Then use Batch Cat by Lenin Lee to add /edit / remove the appropriate terms from the posts in bulk.

I just edited several hundred categories and 1,700 posts in about 30 minutes.

We heart plugin authors!

To install the image widget plugin:

1.  Log into your website at www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin

2.  Go to the Plugins tab on the left, and click on “Add New”.

3.  In the search bar, type “Image Widget”

4.  These results will show – we’re looking for the plugin by Shane and Peter, Inc.

5.  Click “install now”.   When prompted, click on “Activate Plugin”.

To use the image widget plugin:

1.  Go to the Appearance tab, and click on “Widgets” sub-tab.

2.  Drag the Image Widget widget from the left Available Widgets section to the desired sidebar and slide it into the desired location.

3.  This is the image widget when it is open:

4.  Upload the image by clicking the “Add Image” link.

5.  Assign the widget a title or delete the title if it isn’t necessary.

6.  Optional: caption, open in a new page.

7.  Insert a link if your widget is linking to somewhere when clicked.

8.  For better SEO, assign an alternate text for robots and audible browsers.

9.  Width and height will allow your page to load faster.

10.  And you can set the alignment with a simple drop-down selection.

I adore this plugin!  If you use this and want to support the ongoing development, I’m sure a small donation to the developers would be appreciated!

Questions?  Want to see more plugins posted here?  Let me know in the comments.

Blogs that will be considered for the BlogHer Publishing network must be:  …free of any advertorial or sponsored posts, and compensated product reviews….

And a number of you have been inquiring about providing a separate page without BlogHer ads, on which to post product reviews or giveaways.  If you have tried this, you have no doubt seen that it isn’t as easy as it sounds!   On category pages and searches, and on the front page – the giveaways still show up!  And how do you get the ads OFF your special giveaway page anyway?

Although this may look a little technical, it is actually pretty easy to do:

(If I have installed a separate blog for you, and you’d prefer to combine the blogs and use this method, let me know.)

#1 Prevent the BlogHer Ads from Showing on Certain Pages

• Download the “Widget Context” plugin by Kaspars Dambis from your Plugins >> Add New panel.
• Activate it.
• Go to the Appearance>> Widgets panel, and open the text widget that has your blogher code pasted in it
• And complete the new “context” part like this:

This is what you need in there:

spc-*
category/spc-giveaways
category/spc-giveaways/*

#2  Create a New Category for the Blogher-Ad-Free Giveaway Posts

• Go to Posts>> Categories.
• Add a new category just for the BlogHer-Ad-Free posts:  ”Special Giveaways”.
• Use the slug, “spc-giveaways”.

When you have saved the new category – look at the navigation bar at the top of your screen – it will look something like:  http://mysite.com/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=352.  Make a note of the ID number – in this case, “352″.

#3  Exclude the BlogHer Ad-Free Page from your Home Page

• Go to Plugins>> Add New and download “Front Page Excluded Categories” by Sean O’Steen.
• Activate.
• Go back to Plugins screen, select the new “Front Page Excluded” plugin, and click on the link “edit”.

• Replace the “1,2″  text with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

#4  Directions for Thesis Users:

• Go to Thesis  Options>> Custom File Editor>> and select “Custom_functions.php” from the drop-down menu.
• Scroll to the very bottom of the file, and copy and paste this:

//exclude giveaways from front page by Cathy at Desperately Seeking WordPress function exclude_category($query) {
if ( $query->is_home ) {
$query->set('cat', '-nn');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

• Replace the ‘-nn’ with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

You are not finished yet – there is one more thing that it needs to work.  Read the how-to post below.

How to Write a Special Giveaways BlogHer-Ad-free Post

You are all set to use this category for your ad-free giveaway posts.  If you post to this category, it will not show up on the front page.  If you check the special giveaways archive, it won’t show up there either.  But there is one more place to take care of – the single post.  Whether the permalinks post it under a title alone, or a date of some sort, we will need to append the URL with a few characters.

So – in English:

• Write your special giveaways post
• Assign the Special Giveaways category (that can be the only category)
• Edit the url to include the letters “spc-” like this:

• Write your ‘teaser’ post pointing readers to your new giveaway.
• Categorize this with “giveaways” or whatever you like, but do NOT use the “special giveaways” category.

NOTE ABOUT PERMALINKS:

• This will ONLY work if you are using pretty permalinks (view Settings >> Permalinks panel to check)

If you have any problems at all let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to help you out.  Good luck to all my women-blogger friends and clients!

Huge props to Kaspars Dambis and Sean O’Steen for their plugins – I’m sure a small token of your appreciation would be welcomed!  Their links are in their plugins for donating.

Recommended programs for tracking FEEDS and site VISITORS

You should have two things going on your blog already – feedburner integration, and analytics software.  I recommend using Feedburner because it does all the formatting and delivering of your feed off-site – freeing up bandwidth, and brain cells.  And google analytics I trust because, well, its THEM we’re trying to appease.  There may be more thorough trackers, but GA suits our purposes for now.   To set them up for the first time, get this Feedburner plugin, and this Google Analytics plugin.  Register for accounts on both feedburner.com and Google.com/Analytics and complete the setup as instructed under Settings >> Feedburner Set up and Google Analytics tabs respectively.

Check your stats

THEN – you need to check whats going on with the stats.  To be honest, running over to Feedburner or Google Analytics isn’t my first priority and I often forget to do it.  Plugins, again, come to our rescue.  If you are using the Google Analyticator plugin as mentioned above, you will have access to your stats immediately under the Dashboard.  If you are using a different analytics integration, you will need this plugin:

1. Google Analytics Dashboard and for your feeds,
2. Feed Subscriber Stats.

Note: if your blog is fairly new or if you are a long-time blogger, stats are equally important.  They tell us if we are meeting our GOALS.  If you are a baby blogger, perhaps 50 new subscribers seems like a mountain?  If you are a long-time blogger, perhaps some more optimization for search engines?  Or are your feed readers clicking on anything?  And what grabs their interest the most often?

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Don’t forget to come back every day this week for Hearts for Haiti give-aways!!