WordPress 3.3 was just released. What’s inside? Some nice improvements – watch my video for a quick tour. I’ll show you around the new interface changes, and some of the new features as well.

Quick list of new features in WordPress 3.3 for users

Here’s a short list of the new features in WordPress 3.3. I show many of these in the video above. You can see WordPress.org for their WordPress 3.3 announcement as well.

• Drag and Drop Uploader for all media types (and automatic file type detection). I mentioned in my post from WordCamp earlier this year that WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg said they were going to improve the media uploading capabilities in WordPress to be closer to how Google+ works.
• Hover menus for navigation in the WordPress Admin area
• Pointer tips for new features, and a welcome message
• Improved Admin Bar
• Improved Admin experience for iPad and Tablet devices
• Better Permalinks options, including improved performance for post-slug-only permalinks

SmallBiz – Tested

We’ve been testing the SmallBiz WordPress Theme with WordPress 3.3 since the early betas and everything works fine. So if you’re using SmallBiz, you should have no problems upgrading to WordPress 3.3.

Are you planning to upgrade to WordPress 3.3? What are your favorite features? Let me know in the comments below!

CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, allows you to store style presentation information separate from your HTML structure on your WordPress site. CSS was introduced to replace tables as means to layout a website.

The CSS file controls the fonts, colors, margins, lines, height, width, background images, advanced positions and many other elements of your WordPress website. This gives you, the designer, infinite possibilities for the layout of your WordPress site by knowing how to maneuver Cascading Style Sheets.

What is CSS?

• CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.
• Think of CSS as the set of supplies a painter uses to turn a blank canvas into a beautiful work of art. A collection of brushes, different colors and textures of paint that work together to make the painting a unique piece of artwork.
• This compares to how the use of CSS makes a site creative and unique from other web pages.
• CSS defines how HTML elements are going to be displayed on your website.
• CSS is “The style language” for web design.

Why Use CSS?

• CSS gives you the ability to control and edit the layout/style of all your web pages with endless options from one style sheet.
• Without CSS, your site would look like a long list of text instead of an interactive, original layout.
• CSS gives the designer more specific control of the site’s layout.
• Allows the web designer to apply different layouts to different media-types. Media types refer to the type of device that is used to display a webpage. Examples of some media types are: print, intended for printed documents; projection, intended for projected presentations; and screen, intended for computer screens.
• Numerous advanced and sophisticated techniques. (See Cool CSS Tools below!)
• WordPress themes greatly rely on CSS to complete the look and feel of the website.
• CSS saves a lot of work and time simplifying the process of editing your website.

When Working with CSS You Should:

• Keep your code simple. Stay organized by listing the different sections you will be modifying with your CSS.
• Space your code efficiently with block notation and single line notation. Makes it easier to work with and find the areas you will be altering in your CSS.
• Communicate with other developers if you are working with a team.
• If you have a lot of content, use separate style sheets for components such as text.css, layout.css and color.css.

Cool CSS Tools:

These fun, helpful tools are available on the web and generate unique code for your CSS on the spot. These free tools allow the user to experiment with different options until you create the perfect look for your website.

• CSS3 Generator – choose what you need help coding from a dropdown box, enter any extra info needed, and watch your CSS code magically appear!
• ColorZilla: Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator – design a customized color gradient along with the necessary CSS code, ready to just cut and paste into your WordPress theme!
• 3D Ribbon Generator – the name says it all…design your own 3D ribbon banner for use on any WordPress website or online sales page.

To learn more about CSS, the CSS Tutorial from W3 Schools offers a tutorial with examples, quizzes and an editor for you to experiment with and become familiar with CSS.

About Eileen

Eileen Lonergan is a WordPress website designer who has a concentration in SEO. To learn more about Eileen and see her work visit http://www.EileenLonergan.com

Want to Write for Expand2Web.com?

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WordPress is on fire. Latest stats show that almost 15% of the sites on the Internet are powered by WordPress. And out of every 100 new domains registered, 22 of them are for WordPress websites, which indicates continued growth.

After attending WordCamp in San Francisco a week and a half ago, I was planning to do a blog post right away. I live blogged some of it on Google+ here. But I really wanted to have something more complete on Expand2Web.

So I took some time to reflect after listening closely to Matt’s State of the Word address, and talking to a bunch of cool people at the show.

1. The Reading and Writing experience start to become one

Today, when you want to change something on your WordPress page or post, you can click Edit Post on the top admin toolbar if you are logged in. This takes you to the familiar post editor within WordPress. You make your changes, Preview them, and then Publish them live when ready.

