WordPress Howto Spotter » WordPress

The Google Keyword Tool is Useful, But you Can’t Copy the Numbers

Alex Sysoef — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:54:46 +0000

Start with the general term for which you are looking, and enter it in one of the free keyword research tools. The Google keyword tool is useful, except that you cannot copy the numbers — only the keyword list. Put your keyword list into a spreadsheet program to track your activities and help you to identify the best keywords.

Look at the traffic for the keywords as you go down the list; around 5,000 a month or fewer searches will give you the most likely overlooked terms. However, rarely will you find very good SEO keywords in your first general list. The real secret to finding the overlooked ones is to find sub-phrases of the main keyword group with high traffic, type them into the Google search tool as mentioned above, and then look at the words you get.

The reason to go to all this trouble is that there are many people online who are very smart, and who are looking for overlooked keywords, just like you are. Therefore, you may need to go one or two levels deeper, to find the real gems in the keyword world.

The real secret to finding the overlooked [keywords] is to find sub-phrases of the main keyword group with high traffic…

If, for example, your main keyword was “diabetes” and one of the sub-keyword phrases was “type 2 diabetes.” You would then type in “type 2 diabetes” in the Google keyword research tool and see what comes up.

If you find some combinations with 500 to 5,000 searches per month with low competition (under 10,000 competing pages), you have a good chance of getting your article or a page on your blog or Web site (once it is older than 6 months) ranked toward the top of the search results.

That is the real secret of finding effective long-tail keywords (LTK) that most people do not know about. However, the truly successful article marketers all use this strategy. The extra work will most certainly pay off in the long term.

Another related but important concept, as mentioned above, is the use of page rank as an indicator of the competitiveness of a given LTK. If the page rank of the top 3 or 4 pages in a Google search for a particular long-tail keyword (in quotes) is 2 or less in the organic search results, there is a good chance of getting your article in the top 10.

Organic results are the listings that show up on the left side of the browser window below the sponsored results. The lower the page’s rank among the top listings, the better your chance of getting your articles or Web pages higher on that keyword.

Finally, if you find other articles either from ezinearticles, Squidoo or Hubpages in the top ten, once again, you have a good chance of getting to the top.

Abouth the Author

Visit Bill’s Article Writing Service and learn how He writes high conventional marketing content for bloggers and affiliate marketers. Make sure you subscribe to his RSS feed for more Goodies.

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+1 My Google Rank?

Alex Sysoef — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:21:52 +0000

You know the Like button? Well, Google one upped Facebook with the +1 button. What makes the +1 button unique but comparable to the Like button is the ability for users to like links and share it amongst friends. But the +1 button works on a slightly different level in that it can directly affect the way Google ranks a site in their browser.

When a user uses Google to search, they will be able to click the +1 button that appears next to each site if they like it. The only way a user can do this is by logging into a Google account; either Google+ or Google profile will do.

What happens when a site is +1’d? When a site is +1’d, it will show up in the search results of your friends (as long as they are logged into Google). Your name will appear below the link as a sort of endorsement to the site, signifying that the site is worth checking out. Your friends will be more likely to click on the link after seeing that you recommended the site and more than likely they too will +1 it.

By doing this, the site’s viral ability increases. As more friends see the recommendation, check it out and cast their vote, the site begins to get passed around the entire world and eventually becomes a viral phenomenon.

This also brings up traditional search principles. When a search engine is employed to search for specific keywords, it brings up the sites that are the most relevant—or at least they should be the most relevant. Sometimes spam will pop up as well as mediocre sites in the search results. This is often the result of black hat SEO. Google has dedicated a lot of time to make their search engine the best, but unfortunately even it makes mistakes. +1 is another way to rectify the problem.

As users peruse through the sites, they come across these irrelevant pages and grow frustrated—something that Google is adverse to. As users find the good sites in the list, they are able to give them a +1. Google can then review the results and reevaluate the rankings.

