Tips and Plugins to Make a Multi-Author Blog More Manageable

Running a multi-author blog is no mean feat. Managing content, ensuring timely publishing, maintaining schedules, ensuring proper communication with your authors, ensuring that the posts stick to some predefined guidelines and tracking changes to a post are just some of the tasks that you have to take care of while running a blog. In this post I will share some tips and useful plugins that you can use to make your job a tad bit easier.

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Managing Communication

In a multi-author blog setup, proper and timely communication is very important. Lack of proper communication can result in delayed posts, below quality content and frustration. You may choose any platform like email, IRC, Twitter, Facebook Groups, Google Groups or even a private blog.

 
 Tip: Choose one platform which suits everyone and stick to it. Using multiple channels at once will only cause confusion.

If you want to go via the blog route, you should check out the P2 Theme. It can be easily used as a private blog where discussions on any topic can be done on the same page and it provides a good visual platform for discussion. Many of WP’s core developer blogs are hosted using this setup. You can install plugins like Private Messages for WordPress and P2 Check In and you can have your own private social network hosted from your site. Whichever platform you choose, stick to it and be available for your authors at all times so that they feel that someone is there to address their issues and concerns.

Managing Posts

If not done in an organised manner, managing posts can become a big nightmare. A post goes through many processes from the time of submission to its final publishing that if you loose track of things midway it can impact its final output. Depending on your workflow, you need to decide how a post will move from the author to the frontpage. WordPress offers several plugins you can use to ease your job.
The best plugin for doing such a job has to be Edit Flow. This plugin alone handles lots of things which you would need several plugins for.

• It displays all posts in a drag / drop type calendar format so that you can schedule your posts just by dragging and dropping and can ensure your blog never runs dry.
• You can set custom statuses for your posts apart from ‘Pending Review’ and ‘Draft’ so that you and your authors can track which stage a post is at.
• Authors can get automatic notifications if the status of their post changes.
• Authors can leave notes on the post edit page so that they can discuss about the post with each other. Email notifications are available for the same.
• You can also set custom metadata for each post which your authors can fill out 

You may need to combine the Edit Flow plugin with something that will help you manage post assignments i.e. which posts will be taken up by whom. Unfortunately the plugins that used to offer such functionality are either broken or left abandoned by their developers. So the only choice here is to use a non-WordPress solution like Basecamp which can be of big help in managing post assignments.
Managing posts is not only about their workflow but how they are structured as well. A post should satisfy some basic requirements which you might have in mind. Make sure these are well communicated to your authors. For example their formatting, how to style them and ensuring correct spelling and grammar are just some of the basic requirements that every post should fulfill. You can use the Metadata feature of the Edit Flow Plugin so that an author fills in the details on how they have fulfilled all the requirements of the post.

Managing Authors

To begin with your blog must have a section dedicated to those who want to join your blog as an author. This page should highlight all the things you are looking for, the kind of content you want for your blog and all the terms and conditions which you want the authors to fulfill. You may also want your authors to sign an agreement in writing over terms and coniditons under which they will write/work for your blog. For smaller blogs this may sound like an overkill but in the long run such things can be helpful.
There are people who are not vell versed with WordPress but can write well. You can either help them in using WordPress or just take their posts via mail and publish them yourself under their name. Sometimes you can go that extra mile and create a self help tutorial for those who are not vell versed with WordPress and the publishing aspect. Normally WordPress offers enough help via its help menus. But if you want to add something extra for your authors you can use the WP Help plugin to add your own help sections for your authors.

WordPress by default provides some default usergroups (Roles) like ‘Editors’ and ‘Contributors’. But you may want to edit those groups or add your own to obtain finer control over what your authors see and what they do not. You can use the User Role Editor or Members plugins to achieve the same result. The Members plugin will help you do more than just role editing. It can help you in setting up a private blog accessible just to some people. You can use it in conjunction with the P2 Theme to setup a private blog just for your authors as I suggested before.
Not only can you limit access to various sections of the Dashboard, but with plugins like Adminimize or Advanced Access Manager you can trim down the menu items or meta boxes on various pages you think your authors won’t need. This can be really beneficial if most of your authors are not comfortable with WordPress. They will see only those things which are required for posting.

