This post is partially in response to a question I was asked after publishing my post about fonts and the importance of making your text as easily readable as possible. Of course, it’s nice to know which fonts to use and what size the text should be, but how do you actually change these settings in your own WordPress theme?

Watch the video below to find out:

Download Video

I recommend you watch the video in full-screen mode.

Links and Resources:

• Get the firebug plugin here
• Read about my recommended fonts and text sizes here
• Read about my other design recommendations here
• Get awesome WordPress themes here

That’s all, folks! I hope firebug will be as useful to you as it has been to me.

Overview

So let’s cut right to the chase: wpMassUpdater is a Windows-based automation software that automatically updates multiple WordPress installations. It updates the plugins as well as the WP version itself and all you need to do is create one simple file with a list of all your WordPress sites.

The basic updating process is exactly the same as if you went and logged in to each of your sites and clicked the “update” buttons yourself. The software simply opens the pages in a browser, logs in and simulates the button clicks for you. This means that you can feed wpMassUpdater with one simple file and then leave it running in the background until all your blogs are up to date.

Why Update WordPress?

Most affiliate marketers have anywhere between a few dozen and a few hundred websites they call their own. And with WordPress being as popular as it is, chances are that you’ve got as many WordPress installs as websites. Whenever a new version of WP is released, there are two options: 1) ignore it and leave all or most of your sites un-updated or 2) groan and start updating all of your sites, or at least the most important ones.

Outdated WordPress installations can cause compatibility issues, but that’s not really tragic. As long as you aren’t installing new themes and new plugins, you won’t run into any compatibility issues. The bigger problem is a security risk. Most WordPress updates fix a security loophole or two and the older your WP installation, the more likely it is that it will be exploited somehow.

I personally never took this very seriously (“my sites aren’t big enough to be worth hacking”) until one of my sites got hacked… After hours of reinstating backups and trying to fix the problem myself, I had to resort to rolling back to a server-backup which was several days old, plus paying someon 100 bucks to sweep up the remnants of the malicious code. Casualties: several hours of my time, $100 and one blog post. Very frustrating.

So that’s it, basically. I like to keep my WP stuff up to date and wpMassUpdater now does that for me.

How is This Different from Fantastico/QuickInstall/SimpleScripts?

Fantastico, QuickInstall, SimpleScripts and probably a few others offer very easy installation and in some cases updating of WordPress. I personally like using Fantastico. For installations, it’s perfect. For updates, not as much as they often seem to lag behind on the updates. More importantly, though, it only updates WordPress itself, not the plugins. If you keep updating via Fantastico, you’ll start getting issues with the plugins, as they become outdated and stop working with the newest WP version.

At the end of the day, wpMassUpdater is a very simple way of dealing with a time-consuming problem I had and it costs next to nothing, so I obviously jumped on it. Only drawback: It’s Windows only. If you’ve had the same problems with keeping WP up to date, take a look as I think you’ll like this.

Cheers,

Read on to find out.

Overview

The first thing you need to know about this plugin is that it integrates with Google Website Optimizer and that’s a good thing. Like Analytics, Website Optimizer is a very powerful tool that you get to use for free, courtesy of Google (and their hunger for data). The thing is, GWO doesn’t usually play nice with WordPress and while there are integration options and even free plugins to help integrate the two, most of them still have some severe limitations.

So, let’s see if WP Split Test Optimizer can justify the asking price, compared to what free Optimizer plugins offer.

WP Split Test Optimizer Video

Here’s a video detailing what this plugin does and how it compares to the free ones that are available.

To recap, the WordPress Split Test Optimizer plugin has two advantages over free plugins:

1. It’s slightly easier to set up and manage. This isn’t a huge advantage, but it’s nice to have.
2. It allows you to very easily track clicks on particular links as conversions. This makes the plugin very useful for affiliate marketers. Unless you’re a coding Ninja, Website Optimizer is otherwise almost useless for affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

This plugin is being sold for $47 and while it definitely works as advertised and is a good product, I guess the main question would be: is it worth the price, compared to the free plugins available?