What does this mean for the WordPress community? For those that do own a blog or WordPress site, you want people to find your work. Heck, if you have a website you want people to find it. And +1 will help more people find your website or blog. But there is also the other side of the coin. If your blog or site is irrelevant, then users are not going to give your site a +1.

This new innovation ultimately means that content is king (It always was by the way). If your site is irrelevant to the keywords that supposedly define it, then your site will be demoted. Likewise, if the content is poorly written or presented, then your site will suffer as well. So pay strict attention to the content you post on your page.

Also be sure to install the extension on your site. There is a +1 extension that is available to for WordPress users that can be placed on the site so viewers can press it while they are at the site so they won’t forget.

The +1 button isn’t something that should be feared. As long as your sites offer good information that is relevant to the search terms there isn’t anything to worry about. +1 is really an awesome tool that will help users find the best information faster without having to wade through a list of crap. Also if you do a great job you have the chance of increasing your SEO. Really a win win in the end.

Guest Post By: Jesse Langley enjoys all things search and social networking. He is also an advocate for online training.

Worry FREE Niche Content Each and Every Month! For Less Than A Price Of Pizza, You Get Over 300 Brand-New, Top Shelf Blog Posts Each Month… Without Having To Write A Single Word … Get PLR Content Super Cheap here!

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WordPress Blog Hacked In Less Than 2 Minutes

Alex Sysoef — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:55:08 +0000

Is your WordPress Blog Secure? Are you sure?

To many people discover too late that their blog is not as secure as it should have been with a very sad end results. In this post I want to share with you video demonstration of WordPress blog hacked in under 2 minutes:

If this would have been your blog – it can be quite expensive to remediate problem. I always advise my readers and customers on taking steps to avoid this, in fact my post Triple “P” Of Total WordPress Security can provide you with all the answers you need. And if you think your blog is not popular enough – think again!

It does present smaller target but a target still. Here is just a quick screenshot of how many hack attempts were stopped on this blog.

And keep in mind – this is since last reset, which was done just couple months ago due to some maintenance.

Don’t Let Your WordPress Blog Be Hacked!

While there are many tools available to attack your blog, one used in this video is provided under GPL for penetration testing and although it requires some technical skills to install and use – it is not that difficult and unfortunately there are plenty of people with necessary skills.

So how do you avoid it? How do you protect yourself from this problem?

Answer is quite simple – Just use this FREE Guide, provided for your convenience: Triple “P” Of Total WordPress Security

Or if you are a visual learner – we also provide a video training that walks you through every steps, absolutely FREE:

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Learn How BIG SEO Companies Use Article Marketing To Rank #1 On Google

dimchik — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:34:50 +0000

Big SEO companies have discovered a unique way of dominating Google and other major search engines. The secret they use is to write a total unique seo article that is focused on the primary keyword and related keywords. In this article I will discuss how you can write a quality seo article that can rank well and thus push your site to the first page on Google.com

Below are secrets that are used by big seo firms and I would encourage that you implement for your link building process:

A. Keyword Research: Doing keyword research is an important process in article writing/marketing. My primary keyword tool that I use is Google Keyword Tool. The said tool is effective in identifying profitable keywords. Make sure to select a less competitive keyword that has high volume traffic.

B. Content Writing: Once you have identified keywords that you want o rank for, now its time to write your article that is user friendly. If you write article that are custom to readers, links will follow you, don’t focus too much on search engine. From my own experience I would encourage that you write 1000 article words this because you will be writing an in-depth article that is user friendly. When writing a pillar article make sure to include related keywords that are based on your primary keyword. If you cant write 1000 article words then the minimum you can write is 700 period no debate about it.

C. Content Promotion: Once you have written you article from the above step, you should post your pillar article to your own blog. After you have posted your article then the remaining part is to promote it so that it can be found by search engines. Below are methods that you should use when promoting your content:

Article Distribution
Web2.0
Forum Marketing
Ezine Adverting
Social Media

When you use the above methods in a legitimate way, I can assure that you will start to see results depending on your keyword strength. If you want to rank high on major search engine make sure to write a killer article that will impact your blog to the next level.

