I was about to write a step-by-step guide for backing up your WordPress site…backing up your database is only part of archiving the entire WordPress site…when the Backup Buddy plugin was introduced last week.  I immediately purchased the developer’s copy of this premium plugin and I have to say, I’m impressed!

Does it backup everything? Yes. It backs up the database, plugins, files, themes, scripts, and everything else in the WordPress database and directories.

Is it easy to use? Yes. A few clicks backups your entire WordPress install – including the widgets, themes, plugins AND SQL database … the entire package! The restore function is quick and easy too..upload a script and your backup files and it reinstalls WordPress, your themes, widgets and plugins … everything. You can migrate to another domain easily, with no fuss. You can even schedule BackupBuddy to do daily, weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly backups … and includes email and FTP options to another server.

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration.  Click on the graphic to find out more…

The Backup Buddy replaces the DB-Backup on my list of recommend plugins.

What is a plugin? A WordPress plugin is extra software code that you can easily add to your website from within your admin area that give you extra functionality.  Many plugins are free, but sometimes you may want to pay for a premium plugin that is more advanced and complex. With Backup Buddy you are paying for the plugin as well as upgrades and support from iThemes.

This week we completed the training portion of the WishList Certification (first mentioned in this post), and I’m impressed with how versatile the WishList Member plugin is. WishList Member can be used for different types of membership sites as I learned in the Planning Strategies module.

Here’s a summary of the different membership models using WordPress and the WishList Member plugin.

• Publisher Model: where you are creating fresh new content on a regular basis, very much like an online magazine. When somebody joins your membership, they typically get access to not only the new content that you published this month but they also get access to the content that you published in previous months.

• UPS Model: where you are delivering a package of content on a regular basis. It’s called the UPS Model because it is like a package of content that is being delivered each and every month (week, etc.). Each month that a person remains a member, they get a new download area where they can download a package of content for that specific month.

• Micro Continuity: a fixed term membership. The major distinguishing factors between this and most other membership sites is that it is there is a definitive end to the membership and it’s set up all at one point in time, “set it and forget it.”

• Modular Course: where you are delivering your course one module at a time over a period of time. The Modular Course is perfect for those people who teach courses delivered in a modular format. The content is delivered one step at a time so everyone coming in starts at Level 1 and progress from there.

• Protected Download Area: where you create a page with download links to your various tools and resources or products that people are purchasing. Put the product you’re selling into a Protected Download Area, which means that after payment, they have to set up a username and password in order to access that content.  You can set this up so that this access expires after any number of days.

• Project Management: where you create a membership level for each type of person within your company, non-profit, or committees within a community group.

• Community Center: it is a protected communication center like a forum. It’s a use of WishList Member not necessarily to deliver content, but as a foundation to be able to communicate with like-minded people who share a similar interest in the same subject matter. Essentially creating a protected forum or a protected communication area for people who belong to a particular community.

• Private Members Area: where you create an area where you can have resources, materials, and communication for a private group of people. A private members area is a way for you to create a membership where people can not only communicate with one another, but they can also download materials and resources and perhaps even interact with you or with each other.

• Coaching Site: you create a membership level for each client. If you are a coach or a consultant and you are working with clients, you might want to create a private area so you can communicate and can deliver resources and materials that are specific to their particular needs. You can also create a shared members area where if you have resources that all of your coaching clients are going to use.

• Combo Model: a variety of different elements from each of these. You are never going to be stuck with one particular membership type model. And more often than not, you are probably going to have components of multiple membership levels all contained within one site. So, be creative and enjoy!

Contact me to discuss your own membership site!

A newly discovered (at least by me) plugin to check any and all links on your site is the Broken Link Checker — it automatically checks your posts for broken links and images and reports its findings in the dashboard.

Features

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Also detects redirected links.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured.
• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
• You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.
• Searching and filtering links by URL, anchor text and so on is also possible.
• Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

Basic Usage

Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll), etc and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take a few minutes or even several hours. When parsing is complete the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works. Again, how long this takes depends on how big your site is and how many links there are. You can monitor the progress and set various link checking options in Settings -> Link Checker.

The broken links, if any are found, will show up in a new tab of WP admin panel – Tools -> Broken Links. A notification will also appear in the “Broken Link Checker” widget on the Dashboard. To save display space, you can keep the widget closed and configure it to expand automatically when problematic links are detected.

The “Broken Links” tab will by default display broken links that have been detected so far. However, you can use the subnavigation links on that page to view redirects or see a listing of all links – working or not – instead.

There are several actions associated with each link listed -

• “Details” shows more info about the link. You can also toggle link details by clicking on the “link text” cell.
• “Edit URL” lets you change the URL of that link. If the link is present in more than one place (e.g. both in a post and in the blogroll) then all instances of that URL will be changed.
• “Unlink” removes the link but leaves the link text intact.
• “Exclude” adds the link’s URL to the exclusion list. Excluded URLs won’t be checked again.
• “Discard” lets you manually mark the link as valid. This is useful if you know it was detected as broken only due to a temporary glitch or similar. The link will still be checked normally later.

Have you tried this plugin? Please comment below.

The WordPress plugin that addresses the most important on-page optimization needs…A MUST HAVE if you want to generate traffic on your WordPress site.

What does it do?

By default, WordPress uses the blog tagline as the meta description and keywords, but the keywords in your tagline might not relate to content in your individual posts and pages.

My blog tagline “offering WordPress website services” is not very descriptive for a person searching for the how to use the All in One SEO Pack.  I need to edit the Title, Description, and Keywords (or Meta Tags) to let the search engines know what content is found on this page.

Optimize Individual Pages & Posts

This assumes you have the All In One SEO Pack plugin install and activated on your WordPress site. If you need any help, please contact me.

