THIS OFFER HAS ENDED!

You may have heard that we’re expecting our fourth child sometime in the next couple of weeks. My wife, the kids and I are extremely excited and are looking forward to meeting this new little Miracle (sorry, couldn’t resist).

At the same time, I’ve been looking for an interesting and fun thing to do with another birth in my life – one of a website nature. And I think I’ve done it:

Until noon, eastern, on Sunday, August 30th, I’m going to sell my business-ready, template-based websites for the absolutely insane low price of $350. No typo, I mean three hundred and fifty dollars. Sounds pretty good, huh?

And there’s no strings attached, no gimmicks or bait-and-switch. Just business-ready, WordPress-driven websites (and/or blogs). Include a little training and whole heap of bonuses from people like Chris Garrett, Michael Martine, Easton Ellsworth, Pamela Weir, Stephen Smith and a number of others. They’re each offering products throughout the event.

The Grand Prize

Aside from getting a fully-functioning website for $350, you have the opportunity to win a massive Business Quick-Start Package. Every person that buys a $350, business-ready, WordPress-based website between now and noon on Sunday, you’ll be entered into a drawing. One winner will get:

• A membership to Chris Garrett’s Blogger Authority course ($397 value)
• Easton Ellsworth will prepare a Master SEO Keyword List for your business website and give you some pointers in how to use it to generate SEO results. ($497 value)
• Pamela Weir will help you with your copy writing and editing and write and submit press releases to announce your new website. ($400 value)
• Michael Martine’s WordPress SEO Secrets book which walks you step-by-step on how to get the absolute most SEO benefit from WordPress. And, it’s not theory. It’s very much a how-to book. ($47 value)
• Two, one-hour Business Advisory Phone Sessions with me where we’ll discuss the best possible strategies for promoting your business through your new website. ($500 value)

This is an amazing opportunity to get the website you need at a price that you can definitely afford. Oh, and did I mention the best part: If you’re not exactly ready for a new website you can buy now and use it later. We’ll get you all set up – hosting, WordPress, you design, and plugins – and put a ‘coming soon’ page on top of your website until you’re ready to use it.

To find out more, you need to visit The Website Habitat – my new site. There you can see the designs, find out what’s included and make your purchase. But hurry, time is running out.

note: image from Darwin Bell on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Well, I’m back. Yeah, I know it’s been a while. But I’ve been pretty hard at work.

You’ll also notice that in my month-long absence, I’ve managed to complete a new design of my blog. My goal was to clear out the clutter so the good stuff would be easier to find.

And while I don’t see this layout as being complete, I felt it was close enough to launch it tonight. What I’d love is your feedback. What do you like and don’t like. What works, what doesn’t. And please, if you run into any bugs, let me know. If you could list the browser and operating system you’re using that would be most helpful.

I’m really excited about the layout changes. I’ve got lots of plans for the coming year – including podcasts and video casts. I’m also working on a customized homepage layout – which I’m in no rush to put up.

In the meantime, I’m going back through old posts making sure formatting is solid as well as adding tags and changing my categories (oh what we know in hindsight). Gonna be a lot of work, and for me it’s worth it. So you’ll see small changes on my site over the next few week.

Now that I’ve gotten this launched, updated from WordPress 2.2 to WordPress 2.5, updated my services pages, restructured my growing business and caught up with my work, I’ll also get back to writing regularly – both here and at emoms.

There’s more, of course, including a new blog my wife and I have been hard at work planning. As well as getting her up to speed on her soon-to-be-announced mom blog (about moms, pregnancy, birth and parenting).

So lots going on. Sorry for the break. Now back to our regularly scheduled program…

And remember, I’d love to hear your feedback.

One of the most remarkable things about WordPress for me is the huge development community that supports it. First, WordPress is free (you can even get it installed for free on your server). Second, it’s infinitely expandable through thousands of plugins, add-ons and widgets. If you need a function for your site, it’s likely someone’s already written a plugin to do it.

