First: Weekly screencasts here on $50 Blogs will be no more. My apologies to those who found them helpful, but there simply weren’t enough eyes on them to justify the time investment each week.

However, I’m happy to record and post the occasional screencast here for anyone who lets me know about a specific, WordPress-related issue they’re having. You can post it in the comments or send me a message via this page.

Second: It’s been far too long since I’ve hosted a live support session. So, this Sunday, May 6th, everyone’s invited to mosey on over to the $50 Blogs Facebook page and hit me with any questions they’ve got about blogging, whether a technical issue, or something related to writing style or content.

• Want to change the color of the links on your site?
• Got a bug that you can’t seem to fix?
• Have questions about mailing lists and the like?

I can answer all the above, and more.

The support session will last for an hour, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t make it live, go ahead and post your question on the Facebook wall now, then check back after the session for my answer.

In lieu of the regularly scheduled screencast, this week I want to direct you to a guest post I wrote over at Laura Roeder’s blog, which recommends 9 WordPress plugins to help your blog run without you.

You’re also likely to find a bunch of other useful content over at Laura’s site. She’s something of a social media queen.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Download the Redirection plugin here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:32] Creating a clean login link
[1:27] Using the plugin with affiliate links
[3:26] Creating shortcut links for long URLs
[5:10] Fixing broken links
[5:48] Creating a random post link

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:30] Adding a new user with the contributor role
[1:29] How a contributor will write a post and submit it for review
[2:40] Reviewing and publishing contributor posts as an administrator
[3:32] Using the WP Status Notifier plugin to set up email alerts
[4:47] Example of the email an admin will receive when a post is submitted for review

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:48] Ensuring you have admin access to the WordPress.com blog
[2:10] Exporting the content from the WordPress.com blog
[2:52] Importing the content to your self-hosted WordPress blog
[5:02] What to do if the import doesn’t complete
[6:00] Checking that the content has been transferred
[6:29] A few words on transferring widget content and plugins
[7:11] How to redirect your WordPress.com blog? See here.

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:15] Demonstrating the mistake via the tweet button
[0:44] What difference does this make?
[1:25] How to rectify this mistake
[1:47] The sharing plugin that I use: Sharebar

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:16] The Magazeen theme, with no native menu support
[1:15] Showing you the child theme I’m working with (ref: child themes screencast)
[2:13] Explaining the code we need to add to functions.php
[2:54] Selecting which menu to use in the menu control panel
[3:22] Explaining the code we need to change in header.php
[4:15] Checking that the menu is displaying correctly
[4:58] A quick look at the CSS changes I needed to make

functions.php code:

add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );
function register_my_menus() {
	register_nav_menus(
		array(
			'menu-1' => __( 'Primary Menu' ),
		)
	);
}

header.php snippet:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'menu-1' ) ); ?>

style.css code:

#navigation ul#menu-main-menu { float: left; height: auto; list-style: none outside none; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0 }
#navigation ul#menu-main-menu li.current_page_item a:link, #navigation ul#menu-main-menu li.current_page_item a:active, #navigation ul#menu-main-menu li.current_page_item a:visited {
	margin:-3px 0 0 0; padding:15px 15px 14px 15px;
	background:#171615 url(../magazeen/images/navigation-hover.gif) repeat-x bottom center;
	color:#f1f8ff; position:relative
}

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[0:15] A note about your WordPress theme
[1:40] Creating a menu and adding it to your theme
[2:25] Adding items to your menu
[3:24] How to Rearrange your menu items
[4:25] Deleting a menu item
[4:45] Adding a custom menu to your blog’s sidebar

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Highlights from the video:

[1:04] The quick and easy way
[1:14] A quick note about grabbing YouTube URLs
[1:54] Specifying the height and width of your embedded video

For those with an aversion to video…

To embed a YouTube in a post

Simply grab the YouTube URL and paste it into a blank line of your post. WordPress will automatically read it as a video to be embedded and size it appropriately for you.

Just make sure that the URL you choose looks similar to the one below. Delete any ampersands and whatever follows them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY4hdQK7o9g

To specify the height and width of your video, you’ll need to surround that URL with embed tags, as shown in the video.

To embed other types of videos in your posts

• Vimeo works the same way as YouTube above (details here).
• Check out the related menu on this page for a list of instructions for embedding videos from many different sites.

…

Coming next week: Another screencast of fascinating proportions, but no idea what it will entail just yet. Sign up for email updates in the sidebar or follow us on Twitter to make sure you catch the newness.

Interrupting our regularly scheduled screencast this week to check in and grab some feedback from you fine folks.

Let me know via the comments or email what you’d like covered in future tutorials. What specific parts of blogging and/or WordPress are you struggling with?

No question is too big or too small. Drop me a line and I’ll do my best to help you out in an upcoming screencast.

Cheers.

- Niall