This kind of convenience is fantastic because it lets you share common profile information between sites and sign up for new services in a flash. However, you should be aware of how the big 4 are vying for the title of your primary identity provider… your Slash Daddy.

We are all becoming a “/”

Find me at

• facebook.com/christendybenko
• twitter.com/x10
• friendfeed.com/x10
• google.com/profiles/cdybenko

Any of these big four would love to be my slash daddy. In their best case scenario, my entire online identity will rest and depend on their namespace (not to mention my contact list and all my photos). To their benefit, they can monitor my preferences and make a lot of money serving up ads to suit my taste. This kind of personal information is gold.

I’m not saying this is entirely a bad thing. I love connecting with my friends in these spaces. But the more I read about the competition to be the next big identity provider, I’m learning even more about how to take that control back. Every time I’m presented with an open ID login, I hover between all my options – which is best?

I’m starting to look for ways to just be my own identity with my website and that’s how I found the DiSo Project.

How to stop outsourcing your identity: Diso Project

It is possible to partake in all the social networking fun, and still be in charge of your own online identity thanks to the DiSo Project (dee soh). DiSo stands for the “decentralized social web”. The open source project is lead by open web visionaries Chris Messina, Stephen Paul Weber, Steve Ivy and Will Norris. Together, they push for open web standards like microformats, activity streams and OpenId all while making it possible for you to own your identity online.

Diso allows you to put open source code on your own blog or domain so it functions as an OpenId provider.

Diso has published a plugin for WordPress which allows you to make any WP installation your OpenId provider. (I’m going to try this week with my blog.) They are also busy working on the same for Moveable Type and Drupal.

While I think, at this time, most people prefer the convenience of having a slash daddy, it’s still pretty cool to have your own domain and your own identity outside of the big 4. I hope to keep learning more about this exciting technology.

Who’s your slash daddy? (Mine is still Google).

Further reading:

• The Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet – and Keep Google Out by Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine.
  
• Facebook usernames and the battle over your digital identity by Chris Messina (founder of Diso project)
• Social Network Supermarkets and how to defeat them by Chris Messina (founder of Diso project)

Organic Traffic: Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as “organic” traffic.

When I started, only 4% of my web traffic was organic and now it’s up to 45%.  People are actually finding my content in searches. Yay!

Considering how little work I’ve actually done to see these initial results, it’s pretty exciting.

I’d like to share the 4 WordPress plugins that I rely on to make this possible.

1. SEO Title Tag *UPDATE: Not compatible with WP 2.7*

Use the SEO Title Tag plugin to hand craft titles for blog posts that appear in the <title> of your page.  If you read the post Easy SEO ips and tricks for blogger from Stephan Spencer at WordCamp 2008 it explains how absolutely invaluable this is.

2. All in One SEO Pack

I use the All-in-One SEO Pack to make sure my category, tag and author pages have great SEO titles and meta data.  Changing WP themes can change the way your titles are shown in the code, so using this plugin is a great way  to keep titles consistent regardless of themes.  Use it to add unique meta data (keywords, description) to EACH blog post. This also makes your search listings come up with a great recap underneath them.

** Note: I don’t use this plugin to format my title tags because I like to handcraft each post’s title using the SEO Title tag plugin above, but this is not yet compatible with WP 2.7 so this is a great alternative!

3. Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator makes it insanely easy to add your Analytics tracking code and not have to worry about hand coding it into whichever WP theme you are currently using.

4. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

Google Sitemaps Generator creates XML sitemaps from your site structure. You can customize how the priority of pages occur (for example, give higher priority to the most commented posts).  I just used this with its default settings right out of the box.  Make sure to evaluate your sitemaps at Google Webmaster Tools.  It also submits your changes to yahoo, msn and ask.com.

BuddyPress is an extension to WordPress which will allow WP to be a full fledged social network. This means, that you can use it to make your own “Facebook” of sorts.  It’s currently under development but it is very close (they are predicting December).

BuddyPress is well thought out.  It lets you (as the administrator) customize different parts of the installation to suit your needs. For example, if you are making a network for dog lovers, you can add your own fields to each user’s profile like (I have __ dogs.  Favourite dogpark: ___.  etc)  It also lets you have private messaging between members, friending and photo albums.

It’s pretty crazy that this is free and open source.  WP is getting more and more impressive.

Why a web development agency builds its own CMS for their clients

• Keep control of the source
• Keep the customer hooked long-term
• Ensure quality
• Thorough enjoyment of re-inventing the wheel

Often, the reality:

• Quality and changes are hard to maintain
• Documentation of code usually sucks.
• Hiring freelance developers is more of a hassle when they don’t know the CMS, ultimately the client suffers and has to wait a long time for their changes to happen.

An excerpt from the Synonym blog on their thoughts about proprietary software:

We’re so hellbent on making you happy, that we spend inordinate amounts of time building custom software packages like CMS and such, so you can 1) only call us when you’re having problems and 2) don’t hassle yourself with other companies. After all, they smell funny and why go to them when you have ‘us’?

We start viewing “other” software as the competition.  We don’t say “Hey! That amazing open source CMS has great documentation, a great developer community and lots of resources”, instead we immediately assume we couldn’t or shouldn’t make money from it and we deny our clients from a vast array of resources and flexibility that far surpass the value we deliver.

Try open source

Open source software like WordPress gets better every day with a multitude of developers fixing bugs and making changes. That kind of progress is hard to compete with.  They also have a list of WordPress consultants who can help you with most any issue you find you need help with.  Matt Mullenweg of WordPress has a great comment on Open Source (you can view this interview on Viddler here)

Most software doesn’t die from people pirating it or, you know, people using it in a way you didn’t want.  It dies from obscurity, and so, Open Source is really the best way I can imagine to have distribution and adoption among developers, designers and people who are influentials in the community.

Going open source will let you focus on the strategy you offer clients. The constant upgrades, vast array of freelance developers and documentation are all bonus.