There are many ways to get traffic to your blog. One of the ways I found it effective is to install a Facebook Plugin known as FbLikeButton.

It will display the Like symbol at your blog. You can configure to place it at the top and/or at the bottom of your posting. As for me, I configure for both locations.

If you click on the Like symbol, it will try to detect your Facebook name.

Once it detected it, it will display your Facebook name at the blog.

If you go to your own facebook’s wall(eg http://www.facebook.com/alwinchuah), it will display the blog title and the blog site link.

However I notice it will post the article link to your facebook wall only once. Even though you click a few times on Like symbol or a few days later you try to click the Like symbol on the same article. However if you click Like symbol on a new article from the same blog site, it will publish it on your Facebook’s wall.

Basically what is posted on the Facebook’s wall can be seen by your friends. If they are interested on the topic, they will click on the title. It will then lead them to the blog page.

Increase Traffic

So the best way is once you have posted your article on your blog, click on the Like symbol yourself. It will then display your blog title and link at your Facebook’s wall. Your Facebook’s friends will then be able to click on the link and visit your blog. If they like it, they will click on the Like button, your blog article title will then be displayed in your friends’ Facebook’s wall. If your friend’s friends.click on the title, it will lead them your blog. This is how you get traffic from Facebook.

Download Plugin

You can download the plugin at
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fblikebutton/

Install Plugin

This plugin follows the standard WordPress installation method:

1. Unzip the fblikebutton.zip in your PC.

2. Upload the fblikebutton folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory using ftp.

3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Configure Plugin

At the dashboard, go to Settings->’FBLikeButton’

Modify the fields to your choice and save.

You might want to read my other article on twitter
http://www.globalblogincome.com/blog-plugin/use-twitter-follow-me-plugin-wordpress-blog/

I hope you like this article.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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If you are having your own domain with wordpress software installed, then this article will be relevant to you.

As a blogger, beside busy finding articles to write, we also need to take care of our blog site.
There are 2 areas that we need to take care. They are
•    Security
•    Traffic / SEO

I have also provided a link for each plugin that will bring to a review page & also where to download the plugin. All the plugins mentioned are free. However you are most welcome to donate to the plugins creators.
Following are the plugins that I personally used and found to be effective:-

Security

Security Scan

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Lockin Lockdown

WP-Spam Free

Traffic / SEO

All in One SEO Pack

Google XML sitemap

SEO Friendly Images

Statpress

Zemanta

Maxblogpress Ping Optimizer

After applying all the above plugins, I found my blog is getting better in terms of traffic & more secure.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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When I saw how this plugin function, my mind goes wow! My eyes immediately become wide open. This is the first time that a wordpress plugin can capture my attention.I am really fascinated with this plugin known as Apture Plugin.

This plugin allows keywords in your articles to be connected to Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Maps, Royalty Free Pictures, music and more from 50+ sources of content with one click.

Apture allows 2 methods to connect to the above resources. One of the methods is hyperlink. When you click on the hyperlink word, it will pop up a small resizable window to the resource that I link it to ( eg wikipedia, YouTube, etc). I like this method best as reader can still continue to read my blog.

You can see how hyperlink works
Click on the word blog. It will display a small window containing information from Wikipedia.

You click on this word Wordpress plugin, a small YouTube video screen appears.

Actually I have link the words to the selected resources.

Another method is known as embedding. It will display a resource fully( eg Wikipedia, YouTube, etc)
I like the hyperlink best as it just create a small window displaying the Wikipedia or Youtube content and the reader can still continue to read your blog. You can resize the window to your liking.

Benefits
• Increased Time On Site. Your readers are going to be engaging with all of the content Apture adds to your blog right on your site.
• Easily create external links increasing your SEO rank in search engines.
• Add Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Maps, Royalty Free Pictures, music and more from 50+ sources of content with one click.
• Its free and easy to install and setup only takes a minute.

Download

You can download the plugin here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/apture

Steps to install & configure
• Download the Plugin into your PC.
•    Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
•    Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.

You will see the following after you have activated your plugin

You need to fill up all the requirements as stated below and click on Sign Up.

You can review the settings and click on Continue.

Click on Install Apture Script and you can start to use by clicking Start Using Apture

To learn how to use the Apture better. You can see the Video below:-

If you like this post, please add your comment below. You get a backlink too.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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There are 2 types of Blog visitors. One type of readers is they like to read your blog content. The other loves to watch short video.

Therefore it is best to have both type of media posted on your blog. .

