BlogPiG plugins now update automatically!

The auto-update feature of BlogPiG plugins was introduced just recently so that the process of updating to the latest versions of our products is much easier for you!

Plugins that now have the this feature are:

• CloakPiG 2.2
• CommentPiG 2.1.5
• CSVPiG 2.4.12
• TagPiG 2.2.7

How This Affects You

We’re updating our products all the time based on your feedback so take a moment to read the information below on how you can upgrade your product versions in a couple of clicks:

Update notifications will be visible in the admin sidebar (Updates, Plugins) as well as in the Plugins list table.

Users can then view info about the latest version and can perform the update from within WP-admin.

The update is performed by WP via FTP. The user is then required to enter her/his credentials (for her/his FTP server).

Users should note that that when entering information into the “Hostname” field (on the FTP credentials page), they should enter “localhost” (not the domain name).

Below are some screen grabs to illustrate the update notifications:

Update Notification in Plugins List Table

Update Notifications in Sidebar and Updates Page

Status Box in BlogPiG Plugin with Auto-update Feature

Plugin Info Modal Window

FTP Credentials Page

One of our members, Erika, asked for a new feature to be added to CloakPiG and a week or so later we delivered it.

One of the current features of CloakPiG is its PageRank hoarding functionality. PageRank Hoarder solves one of the key problems with affiliate and datafeed websites – too many outbound links. Every outbound link on your website bleeds a little bit of your PageRank away. PageRank Hoarder prevents this by giving you complete control over exactly how many links you display to search engine spiders. A human visitor would see all 20 of your outbound affiliate links on a page but Googlebot would see only three.

Erika wanted more control over exactly which links were visible to search engine spiders and human visitors, so we developed a the new Spider Safe feature within the PageRank Hoarding functionality of CloakPiG.  By marking your existing or new links as Spider Safe you ensure that they are always shown to both human users and search engine spiders even if PageRank Hoarding is active.

You can download the latest version of CloakPiG from your member’s page.

TagPiG

A few weeks ago I posted some helpful tips on how to get the best out of TagPiG, our auto tagging plugin.  What I didn’t do was tell anyone I’d posted these tips. Not so helpful. Anyway, I’m telling you now. If you use TagPiG already or plan to in the future, take a look at the blog post.

Change to BlogPiG Affiliate Program

You probably know that BlogPiG products are sold via ClickBank. BlogPiG has been running an open affiliate program via ClickBank since we started, so it’s easy for anyone to sign up and promote our products and make some money.

ClickBank provide a great service to affiliates with accurate and punctual payments. We will continue to offer our affiliate program via ClickBank but the program is becoming a ‘closed’ program, i.e. new affiliates will have to be ‘white listed’ by us before they can promote our products.

Why have we opted for a closed program?  Because our affiliates work really hard for us and they deserve to be paid the commission they have earned.  By operating a closed program, we can ensure that hard working affiliates get credit for the sales they have generated.

The partner page is currently being updated so if you would like to promote BlogPiG products and earn 50% commission, just ping me an email and we’ll get you set up.

Customer Support

Customer support is a key area of the BlogPiG business. We want our customers to be happy with their BlogPiG product or products plus we are a community driven organisation. We aim to develop our products based on customer feedback and input.

I’m pleased to introduce you today to a new member of our team, Benjie, who will be responsible for the smooth running of customer support.

Benjie is a technically minded but supremely friendly and helpful chap, so I know he’ll be a great asset to the team here and to our customers. You can check out his smiley profile pic in Support!

So, that’s all the news I can share with you for now. Forgive the slightly loose use of the name ‘SpiderPiG’ at the start of this post but being the high-brow individual that I am, I took inspiration from Homer.

TagPiG 2.2.2 Released

This is minor update with following fixes:

• We’ve updated the Yahoo API as they changed how it worked
• TagPiG now uses the rel=”tag” microformat
• We’ve removed TagTheNet as a source it has stopped working reliably
• Removed some unused features from the UI

You can download TagPiG from BlogPiG Members’ Area now.

BlogPiG is Expanding!

If you’ve used the support desk may have met one the latest BlogPiG employess. Ayi has actually been with us for a few months now and has really made a big difference to our organisation.

Ayi is one of 3 new full-time employees at BlogPiG recently. Franky is running some promotions for BlogPiG and Ronnel is an awesome developer who’ll be working with Alex.

So BlogPiG is now a team of 6!

So Where is SocialPiG?

It’s delayed again I’m afraid. We’ve been working on nothing else but it’s such a huge project and I am determined to get it right.

It’s and awesome piece of kit and it’s doing some amazing things in the labs but there is still a way to go.

I’ve decided I can’t ruin the team’s Christmas by trying to force a release before the end of the year so I’ve pushed it back into the New Year.

I’ll be in touch again soon with more details and if you’re on the beta team Fiona will be in touch shortly too.

My sincerest apologies for the delay.

Gary

Anyway, I stopped digging for a moment today and happened to have a re-read of one of our product pages. I realised with some surprise that even though the video mentioned one of the unique selling points of TagPiG, the copy on the page itself really didn’t make mention of this key point!

Good grief, what’s the point in creating a great feature if you don’t tell anyone about it? (I said as I clipped Gary around the ear!).

I know that BlogPiG has a higher calibre of member than your average site – I mean, you’re all so resourceful, intelligent and good looking (will flattery get me anywhere?) but I’m guessing you’re not telepathic, well at least not many of you. So I thought I’d just highlight one of TagPiG’s features in case you’re not making use of it yet.

You’ll already know that TagPiG automatically adds themed tags to your blogs and allows you to manage them, therefore getting way more pages deep indexed by the search engines. But what you might not have realised is that there is a unique feature which rotates all the tags created so that you help preserve your page rank!

