Switching SEO plugins is no mean feat since you've probably already got meta descriptions and other information that you don't want to lose. There are also a few other tricks to migrating, so here's a step-by-step guide:

Installation and SEO Data Migration

Firstly, install and activate WordPress SEO by Joast.

While WordPress SEO by Joast can import data directly from several other SEO plugins, it can't handle SEO Ultimate directly. But never fear, because SEO Data Transporter can do the job, so install and activate it too.

Import the settings from SEO Ultimate using Tools → SEO Data Transport and selecting from: SEO Ultimate, to: WordPress SEO and Convert.

Disable SEO Ultimate and SEO Data Transporter plugins.

Configure WordPress SEO by Yoast

The WordPress SEO by Yoast settings appear in the main dashboard menu under SEO. I recommend you do the introduction tour to familiarise yourself with what the plugin has to offer.

If you've been using Yoast's RSS Footer plugin, go to SEO → Import and use Import from RSS Footer. Then disable the RSS Footer plugin as you won't need it any more. You could do the same for Robots Meta, but it's unlikely you'd be using that with SEO Ultimate.

Now go to SEO → Dashboard and set your main settings.

Select Disable date in snippet preview for posts, unless your posts are intentionally time-sensitive; generally you want to write evergreen content and you don't want Google's previews showing that your posts are “old” if they still contain great, relevant content.

Every now and then, some supposed SEO expert guy who claims to get paid thousands for his advice looks at my site for free and says “You don't have any keywords”, meaning that I don't have keyword meta tags. It won't help your search ranking since Google doesn't use keyword meta tags, but it will shut these guys up and possibly have them to keep looking for something that would improve your search ranking. Or maybe you want to just weed them out by leaving keyword meta tags disabled.

Personally, I like the idea of having keywords meta tags but don't want to go to any effort to generate them. You can do this easily with Yoast's plugin assuming you're using sensible WordPress category and tag names. So I enable Use meta keywords tag, and on SEO → Titles set your Post Meta keywords template to %%category%%,%%tag%%

I leave all the other Title settings blank, allowing the plugin defaults to do their best.

Under SEO → Indexation, select the checkboxes to disable Date-based archives, Tag archives and Post Formats archives to limit duplicate content on your site and ensure that these are never returned in search results instead of your actual posts. Leave Category archives deselected (i.e. enabled) unless you aren't using categories at all.

Under Archive Settings, select the checkboxes to Disable the date-based archives and Disable post format archives. If your blog is your personal home site so you'll only ever have one author and your home page shows your archive, select Disable the author archives too.

Under SEO → Permalink Settings, select Strip the category base so your category archives appear in the logical place in the URL namespace. If you were previously using WP No Category Base to do this, disable that plugin.

Under SEO → Internal Links you can configure your breadcrumbs, which are supposed to be good but you need to add them to your theme. Can't say I've got around to this on my sites yet.

Under SEO → RSS add your RSS Footer settings to Content to put after each post. This helps give you backlinks from evil content scrapers who repost your RSS feed on their sites. I suggest:

<em>%%POSTLINK%%</em> is a post from <em>%%BLOGLINK%%</em>

Sitemap Configuration

Disable your old sitemap plugin, like Google XML Sitemaps.

Delete the files sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz created by your old XML sitemaps plugin from your root directory using Filezilla. If you don't do this, Google will never see the updated sitemap from Yoast's plugin!

Under SEO → XML Sitemap select Check this box to enable XML sitemap functionality, Ping Yahoo! And Ping Ask.com.

Go to SEO → Edit Files Robots.txt and modify your Sitemap line to read like:

Sitemap: http://yoursitename/sitemap_index.xml

If you have manually submitted your old sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, log in there and delete it. Google and other search engines can find the sitemap automatically from your robots.txt file.

