Blogsite Studio’s Top Blog Posts of 2015

It’s the end of 2015 and time to do what journalists do at the close of a year.

We look back.

People want to review the last year’s stories to make sense of our crazy world, to understand what makes people tick, and gain clarity to move forward into the new year.

And, it’s a damned easy story to post.

Here at Blogsite Studio, I’m reviewing our top blog posts of 2015 according to what Google says are the most visited.

But subjectively, my personal choice of the most important stories is how, after a long drought, WordPress finally named not one, but two new versions after women jazz artists.

billie holiday singing
Billie Holiday

Finally, WordPress Version 4.3 honors Billie Holiday

August 19, 2015 in WordPress
Billie Holiday had reasons to sing the blues. Her life bore a glaring testament to the vicious racism, sexism, and anti-drug fervour manifesting in the US at the time.

Wordpress 4.1 Dinah, http://blogsitestudio.com/wordpress-4-1-named-dinah/
Dinah Washington

WordPress 4.1 is Named Dinah

December 23, 2014 in WordPress, Women
While Dinah, the WordPress version, doesn’t really match the range of this great singer, it tries.

The top blog posts of 2015 on Blogsite Studio

blog a conference wine

10. 12 Tips to Blog a Conference the Fun and Accurate Way

April 22, 2015 in Blogging

When you blog a conference, you’re providing information with a sense of immediacy that is a welcome departure from the typical post. Who doesn’t like to read the latest words of wisdom spoken by industry influencers?

Over the years, I’ve posted a lot from Blogging Meetups and Wine Conferences and have a few tips on how to blog a conference.

content scrapers featured

9. How to Kick Content Scrapers in the Balls

July 2, 2015 in Blogging, Security

People will do anything these days to post free content. Instead of writing something fresh, they would rather copy posts from your site and post them on their own. It’s much less evil than it is lazy.

Content scrapers think that by including a by-line at the top of the post and an attribution at the bottom – or not – that it’s “curation. But it’s still copyright infringement. I’ve found that even Content Marketing “experts” will scrape content, and then advocate the practice as “Curation,” like it’s a smart thing to do.

optimize for mobile

8. Surviving Mobilegeddon: How to get Optimized for Smartphones

May 13, 2015 in Plugins, Themes, Google

In case you hadn’t noticed, Mobilegeddon is upon us. Unlike a regular armageddon with explosions and cataclysms, Mobilegeddon is the quiet meltdown effect of Google’s new algorithm upon your website, should it not be optimized for smartphones.

In February, Google decreed that webmasters had to get their sites optimized for smartphones by April 21, or else they could expect a drop in rank. Three weeks later, the time of reckoning is upon us.

So, is your site Mobile Friendly?

301 redirect backlink chains

7. Don’t Bite the Hand that Backlinks to You: Use 301 Redirects

February 12, 2015 in Links, Advanced Techniques

Backlinks. They’re the popularity contest of the Internet. Backlinks are the highest form of online compliment you can get. Backlinks say, you’re so special, I will place a link from my web site to yours.

So, given that backlinks are like the holy grail of the Internet, you wonder why anyone would simply throw them away, like yesterday’s broken thumbdrive, but they do.

Especially in the wine business.

ruin your wordpress

6. 7 Ways to Ruin your WordPress Website Without Really Trying

March 31, 2015 in WordPress, Maintenance

This post on how to ruin your WordPress Website was inspired by a client I worked with last week. His ecommerce site had been hacked and suspended by his host, and he wanted to clean it up.

Without making promises, I took a look at his WordPress dashboard, and what I found shocked me. He was operating on WordPress V. 3.5 and most of his whopping 33 plugins were outdated.

Safe to say, this fellow did everything he could to ruin his site.

create a wordpress amazon

5. Create a WordPress Website Ebook Launches on Amazon

January 28, 2015 in Create a WordPress Website, Ebooks

Create a wordpress website update 500Today, Blogsite Studio launched the ebook, Create a WordPress Website in Ten Easy Steps: Updated for WordPress v.4.1 on Amazon.com.

Used by 20% off all websites worldwide, WordPress is a powerful communication management system (CMS) that is both friendly and daunting. Super charged for SEO, yet perplexing to the CEO, WordPress appears complex, but it’s also learnable.

You can get your copy for only $2.99 USD.

posting facebook-not

4. Five Things I Wish People Would Stop Posting on Facebook

September 9, 2015 in Social Media

I don’t usually discuss social media on this site, except when it’s about how to connect it to your WordPress site or how to promote your blog. But this time I feel the need to rant a little about some of the posts I see on social media, particularly Facebook, and why I don’t want to see them anymore.

What I like most about Facebook (and Linkedin and Google+) is reading the articles that my “friends” wrote or curated, which turns my page into a singular News Feed. I also like seeing pictures of the places they go, the people they take selfies with, even the food they are about to eat. I enjoy the humorous memes friends share, and I will even tolerate the sometimes gag-inducing inspirational memes that remind me “I am here to change the world and I’m not alone.”

But there are some posts on Facebook that I absolutely can’t stand and I will elucidate them just in case you were thinking of making similar mistakes.

cms shootout

3. WordPress, Drupal and Sitefinity in St. Patrick’s Day CMS Shootout

March 24, 2015 in Meetups, CMS, Vancouver Web Design Meetup

On St. Patricks Day, I went to a Vancouver Web Design Meetup that pitted WordPress, Drupal and Sitefinity in a knock-down, drag-and-drop CMS Shootout.

Given the holiday, I was hoping the all-male debaters would wear shiny leprechaun hats and come out with their dukes up like fightin’ Irishmen. Instead, it was a civilized affair in which each technician presented their CMS with demonstrations, then answered questions from three judges and the audience. The judges would vote for the winning CMS.

business directory find a writer front page

2. WP Directory Ninja is an Ass-Kicking Business Directory Theme

If you’re planning to create an online business directory in WordPress, you have to know about the new word warrior in town.

WordPress Directory Ninja launched at the end of 2014 and I believe I was among the first to use it. Funny thing was, I sort of stumbled upon it.

And the #1 most trafficked post on Blogsite Studio was:

top plugins 2015-wordpress

61 of the Best WordPress Plugins for 2015

February 4, 2015 in Plugins, Advanced Techniques

WordPress Plugins. What would our sites look like without these little apps?

Devoid of functionality is what they’d be since the WordPress core only provides so much. Without plugins our sites would be really boring and fairly useless.

Plugins, and their sidebar cousins the Widgets, are available by the hundreds through the WordPress Repository, and yet more premium plugins are sold privately. Here’s a list of some of the best WordPress plugins I’ve found, segmented by function.

Happy holidaze!

To my faithful subscribers: Thanks for reading my stuff in good times and bad, and may all your WordPress dreams come true. If you have a favorite post that is not on this top blog posts of 2015 list, please mention it in the comments below.

To my new visitors:  Thank you for reading this post and please check out more. Better yet, please subscribe and get my free ebook, Escalate Your WordPress Website.

To the hackers, spammers and hucksters who have annoyed me all year: I hope you soon see the errors of your ways because there is a special place in digital Hell waiting for you. Till then, fuck off!

Happy holidaze!

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