If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people bragging about their broadband speed on Twitter, because mine has always been laughable. Until now.

The UK’s phone company (BT) have taken it upon themselves to finally install fibre optic cabling in the booming metropolis of Thirsk, which means I can now connect to an FTP server in the USA without the Internet crashing to a halt.

What does my broadband connection mean for clients?

Well, if you’ve worked with me before, you’ll know that I prefer to host your client sites on one of my development servers. This is lovely for me, but I know a lot of you would prefer to have your client sites on your own hosting server (or better yet, on the client’s server).

Thankfully, all this new shiny cabling means you can now host your site anywhere you want and I can work on it without wasting half a day waiting for an image to upload. Everyone’s a winner.

People of the Internet, you are mad! So far this year I’ve worked on dozens of existing WordPress sites that have no form of data or file backup AT ALL. None, not even automatic hosting backups.

Now, if you’ve ever lost a Word document (who hasn’t?), think about how devastating it would be to lose your entire Website. Weeks of work gone in an instant, taking your primary lead/sales generation system with it. Gone, history, D.E.A.D.

With this in mind, I’ve prepared a little walkthrough of Backupbuddy, my backup plugin of choice. So sit back and allow me to educate you (and make money off the blatantly obvious affiliate links below).

Automatic WordPress backups (and more)

Backupbuddy is a premium (you have to pay for it) plugin designed to help WordPress users make and keep backup copies of their site, anywhere and at any time. The idea is you set it up and forget about it, safe in the knowledge that IF something does go wrong with your site, you’re protected.

Basic features of Backupbuddy 2.0 include:

1. You can run a manual backup of your WordPress database or files and database
2. You can schedule automatic backups of your database or files and database
3. You can export backup files to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud, FTP or Email (set, and forget)
4. You can check your WordPress installation for Malware
5. For developers, you can migrate your WordPress site to another hosting server

What it costs

Backupbuddy licenses are valid for 1 year. This allows the plugin developers to focus on product development rather than new customer acquisition, a strategy most premium WordPress plugin developers seem to like. Depending on your business, there are 3 packages to choose from:

Backupbuddy license options

Find out more about Backupbuddy’s pricing & features

Backupbuddy Features explained

Manually backup your WordPress site:

Backing up your site manually is a simple two-click operation and you can choose either to backup just your database, or both your files and your database.

1. In the WordPress Admin panel, click on Backupbuddy > Backup & Restore
2. Select either Database Backup or Full Backup
3. Wait for the Status light to turn green, then click Download Backup Zip archive

Once you’ve downloaded your backup you can either store it online or on your computer. Personally I use Dropbox and automatic backups (see below) because I’m forgetful.

Schedule WordPress backups to your Dropbox

You’re running a business and the last thing you’re going to do is remember to manually backup your site. Backupbuddy makes it easy to set up backup locations for your files & database info, or just your database. They’ve configured Amazon S3, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud, FTP and email, so there’s no shortage of places to store your backups.

As I mentioned, I use DRopbox as a storage location (because I have a premium Dropbox account with loads of space), but sending the database to email once a week/month would work just as well.

Use Backupbuddy to migrate WordPress to a new server

For developers, or website owners who have a habit of changing web hosts regularly, the migration tool is invaluable. I use it on every site I build to quickly move files & databases from my development server to ny clients’ live hosting environment. If you’re moving to a decent host, migration is a 5 minute job (if you’re moving to Godaddy you’re probably used to things taking a lot longer, so don’t be surprised if this becomes a 3-hour operation).

The migration process is simple:

1. Backup your site (on the old server).
2. Download importbuddy.php (the installation script)
3. Upload both the backup zip and importbuddy to the new site using FTP.
4. Follow the on-screen prompts, adding your new database details, file locations, etc.
5. Pat yourself on the back for saving an hour of pain.

Use Backupbuddy to scan for Malware

As WordPress becomes more popular, and more teenagers realise there’s nothing to watch on TV, the number of ways to break WordPress is growing. With this in mind, iThemes teamed up with online security experts Sucuri to include a free Malware scanner in Backupbuddy. I don’t pretend to understand how Malware gets into a Website in the first place, or how Backupbuddy detects it, but I know that I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see Malware: none after a scan.

Scanning your site for malware is a manual process (i.e. you can’t automate it the way you can with backups), but it only takes a minute and is a one-click operation. At the end of the scan Backupbuddy spits out a report detailing what was checked and the results.

If your site was infected, this information would help you find and plug the leak. Not bad for a free add-on.

5 reasons to buy Backupbuddy for your WordPress site

To recap, here’s why Backupbuddy is one of my 4 favourite WordPress plugins:

1. Automatic daily, weekly or monthly backups of your WordPress files and database
2. Migrate WordPress from one server to another in a matter of minutes
3. One-click checking for Malware and other baddies
4. Simple restore process in the event of your site being hacked
5. Backup WordPress to Dropbox, Amazon S3 or FTP with ease

You’ve put a lot of work into building a website, so I assume you’re serious about preserving that work. If you are, this is hands down the best backup tool I’ve used. There are other plugins that backup WordPress, but I haven’t been as impressed. However, if you think there’s something better I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Over the past few days I’ve been tweaking my website to update the design. Part of the process included adding a site search box, something I haven’t bothered with before. This is nice, but it also presented a problem because some of my pages are for my eyes only.