But imagine if you could just make your changes directly while viewing your page. You’re browsing a page on your website and think, “hey, I want to change this text a bit…” If you are logged in, you just highlight the area and start making changes! That’s probably going to take a little longer than 1 year, but I think things will start moving in this direction.

Another thing Matt mentioned in his keynote was improving the way you modify WordPress Themes. The proper way to modify a theme today is using Child Themes. The problem with Child Themes, is that they can be a little hard to implement for people not familiar with FTP and editing a little code.

If you want to see how it works today, I’ve put together a video that shows you how to make a Child Theme based on any theme in WordPress. Here is the video:

And here is a link to the full blog post – How To Create Child Theme in WordPress.

Matt envisions you being able to make changes to a theme within the WordPress Admin panel, and having the Child Theme automatically created for you, seamlessly. I think that would be a huge win for theme developers and site owners.

2. Improved photo uploading experience

Another thing I am hoping to see this year is a much improved media uploading and management experience in WordPress. If you’ve ever had to upload a lot of photos using the WordPress Media Library then you know what I’m talking about.

Matt mentioned that he has 30,000 photos on his website/blog. Can you imagine uploading this many using the current Media Library? Well, he said he felt the pain and they are working to improve it dramatically.

In fact, he mentioned that they would like to make uploading much more like Google+. (If you are not on Google+ yet, visit my profile there and I’ll invite you.)

Google has really nailed the photo upload, display and management experience on Google+. As a result, it has attracted a TON of photographers and designers.

So I’m hoping to see some great improvements in image/media uploads and the ability to manage and rearrange galleries in upcoming versions of WordPress.

3. Responsive Design

Responsive Design was buzzing at WordCamp this year. I hadn’t really heard of this before now.

But after attending a few sessions and seeing it in action, believe me – Responsive Design is the new Mobile – and much more…

Responsive design allows you content to adapt to a given environment. What this means, is that instead of having a specific design for people viewing your website on their PC, and another for mobile viewers, and another for iPad viewers, your design adapts your content to whatever the size of the screen is.

This is super important – look at all the device formats emerging. Take a look at the Android phones out there, all with different screen sizes. Same with Windows Phone 7 devices. And now there are many different Tablets emerging to challenge the iPad. That means we will have a ton of different screen formats you need to worry about, unless you design your site to automatically adapt not based on specific device sizes, but based on the screen size itself.

So the goal of Responsive Design is to provide the best user experience on any platform with structured content that adapts to its given environment.

Sara Cannon’s presentation on this was excellent. I’ve included it here:

If you want to see a responsive site in action, here is a website that was designed to adapt to the screen size. Open it up in your browser and try resizing it – notice how the content adapts based on the window size. You’ll even see the navigation menu move from the side to the top when the screen gets too small!

Click here to view a site that implements Responsive Design (resize your browser window while viewing it to see how it adapts)

Sara is in charge of designing future versions of the WordPress Admin UI in this way. So I can see this type of design coming not only to the WordPress Admin UI but also to WordPress themes very soon. The Twenty Eleven theme, for example, already has responsive design elements baked in.

Note: I still think mobile Apps are still important, but as far as adapting your website to mobile device formats I think this is the way to go.

This is something we’re going to be doing the SmallBiz theme as well.

Ok, this ended up being pretty long. If you’re still with me, thanks for hanging in there! I’d like to hear what else you would like to see from future versions of WordPress?

So you’re settled in for the evening at your favorite spot on the couch with your laptop, finally ready to write that awesome blog post that’s been percolating in your mind for the past week while you watch your favorite show.

You fire up Microsoft Word and start writing.

Wait – Don’t Do It!

Why? Because after you write your manifesto and spend all that time formatting it how you want it, you’ll be in for a nasty surprise when you try to cut and paste it into your WordPress blog.

You WILL nuke your blog!

It’s fine to write your blog post in MS Word, especially since it’s much easier to read than if you used a plain text editor. But MS Word has an extensive set of XML tags that represents all of the content and formatting in your Word document.

If you cut and paste your blog post directly from MS Word into your WordPress visual post editor, it will generate something like this behind the scenes.

Microsoft Word Styling XML Codes

OK, so what will happen?

These XML codes will break style elements on your blog and ruin the look of it when viewing this post. After you spent all that work creating the perfect layout for your blog and crafting the perfect blog post, why risk ruining it all?