Missing Features

SEO Ultimate has some features that WordPress SEO by Yoast doesn't have. If you use these features you'll need other plugins to compensate:

Deeplink Juggernaught: Install SEO Smart Links Pro and migrate your custom keywords manually.

Rich Snippets: Install GD Star Rating and migrate your ratings manually.

Slug Optimizer: Install Smart Slug (SEO Slugs hasn't been updated in a long time).

Clean Up

Delete whichever plugins you've disabled as you won't be needing them any more.

And you're done!

How to Migrate from SEO Ultimate to WordPress SEO by Yoast is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

How to Migrate from SEO Ultimate to WordPress SEO by Yoast is a post from Build Your Own Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJM4697kLL4

When your post is displayed, this gets replaced with an iframe which contains the content you wanted to embed, like this:

This works great in a web browser, but isn't so good in your MailPress newsletter, because most email clients don't support iframes. Your readers end up with a newsletter with a blank space instead of the embedded video content. Andre has done some experiments to address this, but nothing has seen the light of day yet. The problem isn't really MailPress's fault, but it does make newsletters with postings containing embedded videos look pretty odd at present.

As a workaround, I suggest disabling the automatic embedding so that the email reader at least sees the link to the video instead of a blank space. To do this, add the following line to the top section of your MailPress theme's _loop.php where you disable content filter plugins that aren't compatible with MailPress:

remove_filter('the_content', array(&$GLOBALS['wp_embed'], 'autoembed'), 8 );/* Dont process autoembeds */

That will stop the link turning into an invisible iframe in the email. In order to make the link clickable, you also need to install the Auto-hyperlink URLs plugin. This will make all plain text URLs in your content clickable on your website, not just in MailPress newsletters; but that's probably not a bad thing. I suggest changing the Auto-hyperlinks default settings to avoid stripping the protocol so the link looks the way it did in your editor.

Workaround for Poor Embedded Video Support in Email Clients is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Workaround for Poor Embedded Video Support in Email Clients is a post from Build Your Own Blog

From now on if you want a dofollow backlink, you'll have to play by CommentLuv Premium's rules and share the article before leaving your comment.

No more dofollow for this blog, I'm afraid is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. Build Traffic By Promoting Your Blog On My Blog

No more dofollow for this blog, I'm afraid is a post from Build Your Own Blog

Remove "[Blog Name] New post" from Subjects

I'd rather have the Subject line of my newsletters read like a personal email than an automatically generated one, so I change:

mp-content/advanced/newsletters/new_post.xml:
<mail><subject>
Strip '[%1$s] New post : '

mp-content/advanced/newsletters/categories/categories.xml:
<mail><Template>singlecat</Template><subject>
Strip '[%1$s] New post in {{the_category}} : '

Friendlier Messages

I like messages that are clear to non-MailPress users, so I change:

mp-content/languages/MailPress.pot:4149 &
mp-includes/class/MP_Widget.class.php:104:
Change "Waiting for your confirmation" to "Check your inbox and confirm your email address"

mp-content/languages/MailPress.pot:4133 &
mp-includes/class/MP_Widget.class.php:99:
Change "Loading..." to "Processing..."

My MailPress Hacks is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. How to Configure Your Blog's Newsletter in MailPress
2. How to Set Up Automatic Bounce Email Processing in MailPress
3. How to Set Up Automatic Bounce Email Processing in MailPress using VERP

My MailPress Hacks is a post from Build Your Own Blog

Well, me too. So I recommend you check out FreeViral.com. It's like a free, legal pyramid scheme for traffic generation. As part of the sign-up process you visit other user's sites. Then you recommend it to other webmasters who want more traffic. They sign up, sending you free traffic. Their visitors also sign up, sending you and me even more traffic. And so on and so on.

In return, you agree to a weekly promo email. Doesn't seem unreasonable.

Of course it only works if you sign up. Having great content on your blog which makes it worth your new visitors staying around and possibly buying your product, if you have one, is important too. Click this link to sign up, and start the free traffic flowing in your direction.