Guest Post By: For over the last two decades Bill Achola has been helping bloggers and affiliate marketers to get high conventional marketing content. To discover how to get multiple Top Rankings for all of your keywords, crush your competition & get more traffic than you ever thought possible, kindly check his popular post on how to get quality backlinks from Web2Mayhem Review traffic generation tool.

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Why Your Business Needs Managed Dedicated Servers

dimchik — Fri, 20 May 2011 10:58:52 +0000

Dedicated servers are servers devoted to specific tasks. They’re used organizationally to split tasks into well-defined roles for administrative and IT purposes. There are two basic species of dedicated servers operationally- Managed and unmanaged. Managed servers are monitored and serviced on a regular basis. Unmanaged servers aren’t, and that’s where the problems start.

Unmanaged Servers- An Overview

Servers are the workhorses of the digital world. They’re so much a part of business that they’re treated like the furniture, something people use but don’t give much notice. Unmanaged servers are also considered to be the cheap option.

Servers are the circulatory system of business information. If they crash, so does the business. IT experts are regularly appalled by the lack of general knowledge some businesses have of their most important commercial equipment. Business can be lost, data trashed, and work totally disrupted when servers go offline. The downtime alone is horrendously expensive, anything but “cheap”.

Then there’s the cyber-crime situation. Unmanaged servers, which are usually only protected to the extent anyone could be bothered to upgrade their protection, are particularly vulnerable. Dedicated servers, like those handling business information and transactions, are prime targets. Again, not “cheap”, by any stretch of the imagination.

So – Do you need managed dedicated servers? Yes, you do!

The Dedicated Servers is by definition an important part of any business. You can quickly gauge how important by just checking out what sort of information the server is handling. Many businesses operate a suite of dedicated servers, including secure transactions, etc.

If you consider the value of any one of these servers going down for an hour or a few hours, you can actually measure the cost to your business in real terms to a reasonable risk analysis level. Server management really is a type of “risk management” to a very large extent.

Managed servers receive these services from their managers:

Monitoring- This is a combination of operational checking and “fire brigade” service.
Event reporting- The managing firm will report any events which may impact on the server’s operations. This can be anything from an attempted hack to a full-scale Denial of Service attack, or server issues.
Operating System updates- Critically important, and often includes security upgrades, server software patches and other important operations.
Security- Anti virus and related scans. Absolutely vital to the operation of secure servers, and in some cases to the entire business network.
Firewalls- Used to keep out harmful or disruptive software which can affect server and business operations.
Administration- Another essential service, which may involve anything from spam eradication on the email server to dealing with bugs or problems affecting operations.
Server backup- If the server goes down, it can be up and running again almost instantly with the right backup.

The average cost of the full server management packages is around $500 a month as a good ballpark figure. Compare this sort of cost to the tens of thousands of dollars which can be lost per day in a serious server problem, and it’s pretty good value.

Yes, your business does need managed dedicated servers. The alternative isn’t worth the risk.

Guest Post By: Tom Mallet is an Australian freelance writer and journalist. He writes extensively in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US. He’s published more than 500 articles about various topics, including Domain Names.

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WordPress 3.1 – New Features

Alex Sysoef — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:20:10 +0000

WordPress 3.1 was finally released and we have spent yesterday upgrading our network of blogs and testing, implementing the changes. For most people with a normal stand alone blogs it will be a simple automatic upgrade. In our tests – no issues or problems discovered, even though some plugins we have haven’t been upgraded officially to support 3.1 – they work.

As always - you want to do a backup of at least your database before taking the plunge but I don’t see any reason with delaying the step. Our Expert WordPress once click installer was upgraded to support latest version, so people who use our services get to enjoy latest and greatest!

