I have to mention though, it’s not as straightforward as it seems. Because several tools used in the process are yet to be released in a public version such as the Google Rich Snippets tool.

The WordPress theme you use will determine how editing you will have to do in the template files. e.g. If you use the WordPress TwentyEleven theme, you won’t have much editing to do because it has most of the prerequisites built into the templates. On the other hand its also advisable to utilize child themes rather than edit the template-core.

Create a Google Profile if you already haven’t

This is easy. Just go to the Google profiles page and follow simple instructions. Upload the profile picture. As per the Google requirements this has to be a clear, genuine head shot of your self only. Then edit the links box on the right hand side of the profile and include the link to your blog home page. I left the title field blank since it didn’t seem to work for me when I added a title. For the home page DO NOT check the ‘This page is specifically about me’ check-box.

Add another link to your author page within the blog. For single author blogs the usual link for author pages is HOMEPAGE-URL/author/admin/. If you have multiple authors to your blog, find out the link to your own author archives and insert it as a custom link to your profile. Tick the ‘This page is specifically about me’ check-box for this link.

Assess Template Files For Compatibility

Google Rich Snippets tool pops out warning messages when classes and attributes ain’t named according to its expectations. Its also noteworthy that it expects certain classes and attributes which are still under experimentation. The ideal structure of container classes is the one used in TwentyEleven theme by WordPress. Although it still popped out one or two warning messages, with some minor tweaking to the template it works just perfect.

For Rich Snippet data to be validated against the Google Rich Snippets tool, the structure of container classes has to be somewhat similar to:

hfeed
hentry
entry-title =
entry-content =
updated =
hcard
fn =
Rel
name =
rel = bookmark
url =
Rel
name =

Quickest way to find out; just enter the blog URL in the Google Rich Snippets Tool and hit ‘Preview.’ If there are any data displayed under the tabs “Extracted Author for this page” and “Extracted rich snippet data from the page,” (even along with few warning messages..) then by following steps below will hopefully complete the linking. But if you don’t find those tabs at all or there is no data displayed under them, then you have to make some serious changes to your theme templates. Alternatively switch to TwentyEleven or find a coder who can help you bring the templates to the latest standards.

Edit Theme Template Files or Child Themes

1. Add a text or image link to your Google profile from every page of your blog

Edit a common template for every page of your blog such as header, sidebar or footer and insert the code below in an appropriate position for the link to appear.


<?php if ( ! is_author() && ! is_page('about')) { ?>
<p><a rel="author" href="YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE URL">
<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">
</a> </p>
<?php } else { ?>
<p><a rel="me" href="YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE URL">
<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">
</a>
</p>
<?php } ?>

note: Please change the ‘About us’ page name and the Google profile URL as required. In my case the about us page name is ‘about’. If you don’t have one, just ignore that part of the code snippet.
What this code does is that it defines the ‘rel’ attribute on the link. On “author archives” or the “About” page, the code will insert ‘rel=”me” ‘ as the rel attribute and ‘rel=”author” ‘ on all other pages. This is a requirement from Google for the tool to properly differentiate author specific pages.

2. Edit Template Files to Rectify Warnings Received in Rich Snippets Tool

A common warning that will be received is the: Warning: Missing required field “updated.” This means the class “updated” is not found in the date container. Just add the class name “updated” to the the container of the date and/or time and the warning message will disappear.

3. Edit TwentyEleven by WordPress Theme Functions Template

If youclosely examine a blog using the TwentyEleven WordPress theme, you will notice that post meta section underneath the post title does not display the author name, although the function responsible does include the necessary coding to display ‘Posted By “author name” ‘ as well.For this to work, replace the printfline in the twentyeleven_posted_on () function within the theme functions template file (functions.php)of the TwentyEleven theme; with the following code.


printf( __( '<span class="sep">Posted on </span>
<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date updated" datetime="%3$s" pubdate>%4$s</time></a>
<span class="sep"> by </span><span class="by-author"><span class="author vcard">
<a class="url fn n" href="%5$s" title="%6$s" rel="author">%7$s</a>
</span></span>', 'twentyeleven' ),

Now that all major editing is complete, check the URL in the rich snippets tool one more time. Hopefully there will be no errors displayed and your thumbnail image will be displayed in Google SERP’s alongside search results from your blog very soon.

One way to get around this, or at least minimize the errors caused by this plugin is to “nofollow” the links/flags in the widget. This not only minimizes the amount of error messages spat out into the Google webmaster tools, but also reduces pagerank leak.

Follow the steps below to add a “nofollow” attribute to the Global translator widget links.

