Pro+ Categories In the last post we listed all the categories you can add to your plugin to get Google Analytics and Facebook Like buttons added to your posts. In this post we’ll look at all the types of social buttons you can add, how to do it and how to avoid some of the most common mistakes. Social Post Links This is one of the two standard links we’ve been using above since the beginning. You should use this if you want to display buttons for all post types to get the most from your buttons. Facebook Like Button The Facebook Like button is one of the most basic ways to add social buttons to your site. But there’s a lot more you can do with this button. From an advertising standpoint it’s fairly ineffective. From a branding standpoint it does more than most standard social buttons. And from a user engagement standpoint it’s one of the best ways to get more Facebook Likes and Shares. Facebook Share Button Same as above but with a Share button instead of a Like button. Again, more visibility but less engagement than Like buttons. Link To Website This social media site has a fairly easy API for adding simple code and displaying widgets for just about anything you could want. The API offers several ways of adding widgets, but one of the simplest is adding the code for a share button. We’ll stick with this method from now on. Twitter There are a few different ways to add the Twitter button to your site. We’ll explore one of the simpler ones in this section. This button uses the standard Twitter API, making it easy to integrate with Twitter clients such as TweetDeck, Twhirl, or Seesmic. If you already use a Twitter client you’ll be right at home here. Facebook Page Tab The Facebook Page Tab gives you more customization of your tab without actually giving you your own Facebook page. This button works great for many websites that sell physical or digital products as well as for non-profit organizations. From a user experience standpoint it’s one of the best ways to add something to your website that gets users “hooked” into liking your page. But since it’s a page tab you can’t get their name for email campaigns or other uses. Add a Facebook Page Tab This is the newer and better way to do the same thing as the Facebook Page Tab, but is a real Facebook Page that anyone with access to Facebook can like. From the looks of it you get more customization and access to deeper information. Like the Facebook Page Tab you’ll get a page tab on Facebook. But this one also gives you the user’s name. Add Custom URL This link uses what we call an “Inline Link” which allows you to add any content you want between the Link and the Button. The Link will automatically be surrounded by the button code so all you need to do is add your content (a button title or image) inside the Link. Like a Blog Add a Like/Follow Add a Tweet to TweetDeck Add a Google Plus1/G+ The main way this works is that you paste the code for the G+ button into your Blogger text box and it will automatically add the button when you post. You can also make it default to off and set it to show up on your blog only after clicking on the link button on your header. Add Addthis This button is another way of adding those simple buttons to your site. If you want more control over how you display those buttons than just linking to Addthis you can add the Addthis widget using the provided code and displaying it using code of your choice. The API gives you several methods for getting the widget including using PHP, Javascript, or jQuery. Google+ Count Add Google+1 Buttons Customize Button Content This last set of buttons is a collection of links you can add to your website. Add OpenGraph Add WordPress Open Graph Buttons Submit Events To Google Calendar This code adds a form to your WordPress site that you can use to add events to Google Calendar, and you can use it to submit other types of events as well. Submit Events To Facebook This adds an easy way to let your users submit events to their Facebook Timeline. You can use this code to do the same thing to other third party sites such as Blogger, Twitter, and other services. Email this post Related Posts I just wanted to let everyone know about a great plugin available on WordPress.org that I have just found recently: Ninja Outreach – The Lead Generation Optimizer. It’s a great plugin that can help your lead generation and marketing campaigns work at the highest levels possible. Like the AddToAny plug-in, which I also use on my site, the Ninja Outreach plug-in integrates into your site in a seamless way to give your visitors the best possible experience. It also makes it easy to track how visitors interact with your website, and keeps all of your contact information within one organized and centralized database. Here is a screenshot of the NinjaOutreach plug-in’s welcome message on my website. I use a slightly modified version of this plug-in on my site for client leads and conversions. What makes this plug-in more special than others is that not only does it help bring your leads into your contact list, it also automatically creates the contact form and populates it with your lead’s information. It can also help collect lead emails and submit them to email marketing systems that you may use, and even add an appointment reminder to set up the call or time to schedule an appointment with you. If you would like to learn more about this plug-in, visit http://wordpress.org/plugins/ninja-outreach-lead-generation-optimizer/ We have received multiple contacts from clients who are in the process of updating their website. They have tried to do it themselves or asked us for advice on how to do it. We thought it would be helpful to have an article about the process of updating a website for our customers. What is a Website Update There are many ways to “Update a Website” and this process can be completely automated depending on what platform you use to make it. However, if you’re updating a website that is hosted on a Linux/LAMP environment then this process can sometimes be a little more complicated than other environments. If you use Linux/LAMP then you’re using a platform that allows you to create websites using PHP, MySQL, and a database. You can create custom plugins and have a custom skin to your site as well. WordPress is the most common platform on which these websites are built, but there are many others such as Joomla and Drupal, to name a few. To keep the article brief I won’t go in depth into how to do updates on a Linux/LAMP environment, but here are some tips to keep in mind that will help make your life easier when you do updates: Make Sure Everything is Backed Up – When making updates to your site, there is always the chance of something going wrong and it is important to make sure that you back everything up before you begin. Make sure your database backup so you can restore it if anything goes wrong, that all of your uploaded files to your site are safely stored, and that you have a recent copy of your site on your computer. Backups may take a little longer than usual depending on the amount of content and size of your database. Change Admin Login Account – If you’re changing your account login name to something other than “admin” you will need to change your WordPress username as well as your FTP user name and password. This change will be required when you log into your site, so you’ll need to make sure that you change that before making your updates. If you change your login information but you forget to update it with your FTP settings, you won’t be able to log into your website. Ensure All User Accounts are Still Working – It’s common for your website to require more bandwidth than is typically allocated to it for a short amount of time after any changes you make. You should make sure that all of the pages on your website still work before you update them. You can use your FTP program to download the files from your website and make sure that the pages are still working properly, and if not, you can use your FTP program to change the files to the most recent version as well as change the settings for any images. Update the Version of PHP – PHP is the language you are using to run WordPress on your site, so if you have more than one version of PHP installed