How to get Free Viral Traffic to Your Blog is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

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1. Increase Traffic to your Coaching Blog by joining The Man Coach Web Traffic Tribe
2. Build Traffic By Promoting Your Blog On My Blog
3. Get 2 Months Free ADSL2+ Internet When You Join Exetel In August

How to get Free Viral Traffic to Your Blog is a post from Build Your Own Blog

There are two ways to do this:

Using an Autoresponder

Create an autoresponder triggered by new newsletter subscriptions, and attach your welcome email to it. With this approach, the subscriber gets both a confirmation email, and a welcome email.

Here are the steps:

On the WordPress dashboard click Mails → Autoresponders

Add an Autoresponder Named newsletter, Slug newsletter, Description New newsletter subscriber. Make sure you select Active, and choose the Event Subscription activated. Then click Add Autoresponder.

Now go to Mails → Add New and write the Welcome email that you would like to send. For the recipient, under All choose one of the Newsletters. At the bottom of the page, look for Autoresponders, and Link to: autoresponder newsletter. Leave the schedule settings at 0,0,0,0,0. Click Add. Don't worry that nothing seems to happen yet.

Save the email as a draft. Notice at the bottom that the autoresponder you added has been saved. Don't hit the Send button, or you'll send it to all your existing subscribers. Emails linked to autoresponders only ever exist as drafts. They get sent automatically when the autoresponder triggers.

If you have disabled background wp-cron, in MailPress 5.1.1 your Welcome message will be sent the next time your cron task runs, instead of immediately that the person subscribes. This may confuse you during testing, but they'll get the email soon enough.

Editing Your Template

With this approach, you edit your MailPress template to include your Welcome message in the confirmation email. I prefer this solution since the subscriber only has to deal with one email instead of two. The downside is that you have to hack some simple PHP in your template.

Using a text editor, open confirmed.php in your active template.

Replace the text in the Subject: line in the comment at the top of the file, with the text you'd like to send in the email Subject:. Don't worry that it looks like a comment; MailPress will find it.

Replace the contents of $_the_content with the content of the email you want to send. You can use HTML markup, but be careful to quote “ with a backslash. If you get it wrong, the link in the please confirm email will give a blank page and the confirmation email won't get sent.

For example, if you want to email a link you'll need to say:

$_the_content = "Here is <a href=\"http://buildyourblog.net/bonus.mp3\">your bonus</a>";

You can make the string as long as you like. Include line breaks with <br />.

If you get stuck, simplify the string and keep re-testing by deactivating your test user on the MailPress Users list, and clicking the activate link again until you get something that works, and gives you the result you want.

How to Send Your Newsletter Subscribers A Welcome Message is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. How to Configure Your Blog's Newsletter in MailPress
2. How To Add Users To Your MailPress Newsletter Manually
3. How to Disable Content Plugins in a MailPress Newsletter

How to Send Your Newsletter Subscribers A Welcome Message is a post from Build Your Own Blog

To sell an ebook on ClickBank you need:

• A ClickBank Vendor account
• Your ebook product listed in the ClickBank marketplace
• A Pitch page on your blog describing your product with your Buy Now button linked to ClickBank
• A Thank You page where the customer lands after they pay to download your product

Thank You page handling is the trickiest part of this process, because you want to secure your site so that people can't steal your downloads. Several WordPress plugins exist to assist with various parts of this process.

Requirements

Here are my requirements for choosing a ClickBank Vendor plugin, ordered roughly from most to least important:

1. Proof of Purchase protection using the ClickBank Link Security Script
2. Stamp the PDF file with the customer's name and email address to discourage file sharing
3. Secure download links that expire after a few days
4. Secure bonus product downloads as well as the main product
5. Handle large files (up to 100 Mb) securely
6. Add the customer to my Customers mailing list in MailPress automatically
7. Easy to add Buy Now buttons to my Pitch page
8. Reasonable cost
9. Multi-site license
10. No license manager
11. Source code accessible/unshrowded/unencrypted so I can track down & fix bugs myself

There are several WordPress plugins which only offer ClickBank Affiliate support, helping you sell other people's products on your blog. But they don't do any of these things, so I don't mention them here.