Let me explain: TagPiG might source 30 or even 50 tags which relate to your blog post. Now, if you were to display all 50 or so tags at one time, your page rank could be dispersed among the many sub pages and diluted. TagPiG avoids this potential concern by allowing you to set a maximum number of tags to display at any one time, say five, or seven, and it then rotates through the 50 tags. That means that each time Google’s bots return to your post they are presented with a new set of tags and so index a new set of tag pages. That way your page rank isn’t decimated but you still get all those pages deep indexed! Clever, huh?

For more information about TagPiG just go to the product page here.

Anyway, the product page has been duly updated but it got me wondering if we undersell ourselves anywhere else. If you ever spot a feature or benefit of one of our products that we have neglected to mention, let us know! If we include it on the product page we’ll say thank you with a year’s fee license to a product of your choice!

Best wishes as ever,

Fiona

This is the first paid version of TagPiG we’ve released and as you’d expect there are a bunch of great new features:

• Archive Tagging – Now you can have TagPiG auto tag you all your existing posts as well as new one
• New Tag Sources – We’ve added the Open Calais API to the list of text extractors with the option to include social & topic tags
• Preferred Tags – You can create you own list of word that should always be tagged if they appear in a post regardless of whether the TagPiG chooses them
• Tag Now Button – If you’re not running your blog on auto you can now manually tag posts using a new button within the edit post screen

TagPiG really can help your blog get indexed deeper and faster by the search engines. Remember every new tag you create equals a new page on your blog. TagPiG can auto tag more than 50 tags per post!

You can try TagPiG out right now with our new seven day trial.

See exactly how Auto Tagging with TagPiG can help your blogs….

If you’re using TagPiG to automate your post tagging you may also be using it’s publish feature to display the generated tags on your blog and feeds. It’s a very powerful feature but I’ll go into detail on that more in another post.

Today I wanted to mention one of the issues that can arise when you use the TagPiG publish feature. Increasingly WordPress theme designers are embedding tag code into their templates. If you then go and turn TagPiG publishing on you’ll end up with 2 sets of tags listed below each post.

To get things working correctly you’ll need to take the embedded tag code out of you template first and leave all the tag management to TagPiG. It’s a pretty easy job but you will need to edit a little code.

You can either edit your templates directly using notepad or even you FTP client but perhaps the easiest way is to use WordPress iteself to edit them in place on you blog.

In WordPress 2.7+ Admin area go to Appearance > Editor in the sidebar. Make sure your active theme is chosen in the dropdown box. You will probably see the following message at below the editor screen:

You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes.

The 2 files we need to focus on are index.php and single.php. Go into your FTP client and change the permissions on these files to 777 (CHMOD 777).

Now in the WordPress Editor select ‘Main Index Template (index.php)’ from the list on the right. If you don’t get a large blue update button below the edit window, something has gone wrong so go back and check the permissions on the two files in your FTP editor.

Scroll down through the file looking for the following code:

<?php the_tags( __( ‘Tagged’ ) . ‘: ‘, ‘, ‘, ”); ?>

It may not look exactly like this but it’s ‘the_tags’ you’re looking for really. Once you’ve found it remove everything between and including the nearest <? and ?> tags. Hit the ‘Update File’ button.

Repeast this process for the ‘Single Post (single.php)’ page and remove the_tags element. Don’t forget to the update the file.

Now go back into your FTP and reset the file permissions to 644.

That’s it, you’re done. You can use TagPiG as your only tag publisher, giving you much more control over how they appear and how many are displayed.

TagPiG is an auto-tagging plugin for WordPress. TagPiG has been designed to overcome the manual bottle-neck by completely automating your tagging process. Here are some of the key features of TagPiG:

• Automatic post categorisation
• Automatic tag publishing
• Automatic tag filtering
• Automatic internal linking of common tags
• Automatic tag rotation

TagPig is simple to install and setup on your WordPress blogs. Once the plugin is activated it will run in the background, silently categorising, tagging and linking your blog posts automatically. With TagPiG installed you get all the great benefits of tagging without any of the additional manual overheads.

You can get an immense amount of benefit from correctly tagging all of your blog posts. Tags not only help you organize large quantities of content, but they also help define your site as a whole. If you post good content and you consistently tag every post you make with maybe 5-10 relevant keywords then, over time, your blog will become a very valuable resource to people interested in those keywords. They can actually come to your blog and get better, more reliable, less spammy, more focused search results than by doing a Google search! While this all sounds very desirable in theory the extremely manual nature of categorising and tagging blog posts has been a major bottle-neck for webmasters who build a lot of blogs and/or post to them frequently.

By Using TagPiG to automate your tagging will:

• Deliver additional keyword density into your blog posts
• Expand the keyword reach of new blog posts
• Get traffic boosts from Technorati and other tag aggregators
• Thematically organise your blog posts
• Provide an intelligent internal linking structure for your blog

TagPig has a comprehensive pdf user manual detailing every aspect of it’s setup, configuration and installation.

You can download TagPiG immediately here…

Tagging is a superb way of theming your blog posts to allow readers and search engines a quick easy way to categorise your content. Until now tags have generally been beyond the reach of the autoblogger simply because categorising your posts takes time.

Imagine adding 10 posts per day across 100 blogs and then having to add 10 tags per post by hand. That’s 10,000 tags! It’s not going to happen!

Because of the manual nature of tagging you won’t normally see tags on any autoblogs. I’d hazard a guess that this obvious difference provides a simple way for search engines to identify and discount autoblog rankings.

TagPiG closes this gap by giving autobloggers a complete auto-tagging solution for their blogs. Simply activate the plugin and you’re ready to go, every new post to your blog will be analysed and tagged with 100% accurate, on-target keywords.

TagPiG is currently available completely free grab it now…