1. Go to the plugins-editor page and select ‘Global Translator’ from the dropdown list.
2. Within ‘translator.php’ search for two lines of codes that include href='$flg_url'.
3. Add rel='nofollow' just after the space following $lnk_attr in both lines.
4. That’s it! Now go test the links if they’re no followed.

There are no proper documentation for altering the link attributes for the Global Translator WordPress plugin. Feel free to leave a comment regarding this small tutorial or the famous Global Translator plugin itself.

So have you seen the latest video released by Anik Singal? (No? then take a peek at it here) If you have, then you must have a glimpse about the next product launch from Anik. Apparently the product should comprise of some special software in the form of wordpress plugins. As I gather, this collection of wordpress plugins should resolve an important task, if not ‘the important task’ for affiliate marketers; which is creating and publishing sites with quality content within a short period of time. Don’t you wanna hear more? Sure you do…

Some recent IM products

In the recent past there were couple of products launched by few veterans in ‘online marketing’, received negative responses overall. Although statistically the products do well and sales have been crazy, the actual content were below par; given the reputation of the authors.

Those products had 3 major flaws,

1. Content were not what the title suggested (marketing hype)
2. Most of the content provided, if not all were available for FREE
3. The presentations were not professional (e.g. no evident preparation for making the videos

Analyzing their success and the reasons are not the focus of this article. But the point I’m making is, a product does not have to be good just because the author has a good reputation. Having said that, I’m inclined to point out that Anik Singal has been so consistent in delivering quality. So I expect no less than the best from ProfitJackpot as well.

On the other hand, if this is ‘the invention of the wheel’, just presented in a different point of view, then I will definitely point it out in my sequel to this post, possibly after the launch. But for now its sufficient to say that founder of ‘LURN Inc.’ delivers on quality.

Little bit about Anik and Jimmy

Anik has a number of quality products that are very popular including PPC Classroom, Affiliate Classroom and Empire Formula. He also happens to be a mentor for thousands, not only on internet marketing, but also on fields such as personal development. Anik goes on lecture tours to many parts of the world very regularly, which reinstates his authority on subjects he teaches, including ‘online business’ and ‘internet marketing’ etc. Needless to say his company has made to the fortune 500 list for 2 consecutive years now.

While his partner Jimmy Kim too has his own IM products which continues to earn him considerable amount of money every single day, he has been a silent force for Anik’s success right throughout. So now you know the power what to expect when two brilliant minds join force.

Is ProfitJackpot the right product for you?

Let me answer this question in a different perspective. There is no straightforward answer to this, because I don’t know you personally. See, if I handover a brand new BMW to a total stranger; how can I guarantee that he will not crash it. Just like an advanced BMW cannot be held responsible for driver’s actions, IM products are not the cause why a majority of newbie internet marketers fail to make a mark. Btw how many brand new BMW’s have you crashed? Get my point? You just can’t expect miracles to happen in this business. Full stop.

But one thing I can guarantee, if you put each and every word that Anik teaches you into action, success is inevitable.

One such plugin I recently encountered was the ‘File Gallery‘ plugin. It has plenty cool features to have it installed in wordpress sites. The plugin adds gallery options and image thumbnails (attached) right at the bottom of edit pages and posts. More than anything it allows detaching images with just a click of a button.

Another requirement that falls along the lines of ‘image detachment’ is attaching a single image to multiple posts. ‘File Gallery’ solves that problem too. What’s more, it allows importing images from other posts and pages from within the edit area.

As a downside to the above features, the plugin creates attachment copies when duplicating attachments but does not remove the copies when detaching the imported images from the post or page. On the other hand it deletes the attachment image altoghether when deleted using the plugin options.

But, overall advantages of the plugin overweighs the minute disadvantages. Hence ‘File Gallery’ is a great little plugin to use for image galleries within posts. Oh, did I mention its much more lighter than ‘NextGen Gallery’. Don’t get me wrong, NextGen is the mother of all gallery plugins as assumed by the WordPress community, thus far, and correctly so too. Personally I don’t like to carry too much bulk, which I don’t use. So in my context ‘File Gallery’ was much better.

Here’s the solution for those who seek similar multimedia functionality in a website.

The embedded flash player I used was the xspf player from boutell. This was the only flash player I found to have an ‘Autoresume’ feature on. For a fresh site needing both ‘Autoplay’ and ‘Autoresume’ from within the website, a comprehensive installation guide can be found at the above link.

