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6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme

By on August 14, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme

WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging platforms available on the web, giving you complete creative freedom and the ability to design the perfect website with minimum effort.

The WordPress directory contains thousands of great plugins whilst the web is abundant with thousands of free themes, all to give your blog project that unique personal touch.

Whilst there are many great free WordPress themes available on the web, only a very few of them have the security and custom ability of a professionally designed premium WordPress theme. And this is the subject matter of this article, where I’d like to share with you 6 valid reasons as to why you should use a premium WordPress theme for your web project, as apposed to one of the readily available free themes on the market.

Design Quality

The design quality often found in free WordPress themes cannot be merely matched to those found in premium themes, and this is down to several reasons; for example, the attention to detail is often reflected on how well the theme’s code was originally written.

A good example of this would suggest; a quality premium theme will rarely ever load with any concerning glitches, the layout of the theme itself will always load cleanly and smoothly with all the qualities found in a premium theme, whilst these qualities can sometimes be of poor forthcoming in the vastly freely available themes.

Features

Many free themes also lack of the essential features whilst premium themes often offer you many useful features such as featured posts plugin, dynamic content gallery, Twitter and RSS integration and a contact us form just name a few.

Customization

When it comes to customization free themes offer almost nothing in return, as many of these free themes are designed for one thing only, and that’s for gaining a free backlink to an external site used by the theme designer normally. However, many if not all premium themes available offer full custom ability with easy customisation of CSS, headers and footers amongst many others.

Security

One of the biggest reasons why many serious bloggers or webmasters tend to use a reputable premium theme is for its impeccable security features.

The guys over at WordPress work their hardest to keep us updated with the latest security releases for their platform, and many of the premium themes are designed to cater and reinforce these security updates to make your blog project as secure as possible. No body likes the thought of waking up to find out their blog or website has been hacked into or sabotaged.

Updates

With a premium WordPress theme you also receive the latest updates that are available for your theme; if a new version of your theme is available you’ll be offered the chance to upgrade with normally no extra cost.

Even with the safe knowledge of being able to get the latest version of your theme as and when available should be enough to make you want to invest in a premium theme.

Technical Support & Documentation

Finally many if not all premium theme services now come with full online technical support as well as documentation with clear instructions on how to use your theme, giving you even greater peace of mind.

If you’re as passionate about your blog or web project as you think you are and are currently using a free WordPress theme for your blog, consider upgrading to a premium theme. For the sake of a few dollars it could mean the difference between your blog or website being safe and secure or being hacked into even without your knowledge.

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How to Install and Activate a WordPress Theme1

By on August 12, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install and Activate a WordPress Theme

[This tutorial applies to WordPress blogs running in a self-hosted environment, meaning that you’ve installed WordPress on a web host of your own. It doesn’t apply to blogs hosted on free WordPress.com accounts.]

Installing a WordPress theme is very straightforward. WordPress themes available for download from various places on the Internet are typically packaged in .zip files (i.e. theme-name.zip). Installing a WordPress theme involves nothing more than unzipping the .zip file into the appropriate directory of your WordPress installation, and activating the theme from your WordPress administration console.

Structure of a WordPress Theme

In order for you to install your new WordPress theme correctly, you need to understand the basics of how the WordPress system interacts with themes. A WordPress theme needs three essential files in order to work correctly with the WordPress administration:

o An index.php file: This file is the controller of a WordPress blog. Most WordPress themes also have other PHP files that represent various sections of a WordPress page, but index.php is the only truly necessary PHP file.

o A style.css file: This file controls the look and layout of the WordPress-based website using style definitions. It also contains the information that is used in the Manage Themes section of WordPress to display the theme name, version, author, and description

o A “”screenshot”” image: This image is used to create preview of the corresponding theme in the Manage Themes section of the WordPress administration. It can be any of the common web graphics files (png, jpg, gif), but it needs to be named screenshot. For instance, screenshot.png, screenshot.jpg, or screenshot.gif.

If you’ve gotten your theme from a designer who knows what he’s doing, you don’t really need to worry about making sure the theme is set up correctly. If you’re not sure, you might just want to double-check that you’ve got the basic files needed to install your theme.

WordPress Directory Structure

The WordPress directory structure contains three folders in the root directory:

o wp-admino wp-contento wp-includes

Under the wp-content folder there is a folder called themes. Inside this folder is where you need to deposit the folder that contains your theme. Here’s an example. Say I’m installing a theme for a recipe blog. The theme is called Recipe, and its folder structure looks like this:

recipe-blog/ index.phpstyle.cssscreenshot.png

This theme would normally be packaged in a .zip file. To use the theme, I would need to unpackage the file, then upload it (probably using FTP) into my WordPress themes folder. If I have WordPress installed on my web server under a directory called blog, my directory structure would look like this:

/WordPress/wp-content/themes/recipe-blog/

index.php

style.css

screenshot.png

Activating a WordPress Theme

After I upload the theme to the correct directory, I can now go to my WordPress administration to activate it. After logging in to the WordPress admin section, I go to Appearances->Themes. I can see that my new theme is installed correctly and ready to be activated, because I can see it in under Available Themes on the Manage Themes page.

