Author Archives: Pamela Coyle

The problem with off-the-shelf WordPress themes and SEO

by Jon Henshaw, Raven Tools

One of the best things about WordPress is that you can get a great looking website without doing too much work.

WordPress makes this happen with a feature they call Themes. Themes control the overall look and feel of your site. You don’t have to change any of the core WordPress code to use them. Plus, most WordPress software updates don’t affect the themes. Just press a button to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, and you’re done!

sponsor raven tools The ease of use and popularity of theming abilities helped create an entire market that focuses exclusively on making and selling WordPress themes.

At one time, WordPress theme makers didn’t concern themselves with search engine optimization (SEO). They would use Flash, table based layouts and other coding methods that interfered with a search engine’s ability to fully comprehend a page’s content.

Today, almost every reputable theme provider touts its themes as SEO friendly. In reality, most are just SEO friendlier.

The Top 4 SEO issues with off-the-shelf WordPress themes are:

Self-Promotion: Many themes include a hard-coded footer link back to their site. Those links are usually unrelated to the website using the theme and can be seen as unnatural (spammy) links by Google’s algorithm. Other themes include additional elements that aren’t as obvious to the site owner, and they only exist to serve the interests of the theme maker.
Too Much Code: To make the theme do the cool looking things that got you to buy it, theme makers often include large JavaScript libraries. Depending on the theme, this can adversely affect the speed and load time of the site. Search engine algorithms devalue websites that are slow to load.
Lack of Focus: Search engine algorithms consider the context of the content on your page. The more focused the experience, the better. Therefore, themes that use three columns and/or enable the display of a multitude of widgets and navigation items are not optimized for SEO (or a good user experience). Website navigation should be limited and focused, and the main content should be at the forefront — preferably in a one column layout. Everything else is a distraction and could dilute the context you’re trying to communicate to search engine algorithms.
Cookie Cutter: There’s a very good chance that a theme — even a theme that passes all of the items on an SEO checklist — is being used by spammers. While this may not affect your site’s ability to perform well in search results, it may affect the first impression and trust level of first time visitors. That’s especially true if they subconsciously identify your theme design with the spammy sites they’ve visited.

Ultimately, the most SEO-friendly WordPress theme is a custom theme. Not only can you control the code, design and focus of your website, your website won’t have spammy looking links by default.

Also, you can take steps to improve the SEO of your website. For example, when writing the HTML, you can label your content with schema.org microdata. This microdata is invisible to humans but helps search engine machines determine whether they’re looking at a movie review, a recipe, an event and much more.

The best place to start with a custom theme is with a starter (a.k.a. barebone, blank or naked) theme. The start theme that I recommend is Roots, which incorporates Bootstrap, Boilerplate and Grunt. Bootstrap gives you a mobile ready framework; Boilerplate provides modern HTML5 code; and Grunt minifies and concatenates the CSS and JavaScript for faster loading times.

In my experience, custom themes almost always outperform off-the-shelf themes when it comes to search engine visibility and organic traffic. And while it’s true that creating your own theme can take significantly more time than using an off-the-shelf theme, the long-term SEO benefits often make it well worth it.

Note: This is one in a series of guest posts from our local sponsors. Jon Henshaw is a founder and chief product officer at Raven Tools. He will be speaking in Track 1 at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 3. His talk is delightfully called “How to SEO the crap out of WordPress.”

WordCamps by the Numbers

What in the world is WordCamp?

It is an event that brings together users, site owners, developers and advocates of WordPress, the world’s best open-source publishing platform. Open-source means free. WordPress people give generously of their time and expertise in forums, on websites and at MeetUps throughout the year but a WordCamp brings everyone together to share, learn and celebrate.

WordCamp Nashville WordPress turns 11 years old in May. It was first released on May 27, 2003. Nearly 20 percent of the top 10 million sites in the world use WordPress. Starting in 2004, major updates to WordPress have been code-named for important jazz musicians. WordPress 3.8, released in December 2013, is codenamed “Parker,” for sax player Charlie Parker. “Smith,” named for jazz organist Jimmy Smith, was released to the public on April 16, 2014. Like a week ago. WP 3.8 has been downloaded more than 20 million times.

Nashville is in distinguished company by organizing its own annual WordCamp. Our first official WordCamp Nashville in 2012 shared the stage with WordCamp New Zealand – held same day, separated by continents and cultures but united in appreciation of WordPress. In 2013, on April 20, we split the the stage with Seoul (Korea) and Slovakia. This year, three other cities will join us on May 3, including Zurich, Switzerland.