WordPress 3.1 New Features To Be Aware Of

Most of the changes will be unnoticeable and invisible to you after upgrade. Perhaps most visible change is addition of Admin Bar that you will see on front end when logged in as blog admin. You can change display options in your User Profile settings, fairly self explanatory.

One change that I personally like is new linking options – now when you click link in your visual editor – you get to choose to interlink a word or phrase to your old existing content by simply searching through your existing posts:

Allows you to highlight your old posts and also helps with SEO, quite nice.

WordPress 3.1 Multi-Site

This is where the biggest changes will be seen. If you are running a Multi-Site network – you want to test upgrade first, as 3.1 introduces some major changes to backend.

Super Admin dashboard menu is gone! Now Network Administration and all its options have moved to its own dashboard that you have to switch to:

In my opinion its quite nice, especially if you are only running network of blogs for yourself, but be sure to test the upgrade. In order to work with new menu – plugins used on your Multi Site have to change some hooks in order to be properly displayed in new dashboard.

If you have any plugins installed on your Multi-Site network that are not yet compatible with new options – you might want to wait with upgrade until they state 3.1 compatibility On good note – those who use WPMUDEV custom plugins can enjoy full compatibility with latest version.

Conclusion

If you have stand alone WordPress blog – go ahead and upgrade now to enjoy the faster loading blog due to multitude of improvements and new features.

Network blogs – test before you take the plunge!

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WordPress Security Plugins You Want To Consider

Alex Sysoef — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:33:07 +0000

WordPress has became an extremely popular web publishing platform and as such – an extremely attractive target for idiots. While I will not be getting into their motivations behind attacks – I want to share with you 3 plugins that you might want to consider implementing on your blog to ensure your blog safety.

Important Note: These plugins by themselves will not secure your blog and if you are serious about your protection I recommend following my “Triple “P” Of Total WordPress Security” guide or access Free Video Tutorials at Lock Your Blog.

3 WordPress Security Plugins I will discuss in this post can be a great addition to your overall efforts, just pick and choose what works best for you and your particular situation….

Exploit Scanner

Consider this plugin your security adviser. It scans your blog files as well as database entries for your blog posts, pages and comments and evaluates them for any unusual or suspicious code and then presents you with list of results.

It does a great job but you have to have some technical knowledge to understand the results presented to you as in my case it gave me:

Level Severe (64 matches)
Level Warning (49 matches)
Level Note (297 matches)

All of those are false positives OR to be exact – known and fully legitimate use of code by plugins. I guess my actions to secure my blog so far help me stay protected but if you choose to use this plugin – be advised not to start hacking and whacking unless you understand the results presented to you.

WordPress Firewall 2 Plugin

I’m going to use an official description from plugin repository as it describes its functionality clearly and to the point:

This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple, WordPress-specific heuristics, to identify and stop the most obvious attacks. There are a few powerful, generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and usually difficult to configure.

This plugin intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases, based on which field they appear within, in a page request (unknown/numeric parameters vs. known post bodies, comment bodies, etc.). Its purpose is not to replace prompt and responsible upgrading, but rather to mitigate 0-day attacks and let bloggers sleep better at night.

An excellent functionality to add to your blog:

Bulletproof Security WordPress Plugin

This plugin works by adding .htaccess protection to your blog and obviously relies on standard Apache web server. Since I have migrated all my production sites to nginx and use Apache only on my testing hosts – I haven’t personally tested the plugin but it could be a life saver for many. Here is just short description of what it does, read the rest on official page:

Protects your website from ALL XSS & SQL Injection hacking attempts. Base64_encode code injection blocked. BPS protects wp-config.php, php.ini and php5.ini files with .htaccess protection. One-click .htaccess security file activation. One-click website under maintenance mode activation (HTTP 503). Hide your WordPress version – WP Generator META tag removed, Check and ensure WP DB errors are off, Check WordPress file and folder permissions, Extensive system info (PHP, MySQL, OS, Memory Usage, IP, Max file size info, etc.). Security Status checking.

