, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. I manage over 17 systems for myself and my clients and have a lot of experience with screwing up, so trust me when I tell you these things, I have messed up every aspect of WordPress at one time or another! Fortunately I am able to learn from my mistakes and pass that on to all of you.
WordPress Problems That Involve Widgets Or Theme Editor Design Changes
Other than plugins, the next most common issues involve failures with WordPress after you change a file within the Theme Editor, or you have added or changed a widget within the sidebar. If you change something and the screen goes white or you try to access a file and it offers to save it to disk or open it with your default program, you have a php issue.
The question is which PHP function has failed? There are a few methods to check errors and most of them are technical. If you are on a shared hosting like GoDaddy you have to look in the log with c-panel or on other hosting solutions that use plesk you have to view the apache logs. If you have access to the server at a root level they are by default in the /var/logs/. If you set up sites within your home folder, then they might be anywhere. The best thing is to contact tech support at your hosting company and ask where the apache logs are for your site.
When you get the latest log after an error it will look like a bunch of code like this:
PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function
force_mod… in /home/mstankard/web/getfoundnow_com/wp-settings.php on
line 160 referer: http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/comment.php?action=approve; etc.
Yours will look a lot different since I had to change a couple of things for security, but this shows the problem was in a comment approval that went bad. I was able to remove the recent comments plugin and everything worked fine. The trick is to identify where the issue is and act upon it.
Another problem I had was with a video display plugin which I was able to troubleshoot with FireFox by viewing source of the error page:
I loaded up the following URL after logging in to my blog’s management console:
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php
There was a section in the page where the player was supposed to be loaded, but it was not appearing. I turned on the error console feature in Firefox to view the Javascript errors and found the following:
SWFObject is not defined
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php
I used the “View Source” function in Firefox to view the source of the plugin management page and found the link to the swfobject.js file. It was pointing to the following URL:
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/swfobject.js
This showed it was looking for code in a different place than before since I removed a plugin that white-screened me, but was able to recreate the directory and copy the file in and it worked.
I am going to continue to update this post
If you are having WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems go there and read that post.
If you like killer WordPress themes you could go to that link as well!
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Jul
16
WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems
Filed Under WordPress SEO | 8 Comments
If you are planning to upgrade your WordPress system to 2.6, there are a few things that you need to prepare. There is a weird thing that happens after you upgrade: you can’t log in or reset your password. I had a freaking heart attack after upgrading and all of a sudden I couldn’t log back in!
Fortunately, there was already support info on WordPress’ blog. You have to clear out your cookies to log back in. So, what can you do to prepare for the install without getting freaked out or dealing with problems installing multiple systems as I have to do?
First of all, it’s easier to use Firefox to do all this since it has an easy way to clear your cookies, just hit control, shift and delete at the same time and a box will pop up. Make sure the “cookies” box and “authenticated sessions” box is checked and hit “Clear Private Data. You can also reach this in FireFox by going to tools > Clear Private Data.
So the process to upgrade is basically the same as always except that after you do the upgrade, and are asked to log back in, clear your cookies, THEN try to log in. On 3 installs I had to have the password reset, but I didn’t have to on 2 others so I can’t explain the difference. The key is to be prepared for any bad things that could happen.
WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Checklist To Fix Login Failure Problems
Just know that if you are getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.6 have the following stuff ready:
- Backup your database! - this is more important than ever since there are a lot of reported bugs with version 2.6.
- Make sure you have your user information - Have the logins, emails and passwords for all administrator accounts. I don’t use the admin account to post articles so all my blogs have at least 2 administrator accounts. You might want to upgrade an account to administrator while doing the upgrade.
- Make sure your WordPress system is sending emails - you will be screwed if your WordPress system can’t send you the password if you need to reset it. Test that your system is sending emails and that you know and have access to the administrator accounts.
- Upgrade WordPress - go ahead and deactivate your plugins and run the upgrade script.