The first WordCamp was in San Francisco in August 2006 and drew more than 500 people. By 2013, according to statistics compiled by the hard-working people at WordCamp Central, the landscape looked like this:

Number of WordCamps: 71
Number of WordCamps in the USA: 31
Number of WordCamps outside the USA: 40
Total Number of WordCamp attendees: over 19,000
Total Days of WordCamp: 117
Number of sessions presented at WordCamps: 1,565
Number of people who spoke at WordCamps: 1,176
Number of companies that sponsored WordCamps: 522
New WordCamps: 15
WordCamp videos published to WordPress.tv: 474

A $20 ticket is about so much more than Nashville WordCamp 2014, though we’re delighted to host you. The international WordPress community is generous, inclusive and growing. With input from local organizers, WordCamp.org sets standards and guidelines to keep these grassroots events about WordPress, learning and sharing best practices and new tricks with the platform many of us know and love.

Check out the schedule, and grab your ticket to WordCamp Nashville while you can.

#WCN14 After-Party Lands at The Flying Saucer

A WordCamp without an afterparty is a bit like a site page without a title tag – useful, but far from optimal.

Breathe easy, for WordCamp Nashville 2014 is all about optimal. The official after-party will be at the Flying Saucer in downtown Nashville from 5 to 9 p.m. flying saucer word camp

Visitors to Nashville may not know about the Flying Saucer, or what we locals call, “The Saucer.” The venue boasts about 120 beers (some tap, some draft), plus other stuff to drink, good food and a fun atmosphere. It’s in downtown Nashville, near the Frist Museum and the fancy Union Station Hotel. (The Saucer is not fancy.)

After 9 p.m., linger longer or use the location as a jumping off point to explore Music City’s entertainment and entertaining epicenter on a Saturday night.

Make sure when you arrive from WordCamp, which ends at 4 p.m., you park in the lower level lot behind the bar. Get your ticket validated inside The Saucer and pay a scant $3 when you exit the lot.

Party sponsorship from Pantheon allowed us to secure a great venue for four hours and provide drink tickets and some coin toward food. Thanks, Pantheon and Cal Evans!

The Flying Saucer
111 10th Avenue South #310
Nashville TN 37203

Did someone say beer?

WordCamp Nashville May 3 features WordPress sessions for beginners, developers, site owners

Kate O’Neill, speaker, consultant and entrepreneur, to deliver keynote talk

About 300 people who use WordPress – ranging from true beginners to advanced developers – will converge on Music City May 3 for the annual WordCamp Nashville 2014.

The daylong learning and networking event celebrates WordPress itself and the large global support community around it. WordPress is free and open-source publishing software admired by fans for its ease of use, flexibility and ability to customize. The platform drives everything from websites of major companies such as Sony Music Entertainment, TechCrunch, and BBC America to simple, single-author blogs – and everything in between.

Tickets are $20 and include lunch, a t-shirt and admission to an after-party.

Kate O’Neill, principal of KO Insights, consultant, entrepreneur and former founder of [meta] marketer, will be the keynote speaker. She is a Nashville Technology Council and Evolve Women board member and a visible, passionate advocate for women in leadership and technology as well as the city’s growing technology community.

The keynote session starts at 11 a.m. at Nashville School of Law. This is the third WordCamp Nashville, and past events attracted participants from Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana in addition to Tennessee.

WordCamp Nashville is part of a much bigger picture. WordPress, which powers more than 75 million personal and business sites on the web, has provided a starting point for many new developers, helping fill gaps in the technology talent pipeline. Each year, volunteers in cities across the globe organize WordCamps to share best practices and new approaches, including how to use WordPress in tandem with other programs.

Attendees may choose from three tracks based on skill level but are not locked into any of them. WordCamp Nashville organizers this year added a daylong Q&A and Help Desk available to everyone, regardless of skill level or experience.

Expect a crowd that loves tech, problem solving, entrepreneurship and business. The event is entirely volunteer-run and speakers are not paid. WordCamps are run under the auspices of the WordPress Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

FACES OF WORDPRESS: Liz Fulghum

Liz Fulghum
WordPressing since 2004
WP Level: Developer, advanced
nosleepforsheep.com

A decade ago Liz Fulghum was a freelance web designer who started exploring options beyond static HTML to give her clients more control over updating their sites.

