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How to Make a WordPress Theme – Use the Incredible Artisteer Theme Creator Software

By on September 21, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Make a WordPress Theme – Use the Incredible Artisteer Theme Creator Software

How to make a WordPress theme – no this isn’t a tutorial on php programming, or a crash course on HTML or any other technical instruction.

If you are using WordPress, whether it is actually for blogging, a general CMS, an article directory or one of the other type uses that this incredible platform lends itself to, you will inevitably get in the situation that we all arrive in, where to get the ideal theme for your site.

Most people probably have no real desire to learn the tedious scripting necessary to build a WordPress theme from scratch, although most of us have probably cut and copied/pasted blocks of code to try and get a theme to our liking, or at least as far as our skills would permit.

After finding Artisteer a good while back, I now know how to make a WordPress theme. I simply start the program and use the menu-driven interface to setup a theme to look exactly as I want it to. There’s no more paying for custom or premium themes, no more searching for hours on end looking for a decent looking WordPress theme that thousands of other sites aren’t also using. Artisteer is both easy to use, but also very powerful in that it allows the user to change nearly everything in the theme aesthetics that you could possibly want.

If you are not familiar with Artisteer, a detailed look at the company site will give the details of the power of this nifty piece of software, which by the way, won the Software Product of the Year (2008) (
The Red Ferrett Journal). It not only works well with WordPress, but will also export themes/templates in HTML, to Blogger, and also to other CMS-type programs.

For less than what you would pay for a single WordPress premium theme, you will actually own Artisteer and have the capability to create as many themes/templates as you need.

The software is a very good value for the reasonable cost (offered in two versions), is very stable, and the company behind this quality product regularly offers updates.

If you have WordPress working just as you want it to, and the only thing left is to make it look just right, Artisteer WordPress theme generator is just what you need.

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Thinking-to-quit-your-day-job

By on September 20, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Thinking to quit your day job?

Are you thinking to quit your day job? If so, why? If you are thinking that you’ll be making more money working online – then I’d say – you should think once again. It’s not because I don’t think there is enough opportunity. But it’s because there are a lot of things that you may not be knowing.

Money can be made online through different ways. But it may not be bringing you money on a monthly basis like your day job if you don’t do things the right way. There are a lot of people, earning some real money online on a monthly basis. But they would be much experienced than you. The benefit of doing a day job is that – you’ll be guaranteed an amount at the end of the month whatsoever – whether you get works or not. The company for which you are working is responsible for delivering you money at the right time. But if you are gonna work online, there is no such time frame or guarantee that you’ll be getting money. You may or may not get money earlier or later than a particular month.

Your online earnings will depend on the work that you are doing online. If you are working directly for the clients, then you may be either getting the amount upfront or after completing the work half or fully. On the other hand if there is a middleman between you and the actual client, then you may have to wait some time before you get the payment in your hand.

If you are with some skills like – designing, programming, writing, or something like that, then you could opt for this track – yup, you can make money online – and even quit your day job. But if you don’t have any such skills, then you’ll have to really work hard. And it won’t be a wise decision for you to quit your day job, if you fall under the second category of people that we mentioned above.

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WordPress – Create a New WordPress Theme (1st in a Series)

By on September 19, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress – Create a New WordPress Theme (1st in a Series)

WordPress is a wonderfully flexible blogging framework.

If you use WordPress much, you will eventually want to make some changes in the appearance of your blog.

Often the best way to give your blog a facelift is to create a new WordPress theme. The developers of WordPress have made this easy to do. This article tells you how to create a new theme. Future articles will tell you how to make visual modifications in your theme.

Note that this article presumes that you are developing on a PC or Mac and uploading your work to your Web site.

Here is the procedure for creating a new WordPress theme, in a nutshell:

1. Start with an existing theme that you want to modify.2. Copy that theme folder to a new theme folder.3. Edit the “”style”” css file in the new theme folder.4. Upload the theme folder to your Web site.5. From the WordPress Admin console, activate the new theme.

That is all you have to do.

The following sections provide detailed descriptions for implementing the above steps.

Start with an Existing Theme

Pick a theme that is already installed in your blog. It does not need to be activated, just installed. Pick one you like.

Copy the Them to a New Theme Folder

Both the old theme (the one you start with) and the new theme (the one you are creating) should be located in the themes folder of the wp-content folder.

Here is the hierarchy: main WordPress folder / wp-content / themes

If for example, you are copying the “”WordPress Default”” them to the “”John Doe”” theme, you will copy the “”default”” folder to the “”john-doe”” folder.

Edit the “”style”” css file in the new theme folder

Now that you have copied the old theme to your new theme folder, you need to edit the “”style”” css file.

