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Custom Fields for Categories using WordPress

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:55:47 +0000

There are endless reasons why it could be helpful to use customs fields on categories pages in WordPress – and it seems many other WP users agree. The users here speak about some plugins that are now out of date – so thankfully, there’s now a painless, fool-proof way to get this working.

1. Download Headspace2

Firstly, you need to download and install the HeadSpace2 SEO plugin. As well as being a mean SEO plugin (far beyond All-In-One or any other plugin you’re probably used to), HeadSpace2 lets you create custom meta data on pages, posts or categories – exactly what we need!

2. Update Page Modules

Once the plugin is activated, navigate to Settings > HeadSpace > Page Modules and drag the Custom Meta into the green Simple box – see below.

3. Add Custom Values

Select the edit box on the right and add the custom fields you’d like to display on your category pages. I’m building an affiliate portal so have added “free-bingo-value”.

4. Edit Categories

The custom fields will now show up on your category description pages – towards the bottom. Add the value you require and update. Here you can also add any of the other modules you selected above – Page Description and Keywords, for example.

5. Call the Custom Fields

Call the custom fields ~~anywhere~~ (see update below) in your theme by using the following PHP code, replacing the custom field name (‘free-bingo-value’) with your own.

Simple as that! It’ll show up without any styling, but you can place tags around it to display as you require.

Update

I’ve crossed out anywhere because I’ve heard from some folks who couldn’t get it to show up on single pages.

Of course, I realise now why anywhere was far too optimistic! If you’re going to call the custom value on a single page (or anywhere in the post loop), it’s going to look for the ‘free-bingo-value’ custom value for that particular post – not for the category. So stick to pasting this on your archive.php or category.php templates.

Update 2

HeadSpace2 is having some issues with WP3.0 and using the plugin for the purpose above will require one small change.

Open headspace.php from the plugin folder and change all instances of cat_ID to tag_ID. Simple as that! Thanks to Rob Felty for the fix.

What is the Bing user-agent?

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:51:27 +0000

Sometimes it’s the absolute simplest questions that you have to dig around for online!

This had me stumped for five or ten minutes, until I saw a comment on the Bing Twitter.

The answer is msnbot.

To add msnbot to your robots.txt file, add the following:

User-agent: msnbot

You can then make any Allow or Disallow rules that you like.

Bing.com are also running a Webmaster Central, much like Google but seemingly cleaner and not as tool-packed.

Sascha Kimmel has some good info on navigating through this.

It should be interesting to see whether Bing.com can make a dent in Google’s 80% share, but it isn’t looking likely. Most say no, and if they are still using the msnbot technology, then I have to agree.

The official Bing page outlining more on their bots is here. Thanks to Benjamin for the link.

Facebook Ads Wish List

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:44:34 +0000

Some time ago I seized the opportunity of having a dedicated (yet mostly absent) Facebook Account Manager and prepared my ‘Facebook Ads Wish List’ – a fantasy list of how Facebook Ads could be (and should be).

I’d love to say that the Facebook Ads platform is so bad that they’re at risk of losing share. But, honeslty – to who? Each month our clients shift more and more budget away from AdWords to Facebook in search of low CPCs, high branding value and the opportunity to target tight demographics. Neither query- or demographic-based advertising will ruin the other – but I imagine the shift will continue.

It doesn’t seem unknown to Facebook either: their is ad platform is one of their least developed areas, with very few updates (that have any use, anyway) or innovation.

Below, however, are some thoughts on how the Facebook Ads platform could be great – should they feel the need to adapt and improve.

Profile Builder

We operate a dozen or so accounts – many in similar niches. Depending on objectives I’ll create 5-10 ads at any one time, mostly targeting similar demographics. While there’s capacity to duplicate ads (across campaigns, but not accounts), it’s just not practical.

A Profile Builder would be ideal. Imagine creating demographic profiles based on any terms you like, saving them to your ‘Profile Directory’ and then, in one click, creating new ads from these. You could select your 50-60 year old women in Sydney profile, your Cooking TV show profile, your food and dieting profile and be advertising in seconds – not tediously typing in as many words as you can think of.

Interest Sets

Maybe I’m being romantic if I think that Facebook has potential to extend their advertisers’ spend and ROI by extending each ads reach.

Surely that was their intention with the changes to the age targetting (you select 20-30 and they’ll show it to anyone they like who was once 20-30, or will be at some point – and apparently it’s better for you…)?

Instead, how about Interest Sets? You click ‘Oprah’ and you’ve instantly added 200 Oprah-related keywords. Sounds powerful. Come on Facebook: no brainer.

Interest Notifications

Facebook Ads typically fatigue in a few days, weeks or months; depending on how deep your pool is. If you created an ad some time ago that targeted every keyword related to ‘Oprah’, you might find that you can add another 20 or so now. Should we need to go back through every ad and see where markets have opened up?

