Free Services to Sign Up For To Improve Your WordPress Blog
Additional Free Services To Sign Up For
Once you’ve got your basic WordPress blog installed and have the pieces all working, you are basically done.
I like to have a few things set up right away when I start blogging. One of my biggest concerns is tracking information – what is going on on my website, who is visiting, who is subscribing, etc. I also am not too happy with the default WordPress comments, and have found a solution I much prefer.
There are some plugins we’ll be installing in the next step, but we need to sign up for some services before we install the plugins. Here are the ones I recommend:
- Feedburner – The only way you will be able to get an accurate count of your subscribers, but even this isn’t 100% accurate. Nonetheless, it is the de facto industry standard and if you want to have any chance of knowing what your subscriber count is, Feedburner is pretty much the only game in town. One nice feature you get for free when you sign up is the ability to send email updates – basically an RSS to Email service. Since many people still do not use RSS, but almost everyone uses email, I strongly suggest you get a feedburner account. You don’t even have to use Feedburner for RSS if you don’t want to – just burn your feed and then use it for email subscriptions.
- Google Analytics – There are a number of ways you can track visitors on your website. After trying a whole slew of tools, I settled on Google Analytics. One of the big selling points for me is their advanced goal tracking data. As your blog grows and you start giving away products or selling products, you’ll want this feature so that you can optimize your website for sales and conversions. If you’re considering using Google Adwords to advertise, you’ll want Google Analytics as well for their tight integration – it may not be fair, but it is the way it is.
- DISQUS – I use DISQUS for my blog comments because it gives me an easy way to see a person’s past behavior and reputation. DISQUS accounts collect all the comments you have left on any website using DISQUS into their profile. DISQUS also enables your readers to post using their Facebook, Twitter and other accounts – a huge time saver for readers. My favorite feature though is the reply by email. When someone comments on my blog, DISQUS emails me the comment. I can reply to the email and it will post my comment as a reply on my blog, and email the original commenter. They can then reply to that email as well and the same thing will happen. In effect, we can have an email discussion amongst ourselves, which at the same time is being posted to my blog for others to read.
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