Note: To activate the Advanced SEO Upgrade, go to your Administration Area > Upgrades.  You can activate it for 1, 3 or 12 months at a time.

If you have already upgraded to the Advanced SEO Upgrade, here are some tips that will help you maximize your sites visiblity to search engines.

To change options for the Advanced SEO, visit your admin area > Settings > All In One SEO.  Click on the blue headings for each item to get a full description for each item.  These settings will greatly improve your overall SEO. Probably the two greatest things to edit here will be your Home Title and Description.  The Home Keywords, in most cases, should be kept blank.  BlogsOnUs automatically populates this field with the  tags and categories that you add to your posts and pages.

You also have custom SEO settings you can set on each page and post on your site.  WordPress Pages don’t let you add tags or keywords normally, but with the Advanced SEO plugin, you have the option on adding keywords on each page you create.  The settings are right below the Page/Post text area when you are editing the Page/Post.

While Posts allow you to add categories and tags (which will be converted to Meta Tags for search engines automatically by BlogsOnus), there may be times you want additional keywords, but really don’t want them included as a tag.  This gives you the ability to add special keywords that will be added to your regular tags.  Again, a very powerful tool for search engines.

Keep in mind, search engines like google love new content.  This is why more and more companies are including a blog on their web sites.  Each time you add a new Blog Entry, BlogsOnUs notifies the search engines that you have new content.  Again, search engines love new content.  While your site might really only neeed Pages (static content), having posts, or an ongoing blog, will keep your site fresh as far as search engines go and bring people to your site.

Well, we have added a really cool plugin, OZH Admin Menu Drop Down Plugin.  This will make life sooooo much easier on you.  That is if you actually write posts and move around in the backend of your blog.  But wait, I know you all do. 

By default, this plugin is not activated.  You will need to activate it on your own.  Just go to your Dashboard > Manage > Plugins > and activate the OZH Admin Menu Drop Down plugin.  Thats it.  Once activated, it will only take one click to get around and do anything your heart desires.

OK, for you WordPress experts, yes, there has been a few plugins that do about the same thing.  So why did BlogsOnUs choose this one in particular.  Because it works.  Not only in WordPress 2.6, but it is also working in the newer version 2.7 (2.7 is not yet available in WordPressMU which is what BlogsOnUs is running on).  We didn’t want to pick a menu plugin that wasn’t growing with the changes.  This is important.

Why didn’t we just activate this by default? Well, we feel that many people like to find their way around the admin area, and it is sometimes easier to see the additional sub-menus in a row then it is in a drop down menu.  Many times options in a drop down menu are ignored.  This way, as they become familiar with the interface, they each person can choose whether or not they want to see drop down menus.

Me personally, I don’t really like the new structure of 2.7’s navigation, but, it is the future of WordPress.  As we move to that version, I just wanted to make sure that users would have an option of using the new features, while still seeing their basic interface, thus, I decided to introduce this plugin now.

If you find you would rather use the older menu’s, feel free to deactivate the OZH menu.  It’s really just there for me, but I think you will like it.

Robert Griffin
Head Developer, BlogsOnUs

QuickShop allows you to easily turn your blog (or part of it) into a shopping site.  There is a little bit of setup you will need to do.  Just visit your Dashboard > Settings > QuickShop.  Full documentation can be found here on our sample shop.  Once setup, your are ready to start adding products that you want to sell.  Just create a Post or a Page, add a product image and description, click on the QuickShop button and add your price and shipping and your are done. When a visitor wants to purchase your item, they just click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button and it automatically creates a Shopping Cart in your sidebar.  Then they click on the checkout button and they are sent to Paypal where they can pay using their Paypal account, or just use a credit card.  No PayPal account is required. NOTE: Your theme will need to support Widgets in order to use QuickShop.

We also have a QuickShop Premium available which adds many more options.  Again, see our sample site to see the plugin in action, and to see full instructions on using both the Standard and Premium versions of our newest plugin, QuickShop.

Keep an eye out for our next enhancements, like our upcomming ‘Tweeter’ and ‘Face Book’ plugins…

We looked at many plugins before deciding to go with the QuickShop plugin (see credits on sample test site).  We actually wanted to use this plugin months ago, but with the new release of WordPress, it was no working correctly.  After many attempts trying to get the developer of this plugin to fix the problems, we decided to move on.  But after looking at more complicated plugins, we kept coming back to QuickShop. After reading further posts from the Author, it seemed like he was not going to update the plugin unless he needed to for his own personal use.  Since he hadn’t updated to WordPressMU, he had no need to.

So we took maters in our own hands and fixed the plugin so it could be used on BlogsOnUs.  And we took it a step further.  QuickShop really was just a simple plugin that let you drop a Add To Cart button onto either a page or a post.  Now, our version lets you totally customize the plugin and product lists and does this without you having to alter your theme.  This means, you will have a full shopping site in a BlogsOnUs blog.  You can design it within a current site, or create a new site just for the plugin.

