Here at MyNameIsAngie.com, I’ve ALWAYS offered a free video course teaching the basics of WordPress. The opt-in for it has ALWAYS been in the upper right sidebar and has always included basically what it does now. And, I’ve always had very minimal success with gaining subscribers. Go figure. I mean, who needs a free 8-video course to learn how to do what some pay a designer hundreds or even thousands to do for them? Anyway…

You should also know that I don’t get thousands of visitors a month. Mostly because I don’t usually DO the things for myself that I teach OTHER people to do which would drive traffic here! Not enough time in the day to teach, design, mother and wife (read: poor time management)! So when you see the opt-in numbers below, they might not look impressive to you. Look beyond the actual numbers, and simply compare the before and after opt-ins.

I installed PopUp Domination on May 19. In the 53 days PRIOR to installing it, I had 2 subscribers. In the 53 days since installing PopUp Domination, I’ve had 37 optins for my free video course. That’s an increase of 1,750%.

I don’t know what else to say. I changed the design of the site a few times, but the new design has actually worked against the other stats of the site (retention, pageviews, bounce, etc…). There is no other explanation except for the in-your-face popup opt-in! I have about a 5.67% opt-in rate right now, with very little effort to either drive traffic to my site or to get what traffic does come to opt-in. I can’t imagine how this little plugin would help turn my visitors into subscribers if I was actually TRYING. What would YOU do with a 1750% increase in subscribers this month?

Click here to purchase your copy of PopUp Domination.

And here is a quick video showing exactly how to use the Editorial Calendar directly from the EC plugin authors.

The WordPress Editorial Calendar Screen Cast from Zack Grossbart on Vimeo.

I’m about to open up another round of my Easy WordPress Websites Webinar. Here’s a little blooper from a promo video. Like the video set up? I learned how to make it from Gideon Shalwick. You can learn how, too, for free here. Sometime this week I’ll show you our actual setup in the basement. I love it!

Would you do me a quick favor while you’re here? Would you leave a comment below with ONE thing you’d like to learn this June? It can be related to WordPress, email marketing, mobile marketing, video marketing… whatever. Just let me know one specific way I can help!

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. (sitemaps.org)

How to use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin:

• Once you have logged in to your WordPress website, scroll to the PLUGINS tab in your dashboard’s sidebar. Expand it and click ADD NEW.
• Search for “Google XML Sitemaps.” At the time I’m writing this post, it is the second plugin returned in that search. Click INSTALL NOW, and confirm YES, you do really want to install this plugin.
• After the installation process is complete, remember to click ACTIVATE, or your plugin will not be available for you to use…it will merely be installed on your site.
• Once you do that, scroll to the SETTINGS tab in your dashboard’s sidebar and expand it. You should see a new link for XML-SITEMAPS. Click it.
• You will see a notice at the very top of this settings page that tells you to build your sitemap for the first time. Click that link… and the magic will begin!

Once your sitemap is built, you will not need to make any other changes to the settings on this page. This plugin is fantastically configured straight out of the box! I know – it almost sounds too easy… but it’s true. So take four minutes and go install this plugin on your site right now.Then, if you have any questions, feel free to pop over to the forum and ask!

First, let’s install and activate the plugin. Then we will look at the basic instructions you’ll use to tell your widgets when to display.

Now, let’s learn how to create some snippets of code that will tell your newly installed Widget Logic what to do with your widgets.

is_home()

just the main blog page

!is_page(‘about’)

everywhere EXCEPT this specific WP ‘page’

is_category(array(5,9,10,11))

category page of one of the given category IDs

(hint – installing the plugin WP Show ID will be helpful for finding the category ID’s for this one)

is_single() && in_category(‘baked-goods’)

single post that’s in the category with this slug

current_user_can(‘level_10′)

displays widget only for administrators

strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], “google.com”)!=false

widget to show when clicked through from a google search

is_category() && in_array($cat, get_term_children( 5, ‘category’))

category page that’s a descendent of category 5

global $post; return (in_array(77,get_post_ancestors($post)));

WP page that is a child of page 77

global $post; return (is_page(‘home’) || ($post->post_parent==”13″));

home page OR the page that’s a child of page 13

Have questions?