At this point, all I have to do is click on the Activate link associated with my new theme. My new theme is now active on my WordPress blog.

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Mistakes Bloggers Make When Building Links

By on August 12, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Mistakes Bloggers Make When Building Links

Most bloggers have finally realized that if they want to rank in the search engines competitively for any term then they are going to need to build lots of content and links to their site. The problem now is that a lot of bloggers are beginning to build links but there not doing it effectively. It doesn’t take much learning to start link building more effectively it’s just that most people don’t share the information that you need and it can hurt your rankings.

The most common mistake people make when building their links is that they don’t use any anchor text or they use an anchor text completely irrelevant to their blog. Now a link is a link, I’ll admit that but if you plan on ranking for any keywords then you need to use those keywords as your anchor text. You should also make sure that you’re using an anchor text when you post links and also make sure that the anchor text is a keyword or phrase that you’re optimizing your blog for. Over time as you build links with anchor text you’ll start for ranking for the terms you use as anchor text and this can bring in tons of targeted traffic to your blog. You should make sure to switch up your anchor text’s and use a handful of them when you build your links so that it seems completely natural.

The next mistake people are making when building links to their blog is that they are only building the links to their homepage. Now building links to your homepage is great and all, but you need to also build links to your blog posts and pages. These are known as deeplinks and are highly valuable when it comes to search engine rankings. If you can write good content then this will result in the most deeplinks as people use your material, but you can also submit to deeplink directories and article directories. All article directories allow deeplinks and if you submit enough articles to popular article directories then it can begin to really increase your search engine rankings.

Both of the above mistakes are becoming very popular and that’s not a good thing for bloggers. If you’re currently building your links and you’re using one of the above common mistakes when doing so then you need to adjust how you’re currently building them and start building them as mentioned. It’s quite simple as long as you what you’re doing, and links can be built fairly quickly on blogs so there is no reason why not to have lots of backlinks pointing to your blog pages. If you’re currently building links without making the two common mistakes above then that’s great and you’ll definitely be on your way to creating a better blog in no time. Blogging is all about building content and links so if you can’t do both then there isn’t much point of even blogging, because there are now millions of blogs out there and if you can’t build your blog up to rank well then it will be eaten by the crowd.

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What Do I Need to Start Building a WordPress Website- WordPress Website Builder

By on August 10, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

What Do I Need to Start Building a WordPress Website? WordPress Website Builder

Building a WordPress website seems easy for some people, however I have showed various students how to do this and it takes everyone at least 3 lessons to get it down pat. That’s not bad either. We are talking about creating a website, much like building a house, it can become a cyber property with true value.

When you start using WordPress you will be amazed at how fast you can have a website (or blog) up and running. After learning a few simple tricks you could probably get a WordPress website built in less than five minutes. The thing is, I believe that anyone can do this and that practice makes perfect.

What do I need to be a WordPress Website Builder?

1. Web hosting that has Cpanel and Fantastico so it is easy for you to install websites. I use HostGator but there are heaps of website hosting companies that compete with each other. They all are trying to give good service to their customers so they can stay in this highly competitive field.

2. You will also need to buy a domain name. There are plenty of places to buy a domain name. I use Namecheap but you can use any name reseller or if you have a spare domain name lying around you can use that. LOL Am I the only person who has 37 spare domain names lying around?

3. You will need self discipline and determination. You also have to be an action taker!

Please note if you are not willing to pay for hosting and a domain name then you are not serious about building websites. I suggest you start a blog at blogger.com until you prove to yourself that this is for you.

Steps to building a WordPress website:

1. Buy WordPress website hosting if you do not have it.2. Do keyword research and find a niche.3. Buy a domain name with your niche keywords in it.4. Point your domain name to your hosting account.5. Go to your cpanel to add on a domain. See how to add a domain in your hosting.6. Go to the Fantastico icon in Cpanel and press on the WordPress link.7. Install a WordPress website/blog.

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Methods-get-tons-of-backlinks

By on August 9, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Methods to get tons of backlinks

Getting backlinks has become much easier these days with the advent of social networking and social bookmarking sites. Social networking sites will be giving you a profile page and in that page you may add details about yourself like your name, hobbies, interests, and also your website. And this is something that makes webmasters attracted towards these sites – yup, I’m talking about the “website url” thing. This is an easy way to get free backlinks. Social networking sites are generally of high authority and getting a link (even if it’s from an inner page), is still of great importance.

