I mentioned previously in the “Advertising platform problems put me off working on the site” post that I was having issues with the Ikarus Theme.

Ikarus theme not working

Basically since the update to the latest WordPress version 2.8 (2.8.4 at time of writing) the Ikarus theme is basically broken in several areas and still months after this has happened there does not seem to be any working fixes coming from the developer of the theme. I actually tried to comment on the developer’s site about this and my comments are blocked (for one reason or another), anyway I’ve had to reluctantly abandon using this theme as a result. This has thought me a few different lessons.

• Firstly, it’s important that for whatever theme you choose that either support is readily available to upgrade the theme or the theme itself is simple enough that it’s easily modified to suit new versions of WordPress. Better yet would be if the theme is written in such a way that changes to WordPress and Internet Browsers are likely to have a low probability of breaking the functionality of the theme.
• Fancy Theme = More Issues? Related to the first point. I really liked the Ikarus Theme as it had a lot of different options and functionality. But this seems like it might also be its Achilles heel. Even the developer of the theme months after the initial problems were reported with WordPress 2.8 (and it’s not fully compatible with IE8 either) is unable to fix it, so for webmasters like me who just have limited knowledge of the coding side of things it’s next to impossible to change the Theme when these complicated problems arise. After arriving home and getting back into ‘work mode’ after travelling for the previous month (I really have to stop going on trips!), I thought ok I need to change this theme fast. I picked the thematic theme http://themeshaper.com/ . It lacks a lot of the ‘bells and whistles’ that Ikarus had but it still feels powerful enough. It also works smoothly. The result is my website looks quite bare looking now, but one can still navigate around quite easily. And right now my main concern is that my website is up and running normally once again. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue to see what I can do with this theme and also see if they are other themes out there that I feel would suit where I want to take www.makingapokerwebsite.com.
• Have a backup. Once I started having issues with Ikarus, I had no secondary theme ready and waiting to put in it’s place. This was a bad mistake, in fact this lesson can be applied to many areas of life in general, particularly in regards to your career and business. Basically the old phrase ‘Not to have all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind, anyway…. before I get too side-tracked, what I’m basically saying is that the smart thing to do would be to have at least 2 themes that you are satisfied with available for use with your WordPress blog, then if for whatever reason your default one becomes broken, then hopefully one of your replacement themes will still work fine, and if and when your theme of choice is fixed then of course you could select it once again if you so wished.

Theme support should not be overlooked

So… to surmise what I’m trying to get at here. Basically the theme you choose should not be just about its functionlity and ‘prettiness’, in fact if anything if the functionaility is very complicated it can prove a liability when it comes to adapting to changes. The level and availability of support for your theme is also very important, perhaps themes built and maintained by a community of enthusiasts might be an area well worth looking at, that way you are not reliant on any one person or company, and last but not least make sure you have a second if not a third and fourth theme ready to substitute for the times if and when your theme of choice no longer functions as expected.

1. Plan your SEO before launching your site

    Well I have to admit I didn’t exactly plan my SEO for http://makingapokerwebsite.com. I can’t argue with the point really, seo is such an important part of a successful website. I will say in my defense that this poker website blog is very much about someone who is not an expert at web design finding their way towards creating a decent website. One of the mistakes I made in this area was assuming that WordPress tags were stored as meta tag keywords, where the hell I got that idea from I don’t know. Though this wasn’t quite as bad a mistake as I first thought, as the value of using meta tag keywords is debatable these days.The great thing you’ll discover about WordPress if you ever use it, is that there seems to be plugins for just about anything you can think of. I found a great plugin called all-in-one-seo which helps to simplify making your site search engine friendly http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ .

2. Plan to build a content rich site

   I think I’m on the right track in this regard. I’ve gotten into a good habit of providing one new post in or around a week. In addition to this I’ve also began to add some new pages and see this continuing on.

3. Don’t stress out about the domain name

   I got lucky I think that this domain name wasn’t registered. It pretty much describes what the site is all about, so I’m very happy with that. For the poker site I have in mind I already have registered a few domain names, but I’m inclined to think for a few reasons that I might wait until the time, when I’m ready to begin the poker website, to then choose the name. One of the reasons for this, is because I read somewhere that domain names registered for a longer period are viewed more favorably by search engines, which my domain names aren’t. Also, perhaps were I to come up with another domain name from scratch it might make the whole process a bit fresher.