At the time, the main blogging platforms had been b2 (the precursor to WordPress) and Movable Type. Developers were hacking them to run regular sites, and a cadre of what became WordPress founders launched an early version they said was “born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL.”

They named it WordPress. Liz tried it and hasn’t looked back. She used it to develop microsites for artists as part of the digital design team at Sony BMG. She launched her own agency, NoSleepForSheep, in 2011 and she and her team design and develop custom WordPress sites for artists, businesses, non-profit agencies and are moving in to app development.

“These days, there’s a certain elegant simplicity to WordPress that is particularly remarkable given how powerful the platform really is,” Liz says. “WordPress maintains an incredibly user-friendly front end while allowing developers the ability to create pretty much any type of functionality you’d need for a modern, database-driven website.”

WordPress is a forgiving platform that allows newbies to learn at their own pace. “Don’t be afraid,” Liz says. “Push the buttons. All of them. Almost anything that can be done also can be undone.”

For budding developers, Liz advises they learn how to build themes from scratch.

“A theme requires exactly two files to be fully functional,” she says. “Even if all you do in your career is customize pre-built themes, you can’t beat the level of understanding you’ll earn from building out your own theme at least once.”

As part of the build-up to WordCamp Nashville 2014 Faces of WordPress will highlight members of Middle Tennessee’s great – and growing – WordPress community. We will feature WP users at all levels, newbies to advanced developers. And mark your calendar. This year’s Big Event is May 3, 2014.

WCN14 Sessions, Speakers, Schedule Announced!

WordCamp Nashville 2014 has something for everyone – new users, businesses owners who want to better understand how their site works, intermediate folks and seasoned developers.

We had an extraordinary strong pool of submissions and narrowing it down was tough. Part of our “theme” this year is Celebrating Nashville’s WordPress Community, and we gave preference to presenters from Tennessee (and Southern Kentucky) to showcase local talent.

WordCamp Nashville 2014 is Saturday, May 3

You’ll see familiar names and some new ones. Samuel Wood, known to the WP community as “Otto”, is back! He’s a WordPress core developer who lives in Memphis and he’ll talk about JSON API(s) in Track 3. Nashville’s Kate O’Neill, a champion of Music City as a technology hub and women in tech and leadership, is the keynote. This year, the keynote will be before lunch, at 11 a.m.

Mike Toppa makes his third consecutive WordCamp Nashville Track 3 appearance. Jon Henshaw of Raven Tools will talk SEO. We’ve got detailed sessions on JetPack, Gravity Forms, SEO, WordPress for Nonprofits and more awesome stuff, including a panel on Women in WordPress.

So get your ticket and join us.

FACES OF WORDPRESS: Mario Scott

Mario Scott
WordPressing since July 2013
“Advanced amateur”

Mario Scott is no stranger to technology – he was a technology information systems operator/analyst for the U.S. Army for six years; maintained and provided technical support for software, hardware and networks at Fort Campbell for three years; and, as a contractor, reviewed and monitored risk management procedures for information systems for Department of Defense accreditation.

But he didn’t meet WordPress until July 2013 when he was researching content management systems for a website to serve as umbrella for integrated media/entertainment projects. WordPress was the perfect fit for the nascent Mario Scott Enterprises.

What struck Mario, beyond the platform itself, was the large, supportive ecosystem of the WordPress community. “The breadth of the community is just huge,” he says.

He began attended WP Nashville MeetUps in January 2014 after getting a new job as a client services analyst at The Tennessean and no longer had to commute to the Clarksville area. Mario’s been experimenting with different templates on WordPress.com as well as learning CSS and tinkering with custom post types.

“It is not a steep learning curve, and you don’t have to go into the code if you don’t want to,” Mario says. “It meets you wherever you are and you can go as far as you want.

“That’s what I like about WordPress,” he says. “It’s the Swiss Army of websites. It’s nuts what you can do with it.”

WordCamp Nashville 2014 Tickets Available Now!

Tickets for WordCamp Nashville 2014 on May 3 are available. For reals.

Hop over to the ticketing page and get your WordCamp Nashville ticket. A scant $20 gets you:

Admission to a full day packed with all things WordPress
A totally awesome t-shirt
Lunch – six options that include vegan and vegetarian fare
Admission to the event after-party

This is the third WordCamp Nashville and, like last year, it will be held at the Nashville School of Law. Each year we add new sessions, new speakers, more capacity and still sell out.

