Earlier this evening, I had a great conversation with the one and only Ptah Dunbar. During my conversation, I had Ptah explain to me why child themes are good to use and why I as an end user need to care. While I’m still somewhat confused about the subject in general, he did a good job providing me with a few reasons. But that is not what I want to talk about in this post.

Instead, I want to mention an idea that I discussed with Ptah which at some later date, he may make a reality. In WordPress 2.5 up to 2.7, managing widgets is a real pain in the rear. I know Jane Wells has been quoted in saying that WordPress 2.8 will feature a reworked administration area for widgets but before that happens, here is my idea on how to manage widgets.

When I login to WordPress and browse into the themes/widgets area, at the center of the screen, I want to see a wireframe of the theme I am using on my blog. This wireframe can be incredibly simple highlighting the header, navigation column, widget sidebars, footer, content area, ect. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just enough to provide an at a glance view with regards to where widgets can be displayed. These widgetized sidebars should be differentiated from the rest of the theme within the wireframe.

In WordPress 2.3, the widgets which were installed were able to be dragged from the bottom of the site into the sidebar of choice. However, the weakness of managing widgets in this way comes to the surface when you have a theme that has 5-9 sidebars. Shifter was a prime example of this weakness as I usually had to scroll from the bottom of the page to the top most times to place a widget into one of the first sidebars.

Although that was a weakness, dragging widgets from one container to the sidebar was an intuitive way to manage where they were displayed. In WordPress 2.5, the weakness in the previous attempt was solved by adding two columns. One column contained the widgets that could be added to the sidebar while the other column was reserved for the actual display order. Ultimately what I would like to see is a combination of the two.

Widget Management In WP2.7

I want the ability to drag widgets from a repository into the widgetized areas located within the wireframe of my theme. This would enable me to know without looking how and where the widgets would be displayed on the site. I could then drag widgets up and down to change their display order within the wireframe as well. No need for a drop down box to select which sidebar you want to place widgets in because the wireframe would show the labels for each sidebar. That however, would be dependent on theme authors actually giving the sidebars good, descriptive titles.

In fact, much of what I described above would have to be adopted by theme authors for this to truly work. I’ve given Ptah the ideas and have described how I would want to it work and he has agreed to at least look into creating something similar.

Alister Cameron at WordCamp Australia described in his keynote something I’ve been harping on since the days I started using WordPress. That is, theme authors are not using the power of widgets to the best of their ability. Of course, having widgetized areas labeled as sidebars is part of the problem. I believe one of the ways in which to see themes evolve is to get rid of the term sidebar and quit relegating widgets to be displayed in a column located on the left or right hand side of the blog. If widget areas within a theme are to extend beyond the sidebar, the term has to be replaced by something a little more open. What that generic term is, I don’t know. Container, module, placeholder, are just a few. It sounds really dumb to have a theme that enables users to place widgets in the footer but technically, it is called a sidebar.

What does all of this mean? Well, I think this way of managing widgets would be intuitive, visual, and easy to explain to people. Applying widgets to a theme would be a simple matter of dragging them to the appropriate area of the wireframe which has widget support. No more columns, no more drop down menus. Drag and drop baby! while some of this relies on the framework of the WordPress backend, theme authors will have to step up their game if they want to take advantage of the new way of doing things. Theme authors will need to speak up in order to have this sidebar nonsense changed. I’m not sure if the theme wireframe would need to be taken care of by the theme author or if WordPress could handle that but considering the wireframe would be unique to each theme, I imagine the theme author would end up with the responsibility.

Well, I’ve expelled the idea from my head long enough so I’ll wrap up this post by asking for your feedback regarding the idea. Let me know the difficulties or negative side effects you can think of if this idea became a reality. What sort of things have I overlooked?

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How do Backlinks Help with SEO

A backlink is a link which directs others towards your site; they are also often referred to as inbound links (IBL’s). So, the number of backlinks that your site has is an indication of how popular or important it is according to your peers (other site owners). These are especially important for SEO, as search engines such as Google will give more credit to those sites with a good number of quality backlinks. So they will then consider these sites more relevant than others in the results pages of a search query.

