Looking at this title, some people may say “there is no such things as real time” because with metrics you are always analyzing the past in trying to determine what may happen in the future or how you can possibly change to better take advantage of future interactions.  In actuality, the best you can get is near real time, but for marketing purposes “real time” sounds more interesting and expensive.

But, why?

What is the point or having near real time web analytics?  For most cases it is just a very expensive “nice to have” feature allowing one to see who is on the site at that moment in time and what they just clicked on.  Other than that there is not much that can be done on the fly to change a user’s experience.  Most analysis is done well after the fact, looking at weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly aggregated metrics and trending.  Many tools provide this very well.  Google Analytics, a free tool, rivals many of the expensive counterparts.

If you need “real time”analysis.  A great tool is Adobe’s Insight (formerly Ominture and before that Visual Sciences).  This tool can provide usage data down to less than 15 second intervals, so you can easily see what your users are doing on your site within 15 seconds of it happening. From a CEO perspective this may be just a cool feature not worth the money, but from a performance perspective it could be really useful.  Did sales just roll out a new campaign or advertisement on a highly visible site?  The “real time” data capture can provide monitoring of usage as the spike happens. Then, adjustme

This post assumes that WordPress has been installed is ready to be used already and is going more in to customization settings.  Google does love WordPress because it is clean and very search engine friendly providing some optimization out-of-the-box.  But, with a few tweaks of the settings the site can be further optimized before even using a SEO plugin or optimized theme.

Within the Settings menu in the admin dashboard there are several options.  I suggest looking at each option and getting familiar with them.  They will come in handy as you may need to change the look and feel of the site.  Options include:

• General
• Writing
• Reading
• Discussion
• Media
• Privacy
• Permalinks

From an SEO perspective the Permalinks is a must to set.  WordPress by default puts the post number after the domain name within the URL, which may be helpful to you, but not your readings nor Google. Creating keyword rich categories and post names are basic ways to optimize for Google because it is a chance to get your keywords within the URL and at the time of writing this Google’s formula rates URLs highly.

Change this to read something like this /%category%/%postname%/.

Another set of settings that can help with standing in Google is setting the Title and Tagline within the General option to include keywords related to your site.

The other categories provide options to make life easier for you as the content producer and for the consumer of the content.  Carefully go through each of the Reading, Writing, Discussion, Media, Privacy settings to best understand how the site can be customized and make sure they are set to exactly how you want them.  For example, I find the post text box default of 10 lines to be a bit short so I typically change it to 25 lines in the Writing settings to give me more visible lines without the text window getting cut off.  Or, you may want to turn off comments or keep a close eye on the comments, through the Discussion options you can customize the interaction of visitors on your pages and posts.

Familiarizing yourself with the available settings options can help make life easier for you and your readers.  Plus, making some simple changes in other places can increase your site’s standing in Google.  So, take some time and understand what the Settings options can provide and adjust accordingl

As with all WordPress admin functionality installation and upgrading plugins is becoming easier. There is no logging into the cPanel of your web host and uploading files anymore.  It is basically a couple clicks and WordPress does all the work seamlessly and in the background for you.

How do you know when a new version is available?  Simple, when logged into the admin Dashboard of the website a number will appear next to the Plugins menu title and also near the top of the menu bar along the left in the Dashboard menu will be a title ‘Updates’ and a number next to it.

There are two ways one can upgrade plugins, one at a time or all at once.  Via the Plugins menu you are given a list of plugins installed (active and not active) underneath each plugin with a newer version is a bolded statement announcing the newer version and a link to upgrade automatically. Click the link and the plugin will be installed.

The other way to install plugins is all at once. In the Plugins navigate to install plugins, select all plugins with a newer version by clicking in each checkbox, find ‘Upgrade’ in the dropdown menu and click ‘Apply’.

There you have it, the newest version of the plugins.  Sometimes settings have to be adjusted to make the plugin function properly.  Most plugins will provide a red warning across the top of the admin dashboard advising you of the settings that need to be adjusted. As always, it is better to be safe than sorry, please backup your website database and files before upgrading.

With each new release of WordPress functionality becomes simpler.  Not too long ago the process of adding new plugins and themes required FTP’ing your files up to the web server, unzipping, and installing manually.  Now, it is as simple as pointing WordPress to your zipped file and the unzipping and installation are done automatically.