I’d say that depends mainly on how good you are at coding and how valuable your time is. To me, spending 50 bucks on a plugin like this is a much cheaper solution than spending hours fiddling with code (trying to get click-tracking to work, for example).

In general, if you want to start split-testing and you like to use WordPress, then this is a good solution. If you want to do more advanced, multivariate split testing and don’t mind spending more money on it, then my first recommendation would be ZenTester. For more “causal” use, WP Split Test Optimizer is the better choice, simply because it’s a solid solution and comes with a one-time price.

Click Here to Get Your Copy

WP Twin Overview:

What Exactly, Does It Do?

There’s actually a ver useful illustration of how WP Twin works, on the sales-page for WP Twin. So let me just grab that and comment it:

You start out with a blog that you want to clone and a fresh WordPress install on a new domain or directory (this can be on a completely different site, different server etc.). You then upload one of the script files into your original blog folder and open it up. This is very easy to do and takes just seconds, with an FTP connection or via your hosting account. When you run this file, you’ll simply be able to push a button to “clone” your blog and it will create a clone file for you, that you can save to your hard-drive.

Then, you copy another script file into the directory of your new WordPress install (again, takes just seconds) and run that. You upload the twin-file you got from the previous step and, once again, push a button to deploy the clone.

That’s it. Depending on the size of the blog you are cloning, this can take anything between a few seconds and a few minutes.

What you get is a perfect copy of your original site in the new location. WP Twin doesn’t just copy over some files from one location to another. Here are some things that I noticed, that make it more than just a copying tool:

• Automatically changes all internal links properly. So, if you had an internal link on the old site like this http://oldsite.com/interesting-page/, on the clone site it will automatically be: http://newsite.com/interesting-page/
• The above also applies to link-redirects. I was using a link-redirect plugin on RichQuickReview, with tons of links set up (alas, GhostURL didn’t exist yet, when I set them up). All of the link “cloaks” or link redirects were automatically updated for the new, IM Impact domain. I didn’t have to touch a thing.
• Automatically carries over all themes, all plugins, all theme-settings and all plugin-settings from the old to the new site. I had over a dozen plugins with customized setups running on one of the sites I cloned and they all worked perfectly after cloning, without needing to deactivate and reactivate or reconfigure any of them.
• Automatically carries over any subscribers or members you have, with any membership script.

And What’s the Point?

Ok, so it makes perfect, hassle-free clones of WordPress sites. But what for?

For me, WP Twin was perfect for the move from RichQuickReview to IM Imact. So, if you’re rebranding or otherwise moving domains, this is a very helpful tool. Apart from that, it can be a great time-saver for anyone who sets up WP sites routinely. If you build niche sites (especially those of the micro-niche variety, where you have to build tons of them), you probably have something of a ritual you go through after installing WordPress. You change the settings to match your preferences, upload and install your favourite themes, upload and install your favourite plugins, configure the individual plugins and so on and so forth.

WP Twin eliminates almost all of that, because you can create one “template” with all your settings and plugins ready and then simply deploy that on every new site you set up.

In addition, it can also be used to create backups of your sites. This, however, needs to be done manually with the standard version of WP Twin. Automatically scheduled backups are available as an upgrade for an extra $47.

Conclusion

I’m very happy I had WP Twin for the site move and it’s saved me at least a few hours in setting up various sites for marketing purposes as well as sites for my link network. Is it an absolutely “must have” essential tool? No, certainly not. It’s useful for anyone working with WP a lot, but it’s not something you should buy if you don’t have a clear idea of how you’re going to use it.

The only downside I can see is the price. I feel that at $97 it is a tad over-priced for what it does.

If you have a use for blog-cloning and the 100 bucks don’t hurt your bottom line too much, I give it a thumbs up.

Click Here to Get Your Copy

Cheers,

Are the Themes Any Good?

In a word: yes.