Plugin has very extensive options and information on your blog overall security and comes with solid explanations on what you need to know, so I highly recommend you check it out!

Conclusion

All of the listed above plugins can’t guarantee your complete security and don’t replace updating and upgrading your blog, plugins and themes in timely manner. Any popular application or CMS as WordPress has become is bound to have security holes but resilient community always comes forth and closes them quickly, you just need to act just as quick and do your upgrades!

Also important to know that NO MEASURE you will take can protect you against poor security practices by your host. I have just recently read a blog post by a freelancer Vladimir Kolesnikov (he is the gentleman who gave heads up on security issue that led to WordPress 3.0.2 security upgrade) in which he details some problems with Dreamhost configuration and how they could be exploited. Post is in Russian but for Unix savvy users with a bit of machine translation, it presents a very clear picture of the problem (I’ll be willing to translate it if he gives me permission, hint… hint).

However! If you are on one of the hosts that has an issue similar to one described by Vladimir, you can still be timely notified on your site being compromised if you followed our Lock Your Blog guide.

Stay Safe, Keep Your Blog Secure and Share Your Thoughts!

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WordPress Multilingual CMS Done Simple Using WPML Plugin

Alex Sysoef — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:22:27 +0000

WordPress Multilingual options were quite limited compared to other CMS (Content Management Systems) I have used, until now. Using WMPL WordPress translation plugin you can easily translate your blog pages and posts using proper native language.

While WordPress allows you to install blog with support for a specific language it doesn’t permit by default a proper translation of the pages and posts and third party intervention is required to do it correctly. I know there are plugins and even scripts, such as one used on this blog to allow “machine translation”, it’s far from perfect. I know because I read my own blog in Russian version and its pretty bad…

WordPress Multilingual (WPML) Translation Plugin Options

WPML plugin is released as open source and you can install it using standard WordPress repository manually or by simply searching for term: WPML Multilingual CMS and installing it directly from your blog admin interface.

IMPORTANT NOTE: in order for your visitors to be able to switch language you have to integrate it into your theme but luckily developers provided quite a nice tutorial on how to get it done.

Once you complete the step you need to configure plugin to support languages your want to use on your blog and a few other options and then just add the Versions of the page in your editor.

2 Ways To Translate WordPress Content

This is the part where ingenuity of the developers shined through in my opinion. Once your plugin installed you have an options to:

Translate all the content yourself or..
Use a professional certified translators to do it for you. Second option might be most appropriate for business owners who have presence in multiple markets and don’t have the time to deal with translation themselves or perhaps just don’t have the time or skills required.

Plugin allows you to seamlessly integrate translation process into ICanLocalize Translation Services. Instead of wasting your time trying to find qualified translators on multiple freelancing sites and then having to deal with copy/paste your content from and to blog – you can just pick a previously pre-screened and pre-qualified professional.

They will do all the work for you and once completed – pages or posts will be added to your blog with no extra work on your part, properly formatted and ready for publishing.

I’m not going to go into too many details as WPML site has excellent videos you can view that describe the entire process.

Conclusion

Whichever option you choose – WPML WordPress CMS plugin provides a long overdue option to create a true Multilingual WordPress site easily and inexpensively, if you choose to use professional translation by ICanLocalize.

Let me know what you think!

How To Blog for International Audiences (johnchow.com)

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Building a Business Blog – Learn How to Become a Famous Blogger Using Blogging as a Platform

dimchik — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:32:40 +0000

Are you interested in becoming a famous blogger? If this is the case, then you should consider setting up a WordPress blog. Advance marketers and newbie’s always starts with building blogs that are search engine friendly so as to make money and gain experience in the blogging industry.

There are some sources on the internet that can provide you with product reviews that can help you select the best blogging platform. These platforms such as WordPress, BlogSpot, Typepad and e.t.c are reviewed by independent and experience bloggers who have used the platforms. Product reviews is very important especially to the buyer, this is because it will influence the purchasing power of the consumer to take action.

