This neat plugin is especially helpful if you have old blogs with lots of posts. Finding all broken links on old blogs is just about impossible. Broken Link Checker continually checks for broken links and sends notification emails when broken links are found.

After testing the plugin on one of my smaller blogs, I installed it here on NJFM. The plugin found over 200 broken links on this site. When you consider that I’ve only got a little over 500 posts, 200 is a rather high percentage of broken links.

Waning Interest

As I was fixing the links I realized most of the links came from NJFM’s comment section. It made me realize that I’m not the only one who loses interest after building blogs.

The majority of the broken links were from folks who created a new blog, came here to No Job for Mom and got very involved in the community. Over time they lost interest and allowed their blog’s domain name to expire thus resulting in broken links (this is not a complaint, just an observation).

The People Factor

I think cleaning up broken links improves the reader’s experience. I know I’ve read quality and compelling comments on other blogs only to be later disappointed when I clicked on the commenter’s website link to find that it was a dead end.

SEO Factor

I am not an SEO expert but I would think search engines appreciate blogs with current links as opposed to blogs with a ton of broken links. Whether or not fixing broken links improve search engine results remains to be seen, but it can’t hurt.

Broken Link Checker has earned its way onto my favorite WordPress plugins list.

When converting a site from Joomla to WordPress (or changing platforms), do not change the category structure or the file naming convention. In other words, don’t do what I did.

Old School

When the site was hand coded, there was only one way to access any page on the site. All a reader had to do was type in the static URL and boom…there was the page! With content management systems such as Joomla and WordPress (yes, I call WordPress a content management system), it’s different.

It wasn’t until after I received over 600 “File not found” errors (started at 90 a day and has now trickled to only 10 or 15 a day) that I had a V-8 moment.

My old school thought process of accessing each page via one URL was outdated. With content management systems, pages can be accessed in a variety of ways. I won’t get into the whole relational database structure reasoning for why that is, but take my word for it.

Changing with the Times

In the past when I changed platforms all I had to do was insert a “change of address” line from the old webpage to the new. Now, with at least 10 ways to access any one page from my old Joomla site, the redirects seem endless. You see, something as simple as including or excluding the forward slash (/) at the end of a URL can generate a “File not found” error if things aren’t redirected correctly.

So, this Redirect Queen has been putting out redirect fires as they happen. I was pleased yesterday when I only received 11 crawl errors.

How do I Find the Errors?

There are two ways to track errors. The easy and not so thorough way is by checking my Statcounter stats. When I see “Page not found” in the log, I know I need to address the problem.

The other more complete way is by signing into my Google Webmaster account. There they list all of the errors Google encounters when the bots crawl my site. Some of the errors are because of redirects but some of the errors are a result of incorrect link backs. I see some of the sites linking to Tidbits were incorrectly coded.

Additionally, I’ve found that Joomla created a few pages that made absolutely no sense to me, but I’ve redirected them anyway.

When will it End?

The way I calculate it, I fully expect to be resolving redirects for a couple of months. Fortunately, each day there are fewer and fewer redirects and I’ve got it down to a science. I can now complete my daily redirect duty before I finish my first cup of coffee.

BTW, if you find yourself with the same problem (hopefully you won’t), there’s a plugin that helps to make the redirection process a little easier. The plugin is appropriately called Redirection .

Ya gotta love this stuff or else you wouldn’t do it.

The largest time consuming aspect of the transition was segregating out the articles to transition to the new platform from the articles to dump.

All in all, my site went from about 471 articles down to about 220. Tidbits lost a lot of weight. I believe the weight of the free articles was pulling Tidbits down. I also believe it was a big factor in the site being so harshly spanked by the Panda.

An Interesting Observation

It’s only been a day since I released the new site, but of the traffic it received yesterday, only 6 out of 486 page views were searching for removed articles. This didn’t surprise me because in checking the traffic and page view habits of my readers over time, I noted the free articles received little to no page views. Therefore dropping the articles was a no brainer.

Just goes to show that quality over quantity wins every time.

Nuts and Bolts

The new site uses the Solostream theme WP-Responsive. It’s one of their newest themes. I set it up in a separate directory under the Tidbits domain. Once I tweaked the theme to my liking, I began the process of moving the articles over.