Yet one of the places that I feel WordPress really shines is in all the free themes (templates) that are available. Basically, thousands of developers from all over the world have created visual designs for WordPress. And while some premium themes are available for between $50 & $250, there are thousands of themes that are completely free.

Just like WordPress, free is a good thing. And, as your developing, updating or enhancing your web business web presence, it can sometimes be good to do so on a small budget.

Here are WordPress theme catalogs, each having many (and in some cases thousands) of free WordPress themes:

• WordPress Theme Viewer – The ‘official’ WordPress theme viewer. Thousands of free themes and thumbnails to see theme layout. Select ‘test run’ to see the theme in full form. Can narrow your search using the options in the sidebar.
• WordPress Themes – More than 2000 free WordPress themes with thumbnails. Great resource. Rating system and download stats tell you how popular themes are. And be sure to check out their WordPress Theme Sparkling Index.
• BGThemes – To date, more than 2000 free WordPress themes. Briefly browsing, I saw a few that I’d not seen on other sites so there may be some exclusive themes here – though I can’t say for sure. Each theme has a thumbnail and a rating system. And the search feature is nice as well.
• Free WordPress Themes – A hand-picked selection of WordPress themes, with thumbnails. All themes are aesthetically pleasing, with solid usability and validated code.
• WordPress Theme Review – This collection is managed by my friend, the blog guru herself, Sarah Lewis. This is a growing database of WordPress themes with a focus on SEO. In Sarah’s own words, “Want to know if search engines like Google and Yahoo! will love your theme? The higher (the) score is the more love the theme gets.” Pretty important thing to know.
• Weblog Tools Collection – One of my favorite sites for both WordPress themes and plugins. But not because the site is easy to use. Theme catalog is huge but thumbnails were only added recently. Of course, I rarely visit the site directly any more relying on its RSS feed to keep me updated on new themes and plugins. And it’s the feed that makes me love the site.
• Free WP Themes – A small, yet very nice selection of WordPress themes with thumbnails. Preview mode lets you view theme as it would look on WordPress blog.
• Theme Time – A very nice, solid selection of attractive WordPress themes. Thumbnails and previews available as well as some premium themes.
• SkinPress – This site show promise. Attractive, yet small list of WordPress themes with thumbnails and theme preview. Definitely worth a look.
• wpSnap – Excellent list of free WordPress themes with thumbnails and demo mode. I saw some very nice looking designs here – a few of which I’d not yet seen elsewhere.
• Blog Themes – A nice WordPress theme collection with thumbnails and previews. Appears to have several hundred themes with download statistics. Saw a few new ones here and the authors seem to be a bit picky about aesthetics.
• Top WordPress Themes – Showcasing a few hundreded free WordPress themes. I’ve seen a number of these in other places. Yet the site is easy to navigation, features thumbnails and has a preview mode.
• Free WordPress Templates – Looks like a few hundred WordPress themes. Saw some interesting and attractive themes. Site has thumbnails but no preview mode.
• My Green Corner – A few hundred, mostly attractive WordPress themes. Thumbnails and preview mode.
• ThemesBox – Only a few WordPress themes, though the ones that are listed are very nice. Thumbnails and demo area for each theme. This is a nice one to check out for a one-stop, quick stop.
• WP Skins – Thousands of WordPress themes with thumbnails and download statistics. Nice site, with tons of themes, though I’d rate it lower because of the popup advertising.
• WPDesigner – Fair selection of WordPress themes with thumbnails. Most of these themes are available on other sites.

So there you are. Tons of free WordPress themes to pick from.

And if that’s not enough, here’s a short list of helpful blog posts that have covered free WordPress themes over the past few months. Each of these I have at the ready in my browser’s bookmarks. So I guess now you get a glimpse inside what’s in my browser.

• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen – Smashing Magazine
• 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
• 10 Fresh, Elegant and Clean WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
• 8 Fresh WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
• Top Ten Best Free WordPress Themes and Templates – Part 1
  
• Top Ten Best Free WordPress Themes and Templates – Part 2
• Top Best and Beautiful WordPress Themes and Templates – Part 3
• Best Customizable Multiple Color Styles WordPress Themes – Part 4
• Best Three Column WordPress Themes and More – Part 5
• Free Magazine Style WordPress Themes and More
• Hack WordPress – Best 2-Column WordPress Themes
• Hack WordPress- Best 3-Column WordPress Themes

Have you used any of these resources yourself? If so, rate them – how well did they serve your needs? And what are they missing?

And if you haven’t used them, what are you waiting for? There’s thousands of attractive free WordPress themes waiting for you to use. Now you have no excuse not to be using WordPress.

I could browse around just fine on my blog itself. However when I tried to do anything else I got this error message:

Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-admin/moderation.php (requested file changes based on task) on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 4428-b779-1366-73cd

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact dawudmiracle at gmail.com and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

Didn’t matter what I tried – comments, add post, delete spam, even update my profile – nothing worked. So I tried logging out and back in only to find out that I couldn’t log back in.

After a bit of frustration I found the error related to the Bad Behavior plugin. Here’s what Michael Hampton, BB’s developer said:

…Yesterday I moved all of my sites to a new dedicated server. In the process, I decommissioned an old blacklist I was running which I thought wasn’t being used, not realizing that Bad Behavior was still set to use it. Shortly afterward, I found myself locked out of my own blog, just as you all did. So therefore, this release.

So if you use Bad Behavior, you probably want to upgrade immediately (link begins download).

To upgrade the plugin simply do the following:

1. Download the latest version of Bad Behavior (2.0.11)
2. Unzip the download
3. Create an FTP connect to your WordPress plugins folder (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Upload the entire Bad Behavior folder into your plugins folder, overwriting the one that’s currenly there.
5. Try logging back into your WordPress admin

This should be fixed. It certainly worked for me. Just to be clear, I could browse my blog just fine. I just couldn’t do anything on it.

And…thanks to Joanna Young from BusinessBlogAngel for first bringing this error to my attention when she tried to leave a comment. Joanna, and everyone else, the issue is resolved so please join back in the conversation.

For the past few months I’ve been using Akismet with the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin. The usual number of comment spam I would get was between 25-50 daily, with almost no comments ending up in spam.

Then Lorelle suggested that I remove the Math Comment Spam Protection and install Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior. It made sense. And since I deeply trust Lorelle’s judgment on anything WordPress, I did it.

But since changing, I’ve been bombed with spam comments. Just yesterday I got 1,400 spam comments caught by Akismet – and that doesn’t include the 800 that Bad Behavior says it caught.

What gives? Why am I all of sudden being bombarded with spam?

Lorelle told me, and I ultimately believe her, that the Math Comment Spam Protection didn’t work. So no fault of hers.

Yet this tidal wave of spam hit me when I took down Math Comment Spam Protection and installed Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior?

Coincidence?

Have I set something wrong with Bad Behavior and/or Spam Karma2? Or did the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin really work for me?

What are your thoughts?

Have you seen a huge increase in comment spam this week?

Any great resources for Bad Behavior or Spam Karma2 setup?

Lorelle VanFossen, of course, writes Lorelle on WordPress (RSS) – one of the best resources for anything relating to WordPress. Need a plugin? Lorelle’s likely written about it. Need to solve a problem? Lorelle may have covered it. Want the latest news? Lorelle’s the one. She even sums it all up with her WordPress Wednesday column on Blog Hearld (RSS).

Lorelle’s done it all. Including make every blogging mistake possible. At least that’s what she said in her interview with Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips (RSS).

Daniel: What is the biggest blogging mistake you did?

Lorelle: Oh, honey, I’ve done them all. I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve done all the big mistakes. When I read through blog posts listing their blogging mistakes, I think, “Yep, did that one in 2001. Oh, that one, I did it big in 1998. Been there, done that in 2004. Won’t repeat that mistake of 1997.”

Is there just one big mistake? Nope. There are only big lessons that come from every mistake along the blogging path. I tend to focus on the lessons learned and not the screw-ups.