In a typical way, it will take time & effort in order to search for videos relevant to your blog. After searching, you need to create a post and embed the YouTube code in it.

Now you can do it the easy way. There is a plugin that allows you to display YouTube video thumbnails on your blog at the side column.
The Plugin is known as “YouTube Monetizer”

Features
•    Display YouTube video thumbnails on your blog
•    Monetize the full video display page with AdSense, banners or opt in.
•    Can specify keywords to display only relevant videos related to your blog.
•    Can choose display order
•    Can customize using CSS

Following is the sample YouTube video thumbnails at the side column of my blog. You need to scroll down to see

After you have click on one of the videos, you will see this screen.  
The beauty of this plugin is that it allows you put banners, adsense or opt-in at the top or at the bottom of the video. Hopefully, this way you will earn some money.

Area of Improvement
I hope they would include in the next version, whereby each time I click on the video, it will launch in new tab in Firefox and new window Internet Explorer.

You may download the plugin at
http://www.profitplugs.com/youtube-monetizer-wordpres

Steps to install & configure
• Download the Plugin into your PC.
•    Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
•    Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.

Configuration

Click on Tools->YouTube Monetizer.

You can then paste your codes for banner, adsense or opt-in at Before Video Code and/or After Video Code
Click on Update settings

Then you need to go to Appearance->Widgets
At the widgets , browse and look for YouTube Monetizer.
Drag the Youtube monetizer widget to whichever column and position you want at the sidebar or side column.

That’s all you need to do. Try and implement it at your blog.

Cheers
Alwin Chuah

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Once you have setup your blog, you will be happily started to post materials to your blog.
Initially the traffic will be minimal. Once the traffic starts to increase, you will have some comment posted on your blog by the readers. This will make you even happier as of now you have some feedback.

Very soon you will find that there are some comments that are not related to your postings. Some of these comments are just fill with links, .political or religious statements or foul languages. These are known as comment spam.

As a blogger , we are responsible for what is posted on our blog. Whether it is by ourself or by our blog readers. Therefore for best practice, we must check through the comments before we allow it to be published. If the comment spams are a lot then it become a tedious chore to delete it one by one.

I have found a plugin known as WP-SpamFree that will help to monitor the comments and blocked those comments classify as spam. In this way, I will have minimal number of  comments to check and save my precious time.  I found this plugin is effective and is even better than Akismet ( This is also another plugin to detect comment spam)

Features of the WP-Spam plugin
1. It provides a counter on your dashboard.
2. No need to have CAPTCHA’s challenge installed. Note: Some of the CAPTCHA method which is complex has turn off some readers from posting comment.
3. Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use — no configuration necessary.
4. A reliable and effective comment spam detection system.
5. Easy to install & configure.
6. Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can say that.
7. The best thing is that this plugin is free. However you are welcome to offer a donation.

Download
You can download the plugin at
http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/plugins/wp-spamfree

Install & configure
Unzip the plugin and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.
Click on Plugin and look for WP-Spamfree.
Click on Activate.
Also you will see Settings.
Click on Settings to configure it or alternatively you can take the default settings.

This is must-have plugin for serious & ambitious blogger.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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If you already have a Twitter account and would like other people to follow your twitter postings, you may do so by placing a “Twitter Follow me” badge on your Wordpress blog.

Your blog reader just need to click on the Twitter Follow Me badge and it will be taken to your Twitter’s page

Download Plugin
First you need to download Follow Me Plugin into your PC from http://wpburn.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-followme-plugin

Steps to install & configure
Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.
Click on Settings->Follow Me Settings

Feature of Follow Me plugin:
•    change the color of the badge
•    change the follow me label (Follow me /  Follow us)
•    change the position of the badge (left side or right side and the distance from top)

Following is the screenshot of the Follow Me configuration screen

The best thing is that as you scroll down your blog page, the Twitter Follow Me badge will be continued to be displayed.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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Do you know about half of the world population do not understand English at all?

This meant, if we write our blog in English, only half the world population can understand what we write. The other half will not understand at all.

Therefore in order to increase readers to our blog, we need to have a plugin that can translate English language to other languages. This way we can allow more people to enjoy what we have written, ahem.

I search in the Wordpress plugin and found the Global translator is the most popular plugin.

Following is the screenshot your blog reader will see and by clicking the selected flag, the blog information will be converted to that country’s language.

