WordPress plugins and some of the popular plugins

By on December 1, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress plugins and some of the popular plugins
There are a large number of plugins available for all WordPress users with the intention to enhance and improve their blogging experience. The number of plugins is increasing from day to day, but not all of the plugins are good for you as some may damage your WordPress installation or even harm your site. Some of the plugins that are worth trying out are:
1. Sideblog- this is a way to post short notes on the sidebar with options such as the number of entries to display, defining the sideblog categories and exclusion from RSS feeds. It is useful to post updates and sharing of links. Some of the options include cool themes, made the sidebars invisible from the search robots or adding feeds to the sideblog.
2. Secure and Accessible Contact Form- this is a plugin with a number of features such as extensive security with 16 individual abuse countermeasures, form an overview page to confirm the general configuration of the plugin, maximum accessibility and usability, option to use your own style sheet or extensive on board documentation library if you ever need any help.
3. Sociable- this plugin attaches a list of social bookmarking sites, which allows your visitors to bookmark and it is found at the end of your posts. It automatically add links to your favourite social bookmarking sites on your posts, RSS feeds and pages and you can choose from 99 different sites.
4. Gravatar 2 Plugin- this plugin allows the display Gravatar which is a globally recognized avatar of your commenters. This allows you to distinguish yourself from other users in an online community such as websites, forum or chat rooms. In WordPress, Gravatars are hosted on a single server by encrypting the user’s email address. You can have one avatar for each forum you visit.
5. Search Everything- this plugin allows you to search everything in the database as the default WordPress search engine does not search some pages such as static Pages or metadatas. There are options for you to choose, so you can choose what to search. Some of the options are to search every page, tag, category, comment, attachment, excerpt or non-password protected pages.
6. Admin Drop Down Menu- this is a very useful plugin as it saves you more time. Usually, you have to click a number of times to get from one page to another. With this plugin, just hovers the arrow of your mouse to the category that the page is located to save more time. Instead of going from one page to another before reaching the final destination, you can choose from the menu itself, which can inactivate a second menu from the first.
Do not be scared by the number of plugins available out there. The best thing to do is to do your research. Read blog posts, reviews or comments on the plugins which are widely available in the Internet. Choose those that will enhance your WordPress sites wisely.

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Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website

By on November 30, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website?

Once upon a time the WordPress CMS (content management system) was designed for blogging sites, which could be created easily by the bloggers themselves. As the platform became more robust over the last few years, WordPress has come to be considered as the basis for traditional and e-commerce web-sites as well as just for blogs. It can be the perfect way to go for
your business if you use a professional web developer.

The Advantages of a Professionally Built WordPress Website

For a simple personal blog site, where graphic design and flexibility are not so important, you may be able to get by with a do-it-yourself site that is hosted by WordPress. However, such a hosted site (“”yourbusiness”".wordpress.com) is not recommended for your business. Your business should have a professional set up a
self-hosted web-site, with its own domain (like “”yourbusiness”".com). You will be able to display ads, have more control of SEO (search engine optimization) and have all the flexibility you need into the future.

While the WordPress development platform is fairly easy to learn for someone with web programming experience, a do-it-yourselfer, with no programming experience is very likely to have trouble tackling this endeavor. The professional who is familiar with web development, can navigate the nuances and get you a better, sharper result in far less time. And, if you do attempt to build this website, and you get stuck, then a professional can generally come to the rescue.

Your Site Can be Up and Running Quickly

The beauty of this type of web site, that is based on a CMS, is that a professional web developer can build your site in a straightforward manner from a starting theme and customize it for your needs. Then you, the not-so-programming-savvy site owner, can add content and post updates with relative ease.

Your web developer can get the job done generally much more quickly than with traditional programming in HTML or php or JavaScript. Yet, this professional will have those web languages at their disposal, if needed, to make customizations not supported by WordPress or your starting theme. Also, if you want to have your existing traditional web-site ported to WordPress, then knowledge of traditional web development languages and techniques is a must.

You get so many advantages right off the bat via the myriad plug-ins written for WordPress by independent programmers. Your web professional will know how to utilize these plug-ins to the fullest for your company’s site. The following, can be done very quickly:

- Adding protective backup support- Great web metrics like Google Analytics- Traffic enhancers like SEO- Photo and media galleries- Being able to easily print your web-pages in print-friendly format

What is the Cost to Create Your WordPress Website?