In a few more words: the visual design of the Elegant Themes collection is, without a doubt, top tier.  All of the themes are really well designed, most of them look absolutely stunning and in terms of usability, page structure etc.  there’s nothing to complain about.

Apart from the eye-candy, I was also pleasantly surprised by what the themes have to offer “under the bonnet”.  Every theme comes with an easy to use and feature-rich options menu, accessible in the WordPress admin area.  The options let you easily modify and change several aspects of the theme’s appearance, switch between different colour schemes (if available), set up ad space and AdSense areas, tweak SEO settings and much more.

Here is a Screenshot of part of this options menu, called the “epanel”:

Another thing worth mentioning: I am very happy with the loading speeds of all the Elegant Themes I have tried so for. Even with animated galleries and lots of pictures (like you see here on RQR), the pages build up fairly quickly.

Elegant Themes Short Codes

Another remarkable feature offered with every Elegant Themes theme are the so called “short codes”. These are simple snippets of code that can be very easily integrated on any post or page and let you add all kinds of awesome styling to your pages.

With the short codes, it’s really easy to create awesome looking slideshows, text-boxes, tabbed content and much more. All in all, they help turn Elegant Themes into a very flexible site-building tool and the “arsenal” you get with an ET subscription goes far beyond the scope of just a few skins that make your blogs look nice.

Are They Suitable for Money-Sites?

So, the themes may be good, but are they also suitable for sites geared completely towards monetizaton? I can only see one potential problem with using Elegant Themes for money-sites: they aren’t ugly.

As you may know, for certain types of sites, particularly if they are monetized with AdSense or banner ads, it’s beneficial to use an ugly theme.  Essentially, if your website is ugly, then the ads on it will be the most compelling thing to click on.  This definitely won’t happen with Elegant Themes.

Apart from that, some of the themes on offer are actually very interesting from a marketing prospective, because they can be used as a flexible CMS for websites that don’t actually look like blogs.  If you’re promoting affiliate products or your own products, then some of these themes are definitely worth taking a closer look at.

What it comes down to is that it simply depends on your market and how you intend to monetize a website.  What I can tell you is that even though I originally only signed up with Elegant Themes to get this one theme that you are now looking at on RichQuickReview, browsing through the ET gallery gave me some new ideas and I have since set up several websites using their themes.

The Marketing Lesson

Elegant Themes has a very interesting business model, which works like this: you sign up for a membership to get access to all of their themes, future updates and support.  There is no way to buy only one single theme but you can keep any themes you are using, even if you cancel your membership.

What’s special about this is that the membership costs only 40 bucks a year.

The question I asked myself when I saw this offer was: if I were this guy, would I offer (currently) 46 high end, premium themes plus support for only 40 bucks a year?

And this is in a market where, for example, the Thesis theme is selling like hot cakes, costing $87 for a single-site licence and competitor Woo Themes is selling smaller packages of themes starting at $70.  Not to mention that buying even one single premium theme that has the kind of quality design and flexibility that elegant themes offers, will usually cost more than 40 bucks.

At first glance, it just doesn’t make sense for Elegant Themes to put such a low price tag on what they have to offer.

However, it seems to be working out just fine.  I don’t know any exact sales numbers but I can tell you that there are more than 22,000 members registered in the ET forums.  It’s safe to assume that not all of those are still active and paying members, but even if everyone were to quit before the second yearly payment, this amount of members still represents quite a tidy bit revenue.

What’s the lesson here?  Making a really, really good offer can pay off.

$40 is kind of a no-brainer and I was willing to pay that amount just to get hold of one of the themes.  The other themes on offer and the good support won me over and I don’t see a reason to cancel my membership.  If you can make an offer that gets around 20,000 people thinking along those lines, well, then you’re making a good living.

Cheers,

Read on and watch the video below to find out just that.

Overview:

SEOPressor installs like any plugin for WordPress does. Once you’ve set it up, it has two funcions: Automation and “Consultation”. Here are those two features in more detail:

SEOPressor for On-Page SEO Automation

For “normal” or manual blogging use, the plugin can automatically add bold, underline, and italic text-decoration to your keyword throghout a post or page (in this case, you specify the target keyword for each individual case). It can also add the keyword to the post or page title and it can add it as an alt-text to any images you include in the post.