Most search engines will want websites to have a level playing field, and so will more often than not look for natural links that have been built slowly over time. Although it can be fairly easy to manipulate the links on a web page in order to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from another site. This is why these feature so highly in a search engine’s algorithm. Today it has gotten even harder to achieve these inbound links because of unscrupulous webmasters. Such people try to achieve these links by deceptive or sneaky techniques (through either hidden links or through automatically generated pages). Such pages are known as link farms and they are generally disregarded by search engines. But if you are linked to such a link farm, then you may find your site being banned entirely from these search engines.

Another way of achieving quality backlinks to a site is to entice quality visitors to come to yours.

There are a number of ways in which back linking can be achieved.

1. Reciprocal Linking – this is where you link to another site that provides the same service or product as you and they in turn have a link to your site on theirs.

2. Site Submissions. Submit links for your site to directories which allow free submissions, or if you can afford it, some paid directories. There are many sites around which offer a service where you can submit your site details to numerous sites. Plus, if you want, you can always create your own directory of similar websites.

3. Articles. This is another way of getting great backlinks. So if you have a reputable looking site that contains informative, well written reviews, then there is a good chance that your articles will receive high search engine rankings also. But it is vital that any articles you write are on the subject, informative and thorough in relation to your site. Also you could always write a few articles for submission to article sites such as EzineArticles.com or SearchWarp.com. This is another great way of getting even more backlinks to your site.

Below are a few tips you will need to consider in order to write good articles for your site.

a. Write in a way that your intended target audience will understand what you are trying to say. In other words, don’t write it like you were a teacher talking to a class of 10 year olds, but don’t be overly complicated.

b. Watch your spelling, grammar and punctuation. If in doubt, then use your spell checker.

c. Do not make your article too long. Usually a good article will consist of between 350 to 500 words.

d. Always include a resource box at the end, as this will include that all important backlink to your site. This resource box should also include a short biography regarding you and your site.

4. Blogging. This has now become an integral part of the internet, and is one of the most effective ways of linking. You either have the choice of placing a few words of comments on to someone else’s blog, or you may want to link to them from your own blog. In fact, you will find that most blogs will be happy to link back to you. However, it is important that you try to update your blog regularly and post interesting content to ensure that people will want to link back to you.

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What is Search Engine Friendly Content

In this post, we will look at just what search engine friendly content is. Although you may think it is about stuffing your website with target keywords, it isn’t. In fact, you may find that you could fall foul of the search if you do this. What you need to remember is that you need to write copy that not only spiders will look at, but also human beings will as well. What is the point of having a site that is highly ranked, yet none of your visitors can understand? So it is vital that your site is user friendly to both your visitors, as well as search engine spiders.

First of all you need to answer the following questions:-

1. What is your site for?
2. What does it do?
3. What do you want your visitors to do when they reach it?
4. Would you like them to spend money when they get to it?
5. Or are you just providing them with information?

So you need to remember these, as they will have an impact on the copy that you write for the content of your site.

So whenever possible, use short paragraphs or bullet points, as these are more likely to attract visitors, while more lengthy essays will only drive them away.

But if you are selling a service or product then you need to make your site look interesting. Provide as many calls to action as you can, and not just provide them with an online price list.

So remember that you are trying to attract the search engines, but your site should be designed first and foremost for human readers. As long as a site has been designed well with people in mind, then 9 times out of 10 you will find that it is search engine friendly also.

Just like a visitor to your site reads the copy on your page in order to figure out what you have to offer, so does a search engine. So when a search engine is looking at your page, they are looking for keyword phrases in your copy (Content).

Below are provided a number of tips which should help in your SEO using the content on your site.

1. You should have at least 200 words of copy on each page of your site. Although this may be difficult at times, search engines really like it, so it is important that you increase the amount of copy where you are able to. Generally speaking, once you surpass 1,000 words, the search engines will pretty much stop looking…so no need to get too long, unless the desired action you want from the visitor requires it.

This text, wherever possible, should include your most important keyword phrases, but should still remain logical and easy to read by visitors to the site.

2. Ensure that you use the phrases which you have used in the other tags on the pages during this part of the optimization process.

3. Add additional copy filled pages to the site, such as how to articles, tips or tutorials. Not only do these types of pages help with SEO, but you may find that other sites will link to yours.

These tips should not be ignored, as optimizing your page copy (content) is one of the most important things you could possibly do in order to improve your rankings in the Search Engines.

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