The Solution

There are three very simple solutions to avoid blowing up your blog.

#1: Write your post in MS Word, then copy and paste it into a plain text editor, such as Notepad, then copy and paste the Notepad version into your WordPress editor.

Sure, there are 3 steps here but how long does it take to copy and paste, really?

Then you format the subheadings and fonts to your liking, hit publish and voila!

Picture perfect blog post with no issues!

#2: Use the “Paste from Word” button that you’ll find in your WordPress Visual Post Editor.

Paste from Word Button in WordPress

Click this button just once to bring up the following editing box.
Copy and paste your text from MS Word into this pop up box. Click Insert.

Wordpress Paste From Word Editor

Now you’ll see that copy appear in The WordPress Visual Post Editor.

The WordPress Visual Post Editor

#3: Publish your blog post direct from MS Word 2007. Yes, it seems after years of having people blowing up their blogs, there’s a fix direct from Microsoft!

First, open up MS Word 2007 and click New from the Office icon in the upper left corner. Instead of choosing Blank Document, choose New Blog Post.

New MS Word Blog Post

Next you’ll be asked to register your blog so input your WordPress blog information as promted. This MS Word option also supports other blogging platforms but here at Expand2Web we highly recommend WordPress.

Once registered, start typing your post. The MS Word 2007 editor has the same essential look as when you create a blank document but notice the Blog Post tab where the Publish button is located.

MS Word Blog Post Editor

How To Check Your Blog Post HTML

Prior to publishing your blog post, click the button in your WordPress blog post editing screen that is labeled HTML.

You’ll notice right away that all your formatting is gone. Don’t panic…it’s still there in the Visual Editor. But here in HTML is where you should look for those funky XML codes from the earlier photo.

You should see your basic formatting HTML codes but if there’s anything that looks suspicious, delete it.

Switch back to the Visual Editor to check your formatting and then click Publish.

Now you can use Microsoft Word and WordPress together Without Nuking Your Blog!

Your only job now is to create quality content for your readers.

We’re very excited to announce something we’ve been working very hard on for the past several months – the SmallBiz Web Suite v3.7.

This version is more than just a WordPress Theme. It is the next evolution of SmallBiz, and provides the ability to create a complete web presence – including a Website, Blog, Facebook page and Touch-enabled Mobile site for your clients – in record time.

Video Tour of SmallBiz Theme

Watch a video tour of the new theme:

And we’ve made a ton of design and usability changes in both the back and the front-end.

New Features

• SmallBiz 3.7 features a complete design refresh, for both the site layouts and the Options panel. Here are just a few of the new features, many of them requested by you:
• New wider theme layout.
• New, professionally designed header graphics and auto-color schemes.
• New, modern dynamic navigation menu replaces the graphical based one.
• Larger default font size, and new social media icons for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Reorganized Options Panel groups settings more logically so you can find what you are looking for easily.
• Tons of new options for changing the look and feel of your site without coding.
• Ability to hide options panel for customer sites.

And that’s just a few of the new features. Wait until you open it up and look under the hood

Video Tour of SmallBiz Options Panel

Take a tour of the options panel to see all the things you can change in the theme without having to know HTML or CSS:

How To Get SmallBiz

Visit SmallBizTheme.com to get your copy of the SmallBiz Web Suite and start building killer small business websites in minutes!

Thanks to Google’s recent changes to their algorithm, the need for fresh content has become absolutely necessary for any business wanting to maintain or improve their search engine rankings. Articles for blogs, newsletters, and directories are key components of this fresh content. While most business owners with websites understand this reality, some are at a loss as to how to generate these articles on an ongoing basis.

Of course, there are business owners who take matters into their own hands by writing their own content. For those who have the time, desire, and ability to write, this is an ideal solution. No one can write with more authority and insight than a business owner.

Unfortunately, too many get set up with a blog site, write a post or two, and then basically abandon it because they find it’s too time consuming or frustrating to manage. Along with blogs getting neglected, newsletters often stop being published, and article distribution commonly ceases after only a short run because of lack of commitment, resources, or time. This can definitely lead to a drop in search engine rankings along with customers being frustrated by the lack of consistency.

It can’t be stressed enough. Fresh content remains a fundamental component to online marketing. So, what’s a business owner to do? Yes, there really is an effective alternative to the DIY approach.

Hiring a Professional Writer
There are writers specializing in online content who can help keep things flowing on a regular basis. These are not content farms that create useless, spun, or plagiarized articles for SEO purposes. Rather, they are providers who know your industry’s lingo and can write in your business’s brand voice to both engage readers AND help with search engine rankings.  

