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Using Plugins in a WordPress Blog – How to Use WordPress Plugins on Your Blog

By on April 6, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Using Plugins in a WordPress Blog – How to Use WordPress Plugins on Your Blog

WordPress is an astounding blogging platform right out of the box. It is packed with features and functions that allow you to blog at a pretty high level even at its most basic. But there might be some things you want your blog to do that the default WordPress blog won’t. That’s where plugins come in. WordPress plugins are so ridiculously awesome that I think we should crack open a bottle of something and toast to them together.

Basically, a plugin is a program that adds a specific feature or function to your blog and it’s integrated seamlessly with the design of the blog allowing for stupidly simple customization without changing the actually programming of WordPress at all. Best of all, there’s a plugin for just about everything and although there have been brilliant plugins developed that have a small price tag, there are thousands of mind-blowingly fabulous plugins that are absolutely free for you to use. Here’s why I love them so much. I am not a web designer. I don’t know code. I don’t intend to learn code. But I can design you a pretty kick butt website by simply starting with WordPress and adding a theme and the right plugins. And you can do the same. So here’s how to get started with plugins on your own blog.

In your WordPress dashboard, check out the menus going down the left side. Find the one called “”Plugins””. Click “”Add New””. This is where you’ll always come to search for plugins that you need. I guarantee you that for most needs you’ll ever have, there will be a free plugin available that will serve your purposes brilliantly. Let’s first talk about a few plugins I recommend that you install right away. Then we’ll walk through an example of how to install the plugin and activate it on your blog.

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The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

By on April 5, 2012 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

The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

Once you have set-up your WordPress blog one of the first things everyone does is chooses the theme for their blog. You don’t need to keep the same theme and can change it anytime you would like. In the beginning when your blog is new I would just use a free wordpress theme that is related to your niche. There are hundreds of different free wordpress themes out there that you can use and many of them are very well done with great graphics.

As your blog starts to get older you’ll need to determine whether or not you want to keep using the free wordpress themes or if you want to adapt a custom wordpress theme to your blog. Normally what will determine this is whether or not your blog has any traffic or revenue. If you have traffic and are making some money off of your blog then I would recommend getting a custom wordpress made for your blog. Once you have a custom wordpress theme it’s like jumping up the ladder in blogging and makes you almost like royalty. Most readers will stay on custom theme blogs longer than other blogs as well because when you use a free wordpress theme people see those everywhere, but when you adapt a custom theme your readers will have never seen any blog like yours before.

WordPress themes have come down in price over the past couple years and you can get a great custom wordpress theme for under $200. This isn’t a small investment for a blog that isn’t making money and isn’t a very wise investment either. If you have traffic on your blog though, and making some money off your blog then spending $200 won’t seem nearly as bad. It should also help increase your traffic and revenue so it’s a wise investment in some situations. Make sure you have established traffic and revenue before spending money on any theme though, this is because a lot of blogs will never make any money. The last thing you want to do is spend a couple hundred on your blog and it never make any money.

If you look around the blogosphere you’ll notice that most of the established and authority blogs all have custom themes that look amazing and unique. It helps to retain traffic and also assists in increasing your return visitor traffic. If you’re a designer and coder then you can most likely make your own wordpress theme and if you can do this then you should definitely do it for all of your blogs. You don’t need to wait for traffic and revenue if you can do the work on your own time because it isn’t costing you any money.

When you decide to implement your own custom wordpress theme to your blog make sure that it stands out and is unique. You don’t want to spend money on a theme that looks similar to another theme because that defeats the purpose. The purpose of a custom theme is to stand out to your readers and to retain the traffic you build to your blog. Try to add some new features to your theme that you can’t find on other blogs or try changing the layout of the conventional style and making your own style. Always make sure that you use a custom logo or mascot for your theme as well because this will help brand your blog, especially a mascot.

As you can see the importance of your wordpress theme is very important and there are many reasons you should be considering when choosing a theme. If you’re choosing your theme for looks only then you aren’t doing enough. You need to think about how many people are doing that as well, because many do and end up with the same free wordpress themes. If your blog can afford to invest some money into it then I would first spend it on a custom wordpress theme.

A custom wordpress theme will also help you sell your blog if you ever decide to sell it in the future, and you’ll be able to fetch top dollar for your blog. So your themes is more of an investment then anything else, but if money is tight then wait until your blog is making money before spending money on a custom theme. If you’re using free wordpress themes then you should consider switching your theme every month or so, this is so that your readers don’t get bored of the same theme. You should try switching your theme with a newly released free theme each month as then your visitors will be less likely to have already seen the theme.