Summary

Legend:

• Yes: Feature is supported
• No: Feature is not supported
• Maybe: Depends on your hosting service
• Hack: Can be modified to support it reasonably easily
• Multi: Use on as many sites as you like
• Single: Can only be used on one site per license

Digital Product Demon

My first attempt was Digital Product Demon from Eubie Art Media, which turns out to be a cut down version of Marketing LaunchPad. I struggled with it for some time before finding a version that worked at all. The author sold resale and giveaway rights to several internet marketers who now sell or give it away in order to build a list of other internet marketers. Unfortunately the version they're giving away is often old and doesn't work, and you get no support. The email address of the author isn't even in the documentation so there's no way to report or fix problems. The guy I got it from had never used it himself, and didn't even know the version he was distributing didn't work. He's still out there spruiking it though.

The way the secure link generator is integrated in Digital Product Demon makes it impossible to secure download links for bonus products, which is why I eventually switched to Marketing LaunchPad instead.

Most of the source code is shrouded, but fortunately the basic part responsible for Thank You page processing isn't so I was able to add code to automatically add my customers to a MailPress mailing list without any support from the author. This is the only ClickBank plugin I was able to integrate with MailPress, which makes it a shame that I later abandoned it.

I recommend you avoid this plugin since Marketing LaunchPad has all the same features and more, and is only slightly more expensive. But if you really like torturing yourself, make sure you have at least version 00.11.31 or you'll waste a lot of time trying to get it to work.

Marketing LaunchPad

I had more success with Marketing LaunchPad, which is included in the Marketing Power Pack. It basically works, and since you buy it from the original author he offers reasonable support. The license manager caused me some grief when the sales process to stopped working unexpectedly on my site, and the author logged in there to diagnose and fix it. Switching hosting services required a new license; as if switching hosts wasn't complicated enough already. I'd prefer not to have a license manager in the first place so I could avoid such problems altogether.

Pretty much the entire code is shrouded, including the bit that was conveniently left unshrouded in Digital Product Demon where I would have liked to add the MailPress mailing list subscription. The author said he'd add a hook to allow this functionality, but I never heard back from him about it. Mind you, I didn't push it. The plugin would also need a hook added to stamp the customer's name and email address into the PDF files, which currently isn't supported either.

The Secure URL Generator reads the entire file into the PHP interpreter's memory, which fails on large files if it exceeds your PHP max_memory_limit. You can increase this limit to work around the problem on some hosts like IX Web Hosting, but you can't on my current host HostGator. That means I can't use it to secure my large audio downloads.

The Secure URL Generator also triggers a Firefox bug that the Mozilla developers refuse to acknowledge, let alone fix, which causes the filename to be lost when the customer uses Save As to download the file. The fact that Microsoft Internet Explorer gets it right is a testament to the unusual bloodymindedness of the Mozilla developers on this issue. But that's not much help if your customers happen to use Firefox and send you refund requests because they have trouble downloading your products.

The regular price of Marketing Launch Pad is US$27. Use the discount code MLPWSO2STD to get it for US$17.

WP PDF Stamper

Stamp your customer's Name and Email address in your ebook to discourage file sharing

WP PDF Stamper from Tips And Tricks HQ stamps your customer's name and email address into the product before downloading it to them, to discourage them from uploading it to file sharing services. It also comes with a lightweight ClickBank integration which make it possible to build a Thank You page using a simple shortcode.