Interest notifications would let you know when new pages or groups have been created, or new interest keywords have been added to the database. Kind of like the AdWords ‘Opportunities’ section. And no, I’m not talking about the 6 suggested interests that you see below an ad – that’s so useless and mis-targeted that it’s offensive.

Location Settings

Can we get some clarity here? Is geo-targeting done by IP or the location that users have entered? I’m assuming the former, but there is a lot of room for improvement here – and I don’t just mean adding my hometown.

Why not allow advertisers to target users based on both their current location and their stated location (or most regular login location)? I know a few scuba companies who would kill to be able to single in on English backpackers in Sydney, but there are plenty more uses.

Conversion Tracking

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If you’re Facebook, and it’s broken, just remove it. They removed conversion tracking for any of the following reasons:

It didn’t work and they couldn’t be bothered fixing it.
Feedback from advertisers was that ROI was low.
They just couldn’t be bothered trying to offer something that Google Analytics could do better.

Flexible Page Ads

Any advertiser should know by now that Facebook users hate leaving the site – and when they do their conversion and engagement metrics are pitiful. So, allowing Facebook advertisers to promote Facebook pages was genius. Not only are they taking revenues, Facebook users aren’t ever leaving.

It’s for that reason that advertising pages should be made easier. For example, you can’t change the title of your ad – it’s locked as the page’s title. There’s obviously an anti-spam element to this, though a simple fix would be to include the page title in small copy at the bottom of the ad or underneath the title. Then there’s little chance of misrepresentation yet advertisers can still shape their ad copy to their objectives.

Account History

The benefits of being a long-time, successful Facebook advertiser are very few. Unlilke AdWords there appears to be little or no consideration for account history: your ad’s performance is entirely individual and, I am assuming from experience, resets at the end of the day.

Seems fair? Not really. You can start your day bidding 30c and paying 20c. With a good CTR your CPC might drop to 10c. Here’s where it gets interesting: if you continue to raise your bid you can get even more impressions yet barely raise the CPC. Perfect, right? Until the next day begins and you’ve got a 70c bid. All of a sudden you’ve got no account history and your CPC is 60c.

If you want to play rodeo on your account then this can actually play to your benefit, but the set-and-forget type advertiser either misses a lot of traffic or simply pays too much.

Dynamic Values

This was one of the few requests that triggered a short, negative response from our Facebook Account Manager. Using dynamic values (names, ages, location, etc) in adswill never happen, we hear. It was worth a try…

Extended Payment Options

Facebook Ads began allowing PayPal payments some time ago, but it’s still very inflexible. No pre-pay billing? Are you serious? There is invoicing available for accounts over $10k, luckily, but if you’re a small advertiser: expect to have a charge from Facebook for every individual day you advertise.

No Bulk Uploads

I beg you, make it easier! I want to create campaigns using Excel. The response from Facebook was that yes, this is actually possible. I looked for the option for some time, hoping it would show itself if I remained patient. It didn’t.

I called again recently and was told that this has to be individually activated by their team. Perhaps my request for this to be added as a feature wasn’t direct enough to be considered a request that it be added as a feature to my account.

I’ve asked again and wait in anticipation.

Simple Period Selections

You’ll find many impracticalities and grievances in any product if you use it for hours each day, but this has got to be the worst. By default the account and campaign period is set to Lifetime. Not ideal, really.

You can’t simply change it to ‘This Month’ or ‘Last Month’ either – apparently Facebook reports in 7 day blocks, so you should too. There’s that, ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Custom Date Range’. I’d like to see some event tracking on this and calculate how much time advertisers waste entering in the month’s date range (and then re-entering it once the page refreshes. That’s right, no page carry-over).

When you select an individual ad it all changes again: it’s only weekly and be damned if you want anything else.

Locked Account Settings

When I sent this to Facebook this was a massive problem for us. I have to admit, it’s been fixed to some extent now that Facebook allows linked advertiser accounts. It’s still not ideal, but then, changing the time zone and currency seems to be something that many platforms struggle with (ahem, AdWords).

And your requests?

I invite you to add your own requests below!

Obtain Australian State from Postcode in Excel

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:38:05 +0000

This made my head hurt, so I hope it’s useful!

