iridium Interactive Blog » Curiious Series

Puzzled with the URL structure of your Wordpress Blog?

Rahul — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:49:17 +0000

If your wordpress hosted blog has URLs like http://www.example.com/?c=2254, don’t you find it confusing and hard to memorize? Don’t you want to change it to something better like http://www.example.com/2010/03/sample-post/ or http://www.example.com/cat-name/samplepost/

Permalinks denotes how the URL structure of a WordPress powered post appears. From the technical point of view, your webserver should be running Apache with mod rewrite module in it. It’s always advisable to check with your web-hosting service provider if they support wordpress in their servers.

How to setup your Permalink Structure?

It’s always advisable to prioritize and setup the permalink structure of your blog just after installing Wordpress. The reasons, search engines which index your blog based on the URL, might find it hard to track such changes resulting to which you may loose your search engine ranking resulting in a fall of traffic to your website.

To configure the permalink structure of your blog, click on the “Options” tab in your WordPress Dashboard and then select “Permalinks”

A screenshot of the same has been shared below:

You may choose from any of the top 4 options in the “Common settings” and define the URL structure of the blog. In case you want to customize further, choose the 5^th option as shown in the above screen shot.

You may have a look at the common syntaxes below to customize your permalink structure.

%year% – The year of the post, four digits. Example: 2004

%monthnum% – Month of the year. Example: 05

%day% – Day of the month. Example: 28

%hour% – Hour of the day. Example: 15

%minute% – Minute of the hour. Example: 43

%second% – Second of the minute. Example 33

%postname% – A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “It’s Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI (see Using only %postname%). Starting Permalinks with %postname% is strongly not recommended for performance reasons.

*** Note – this has been changed and is ok to do since ver. 2.0

%post_id% – The unique ID # of the post. Example: 423

%category% – A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI. Starting Permalinks with %category% is strongly not recommended for performance reasons.

%author% – A sanitized version of the author name.

Now that you know the importance of structured URLs, it’s time to take some time out and change the URL to something that will direct more traffic to your blog and website.

Rahul Basu is a social marketing expert at iridiumInteractive Ltd. You can also find him on Twitter.

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Many Twitter How To’s Answered

Rahul — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:16:16 +0000

Q1) How can I change my Twitter Username?

Ans: When you signup for a new Twitter account, you are entitled to provide a real name and a username. The username you enter is what appears in your Twitter profile URL (Ex: http://www.twitter.com/iridiuminter) and at the top left of your Twitter profile page next to your photo. Your username is also displayed in @(username) when someone replies back. This will be the name that the entire community will associate you with. It’s therefore advisable to choose your username smartly as it will become a part of your brand on the Twitter Platform.

You may however change your Twitter usename by visiting your Twitter Account Settings page and entering your new username in the Username Box. Please note that the username can not exceed 15 characters. Hence, you can not get a username such as: iridium Interactive as it exceeds the max number of characters. Twitter don’t allow spaces in usernames.

Q2) How do I block a Twitter Follower?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers on Twitter whom you might want to block.

If someone follows you and you want to block that particular user, simply log onto Twitter and go to that person’s profile page. Then select the “Block” option from the right hand sidebar (under the “Actions” heading). Remember, you can still view them in your public Twitter stream if you have blocked them, but they won’t appear on your Followers list and you won’t appear on their list as well.

Q3) How do I edit a tweet which has been already published?

Sorry, there isn’t any edit option introduced by Twitter so far. You may however delete your tweet any time and republish it the way you wish to.

Q4) What is retweet?

If you like someone’s tweet, you can always Retweet (abbreviated as RT) and share it on your own Twitter profile. To do so, simply add RT and the original poster’s Twitter username within your tweet (for example, “RT @iridiuminter” would indicate you’re retweeting, or republishing, something that iridium interactive has published). You will find loads of twitter applications which provides you with an option to retweet or retweet with comment option in your profile.

Q5) What is hashtag?

A hashtag in Twitter is a keyword preceded by the “#” symbol used while tweeting. Hashtags generally help Twitter users to quickly find content related to a particular subject. For example, if I want to search for updates related to Iridium Interactive, I would go to http://search.twitter.com/ (Internal Search of Twitter) and search for “iridium Interactive”. The search result will fetch all the tweets which contains the word Iridium Interactive in it or #iridium interactive or #iridium.

Q6) What is @reply?

While using Twitter for micro-blogging you’ve undoubtedly seen the @reply tag and heard the term ‘at reply’. An @reply is a reply to a particular tweet from one person directly to another that is published in the tweeter’s public Twitter stream and in the @reply recipient’s @username link (where ‘username’ is replaced with the person’s actual Twitter username) in the sidebar of that person’s Twitter profile page.

