Integrating Feedburner and Google Analytics In mid-November, Google Analytics and Feedburner announced a very interesting integration. While this is excellent news for Google Analytics and Feedburner users, it must be dealt properly when it comes to SEO, especially on websites that are heavily based on RSS feeds. Google Analytics users rejoice! This integration is very interesting in that it allows a much deeper understanding of the interaction of users coming from feeds and the profitability of this segment on websites. As can be seen in the screenshot below (from Online Behavior website), we are able to use five UTM parameters as used in the URL builder. utm_source: Identifies the referrer (e.g. google, searchengineland.com, newsletter)utm_medium:: Identifies the marketing medium (e.g. organic, CPC, banner, email)utm_campaign: Identifies the campaign that is being run in the referrerutm_content: Used to differentiate ads or links inside a campaignutm_term: Used to differentiate the keywords clicked
10 Ideas for Class Blog Posts Class blogging is becoming ever more popular as a fantastic way of encouraging young people to write with a purpose, for a real audience and receive genuine feedback. At its best it’s assessment for learning in action. So what’s not to love? Well, although it’s really simple to set up your class blog, sometimes it can be a bit hard to think what to get your class to blog about. Diary Style Blogging Asking students to write about what they did at the weekend or a favourite memory from the last school holidays can be a great stimulus for individual writing. Fictional Diary Style Blogging Once pupils are comfortable with writing diary entries about their own experiences, why not mix things up a little bit by asking them to write a diary entry from the point of view of e.g a famous historical character you’ve been learning about, or a character from a book? Collaborative Story Telling Work Showcase Heroes Something Kind Dream Journal What I want to be when I grow up Reviews
HOW TO: Get Up-to-Date on WordPress 3.0 This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace's hosting solutions here. WordPress 3.0, the latest and greatest version of the popular open source content management system, has just been released. The latest version brings a refined backend interface, a brand new default theme, a new custom menu structure, plus improved support for custom post types and custom taxonomies. While we've written about some of the most exciting and important new features in WordPress 3.0 already, we thought now would be a good time to round-up some resources of how these newest features work and what WordPress designers and developers will need to consider when upgrading or creating new plugins or themes for WordPress 3.0.Although WordPress 3.0 was only released last week, it has been in the works for quite some time, so a fair amount of documentation is already online. All About Menus Multisite Madness Custom Post Types Galore Custom Taxonomies Trickery
The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All! If you are one of those out there that believe that Facebook has no place in the classroom, then, well maybe this post isn’t for you. But please first take a look at just a few reasons why you should reconsider: The fact is, the majority of your students and their parents are probably already on FacebookEven when schools have a policy against being “friends” online, there are tools you can use that won’t violate policyDespite what you may hear, there are strong privacy options that you can set up so only those that you want can access your informationWe have an obligation as educators to model appropriate online behavior and learn right along our students From Where do we begin? Just today, Facebook released their own sponsored Facebook For Educators guide, but we found that there really wasn’t enough “how-to” in this guide to make it worth it. FacebookForEducators.org Should we be “friends” with students? 1. 2. 3. 4.
Introducing Rich Snippets Webmaster Level: All As a webmaster, you have a unique understanding of your web pages and the content they represent. Google helps users find your page by showing them a small sample of that content -- the "snippet." Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. To display Rich Snippets, Google looks for markup formats (microformats and RDFa) that you can easily add to your own web pages. and now with microformats markup: or alternatively, use RDFa markup. By incorporating standard annotations in your pages, you not only make your structured data available for Google's search results, but also for any service or tool that supports the same standard. To ensure that this additional data is as helpful as possible to users, we'll be rolling this feature out gradually, expanding coverage to more sites as we do more experiments and process feedback from webmasters. Now, time for some Q&A with the team: No. What's next?
10 reasons to get educators blogging 5 reasons educators should start reading blogs: 1) - Blogs are the heart of learning and sharing... If you are an idea and inspiration junkie like myself, then you will find blogs to be extremely beneficial. Educators of all ages and backgrounds are bringing their ideas, reflections and experiences to one convenient location; their blog. 2) - Blogs are real world and real time experiences... When educators write a new blog post I can say with almost 100% certainty that they are writing about something that has happened recently. 3) - Blogs will make you reflect on your educational practices... As you begin reading educator blogs you will instinctively start to reflect upon your educational practices and beliefs. 4) - Blogs give you the opportunity to connect and collaborate with educators from all around the world... One thing most educators don't have the time for during the course of a normal work day is sharing and collaboration. 5 reasons educators should have their own blogs:
A Complete To-Do List & Plugins for WordPress Site Maintenance | If you own a WordPress site, it will probably be operational 24/7. As time passes, the number of different site operations will cause your WordPress site to slow down. Just like your computer or house, your WordPress site requires scheduled maintenance checks in order to keep it running in its prime condition. Image credit: batega When it comes to WordPress site maintenance, it can be as easy as doing your housekeeping tasks through the WordPress Admin, to the extent of technical tweaks at the back of your WordPress site. It can also be tedious for less tech-savvy blog owners to complete the technical tweaks for your WordPress site. Take Down Your WordPress Site For Maintenance Some of the maintenance tasks do not require you to bring down your WordPress site entirely. Here are some ways you can use to temporarily take down your WordPress site for maintenance. .htaccess Replace /maintenance.html with whatever the URL of your maintenance page is and put in your own IP address on line 3.
prezi In my last blog post, I tried to explain what Prezi actually is and how it should be (or shouldn't be) compared to PowerPoint. In this post, I will try to explain some of the basics of using Prezi. Signing up: The sign-up process is pretty easy. All you have to do is to decide which license you need. Prezi offers three licenses: Public, Enjoy and Pro. The Public license is free. After you have received your confirmation e-mail, you can log on to the site and start creating your own Prezis. First steps: After clicking the "New Prezi" button you will be asked to give a title for your presentation. The Editing "Canvas": Now you are at the editing area of your Prezi. After this point, you will start creating your presentation. Click here to continue reading Part 3