Write a Book tutorial problem
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There is a major problem with the tutorial at http://en.support.wordpress.com/write-a-book/.
It suggests using posts to contain chapters. This would be fine if one were using Blogger, LiveJournal, or their like to write books. But WordPress is a superior tool for author’s. It has pages as well as posts. Chapters change rarely, and so are better suited to storing in pages.
Posts then become announcements to readers of a site that a new book has been uploaded. That post is like the blurb at the back of the book – a few short paragraphs to hook a reader, followed by a link to the first chapter.
When an additional chapter is loaded the writer can announce that with a post ending with a link to the new chapter. This post can often be very short – once readers are hooked on a book they do not need a constant barrage of blurbs.
Or sometimes a post may be used to announce a major shift in the direction of the story. As “Jennie gives star athlete John a lift home when his car has problems and finds underneath the tough exterior a softer, more thoughtful person.”
The index to a book need not be a separate page. It can be contained in menu items, especially for those themes which support multi-level menus.
I have done this with my sci-fi site, which you can see at the following link. I found 2010 (or the new Duster theme) to be the best theme to support a site for displaying samples of an author’s work. Or as a collaborative site for two or more authors.
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Write a Book http://wp.me/PEmnE-1e
Note: You can also use Pages for your chapters instead of posts.
It’s all about having options. And yours is also a very good idea.
Regardless of which method you choose, the only “page” that will ping email subscribers and RSS readers is posting on the blog posts page.
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The main problem with this idea is that Pages have virtually no googlejuice, and part of the reason to blog is to develop a following. Posts will ALWAYS be more effective at that than Pages.
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Wrong on two counts. First, the contents of pages are indexed by search engines, just as posts are. Second, when each chapter or series of chapters of a book is loaded the author will typically also post a notice in the blog section of a web site. That should include several tags which will help direct search engines.
Search engine optimization is a complex topic. WordPress addresses the subject in several ways. One of them is the automatic creation of a sitemap which users can register with Google, Bing, and so on. Another is the creation of pingbacks for pages. Another is with a tutorial on the practical aspects of gaining.
Some of these topics are addressed in the following location.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/topic/traffic/Perhaps the best place to start is the topic titled Getting More Views and Traffic at http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
But there is more to the subject, certainly much more than can be addressed here.
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The main problem with this idea is that Pages have virtually no googlejuice, and part of the reason to blog is to develop a following. Posts will ALWAYS be more effective at that than Pages.
Right!
Click the link and scroll to: http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/12/better-blogging-at-wordpress-com-pages-and-posts/
Characteristics of pages
Characteristics of postsWhen bloggers publish posts on related topics they link to the most relevant and authoritative posts found in the most authoritative blogs in their own niche. This is called backlinking and the number of backlinks a blog earns is one of the factors in the algorithm that determines a blog’s Google PageRank.
When compared to conventional Post based structureed blogs Page structured blogs have a very difficult time:
1. securing traffic;
2. securing comments;
3. securing backlinks;
4. achieving authority in their niche;
5. achieving Google PageRank. -
You have many good points in the excellent article that you link to.
Notice, however, that your points have nothing to do with the main point I made. That pages are better suited for holding chapters of a book.
The strength of WordPress over other blog/web site hosting software is that WP sites can flexibly and attractively contain BOTH posts and pages. WP site creators have the best of both worlds.
They can have a blog section to alert blog readers (human and robotic) of news about the site, the author’s works, and interesting personal info for fans of the author or her series of books.
This is why my sites have a post-centered home page rather than having a static home page. For exactly the reasons you cited in your article.
WP authors’ sites (unlike those created in Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.) can ALSO have several pages of relatively unchanging information. This could include a page of author bio information. Short character bios: Harry Potter, Hermione, Ron. A series-background page, maybe with subsections : Hogwarts, Quidditch, maps, etc.
Speaking of maps, on my Confederation Tales site I have a page showing two maps of the galaxy, one for our stellar neighborhood, one of the galaxy as a whole. You can (as suggested by a label below each map) click on the map. This kicks off a separate page which is an interactive map, where you can browse the universe near and far. All created through WP tools.
http://confederationtales.com/confederation/
For books taking place on this planet, Google has a lot of tools you can use to build, annotate, and display maps. These are interactive maps, which tends to involve those who look at them. Go to Google for more info about how to create annotated maps, make them public, and increase their rank in Google – and thus bring random browsers to your site.
Which brings us back to an error expressed in previous comments on this topic. WP pages DO in fact have googlejuice. It’s just a different kind of juice than that of posts. But that subject should be addressed in a separate topic.
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@shapechangers
If you wish to draw Staff attention to the fact that you think the “write a book” support documentation entry needs updating and enhancement, then please be aware that Staff are not available until March 2nd, 2011. That’s when you can use this link to forward your suggestion to them. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/The team is spending a week together to brainstorm various new ways to improve your WordPress.com experience, so we’ve shut down the form for most users until March 1.
Users with paid upgrades will still have access to the [suppot ticket] form, and we’ll be monitoring for new tickets when we can.
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I just received confirmation from WordPress that pages DO receive equivalent attention from search engines as posts do. The attention, however, is different.