Lessons…that’s the perspective I love about Lorelle. Having spent some time with her at SOBCon07 back in May, it was easy to fall in love with her. She’s real, she’s honest and she doesn’t judge. And just like me, she has her opinions…

Daniel: How long should a blogger wait to monetize the blog?

Lorelle: I do not think bloggers should monetize their blogs. I think that people who want to get into the business of blogging must make a business plan on how they will use blogging for their business or as their business, thus creating a plan for monetizing their blogs.

But general bloggers? Why should your hobby make money? If you want to work your way towards professional blogging, then blog for a year or two to get a feel for blogging and make your business plan. Then move towards being a professional blogger.

I couldn’t agree more. Too many bloggers are watching what the business bloggers are doing and think about the “easy money” they could be making off their blogs. But it’s not easy money. It’s hard work.

But so is blogging in general. Some days it’s easy, some it’s hard. Everyday it’s effort. That’s why many blogs aren’t successful.
And that’s what I love about Lorelle, she tells it like it is. She doesn’t sugar coat it. She’s honest about the ups and downs. That why I recommend that everyone read her new book, Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

I’ve read it three times cover to cover and it’s full of great advice. It’s literally the first blogging book I’ve read that’s really about blogging. Most blog books spend way too much time covering blog platforms or why to blog. Authors sometimes spend 1/2 to 3/4 of a book getting to the meat.

Blogging Tips is different in that Lorelle assumes you’ll get that type of information elsewhere. Instead, she gets right into meat. I highly recommend her book (and I’m not getting an affiliate kickback to say that).

I also really enjoyed Adii’s interview with Lorelle where they talk a bit more WordPress.

You know, it’s also kind of challenging to find photos of Lorelle. I snagged one with her and David Dalka (he’s on the right, I’m on the left and Lorelle is between us) when we were at SOBCon.

I spent a bit of time over the night upgrading to WordPress 2.2 (from 2.0.3). I’m already loving the upgrade. Why?

• The speed optimizations. This version is really quite faster than the previous one I was using – both on the browser side and admin.
• I love being able to scan back through all my comments (previous version only allowed me to see last 20 comments)
• I like the admin tab enhancements. It’s great that Comments now has its own tab.
• It’s great to be able to deactivate all plugins at once.
• Did I mention it’s faster?

I’m quite happy with the upgrade. I have a couple of small hiccups and found a plugin that I couldn’t get to work. Luckily it was a minor plugin. Otherwise, no problems with the upgrade.

And I know that with all computer upgrades there could be some hiccups. So, please, if you find anything that’s not functioning correctly on my site, would you let me know in the comment box?

Thanks, in advance.

And if you’re the do-it-yourselfer, there’s a number of tutorials on how to make the jump to 2.2, including in the WordPress Codex. And if you’re using version 2.1.x, this is considered a mandatory upgrade.

1. Lorelle on WordPress – If I need anything related to WP, I go to Lorelle’s site first. It is such a comprehensive resource. (Bookmark it NOW)
2. WordPress Codex – The second place I go when I need a question answered.
3. Problogger’s WordPress Resources
4. Alex King – I’m loving the Most Popular plugin (I have it running at CasualKeystrokes and it will be here soon)
5. cre8d design
6. Lisa Sabin-Wilson – her upcoming book WordPress for Dummies is sure to be a must have resource
7. WASABI WP Plugins
8. Themes.wordpress.net – the huge sortable database of free WP themes
9. WP Designer – themes and support forums
10. Brian Gardner – more beautiful themes
11. Kaushel Sheth – and more great themes
12. ThemesBase – more themes and support forum
13. WordPress Station – a WP blog about WP

I used 1-3 regularly. And Alex King is a great resource for anything WordPress.