Upgrading WordPress is just as easy these days.  The software checks your version and if there is a newer version available a yellow banner will appear across the top of the admin dashboard advertising this fact.  In the banner a “Please update now” link is available. Click on the link and a screen with a few options appear. The first set of options asks “Upgrade Automatically” or “Download x.x”. In most cases just do the automatic upgrade.  WordPress will download requisite files, unzip, and install in one click and you can go on with the most important thing, producing new content.

If you need details on doing a manual upgrade the WordPress Codex site has detailed step-by-step instructions.

Please note, always backup your database and files before upgrading just in case something goes awry. I personally have never had anything happen, but it is better safe than sorry.

WordPress installations are easy and whatever route you choose there is plenty of documentation provided to help you through every step.

The beyond simple and recommended method is to use a web host, such as HostMonster, that offer “one-click” installs.  Bascially, all you have to do is login to your cPanel, find the WordPress link, and click ‘Install’.  In no more than two minutes (in most cases) your website is online and ready for customization and the most important part — content.

If you do not have the fortune of this simple install WordPress.org has all you need to know to install WordPress. The process can be anywhere from five minutes for the experienced to possibly much longer depending on experience and comprehension levels of the documentation provided.   Basically the process involves downloading the software, creating a database and user, uploading data, file configuration, and running the install scripts.

Another great and wonderful power of using WordPress are plugins.  Plugins are essentially pieces of code that can be installed to enhance, modify, and add functionality to your WordPress site.  Since WordPress is so popular and fairly well entrenched you can pretty much find a plugin for anything you need or want (sometimes multiple plugins).  If a plugin cannot be found for the functionality you need, you may be able to tap the large WordPress community for custom creation.

There are two methods one can take to finding plugins — searching WordPress or searching via Google.

Follow the easy steps below to find and install plugins from the WordPress library.

1. Log into the admin dashboard of the WordPress website
2. Find the ‘Plugins’ menu and click the arrow to the right to expand
3. Click ‘Add New’
4. In the “Search” box type in the name or keywords of the plugin and click ‘Search Plugins”
5. Find the plugin that best suits your needs and click “Install Now”
6. A message asking if you would like to install the plugin appears, click “OK” to continue or “Cancel” to stop installation
7. WordPress will download, unzip, and install the plugin
8. Once the plugin code is installed on your website click “Activate Plugin” to make the plugin active or “Return to Plugins Page” and activate later
9. Find your new plugin in the Plugins, Tools, or Settings menus to customize settings

If you cannot find the plugin that suits required needs try doing Google searches for the desired plugin.  Sometimes plugins are available for use, but not listed in the WordPress library.  Follow the below steps to search and install a plugin.

1. Search for the plugin using your favorite search engine, such as Google or Bing
2. When a plugin has been located download the plugin to your machine
3. Log into the admin dashboard of your WordPress website
4. Find the ‘Plugins’ menu and click the arrow to the right to expand
5. Click the ‘Upload’ link at the top of the window’
6. Click ‘Browse…’ to find the plugin and ‘Open’ the plugin
7. Click the ‘Install Now’ button
8. WordPress will download, unzip, and install the plugin
9. Once the plugin code is installed on your website click “Activate Plugin” to make the plugin active or “Return to Plugins Page” and activate later
10. Find your new plugin in the Plugins, Tools, or Settings menus to customize settings

Most plugins accompanying documentation either in the WordPress library listing or on the developer’s website.  Utilize this documentation where possible make the most out of the plugin.  Especially if the plugin is used to enhance findability or specific functionality of the WordPress website.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a server-side scripting language used for development of websites. PHP is commonly used in conjunction with HTML.

For a tutorial, click here.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language, not a programming language, that is commonly used for development of web pages.

For a tutorial, click here.

Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) are used to format the look and feel (colors, fonts, background formatting, borders, etc.) of web pages that use markup languages such as HTML, XHTML, and XML.

For a tutorial, click here.

Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount paid per click when running advertisement campaigns on Google, Bing, etc.

An example would be to run advertisements on Google and pay a certain amount of money when someone searches using keywords you have defined and clicking on your advertisement.