While we are happy with the results, your feedback is essential the the growth of the plug.  So please, visit our test site and let us know what you think.  The standard edition of BlogsOnUs QuickShop plugin is activated at the time you created your blog.  Just visit your blog settings to customize it for your Paypal Account.  If you are interested the the Premium features we built in to QuickShop (as seen on our sample shop), just click Upgrades to add these features to your blog.

Google can analyze your site letting you know when visitors arrived at your site, where they came from, where they went after leaving, how long they visited and what pages they looked at while visiting.  This is great information to have and helps you plan your site and your sites advertising.

We are currently testing a plugin that will automatically submit this information to Google for you.  But in order to use it, you will need to apply for a Google Analytics account.  The account is free and so is the information that they provide. Once you have signed up, enter your account number for Google Analytics (looks like “UA-xxxxxxx-x” or “UA-xxxxxxx-xx” ) in your Admin area of your site (Site Admin > Settings > Google Analytics). Once it has been setup, Google will start working for you.  Let us know what you think by commenting here at the bottom of this post.

We are also testing a new plugin called WassUp.  It also gives you statistics, but unlike Google who has to analyse everything prior to making its reports, WassUp gives you live information along with history.  It even will display a map of the word, pin-marking exactly where in the world your visitors that are on you page are from.  If we release this it will be an upgrade to our basic free account (due to the increased database usage and extra tables required to run the plugin), but we will let you use it for free for 30 days so you can test it out.  Well keep you posted on how the testing goes.

While available privately to Real Solutions employee’s, family and friends, we have added many new features and upgrades to our old system.  We now run on a completely different backbone allowing us a much more flexible and faster browsing time.

While some of our own blogs are still in the process of being moved, we decided that the site was ready to go.  If this is your first visit, look around.  We have some of our basic support videos available on our public site allowing you to see how easy it is to start a blog or a full blown website.

Over the next few months, we will be concentrating on finishing up testing new features that are almost ready for release.  Unfortunately we had to hold off on them waiting for the final release of Wordpress 2.7 which keeps getting postponed.  For those who have been following the development, it is a exciting time for Wordpress and its users.  We will be upgrading our system when the new release is available.  At that time, we will be able to release our new features also.

Keep an eye on our feed to stay up to date on the latest news.

We are actually hoping to finallize the last changes to our core files here over the next week.  The testing is going great and most all of our features are in place.

For those who are displaying ads on their site, you probably have noticed better placement.  We will be adding more rules for our ads after final release of the service, but right now, if you are logged in you won’t see any ads displayed. They are currently only displayed for your visitors.  Remember, if you change your theme (heck we have about 100 themes now) don’t worry.  Your ads will continue to display.  You might however visit you Google Adsence account and change the colors and sizes of your ads to match your new themes.

If you currently are not having ads displayed, please let us know so we can get it fixed.

We are in final beta testing of our next gallery plugin Laziest Gallery.  We have now tested over 10 galleries, and while Laziest Gallery might not have all the features that some of the other galleries have, the developement is very active, which makes it exciting. If you are displaying pictures on your site in a gallery format, you will want to concider upgrading to the latest Laziest Gallery. Visit the Upgrades Section in the setup.

Well, that is the latest news around here.  Enjoy and keep us posted.  And remember, your blog is on us!

Unlike many blogging sites out their, we know what bloggers want.  Why? Because we are bloggers.  We know how frustrating it can be at times when you find out you can’t do certain things on your blog.  Thats why Blogs On Us blogs are different.

All accounts include

• A generous amount of space available.
• No just your standard ‘ol post editor, but we made available an advanced editor, allowing tables, styling and formatting you just will have a hard time finding anywhere else for free.
• Some wonderful themes to choose from (if you want to change from our basic theme, we kinda like it)
• Fantastic built in social bookmarking.
• The ability to import your posts from other blogging sites.
• The ability to export out blog for backup, or if you ever decide to move to another site (we don’t think so). We don’t want to hold your posts ransom to keep you here.  Export and any time, as many times as you would like.
• Easy Uploading of graphics, videos, music and files with built in media library where you can manage your files.
• A fantastic set of tagging and categories which will allow your visitors a simple way to find just what they are looking for.
• All of our themes are widgetized.  Makes it easy to design you page is a few seconds.
• And many, many other features, most of which are available in our exclusive support video collection.

And we will go with you.  You have many upgrade options to keep you site up to date with today’s blogs.  We have unique privacy plugins, gallery’s, a fantastic video player, custom themes, custom them editors and more add-ons as you need them.

While we are currently in beta we are close to launching the service.  So create a blog.  If you run into any problems let us know.  In most cases it will be fixed within hours.  And don’t forget, It’s free and always will be. Your blogs on us.  Take your own test drive and see for yourself why we are not just the new kids on the block.