Majority of highly respected websites provides blogging platform to interested internet marketers. The said programs can be a money making machine for your business especially when you are marketing your business to a competitive market. There are two powerful types of blogging platform that are currently HOT in the market.

The first one is a web-based platform and the second one is through a software platform. These two types of blogging platforms are widely used by internet marketers and online entrepreneurs. When you consider using a software platform which is mostly provided by elite marketers, you will have a bigger advantage this is because the software that you will be using will have all the blogging resources such as:

(a) Keyword Research Tool
(b) WordPress Tools
(c) Marketing Tools
(d) Site Building Templates
(e) Squeeze Pages
(f) Optimized Articles
(g) Adsense Templates
(h) Hosting Platforms
(i) List Building Software

These are just a few benefits you will have. What I like about WordPress blogs is that you can easily dominate any market of your interest, this is because Google, Yahoo and Bing loves WordPress blogs.

The other type of blogging platform is through a web-based program. The said platform is more realistic about internet marketing. Here you will be creating your blog online without downloading any software.

Using a web-based program you will have first hand experience with blog managers who are professional and have lots of experience in your market. These blog managers always provide blogging advice to their users. WordPress blogs works best with:

(a) Newbie’s
(b) College students
(c) Housewives
(d) Advance marketers
(e) Affiliates
(f) Small business owners
(g) Entrepreneurs

and e.t.c. The reason why WordPress blogs are very popular and demanding it’s because they can rank highly in the search engines without spending much time on link building.

To be a famous blogger you need to focus on profitable niches that will maximize your profits. If you take full advantage of the blogging platform, then making profits and enjoying your income will be realized fast.

If you want the best blogging platform that will make you an excellent blogger, you need to make an accurate choice by reviewing the well proven blogging platform that will be profitable to your business. If you want to be a famous blogger and earn more money with your blog, then you should opt for a powerful blogging system that will garner maximum results.

Guest Post by: Bill Achola is accomplished Internet Marketer. Are you interested in online marketing, Internet business, blogs and podcasts? Are you sick of “gurus” trying to sell you the latest get rich quick online deal? Get educated, it’s the key to real online wealth. Enjoy your new lifestyle you deserve by reading more on Building a Web Site.

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WordPress Backup Plugins I Recommend

Alex Sysoef — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:40:44 +0000

WordPress backup plugin should be part of each and every blog install to ensure successful disaster recovery. In fact I consider WordPress database backup as well as unique files to be absolutely crucial part and it is the last part of concept I have pioneered and explained in “Triple ‘P’ of Total WordPress Security”

But with multitude of options available – What WordPress backup plugin should you use? Which one will be the best option for you?

In this post I want to go over couple plugins I have personally use successfully and will show you How To Backup WordPress automatically and ensure you can recover your blog IF disaster strikes and your blog becomes a victim of a hack.

When it comes to plugins that provide you with backup functionality you have multitude of options but today I will concentrate on 2 very specific plugins, not only because of the simplicity they offer but also because i have tested them personally and KNOW they produce the results, at least in standard host configurations…

My goal here is NOT to overload you with options and choices but give you information you can use – right now!

WordPress Database Backup Plugin

A solid performing plugin I have used on my blogs for at least couple of years. It does one thing and does it exceptionally well – creates a full database backup and gives you options to either store it locally, get a direct download or email it to you.

Obviously our goal is automation so email backup makes most sense and I personally use a dedicated gmail account that allows me to store large amount of data for free and most importantly – gives me access to daily backup no matter where disaster might find me!

If I need to restore database to previously working good configuration all I have to do is login into my gmail account, download “last known good” backup and restore it using phpMyAdmin. I teach the entire process in both “Lock Your Blog“ (free digital access) and “Expert WordPress” (members core training).

I recommend you also use a scheduled backup option, just be advised – anytime you add new plugins that create their own database tables – you need to revisit configuration and be sure to include it into daily backup!