Promoting Your Authors

There is no bigger reward for your authors than getting due credit and exposure for their work. Giving them exposure can eventually motivate them to write better and more often. To start with, choose a theme which lists authors’ names under every post heading and on the single post pages. If your theme is missing these tags, you can add them by using the get_the_author() tag.
If your posts are written by more than one author then you must check out Co-Authors Plus. It allows you to add more than one author to a post and list them accordingly using proper template tags.
Also you should make sure your theme has an author box beneath each post which lists the author’s name, their bio, link to their recent posts and also link to their website. For this, ensure that all authors have filled the complete profile and have set a gravatar for themselves. Most themes now come with their own author box but if your theme doesn’t have one you can use the Author Box After Posts plugin. Check our author box by hovering your mouse over my name beneath this post. You should also make use of the Author Template feature of WordPress which allows each author to have their own dedicated page with all their posts on it. You can follow our tutorial on Author Templates to create your own if your theme doesn’t come with one.
You can also help get your authors featured in Google Search Results as well. If you are using the WordPress SEO Plugin, just ask your users to fill their Google+ field in the Profile menu. Then the following tag will appear in the head section of the single post page.

<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/105601606991796913303"/>

Google will then pull their name, photo and link to their Google+ profile page whenever a post appears in it. It’s a nice way to give your authors extra exposure. If you are not using WordPress SEO then you can add this functionality by using the following code snippet as a plugin. Save the following code into a file called googleplusheader.php and put it in your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it. Now all your authors have to do is fill the Google+ Profile field and then this link will be added to their post pages.

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Author Header Tag Plugin

Description: This plugin adds a link to your Google+ Profile

Author: Navjot Singh

Version: 1.0

*/

function wptuts_googleplus_contactmethod( $contactmethods ) {

    if ( ! isset( $contactmethods['googleplus'] ) )

        $contactmethods['googleplus'] = 'Google+';

    return $contactmethods;

}

add_filter( 'user_contactmethods', 'wptuts_googleplus_contactmethod' );

add_action( 'wp_head', 'wptuts_googleplus_header' );

function wptuts_googleplus_header() {

    if ( is_singular() ) {

        $gplus_link = get_the_author_meta( 'googleplus', get_current_user_id() );

        if ( $gplus_link )

            echo '<link rel="author" href="' . $gplus_link . '" />';

    }

}

?>

Conclusion

These are just some of the tips that one could use for a multi-author blog. In the end, every blog is different and it’s up to you how you handle things. So, how do you manage your blog? Share with me in the comments.

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Make Money with Wordpress

With WordPress powering 8% of the websites in the world, the demand for WordPress related services is increasing exponentially. Not every WordPress website is owned by a developer. After the users get familiar with basic WordPress usage, they would need more specialized services to enhance the way their website looks or to add new features. If you offer your clients WordPress based websites or are involved in any WordPress based development, then this article is just for you.

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Most WordPress site owners have got their website made by others, or have managed to somehow set it up themselves by reading few articles or using one click installation provided by most hosting companies. Once these users start understanding how they could leverage the website, they would need additional services to make their website better and more functional.
These things would be like a custom theme, plugin or just some basic theme modification work. This basic requirement creates a whole new market place which developers like me and you could cater to.
If you offer custom design or development, working with different clients and their requirements might have offered you a lot of experience. This can be used to create products or services specially targeted for WordPress users. Not only will this provide additional source of income if done well, but if it also addresses problems faced by WordPress users, then it can be the only thing you need to do to make a living.
In this article, we will try to identify these distinct WordPress services into different categories and see how few companies are dominating the market.

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Examples of WordPress Based Services or Products

Theme Design

Unless you have a big client, the profit from a single custom made website project is not much. Most projects also end up as a disappointment, as clients sometimes reject good design ideas. Getting into theme development, gives designers the opportunity to work on their own time, use good design principles and create something they are proud of. Marketplaces such as ThemeForest.net offer between 50 to 70% of the sale amount to all theme developers. Considering a basic WordPress theme is priced around $40 on ThemeForest, even if 100 people download it, it would mean the designer earns $2,000. This is actually more than what most freelance designers and small companies in regions like India earn from a custom design project.
Some top theme developers like Orman Clark have around 18 themes with over 23,000 sales. If you do the math, it’s a pretty impressive number. Of course we would not reach that number in one day, but it’s better to start now, and if you have multiple themes for sale this could be a nice way to do what you love and earn money.

Plugin or App Theme Development

One of the plugins that I absolutely love and use for each single WordPress project is Gravity Forms. There are many free plugins similar to this and they are great, but I and many other users find this plugin to be the best. The developers have made one thing, and this one thing named “Gravity Forms” makes creating complex forms as easy as creating a WordPress post.
Gravity Forms charges just $39 for a basic license. Having a useful product such as this along with a low price has made Gravity Forms a market leader in the WordPress forms category. Low price seems less profit, but considering the number of WordPress websites, this can get very profitable. As of today this plugin is installed on more than 300,000 WordPress websites. As WordPress developers, some of us might have already created custom functionalities for our clients. Creating a premium plugin out of it can add a new source of income.