So rather than write a custom query to fix this, I went hunting for a plugin, and found a solution in Search Everything. The plugin makes it easy to select the page ID you want to hide, and exclude it, all in under 60 seconds.

Here’s a walkthrough:

1. From WordPress’ Plugins > Add New screen, add the phrase ‘search everything’, then click install on the Search Everything link and follow the instructions.
2. Activate the plugin, then go to Settings > Search Everything.
3. Under ‘Advanced Configuration – Exclusion’, enter the page IDs of the pages you want to exclude from your search results.
4. Click ‘Update Options’.

Done. This is a quick and dirty fix if you’re trying to keep people from seeing all the pages on your site, but it works beautifully.

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If you’re a regular visitor to this blog you deserve a medal. Not only isn’t it updated very often, but the content I do update it with is mundane at best.

It wasn’t always like this. In the early days of blogging I published tutorials, reviews and general WordPress stuff at least once a week. This type of ‘trust blogging’ didn’t bring me much in the way of traffic but it did give prospective clients an insight to the way I work, leading to a steady number of sales leads.

And then Twitter came along

Granted, Twitter had been in the background for a year or 2 already, but it wasn’t until I went into freelancing full-time (and had nobody to talk to) that Twitter became my main outlet for publishing. Compared to blogging, Twitter appears to have 2 really cool benefits:

1. Real-time responses. For someone who thrives on instant gratification, Twitter is the perfect outlet. Within 30 seconds of tweeting something good, I was getting replies and retweets galore. Lovely!
2. 140 characters. Compared to 500-800 words, 140 characters is a non-writer’s dream! I could think up a tweet in less time than it took to open WordPress.

But along with the benefits, I truly believe that Twitter killed my blog (and to a large extent, my source of quality sales leads). Here are a few things I’ve learned about Twitter in the past year.

Twitter doesn’t have staying power

When you tweet something good, it has a lifespan of less than 8 hours. Of course you could tweet the same stuff every hour, but I call that spam. Nothing puts me off more than a Twitter stream laced with repeats. If I want repeats I’ll watch TV.

By comparison, blog posts have an infinite lifespan. I published a post on backing up a website about 3 years ago, and it still gets over 1000 visitors a month (and earns me about $100 in affiliate commissions every month). On Twitter that content would have disappeared ages ago.

Your Twitter friends do not equal your blog visitors

This may be different for some people, but my Twitter stream is filled with 4 types of people:

1. People who I consider equals (about 40%). They’re either web designers/developers in the trenches, or small businesses who deal in WordPress themes, plugins and random web based services.
2. People who I look up to (about 40%). These are the A-list bloggers, designers, developers and celebrities (ok, only Charlie Sheen and Stephen Fry) who supposedly have their fingers on the pulse.
3. My existing customers and prospects I’m targeting (about 5%). These are the people I actually care about. It helps me to know what they’re up to, where they are and why they aren’t answering my emails . Of course, they’re also watching me and waiting for their projects to get finished, which is why I don’t tweet about going for a bike ride at 11am on a Tuesday.
4. Spammers (about 15%). These are the men who have avatars of gorgeous half-naked women. I’ll never understand why they think it’ll work, but sadly my Twitter stream contains a lot of their noise.

On Twitter, everyone’s in it for the money

When Twitter first launched it was a geek haven. No advertising, so spam. Just a bunch of like-minded people who wanted to share information.

Sadly this is no longer true. Everyone has an agenda now. They have ‘Twitter Strategies’ and use software like Buffer to get the most bang for their tweets, even when they’re asleep.

On Twitter, everyone’s in it for the money, even me.

Farewell Twitter

I’ve decided to stay off Twitter for the month of February and focus on writing 4 blog posts (trust me, that’s a lot of work for me) that will help DIYers, prospects and existing clients do stuff online.

Yes, I’m still in it for the money, but I believe blog posts are more helpful, more insightful and potentially, more profitable than tweets. I’ll keep you posted.

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The more I look at WordPress sites I’m building now, the more I’m amazed at how they’ve changed from sites I built 2 years ago. Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies have changed the way we manage content in WordPress, and they’ve done wonders for our favourite CMS’ ability to work with more complex websites.

Here’s a quick list of 10 project applications I’ve worked on (or plan to work on) that use Post Types and custom Taxonomies to simplify WordPress content management:

Custom Post Types to build a business directory

Last month I worked on a site for a large agency with offices in the UK, the US and Australia. They wanted an easy-to-manage business directory that shows company offices and contact information for all 34 locations. A custom post type tied to Google Maps did the trick.

