Using the FileZilla FTP Client With HostGator

WordPress is great.  99% of what you need to do you can do through the admin dashboard.  But what of the other 1%? Sometimes you will need to access the files on your host directly.  You may have some non-WordPress pages that you need to manipulate, or perhaps want to swap one photo for another without messing with WordPress.  So how do  you do that?  With an FTP client. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.  It is the de facto standard on the internet for moving files from place A to place B. ...

How to Hide Your Site While You are Building It

So the question comes up every once in a while of how to hide a site while it is under construction.  After all, none of us really want to have people looking at our dirty laundry.  As is so often the case, there is a plugin for that. I wish I could remember where I picked this tip up so that I could give credit where it is due.  There is a plugin called WP Maintenance Mode.  If you need it, I have previously created a guide on how to install WordPress plugins. WP Maintenance Mode quite simply...

Not All WordPress Plugins Appear When Searching Through the WordPress Dashboard

I was recently directed to a WordPress Plugin named ReplyMe.  This plugin will automatically send an email to somebody who left a comment when somebody else replies to his comment.  However, when I searched for the plugin through the dashboard, it did not come up.  I figured it was a premium plugin and searched for it through Google.  Lo and behold, where did I find it?  In the plugins section of WordPress.org. Since I have already created a guide to installing WordPress plugins through the...

Add to Plugins to Your Site at Your Own Risk

So here I am, a huge believer in the power of plugins and yet I am warning you about them?  What gives, Nick? I am now using a service to post my content to social media.  Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.  It is too exhausing to do it all manually, so I I will write that service up down the road a bit, but for irght now I just want to warn you about what happened to me. After I signed up, Google was reporting my traffic as a flatline zero.  What the heck?  Did I get banned? I also use Google Webmaster...