If you want to send a reply to someone on Twitter or send a private message (where you don’t want the message to appear in your Twitter stream or the other person’s @username link list), then you should use the Direct Message function in Twitter to send him/her a private message.

Please note that a @username reference in a tweet only counts in the form of @reply if it is at the beginning of the tweet. If the @reply reference is made in the middle a tweet, Twitter considers it to be a ‘mention’ and not a ‘reply’. However, both mentions and replies are included in the @username link in the sidebar of a user’s Twitter profile.

Q7) What is a URL Shortener?

Twitter allows only 140 characters per tweet. Sometimes URLs are so long they often use up all characters leaving no space for you to insert a message. URL Shortener helps shortening any particular URL you provide for Ex- http://bit.ly/a53aj5 . This is a great way to share a link with a message.

Follow iridium Interactive on twitter and facebook and stay current with the latest on social media and campaigns.

Rahul Basu is a social marketing expert at iridiumInteractive Ltd. You can also find him on Twitter.

You may find the following posts interesting:

Is your twitter account hacked?

Rahul — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:37:23 +0000

According to the Quantcast Audience Profile, Twitter ranks among the top 50 site that reaches over 27 million people on a monthly basis in US itself.

But what is twitter? For all those who are not following @sbharatam’s iiwisdomseries on Twitter, it is a micro-blogging tool which acts like your personal radio station where you can broadcast live by sending short messages or (tweets) whenever you like on whatever you want. It is like instant messaging with more widespread visibility.

I have seen many a times twittizens do not realise when they give their account details for better services to potential hackers. Can you ever imagine that your favorite twitter account being hacked? You will not have access to your profile, nor will you be able to find out whats your friends are currently tweeting. Isnt that frustrating!!

Do you offer a helping hand to the hackers trying to get an easy access to your twitter account?

It may sound a bit strange, but the answer is “Yes”. Lets take an instance. I want a software for twitter that can provide me the best way of using Twitter. I searched for the same at a popular search engine and found out Tweetdeck which is a free twitter application which can be installed in various OS Platforms Windows, Linux and Mac. At any point during downloading the application it can ask you for your twitter credentials, without thinking much I give my password and username details. This is where we are at a potential risk of having our accounts hacked.

There are countless third party applications available on the web promising you better user experiences on your twitter account. These applications are free to use and tends to have an access of your account through Twitter connections, whenever you accept and give them the permission to post on your behalf of your twitter account, you are allowing a potential hacker to hack your account.

How do you protect your Twitter Account?

In order to protect your twitter account from getting hacked, its always advisable to use the least number of third party applications while using your Twitter. Incase, you happen to use some third party application, do ensure that you verify the nature of the third party twitter application and ensure that its not a plot to hack your account. At the same time, do keep a note of the applications, which you granted the access to your account. You may find them in details at http://twitter.com/settings/connections

PS: The instances used in the above post have been used to explain you how serious this issue is. By no means, we did want to explain that Twitterdeck or its related tools are hacking instruments.

Rahul Basu is a social marketing expert at iridiumInteractive Ltd. You can also find him on Twitter.

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Do you know about Echofon?

Rahul — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:20:20 +0000

Are you still using the web interface of browsing through Twitter.com to post a new tweet into your profile? It is a time taking process to log into your twitter id every time you want to tweet.

After a few discussions with a few people who have twitter accounts I came to understand one common problem all of them faced that ultimately discourages them to tweet, they arent interested in tweeting because they dont like updating their Twitter profile every time through their Web Browser.

Guys.. You should check out Echofon. It offers some easy to use way of using twitter iphone, Mac and those using Firefox Web Browsers. Previously Echofon for iPhone was called “TwitterFon” and Echofon for Firefox was called “TwitterFox”.

Echofon features the basic feature of tweeting, displaying the tweet of the person whom you follow, tweets where your name is mentioned, direct messages. Also allows to Retweet, URL Shortening, Send a Reply, Adding to Favorites & many more.

Its a nice tool especially because you get the power of twitter at your finger tips while at the same time you can configure multiple accounts and surf through them at one go. Hey.. Its FREE to download and isnt bundled with any spyware.

Happy Tweeting!!

Rahul Basu is a social marketing expert at iridiumInteractive Ltd. You can also find him on Twitter.

You may find the following posts interesting:

How to use RSS?

Rahul — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:25:59 +0000

Get an RSS Reader – The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features – however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Google’s Reader) – as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item – marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to – there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

On the Site
In Your Browser

On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

RSS Buttons

There are plenty more – but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button.

Rahul Basu is a social marketing expert at iridiumInteractive Ltd. You can also find him on Twitter.