Professional online writers can be found through sources like Elance and Guru or, even better, through referral. If you’ve noticed a business with great content, ask the business owner who writes it. Oftentimes, it’s a professional writer and not the business owner.

Once you’ve identified a writer or two who might be a good fit for your business, ask for samples and pricing. Be specific about what you need! Most writers have set prices for articles or an hourly rate. If you’re not sure what you need, ask for suggestions. Keep in mind that many writers offer discounts if you use their services on an ongoing basis such as for weekly blog posts or monthly newsletters. Make sure to get a detailed proposal that spells out the specifics.

Here are some typical prices for content from a skilled writer (not a content farm):

• 500 word article with keywords $35 – $75 (price depends on how much research is required prior to writing)
• Monthly blog management including weekly posts, link placement, and uploading with images $300.00 – $500.00
• Hourly rate $50 – $100 depending on specialty and experience

“Wait a minute,” you might be saying to yourself right now. “I’ve heard I can get articles for $5.00 or $10.00 each.” Yes, you can definitely get articles at every price point. However, you may want to consider a few important points before dropping $20.00 for a batch of four articles for your blog or newsletter.

 It takes most writers at least 30 minutes to over an hour to write a 500 word article. That’s not including research. If you break this down to an hourly rate, you can clearly see that it’s not particularly good pay. Guess who is going to accept this work? It is almost always a provider in another country who is not a native English speaker or someone who isn’t an experienced writer at all. In both cases, you’ll most likely find yourself editing much of the work. Thus, you’ll have to add your own time to the price of the content. Simply put, it’s usually more cost effective and far less hassle to opt for the professional writer rather than scrimp and have to redo the work yourself.

While the prices mentioned above are typical, they can vary considerably depending on the specifics of what you need. If you require a writer to do a large amount of preliminary research prior to writing an article, this extra time will have to be built into the cost. Pricing can also be higher for someone who is specifically trained in SEO practices or who has the ability to post content to a WordPress site. You can expect that writers with these skills will quote prices based on also offering these extra services.

If you’re ready to accept a proposal, you will want to discuss payment. A 50% deposit is typically required – especially for one-time projects or for the first month of a retainer. Most writers take checks or PayPal, and some even accept credit cards or are willing to barter.

Before a writer starts on the first article, you’ll want to discuss your style of collaboration. Start by mapping out expectations and deadlines. Will you be supplying them with loads of detail or little information at all? Will the content be going through multiple rounds of edits with more than one person, or will the writer have more autonomy? These are all topics worth reviewing prior to starting work to avoid any complications down the road. The more information that the writer has upfront, the less chance that expectations won’t be met.

Then, work together on a content plan that establishes objectives, messaging, and strategy. Skilled online content providers should be able to help with keywords, identify editorial opportunities in publications, along with providing recommendations for distribution, topics, and ways to expand readership. Some will even be able to integrate content into social media channels. If you’re not sure what you need done, make sure to ask. More often than not, the writer will be able to meet your needs while also being able to make smart recommendations.

With customers increasingly seeking out blogs and articles to learn about the businesses they buy from, it’s simply a good business strategy to commit to generating fresh content. This will also ultimately help with search engine rankings. Yes, it’s fantastic if you can write it yourself. But, if you can’t, you have resources available to you, and if you leverage them effectively, they can be well worth the expense.

Want to Write for Expand2Web.com?

We are on the lookout for Guest Authors to share their expertise with our readership. For consideration, please visit our Author Guidelines page and submit your ideas to our Content Manager. We look forward to hearing from you!

Those of you who follow my blog know I recommend BlueHost for simple and easy WordPress hosting. WordPress installs and updates are a breeze, you get great U.S. based tech support, and the price is right.

Not to mention you can install up to 100 WordPress sites on a single account!

And here’s another great reason: BlueHost just made it super easy to do automated backups and file-level restores.

New: Site Backup & Restore

The new feature I’m talking about is called Site Backup & Restore. As I wrote in Back up Your WordPress Site it is super important to have an automated backup plan, even if your site is small.

With BlueHost’s Site Backup & Restore, every site in your BlueHost account – including files and databases – are backed up for you automatically every day. Several versions are maintained so that you can go back and restore files, directories, or entire sites if you need to for any reason.

