Tag Archives | Tweaks

An Introduction To WordPress Plugins

An Introduction To WordPress Plugins

WordPress is an amazing CMS system that is renowned for its flexibility as not only a blogging platform, but a platform for those who are simply seeking to publish content based websites to the Internet. It is for this reason that usage of WordPress has skyrocketed over the fast few years, as such, a very active community has given the platform support by developing what would have to be the largest directory of plugins for a single platform in history. So, what is a plugin?

A WordPress plugin is a simple script or software package that extends the functionality of the WordPress platform further than what the original developers of the platform have decided upon. It is for this reason that the CMS is quite raw, and offers only basic functionality such as creating posts, pages, and editing basic code. A plugin is generally installed via the plugin administration area in WordPress, and can either be done automatically from the plugins directory hosted by WordPress, or can also be done manually via FTP, or via an upload in the back end of WordPress.

In most cases, you will never need to install a plugin manually, however, as the availability of premium plugins is rising significantly, this is happening more and more. There are two plugin types that you will more than likely find. Freely available plugins, and premium plugins.

Free plugins are usually available en-masse in the WordPress plugins directory, and are searchable based on set keywords and criteria, however premium plugins are usually available via their own marketplace or shopping cart. Needless to say, the need to pay for a plugin generally warrants extra functionality such as code tweaks, creation of clone WordPress installations, and so on, more often than not, functionality that exceeds its own monetary value significantly.

Plugins can transform WordPress almost into its own separate systems. For example, there are many premium shopping cart and membership site plugins that will transform WordPress from a blog to a paid of free membership site. Some will also transform the installation into a sales letter with a payment portal, and other plugins will offer much more simple functionality such as admin extension, social media links, and clone wordpress backup files for your own security. To get started, simply enter the plugins area within your WordPress admin area, and select ""add new"". In this area, you will be able to explore plugins, and their functionality further, and most importantly, you will be able to experiment with different plugins and get a grasp of this brilliant functionality that lies within WordPress.

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WordPress Plugins, Themes & Hosting Consideration Recommendations from Search Commander Inc., CEO

PubCon video content producer Vanessa Zamora sat down with Scott Hendison, president at Search Commander Inc., to discuss content management systems, specifically WordPress, the blogging platform that is one of his specialties. Hendison shared a number of his top plugin picks for WordPress development in this PubCon Las Vegas 2010 interview, including SEO Automatic’s own Core Tweaks WordPress Setup plugin that minimizes the initial content management system set up time, All in One SEO Pack and HeadSpace2 SEO for search engine optimization needs, as well as Yoast, which includes a plugin for SEO, an XML Sitemaps plugin, and an RSS footer plugin. Hendison also shared his preferred WordPress themes, pointing out that although the most popular theme to his knowledge is Thesis, a premium theme, he prefers a free theme called Atahualpa, and recommends others browse through free themes before spending money on a premium theme that ultimately might not have all of the desired capabilities. Hendison continued by sharing his recommendations with regards to selecting a Web hosting server, suggesting against shared servers that stifle page load time, now a factor in Google’s ranking system. In addition, shared servers do not provide as much security as dedicated environments, Hendison added. If looking for shared hosting, Hendison suggested Search Commanders PDXTC shared hosting service, as well as Bluehost. For dedicated options Hendison suggested Rackspace or Dreamhost.

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Link Building for Bloggers

Link Building for Bloggers

Its tough even deciding on where to begin with discussing link building with all of you but it’s definitely something that needs to be addressed amongst all of us bloggers. Link building is the single most important aspect of blogging apart from your content. We all already know that content is absolute king when it comes to blogging and you won’t retain visitors without good content, and you also won’t see too much search engine traffic. If you have your content figured out and you got a steady stream of traffic beginning to pick up on your blog then you might be considering a link building campaign. There are lots of ways you can build links as a blogger and all of them I feel are vital to maximizing your exposure. If you only focus on getting one type of backlink then you’ll be missing to be much exposure that you could otherwise be getting if you just planned your campaign out. I always make sure I have a solid plan written out before I begin any link building campaign, and I also accompany the written plan with an excel sheet to record the data. I like knowing how much I do each day so that I can add it all up at the end of each month to see how my campaign did and to see if I noticed any results. If I notice results that for the better then I usually keeps the same plan for the next month minus a few tweaks. If I notice that the results have worsened from previous months then I will re-look through my data and make needed changes. Having everything written down allows for it to be a lot more organized and a lot more effective.

Once you have your plan of attack laid out then you can begin building the links throughout the rest of this article I will aim to teach you multiple methods of getting backlinks now so you can begin planning.

– Social Bookmarking
– Article Marketing
– Blog Posts
– Directory Submissions
– RSS Feed Submissions
– Adwords
– Blog Reviews
– Blog Comments
– Bought Links

There are tons of ways to naturally attain links for your blog and you need to try and incorporate as many of the different options as possible when working on link building. Link building is a constant trait of a blogger so make sure you’re willing to spend at least a half hour each day building links before you begin blogging. Building links I find is the most strenuous part of blogging, but it needs to be done so either you need to spend the time doing it yourself or you need to hire someone who can do it for you. Hiring someone isn’t always that bad, but typically you shouldn’t hire anyone to work on your blog before its making profit because you don’t know if it will even make money. I generally will wait until I see some traffic and a couple conversions on a blog before I really start pushing the link building and content.

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