On the other hand, a social bookmarking site will allow you to create a profile page and also to bookmark your favorite sites.This way, creating a single account, you can get backlinks to unlimited sites of yours. Not just that, if you stay active at these sites, then you’ll be getting free traffic as well. Members who are active will get a lot of hits to their profile. And this will prompt others to visit their bookmarks. This way, it will be providing you double benefit.

There are thousands of social bookmarking and social networking sites at the moment. If you go on creating accounts in all these sites, then you’ll never reach the finish line for sure. That’s because new ones are born every day. It’ll only waste your time. So, just concentrate on sites that is with good pagerank and traffic. A link from a high authority site is worth more than – even tens or hundreds of links from a low authority site. So, create accounts in high authority, high traffic sites, this way, your sites will be benefiting in two ways :- they’ll be getting a quality backlink and also free targeted traffic.

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How To Create Your Own WordPress Plugin And Distribute It Online

By on August 8, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How To Create Your Own WordPress Plugin And Distribute It Online

Creating your own WordPress plugin takes a little bit of programming background, though nothing that you really have to pay an arm and a leg for. Most of the how to can be found online. But once you create your WordPress plugin, you’ve got to get it out there, so that it starts to bring out the results you are looking for. For that you will need to focus on distribution, but let’s take it one step at a time.

First, you must determine what it is about your WordPress blog that is lacking. Brainstorm a list of functions that you would like to be able to include on your blog. Once you have the concrete details in place, it is time to learn the PHP language for creating a WordPress plugin. What you will want to do is create one or several files that bear the commands you have given to your plugin in the PHP language. In order to teach yourself PHP, it will take a considerable amount more time and space than can be provided here, but it is recommended that you run Google searches for “”learn PHP”” or “”understand PHP language.”” Once you’ve read up on how the formatting operates, you should be prepared to write the code for the plugin itself.

Taking your ideas, and the PHP translation of those ideas, you can easily and effectively incorporate them into the blog by a simple copy and paste into the body of the code. If you are not creating the plugin for yourself but for other WordPress users, then you may want to create an additional txt file and submit to the plugin directory. Getting the word out on your plugin creation will generate more interest, and if it is something that you charge for, it will lead to more money as well.

But exposure is key and to do that you will have to not only get your WordPress plugin seen, but also promoted. Promoting your plugin is simple, but work intensive. There are a number of traditional marketing tactics that you may wish to use, but one of the most dynamic is social media, because things have the potential to go viral much more quickly. If you have a product that is viable and that others find of interest, it could be that you attract thousands of users without ever spending one dime on marketing promotion.

Learning the tools of the WordPress trade will give you more power for functionality on your own blog, and it could help you generate interest in your site or products increasing their earning potential in the process. If you’re ready to take your plugin to the next level, then create and distribute wisely.

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Methods to Build Your Blog Traffic

By on August 6, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Methods to Build Your Blog Traffic

If you have a blog that you’ve been filling up with content but the traffic has yet to start pouring in then you might need to start working on some marketing tactics to build your blog traffic. The first and most important thing is that you have lots of good content on your blog before you start working on getting much traffic to your blog. The best way to get traffic is through search engines but you need to rank for keywords in order to start getting search engine traffic and that isn’t easy to do. It takes time to start ranking for keywords in the search engines and you need to build lots of links as well. The links that you build can help also bring traffic to your blog though so there are many benefits from building links.

One of the best ways to get traffic is through articles submissions which you should try and do on a weekly basis so that you continually build traffic through it. Some of the article directories are already very established sites and have tons of traffic so posting articles in these directories with your link to your blog is very smart. You need to make sure that you follow the directories rules which are usually straightforward and then you will be on your way to getting traffic. The articles remain on the site permanently as well so if you keep the blog then you’ll always get traffic from your article submissions.

Other ways to gain traffic are through directory submissions and social bookmarking. These can bring lots of traffic and there basically the same except in one way which is directory submission traffic usually is slow and continuous where social bookmarks are usually fast and big amounts of traffic. It doesn’t take long to submit to a few directories and social bookmarks everyday so make sure that you take the time to do it as it will help your site a lot.

You can also become apart of a traffic exchange program where you can have ad’s on your site and in return you get ad’s on other sites. These aren’t always the best because most of them you need to give traffic to receive traffic, but some of them are set-up so that you simply sell and buy ads when you choose and aren’t forced to do either. EntreCard is a great example of one of the most effective traffic exchange programs that you can use and I would highly recommend this one out of any of them.

There are tons of other ways for you to build your blog traffic as well and you should always try finding new ways to build your traffic. As time goes on you’ll begin ranking better in the search engines if you’ve been working hard building links and then your traffic will go through the roof. If you can hold a steady stream of traffic up until you start getting search engine traffic then you’ve done a great job at creating a successful blog.

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