Problem Upgrading To Wordpress 2.9

Just in case anyone else had this problem -

I upgraded to latest Wordpress version 2.9 – and found a bit of a bug when I viewed the website. The homepage showed no posts, and I was unable to change the themes.

This was mainly due to a pretty lazy upgrade process on my behalf – the ‘upgrade now’ button called to me louder than the ‘make sure you backup, and turn off all your plugins’ voice in the back of my head.  I clearly don’t have the patience to be a developer!

The issue for me was specifically to do with the Wordpress Super Cache plugin.

I disabled this plugin, and the problem was resolved.

If you’re having the same problem, but you’re not using this plugin, then turn off your plugins one by one, refresh your site to find the culprit.

Alternatively, if you cannot access your admin panel – then re-name your plugin directory.  This will automatically disable your plugins, and if there is a conflict that is breaking the site, you should be able to access the admin area once more.

Posted: December 30th, 2009 under Blogging - No Comments.

Some Statistics About Your Facebook Status

Inside Facebook Blog has put together some statistics on Facebook Status updates; some of which is more relevant to America, but there were some global insights which I found quite interesting.

Whilst competing for users, Facebook integrates well with Twitter. You can see the effect of the conversation about Twitter versus the integration with the following graph.  Conversation, (e.g. “Twitter’s down again”) seems to be on the decline, but integration is increasing (judging by the growth in statuses which include the RT – or Re Tweet tag).

The RT and @username tags aren’t likely to make much sense to non Tweeters on Facebook, so I expect that there will be a way to sync only original posts in future.  I wonder whether the decline in Twitter mentions is down to increased server capacity.

The strain of virus formerly known as “swine flu” produced “a huge media frenzy at least as big as avian flu a couple of years ago, and mad cow disease before that,” as the post appropriately notes. The friendlier-to-pigs term, “H1N1,” has managed to infect Facebook, occurring as frequently as “swine flu” this past fall.

The effects of media hype and seasonal illnesses can be seen from the following graph, which shows a winter trend in status updates for Flu type terms, along with a huge spike in status updates for the terms Flu and Swine flu, which followed from the heavy coverage in the news.

I quite like this graph. It shows the frequency of occurrences for two common swear words in Facebook status updates.

Interestingly, people seem to be becoming more well behaved, as the number of mentions has declined over the year.  Perhaps people are becoming more aware that content published on the Internet may come back to haunt you in later life… or maybe it’s because mum’s on Facebook now!

Posted: December 23rd, 2009 under Online Social Networking - No Comments. Tags: facebook, social media

Preconceptions and the best data commentary

Hans Rosling, he’s a genius.

The way he breaks the data down into smaller chunks to completely change the story here is amazing.

This is data visualization at it’s best, and guess who’s bought the software he used to create these charts?

If you’re thinking the charts look a bit like the new motion charts in Google Analytics, it’s no coincidence.

Since Google bought Trendalizer, they don’t seem to have launched it to the full depth demonstrated above, but they are making steps to use it for a number of uses.  For example – you can use the public data available for US unemployment rates, and drill down to the states you are interested in.  You can also use motion charts within Google Analytics, and you can apply visualisations to your own data using the Google Visualization API.

Posted: August 25th, 2009 under Web Analytics - No Comments.

Analytics / AdWords Goal & Transaction Integration

It’s been a long time coming, but Google have now stepped a little further towards integrating the stats from Google Analytics into Google AdWords.

We’ve been able to see how much we spend on PPC, and what campaigns, ad groups, and keywords provide traffic which converts for a while now.  This is great, but it would be so much easier if you could amend your campaigns based on this information straight away, rather than switching between two interfaces.

I can’t have been the only one thinking this, because, from today, users are invited to link thier conversion information from Google Analytics to Google AdWords so that they can see their pre-defined goals and e-commerce data within AdWords.  As it takes 24 hours to update, I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing how the data is represented, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow to see how user friendly this new feature is.

I’m also looking forward to seeing how it works with Conversion Optimizer.

For more info on this, check out the Google AdWords blog.

Posted: July 2nd, 2009 under Paid search marketing, Web Analytics - No Comments.

Big Chip Award Winners

Last week, the company I work for, PushON won the Big Chip Award for ‘Best Use of Search’ – the event is the most prestigious digital award ceremony in the North West, and is judged by experts within the industry.  The category we entered, ‘Best Use of Search’ encompasses both Pay Per Click and Organic Search Engine Marketing.

It was for a project very close to my heart – The Little Greene Paint Company.  I’ve worked on this account from the beginning, and we’ve worked closely with their web development team to implement changes which give them the best possible chance to rank in search engines, and also convert the traffic they receive into sales.

I’m happy to say, that since we entered the competition – a number of significant further improvements have been made – for example, the launch of The Little Greene Blog, improvements to their paint finish listings, and a development which is soon to launch – a tagging system for paint colours which helps people find related paint colours, types of colours or styles (helping users find what they want both from search engines & when they are on the site).

I feel that this year, we got the groundwork right, and I’m looking forward to the progress over the next year, where we can work on some exciting and engaging projects which will help push the brand forward online.

Posted: July 2nd, 2009 under Online Marketing, Paid search marketing, Search Engine Optimization - No Comments.

Google AdWords Desktop Tool Bug

Is it just me?

It may be, but there was a bug in the latest install of my Google AdWords editor (version 7.5.1).

The problem was that every menu option had an ampersand preceding, so I was presented with the following menu:

&File |  &Edit |  &Data | &Account | &Tools | &Help

And nothing I clicked on did anything.

After restarting, reinstalling, still no joy, I then un-installed and downloaded & installed the latest version of the US Google AdWords Editor, and that did the trick.

So maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s the British (GB) version of AdWords Editor, but if you have the same problem, now you know how to get around it.

Posted: June 3rd, 2009 under Digital Media - No Comments.