If you are familiar with the principles of on-page optimization, you’ll recognize these as some important factors that search engines pay attention to. The text-decoration is one factor that helps search engines determine what keywords to rank your page for, the page title is perhaps the most important on-page SEO factor and image alt-tags can also help keep all of your content relevant to the target keyword.

For auto-blogs, you can also enter one or several keywords and set SEOPressor to automatically text-decorate those keywords as they appear in each new post.

On-the-Fly SEO “Advice”

The second major feature this plugin brings with it is that it keeps track of all on-page factors for any post or page you create or edit and presents you with a “score-card” and suggestions for improving your SEO. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

As you can see, it’s telling me which factors I’m getting right and where there’s still room for improvement. It also keeps track of the keyword density on the page (i.e. how often does the target keyword occur compared to the total number of words) and warns the user if the density is too low or too high.

I particularly like this feature because I’m too lazy to calculate keyword density myself, but I’m aware that it shouldn’t be too high. So, before using SEOPressor, I was always a bit nervous about this factor. Can I repeat the keyword again or do I need to change the sentence around, so that I can use a different word? Is this too much or too little? Now, each time I hit “Save Draft” or “Update”, the scorecard refreshes and I see exactly where I’m standing.

Here’s a video with a quick demonstration of how SEOPressor is used. I also briefly talk about the actual test-results I got with it, so make sure you watch this:

Complaining

Of course, no review on IM Impact would be complete without me complaining about something, so here goes:

1) There are one or two suggestions that SEOPressor makes, that I don’t agree with. For one, it advocates “Page Rank Hoarding”, by adding a “nofollow” tag to your external links. I don’t agree with this for several reasons, not the least of which is that it’s bascially “unethical”. You want others to link to you with dofollow links, right? So, don’t attach nofollows to your links. I’ll explain more about why I’m against PR hoarding in a separate article.

2) Many WordPress themes automatically place your post title in H1 tags. SEOPressor will still tell you that you don’t have your keyword in an H1 tag and that you should add one, in this case. Not tragic, but not optimal, either.

3) At $97, the price for this plugin is too high. The plugin is useful and well made, but it doesn’t feel like it’s worth 100 bucks. For my own products, I really believe in over-delivering and offer more than what the customer expects for the price they paid. With SEOPressor, I feel it’s the other way around and it feels like you over-paid for what you’re getting.

SEOPressor: Conclusion

Overall, SEOPressor does what it’s supposed to do: It helps you with on-page optimization which in turn helps with getting your pages ranked. On-page SEO is an important factor, but it alone will not get your pages ranked in the top spots for any keywords worth pursuing. It will, however, make your journey to the top quicker.

In my opinion, whether you should purchase SEOPressor or not comes down to your budget: If $97 is a large investment for you, then I can’t recommend getting it.

If you use WordPress on a regular basis and have several sites out there that are already generating good revenue, then SEOPressor could be a good investment. It’s a very neat tool and it’s just nice to have the ongoing feedback while you create or edit posts. Use it on sites that are already making you money and you’ll make your investment back in no time.

Get SEOPressor Here

Have you used this plugin? Do you have any further questions or comments regarding SEOPressor? Let me know in the comments!

Cheers,

Overview

*This is part of the big reason you should get this plugin right now.

The other part is that all the profits made from selling this plugin during the limited time it’s being offered for just $9.70 (regular price: $47) are being donated to asthma research. So, not only is this a great deal, it’s also for a good cause!