- Clear your cookies! you can use the Ctrl - Shift - Delete keys on your keyboard to launch the cookie clearer in Firefox, or go to Tools - Clear Private Data in Firefox or go to Tools - Delete Browsing History if you must use Internet Explorer.
- Log into your WordPress system as an administrator - once your cookies are cleared you can try to log in as an admin ad start activating your plugins.
- Activate Plugins One At A Time! - do not activate your plugins in bulk mode! If there is a problem with a plugin you will screw your entire system up if you don’t activate your plugins one at a time. If you have a problem with a plugin, but can’t access your plugin page anymore after the run-once screen pops up, you will have use a FTP client to delete the plugin or add a 1 to the extension. Make sure that if you use the automatic upgrade feature for plugins that the plugin that you are upgrading is deactivated before automatically upgrading it.
That should get you through the process of upgrading to WordPress 2.6 and deal with the login problem. Tomorrow I am going to post a tutorial on how to troubleshoot “WordPress White Screen of Death” problems. Remember to back up everything!
If you want to check out the best WordPress thems visit Revolution Themes, they are what I use for all my clients sites.
Oct
2
WordPress 2.3 Changes
Filed Under WordPress SEO | Leave a Comment
Well the new version of WordPress is here and it is great! While some people are complaining about lack of plugin compatibility, the pros far outweigh the cons in version 2.3. With a little tweaking WordPress is a powerful SEO machine. It is a very good content management system, but what separates it from other database driven CMS’s is its inherent support for SEO. There are several plugins that are vital to good SEO that I have written about. Most of the key plugins still function. One of the best changes to WordPress 2.3 is its capability to show when plugins have new versions. It also eliminates the need for a WordPress version check plugin since it tells you in the dashboard if a new version exists.
The upgrade of WordPress is always pretty easy and this update is no different. I was able to get it up on 17 blogs in a couple of hours. It is important to deactivate all your plugins before this update if you normally don’t do that. I like many webmaster can get pretty lazy when it comes to upgrading, so this time cover all the bases since there are many changes to the database in this upgrade. So please back up your database before updating, especially in 2.3. The WordPress site has a list of compatibility issues with themes and plugins here. This page is the features page with all the new stuff, but also has links to the plugins and themes compatibilities. The list is incomplete, but for the most part if your theme is widget compatible you should be all right.
Major WordPress 2.3 Features
The most obvious feature is tagging. WordPress has really gotten on the tagging bandwagon, probably in response to SES in San Diego where everyone was talking about tagging. One of the most obvious compatibility issues is with Ultimate Tag Warrior. This plugin was named as one of the most important plugins at SES, so it is a little weird that it won’t work with the new WordPress. Granted a lot of its features are now standard in the new upgrade and I am sure the developer will have a new update out soon. I personally have issues with a lot of tagging. I agree that tagging can be useful for posts that fall under multiple categories, but I have concerns over duplicate content issues that can arise from some tagging strategies.
Duplicate content is one of the biggest vulnerabilities with WordPress and giving search engines multiple ways to list the same content is dangerous. I use Technorati to handle tagging and tag clouds. The question is “How much does tagging help usability?” This is a big topic, but I prefer search over tags as a means for visitors to find what they are looking for on my site. Cluttered and long pages can easily disrupt a users concentration as they are searching for information on your blog. Deep link navigation and bread crumb navigation are the best ways to let your visitors know where they are, and where they have been. Previous and Next buttons can get confusing quickly.
One of the best things about the new tagging feature is the related posts by tags. Being able to have all the posts within specific tags listed can help users find all the info that your site has to offer on any given subject. The problem will be in filtering the output so you don’t have too many options for a user. Again cluttered sites are hard to follow and won’t get return visitors or high page views. If you aren’t sure of the difference or importance of these metrics read my post: Hits, Visitors, page views explained.
The tagging features eliminate the need for the following plugins:
- Ultimate Tag Warrior - this plugin is pretty hard to use for regular people like me anyway.
