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Customize Wordpress Insert/Edit Image
2008-06-05 03:22:00
How to customize Wordpress Insert / Edit Image window so you don't have to type in long URLs to your image directory.

The Big Pictures and Indexed Too
2008-05-10 06:56:00
The last post here at the Lab talked about using flickr slide shows to add a collection of large images to a blog post without taking up additional bandwidth or storage space on your hosting account.
More About: Pictures

A Pro Flickr Account is a Good Idea to Enhance Your Blog Posts
2008-05-09 03:31:00
Many of you are already have a Flickr account. Did you know you can use your Flickr account to enhance your blog or website? With a Pro account for $25 a year you can have unlimited uploads and unlimited sets of images. It is easy to upload and manage images and once they are ...
More About: Blog , Idea , Good , Posts

WordPress 2.5 More Observations
2008-04-26 02:51:00
Manage still exists but Options is gone. The Options have been scattered about various places on the Dashboard. Settings, Plugins, Users are now top right. They aren't on a tab just sitting there to themselves.
More About: Wordpress , How To , Observations

A Tool to Help Pick Keyword Targets
2008-04-11 01:37:00
Don't know where to go to find keywords or specifically what keywords to target? Like Zillow
More About: Keyword , Tool , Pick

Comment Spam Not an SEO Shortcut
2008-04-08 02:45:00
Moderation is turned on for all comments at the blog lab. At least until you have achieved a level of trust that posts your comments as soon as you submit them. Unless they have more than two active links in them, that puts them back in moderation.
More About: Spam , Comment , Shortcut

Dates are important even if you aren?t single
2008-03-31 18:39:00
I'm an old (yep old) database programmer. One thing about all of us that predate (pun intended) the "millennium bug", we want dates.
More About: Dates , Single

Real Estate Blog Lab Running WordPress 2.5
2008-03-29 22:53:00
What the heck, it is just a hobby blog, right! So I pulled the plug and upgraded to 2.5. I might even be so bold as to try and add an image to this post. WOW, going out on a limb there hey.
More About: Wordpress , Running , Estate , Real Estate , Blog

Hyper Local Target Marketing Local and National Events
2008-03-04 22:04:00
What is going on in your neck of the woods. Are you writing about these events? If you aren't you should certainly consider it. I know they are covered on television and in local color articles in the newspaper, but you would be surprised how many people these days do a quick Google search to find out about local events, cost, times, dates, etc. So why not be the one to provide the information.
More About: Marketing , Events , National , Local , Target

Hyper Local Target Marketing Title Tags
2008-03-04 03:31:00
These little babies are the Turbo Charged Engines that makes the wheels go round and it is unfortunate they are also the Rodney Dangerfield's of the Internet. I say the internet and not just blogging because they are the Super Nova's which speed your content to the top, or the red dwarfs which go nowhere at all and are often never found.
More About: Marketing , Local , Tags , Target , Title

Google PR Update I lost PR and I Couldn?t Be Happier
2008-02-28 19:42:00
I wasn't expecting a PR update from Google this soon. The last was longer coming than most of us thought and now there is another so soon. I started noticing the change in some of my sites on Tuesday Feb. 27, 2008. It is continuing to sweep over the data centers as the update continues.
More About: Lost , Update , Google Dance , Happier

Hyper Local Target Marketing Create Your Own Backlinks
2008-02-25 19:18:00
I remember when I first got started blogging I read everywhere. "To get a high pagerank you have to get quality back-links." True, and a good piece of advise. How do you do that? "Write quality content that people want to link back to" Sounds good so far doesn't it.
More About: Marketing , Backlinks , Local , Outside , Target

Hyper Local Blog Market Targeting
2008-02-24 19:47:00
What a mouthful. I am a hyper local blogger at heart. It is the focus of my writing and the time I spend studying how to get these blogs in front of new readers and provide valuable information about my real estate market and the community in which I live and work.
More About: Market , Blog , Local , Targeting , Hyper

Wordpress 2.3.2 Upgrade is Complete
2008-01-02 21:40:00
The 2.3.2 upgrade was painless. So there is no smoke in the Lab just this picture of Prickly Pear Cactus since upgrading Wordpress continues to be a prickly situation with which to deal. There was still the issue of the spell checker not working so I had to move the spellchecker directory from the previous install to this one.
More About: Complete , Grade I

Windows Live Writer Deleted My Wordpress 2.3.2 Upgrade is Complete Post
2008-01-02 07:38:00
There was a very nice post here. I used Windows Live Writer to create the draft and send it to the blog. It looked good and had an image on it. Once it was published I came back into Live Writer. I had sent the post to the blog as a ...
More About: Wordpress , Windows Live , Post

Wordpress 2.3 Can An Interface Ruin Your Attitude About Blogging ?
2008-01-01 00:04:00
The last day of the year, the time when everyone does the "Let's look back. . . " or the "Lets see what the future hold for 2008." I'm sitting here like I do so many days seeing there is yet another update to Wordpress version 2.3.2. I didn't bother with 2.3.1 and now there is talk of 2.4 just around the corner.
More About: Blogging , Attitude , Ruin , Interface

Real Estate Weblogging 101 Revisited
2007-11-01 17:19:00
Here is how the first post began: Greg Swann at Bloodhound blog on June 21, 2007 launched the new blog Real Estate Weblogging 101. What Greg didn’t realize was he also set in motion an experiment I have been wanting to run here in the lab. Here is the basis for the experiment: Setup a new domain name. Use Wordpress as the basis Instead of Post use Pages See how the search engines respond When I say search engines, I’m referring to Google primarily. Since we recently had a PR update from Supreme Ruler I couldn’t resist going back to the site and seeing how the experiment is proceeding. Quite well is the short answer. I should say amazing considering this is a blog that is barely 4 months. In our second post on the site it was just over 2 months old and had nothing in supplemental results that shouldn’t be there. Time has passed and the issue of supplemental results is history. I miss them in a way, but not really. What I found this week. The home page h...
More About: Real Estate