There's no download link security with this plugin, but you could argue that it's less important given that people are unlikely to share links to downloads with their personal details stamped in them. Ideally Marketing LaunchPad would integrate with WP PDF Stamper; but they're written by different people. Tips And Trick HQ's WordPress eStore Plugin which does integrate with WP PDF Stamper doesn't support ClickBank. Catch-22. It is possible to use the Secure URL Generator from Marketing Launch Pad with WP PDF Stamper to secure bonus products if you don't stamp them.

The code is encrypted with Ioncube, so I had to install the Ioncube loader on my XAMPP test site in order to test it. Encryption also makes it impossible to hack it to add code to subscribe customers to my MailPress mailing list. The license manager prevents you running it on more than one site at a time, so you can't leave it enabled on your local test site and on the main site at the same time.

The plugin adds a rather ugly unique identifier to stamped filenames to avoid them clashing. I have suggested they use a separate directory instead so the customer sees the original clean filename.

I recommend creating a new directory under wp-content and changing the default output directory to it; otherwise stamped files end up in the plugin directory, which isn't good. Make sure you create an empty index.html file in the output directory to stop customers browsing other stamped files.

I'd like to see this plugin enhanced to automatically delete stamped files after a period of time; at present you have to initiate this process manually via the plugin settings menu.

On HostGator you need to put in a support request to enable cURL.

This plugin conflicts with Simple Facebook Connect version 1.1. SFC's author says that plugins are breaking the rules when they act like WP PDF Stamper does. The only workaround is to disable SFC and find another way of updating your Facebook Fan Page automatically. Bit of a developer stand-off there.

WordPress ClickBank Integration

Although the name sounds promising, WordPress ClickBank Integration really doesn't do very much for you. It just allows you to add Buy Now buttons to your Pitch page using a shortcode. But that's the easy part; it's the Thank You page processing you need a plugin's help with. This plugin could be useful used with WP PDF Stamper though, which only does the Thank You page part.

General Notes

Remember to Hide Your Thank You Page

Whichever plugin you use, remember that it's important to hide your Thank You page and to mark it noindex. Some unfortunate ClickBank Vendors have ended up with their Thank You pages complete with purchase receipt information indexed on Google; and they're trivial to find once you know how.

MailPress Integration

I'd love to see developers of these plugins adding MailPress support, so that customers can automatically be added to a Customers mailing list. The developer of the E-Junkie plugin recently emailed me saying he was adding this, and it would be great to see ClickBank plugins supporting it too. External services like AWeber and MailChimp support it via various hacks, but it would be great to have it built in with WordPress's own mailing plugin.

Comparison of ClickBank Vendor eBook Sales Plugins for WordPress is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. Comparison of Keyword Affiliate Link Plugins for WordPress
2. Comparison of WordPress Email Newsletter Subscription Plugins
3. The Best WordPress Plugins

Comparison of ClickBank Vendor eBook Sales Plugins for WordPress is a post from Build Your Own Blog

I liked this feature.

Unfortunately it led to so many support requests that the plugin author removed it. Apparently on blogs with large numbers of comments, the extra processing time is too much for many servers. So if you have a blog with thousands of comments, just live and let live. But if you only have a few, and really want this feature, and promise not to hassle the plugin author about it... Here's how to re-enable comment processing in SEO Smart Links Pro version 1.6.3:

Edit the file seo-smart-links-pro.php in a text editor like TextPad.

Uncomment this code in function SEOLinksPro:

/*if ($options['comment'])
add_filter('comment_text', array(
&$this,
'SEOLinks_the_content_filter'
), 200);*/

Changing it to:

if ($options['comment'])
add_filter('comment_text', array(
&$this,
'SEOLinks_the_content_filter'
), 200);

In function handle_options, you need to insert code to set the comment option. Look for this code:

<p>Check to enable UTF-8 support if your site uses non-english characters. Also helps with matching non-letter characters.</p>
<input type="checkbox" name="utfsupport" $utfsupport /><label for="utfsupprt"> Enable UTF-8 support</label> <br>
<br>

And immediately after it, add:

<p>Process Comments.</p>
<input type="checkbox" name="comment" $comment /><label for="comment"> Process comments</label> <br>
<br>

Now go to the SEO Smart Links Pro Options screen, and select the option to Process Comments. Save options... and you're done!