4. Keep your site design simple

   My website’s design isn’t as simplistic as Randy’s. Nevertheless, I think I’ve kept it reasonably simple. I don’t have a whole lot of colors going on. I’ve big text for ease of readability. I don’t have any flash images. I do have some javascript but that’s because it’s built into the theme I’m using. I think the stuff I do have on my site like social networking tags, tag clouds, latest posts etc add to my user experience, so it serves a purpose rather than being there purely for show.

5. Do the basic on-page search engine optimization stuff

   Again I would have to fail myself for this point. Now that I’ve started to use the all-in-one-seo plugin this should help matters, but I haven’t been paying due diligence to every post and page’s search engine optimization. This is something I absolutely must change going forward and also to get it right from the start once I commence the poker information website.

6. Get links, but don’t stress out about it

   I’ve made pretty much zero effort to get links so far, so I certainly haven’t been stressed out about it. I think I have been right so far not to go looking for links too proactively for my website as it was in its very early stages and I didn’t want to be pestering webmasters looking for links to a site that hadn’t yet much to offer. I think the making a poker website blog is beginning to come along nicely now though and soon I will embark on a link building campaign along with the other non-spammy ways Randy suggest to increase my website’s exposure. I’m thinking sometime in June would be a good time to kick off such a campaign. I will of course blog the whole process.

7. Pay attention to your traffic

     Pay attention to your traffic: After hearing many great things about it, I installed google analytics last week. It provides a whole stream of interlinked information that can really help you address issues and improve the way your site operates in terms of being found more often in search engines and retaining your visitors for longer. The making a poker website blog is still very young, but if and when the site grows, is when I would expect google analytics to be a very useful tool. But even now, I can already see, that for some of my posts, especially the longer ones, that people are not always taking the time to read them. This tells me that perhaps I need to take into account peoples short span of attention these days, perhaps to emphasis key points and provide in post links to key points, such as my post about the best way to display your email address http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/the-best-way-to-display-your-email-address-on-a-website/. The real juicy bit is at the end of the post when I talk about Recaptcha, but people may not always have the patience to get to this part, so maybe making the overall reading experience more user friendly I can help my readers to get more out of my posts.
   

8. Use the force Luke aka Stay away from the dark side

   Sounds a bit sinister. I presume Randy means don’t try anything underhand, annoying or illegal and so forth. Well I hope it’s clear that I’m putting in some honest effort here. I certainly have no intention of doing anything illegal or underhand such as spamming, sending annoying auto-generated link requests and the like. Anyway that’s a pretty simple point to follow, its either a path you are going to take or not. Even from a purely selfish point of view though I think staying ‘white hat’ makes sense, as Randy says you can make a ‘fortune’ as a poker webmaster by just doing things the right way without undue effort so why the hell take an underhanded approach!

    

Going forward positively?

So on the 8 points though I think I got somethings right, it was by no means a flawless performance. Link building is something for going forward. I’m still not totally happy with some of the finer points of the look of my posts, so I want to address that before I really start to promote my site. The main areas which I need to focus on now is improving the way I do things seo wise and improving the overall experience of the reader on my site. On a positive note I think everything is moving in the right direction and I have learned a few lessons for when it comes around to beginning the poker information site.

]]> http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/a-detailed-look-at-the-8-points-of-poker-seo-guru-randy-ray/feed/ 1 http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/time-to-get-to-know-wordpress-a-bit-better/ http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/time-to-get-to-know-wordpress-a-bit-better/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:52:49 +0000 Barry O'Callaghan http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/?p=58



Visit me, please, pretty please

At this point, my making a poker website blog hasn’t had many visitors, but if you are one of the few who has come here for a look, then you’ll notice it’s very basic looking.

Eh got a good personality

In fact this plain look is largely intentional. I am not going to go for a snazzy looking design just for the sake of it. I just want to keep it simple and let the content speak for itself.

Going to get myself some makeup

I do recognise however that the design and outlay of the blog could do with a bit of touching up to make it a more well rounded looking site. Time for me to get to know WordPress a bit better then!

Randy Ray’s your man, if Randy can’t do it, no one can

I’m also going to be looking at Randy Ray’s http://www.pokerseo.org/ site as a sort of reference. 

Getting influenced

Though of course I have no intention of copying his site, the influence of his site will most likely become visible in this site, particularly by the end of the early stages of this site.

Got vision? Oh yes!

As the site grows I envision that the site would develop a more unique looking character, and perhaps doing some things a bit differently from Randy, but nonetheless sticking to the core values that makes Randy’s sites successful.

OKing it with Randy

I haven’t had the chance to ask Randy if this is Ok with him yet, I’m sure it will be as it’s of course an endorsement for his site and for his skills, if it’s not then of course I will have to find another route.

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