Videos

I made two different videos about the WPSyndicator plugin. The first one is basically a sales-video for the plugin that I made to straight-up promote it (by the way: affiliates don’t get a cut on this. ALL the profits go to charity). While I don’t usually post anything with a sales-angle here, the video can still help you understand exactly what this tool does:

The second video is simply a demonstration of how to install the plugin, how to syndicate a post and I also show you the results on a few of the sites, so you can see what exactly the Syndicator sends out:

Conclusion

The plugin does what it says on the box: It syndicates your posts, creating backlinks automatically. It does take a little time to set it up with all of the different accounts, but once that’s done, it really is a one-click solution. Bottom line: It’s probably the easiest way I’ve ever seen, for buidling a handful of backlinks and giving a small “SEO boost” to each one of your posts.

The low price and charity donations will end in the third week of July, so get in on this right now and help a good cause: Get The Plugin Here.

Cheers,

I don’t really want to go in-depth on this, so let me just say: if you use or want to use any kind of tables on a WordPress site, do yourself a favour and get the plugin.

As you may already know, I personally like to use WordPress for building all kinds of marketing sites. From blog-style sites to squeeze-pages or sales-pages, with the right themes and plugins, WP can be the ideal platform for any kind of website.

In today’s review, I take a look at a new plugin called WP Split Test and as the name implies, this tool helps you set up and track split tests on your WordPress websites.

Overview

WP Split Test is a WordPress plugin which lets easily set up split-tests for posts and pages on a WordPress site. For more information on the point of all this, please check out my Split Testing Basics post.

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Installation and Setup

WP Split Test installs like any other WordPress Plugin and I had no difficulties activating it. Once the plugin is activated, you’ll find a new options tab in your WordPress admin panel, from where you can set up your A/B-tests.

You can set up as many different campaigns as you like and for each campaign, you can create up to four different pages. The pages are created in a simple editor, just like the one used for creating normal WP post. If you prefer, you can compose your pages in an HTML editor and copy-paste them into the WP Split Test editor.

In other words, you have complete freedom in creating your pages. There are absolutely no restrictions imposed by the plugin. Whether you want to test small changes like different titles or different order-button colours or make completely different pages (video sales page vs. text sales page, for example), you can do it using WP Split Test.

Once you’ve created your pages, you simply grab a small code snippet and insert that into a new WordPress post. You don’t need to add anything else but that code snippet to the post. Once it’s published, the plugin will rotate the different pages for each visit to the post.

Check out this video to see the plugin in action, plus a demonstration of the setup process:

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Tracking

Of course, just rotating page variations is only part of the equation for effective split-testing. You also need to be able to track conversion-rates so that you can determine which version of a page is the most profitable one. WP Split Test does click-tracking for your campaigns and interestingly, it tracks clicks within your page contents and also (separately) tracks clicks to your sidebar, navbar and footer contents. For your main page content, you can determine conversion rates simply by checking out the clicks you get to your affiliate link, order button or sign-up button.

Changes can be made on the fly, so if you see that one of your pages is a clear winner, you can give it more weight, deactivate all the other pages or make another minor change within seconds, from the plugin’s admin panel.

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Overall Rating

WP Split Test is a very solid plugin. It couldn’t be easier to install and set up, it rotates pages very cleanly (I like the fact that the URL doesn’t change) and it has no negative impact on page loading times, as far as I can tell.

In my previous post about split-testing, I’ve already expressed how important testing and tracking is for any kind of online money-making venture. You absolutely must do split-testing if you are serious about your online business and if WordPress happens to be your preferred CMS, then WP Split Test is the ideal solution for you.

This is for you, if:

• You like to use WordPress for your sales-pages/squeeze-pages/landing-pages
• You have monetized WordPress blogs or blog-style landing pages
• You are looking for a simple, easy-to-use split-testing solution

This is not for you, if:

• You already have a split-testing solution in place that you are satisfied with

Click the banner below to grab your copy of WP Split Test right now!

WordPress Websites Made Easy is the first free downloadable report made available on RichQuickReview. This is a very easy-to-follow guide on how to build your first website, completely from scratch, even if you’ve never done something like this before and can’t code (hint: neither can I).

Check out this page for more details and the download link!

Obviously, I’m very excited to finally publish this guide and I’d love to get some feedback from you!

Cheers,