How to Enable Comment Processing in SEO Smart Links Pro is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. How to Migrate from SEO Ultimate to WordPress SEO by Yoast
2. CommentLuv Plugin Helps Build Links and Traffic
3. How to Set Up Automatic Bounce Email Processing in MailPress using VERP

How to Enable Comment Processing in SEO Smart Links Pro is a post from Build Your Own Blog

Yet MailPress 5.1.1 also has some limitations, missing features and bugs which can really get in my way when I use it. At present it's merely great; once these issues are addressed it will be awesome.

So here's my list of enhancements I wish MailPress had, which would bring it much closer to replacing commercial email solutions like MailChimp and Aweber which don't integrate with WordPress anywhere near as cleanly. If you're a developer, I encourage you to give Andre a hand by submitting patches to add these enhancements, and fix these bugs.

I've ordered the list from most important to least important (to me, anyway):

Easy Subscribe to Newsletter when Commenting

Add a “Notify me of new posts via email” checkbox in addition to the “Notify me of follow-up comments via email” checkbox, as described by Joost de Valk here. This is a great way to turn commenters into newsletter subscribers and increase engagement on your blog. Here's an example of another blog with this feature.

Also add configuration options to allow both checkboxes to be selected by default, and optionally disabled.

Reference: Here is the Google Groups thread discussing this.

Custom Thank You Page

I'd like to be able to present a custom page of text to the subscriber when they have confirmed their subscription, so I can offer a more friendly greeting along with bonus download links.

Reference: Here is a Google Groups discussion of this.

Subscribe to Mailing List without Default Newsletter Subscription

Subscribing to a Mailing List always adds a Default Newsletter Subscription too. This pops up all over the place, and seems to be a core MailPress limitation at present. You can create a mailing list subscription form with:

[mailpress mailinglist=id]

At present, there is no way to specify that the new mailing list subscriber should not also be subscribed to the default newsletter. On The Confident Man Project, I have an affiliate signup page which adds affiliates to my Affiliate mailing list; but my affiliates do not usually want to become newsletter subscribers.

I suggest that when the mailinglist parameter is specified, a checkbox should appear saying “Also subscribe to the newsletter”. The checkbox should be enabled by default.

This problem also exists with the Bulk Add field at the bottom of the MailPress Users list: adding new users here also adds them to the default newsletter; to add them to a mailing list without subscribing them to the newsletter, you have to deselect the default newsletter first which is really inconvenient.

Reference: Here is the Google Group thread discussing this.

Omit Certain Posts From The Newsletter

Sometimes I publish a post that makes sense on my blog, but doesn't belong in the email newsletter. It would be good to have a field on the Edit Post page that would allow me to omit these post from the Newsletter. I'd also like to be able to omit posts based on Mailing List subscription settings; for example, don't send a post to subscribers of my Customers mailing list. I don't want to bombard my existing customers with offers for a product I know they've already purchased.

Existing Users Should Be Added To Mailing List by Bulk Add

When adding a new MailPress user via the Bulk Add feature at the bottom of the MailPress Users list with a mailing list selected they don't get added to the selected mailing list if the user already exists. I believe this is a bug.

It's also not possible to Bulk Add users to a mailing list without also subscribing them to the default newsletter. This is a missing feature.

Reference: See here for the Google Group discussion of this, and here for the previous discussion.

CSV Import Problems

There are a few problems with CSV import:

1. Imported users get added to the default Newsletter even if “Add default subscriptions” isn't selected. The workaround is to select “Delete all subscriptions”; but that will delete subscriptions of existing users who were subscribed to the newsletter, which isn't really what you want.
2. The importer should recognise columns headed "email" and “name” automatically
3. The uploaded CSV file is left in a publicly accessible directory with an easily guessable name.
4. I'd also like the ability to ignore certain columns (instead of treating them as meta data).