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How to Install and Activate a WordPress Theme

By on April 4, 2012 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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Best Ways to Learn WordPress

By on April 2, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best Ways to Learn WordPress

WordPress is an open source web publishing platform. Once the favorite of bloggers, it is quickly becoming the go to application to build any type of website. There are a lot of benefits to using WordPress, including it being search engine friendly and it is simple to change an entire website’s design. The feature that makes it a must use for me is that you can put the control back into the web owners hand. WordPress is significantly easier to update than your traditional HTML websites. This is important because it means web designers can create a website that their clients can control. Anyone who has seen their web designer go AWOL knows the importance of this.

This brings up one question though: Where do I learn how to use WordPress?

1. WordPress.org: If you are new to WordPress make this your first stop. This site is home to the WordPress codex and it contains just about every piece of WordPress knowledge known to man. The codex can be a lot to wrap your head around at first, but there is also a message board here that is quite handy. The message board will allow you to ask the questions you couldn’t figure out from the codex. You might run into some people who just tell you to “”Learn The Codex NOOB”” but most people are willing to help.

2. Online Tutorials: There are a number of WordPress tutorials online. If you have a WordPress issue you can probably search and find a tutorial dealing with that. Using Google and YouTube searches is probably your best bet. Whether you prefer written or video tutorials you should be able to find what you are looking for. Some of the downsides of this method are that video quality can be bad and sometimes the person doing the voice over has an annoying or intelligible voice. I hate having to rewind five times tying to catch what someone is saying. Depending on where you find your tutorial, the creator may not be actively answering any follow up questions you have. This is extremely annoying if you get to end of tutorial and notice you have an issue they didn’t address. That said, if you search around enough you can find good quality tutorials.

3. Coaching: This is the proverbial Cadillac of learning options. There is usually a cost involved but when you figure in how much your time is worth, it is the best option. This is actually how I learned WordPress and it saved me weeks and weeks of time. I spent my first week on WordPress complaining about how it didn’t make sense, and how I wanted to switch back to HTML. I ended up spending a couple hours with a new colleague and he had me up and running in no time. A coupe hours of coaching was able to accomplish more than an entire week of learning on my own. The benefits are that a WordPress coach has dealt with new users before. They have probably already answered your questions. Also he had some tutorials that were unmatched quality. Lastly, instant feedback was amazing. I didn’t have to wait and see if someone would reply to my blog comment. I asked a question and it was answered. If their wasn’t an answer right away – I knew their would be within the day. This is definitely the easiest way to learn.

It is up to you what way you want to learn. All of the above techniques will get you where you want to be, it is just a question on how quick and direct the route is.

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How to Install and Activate a Premium WordPress Theme

By on March 31, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install and Activate a Premium WordPress Theme

The greatest thing about WordPress, the open-source Content Management System and blogging platform, is the sheer number of options it affords users when it comes to designing a website or blog. The user of a WordPress blog can upload any number of custom widgets that could display the user’s latest tweets or even a simple contact form, they can get granular control over various technical aspects of their site design including modifying permalinks and URL structures and, most importantly, they can easily alter the appearance of their website by installing a few WordPress themes. The power of WordPress exists in its ability to make significant changes to the appearance of a website in just a few simple clicks – users can add and delete entire designs in the click of a button.

The easiest way to add a new theme to your WordPress site is just to upload it using the in-built WordPress theme uploader. Before doing this however, you will need to actually download a theme and this can be done quickly and easily by typing “”WordPress Themes”” into Google and selecting from the many paid or free options available. You do not need to extract the contents of the zip folder once it has been downloaded, merely leave it as it is and then go to the appearance menu in WordPress and select add new theme. Click the upload button and then browse to the zip file and click upload, once this is done just click the activate button and you theme will now be live on your website.

Another popular way to install a theme is to upload it directly to the WordPress themes folder situated on your web server. The easiest way to do this is to install an FTP client such as FileZilla, and configure so that you have FTP access to your website. Once this is done, go to the “”wp-content”” folder, then click on the themes “”folder””. To upload a theme you will need to unzip it first – once you have done this just drag and drop the theme folder that is on your hard drive into the WordPress themes folder on your server. The theme will now be available to activate under the WordPress themes menu in your WordPress control panel.

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How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software

By on March 28, 2012 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

How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software?

Anyone who desires a successful Internet business understands the importance of a good shopping cart. There are so many shopping carts online now that it can be difficult to wade through all your choices to locate the one that will work best for you.