- Jerome’s Keywords - I always used this and was always irritated by how it would loose the keyword filed if you didn’t add the custom key “keywords” in the custom fields. I am still testing how this effects the meta tags.
- Simple Tags - I still use this because of its additional Technorati features.
- Bunny’s Technorati Tags - I always used Simple Tags so don’t know much about Bunny or her plugin.
If these were paid solutions I guess you would wonder if WordPress is becoming the Walmart of content management systems by pushing out the little guy. I will keep everyone informed on how the many tests on tagging that I am running are going.
Along with more features within the visual editor and tagging, the new WordPress also takes care of a couple of permalink and domain problems that have plagued them in the past. You now have control over the www and non-www version of your domain. We all know that Google can see the www and non-www version of a site as 2 different sites. Even though they have solved a lot of this in the Webmaster Center where you can assign the proper FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) of your domain, it is good to have that backed up by WordPress. They have also fixed some of the slug and URL naming issues that occur when importing blogs like Blogger sites which tend to cut off the post title in the URL.
WordPress has always given you the control over the URL through the slug, but now you can be safe in importing or creating long URL’s with their new support of “pretty URL’s”. I know that there are experts out there that claim the URL isn’t important as much in blogs, but I disagree. I go as far as to end the URL string with a .html. While this might not matter to spiders, it does resolve canonical name issues that happen when the trailing slash is not included in the URL string. Yahoo might not care, but Google definitely does. I use the .html in the permalink to resolve this problem. Read more about it on my post - WordPress Permalinks Changing Links On An Existing Site - for more info.
The bottom line is WordPress 2.3 is a great update and worth the time. Back up everything and take it slow and you will be fine. I only scratched the surface of all the features. I have found the new version to be fast and clean. They did an awesome job with this update of WordPress.
Sep
14
WordPress Robots.txt For SEO
Filed Under WordPress SEO | 1 Comment
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about changing WordPress permalinks and how best to avoid duplicate content. I have gotten a lot of questions about the robots.txt portion of WordPress SEO. It is important to understand that the robots.txt file must be in your top directory. There is some speculation about this and the use of wildcard (*) within the robots.txt file. Spiders or bots are different, but you can look at this page on Google’s Webmaster help site which outlines their policy on robots.txt. Here is a quote directly from Google on placement of the robots.txt:
The robots.txt file must reside in the root of the domain and must be named “robots.txt”. A robots.txt file located in a subdirectory isn’t valid, as bots only check for this file in the root of the domain. For instance, http://www.example.com/robots.txt is a valid location. But, http://www.example.com/mysite/robots.txt is not.
OK so now what do you do?
SEO Strategy With The Robots.txt For WordPress
We all know that duplicate content is bad. WordPress in its very nature is a dupe content nightmare. There are many ways that the same page can have different URL’s and our job is to limit what the spiders crawl, without affecting the sites usability.
Not all spiders are the same, in fact it is unclear if they all support the wildcard, but Google does. The question is, do you optimize primarily for Google? I do. Yahoo does not have as strict enforcement of their content guidelines as Google does.
Below is how I set up a robots.txt on a test site that has excellent placement for specific keywords. I will keep everyone informed how the progress of the site in the SERP’s goes. Even though Google has eliminated Supplemental listings, they still retain a basement for dupe pages. My test site had a bunch or pages in the sup index, so we will see if the WordPress SEO robots.txt file has helped.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /adlogger/
Disallow: /ads/
Disallow: /mint/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /20*
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /*.php*
Disallow: */trackback*
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /wp-*
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.txt$
Disallow: /*/feed*
Disallow: /20*
Aug
21
Even though this article is primarily about WordPress, it is important for anyone that has a website whose URL structure is less than optimal. We all learn by doing, SEO isn’t a precise science, in fact the rules change all the time. With WordPress you have options when setting up your site, but what if you didn’t set it up right in the first place?