There are a few other resources I either use regularly or have found to be helpful for my clients:

1. WordPress.org – Home to everything WordPress.
2. WordPress Plugins – Finally a plugin directory on WordPress.org. Good initial place to search for plugins – growing quickly.
3. Weblog Tools Collection – Daily updates of new themes and plugins. I read feed daily.
4. BloggingPro – Up-to-Date news about many things WordPress.
5. The WordPress Podcast – WordPress Community Podcast. Nice listens. Most recent podcast covers WordPress 2.2 delay and how tagging figures into future updates.
6. 7 Essential WordPress Hacks – Tubetorial’s 7-part video how-to series. Well-done, easy to follow.
7. WordPress on YouTube – Over 11,000 More than 500 video clips related to using WordPress. Need to know how to do something, likely find it there. (updated)
8. UPDATE: www.wordpressthemes.com

So there’s a few more helpful WordPress Resources. You can find a ton of WordPress sites so if you have anything to add, please let me know.

A few days ago, Randa Clay had the great idea of creating a badge. Great idea, I thought. Why didn’t I think of that? Well, the great thing is, she has.

What does nofollow do?
What it was supposed to do is greatly reduce comment spam. We all know that didn’t work. What it does do is tell Google bots, and other search engines bots, not to follow links in your comments. That means, when someone posts a comment, they get no Google Juice. I don’t feel that’s right. It’s sort of like thanking your clients by cutting off their hand (okay, maybe not that extreme).

Why should we remove it?
First, it doesn’t work to reduce comment spam. Or if it does, it’s quite minimal. Second, by removing it, you reward your commenters with link love. And link love is good. I’m all for spreading as much link love as I can.

Why the U Comment, I Follow Badge?
It’s one way to let your readers know that when they leave comments, they’re going to get link love. Sure, you can write a few post about it and even remind readers from time to time. But many will not see it. But the badge, that stays and your readers can see it.

More and more bloggers are removing nofollow every day. So what are you waiting for? Hop on over to Randa’s blog and get yourself a nofollow badge.

And if you still have nofollow on your comments, take it off, learn how. Using WordPress plugins, it’s easy. I’ve even found how to do it in TypePad – it’s just a bit complicated and would one long post. You can also remove it Blogger and Movable Type.

Let me know when you’ve removed nofollow from your comments. If you need help, let me know. And please, keep spreading the word.

When I began blogging, I knew commenting on other blogs was important. My comments created interest in my blog, which led to increased traffic, which led to more readers.

I also thought it would lead to more links to my blog. Every day I’d visit and leave comments on anywhere from 12-20 blogs. And each day I’d check for link backs in Technorati and Google Blog Search. But I wasn’t getting any. I didn’t know why. I thought I might be doing something wrong.

It was only later that I learned that almost all blogs don’t reward commenters with link backs. That ticked me off a little bit so I looked into why.

It seems that all blogware – WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Movable Type, etc – inserts a little piece of code in all outgoing links that come from comments. In an attempt to stop comment spam, this little piece of code tells search engines not to follow and record any outgoing links placed in comments. Essentially it neuters your comments. And, what’s worse, it doesn’t stop comment spam.

So I say, let’s ditch it. Let’s get rid of this little piece of code. And let’s start giving link love to everyone who comments on our blog. Isn’t it the least we can do to thank them for being a part of our conversations?

This little piece of code looks like this rel=”nofollow”. If you haven’t done anything to remove it, you can guarantee it’s still there. With a very little effort, you can remove it from your blog. Below I offer you some simple options:

WordPress
Very, very easy to remove. You just need to install a plugin. There are many, but I like Kimmo Suominen’s Dofollow. The steps to install are easy:

1. Download the plugin
2. Unzip it
3. Upload it to your WordPress plugins folder on your server (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Login to your WordPress admin account, go to ‘Plugins’ and activate it.
5. That’s it. No more rel=”nofollow”

Blogger
BetaBlogger has the details of how to remove rel=”nofollow” from Googles Blogger.

TypePad
I’ve searched and been asking around – nothing yet. Will update if I find something. UPDATE: After a bit of investigation, it appears that removing rel=”nofollow” from TypePad is a bit more involved – requiring some coding. If anyone has a post about the process, I’d love to know about it.
Movable Type
Found one post from someone who tried to disable nofollow and eventually got nowhere.