One way of knowing which shopping cart is best for you is to read shopping cart product reviews that you can find online and in IT magazines. Read about what others think of the shopping carts, make note of the features discussed and compare what is offered to what you need.

Another way to find what is the best shopping cart software for your business is to do some comparison-shopping yourself using a list of what you need in a shopping cart and your budget.

When you have pared down the possible candidates to just a few, then it is time to look at live stores that use each of the candidates shopping cart programs. Notice how easy or not it is to navigate, search for products, add to or delete products from the shopping cart and the features available for the customer. Look to see if the shopping cart software companies offer a customer service and give them a try to see how they respond to you.

When you are paring down your list of possible shopping cart candidates do it by comparing price, feature, and by reading the reviews of each shopping cart. Look for the shopping carts that seem to be up to date on the latest technology, are easily integrated with payment processors and your Website. Make sure you discard the shopping carts that are older or have lower quality.

When investigating live stores that use the various shopping carts that you have pared down your candidates to you want to get a feel for how the shopping carts work when in use. Typically the shopping cart companies will provide a list of several online stores that use their shopping cart. Some of the things you will be looking for are how well the shopping cart blends in with the Website and does each store look different from the others? Actually use the shopping carts on these stores to see how the carts perform.

When filtering out the candidates use a list of the top 3 things that you are looking for in a shopping cart and if a candidate does not have one of the top 3 than cross it off your list. Make a list of the features that are important to you and which ones you cannot do without this will help to narrow down your list of candidates.

If you know you will be using electronic certificates that cross off any shopping carts that do not offer this feature.

Make sure you investigate how good each company’s customer service department is by sending them each an email asking some pre-sale questions and make notes about how fast they respond, if they respond with a canned reply or really give you individual attention.

Do the candidate shopping cart companies have technical support? Take a look at the FAQs and index of help topics to see how helpful they are and if they are easy to understand. Download the user guide and review it to see if it is understandable.

Read shopping cart review from respected sources to see what is recommended. See if you can find user reviews on each of the shopping carts that you have decided are the biggest contenders for your money.

Once you have your list narrowed down to just 3 or 5 shopping cart software companies than it is time to look at the total cost of using each shopping cart, and also look at what the strong points are for each of the remaining carts.

Look at price, features and support and make your best decision.

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How to Install a New WordPress Theme With FileZilla and Cpanel1

By on March 27, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install a New WordPress Theme With FileZilla and Cpanel

How to Install a New WordPress Theme with FileZilla and Cpanel.

It’s Great that you’ve installed your new WordPress software in your domain. But you need to change the generic wordpress themes with customized theme to make your blog beautiful and full of different functional capabilities.

You can install your new wordpress theme with Filezilla which is recommended or the Cpanel which is the more tedious part. Now lets begin;

Option 1:How to install your New WordPress theme with FileZilla

* Download your WordPress Theme and Unzip. Save in a location on your computer.

* First, download the FTP which will be FileZilla and run. To access your web files, log in the FTP with your webhost address, your username, and password. The default Port connection is 21 but you can leave it empty. Then connect.

* After successfully connecting, you will be able to see the files on y our computer in the left window and your webhost root document files in the Remote site which is on the right.

* Locate your saved unzipped WordPress Theme.

* Go over to the remote server on the right of the FTP and open the public_html folder, which contains your root document files. If you have installed your new wordpress theme on your domain, then you would see the wordpress files and folders and also the “”theme”” folder where the new wordpress theme should go.

* Drag the new unzipped wordpress folder to the theme folder. The file transfer then starts.

* After completing the file transfer, head over to your wordpress dashboard by logging in to your wordpress admin site with your username and password you provided when installing your wordpress software. Go over to Design, then over to Theme and search for your New installed theme and activate. It should then be visible on your blog. If you are using older versions of wordpress you can activate your new installed theme by going to Presentation and then Theme.

* You finished a successful WordPress Installation.

Option 2:How to Install your New WordPress Theme with Cpanel.

This is one tedious task and much more stressful when you have a wordpress theme with a lot of folders and files. I would recommend you stick with the FTP option which will transfer your files faster, save you a great deal of time and does much of the job for you. If you want to learn how to use Cpanel, heres how you do it.

* Log in to your Cpanel through Cpanel webhost domain with your webhost username and password. On your Cpanel Frontpage click on File Manager or Legacy File Manager.

* Open the public_html folder by clicking the folder icon by the side and not on the public_html text itself. Doing this will show all the files and folders in the public_html and clicking the public_html text will only show you the folder properties.

