Dave Benham

I bet that sometime in your life you’ve been told to keep a notepad handy to record that winning idea that will make you a million bucks.

I’m still waiting for that idea, but in the meantime if I think of a topic to blog about you can bet that I’m not anywhere near a PC. That’s where the Wordpress Iphone application comes into its own.

Wordpress has arguably been the blogging channel of choice for a few years now. You can host the files yourself or let Wordpress do it for you,  and only Google’s Blogger service really comes close to a similar platform. And this application lets you compose and edit posts from anywhere with a mobile signal.

After downloading the app, you need to go to your Wordpress settings and activate XML-RPC remote publishing in the Writing section. Then it’s just a case of putting in your URL, username and password and away you go.

It’s great if you have a topic you think of on the move – for instance I’m sat in the car writing this while Wifey shops. Once I’ve finished I can either publish the post, or save it to draft locally (on my Iphone) or on the web server. I tend to start a draft and sketch out ideas for the post, save it to draft then complete it when I get home.

A new version of the app is in beta with some cool new features. Read about version 1.2 of the Wordpress application here.

My parents always told me it was nice to share, so in true Web 2.0 fashion I’ve added the Sociable Wordpress plugin to the blog.

At the end of every post there are a selection of little plugins that will allow you to share a post with your friends on some of the major social networking sites, like Facebook, Digg and Del.icio.us. Feel free to have a play!

You may have noticed that for a photography blog there is currently a glaring ommission – a gallery. I’m just working my way through some of the Picassa / Flickr plugins and working out which works best with the blog and layout. Watch this space!

The default way Wordpress creates URLs for your blog posts is in this format: http://www.yourblog.com/index.php?p=2. It’s simple and it works, but it doesn’t describe a great deal about what you’re saying. To be picked up by search engines which look for relevancy against search terms you need a little more.

So here’s my potted guide, accumalated in the last few days, on how to make your blog more search engine friendly, and the resources you need to do it.

The easiest way to create search engine friendly URLs is to set Wordpress up to do it from the start – it’s under the Settings menu, entitled Permalinks. I favour a custom pattern like this: /%post_id%/%postname%.htm.

That way my posts are generated with my domain name, the post id, then the name of my post, and .htm is put on the end. All I have to worry about then is to make the post title useful and descriptive. You’ll also need to make sure mod_rewrite is activated on your site hosting – most hosts will have this these days, although my friends at Aress installed it for me.

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I’ve dabbled with Wordpress for a while, both as a web host and a blogger. I felt the need to acknowledge just how far it has come in a relatively short space of time.

The autoinstall on Wordpress is nothing short of incredible. Having prepared my database in advance I was ready to input six or seven screens of information before being able to start on the content and customisation. But no. One click. That’s all it took. The installation screen apologises that it’s so easy!

The quality of the available templates is excellent, allowing anyone to have a professional look in seconds. I browsed the Theme Gallery at Wordpress, as well as checking a couple of paid sources and styles that I liked from other blogs, before deciding on the excellent Aeros template. I just want to replace the background image with one of my own – watch this space.

I know, working for a digital agency I could have asked for help from our amazing design team – perhaps working in the office next to them some of their talent will rub off!