Wordpress 2.3 and Askimet Approved Comments
2007-10-31 22:50:00
I have moderation turned on for comments on the blog lab.  The setting is for approval of all first time comments and once approved the person making the comments can continue to make comments as long as there are not more than 3 links in a comment. I’ve noticed lately, that all the people that have been approved before are no longer approved.  This happened with the last WP update. I have not added any additional spam filters to the lab or even updated any.  If you don’t see a comment wait a little while.  It might be stuck in the spam filter, because instead of them going to be approved with an email notification to me they are going directly to the spam filter. This is appears to be an undocumented “feature” of the last upgrade. : ) Share This
More About: Wordpress , Comments , Prove

Lightbox your way to a quicker load
2007-10-31 19:58:00
I like big photos. I like them to fill as much of the space on the screen as possible. On an individual post the page size by K isn't too bad with large images. But when there are 5 to 10 posts on the home page all with images on them, it can bloat the size of your home page and make it very slow to load.
More About: Plug-ins , Load

Take a little Bounce out of your Bounce Rate
2007-10-13 17:37:00
We all have high bounce rates. Even the people that say they don’t do. It is inevitable. We can’t control how or when the search engines will place us high on a page for a search. It might not be relevant to the search at all. Write Relevant Posts I once write about the start of the Oro Valley Real Estate site explaining how it was a blog with posts rather than a typical website with pages. I ...
More About: Bounce , Rate , Litt

Home Evaluation Sheets to Prevent Cerebral Jello
2007-10-10 18:47:00
I initially wrote this post for home buyers getting ready to move to Tucson. It’s not a real bells and whistles kind of tool but I think some of you might find a use for it with your buyers. Doug Trudeau at Tucson RE Blogs calls this process of all the listing getting mixed up in a buyer’s head Cerebral Jello. For Tucson I added it would be Stucco Flavor. I purposely made the Home Evaluation Shee t generic ...
More About: Valuation

Target and Focus Your Local Content
2007-10-08 15:27:00
I’ve just written about SEO deprogramming; because of the urge to focus most of your time and effort into SEO for your blog. SEO might get people to come to your site, but SEO won’t get them to stay there. This is referred to as the bounce rate. How many people click to your site, don’t see what they want on their screen, and hit the back button to move on to the next result. There are ways to ...
More About: Content , Local , Focus , Target , Tent

Wordpress 2.3 Why we will wait
2007-09-23 21:23:00
There is a lot of hype about the release tomorrow of WordPress 2.3. There are parties being planned, it is a big roll out. They have done a much better job of explaining what is going to happen and what plugins work and which ones do not. Check this list of working and ...
More About: Wordpress , Tagging , Wait

Powerset for Real Estate Bloggers
2007-09-19 03:44:00
Calling all Real Estate bloggers, especially the Geeks. Here is your chance to be in on the ground floor of cutting edge technology in Search Engines. You can sign-up to be one of the first RE bloggers to enter the Powers et Labs. Meaning, you are an alpha or beta tester. I just signed up ...
More About: Real Estate , Bloggers

Is your Blog a Serial Novel a Reference Book or Both
2007-09-17 23:27:00
Do you have a philosophy for your blog? Have you ever thought about it. Are you trying to tell a story about your community? Are you drawing a word picture of life in your community? The Lab is more oriented to be topic driven. RE Blog gers, specifically leaning toward self hosted ...
More About: Book , Reference , Serial , Refer

Archive in your Sidebar (Tag Team Widgetize Anything and SRG Clean Archive
2007-09-13 22:04:00
Recently Eric on Search was doing a little insightful thinking about the continued indexing of the pages at realestateweblogging101. He suggested that the internal linking structure was one of the things helping keep these pages in the Google active index. Every page on the site had a link to the other pages on the ...
More About: Archive , Clean , Team , Sidebar , Hive

Checking Your Site In Different Browsers
2007-09-10 20:55:00
The post “When Your Website Doesn’t Look Right” dealt with making sure your site displayed properly in multiple browsers. I still run into a lot of sites that look fine in Fire Fox but are broken in IE 6 or 7. It usually has to do with the overflow float issue IE is ...
More About: Browsers , Site , Browse , Diff

Animoto First Real Estate Hip Hop Virtual Tours
2007-09-10 02:20:00
More Fun with Animoto I made these earlier today then had to do an open house. I’m pretty sure they are the First Hip Hop Virtual Tours In Tucson. Two versions of the same home at 1635 Deer Shadow Lane in La Reserve. The second ever Tucson Hip Hop Virtual Tour I hope no one gets hurt either ...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real

Animoto is a blast
2007-09-09 02:36:00
The boys at Sellsius have surfaced and they have done so with a bang in the blogosphere. Introducing some of us to Animoto. Animoto is a blast. Here is a quick short that took just a few minutes to put together. Limit your images to 15 and select the 30 sec free option to play around ...
More About: Blast

RealEstateWeblogging101 2 months old Plus
2007-09-06 23:59:00
Greg Swann provided the experiment for the lab by creating this blog in a single bound and making almost all of the content on Pages not Posts at Real Estate Weblogging 101. I first wrote about this in Real Estate Weblogging 101 The experiment was to see how long these pages could stay in the active ...
More About: Realestate , Months , Month , Mont