I highlighted option in image below, you can find them under Tools->Backup menu:

I love this plugin for peace of mind it provides but you have to be aware that it only does WordPress Database backup, just as it name states and you are still left with manual work backing up important files from your blog.

Second plugin I want to talk about is also free but gives you pretty much complete solution, if you configure it correctly…

BackWPup Plugin

I have tested this plugin on both single standalone blog as well as latest WordPress 3.0.1 Multi-Site configuration. Once you install the plugin, and it could be done as always by simply searching for term through your admin panel, you need to configure its options.

By default it does a very good job of determining your blog host important information, such as location of files, your administrative email, etc., but I recommend you do some tweaking in at least a few places under Tools->BackWPup menu:

Change, if necessary sender email and sender name – you want to be sure you can easily recognize it.

Once you have configured general settings – you need to actually create the backup job and schedule it:

Once you click “Add New” you will be provided with interface to configure all available options. I will cover configuring your blog to be backed up to Amazon S3, as it provides super cheap storage and it is accessible to you from ANY place in the world, as long as you have internet connection. To me it makes most sense and this is how I personally tested it.

I will show below configuration options I used on one of my MU blogs and explain them, so you could make decision on what fits your needs.

Your backup job name, something that identifies it uniquely
Database tables to exclude – an option available to you although it makes no sense to exclude anything as you are trying to create a backup you can use to restore your blog
Job Type – I personally use WordPress database backup and WordPress files backup as it gives me everything I need to restore my blog back to full working configuration if something happens.
Job Schedule – this is where you pick time of the day for job to run and also how often to run it. I prefer to do it right around midnight and daily.
File Backup options – you are provided with list of WordPress folders to include into backup and right below it – EXCLUDE options. It is important to understand that by placing a check mark into those fields will tell plugin NOT TO BACK it up. And as you can see for nightly backup I choose not to backup a lot of folders, but that s because I choose to run complete backup on less frequent schedule as separate job.
If you have any custom folders you are provided with option to include them into back and also option to exclude some specific files or folders. “error_log” generated by Apache is a great candidate for exclusion.
Backup file template name – something that will uniquely identify which blog this backup is coming from.

In next screenshot we will discuss your “backup to” options. I will concentrate on Amazon S3 but important note here – everything else you are not going to use – delete all default data, to avoid creating backups where you are not intended, such as “Backup to directory”

First you need to provide email address where the log will be sent to – I recommend you do not choose to send email only on errors – you need to be aware that your backup job is running properly and doing its job.

Next – delete ALL text except in what you need, in case above, Amazon S3 Backup Options.

Fill your Amazon S3 Access Information, choose a bucket to store your backup into (choices will be provided as soon as access info verified by plugin), and choose storage options.

My Recommendation for Backing WordPress Up To Amazon S3

Create 2 different buckets – one for nightly backups of ONLY the files you know could be changed and database. Exclude all the non-changing directories, such as wp-admin, includes, plugins, themes, etc. Use second bucket for Weekly or Monthly backups and store COMPLETE blog backup there
Create 2 different jobs – one for nightly as discussed above and one for full backup, using whatever schedule fits you.

Using strategy above you can have a full backup storing only 2-3 files to save on storage expenses and yet giving you opportunity to recover your blog quickly and nightly backup that will contain any changes, consider it incremental backup.

IMPORTANT: both plugins I mentioned above provide only backup files and while second one gives you option to restore database – I do it always by hand. Not because I don’t trust them – I just prefer it that way.

Backup Your WordPress Blog Before You Upgrade: A Lesson Learned (thebloggersbulletin.org)
35 Security Plugins to Make Your WordPress Bulletproof (1stwebdesigner.com)

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WordPress Blog Hacked In Less Than 2 Minutes

Don’t Let Your WordPress Blog Be Hacked!

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Why Your Business Needs Managed Dedicated Servers

Unmanaged Servers- An Overview

So – Do you need managed dedicated servers? Yes, you do!

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