The cost of creating your site will depend primarily on five things:

1. The number and size of the web-pages2. Does your content exist in publishable form3. How fancy you want your graphics, photos and other media4. Whether you will have an e-commerce site (i.e. be selling things)5. Is this a brand new web-site or will it be created from an existing site

Say a website for a small law office has a few pages of credentials and biographies of the counsels plus contact information, with 15 total web pages. This site would typically cost a lot less than a website that is a virtual store with a two hundred page catalog, a shopping cart, etc.

Making Your Site Better Over Time

One of the great advantages of a WordPress site is that it is fairly straightforward for a web professional to take your simple website and add the latest features over time. After a while, you may want to change aspects of the site, such as how it looks, its navigation or to add e-commerce (if not already there). The original designer/developer or another professional can get the job done much more quickly than if the web-site were built with traditional programming methods.

What Are You Waiting For?

So if you want a new website for your business, then you should consider having a web professional build one that’s polished and maintainable. This will help to attract and keep your customers’ attention.

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What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

By on November 29, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

There are many things that go on within a shopping cart. There are many different features and management systems, so many that it can be mind-boggling. When deciding on which shopping cart program to purchase you should know what the basic parts of a shopping cart system entails so that you can make a smart buying decision.

All shopping carts have some kind of ordering system whether it is a simple online ordering system that includes buttons that have HTML attached to them such as is done with the Paypal shopping cart or a store-front ordering system where everything is done on site.

All shopping carts also have the ability for customers to add items to the cart, delete items from the cart, and input quantity desired. All shopping carts collect data such as the customer’s name, address and phone number. All shopping carts have to include shipping modules unless the products are all digital in nature in that case there would be a download manager.

Advanced shopping carts would allow customers to have several options per item such as color, size, weight, shape, height or width. Some carts even have choices between bulk or single item orders.

Shopping carts normally have shipping options with common ones being USPS, UPS and FedEx, DHL, CanadaPost, and also AustraliaPost. Not only do you have the different carriers but you also have other shipping options such as delivery time: next day, second day, ground, and air.

Tax calculation are also a part of what shopping carts need to offer when the customer has a physical address that is in the same state or city as the merchant. Tax calculations are done by zip code. Merchants who have stores in multiple rates would have a hair-pulling experience if not for advanced software plug-ins such as TaxWare’s Sales/Use Tax System or CertiTax which can calculate for the customer in real time the exact taxes.

Buyers insist on secure transactions before they hand over their credit cards so it is important for the shopping cart to integrate a payment gateway that is secure, protection for credit card numbers that are stored on the Website, an SSL secure connection certificate between the customer and the Website to discourage hackers from stealing sensitive financial information from the customers. It is also important to have a secure Sockets Layer (SSL) between the customer and the Website. If your Website server is not secure customer won’t buy. It is also important to have secure order retrieval.

Not all payment gateways are compatible with all shopping carts so you need to verify that the payment gateway is compatible before making your purchase. The most common U.S. based shopping cart compatible payment gateways are Authorize.net, LinkPoint, veriSign PayFlow Pro, and WorldPay. PayPal is another alternative payment system for most shopping carts but PayPal’s proprietary Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is not always available so you have to check before deciding to use PayPal.

Most shopping carts nowadays provide email confirmation of order placement and a few provide email confirmation of shipment.

Cookies, temporary IP number assignment and randomly generated cart numbers are all ways that shopping carts have to help keep customer orders straight. Because some shoppers turn off cookies it is important that shopping carts be set up with other methods alongside cookies just in case.

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Updated WordPress.com – Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog

By on November 28, 2011 in Randy Roedl

Chris Abraham walks you through how to join the fastest-growing and most elegant free blogging services, WordPress.com. Go from the simple acts of joining all the way through set up and administration. Become a blogger in less than and hour. Most folks only need the first 15 minutes to get you started. Chris is a professional blogging instructor. Enjoy! All of you have been asking me to update my step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress.com as a blogging platform — please check it out and please let me know what I have missed.

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