Well that is what happened to me. I followed the guidelines on the WordPress permalink page, and used the year, month, and day string in my URL structure as recommended. I set up my blog like that as well as most of my clients’ blogs. I jumped right into WordPress without really testing the waters like I should have. The problems weren’t really on this site, but on my wife’s site homesadvisory.com which has a 4 PR on the home page, but isn’t getting any love in Google. I found that a lot of her articles were in supplemental results. I know that Google is eliminating sup results, but I really don’t think that is going to do anything for her SEO.
After much research I realized I had broken one of my oldest rules: no duplicate content! So what to do? I found a lot of great websites with many different answers. I decided to just do what I knew is best, solid URL’s and no chance of dupe content.
The important thing is I don’t want to loose placement for posts that are doing well. For example I am #2 for “rss syndication services” which is accounting for 20% of my traffic. So if I change the permalinks within WordPress, I know that at the site level I am OK, but what about the links within the SERP’s and all the other sites that link into my posts?
The answer is a cool plugin called Permalink Migration from Dean Lee. It allowed me to easily change all the links on my site from /2007/05/02/postname to /postname.html. You see the main reason I want to do this is to stop Google from spidering my archives. I can easily do that by adding Disallow: /20* as a line within my robots.txt file, which will stop any date based archive pages or posts from being re-spidered, eliminating the dupe content.
This isn’t the only step though. If you use a sitemap plugin like me, you have to go in and manually change the settings to NOT add the archives to the sitemap. My sitemap is now totally clean and my URL’s are cool. The only thing left is the links within the posts themselves. I firmly believe in Deep Link Navigation so my articles have tons of internal links. These unfortunately weren’t changed.
I am currently looking into doing a replace within the MySql database rather than modify hundreds of posts. I’ll add comments to this post on the progress. If you have a WordPress blog and are using date based URL’s, you need to change your permalink structure! Leave any questions as comments on this post.
Aug
9
WordPress SEO Search Engine Optimization: Getting Started
Filed Under WordPress SEO | Leave a Comment
Search engine optimization of static pages is a subject that is covered ad nausea. How about those of us that have more dynamic Internet presences? I personally prefer the WordPress system to any other type of content management system, and believe me I have tried them all. Unless you have an e-commerce site with hundreds or thousands of products, more than likely you could use WordPress as your content management system.
Using WordPress Posts and Pages For SEO
When you have WordPress installed either as a standalone application or part of a website, your options for SEO are increased big time. In my post WordPress SEO Server Side I explain the basics of WordPress and the importance of a good theme. Now that it is up, what do you do?
The first steps involve the sites content. You must have a plan for at least the first 20 posts or pages. There is a difference between WordPress posts and pages. A page is pretty much the same as a standard web page. It takes longer to get into the SERPs, but also has more staying power. A post can get you instant gratification, but unless the post is commented on frequently, it won’t stay in the SERP’s for long.
Creating Keyword Intensive Pages
If your site is specific to a set of keywords, the best game plan is to create keyword heavy PAGES. I have found that an optimized page other than the home page can rank highly for about 3 keywords or keyword phrases. The key is to use the keyword phrase in both the URL (in WordPress that would be the slug which is best formatted in lowercase with words separated by a dash, i.e. keyword1-keyword2-etc) and the Page title. In the slug or URL field do not use noise words like the, and, or, a, etc.
WordPress SEO is pretty basic on the client side if your system is set up properly with the right plugins. You have your title and slug with the keywords you are promoting on the Page. The first sentences should be a description of the content on the page. You need at least 1 or 2 paragraphs to start off the page prior to using H2 tags. The H2 tag should also have a keyword phrase in it. If you are optimizing for multiple phrase, then use multiple H2 tags, but always have at least 2 paragraphs between H2 tags. If the keyword phrase you are promoting has sub-topics use H3 tags to break down and isolate the different phrases.
It is important not to spam the page, and to have as much keywords that make sense. It is always good to rotate between <strong> and <em> tags to bold and italicize your keywords and phrases. This shows the spiders that the page is an authority on the keywords mentioned.