CSV import is such an important feature, you really want it to handle corner cases correctly.

Reference: Here is the Google Group thread discussing this.

Selectively Disable content Filters in Manual and Autoresponder Emails

Many WordPress plugins register content filters which MailPress applies when sending email manually or from an autoresponder. In some cases this is what you want, and in others it isn't. For example, SEO Smart Links will turn all keywords in your handcrafted email into links back to your site; which isn't always what you want.

I'd like to be able to disable certain plugin content filters in manual emails; I know how to disable content filters in your newsletter but haven't worked out how to disable SEO Smart Links in manual emails. You can't just disable the plugin, since that affects your live site.

Reference: Here is the Google Group discussion of this.

Richer Selection On Sending Mail

When sending an email manually via the Mails menu, MailPress allows you to choose from a single email address, or all subscribers, commenters, mailing list members, or newsletter subscribers. However, you can't combine them or use the Geolocation information MailPress has access to.

I have a mailing list for Customers, and another for Affiliates. Members of these lists are not necessarily newsletter subscribers. I'd like to be able to choose combinations like:

• All newsletter subscribers who are not members of the Customers mailing list
• All members of the Customers mailing list who are not also on the Affiliates mailing list
• All newsletter subscribers in a certain country
• All members of the Customers mailing list in a certain country
• All newsletter subscribers and members the Customers mailing list, without sending duplicates.

Embedded Video Support

Embedded videos, whether created via OEmbed links or shortcodes from popular plugins like the WordPress Video Plugin, generally don't work in popular email clients like Windows Live Mail. Other email services work around this by converting the video into a static image which links to the video on the video hosting service. Users who click the play button in the image find themselves playing the video, and they at least see an image in their email client. At present, all I see when I read a MailPress email with an embeded a video is a blank space.

Embedded Facebook Like, Tweet and Google +1 Buttons

I use the Really simple share buttons plugin to generate the Facebook Like, Tweet and Google +1 buttons at the top and bottom of my posts. But they don't show up when I view my newsletter emails in Windows Live Mail. It would be great if they did, so newsletter readers who like my post can share them more easily.

While it's probably a lot harder to implement, it would also be great if the SexyBookmarks buttons turned into a clickable image that worked, even if it's not animated. At present I disable Sexybookmarks entirely in my newsletter.

Don't Track This Link with Tracking Add-on

The Tracking add-on tracks mail reader activity by replacing all links in a post with tracking links when creating the newsletter. Although link tracking is an excellent feature, sometimes I want the links to be left alone. I'd like to be able to specify a property for each link that indicates that its shouldn't be replaced with a tracking link, like rel=notracking.

Support for External Redirections in Tracking_ga

Affiliate links are generally cloaked/managed using local URLs that point to 301-redirections which send the visitor to the hidden affiliate address. This helps prevents commission fraud by visitors who try to edit the affiliate link. Affiliate links end up looking like this:

http://confidentman.net/resources/doubleyourdating

instead of the less inviting:

http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-3556402-10745526

Affiliate link manager plugins such as SEO Smart Links Pro, Ninja Affiliate, Pretty Link Pro, and many others all support this form of redirection, which is also recognised by the most popular Google Analytics for WordPress plugin.

The MailPress Tracking_ga add-in adds UTM tracking parameters to all links to the local site, so that Google Analytics can track which MailPress emails users clicked links in to bring them back to the site. Tracking_ga correctly omits these parameters from links to external sites. However it currently doesn't recognise that links beginning with the redirection prefix are actually external links. When tracking parameters are added to these links, they can confuse the external site.