However my task was beyond just finding a player which did this. Because my client was using the ‘Tierra audio playlist manager‘ plaugin for WordPress to manage his playlists and yes it was a WordPress based project. I was suddenly in a different hole with a brand new set of problems. Fortunately ‘Tierra audio plugin’ provided the option to upload and use other xspf players for playback. Having said that, ‘Autoresume’ off by default in the Boutell’s xspf player questioned the implementation with the Tierra plugin.

After about 3 hours of researching and analyzing, I modified the ‘Tierra audio playlist manager’ plugin to include ‘Autoresume’ feature as a widget option. Follow the steps below to add MP3 with ‘Autoresume’ on to your WordPress site.

1. Download the modified ‘Tierra audio with autoresume‘ playlist manager plugin and upload it to your WordPress site. Alternatively, use WordPress plugin directory to install the plugin – Download from WordPress.org
2. Create MP3 playlists using ‘Playlist Manager’ interface.
3. Tick the ‘Autoresume’ option when adding the widget or use shortcodes as needed.
4. And that’s all. Enjoy continuous MP3 playback in the site.

Although it’s not needed for ‘Autoresume’ to work, if a custom player needs to be used along with this plugin’s MP3 management system, do the following in the widget options :-

Enter the url http://YOURDOMAIN/wp-content/plugins/tierra-audio-playlist-manager/swf/YOUR-CUSTOM-PLAYER in the ‘custom xspf swf player field within the widget options. (replace YOURDOMAIN with the actual domain and YOUR-CUSTOM-PLAYER with the uploaded custom player swf file)

Plugin shortcodes and usage

using the short code [ti_audio] by itself will attempt to play playlist #1, which may or may not exist. It’s always preferable to use a named Playlist when calling the player or to set the id.

Plays playlist with name “Name of Playlist” (case sensitive)

[ti_audio name="Name of Playlist"] 

Plays playlist #1

[ti_audio id="1"] 

Uses the swf located at this location, rather than the default.
Your root folder must contain a crossdomain.xml file allowing
another domain’s swf access to XML data. Also passed is the
name of the player and the swf’s width and height values.

[ti_audio skin="/player/xspf_player_custom.swf" width="260" height="315"] 

In addition, you can also change the following attributes of the player (defaults shown):

Sets player to begin playing on load. Default is off, 0.

autoplay="0" 

Sets player for continuous playback, fresh page-load will only pause the player for moments (given the player resides in a common place sucha as sidebar or footer). Default is off, 0.

autoresume="0" 

Sets player to begin loading assets before the user clicks anything. Default is on, 1.

autoload="1" 

Sets player to repeat once it reaches the end of the playlist. Default is off, 0.

repeat="0" 

URL of the XSPF swf to use for display. Uses default player unless specified.

skin="xspf_player.swf" 

Set if the skin attribute points to a SWF of different dimensions.

width="400"

height="170" 

Set default volume level (in percent)

volume="50" 

Set the playlist to play in random order

randomize="1" 

Single Audio Track:

If you are looking to embed a single file, use the following short code.

Plays audio file with id of 1

[ti_audio media='201'] 

Plays single audio file, set to auto play, repeat and volume at 60%

[ti_audio media='201' autoplay="1" repeat="1" volume="60"] 

Templates:

You can embed the audio player into any WordPress template. Much like the short code examples above, you can customize the values within your own templates. Here are all of the fields that you can specify should you choose. Omitting a field will set it to the plugin�s default values.

<? if (function_exists ("ti_apm_print_player")) { print ti_apm_print_player (array( "name" => "Name of Playlist", "skin" => "/player/xspf_player_custom.swf", "autoplay" => "0", "repeat" => "0", "width" => "400", "height" => "170" )); } ?>

To play a single audio file within your template, specify the following:

<? if (function_exists ("ti_apm_print_player")) { ti_apm_print_player (array( "media" => "3" )); } ?>

Original plugin and usage information from Tierra Innovation

Hope this tutorial helped you.

WordPress Plugins are very easy to get carried away with and it can sometimes be overwhelming to workaround them. Eventually you might have to twist and tweak plugins individually or in combination, just to shape them to do what you exactly want them to do. It’s always best to avoid plugins if the purpose is not of high importance.

7 Things to check when installing plugins

• Remember the fact that plugins are 3rd party peaces of codes that aren’t always reliable
• Check the wordpress version compatibility
• Take note of the user count of the plugin
• Visit the plugin author page for more indepth info
• Read reviews and ratings from the actual users and webmasters
• Analyze the gravity of the purpose
• Update and maintain the plugin version and changes

This is how I think, wordpress plugins must be used and this is exactly what I had failed to execute. If you have a tip or two to add please do so with a comment below.