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The Dawn of a New WordPress

The Dawn of a New WordPress – V2.5.x

Not long ago, the ever popular blog hosting site which goes by the name of WordPress gave their system a remake, thus giving birth to a newer and better WordPress 2.5. It is a major improvement over WordPress 2.3 and these are the areas where the new features are prominent.

Dashboard
The dashboard is now designed to look very much like your blog’s hub and is designed in a sleeker and more focused manner which provides you an interesting choice of colour schemes. The new layout is now more organized with quick links at your disposal and easy to use. Also, feeds are now customisable for your viewing convenience and are not only limited to WordPress Development Blog or WordPress Planet feeds. To add to that, the displays of incoming links such as the ones from Google Blog Search are can now be personalized.

Navigation Menu
One feature which went through a major revamp is the navigation menu which has shrunk in menu items, a number of which have been renamed. Renamed items include Presentation (changed to Design) and Options (changed to Settings) and these are now included under Manage.

Post & Page
This area had a major overhaul which leaves bloggers who use the ‘tag’ and ‘trackback’ features needing to scroll more when using the new WordPress. There is also no more drag and drop option for items. However, WordPress 2.5 will provide the option to add pictures and videos directly from the likes of YouTube and Flickr.

Post/Page Management
Navigation and management is now a lot easier as users can now skim through and edit their posts according to tags or authors. Also, there is now the ability to mass delete unwanted entries. An interesting change is the date format, which will give displays such as “3 hours ago” for any edits or posts within short periods of time.

Edit Post Page
Basically, the most prominent change would be the renaming of ‘View This Post’ to ‘Preview’. However, it is now more convenient and faster when it comes to post editing and there is a quick link for quick post deletion. Overall, it is a whole lot more convenient.

Miscellaneous Management
There is now a ‘Tags’ option for easy tag addition, editing or deletion. As for media, there is now a Media Library which supports more file types than what WordPress 2.3 could where all your uploaded files can be managed. Also, it is easier to manage widgets now than before. They are easy to add onto the sidebar and once there, can simply be dragged as you wish for your desired arrangement.

Other Changes
There is now an improvement on the user filters which makes it more user-friendly. Also, you can now see the exact number of comments in the navigation menu pending your review. One last notable addition is the ability to support avatars directly from the box. Overall, WordPress 2.5 is quite an improvement but the changes make it a love or hate affair. Either way, it is certainly the talk of the blogosphere.

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How to Edit WordPress Widgets

How to Edit WordPress Widgets

One of the things most people like about WordPress is the built in widget system. Widgets make it really easy to manage the sidebar elements of your blog or website. Depending on your theme, you may also be able to use widgets to control other sections of your WordPress blog or website.

However, in order to take advantage of the widget system you need to learn how to edit WordPress widgets to suit your needs. The good news is doing this is really, really easy.

To get started with widgets, just navigate to the widgets section within the WordPress administration panel. If you are unfamiliar with this, you can find the link to the widgets section along the left hand side of the screen.

Once you are in the widgets section, you will see a variety of different options available to you. WordPress comes with a handful of built in widgets, such as recent posts, recent comments, tags, categories, and search.

To activate any of these widgets, just click and drag it to the sidebar section which can be found on the right side of the screen. Then let go of your mouse button to automatically place the widget in the sidebar you choose.

Another cool thing about widgets is that you can drag and drop them to determine the order they show up on your sidebar. They will appear exactly the way you place them within the widget screen. If you place recent comments above recent posts, then they will show up just like that on your blog or website.

As far as editing widgets go, each widget has different options which can be configured. If you see an arrow next to the name of the widget, you can click on it to expand it. This will then give you a variety of options that can be customized for that specific widget. A good example of this is setting the number of recent posts to show.

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7 Big Benefits to Creating Your Next Small Business Website With WordPress

7 Big Benefits to Creating Your Next Small Business Website With WordPress

Which of these choices would you prefer?

A website that requires custom programming costing $3000 or more, requires a knowledge of complex programming languages in order to make even simple changes to the content, and requires a complete redesign (again costing thousands of dollars) if you decide the look is outdated?

Or a website that is built on free software, allows you to easily update content yourself and you can select from thousands of clean, professional looking designs that can be added to the site in a matter of minutes?

No brainer, right?

Meet WordPress.

WordPress, originally used solely for blogs, has morphed into an incredibly powerful Content Management System you can use to easily and inexpensively create a very professional and functional website for your small business.

Here are 7 benefits to using WordPress for your small business’ website:

1. It costs nothing! Not one penny! WordPress is available for download at WordPress.org at no cost – you won’t even have to give up your email address. To host a WordPress site yourself, however, you will need to find a hosting company. That’s generally not free. But it’s not expensive either. For just $5 – $10 a month you can host your WordPress site at any number of quality web host providers. Many of them include Fantastico with your hosting plan which is software that lets you install WordPress in just a few clicks without even having to download the software.