Key features of Global Translator plugin:-

•    It can translate 41 different languages

•    It support 4 different Translation Engines:

from Google Translation Engine, Babel Fish, Promt & FreeTranslations.com

•    Search Engine Optimized:

It uses the permalinks by adding the language code at the beginning of all your URI. For example the english version on www.domain.com/mycategory/mypost will be automatically transformed in www.domain.com/en/mycategory/mypost

•    Fully configurable layout:

You can easily customize the appearance of the translation bar by choosing between a TABLE, DIV or IMAGE MAP based layout for the flags bar and by selecting the number of translations to make available to your visitors

Plugin Download

You can download the plugin here at http://www.nothing2hide.net/wp-plugins/wordpress-global-translator-plugin/

Steps to install & configure

Download the Plugin into your PC.

Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.

Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.

Click on Settings->Global Translator

The configuration screen appears. You may follow the guide on the screen and configure accordingly. If you not sure, use default settings.

I hope you like this article

Cheers

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In order to increase traffics to your blog, you need to optimize the keywords in content and also in images.

Many people use keywords to search for information. As such it is important to optimize the blog with correct keywords in order to ensure your blog is displayed prominently in the search results page.

But there are other people that search for images or pictures. Therefore it is encouraged to have picture or images in your blog posting. Do you know pictures attract readers more than words?

In order to optimize the images or pictures into SEO friendly, you need to ensure the ALT & TITLE attributes are correctly done.

As I am not a programmer by profession, I have difficulty in checking the HTML programming lines and update the ALT & TITLE correctly.

Enter the SEO Friendly Images plugin that really makes my day. If you are seriously in increasing traffic to your blog, you really need to activate this plugin in your blog.
Once you have activated the plugin, it will automatically update all the images in your blog with ALT & TITLE. You can double check it by looking at the HTML codes.
It really makes your life easy. Now who says automation is bad?

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.

TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

You can download the plugin at seo friendly images

Installation & Configuration
Download the Plugin into your PC.
Unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Go to your blog’s plugin and activate it.

Click on Settings->SEO Friendly Images.
The following appears.

You can change the parameters for ALT & TITLE or you can take the default settings. After that click on Update Options to save it.

It will then update all of your blogs images with ALT & TITLE attributes.

Cheers

Alwin Chuah

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There are many ways to optimize your blog in order to speed it up.

One of the way is to optimize the MySQL database of your blog..

The reason you need to optimize the database is that over a period of time and usage, the database will be fragmented.

I have read in a couple blogs on how to optimize the blog. When I saw the commands, programming codes and lengthy steps required to optimize the database, I froze. I told myself I am not going to use those methods. I knew that all it takes is one wrong move and my blog’s database will be corrupted.

I have search around and found a useful plugin that allow optimizing your blog database safely and efficiently.

It is known as Optimize DB.
You can download it here at http://yoast.com/wordpress/optimize-db/

Installation
You just need to download the zip file from the above site.
Unzip the file
Upload the file to your blog’s plugin folder.

Usage
At the Manage Plugin screen, go to the Optimize DB plugin and select Activate.

At the Optimize DB’s plugin, select Optimize.

It will read your blog’s database and display a similar list. You just need to click on Optimize Now.

Once it finished optimizing, it will display below.

Simple isn’t ?

I hope the above article is useful to you.

Regards
Alwin Chuah

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As you add more & more articles, pictures, links to your blog or you have quite a lot of visitors to your blog, you will notice that it takes longer time to fully load all the items. Well, depending on the visitors bandwidth speed. For those that are using a slower speed bandwidth, it will take a while for your visitor to start reading the blog. Blog readers are an impatient lot. They will not wait if it takes longer than usual to fully load.

Therefore if you want to maintain goodwill with your visitors, you need to improve the access time, your visitor can start to view your blog.

That’s where WP Super Cache comes in.

This is how it works:-

In laymen term

- This plugin makes your site download much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests.

In technical term

-WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

When WP Super Cache is installed, html files are generated and they are served without ever invoking a single line of PHP. How fast can your site serve graphic files? That’s (almost) as fast it will be able to serve these cached files. If your site is struggling to cope with the daily number of visitors, then this plugin is for you.

You can get it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

You just need to download the files, unzip it and upload to your blog’s plugin folder.
Then you activate the plugin.

Go to Settings -> WP Super Cache

Tick on the “On WP cache and Super Cache enabled” & other items that are helpful for your blog. Just follow the instructions on the screen

I find that it improve my blog download speed. It works well with Internet Explorer & Firefox.
Cheers

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