 =IF(AND(A1>=2000,A1<=2599),"NSW", IF(AND(A1>=2619,A1<=2898),"NSW", IF(AND(A1>=2921,A1<=2999),"NSW", IF(AND(A1>=0200,A1<=0299),"ACT", IF(AND(A1>=2900,A1<=2920),"ACT", IF(AND(A1>=2600,A1<=2618),"ACT", IF(AND(A1>=3000,A1<=3999),"VIC", IF(AND(A1>=8000,A1<=8999),"VIC", IF(AND(A1>=4000,A1<=4999),"QLD", IF(AND(A1>=9000,A1<=9999),"QLD", IF(AND(A1>=5000,A1<=5999),"SA", IF(AND(A1>=6000,A1<=6999),"WA", IF(AND(A1>=7000,A1<=7999),"TAS", IF(AND(A1>=0800,A1<=0999),"NT", "INT"))))))))))))))

Capture user IP, location and referring URL

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:35:05 +0000

Are you getting the most out of your subscriber signup forms?

I’m starting some new campaigns and wanted to get as much info as possible on my subscribers.

Here’s what I was after:

Record the referring URL

By recording the referring URL and monitoring user’s interaction with my newsletters, I can find out which pages or search phrases send the highest-converting traffic.

I believe there are more advanced ways of doing this, including using cookies to record the original referrer (this code will only show the last page accessed, unfortunately), but this is plenty in my case.

Capture IPs

Freelancers will be pushing traffic to one of my signup forms on a CPA agreement. Monitoring IPs won’t be the greatest way to stop scammers, but it’s a quick and free solution without having to install any software.

This one’s fairly simple and will also help us capture the location in the next step.

Capture location

I’m promoting UK-only sites and this will help me segment the database to serve unique newsletter content accordingly.

There’s plenty of half-arsed tutorials on how to do this – including a solution where you upload an array of countries and their codes / IP ranges to a MySQL database and query them from there. This seemed like a fair bit of overkill to me and the vague instructions were beyond a coder at my level.

I was content with this solution found on the Tek-Tips forum.

 // Create the country code key



// Call your city and country info

 // Call City, Country

 // Call Country only

The ease of calling the API from hostip.info also means that you’re reliant on these guys keeping their database online, but I’m willing to bank on it for now.

Full signup form with IP, location, country

So here’s all our code in one place. Basically, this uses all of the above functions and inputs them into fields that users won’t see because of the display:none style.

To capture these in your subscriber database (I use and recommend Campaign Monitor), simply create a custom field where you can point the data.


	
	

	

	" style="display:none" />

		

	 // this was created in the country code above, so we can call it here also

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions of troubles.

Hack Firefox’s search to use another country’s server

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:33:11 +0000

If, like me, you’re optimising sites for a particular country and you’re not there, Firefox’sstandard geo-locating search bar isn’t much help.

Sure: you can change .com (or whatever), to .co.uk in the URL everytime – but, come on,why?

Add extra search engine servers to the Firefox Search Bar

For this example I’m going to add a search server for google.co.uk. Assume I’m in Australia.

1. Right Click on Firefox in your Applications folder and choose Show Package Contents.

2. Navigate to Contents > MacOS > searchplugins

3. Duplicate the relevant file (ie: google.xml or yahoo.xml).

4. Open the file with a text editor like TextMate and change all instances ofgoogle.com.au (it will most likely be the server relevant to where you currently are) togoogle.co.uk (or whatever you require)

5. Rename the file something relevant to the server: google-uk.xml.

6. Done! You can now use the dropdown menu on the Firefox search bar to change your servers easily. Select Manage Search Engines to set your default.

I imagine you could use a similar process for PC – you’d just have to find the right files.

FIX: Analytics auto-tagging not working in AdWords

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:30:19 +0000

Here’s a very simple, very clever fix to an auto-tagging issue in AdWords.

You may be having issues implementing the auto-tagging, depending on how your site is built. I came across a client recently that had some custom redirects on their site that was interfering with the auto-tagging and outputting 404s.

The following examples, as outputted by AdWords when the campaign tracking is live, were not working:

example.com/?gclid=1234
example.com/index.php?gclid=1234
example.com/page/?gclid=1234

However, a typical query string did work on this particular site. As you probably know, you can only have one query string in a URL. If there is already a query string in the destination URL of your ad, AdWords will append their tracking with an ampersand. Nice one Google!

The solution: fake a query string!

Try this destination URL:

example.com/?adwords

If it works, turn on auto-tagging and, once an ad is clicked, the appended URL will be:

example.com/?adwords&gclid=1234

Problems: duplicate reporting

You’ll be able to analyse all of your AdWords traffic in the individual analytics tab, however using the ?adwords query string will result in a second set of page views. For example, in your page views (from all sources), you will see results for:

example.com and example.com/?adwords

There’s no way around this, that I can see, but it is a fair compromise to be able to use auto-tagging.

The alternative: dynamic tagging

There’s a great post on how to manually tag ads with dynamic values. If the above doesn’t work for you, the dynamic values on this page will – however, it can still take a lot of time with large campaigns.

Please let me know your feedback or questions!