2. Ease of Use. Using WordPress is really quite simple. Yes, especially for the technically-challenged among us, there will be a little bit of a learning curve. However, there’s no shortage of quality WordPress tutorials online to help you get up to speed quickly. Once you get the hang of things, adding content is a snap. It’s no more difficult than using a word processing program. And you don’t have to know how to write code or do anything vaguely technical in nature to maintain your site.

3. Themes. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of themes available for WordPress. A theme is basically a template that changes the look and feel of your WordPress site (a theme can also alter the behind-the-scenes options to make WordPress even easier to customize and use). Some of these themes are free, others you have to pay for. You can also have a custom theme designed so your site meets your exact specifications.

With themes, it’s easy to get a clean, professional looking site without paying a lot for custom design work. And if one day you decide you don’t like the look of your site – no problem. Find a theme you like better, activate it in WordPress and you instantly have a new look and feel to your site – all without having to change the blog posts or pages on your site.

4. Plugins. Plugins are software the extend the capabilities of WordPress to do pretty much anything you want. Using plugins, you can track site visits, add social bookmarking to your site, automate backups of your site, fight spam, create contact forms, improve site security and a lot more. And, with few exceptions, the plugins are absolutely free.

5. Search Engine Love. Google (and the other search engines) love WordPress. Using WordPress can give your search engine optimization efforts a big boost. And if you take advantage of some of the SEO-related plugins available for WordPress, the search engines will really think your site is the bee’s knees.

6. Technical Support. WordPress does not offer tech support for you to email or call with your questions. However, have no fear, there are still a ton of options for you if you have an issue you need addressed. You can turn to the forum on WordPress.org, which is a very active community of WordPress users who are always willing to help those having problems with the software. In addition, there are a bunch of other websites, message boards and blogs that you can turn to for advice. There are also plenty of wordPress experts for hire to assist you. Whatever issue you may encounter, help is always close at hand.

7. Control. Hosting your own WordPress website puts you in control of your web presence. Need to update your content, add new posts or pages? You can easily do it yourself. Want to update the appearance of your site? Find a new Theme, upload it, activate it and you’re done. Don’t like the hosting company you’re using? Find another and move your site – there are plenty of good hosting companies around.

So there are seven strong benefits to using WordPress for your small business’ website/blog. Without a doubt there are reasons why you may WordPress may not work for your situation and hiring a programmer to develop a custom site is the best option.

For most small business owners, however, WordPress will provide all that you need to get a professionally looking website that you, and the search engines will love. It’s a highly functional, flexible and cost-effective option that is hard to top.

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Important Reasons why you should become Active in the Blogosphere

Important Reasons why you should become Active in the Blogosphere

There are millions of blogs out there on the internet and thousands of them are promoted on a daily basis and updated regularly. This means that in most cases there will be other bloggers in the niche that you choose to blog about, and although there your competition they can also help you out. You don’t always want to look at your competition as your enemy when it comes to blogging because there are ways you can benefit from other bloggers in your niche. The importance of becoming active on the authority blogs in your niche is becoming more important as each day passes and you should make sure you start commenting now. If you’re unsure as to why you should spend time becoming active on the authority blogs in your niche that’s fine as we’re going to take a look at some of the reasons now.

Reason #1

The first reason you want to become active on blogs in your niche is for the backlinks. The backlinks only count in the search engines if there do-follow, but nowadays there are lots of bloggers who use the do-follow feature on their comments. You should find all of the blogs that offer do-follow comments in your niche and you should make a note of commenting on these blogs regularly. The search engines love relevant links so by commenting on blogs similar to yours you’ll be getting about as relevant as links as you possibly can manage to get.

Reason #2

Commenting on blogs helps to also gain traffic for your blog over the long-term, and is one of the main benefits of commenting on blogs in your niche. As visitors see your comments on the blogs they’ll be able to click your link and visit your blog. You won’t get to much traffic from doing this, but it adds up over time and you should use any advantages you can over your competitors. The traffic you get from the comments will also be targeted and could result in a long-term reader of your blog or even a customer.

Reason #3

If you comment regularly enough on the authority blogs then the owner will begin to take notice of you and it could benefit you and your blog. As you grow a relationship with the other bloggers in your niche you open up your chances of exchanging links with them. To get an authority backlink in your niche usually means spending a lot of money, but if you can grow a friendly relationship through blog commenting then you may be surprised what the bloggers may do for you. If your blog has good content then they’ll have no problem linking to you in one of there posts, and this is when you get the real traffic.

