Crikey! How in the world did a simple task turn out into a monster project?

During the weekend, I figured I would take a few short minutes to fire up my handy WP Auto Upgrade to upgrade all my sites. I also thought, while I was add it, to do one or two tasks to secure each installation. One of the first steps was to create an inventory of all the sites, each site’s WP version, what is running on every one of them, date of last update/upgrade and who they are hosted with.

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credit: ninjapoodles

Well that sure turned into a mega project. I now am reminded I need to decide once and for all what to do with some of these sites. A few were inherited from my brother and since defunct. Some needed to be moved and traffic re-directed. Some need to be re-freshed.

Not looking forward to the work. On the other hand it also gives

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Time for our weekly help desk column.

Hi Lynette, My website is www.create-a-mural.com I started it about 6 years age is doing well. I am having a problem with understanding how to address: Todays internet marking with an older website.

1-Adding “Bookmark with the little icons

2-I have 2 different providers for my website & my email list making them flow better.

3-Adding a blog (rss feed?) -Do you do business consultation? - Camille

Heya Camille,

What fun and lovely murals. Your site is a classic online store and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. What you need is not to add all these bookmarks to the site because when people are there, you want them to focus on buying.

But I do see where having a blog to compliment the site would be very beneficial. There are so many things to blog about in your line. You can share ideas, talk about

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Back to our regular Mailbag Thursday. Here’s the question of the week.

I want to set up my first Real Estate Blog, My Company has a web site: But I want to focus on my Residential Christian clients, and local residential clients.

I think a blog, keeping them informed would be helpful, and I would also like to communicate on the condition of the market, as well as use it as a christian vendor exchange. Am I trying to do to much with this. God Bless & Thanks for your help. Bob Weaver

A: Hi Bob!

I like that idea, especially the local flavor. Love the part about sharing information about market conditions. This is one of the hot topics these days. Actually, it’s a good topic whether times are good or bad. And, some markets do OK while others don’t, therefore, the local angle is great.

The only part I’d be cautious about is the vendor exchange. This

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The WordPress Dev Team released the latest version (2.5) over the weekend. Have you upgraded yet or are you thinking oh no… not another upgrade. I just did an upgrade X days ago.

Yes ma’am WordPress has been really busy. I’m looking at their Releases feed and it’s been crazy. Since May 2007, there has been an update or emergency release almost every month. Some months there were multiple releases to boot.

An administrative nightmare if you run multiple blogs or worse. Like I do, almost all websites are powered by WordPress. You don’t have to upgrade of course, but sometimes you don’t have much choice, for example, security upgrades.

Upgrades to any software is generally a good idea - maybe not bleeding edge upgrades but keeping your software up to date also means you can take advantage of the latest features. One big reason I am a fan of regularly updating is because the longer

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You know, I truly appreciate you taking a few moments of your time to leave your 2 cents. So, I’ve decided to reward you with extra link love.

You already know you get that love when you enter your blog or website URL in your comments. There were so many ways I could do this. So many different plugins including the ones that would display your latest post under your comment.

I think those are all cool. But I wanted something more prominent, not buried under old posts. I want to shine a spot light on you. So now, you will see a place just under my BlogRush widget, where you’ll find links to your site or blog (if you commented).

The more you comment, the longer you’ll stay in my top 5 commenters list of the month. But, the counter resets itself every month now. I hope you’ll come back every month so I can feature you.

Thank you

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