Once I moved them over I checked each article for broken links and functioning image thumbnails. I created a checklist of things I had to do lest I would forget.

The biggest difficulty was in moving the old Kids Korner games over. If you checkout the site, you’ll see that I didn’t move some of the games over (I also dumped quite a few games too) because they were not compatible with the WordPress platform. No biggie, there’s always a work around for every problem (I’ve worked with Microsoft for so long that workarounds are a part of life).

Flipping the Switch

Once I was reasonably satisfied (webmasters are never 100% satisfied), I signed into my WordPress installation and modified the settings under the General tab. I changed the site’s address from the sub directory to the main URL (I left the WordPress URL alone).

After making those changes, I went back to the server and moved the index.php and .htaccess files into the root directory. This allows everyone to access the site by typing in the domain name instead of domain name/ sub directory name.

Almost Done

Before I actually flipped the switch, I had to set up a few redirects. Well, actually, more than a few. There are 956 lines of redirects.

Redirects tell the Internet to go to the new site instead of the old. Instead of attempting the impossible task of changing backlinks, I placed redirect lines of code inside of the .htaccess file. The trick with the redirects is figuring out each and every way someone might access a page on the old site.

Even the pages that I dropped from the site are redirected to the topic’s section page. For example, I used to have an article on the subject of wigs. Since I dropped the article, anyone looking for it on my site will be redirected to the Beauty/Health section page.

Redirects are Tricky

If you incorrectly add an extra space or improperly redirect a page, your whole site will display a 500 Server error. Therefore, I couldn’t copy and paste 956 lines of code into my .htaccess file. I had to do it a section at a time. It was a bit tedious, but it’s all done.

The redirects can only be tested on the live site. The other tricky part to redirects is the Google bot must read them in order to redirect incoming traffic. So, when I flipped the switch and uploaded my redirects, I had to wait to see if the Google bot would read my .htaccess file. I’d say it took the bot about 5 or 6 minutes before is showed up (whew).

Not Home Free Yet

For the next hour or so after the site went live, I checked my stats to see if readers were getting “404 File Not Found” or “This page is being redirected in a way that will never resolve” errors. I did get a few of those so I made the appropriate changes to the .htaccess file and cleared them up.

Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Because I’ve been down this road before, I knew what to do. However, the first time I transitioned a site from one platform to another, I took it one step at a time. It’s sort of like taking a cross-country road trip. You only read the part of the directions that pertain to your current location. Reading the entire list of directions only causes confusion and frustration.

Oh, and one more thing. In transitioning the site I came across a cool plugin called Smooth Slider. Smooth Slider in combination with Widget Logic allows me to display a different slider per topic.

Now that I’m done with Tidbits, I’m brainstorming on how to make changes here at NJFM in 2012. As for 2011, I think I’m done.  Errors, issues and typos will have to be fixed next year.  I’m calling my boss to tell her I’m not working for the rest of the year.

This is old news to folks who subscribe to the newsletter, but for those who don’t I’d like to share the release of my new ebook with you.

The name of the book is Make Money Blogging.   Since most of you are already blogging and have passed the beginning stage, you guys aren’t my target audience.  Well, you are, sort of.

You see, the book not only has the beginning basic stuff, but I also include blogging tips, advice and much of the blogging philosophy that I’ve developed over the years.

New Bloggers Every Day

I wrote this book because new bloggers are born every day. Going back to my August post where I quote statistics from Pingdom.com, only 13% of people online have blogs.   That’s a small percentage especially when you consider that only 1/3 of the world’s population is currently online.

Think about it.  There are new people being introduced to the Internet daily and of those new people, a small fraction of them will become bloggers.  This means there is a growing market of newbie bloggers who are thirsty for quality, easy to understand information on what blogging is and how to become a blogger.

What’s in the Book?

In the book I not only explain what blogging is and types of blogs, I also discuss the age-old question of whether or not to use a free or paid for blogging platform.  I give tips on blogging frequency, word count, SEO and blog monetization.   These are things every blogger should know.

Of course, I couldn’t write a book on blogging without providing the much-needed motivation to keep blogging.  We all have faced that blogging brick wall at one time or another and wondered, “Why am I doing this?”

Make Money Blogging gives a plain, simple, no-nonsense approach to becoming a successful blogger.