Most importantly, tags and categories help improve the visibility of posts. But site creators do have to put them in posts. They also have to be carefully planned. A too-general, off-topic tag or category will be disregarded by search bots. Or send people to your post who will not be interested in your subject.
Both posts and pages are Web pages. Each is scanned. The same SEO (search engine optimization) tactics which work in one will work in the other. Those interested can do a Web search to find out more about SEO tactics. (Just look at the first dozen or so results. They begin to repeat.)
WordPress behind the scenes takes a number of actions to increase SEO for site creators. One is to create a sitemap, keep it up to date, and notify search engines of changes. You can make good use of this by registering your sitemap. It takes eight steps and a few minutes, as explained here. http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
To see your sitemap use this link: myblog.wordpress.com/sitemap.xml. Notice that it lists each page and post and the entire site.
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None of that is news to me at all. The “Google juice” raincoaster and I are referring to is realted to PageRank. When someone backlinks to your your blog or to pages/post in their blog there is a flow of ranking Google juice. The point I was making is that it is my experience that other bloggers rarely, if ever, link to static pages. SIGH …
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None of that is news to me at all. The “Google juice” raincoaster and I are referring to is related to PageRank. When someone backlinks to your blog or to pages/post in your blog from their blog then here is a flow of ranking Google juice. The point I was making is that it is my experience that other bloggers rarely, if ever, link to static pages. SIGH ..
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You and Raincoaster seem to be narrowly focused on WordPress sites as blogs. My point is that WP offers the best of both worlds, blogs and web sites. A smart WP user will use BOTH posts and pages to contain content.
As I wrote earlier, the home page of a site should the dynamic (blog) part of a creator’s site. Posts here should be relatively short, make good use of tags and categories, and point to content which is relatively enduring. Such as descriptions of physical objects, chapters in a book, services offered, and many other kinds of descriptions.
These descriptions may have complex hierarchical relationships. (Toyota model X to tires, transmissions, car seats, etc.) Or they may have serial relationships. (Bought this computer? You may now want to buy service/accessory/etc.)
Posts and pages have their advantages and disadvantages. Posts in particular are arranged in reverse chronological order, and are all stuffed in one pipeline potentially hundreds and thousands of posts deep. No amount of smart tagging and categorization placed in the sidebar will let users quickly find something posted three years ago which is still relevant to their needs.
I can if you wish post any number of links pointing out problems with posts. I did after all work for more than ten years at Boeing creating, helping to create, and maintaining Web sites.
WordPress began as a blogging tool, little different than Blogger, LiveJournal, and so on. But they added a revolutionary feature: pages. And that has opened up a whole new way to create Web sites. Sites, moreover, which can be scaled up. Blogs scale up poorly.
The greatest feature of WP.com, in my opinion, is that it is absolutely free. Or for a modest amount of money it can be customized with a CSS update, your own domain name, and extra storage space if you want to create a massive site.
And once your needs expand beyond the very rich capabilities of WP.com, you can migrate to WP.org.
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@larryeugenecarroll
I assure you that nothing you said is news to either raincoaster or myself. It’s a same your opinion hasn’t been expressed in a blog post and published. I’m sure it would make the wp developers beam with pride, as they ought to, of course. Don’t forget that we are wordpress fans too. :) -
My comment in this thread was strictly about the relative SEO of pages and posts on WordPress.com. Posts have more than Pages do. This is ONE thing to take into consideration when structuring a site here, and a very important one when you think about why you have a website in the first place, because Google is better at getting your blog noticed than you are, unless you’re Cory Doctorow.
WordPress.com has recently introduced some changes that lower the SEO of posts, but they still have much more than Pages do or ever will, regardless how many pages you have.
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Your assertion that posts are much more effective than pages at getting higher search-engine page rankings would be more convincing if you would be specific.
Are they 1000 times more effective? Or 100 times? Or 10 or 2 or 1.1 times?
What specific mechanisms make them more effective?
Where in WordPress FAQs or tutorials does WP make this claim?
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The first issue I had with the Write a Book tutorial is its suggestion that chapters should be placed in posts. I believe they should go into pages.
The second issue (which got lost in the discussion of the merits of posts and pages) is its suggestion that the home page should a page. I believe it should be the post pipeline, the blog part of the site. Posts are good for announcements of additions and changes to a site. They also can have tags and categories with their several advantages.
The third issue is the suggestion to create a table of contents (which the tutorial mistakenly called an index) pointing to each of the chapters. This is not an error so much as a choice. Fiction books rarely have TOCs. Non-fiction books usually do. Fiction is usually read in a serial fashion. Non-fiction may be read out of order, as the reader seeks only the material they need for their purposes.
Finally I think there should be a short discussion of what theme to use, with links to general tutorials on themes. I experimented with all 100+ themes for my several WP book sites. Twenty Ten turned out to work best for me, perhaps because my books are all fiction. Non-fiction books might be better contained in sites with other themes, especially if they have lots of visual contents such as photos and drawings and graphs.
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PS to timethief. For several weeks I’ve been building a blog/site about WP sites for authors. It will not be set to public/searchable until its complete enough to be useful.PS to everyone. A good forum for fiction writers, especially if you write science fiction and fantasy, is on SFFworld at http://www.sffworld.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10
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