Join our forum and ask away!

This is the start of a series on the plugins I suggest and use myself. Starting with one a day for the next week, I will show you some of my favorite plugins and how to use them. Plugins, like themes for your site, come in two versions: free and premium. They both work fine, but sometimes the premium ones will come with additional or more attentive support (and lots of times, the free plugins have support that’s just as good as the premium ones! Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that only premium themes and plugins are worth anything – it’s not true)!

I want to start by showing you how to install, activate, deactivate and delete a plugin. It’s important to know how to do this because whenever you upgrade your WordPress installation, you should deactivate your plugins first – then reactivate them once you’ve upgraded. So without further adieu, here’s a quick video on how to install plugins (PS – please forgive the abrubt ending! I ran out of time – rest assured I had said everything I needed to say)!

Free Plugins

• All in One SEO Pack
• Sexy Bookmarks (or ShareThis or Sociable)
• Contact Form 7
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Widget Logic
• Google Analyticor

Premium Plugins

A vision is a picture of what could be and should be fueled by the conviction that it will be.

I am taking a risk and sharing with you a vision I have for my own life, and a concrete step I’m taking towards achieving it. Will you do the same and let me know what is keeping you from accomplishing your goals online? What’s stopping you from building your website? From creating new content for your site? Whatever it is that’s keeping you from accomplishing that vision you once had for your business or hobby online, would you either reply in the comments, on the forum, or by email and let me know what they are?

I want to help!

Also,If you’d like to check out the Couch to 5K interval training yourself, you can download the mp3′s I’m using here.

In the past two days, I’ve had requests from two clients to show them how to do this, and so I thought, “If THEY need to know how, then probably others do, too.” Here’s a quick video showing how to link text to other websites, documents, and email addresses. I apologize in advance for the scruffy voice – I’m trying to not let my allergies get the best of me!

Also, I have a FREE PREVIEW of my Easy Website Playbook just for subscribers to MyNameIsAngie. Drop your name and email here or in the subscription box in the sidebar, and I’ll send you the private link. Even if YOU don’t need a basic primer on how to install and use WordPress, please share it with someone you know. Thanks!

If you’re using WordPress (please, tell me you’re using WordPress already), the videos below will show you how to find, install and use a plugin called Organize Series. Keep your hard earned series from being relegated to page 28 of your site.

And yes, I know I could have made a series of these four videos…

INTRO TO ORGANIZING SERIES ON WORDPRESS

HOW TO ADD A SERIES

A POST IN A SERIES USING THE DEFAULT SETTINGS

HOW TO ADD A POST TO A SERIES

Undoubtedly, this video has been shared on Facebook and Twitter the same number of times. I’m not even an OSU fan, and when President Gordon Gee comes across with Brutus Buckeye, I almost shed a little tear.

So this post you’re reading right now…it could be about anything, right? It just happens to be about OSU because that’s what was hot in my neck of the woods this week. Whatever you write about, you obviously want your readers to share with other people, whether those people are at your site or not. Now visitors can simply click a Facebook LIKE button on your site and just as they LIKE a link or video on Facebook, they can LIKE your article. Once they LIKE it, a short line will appear on their Facebook wall that says, “Angie Meeker likes Adding a Facebook Like Button To Your WordPress Website,” except that it will have their name, and their article, obviously. Let’s get people showing their friends on Facebook how much their like your website.

Here’s how to install the NEW Facebook LIKE button on your WordPress site.

BTW – It didn’t show up in my feed because when I tested it earlier, and it DID show up, I hid it…so that it wouldn’t be there when I went to show you it magically appear for this video. Try it yourself and see it work!