NJFM Affiliate Program

The book is priced at $9.98.  I chose an even amount because I’m offering a 50/50 commission split to NJFM affiliates.  The book is currently available for sale on e-Junkie.  You have the option of purchasing the book as a non-affiliate for the full price, or as an affiliate and earn $4.99 on your purchase.

Affiliates are paid once a month about 2 weeks after the month closes. Although you’ll shell out the full $9.98 as an affiliate, you’ll see $4.99 of it back when commissions are issued.

To become an affiliate, use the NJFM e-Junkie link.  If you already have an e-Junkie account, just look for the book in the marketplace.  If you don’t have an account, create one, become an NJFM affiliate and begin sharing the book. The 50/50 commission split is my way of thanking you for not only reading the book, but for sharing it with other newbie bloggers (and there are tons of them).

All I know is that when I first started, I wish I had such a book to save me the bumps and bruises I received while learning my way around.

Book # 1 Still Free

My first book  So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer  is still available for free, but I’m monitoring it using e-Junkie. I’ve also uploaded the “free” book to Amazon in the Kindle format but unfortunately; Amazon wouldn’t let me share it for free. So, if you want the Kindle edition of So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer, you’ll have to fork over $.99.

I’m converting the NJFM’s Blogging for Beginners book into a Kindle compatible format for upload to Amazon, and a Nook compatible format for Barnes & Noble, iPods, iPads and Apple.

BTW, If you haven’t signed up for the NJFM newsletter, you should.  I intend to utilize the newsletter a bit more than I have in the past.

Update: 11/16/2011:  I’ve changed the cover and title of the book.

Shortly after taking on line writing seriously one of my early dreams was to become self sufficient. In other words I wanted the majority, if not all of my income to come from my own sites. A former co-worker of mine planted the seed many years ago when he told me about a woman who earned $50,000 a year working from home. Her income source was her website.

He told me that story way before AdSense was around and before I really understood what this Internet thing was. The ads back then were from a company called Double Click. He knew because he worked for Double Click. Now Double Click is doubleclick and owned by Google.

That very same co-worker is the one who took me under his wing and taught me that the internet was nothing to be afraid of and explained the basics of HTML. Once he planted the seed and cultivated it a little, I took off running and haven’t looked back.

Love of Learning

I wouldn’t be doing this stuff if I didn’t absolutely love it. Because I enjoy it so much, I was eager to learn as much as I could about writing and creating online. I learned about content sites, blogs, SEO, search engines, RSS feeds, HTML, CSS, jpg, png, java and more. Early on I spent quite a lot of time on a site called Web Monkey. Web Monkey has changed quite a bit from the old days, but back in the day they had a host of free online tutorials. I think I took every single one of them.

I went to the library to read books but realized the books on my favorite subject matter were out of date. I then spent hours in Barnes & Noble with the latest releases only to jot down URLs from the reference pages to later look them up on the internet.

Creating new websites from scratch was just as much fun as dining at my favorite restaurant. When my family slept, I used to create, learn, experiment and confer with my mentor. My mentor finally admitted that the student had surpassed the teacher.

Love, Time and Money

During my time of learning and experimenting, I “discovered” AdSense. I placed it on one of my sites back in April of 2006. You guys know the 63 cent story so I won’t repeat it here. Just think, I earned money doing something that I truly enjoyed. I had to read the terms of service to see if there was a catch. There was no way on God’s green earth that earning money should be so simple.

Over time as I continued to learn and hone my online writing skills I became more and more comfortable online. It was the one place where I could allow my imagination to run wild and continue to earn money.

To this day, I still continue to experiment and create new sites. Why? Well, because I love doing this stuff and I find that over time it pays well. When I write online, I don’t have to worry about hitting the glass ceiling or playing office politics. I can work when I want, where I want and write what I want.

It took 4 ½ years (and 500 posts), but I think I can finally redefine myself. Instead of calling myself an online freelance writer (since I rarely write for anyone else), I think I’ve graduated to full-time blogger and part-time author. 500 posts from now (and who knows maybe another 4 ½ years) I’d love to be known as “Felicia A. Williams,  well-known author and part-time blogger.”

The great thing about this online writing stuff is that no one can stop me from making it happen but me.

Where do you see yourself 4 ½ (and 500 posts) from now?

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