If you use WordPress, it’s easy. So what are you waiting for? Remove that nofollow. Because don’t you think it’s time you give your commenters a little more link love?

As a blogger, or website owner in general, you want links coming back to your site/blog. Links to your site is one of the major ways to increase your Google ranking. That’s why in the blogosphere, link love is high currency.

If you knew that, then you likely think that each comment you leave on a blog would give you more links to your site or blog. Most often, though, this is not the case. Most blogware has a little piece of code it attaches to outgoing links from comments called a ‘nofollow.’ What does nofollow do, well, it tells Google bots not to follow links off your blog. Hence, no link love and no Google Juice.

So really, nofollow sucks. So bloggers like Ben Yoskovitz, Wendy Piersall, Chris Cree, Andy Beard and Chris Garrett have all seen the light. As has Robert Scoble. Well, I have too. So no more nofollow on dmiracle.com.

This means now that every time you leave a comment on my blog, you’ll get a little more link love to yours. You’ve helped make my blog successful, so it’s the least I can do for you.
Want to join the party? Here are some resources for removing the nofollow attribute from your blog comments.

• Andy Beard has a the definitive resource for nofollow plugins for WordPress.
• Semiologic’s Dofollow is probably the most used plugin for WordPress. Easy install, by the way.
• You can also read Dougal Campbell’s piece on the nofollow.
• MovableType users can check out this post.

I’m looking for resources to remove nofollow from TypePad and Blogger, if it’s possible. Know of any?

So, how do you feel knowing that all your comments (beginning yesterday) will now be full-on link love?�

I’ve been officially blogging since January 8th and I’ve already collected and deleted more than 600 spam comments. In the same amount of time I’ve recorded more than 200 legitimate comments Akismet (thank you to all of you, by the way). If it wasn’t for , I can’t imagine how much more work blogging would be.

So far Akismet has caught every piece of comment spam while only catching three legitimate comments. So I want to send a shout out to Matt Mullenweg of WordPress for it’s development. As of 6:40am this morning, here’s the amount of spam Akismet has caught. I refreshed the page a few times and the numbers jump quite a bit in only seconds between refreshes. And look at this number – 94% of all comments Akismet catches is spam. WOW!

Steve Rubel reports that eBuilt Group tracked 8.8 million pings on weblogs.com between January 23rd and January 26th and found that 53% of all pings is spam, 64% of all pings from blogs in English is spam and 56% of all pinging blogs are spam. Amazing, huh?

And it’s not just post comments. The blogosphere is riddled with spammers. ProBlogger cites that MyBlogLog is having to create their own anti-spam policy. I guess where there’s success, there’s freeloading spammers waiting to pounce.
So that leads me to the question…does spam work? It has too, right? I mean if it didn’t work, why would it be so prevalent? So while I just delete it without as much as a glace, others must be allowing it on their blogs.

Well, we can all do something to combat it?

1. First moderate all your comments.
2. Second, get a comment spam filter in place for your blog. For WordPress Akismet or Spam Karma 2 work great. Movable Type and TypePad users, check out Six Apart’s Anti-Spam Plugin Page. If you use Blogger, you’re likely using captcha, which also works well.
3. Third, don’t ever click on a spam link. Doing so is like responding – you’ll get flooded with spam after that.
4. Fourth, when you’re moderating your comments, error on caution. I delete any comment that doesn’t look legitimate, even if the comment is a nice one. Look at the email and web addresses of the comment for origin. That often gives it away.

You really can combat comment spam. Most bloggers do it. If you don’t, begin with the steps above and you’ll find some immediate relief.

And, let’s ask our readers – what have you done to successfully combat comment spam?

In the final design I used the pages feature in WordPress to create the ‘static’ pages that you’d find on any brochure site. We made sure the blog was on the ‘homepage’ while still adding a brief intro about his work.

