Systems Cowboy

A lot of people using automatic following programs on Twitter (like Get More Twitters) are wondering what the Twitter limits are. How can you push the limits of Twitter without going beyond them?

Twitter does impose some limitations, and if you exceed them your account can be disabled – temporarily or permanently. You’ll likely get a message that says something like this:

“Sorry Twitter Message: You are unable to Follow User at this time please try later”

Or

“You are unable to follow more people at this time.”

Here’s the info from Twitter about the Twitter follow limits:

“Last year, Twitter imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system and user abuse. (You can read more about that here.) If you hit a Twitter limit, we will tell you by showing an error message in your browser when you try to perform an action. If you’ve hit a limit, it means you’ve exceeded one of these limits:

* 1,000 updates per day
* 1,000 direct messages per day
* 100 API requests per hour
* Follow limit

We do not limit the number of people who can follow you, but we have put limits in place to stop people from aggressively following others. Everyone is allowed to follow 2000 people. After that, follow limits are based on the number of people who are following you. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts.”

Twitter Follow Limits

More info about getting more Twitters here.

Everybody knows that Twitter is kind of the darling of the internet at this moment. I’ve been using it for marketing purposes for a while and have been through a lot of Twitter tools.

Recently, I got a new one that’s my favorite. I like it because it’s the most flexible and configurable one of all the ones I’ve tried. It’s very powerful and it works well.

They call it Get More Twitters. Check it out if you’re into Twittering.

If you use Aweber to manage your mailing list, this Aweber integration plugin works great – it gives you a little widget you can add to your signbar that has your Aweber signup box:

Aweber Integration Plugin.

There are a handful of WordPress plugins that I wind up using almost every time:

• All in One SEO – Standard. Handles meta tags and titles.
• Google XML Sitemaps. Gotta have a sitemap for Google. This does it automatically.
• Restore Post ID. After you tweak your Permalinks for SEO, the latest version of WordPress makes it difficult to find out the post ID for your pages and posts. You need these for certain functions, like including or excluding the page from the main navigation. This plugin makes the post ID’s show in the admin interface again. Just makes it easier.
• No Category Base. This makes it so your blog doesn’t have to have a category base like www.myurl.com/category/blog-post.html. Instead, your URL can look like www.myurl.com/blog-post.html.

Other plugins I use often:

• WP-Table-Reloaded. Excellent if you need to display data in tables in your blog.
• WP-Postratings. Great for allowing reader to rate a post 1-4 stars. Looks nice.

Two excellent paid (not free) plugins:

• Caffeinated Content. Automatically creates relevant blog content. Can be good for SEO.
• Ninja Affiliate. Makes it easy to add affiliate links in your blog. Makes the links look nice, easy to manage, and tracks clicks. Also has cloaking ability. Highly recommended.

Also: HTML on Pages puts the “.html” back on your pages and Automatic SEO Links automatically links up certain text to where you’d like it to link, which helps for SEO. Free Casino Money and Mega Moolah are a couple of sites that use these plugins.

I love WordPress.  I don’t bother “designing” or “programming” sites anymore.  There are too many great templates for WordPress, it’s too easy to use, and there is a plug-in for most anything I need to do.  A WordPress site doesn’t have to look like a blog, and it’s perfect for creating “mini-sites”.

Now, this subject has been covered alot online, but I’m going to talk about what I do when I set up a WordPress blog since it’s on my mind as I set up this blog today.

The first thing I do is set up Permalinks.  Under settings > Permalinks > Custom Structure, I pretty much always put /%postname%.html

That makes the URL of all your posts look like www.myurl.com/my-subject-matter.html instead of www.myurl.com/?p=123.

Next, I take a couple of minutes and install several key plugins…