WordPress Specific Web Hosting

Over the last few years, WordPress specific hosting has become more than just a marketing gimmick. While most web hosting companies are using WordPress in their website promotion only for SEO reasons some companies such as WPEngine.com & Page.ly have become specialized WordPress hosting platforms with almost no competition.
Many web hosting companies offer one click installation of WordPress, but WordPress users do require many other features such as automated security updates, daily backups, one click restore, etc. which are not addressed by most hosts. Despite WordPress being easy to update, many users still ignore it or are unaware of it.
For such a market, selling WordPress specific hosting which allows users to focus on their site and content while security updates & backups are taken care of becomes more useful than a general web hosting account. If you currently charge $10/month for general hosting, then you could easily charge double for WordPress specific services with your hosting. Since there are very few companies like WPEngine or Page.ly, if you start now you definitely would be among the first few companies with less competition.

Premium Support, Backup & Maintenance Services

Like WordPress specific hosting you could package your after sales maintenance services as WordPress management to offer optimization, regular security audits, backups for a fixed monthly or yearly fee. Most companies have already started doing this but are not marketing it well. If you are able to promote this service and get good reviews, even doing general updates could add an additional source of income.
Services like ManageWP.com & WPRemote.com allows us to update WordPress core, plugins, themes & take backups remotely in just a few clicks. By using this as the tool to manage your WordPress customers, instead of logging into each customer’s website, you could remotely manage all WordPress websites through one single control panel. Considering these services cost as low as $0.02 per website and your few minutes each day there is no additional requirement to start offering WordPress management services and make decent profits from day one.

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While being a WordPress designer or developer and working on custom projects gives a good income, the above business ideas would give regular income by doing exactly what you want to do and on your own terms. It makes sense to get started early and who knows you could be the next person to be featured on ThemeForest for reaching a million dollars in sales.
If you have any more ideas please share them in the comments below.

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Crucial Things You Must Do When Changing Your WordPress Theme

A WordPress theme is a way of ‘skinning’ or creating the outer design of your website. The theme can make a huge difference to the presentation and the overall look of your site.

The theme offers a graphical interface via template files. It modifies the way in which the site is displayed without modifying the basic software itself. The theme directory in WordPress offers several different styles and types of themes.

If you have used WordPress, you may have already switched themes once, twice, or even several times. If this is your first time, you need to take care of certain aspects of your site. It is very easy and simple to change themes in WordPress with just a few clicks, but you need to have a checklist of items to take care of before you change the theme. These steps are critical to ensure that everything works smoothly, or you may end up losing parts of your site that you did not intend to lose.

Before making changes to your WordPress theme, it’s wise to take things step-by-step and do it slowly and carefully.

First, change smaller elements to confirm that they are functioning properly. Once you are satisfied, you can start making the more drastic and dramatic changes.

You also need to familiarize yourself with the structure and semantics of the new WordPress theme before you start changing things, so that you can be aware of what you are doing and tackle problems effectively.

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Note Aspects of Your Current Theme

You might have made some previous changes using solutions and snippets that you found on the web and added them manually to your current theme. This is done in the form of the functions.php file and as you just made the changes once, you may have forgotten about them.
It is important to go through the current theme file and make note of all the additional code that you have added. It is also important to check out the load time of the current theme, to give you a good basis for comparison after installing the new theme.
Test the load time of the various pages, not just the homepage, by means of tools, such as YSlow.

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Backing Up Files

Create a full site backup before you change your WordPress theme – this way, you will never completely lose any file. This is a precautionary measure to be taken for all your theme files, plugins, and any other important database or element.
It is highly unlikely that you would lose them while changing the theme, but you need to be safe.

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Maintenance Mode Template

While you are making changes to your WordPress theme, you don’t want users and other visitors to see the site as you’re making changes. The best alternative would be to switch over to a maintenance mode for about half an hour or so, while you ensure that the new theme is well in place and functioning properly.
Remember to set up the maintenance mode and then start activating the new theme. If your site is not yet launched to the public, there really is no problem. If, however, you have a lot of visitors and high traffic, it’s not advisable to allow users to see a broken version of the site.
WordPress offers plugins for maintenance mode and this helps redirect visitors to a maintenance page for a certain period of time. The page can show visitors the approximate time it will take to come back live or you can just give a short message explaining that you’ll be back.
It is a very popular plug-in and it allows a splash page to be added to the blog. The normal message visitors will see is one of ‘Maintenance Mode – currently undergoing maintenance. Try after so many hours, days, and minutes and so on… Sorry for the Inconvenience.’
When you install the maintenance mode, other administrators who are logged in can still access the blog, but you can limit the user type who can.