Kate O’Neill, principal of KO Insights, consultant, entrepreneur and former CEO of [meta]marketer, will be the keynote speaker. Kate, who is on the board of both the Nashville Technology Council and Evolve Women, is an eloquent advocate for Nashville as a growing tech sector, as well as women in technology and leadership.

Kate O’Neill – Consultant, Author and WordCamp Nashville 2014 Keynote Speaker

And we’ve added a fourth “track,” a day-long Q&A and Help Desk that is available to everyone, regardless of skill level or experience. We are calling it Track 0, only because we already had a Track 1.

We’ll ask you to select Track 1, 2, or 3 when buying your ticket but please remember – WordCampers can attend any session, regardless of track. Move around. If a session doesn’t meet your needs, find another one. We just like a general idea for planning purposes. The tracks:

Track 1: New Users
Track 2: Intermediate Users
Track 3: Developers

The full speaker line-up will be available next week but go ahead – buy WordCamp Nashville 2014 tickets. Now.

FACES OF WORDPRESS: MaAnna Stephenson

MaAnna Stephenson
WordPressing since 2006
WP Level: Expert User, WordCamp Nashville 2013 Speaker
BlogAid

MaAnna Stephenson found WordPress when she needed to create a blog for her book site, which she had built in static HTML.

Within two years, she launched BlogAid, offering classes and consulting to help non-Geeks learn the ways of WordPress. She’s created a vast video tutorial library, her “Tips Tuesday” podcast is hugely popular and, if Google+ means anything to you, more than 3,600 people have MaAnna in their “circles.” Among them are other well-known WordPress and G+ experts.

“Learning WordPress changed everything about my business. I moved away from being a coder and into the User and management side of owning a site,” she says. “I change my business model at least once a year to keep up with the changes in tech, online business trends, and WordPress itself.”

She built BlogAid while working fulltime as a field service electronics engineer. As WordPress grew up, so did BlogAid and earlier this year MaAnna left the “day job” to devote all her attention to her own business.

Often clients come to BlogAid after going it alone. MaAnna trains other people to create and run successful websites, which includes learning to harness the power of WordPress itself, SEO, content marketing, and conversion.

“There is no other field of endeavor where folks think they can make money overnight without having some idea of how to do it. It costs way more, in both time and money, to try to do things on the cheap and figure it out as you go. Those that invest in their online business make more money than those that don’t. That’s the bottom line.

The old coder in MaAnna relishes getting early looks at WordPress updates as a beta tester and appreciates that the WP team develops at a plugin level first before adding new functionality to the core.

“I believe that will be the future of WordPress and give it the ability to grow in different directions for different business models,” she says.

FACES OF WORDPRESS: Nathaniel Schweinberg

Nathaniel Schweinberg
WordPressing since 2009
WP Level: Developer, WordCamp Nashville 2013 Speaker
Fight the Current

When other developers ask Nathaniel Schweinberg “why on Earth” he would develop with WordPress, he has a ready answer.

“Why not is a better question,” he says. “WordPress is what got me into development in the first place. Using WordPress doesn’t make be a bad developer. It’s inspired me to become a better one.”

Nathaniel was introduced to WordPress in 2009 while at Florida State (though not as part of any class) and developed his first custom theme for an artist who needed a website with a portfolio of paintings and sculptures.

He moved to Nashville the following year to intern with a video company that did environmental projection and continued to work in WordPress. Clients would ask for a new feature and Nathaniel would figure out how to make it happen and ask members of the vast and supportive WordPress community for help if he couldn’t.

And now?

Nate has migrated from building WordPress sites to building custom plugins and now is using WordPress to build web applications. One project in the works is creating a 25-user social app for an art school in California. He talked about what he’s up to in a recent blog post:

I’m researching how to effectively develop an API, how to fully utilize Object Oriented Programming within the context of PHP, learning new server side languages, and better utilizing dependency management. I’ve learned how to use HTML and CSS preprocessors, version control systems, picked up a few extra languages, and how to manage my own server.

WordPress allowed him to pace his learning, step by step, and ease into deeper levels of development. It also allowed him to be self-employed, straight out of college.

For new developers, Nathaniel recommends starting with the basics, html and css, then diving into the WordPress core to understand how the php works. From there, you can bend WordPress “to your will,” he says, and use it “in conjunction with other tools.”

“Don’t let the framework get in the way of what you’re seeking to accomplish. It’s ok to use the right tool for the job.”