There are even more reasons as to why you should become active in the blogosphere, but these three are the main reasons that I do it. You don’t need to go to blogs in your niche and spam all the posts on them as this will just upset the blog owner. You should comment on a regular basis as the blogger adds new content, as then they’ll know that you continually check their blog out and will make them more likely to check out your blog.

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How to Create a Profit Pulling WordPress Blog Today

How to Create a Profit Pulling WordPress Blog Today

The WordPress Platform has come a long way since the early days, so much so that you can now easily control every function of your WordPress Blog from an easy to manage WordPress Admin Dashboard ….

Install your WordPress Theme, Install your WordPress Plugin, Install Affiliate Products, Optimize your WordPress Blog.

Now if you have never used WordPress before you may be breaking into a cold sweat just thinking about this ….

Worry not, it is simpler than you may think….. I would suggest following the simple steps before you even start to think about the technical stuff.. now most would tell you get a domain name etc etc

Ok, that is half right, but if you follow the steps suggested below, then the likelyhood is you will get your WordPress Blog setup right – First Time ……

Step 1 – Research and choose a Niche

This is an important first step, this will get your creative thinking head on, just get a blank piece of paper and write down maybe 5 things that interest you. Once you have your list, then you can check how popular these ideas may be by using for example the Google Keyword Tool Anylazer…

Step 2 – Choosing your Domain Name

Choosing a Domain Name could be a two minute job, for example if you want to self-brand yourself, if so it would be a case of registering yourname.com

If you are looking to blog about a certain niche, then some basic research is required. I would also suggest you look to try and chose a keyword rich. For example, if you are blogging about Bonsai Trees then try and have this within your Domain Name.

Step 3 – Registering your Domain Name

There are many Domain Name Registers out there, I have used a few, over the last year I have used Namecheap.com for a number of reasons, they are reasonably priced, offer free WHOIS Gaurd to protect your Personal Details and with their money off coupons you can secure your Domain Name for under $9.00! . If you enter “”Namecheap Coupon Code – July 2009″” then you can save money on the cost.

Step 4 – Setting up your Webhosting Account

It is important you get this step right, I have in the past lost out with Webhost companies disappearing overnight and with it your websites and business. It can be personal choice who you decide to host with, I would recommend Hostgator.com, the reasons behind it they are reliable and cheap, offer 24-7 customer service and to help you get started you could get the first months hosting for only 1 cent!

Step 5- Updating your DNS Nameservers

This step is required to have your Domain Name Register, ‘point’ your Domain Name to your ‘webspace’ so when people type your WordPress Blog Domain Address into their Internet Browser, it will automatically go to where your WordPress Blog is installed. Your Webhosting company will supply your Nameservers Information – for example- ns1.yourwebhoster.com, ns2.yourwebhoster.com you would access ‘Transfer to Webhost’ in your Domain Control Panel and enter the Nameserver Information and Update. It can take up to 24 Hours to propgate the information and point to your webspace.

Step 6 – Installing your WordPress Blog

As I mentioned in Step 4 it is important to choose the correct Webhosting Company for your webhosting needs, one of the reasons being that they will supply a powerful function called ‘Fantastico De Luxe’ , so with a few clicks of your mouse you can have your WordPress Blog installed in under 3 minutes.

The steps above are just the start to creating your profit pulling WordPress Blog.

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The Benefits of Ready Made WordPress Themes

The Benefits of Ready Made WordPress Themes

Since most of the important and necessary events take place in the internet, web developers then expanded the idea of making money by using the advantages of internet. Hundreds or even thousands of users all over the world are using the internet simultaneously. The idea of creating profit out of the internet was first developed in blogging. It was supposedly an online form of a diary of a person. Everyone became interested in writing and posting a blog since most of the sensible information posted in the internet can give them money.

However, making money through the use of internet is not that easy. You need to create an informative blog that will be often noticed by readers. It should also contain all the necessary data that will put your blog into fame. You must remember the common principle of search engine optimization. It is a basic trick that you must know if you want to be part of the blogging business.

Your articles must answer almost all the common questions of the people. You should also base your articles on issues that are timely. It will give you the best idea about what article you are going to create. It is also important to be involved in the latest issues of your place. It will give your article the chance to be read by people who are concern about the latest issue you have posted.

Writing an article is the easiest part of creating your own site. It would be great if you have an additional knowledge about WordPress design since it is one of the hardest tasks in building your own page. WordPress themes and templates are often available in the internet and are free to download. Its general task is to enhance the appearance of your page.

Your articles are not capable of standing on their own without the help of your WordPress themes. You should not only offer your readers a set of sensible information. You also need to impress their eyes. Your WordPress themes must be attractive as much as it could but not too much. The appearance of your page is one of the factors that you must consider upon building up your site.