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Testing Plugins

After activating the new theme, you will have to make sure that all the plugins are still in working condition.  Look at all the notes you made in the beginning and see whether there is any functionality from the original theme that you would want to bring back to the new theme.
Test all of the features, such as the search, the single post pages, the contact page and others. Check out whether all the widgets are still in working condition. Ensure that the formatting has not changed with respect to the plugins.
When you change the theme, the new plugins usually use the existing style for display, but these may not always look good or match your new theme.

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Check if Your RSS Is Working

FeedBurner is commonly used for WordPress RSS feeds. Default feeds can be connected to FeedBurner and this enables the user to view the analytics on their feed subscribers.
Several themes in WordPress, such as the Standard Theme, the Headway Theme and some others allow the user to integrate FeedBurner while changing the theme. It is important to take care of this aspect and check that the feed is properly directed to the FeedBurner. Failing this, you will not receive any RSS feed for your blog or site.
This might also result in losing track of several current subscribers to your blog or site, as they had subscribed making use of the /feed/ URL. If this is no longer properly pointing to FeedBurner, you will lose them. In fact, they will still be there, but are not visible to you as you cannot see them in the FeedBurner count.

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Updating Ads

You might want to update ads and other third party items on your site. For instance, if you are using Google AdSense, you are allowed to format the ads. The best thing would be to customize them to suit your new theme. You could change the color or the size.
For instance, if the previous theme was blue, or you had blue links in Google AdSense, and your new color is orange it makes sense to make changes to the AdSense links as well.
You can also make changes to other third party items, such as Facebook Like buttons, the Twitter widget, and so on. They can be adjusted with respect to size and color in accordance with your new WordPress theme.

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Compatibility With Multiple Browsers

After making changes to the theme, check out whether the site can be accessed with different browsers. Different browsers render themes differently, so you need to make sure that the new design looks good on all browsers, or at least the major ones.
It has also been noted that some themes break completely in different browsers, even though they work fine on some. If you think several of your visitors or users use Internet Explorer, ensure that they can access it.
Other things you need to take care of are to check the bounce rate. Some themes work better than others while navigating around the site. Some themes result in increasing your bounce rate and you may want to work on tweaking this aspect.

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Conclusion

WordPress has an impressive array of vibrant styles and themes, so there is no excuse for sticking to the default theme just because it does its basic job. Today, it is a lot more than just substance. Presentation and style do count. You need to overcome certain obstacles and maintain a checklist of things that you need to take care of before making the switch.
You need to take a backup of almost everything; database, files, and so on. You can use the Live Preview feature to see the changes before you publish the theme to your site. Also, check out whether the new theme is compatible with all commonly used browsers, such as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome.
Once you make the switch, it would be a good idea to inform your users. You can just write a quick blog post and let them know, and you could even ask them for bug reports. You can ask the audience through Facebook or Twitter and get feedback on the site and whether it looks good on their browser and so on.
If there are any issues, you can ask them to send a screenshot so you can fix it. It is important to get the opinion of different users, as they will have different screen resolutions and browsers. Check out what your site looks like on mobile devices by manually testing the new theme with iOS and Android.
You can also ask the RSS readers to visit the site and see the changes. Try to prune and get rid of anything that you don’t need. While choosing a WordPress theme, choose wisely. Users usually have a lot of advice and suggestions. Communicate with them and start working on improvements. Have a checklist of your own while making any changes to your WordPress theme.
What other things would you add to this checklist for changing your theme? Let us know in the comments below!
Update: As @humpyD pointed out in the comments below, the “maintenance mode” plugin linked in the article hasn’t been updated in some time. He also recommended the alternative DP Maintenance Mode Lite plugin.

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Twitter begins integrating advertising software

 Twitter Inc said on Wednesday it is opening up its platform to third-party advertising management software, taking another step to establish its ad-based business model ahead of an initial public offering.

The ads application programming interface, or API, would allow advertisers to connect their existing ad management software to their Twitter account to automate ads on the micro-messaging platform.

Twitter said that it would begin by integrating with ad software by Adobe Systems Inc, Salesforce Inc, Hootsuite, SHIFT and TBG Global.

"With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale," Twitter product manager April Underwood wrote in a blog post.
Under pressure to show growing revenues, Twitter in recent years has ramped up its ad-serving capabilities while building a sales staff to woo corporate marketers. The firm said last year it would allow marketers to target Twitter users based on a profile of their perceived interests and by location.

Twitter makes money every time a user clicks or retweets a "promoted" message paid for by an advertiser. The new API would allow great automation for advertisers, who previously had to manually write every promoted tweet.

In 2013, Twitter's ad revenues are expected to grow nearly 90 percent to $545 million, according to eMarketer which noted that Facebook Inc experienced similarly rapid growth after opening its API to advertisers in 2011.

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