Dr Elliott is trained as a Naturopath. He’s more recently trained in an interesting alternative therapy called BodyTalk. Based in Applied Kinesiology and western medicine, BodyTalk looks at healing the whole of a person’s physical body, emotions, mind, and spirit. He works with many types of ailments, including chronic diseases, with great results. Certainly interesting work.

Why? It’s so easy today to create custom error pages. Why don’t more site owners do so?

While error pages can certainly be a pain the butt for our visitors, they can also be an opportunity. How?

First, it can be an opportunity not to frustrate our visitors or make them feel stupid. Nothing does both more than ’404� – Page Not Found.’

Second, the error page can offer great opportunity to shine and show you’re take the extra step in customer service. Imagine if your error message said, “Page not found. Ah, looks like you’ve stumbled onto a bad link that I haven’t found yet. I’m sorry. This is certainly not your fault. Here, check out the options below and see if that helps you find what you’re looking for.” Then, give them a site map.

Quite a bit better, huh? I add a similar message on my error page. Then I use Dagon Design’s WordPress Sitemap Generator Plugin to generate a sitemap right on my error page. This way, visitors have a better chance of finding what they want. The reason I chose DD’s plugin is because it’s highly configurable. To the point that I can easily exclude pages from my site map – pages like redirects after form submissions, for instance.

Using WordPress, Rick Cockrum takes another approach. He sites Brandon Wood’s approach from Building a Better 404 Page for WordPress. Brandon added automatic search results to his 404 page, using the keywords from the broken URL. With a small script from Doug Karr, Brandon was off and running.

You should take a look at Brandon’s error page. It works pretty nice. The real test will be in what results it brings up based on what visitors are looking for. I’m going to put Doug’s script on my error page soon and give it a once-over. Thanks to Rick, Brandon and Doug.

There are other approaches to your 404 error page. My suggestion is offer something that will benefit your audience. That way, you can take a negative and quickly turn it into a positive.

Now we could each wait for Google’s bots to crawl our sites and find our content – both old and new. Or, we could force the issue a little bit by taking advantage of a Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Part of Google’s Webmaster Tools is Google Sitemap. With Google Sitemap, you can submit a site map of your website/blog to Google and their bots will pick up your new content right away. Much faster than waiting for the bots to come back around your server.

My new friend Gary Conn covers the ‘how to’ using WordPress and a WordPress plugin in a great post from a couple of days back. Read his post for the details. But here are the highlights:

Step One: Add Your URL to Google.

Step Two: Create a Sitemap

Step Three: Add Your Sitemap to Google

Step Four: That’s it! No More Steps

Creating a Google Sitemap was an item on my development list that I hadn’t gotten too. Gary made it sound so easy, I decided to jump in and do it today.

I followed the steps, using Arne Brachhold’s Google Site Map Generator Plugin for WordPress v2. It was easy. I had the plugin installed, a Google Webmaster Tools account added to my Google account and my sitemap file added to Google in about 10 minutes. No kidding. It’s that easy.

And Google had my site indexed in less than 90 seconds itself. So there you go, in less than 15 minutes, all the page of my site are indexed in Google. And when I finish this post, my Arne’s plugin will update my sitemap file and ping Google to reindex my site. From now on, every time I write a post, the plugin will update the sitemap and ping Google. Gotta love instant gratification!

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… “Dawud, you’re a web developer, you deal with code all the time. Of course this was easy for you.”

So I’m going to prove it’s easy by putting one of my friends on the spot. Over the weekend, I’ll ask Dave Schoof, a client of mine, who owns The Disquiet in Men, go through this process himself – without my help. I’ll have him follow Gary’s tutorial. Once he’s done, I’ll ask him to post his comments on how long it took him and how easy it was.

If you need further help, I did manage to find a video by Andre Cheperon. It’s a bit dated as Google Sitemaps was a stand-alone product when he made this tutorial. Though it’s still quite a valid as Google just added Sitemaps into their Webmaster Tools.

I’d love to hear your experiences both installing and using Google Sitemaps. What difference has it made in your site traffic?