Every theme has a “”style”” css file. That file starts out with some information that WordPress uses to display information about the style in the admin console. You will need to change this information. A skeletal version of this information looks like the following:

Theme Name: Theme name hereDescription: Description of theme here

Version:
Version number

Author:
Your Name

Author URI:
Your Web Site (if you have one)

Licensing Information

A filled in version would look something like the following:

Theme Name:
John Doe

Description:
This is a theme that John Doe created to for his personal Web site.

Version:
1.00

Author:
John Doe

This theme is offered under the GPL License.

Upload the Theme Folder to Your Web site

Using FTP or whatever system is in your editor/Web design software, upload the new theme folder to your Web site.

Activate the New Theme

(i) Log into your WordPress management console.(ii) On the left side of the console, about 1/2 way down, click on the “”Appearance”” link.(iii) Your theme should show up under “”Available Themes””, in the lower right hand side of the page.(iv) Click on the “”Activate”” link for your theme.

WordPress should now be using your theme.

Check the New Theme

If you want to check that you are actually using the new theme, do “”view page source”” and search for wp-content/themes/xxxxxxx where xxxxxxx is your theme name.

Summary

Creating a new WordPress theme is easy. Future articles will tell you how to change the appearance of your new theme.

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How to Install WordPress Plugins

By on September 17, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install WordPress Plugins

When it comes to WordPress plugins, there are hundreds… if not thousands to choose from. Trying to decide what’s best for you and your site can be a bit tricky.

Before we get into a lot of the “”supplementary”” plugins there are a few “”core”” plugins that EVERY WordPress site should have. These plugins are critical to ensure the success of your site AND leveraging the power of WordPress with internet marketing.

I will briefly discuss each plugin and why they are so critical:

#1 –
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress itself isn’t very SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. There are a LOT of improvements that could be made to each and every page and post that is created. All in One SEO Pack does a fantastic job of allowing you to update the title tags, meta description, and meta keyword to ensure your page/post is SEO friendly.

#2 –
Google Analytics for WordPress – It doesn’t matter how good you THINK your site is … without Google analytics you will never actually KNOW how visitors interact with your site AND how you can make it better. If you seriously want a site to succeed online and you do not have Google Analytics, or some kind of statistic tracking code installed on your site, you will NOT succeed. Simple as that.

#3 –
Google XML Sitemaps – This is a very powerful plugin for Search Engine Optimization. It ensures all your pages, even recent ones, can get indexed quickly and efficiently. Google themselves have stated that have a “”sitemap”” WILL help for indexing purposes.

#4 –
Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/eMail – This one may not be quite a critical as the above plugins but lends itself nicely to viral marketing. Giving your visitors the ability to “”share”” your website/page with others can tremendously help your SEO and traffic initiatives. This plugin will vary in importance depending on your site however I strongly recommend have this installed … just in case …

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of plugins. There are other plugins that could arguably make this list however I wanted to keep it fairly short and sweet and focus on two of the most important elements of a site TRAFFIC and TESTING.

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9 Great WordPress Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

By on September 15, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

9 Great WordPress Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

WordPress itself is a great platform to run your own blogs but WordPress plugins make it a lot easier to control spam comments, SEO, check for broken links, place revenue generating ads and to back up your WordPress database to name a few. Without these plugins you would require technical expertise way beyond the average blogger, not to mention the time plugins save in doing things like creating a “”Contact Us”” page and sorting out all those spam blog comments.

Here are the 9 plugins that I now use on all my blogs.

Akismet is a popular plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “”Comments.”” Without such a plugin your blog could easily become full of undesirable comments that you certainly do not want your readers to read.

All in One SEO Pack is Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. You can use this plugin to tweak the default options for title, description, keywords and duplicate content.

Broken Link Checker checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. There is nothing worse getting traffic to your blog and then sending them to a web page that no longer exists. Without this plugin it would takes quite some time to regularly check all the links on all your blog posts and pages.

Google AdSense, Chitika and Kontera plugins allow you to monetize your blog and make an income from an information blog.

Contact Form 7 allows you to create a “”Contact Us”” page with a form people can fill in for further information or questions about your products.

Google XML Site maps plugin will generate a special XML site map which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. Another time saving plugin.

Pretty Link will shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. No more ugly affiliate links that you have to hide under hyper-linked text.

StatPress gives real time stats for your WordPress blog. This is my preference for displaying my blog stats.

WP-DBManager manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of the database. This is probably one of the most overlooked plugins for WordPress as a backup is only needed when your blog has been hacked or has failed due to technical issues. Relying on your hosting account for backups may not be a good as you think because blogs need to be backed up regularly as they are constantly changing with new posts being added regularly.