Reviewing products and collecting testimonials

I’m inherently lazy, so when it came time to add a review/testimonial system to my iPhone cases website, I wanted to automate the process of collecting feedback from customers and publishing reviews in strategic locations on the website. Gravity Forms collects the review and a custom post type displays it where I want. All I have to do is hit the publish button.

Frequently Asked Questions management

Frequently Asked Questions are a great way to cut down on the number of emails a company receives asking the same questions over and over. So thanks to this jQuery solution and a single custom post type, the post title becomes the question, the content becomes the answer. And the Post Type Order plugin helps the client arrange questions by priority.

Managing staff member information

I worked on a corporate site for a large water company a couple of months ago. They have over 100 management-level employees divided up into divisions and job roles. Custom post types and taxonomies made sorting & displaying their details a piece of cake. I also spotted a staff page built by Kevin Leary that does a great job of filtering the results.

Sliders

For some bizarre reason, everyone wants a jQuery slider on their website. So I built a custom post type to handle content and added some animation using the slidesjs jQuery plugin. Now the client can order each slide, edit each background image, content and click through URL with ease. Of course there are plugins that already do this, but I prefer using post types to manage workflow more effectively.

An Events Calendar

I haven’t built this one yet, but it seems like a good idea to use Custom Post Types to make an events calendar. There are plugins that do this well, but once again I like the idea of the events fitting into the site’s content management workflow.

Portfolio

When Custom Post Types were first released, everyone rushed out and used them to build a portfolio. And they’re perfect for the job, allowing you to filter posts by job type and display complex layouts with ease. I also spotted a great Ajax effect on this Themeforest theme by Orman Clark, which really enhances the functionality of the portfolio.

Case Studies

I’m currently working on a redesign of my own site (again) and one of the sections I want to add is case studies. The structure of these posts will be more complex than normal pages or blog posts, so I want them managed separately. I’ll also be using Bill Erikson’s great Meta Boxes class to simplify and standardise the content layout.

Product catalog

Once again I haven’t done this one yet, but I’m certain there are loads of WordPress sites now using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies to display a product catalog. If you think of a company with 1000+ products, the last thing you want is to manage them using a bunch of static pages.

Content Snippets

How about content that makes up part of the theme, but isn’t actual published content. I’m thinking of things like call-to-action buttons and copyright notices, or anything you would usually use a widget for or leave hard-coded. Why not create a Snippets Custom Post Type and give the website manager the ability to manage anything they want.

Note: The guys at Interconnect/it released a plugin called Spots which does this very nicely.

So when should you use Custom Post Types

I don’t think there’s any rule here, but I use a Custom Post Type when a piece of content is:

• Not a blog post.
• Not a static page.
• Repeatable, i.e. there are potentially loads of content pieces with the same format.
• Complicated, i.e. when there’s a need for meta boxes and other controls that you don’t want displayed on the Page or Post editor.
• HTML-heavy. To avoid having clients wade through HTML in the WordPress editor, I break up content into individual mini-posts.

In summary, Custom Post Types have taken a good publishing platform and turned it into a versatile and intuitive Content Management System. About time too.

Update (01-01-2012): Clean Elements has been taken out of circulation for the time being so I can re-release it as a premium theme/skin. I’ll let you all know when it’s available again. Thanks for your interest.

As WordPress theme frameworks go, Thesis’ SEO and typography are second-to-none, but out of the box it doesn’t look like much.

So to take advantage of Thesis’ features AND have a professional looking website, your choices are:

1. Buy a skin to completely change the way it looks, but be prepared to install it and customise it to suit your branding — and that doesn’t always turn out the way you imagined.
2. Hire a designer, pay them thousands and get a professional looking site. For startups and small businesses, this isn’t always viable.

So what you need is something in between a custom theme design costing thousands, and a cheap skin that looks like a cheap skin.

Well, now you can have it

Theme Store is a simple concept. I make a new Thesis skin every month. If you like the design, send me your logo, your colour ideas and changes you’d like made to the design. Within 7 days I’ll convert the skin into a custom site that looks like it was made just for you. I’ll also launch the site on your hosting, give you Gravity Forms and other premium plugins, and offer free technical support for 30 days.

So what does it cost?

My first theme is called Clean Elements and costs just $147. I designed it with small businesses in mind and have already customised it for a signage company, a plumber and a legal firm, so it’s pretty versatile.

When you buy Clean Elements, here’s what you get:

• A custom home page design
• A home page slider using the Nivo Slider plugin
• Page and blog templates
• A dynamic sitemap template
• Header and footer menus
• Gravity Forms for contact forms, newsletter forms, anything forms
• 1 hour of my time to tweak your design and add your logo
• Installation on your hosting
• 30 days free support

What about Thesis 2.0?

Because we don’t know what Thesis 2.0 will look like or how it will work, I can only guarantee that Clean Elements will work on it, but may need an upgrade first (which I’ll do at no extra charge).

Sound interesting?

Take a look at the Theme Store page, view the Clean Elements demo and when you’re ready, order Clean Elements for your site.