Within the talk there were a lot of Pop Culture references. Some were subtle and some were most likely only obvious to me. I had a few people ask me about some of the references that may have been missed which prompted me to put together this post showing each of the references I used in my session.

Reservoir Dogs

While not mentioned in the slides, I dressed in a black suit and skinny tie to represent the Reservoir Dogs.

Glengarry Glen Ross

In my opening slide I used a still from the scene where Alec Baldwin unleashed a torrent of ‘eff bombs‘ and tells a group of real estate agents that only the top two closers will be keeping their jobs.

True Romance

I accidentally skipped over it but was supposed to say “I haven’t done any public speaking since 1984” which is a reference to the line that Christopher Walken said after killing Dennis Hopper’s character.

The Peoples Court

To start my section on how people judge blogs I used an image of Judge Wapner handing over a gavel to Judge Milian.

Judge Dredd

To continue the judging section I used an image of Sylvester Stallone from the film Judge Dredd.

Robert Downey Jr.

I referenced a post that I wrote some time ago on “Dork and Beans” where I tried to make a statement of how I dislike how the law likes to dish out free passes to celebrities. It instead turned into an RDJ bashing session. Due to that post I received my first ever hate mail/death threats (check out the comments)

Pulp Fiction

I created a banner for the imagined Samuel L. Jackson blog called “The Art of Being Badass”

Super Mario Brothers

I used an image from the first level of the game to illustrate the point about “starting from the beginning.”

The Legend of Zelda

I used the fact that Link starts off with a wooden sword and then keeps getting a better sword as a metaphor to show how this strategy involves starting off slow and then building up.

The Legend of Zelda

I again referenced this game and used a quote from the very beginning of the game “It’s dangerous to go alone” to illustrate that we will need the help of others to be successful.

Worlds Finest Chocolates

The terrible and expensive chocolate that has been self titled “Worlds Finest Chocolate” was used to show how you can’t just ask random peole for help. You need to have some kind of credibility with people before they will help you.

From Dusk Til Dawn

I used my old man voice and modified the scene where George Clooney is looking to get a motel room.

Cheers

Continuing on the theme that you need credibility, and that you have built in credibility with your friends and family.

He Man

On the slide where I mention using the power of Facebook I showed an image of He Man and said “by the power of Facebook.” I had no magic sword to hold aloft.

Mark Zuckerberg

During my section about using Facebook I used an image of Mark Zuckerberg.

Fred Rogers

When speaking about looking for locally written blogs I used an image of Mr. Rogers.

Catch Me if You Can

In the “Stalking for Credibility” section of the session I used an image of Tom Hanks from Catch Me if You Can looking over some documents as the main image.

Wheel of Fortune

A shot of Vanna White and the puzzle board was the main image used in my “Bonus Round” section.

Rick Astley

On my final slide I had created a QR code that I was hoping people would scan. When the code was scanned it would redirect you to a page on my site that had Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Any other references that may have come up were purely coincidental and due to the fact that I make pop culture references to illustrate my point pretty much all the time (which drives my wife crazy). I use pop culture references in pretty much all my blogs posts to illustrate some kind of point, so naturally I had to use them in my Wordcamp presentation.

Any thoughts as to what other references I should have used (Back to the Future, Goonies…)?”

WordPress has a built in text editor for when you create a page or post on your site.  It gives you a bunch of text editing  options which unfortunately includes the ability to add colour to the text.  This will often lead to a mix of blue, green and red text within a single page.  While you have this amazing new ability to “edit” your website, you really need to consider how the mess you are creating looks to potential visitors or customers.

Instead of splashing around colour like a bag of Skittles may I suggest an alternative?

When designing a Worpdress theme a designer will set a specific layout, colour and style of various heading elements.  These elements match the overall design of your site and do not punch your visitors in the face with colour palette that mirrors an elementary school field trip permission slip.

Within the post editor there is a drop down menu (which is just 3 buttons over from the text colour button) which has a number of choices such as paragraph, heading 1, heading 2.  These are what you should do to create headlines or featured pieces of text.  Just select the text and then choose one of the options from the drop down.  In the text area you won’t see the special formatting like you would the “finger paint” text, so just hit the Preview button to see how the post will look.  If you have a theme built by a good designer then the heading options you used should showcase that specific text and match the design of the site.

So next time you feel the urge to play designer, try to remember that obscene amounts of colours may look unprofessional and cause your potential clients to look elsewhere to take their business

So IF you have a search box on your WordPress site, then I highly suggest that you install the plugin called Search Meter. What this plugin does is track the searches made by visitors on your site, so that you can react to any queries that may appear.

The plugin breaks the results into two sections that will help out your site immensely:

Search Summary: This shows all the completed searches that were done on your site where the user successfully found content. This tells you what content your visitors are looking for, of course Google Analytics can do this as well. More importantly it tells you popular content that people are looking for but have troubles finding. With this knowledge you can perhaps rearrange the site content to make the popular content easier to find. For the number of people using the search function there are most likely a number of people not using it and moving on to another website.

Unsuccessful Search Summary: This tells you what people are searching for but were not able to find it on the site. This can help you come up with new content for pages or posts that would be beneficial for your visitors. You could also take a look at this to see what search terms people are using to look for content and either rephrase page content, or perhaps use them as potential Adowrds, or SEO campaigns.

It’s a simple plugin with some pretty awesome powers. You can check it out here: Search Meter.

Keep in mind that I have a WordPress Updates by Donation service available, so if you have troubles installing and configuring plugins I can help you without putting a hole in your wallet.