* Locate the wp_content folder and open through the icon folder. Then open the Theme Folder. This is where you upload all the new wordpress theme and folders.You will be installing the wordpress theme they way the files and folders are arranged in your computer.

* Create a New Folder by clicking on the “”create a new folder”” link at the top of the folders’ display. Then create the overall theme folder with the theme name. Then open the theme folder by clicking on the folder icon. Repeat the same process with all the folders in the WordPress Theme on your computer.

* You will have to install the files in the respective folders the way it is on your computer. All you have to do is clicking “”upload files”” when you are in the Folder that contains the files originally the way it is on your computer. On the upload page, click on browse and search for the files, then upload. Remember, clicking on the file name after upload will show you the edit properties for the file and you can change the File permissions CHMOD. Repeat this sequence for all Folders that contains files the way it is on your computer.

You’ll see that what you’ve been doing is transferring the files from the computer in the hierarchical manner into your web host the way they originally are. You see that it’s more tedious unlike Filezilla that transfers the Full WordPress themes and arranges the folders and files it contains automatically.

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Best Minimalist WordPress Theme and Why Use Minimal Themes

By on March 25, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best Minimalist WordPress Theme and Why Use Minimal Themes

What is a minimalist WordPress theme?

It’s a theme that has little or no design and graphics. Essentially it’s a naked theme that you can design from scratch.

Most themes are fully designed. They’re great if you like the design, more or less.

Why use minimal themes?

Because in some cases, it’s faster to start creating and implementing a website design from scratch than changing a designed template.

What’s the best minimalist WordPress theme?

Of course, any “”best”” determination is an opinion. You may agree or disagree. I like reading “”best of”” and “”best whatever”” articles because it’s a starting point for me when researching for a product or service purchase.

Therefore, I’ll throw my two cents worth in the ring on what I think is the best minimalist WordPress theme.

Prose by StudioPress is in my view, the best minimalist WordPress template. I base this opinion on two grounds:

1. It has a comprehensive built-in customization panel, and2. It’s actually a child theme that operates on the Genesis Framework.

Reason #1: Prose has a comprehensive built-in customization panel

Prose is StudioPress’ “”build a website from scratch”” template. In order to do this, StudioPress developed a comprehensive panel in which you can easily and quickly design your website.

Also, Prose comes with pretty much no design. Essentially you get a naked minimalist WordPress theme but with the power of the Genesis Framework. Which brings me to my second reason for proclaiming Prose as the best minimalist WordPress theme.

Reason #2: Prose Operates on the Genesis Framework

The Genesis Framework operates as a parent and child theme configuration. The parent is Genesis, the design and style is dictated by a child theme.

Why not just customize Genesis the parent theme?

Because when you update Genesis (all themes get updated), you’ll lose your customization work. When you design your website on a child theme, when you update Genesis, your customization remains unaffected. This is one of the major benefits of the parent / child theme set up.

Before I moved my sites to Genesis, I resisted upgrading my themes because I knew I’d have to do a bunch of work. Now updating is simple and no work (as long as you restrict all customization and design on your child theme).

Moreover, Genesis has an “”update now”” button in the WordPress dashboard. Just click the “”update Genesis now”” button and you’re done. No more updating via your CPanel in your hosting service.

Premium themes such as Genesis drive innovation

In the early days of WordPress, there wasn’t a huge difference between premium (paid) themes and free themes. Your choice came down to design. Premium themes promoted the fact they paid more attention to design.

Now, however, premium theme developers are constantly pushing the envelope on WordPress innovation. In my view, StudioPress, with Genesis, is a leader in theme innovation.

StudioPress themes were my first WordPress paid theme purchase. I liked their design. I also liked the navigation flexibility and the Featured Posts feature their themes offer. Since then, I’ve bought many other premium themes to see what else is available (I’ve stopped using free themes a long time ago). In the end, after much testing and toying with many themes, most of my websites are built on the Genesis Framework.

Changing your mind about your design – consider the following scenario:

You buy a minimalist WordPress theme (or use a free one). You spend some time designing it, but then aren’t pleased with the design and wish to use a pre-designed theme. Chances are part of your design process is configuring navigation and layout. If you use Prose on the Genesis Framework, all you need to do is install another child theme and your navigation and layout configuration remains generally the same (the home page may change depending on the home page of the new child theme).

If you don’t use a parent / child theme set up, then when you install a new theme, you start from scratch. My point is swapping child themes reduces your overall work in the long run. I know, because I’ve gone through this process more than once with and without the Genesis Framework.

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