Tracking_ga should be enhanced to add a parameter similar to the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin's “Internal links to track as outbound:” parameter. All links beginning with these prefixes should be treated as outbound links so that no tracking parameters are added to them. (Note the Google Analytics Plugin's “Track outbound clicks & downloads:” field is only available if “Track outbound clicks & downloads:” is selected, but the problem exists even if that option is disabled; so Tracking_ga needs its own field).

Reference: Here is the Google Groups thread discussing this

Manual Republish Button

A button on the dashboard sidebar that tells MailPress to republish a post in the next newsletter.

Automatically Republishing Old Posts

When no posts have been published in WordPress for N days, republish the post that was last published longest ago in the newsletter. This would enable blogs with large amounts of content to cycle through their content indefinitely when no new articles are being published, say because I'm on holidays or no longer writing new content. N should be configurable; I'd set it to 7 by default.

I know you can already do a similar thing with the autoresponder feature, but this would be much simpler to use than manually setting up an autoresponder with the content of every post and would automatically accomodate new content.

The Tweet Old Post plugin does something slightly similar for your Twitter feed. It would also be cool to republish old posts to Facebook and Google+. A single plugin that handles all four would be ideal.

Remind and Delete Users That Don't Confirm

Many user registrations on my blogs never get confirmed. The biggest source of these is spam comments; Akismet doesn't filter the spam until after it's accepted, meaning spammers end up registering bogus addresses for updates to comments on articles they spam. Other anti-spam plugins can do a slightly better job by trapping spam before registering the spammer, but this doesn't always work either. If the confirmation mail bounces due to a bad address it won't exceed the bounce handling threshold and even some legitimate users never confirm their subscription.

For MailPress maintenance to be automated, users who don't reply to the confirmation email should be reminded after one week, and deleted from the database after two weeks.

Editing A User's Email Address

You can't edit a MailPress user's email address on the Edit MailPress User page. The only way to do it is to delete the user and create them anew. I'd like to just be able to edit the field instead.

Child Themes

To modify a MailPress theme, you have to copy it; then merge future updates manually. It would be good to have the equivalent of WordPress child themes.

"Add Form" Doesn't Work

When adding a Form, the Add Form button clears the form creation form without adding a form to the list on the right hand side. This makes the entire Form feature inaccessible. It only happens on some sites, but if it hits yours then you can't create contact forms. The only workaround is to use another contact form plugin, like Contact Form 7.

Here is the Google Group discussion of this

Paragraph Spacing Is Missing In TwentyTen Theme

It's easy to fix, but the paragraph spacing is missing in the MailPress TwentyTen them.

Conditional Text

Being able to insert text in a blog post that's conditional depending on where the article appears would be useful. Sometimes I want to include a statement like "Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting a series of articles on XYZ", and have it only appear in the email newsletter since such a statement doesn't make sense in an evergreen blog post.

For instance:

[conditional email]Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting a series of articles on XYZ[/conditional]

Or

[conditional web]This only appears on the web[/conditional]

Or

[conditional rss]This only appears in the RSS feed[/conditional]

Or

[conditional !email]This doesn't appear in the email newsletter, but does appear on the web and in the RSS feed[/conditional]

Being free software, to address these issues you either have to do it yourself, motivate and/or reward the developer(s), or hire a contractor to do it for you. Otherwise go with a commercial solution like MailChimp or Tribulant WordPress Newsletter. Got any MailPress wishlist features or bugs of your own to mention?

MailPress Enhancement/Bug Fix Wish List is a post from Build Your Own Blog - How to Build your own Blog using WordPress

Related posts:

1. How To Add Users To Your MailPress Newsletter Manually
2. How to Disable Content Plugins in a MailPress Newsletter
3. How to Set Up Automatic Bounce Email Processing in MailPress using VERP

MailPress Enhancement/Bug Fix Wish List is a post from Build Your Own Blog

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Build Traffic By Promoting Your Blog On My Blog is a post from Build Your Own Blog