These are only a few of the many plugins available to use on your blogs. You need to consider the nature of your blog,the niche you are blogging in and other things like are you using you WordPress blog as a blog, a sales page or just a website?

You must also be aware that some plugins for WordPress can conflict with one another and cause problems with your blog. From my experience I have had I am yet to have a problem using the above combination of plugins but one must remember that plugins are always being updated and conflicts may arise with future updates.

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Information about Pay-Per-Click Advertising

By on September 14, 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

Information about Pay-Per-Click Advertising

If you run a website or blog that sells products then you might want too consider using pay-per-click advertising too increase your revenue. Whether you sell your own products or products for affiliates doesn’t matter, although you would obviously make more if it’s your own products. Many affiliates make thousands of dollars each month though using pay-per-click advertising and it’s possible for you too as well if you know what you’re doing.

Nowadays there are lots of different pay-per-click advertising mediums available to you, but the most popular is still Google Adwords by a long shot. Of course if you want too use Adwords though then you better be prepared too pay more for your keywords then you would on other pay-per-click mediums. Some other options available too you are MSN Adcenter and Yahoo.

Basically pay-per-click advertising is where you pay for your search engine rankings. As you probably already know many keywords in the search engines have millions of results and many have been around for years. This means that getting a first page ranking on Google would take years of link building which for a company isn’t something you want too hear. Now if you use Google Adwords then you’ll be able too buy rankings for your site which appear on the first page of Google. The rankings on the left side of Google search results are all the ones who are ranking for the keyword from their SEO, and the listings on the right on the search results are the pay-per-click advertisements.

Pay-per-click search engines aren’t for new webmasters and you shouldn’t attempt using these services unless you know what you’re getting into. They can cost you a lot of money and if you’re not getting conversions then you could be in big trouble. Many keywords nowadays also cost a lot of money per click so you could be spending upwards of $100 daily depending on what you’re promoting.

The goal you should focus on when using Adwords is too find long-tail keywords that get good search traffic that you can buy for cheap. Long-tail keywords are always cheaper too purchase and you may only need to spend $10 daily for top rankings. Make sure when you buy keywords you look for keywords that are generally people looking too buy something. You don’t want keywords of people looking for free things coming too your site because they’ll leave when they see it’s not free. There are millions of keywords and it can take hours to set-up a good Adwords campaign and even then you’ll need to do a lot of tweaking.

There is definitely money too be made in pay-per-click advertising, but for newer webmasters without the huge budgets you need to focus on smaller keywords and niched products. You’ll do a lot of testing, but once you find the right combination of keywords and products then you’ll be well on your way too cashing in on the pay-per-click craze that is going on right now.

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The Difference between Web-Based Software or PC Based Software

By on September 14, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

The Difference between Web-Based Software or PC Based Software

You’ll find that as a webmaster there are plenty of tools to assist you with your marketing and promotion tactics. Each program is different though and there are some which are web-based and some which are pc-based. There is a big difference between the two and you’ll need to know the difference as it’s very important so that you don’t waste any of your money.

PC-based software programs are run on your desktop and are easily installed on your computer. Once you buy a pc-based program you’ll be able to download it and download it to your desktop immediately. It will be able to run on your computer without the need for using the internet at all. These are the programs which I personally prefer and when I have the option I always choose PC-based over web-based. The reason is it’s a lot simpler to install and it’s a lot easier to use without having to worry about anything.

A web-based software program is a program that you need to install on your hosting plan. In most cases your hosting will be able to support the software, but sometimes it won’t be able to and you’ll need to either get a better hosting plan or not get the program. Installing these programs can be a bit difficult to do if you’re new to the technical aspect of website building, but there are always plenty of instructions. Often you can pay a small premium as well in order to have the owner of the software install it for you, and this is recommended if you don’t know what you’re doing because it will save you a lot of time. Once there installed then it becomes easier to use these programs, but you still need to worry about server resources and things like this. Some automation programs that run on your hosting take up a lot of resources so often you need either a VPS or DS which can be costly.

As you can see there are some great reasons why pc-based software is a better choice then web-based software especially for those of you who are new to this industry. Tools that run on your desktop can be installed within a few clicks typically and using them is a breeze. You also don’t need to worry about having your hosting shut down for using to many server resources, or the need to invest in expensive hosting in order to use the software.

If you’re new to internet marketing and would like to use some automation tools then you should make sure there pc-based. There the same price as web-based software they just have the advantages of easy installation and no need for hosting. Hosting is expensive to purchase so when you’re new to the game you don’t want to have to invest on it. Instead make sure that the programs you purchase are pc-based, so that you don’t need to worry about problems.

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