The All in One SEO Pack can be found as a drop down on the post and page editors.

The Title allows you to chose the name of each post. As you can see with this post it is called “SEO for WordPress”. The title tag for this page has been changed to “How To Use The All In One SEO Pack To Optimize Your Website”. The keywords are more descriptive and will allow me to rank higher for search terms relating to the All In One SEO Pack.

The Description is basically the meta description for the post. Whatever you write in this field is what will affect the description search engines will use to describe your website in the search engine results. Make sure that your meta description properly reflects the content found within the post. This is the first thing your readers will see when your site was appears in search engine results. The meta description I used in this post is: “This all in one seo pack will help you optimize your wordpress for better search engine results. Easy to install and use”.

The Keywords are the meta keywords you want to include for the post. All you have to do is make a list of keywords that appropriately reflect the keywords found within the post and enter them in. Use commas to separate each meta keyword and avoid keyword spamming or keyword stuffing. This will hurt your search engine results. The meta keywords used in this post are: “all in one seo pack, seach engine, google, optimize, seo”.

You can also optimize the home page of your site. The All In One SEO Pack allows you to make search engine friendly your home page title, home page meta description and meta keywords.

From the dashboard, select

All in One SEO

Here are just a few options you can set…

Home Title allows you make your homepage title separate from any other pages on your site. It’s recommended to make your home title include the keywords you are trying to target for your site.

Home Description allows you to fill out the meta description for your home page. This is what will appear in search engine results for when your home page is being displayed.

Home Keywords are the meta keywords you want to have included on your home page. These keywords should reflect keywords found within your site. Make sure you include any keywords you want to rank high for in search engines when filling this out.

All in One SEO Pack – The plugins that optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines.

When you delete a user, the pages that the user authored get deleted too. You’re given the option of assigning another user the posts and the links, but NOT THE PAGES.

Here’s the story…

I deleted a user on a client’s site. I was given the option of assigning another user the posts and links that the deleted user had written…

but NOT THE PAGES!

I had already assigned the posts to another user so I thought I was good to go…I made  my selection and deleted the user. But I soon realized, with a sinking heart, that all the pages that were owned by the deleted user disappeared!

What could I do?

Luckily, I had run the Database Backup plugin* before I started so I was able to restore the database. Here’s how it was done…

(1) Download and unzip the backup file, making sure that it can be located again!

(2) Logged in to my web host CPanel and selected phpMyAdmin (the one with the sailboat icon) from the Databases section.

(3) Choose the WordPress database you want to restore from the list of all available databases.

HINT:  The database name is contained in your backup zip file. In this example, it’s sswp01.

You need to DROP all WordPress tables in your database to make room for the restore.

(4) You should see the tables on the Structure tab…make sure that all of the boxes are checked then go down and select drop.

You will then see

(5) Click Yes IF YOU ARE SURE.

Your database is now empty.

(6) Click on the Import tab…

And use the browse button to locate the unzipped backup file on your computer and upload it.

(7) If it all goes well, you’ll see this. You’re done!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PLEASE READ THIS !

If your .sql file is less than about 3meg in size, you will probably be fine with this method.

If your .sql file is larger, you can try the upload but you may get timeout errors. This is NOT the fault of WordPress – it is a host setting. If you have your own server you can change the settings. If you cannot alter that, and you get timeouts, you will have to do the following;

Open the .sql file in a text editor. Do NOT use a word-processor or Dreamweaver unless you REALLY know what you are doing – on a Windows machine NotePad is fine.

You will see something similar to this at the top:

– phpMyAdmin SQL Dump
— version 2.6.1-pl2
— http://www.phpmyadmin.net
—
— Host: localhost
— Generation Time: Jun 24, 2005 at 05:14 PM
— Server version: 4.0.24
— PHP Version: 4.3.11
—
— Database: `tamba2_data`
—
CREATE DATABASE `tamba2_data`;
USE tamba2_data;

Ignore all that, not needed. Everything else in that file needs copying and pasting into the SQL window. You highlight some text, copy it, paste it into the SQL window, click Go and after the Success message, you do it again with the next chunk of text. It can take a while, and you need to be careful that you miss no lines out.

From experience, there are a number of things which can mess things up when restoring and while nothing is fatal, it’s too complicated to describe here. If you run into trouble, please ask for help in the WordPress Support Forums.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LESSON LEARNED! Be sure to run the Database Backup Plugin before you delete any user!

*WP-DB-Backup – Easily backup/restore your posts and entire Wordpress database. Download or send the backup to your email.

There are a number of membership site plugins for WordPress but the one that I recommend (and am an affiliate for) is WishList Member and this week I’m beginning their first ever WishList Member Training and Certification Course.

WishList Member is the quick way to turn WordPress into a membership site and the WishList Member Training and Certification Course will cover how to setup, build and market a successful membership site using WishList Member…training that I hope will be of value to you in setting up your membership site.

WishList will teach strategies in this membership training program specifically designed for people looking to take their (or their client’s) membership sites to a whole new level. These strategies, grouped into 7 areas, have proven to be the core elements of successful memberships.

• Membership Planning Strategies
• Content Creation Strategies
• Promotion Strategies
• Conversion Strategies
• Retention Strategies
• Engagement & Community Strategies
• Outsourcing & Automation Strategies

This video explains more…
(my affiliate link for http://member.wishlistproducts.com/course)

If you’d like to join me in class, please sign up and send me an email to let me know you’re taking the training.  I’ll touch base and offer you additional support in creating your own membership site. But hurry…the course will be open for new registrations until Tuesday, December 1st, 2009.

Not interested? That’s fine too. Just wanted you to know that I’m available for any future membership site needs.

As a bonus…

Top 10 Membership Models

Stu McLaren from WishList Member describes the Top 10 Membership Models for people looking to create an online membership site.