By creating Pages that are keyword heavy, you now have a base for deep link navigation that will help you gain authority in the search engines and give your users an idea what your site is about. The Pages are the foundation for getting started with WordPress SEO.
Promoting WordPress Pages With Posts
Once you have your primary keywords within Pages, you can now start writing WordPress Posts to promote them. During the WordPress set up you should have created at least the most basic categories to put your pages in. If you haven’t then now is the time to create your categories.
Most new blogs have a growing period from inception to getting regular readers and subscribers. That being said the first posts are probably not going to be consumed by the masses, which is why it is good to use them to promote your optimized WordPress Pages.
Setting up a WordPress Post for SEO is basically the same as it is for a Page except that you also will have tags and keywords. The same principles of title and slug remain the same, use your keywords in both. Once you have created enough posts that link to your pages, your blatant self promotion is over and you are ready to get busy writing your articles and setting up your subscription base. If you are unfamiliar with syndication read my post RSS Real Simple Syndication Overview.
WordPress SEO is a big topic and I will be covering it over the next 2 weeks, please leave any questions as comments on this post. I am putting together a plugin package along with an instructional video on how to install and configure the SEO plugins I use. I hope to have that done by the end of next week.
Jul
27
WordPress is ready and willing to be your partner in search engine optimization. This new series will focus on the best ways to optimize your WordPress installations. It is going to be broken down into 2 parts:
- Server Side WordPress Search Engine Optimization - these articles will deal with the backend, management dashboard, plugins and themes. We will be exploring the proper use of the robots.txt file with WordPress as well as other server-side technology to best optimize your blog and feeds. We will also look at the installation of analytics tracking, setting up specific blog oriented goals and getting your blog ready for submissions and planting.
- Front End WordPress Search Engine Optimization - these articles will deal with how to optimize your content, obtain trackbacks, submit your blog, submit your feed and plant your articles. We will also be looking at the front end of Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer, FeedBurner and powerful services such as Technorati, Del.iso.us and mag.nol.ia.
I know that there are more blogging platforms than WordPress, and that the backend articles are not going to help people running TypePad, but the front end posts will help anybody with a blog. I use WordPress and am an expert at customizing and marketing that platform. As every professional blogger will tell you: “write about what you know”!
Getting Started With WordPress and SEO
We are going to assume you have hosting that either offers WordPress with their packages, or that you have control over your servers and can install whatever you want. I host with Rackspace Managed Hosting and have 4 servers, 3 of which are Linux. If you are ready to get a blog going and either have hosting that doesn’t offer WordPress or want to upgrade, call me at 727-856-4695 and I can hook you up with all kinds of different hosting. My Social Network Marketing packages all include hosting if you don’t have a blog and want one.
Once you have installed WordPress and chosen your theme, the fun stuff begins! It helps for you to have a theme that is optimized. A search for WordPress SEO themes will show you a ton of excellent themes that are ready for SEO. While it is true that you have hundreds of choices, you want to keep it simple. Themes that are 100% CSS driven are hard to modify if you aren’t a serious coder. I normally don’t promote any one website over another, but there is a very solid themes system from Easy Web Tutorials that is among the best and easiest to customize.
The theme is extremely important since it dictates how your blog is presented to the search engines. Things like meta descriptions and post headers are extremely important, and are usually within the index.php, single.php and page.php. The page is extremely critical if you use them as well as posts. Standard page code has the title of the blog appear as the primary meta title, I usually remove that line of code so that only the actual title that you input into the visual editor is the title of the page, not the complete title of the blog THEN the page title. Most search engines don’t read meta titles past 85 characters.
If you are unsure of anything I said in the last paragraph, please leave a comment with your question and I will answer it.
Once your blog is installed and you have chosen and installed a theme, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. For search engine optimized WordPress installs you will need several plugins to help the search engines help you. My next post in this series will list all of the plugins I use, where to download them and how to configure them.