ContentRobot’s tagline promotes us as WordPress experts, and today we were put to the test.

Our partner, Stephanie Agresta, asked us to lend our knowledge as speakers during a round table discussion at Affiliate Summit West 2008. While affiliate marketing was still new to us, blogging was definitely something we could speak about. We weren’t sure what we were in for …

Would affiliate marketers be interested in learning more about blogging? What were their feelings about WordPress? If anyone actually showed up, would we be able to give them the information that they needed? What would they really want to know? We hoped we were ready for anything they could throw at us.


Luckily, our fears quickly subsided. After speaker introductions, the session began with several people gathered around our large table. Then for the next hour and fifteen minutes, we were able to chat with newbies and veteran bloggers who were curious about our experiences with WordPress. Here are some snippets of what we talked about:

Why do you use WordPress?
We believe that this open source software provides the most flexible platform for building blogs and blog-powered websites. The helpful community allows us to expand blogs in a bunch of ways and we are thankful for the support.

What qualifies ContentRobot as experts?
We have committed to using and pushing the software in places where few dare to venture for our clients. We have designed several unique themes, developed custom plugins or enhanced others, and have been able to customize dynamic blog content to be displayed in a variety of ways. We also are proud to nurture a good relationship with WordPress’ parent company, Automattic and several people who work there.

What are some of the techniques you use to attract traffic?
Install and/or implement the following:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google XML Sitemaps
  • Feedburner feed enhancements
  • All in One SEO Pack
  • Submitting blog to search engines and blog directories

What are some of your frustrations with WordPress?
We are continually on the lookout for a better WYWIWYG that doesn’t strip or reformat code. Image management is weak, too. We are pleased to see that some of these beefs are being addressed in the upcoming WordPress 2.5.

What were the users’ biggest frustrations?
We spent a lot of time discussing the upgrade process of the core software and plugins. While WordPress provides a link that encourages them to upgrade (often due to scary security holes), some brave ones who’ve attempted found that their sites were now broken. Everyone wants a one-touch upgrade, ala Firefox, but due to the coordination required from of plugin authors, this goal seems elusive for now.

We sympathized with the bunch, and we provided some basic steps to creating a development and test server environment. While playing in the database was not something most wanted to do, we promised to write a detailed post soon to help them through the process. While it is still fairly easy to blog, maintaining the software is still best left to the techies.

They also agreed that the WYSIWYG and the image management could be improved. What great feedback from everyone on what they think is “missing” from working with WordPress software!

What are your favorite plugins?
We like the following plugins and install them on most of our client sites:

So, how did it go?
We think we were able to speak to the entire crowd simply and honestly about WordPress and its many uses. We found that David Dalka enjoyed our round table. We were also happy to give two new bloggers-to-be a copy of the The Secret Power of Blogging book we collaborated on. We have also gotten a few emails and inquiries since our session.

Thanks to everyone who attended, we hope we were able to answer all your questions!