If you are still new to this kind of field and unfortunately you lack the knowledge about designing your own site you better take my advice. There are several online sites where you can download free WordPress themes, such as the Joomla website. They are best known with their trendy themes and templates.

Joomla is one of the pioneering editors of WordPress themes. Beginners of WordPress design often use the creations of Joomla. Aside from their artistic designs, their WordPress themes and templates are easy to run. Unlike other WordPress themes it has an uninstall option which makes it more manageable. It is also capable of restoring its own configurations when sudden problems occur. The concept of having a secured WordPress theme is also one of the famous ideas of Joomla.

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Five Blog Writing Tips Anyone can Implement

Five Blog Writing Tips Anyone can Implement

There are plenty of us out there who are blogging and looking to become the next authority blog, but to do that it’s going to take a lot work. One of the most important aspects of your blog is the content, and without useful content you won’t make it very far in the blogging world. You’ll need to be able to offer people that noone else can offer them and you can’t become like most bloggers and regurgitate information that is found everywhere else. I want to spend some time looking at some tips you can implement into your writing so you can assist your blog in becoming successful.

Unique Content

As a blogger one of the worst things you can do is steal content from somewhere else and claim that it’s yours. Not only is this wrong in so many ways, but chances are your readers will catch on eventually and you’ll be stuck with a blog that has no traffic and no resale value. You need to make your blog your own by writing the content yourself so that you can interact with your readers. To gather loyal blog readers the only way to go is by offering unique content that is new and useful as well as interacting with your audience.

Know Your Niche

I’ve seen hundreds of bloggers in hundreds of niches that don’t know what a niche is. If you create a blog to write about airplanes then you shouldn’t ever be posting about recent celebrity news in your blog. Your visitors found your blog because they want airplane information and not celebrity information so make sure you know your niche. It’s important to not only know your niche, but you need to know what you’re talking about. The worst thing possible for a blogger is when your readers start correcting your information because it’s wrong. Take the time to write one good post each day and if you have to spend time researching the topic so that you don’t look stupid in front of your readers.

Keep Readers in Mind

The blog that you’ve created has probably been created so that you can eventually make some money off of it. Before you can make any money off of your blog though, you need a loyal readership that trusts you. In order to gain a loyal readership you’ll need to offer content everyday on topics your readers want to read about. You need to consider the different ways your readers have found your blog and then write content on those topics that are popular. It’s important to write what the readers want to read and not what you want on your blog if you want to have a loyal readership.

Reply to Comments

When someone takes the time out of there day to make a meaningful comment on your blog then you should spend the time to reply to the message. It doesn’t take long to reply to a couple comments everyday and if you do reply then you’ll be showing you care about your readers. A lot of people who make comments will come back to see if it’s been answered so make sure you stay on top of your comments in moderation.

Work with Competitors

Once you’ve established who your competition is you need to become friends with them and share resources. There is plenty of competition out there so by teaming up with a few other bloggers in your niche you’ll have a slight advantage over some of the other bloggers. It’s important to gain relevant backlinks so by swapping links in blog posts will other bloggers in your niche is important. You should also become an active reader and commenter on your competitions blogs as you’ll gain backlinks from your comments.

Writing is a huge part of blogging and if you think you’ll be able to get away without writing much content then you have another thing coming. Blogging is all about being able to offer readers useful content to read on a daily basis, so before you commit to blogging make sure you’re ready to write lots of content. All of these tips can be implemented immediately as long as you have the time, but if you don’t have the time for this then I recommend leaving blogging along and stick with static websites.

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How to Apply A WordPress Theme1

How to Apply A WordPress Theme

One of the biggest advantages to WordPress is the easy to use theme system. This makes changing your blog or websites design a really easy task. Best of all, many themes are available for free of charge. The key is to learn how to use the theme system so you do not waste your time trying to figure out why your theme is not working.

If you want to apply a WordPress theme, the first step is making sure you have the theme installed. There are two different ways that a WordPress theme can be installed. The first option is to install it manually by uploading the theme folder to your themes directory. This requires some knowledge of FTP and web directories.

The second option is to use the build in theme uploader, which can be accessed from directly in the WordPress administration panel. To get started, just browser to the appearance section in WordPress and click on the themes section. One in here, you can just click on the add new theme button to get started. You can either search for a theme in the directory or choose the zip file you downloaded from somewhere else on the internet.

Regardless of the way you choose, WordPress will automatically install the theme for you and place it in the correct folder. Once this is done, you are then ready to apply the WordPress theme.

Guess what? Activating the theme is even easier than installing it! All you have to do is look at your installed themes and choose the one you want to use. Then just use the activate link to automatically apply any given them. Within a matter of seconds, your entire blog or website layout will completely change based on the theme you are using. Talk about an easy way to design websites!

So there is a quick overview on how to apply WordPress themes.

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