Watch a Video of Site Backup & Restore in Action

There is a free and a Pro version of Site Backup & Restore. The free version will automate backups for you. The Pro version adds the ability to restore individual files and folders, and MySQL databases (which is what WordPress uses.)

If you are using BlueHost, run – don’t walk – and sign up for the Pro version of this feature. At $12.95 for the YEAR it is well worth the peace of mind you’ll get from knowing all of your sites are fully backed up.

If you are considering hosting providers, give BlueHost a try – it’s the best low-cost WordPress hosting around. Why? I give you 5 great reasons here.

p.s. Several of the links in this article are affiliate links. I use BlueHost for most of my websites (over 25 of them) and I also use the Site Backup & Restore Pro feature that I’m writing about in this article.

If you installed WordPress in a sub-folder or sub-directory under your domain, and want to move it to the root of the domain, there are a few things you need to be aware of.

For example, what if you installed WordPress in: http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/

but you want to move it to to top level of the domain like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/

Well, its not hard if you know what to look for. In this video, I’ll show you how to move your WordPress installation to another directory and how to make sure that all of your content and images are moved over properly too.

Here’s a quick summary of the steps in the video:

1. Update the WordPress address and site address in the WordPress database
2. Move the files to the new location
3. Fix up the URLs to any files or images you have uploaded via WordPress

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!

p.s. Do you like my new video intro clip? Seriously, I want to know if you like it or if you think it gets in the way…

Last week one of my readers asked a very good question:

“Is there anything in particular you recommend to secure a WordPress website? In talking to a tech at my hosting provider, he recommended adding security plugin. Is that something you recommend? Should I worry about security?”

WordPress security can be a deep and technical topic. Just take a look at the explanation on WordPress.org – Hardening WordPress.

So I thought I would put together a short-list of the basics of WordPress security – the essentials that you need to know about to protect your website.

How Do WordPress Sites Get Hacked?

The most common attacks against a WordPress blog usually fall into 2 categories:

1. Attacking specific vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress or WordPress Plug-ins.
2. Attempting to gain access to your blog by using “brute-force” password guessing.

Ok, so if that is the case, what can you do to protect your site against those types of attacks as much as possible?

How To Avoid Getting Hacked

Here are the most important basic things do to to secure your WordPress Blog/Website – no matter which theme you use:

1. Use a good hosting provider

One who is familiar with and supports WordPress. I recommend BlueHost. I’ve noticed a huge variation across different hosting providers in how they handle WordPress installations and file level permissions. BlueHost has always been reliable and secure for me.

2. Keep WordPress up-to-date

WordPress does a good job of identifying issues and updating their code quickly. They will notify you in the Admin Dashboard when new versions are released. Make sure you keep your installation up-to-date.

WordPress update notification in the dashboard

3. Be careful which plugins you install

Only use plugins from the WordPress Plugin directory that have a lot of good ratings and are supported by the author. And keep them up-to-date as well. You will get notifications in the WordPress dashboard when there are updates for the plugins you have installed. Keep your use of plugins to a minimum to simplify updates and reduce the chance of vulnerabilities.

WordPress plugin update notifications in the dashboard

5. Make sure you change the default Admin userid

Create a new one and delete the old one. When you delete the old one, make sure to “attribute all posts and pages” to your new id.

Make sure to attribute your posts to the new user id

6. Backup your WordPress database

By using a plugin like WP-DB-Backup to backup your WordPress database automatically. That way if you do get hacked, you can restore your site. You can find more WordPress backup options here.

These steps are just the bare minimum – the essentials. If you want to dig into the technical details I’ve added some links to advanced resources below.

Advanced Precautions

There are plugins that help you lock down your WordPress installation and scan for issues. Here are a few:

• Login Lockdown Plugin allows you to limit login attempts to your blog.
• WP Security Scan scans your WordPress installation for common vulnerabilities and provides recommendations on how to fix them.

You can also consider using WordPress security keys, as described in this post on WP Beginner.

This presentation also goes into some more advanced topics on WordPress Security – How to Protect WordPress.

Discuss!

What are you doing to keep your WordPress blog or website secure? Do you have any questions about it? Let’s discuss it in the comments below!

I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New year from Expand2Web.

Thomas and I truly appreciate our readers and customers and really enjoy meeting and getting to know you.

If you haven’t already dropped us an email or commented and introduced yourself, please do – we’d love to meet you.

Have a great holiday!

p.s. We are just put up a 20% holiday discount on our SmallBiz WordPress Themes until January 1. If you’ve been thinking about getting the SmallBiz theme now is the time!