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Why is WordPress Blog Better than Blogger

By on December 15, 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

Why is WordPress Blog Better than Blogger.com?
Here, we are comparing WordPress Blog with Blogger.com and out of these two, there is only one winner that stands out. These are the two most well-known blog hosts in the blogging community. Both of these hosts provide free hosting services for quite some time and it is their unique features that distinguish the better one. It is their services and features that influences our decision to choose which blog host. Thus to start the competition, their features will be compared to come up with the winner.
Free and Tailor-made
Both are free blogging hosts and allow the users to create as many blogs as they want. With optional paid upgrade, users can utilize additional features to improve their blogs.

Principle
Blogger is Google-owned while WordPress used open source project. WordPress offers more flexibility and reliability as compared to Blogger, and it is very useful especially to more advanced blogging community.

Themes
WordPress and Blogger both offer a variety of brilliant themes for the users to choose according to their own theme and needs. Themes are useful in giving a blog its uniqueness as compared to other blogs, and even the fastidious users managed to find a theme that suits them from these two hosts. Both of them provide features that allow users to design their own web page.

WordPress has limited customization compared to Blogger in terms of additional coding. Blogger allows access to coding allowing more customization than WordPress. However, WordPress counter this weakness by allowing the users to change themes as often as they want in an instance. WordPress are constantly upgrading their themes based on feedbacks from users which enables users to select from a larger variety of themes.

Speed and easiness of blog creation
WordPress only requires 2 steps in starting up the blogging process and can be done within a couple of seconds. On the other hand, Blogger needs 3 major steps with longer time required to start blogging. WordPress wins over Blogger with it simple and fast start-up.

Defense against spam
Automatic Spam Protection in WordPress is a reliable protector against spam for published blogs. However, Blogger only protects against spam in the process of blogging, and not for published blogs. Thus, WordPress is better.

Feedbacks
WordPress offers notification of feedbacks from the visitors. This helps the blogger as feedbacks are a source of improvements. Blogger on the other hand do not provide such service.

Import
WordPress has importing feature which allows the users to import their previous blog posts in other hosts such as Blogger to WordPress. Apart from this, there are a few other importing options as well.

Page management
Page management enables users of WordPress to post up as many pages as they want in a blog post. Blogger again do not have such a features.
Additional features
WordPress has added features such as Words, Spell-Check and Autosave which are similar to those in Microsoft Word. This allows the users to edit their text blogs and check for mistakes without the need to read the whole post after writing. Autosave is important when power failures occur as it allows users to save the work and not losing everything. These features are definitely a convenience to the users and provide security over their works.

It is an easy win for WordPress over Blogger with their features which provide simple and easy to understand steps in creating blog posts. WordPress definitely has advantage over Blogger in terms of attracting larger number of users due to their unique features not provided by other web hosts.

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WordPress 3.0 Nav Menu Management Introductory Screencast

By on December 8, 2011 in Randy Roedl

The Menu Manager is one of my favorite additions to WordPress 3.0 as it makes WordPress an even more robust content management system (CMS). I’ve recorded a short introduction to the new Nav Menu highlighting the various features and how to use them. One of my favorite functions is the ability to add custom links to your nav bar. This allows you to have links in your nav bar that go anywhere on the web you’d like. For more great content: dmiracle.com. Dawud Miracle, Build Your Following…Build Your Business. (sorry for resolution problems)

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Free Hosting vs Paid Hosting

By on December 7, 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

Free Hosting vs. Paid Hosting

If you’re just starting out in the webmaster arena then you’ll probably either already be debating between a free host or paid host or you will be soon. A lot of new webmasters aren’t too confident with what there doing and feel that they may not know how to do anything which is one of the reasons why people choose using a free host. There are tons of free blog hosts out there which allow you too create your very own blog on their servers for no charge at all. This means you could potentially make money without ever spending a dime of your own money, but there are downsides to using a free host.

Sure most people talk about how new webmasters should use a free host because it will allow them to test out how to run a blog and will give them valuable experience. Now this is correct in the fact that the person would learn what it takes too run a blog, but then once they do feel confident with blogging they’ll want too move on to their own domain. Now the problem with this is that you won’t be able too take your blog with you and therefore you’ll need to start from scratch from again which isn’t always fun. This is why I recommend starting out with your own paid hosting right from the beginning. For the price that it costs for a domain and a small blog hosting package nowadays there is no reason too be using free hosts.

It will cost you no more then $20 too get your first domain and first months of hosting paid for and from there you can begin making your blog and you actually will own it. On a free blog host you don’t really ever own your blog, but with your own domain and hosting you’re the complete owner to your blog and nobody will be able too take that from you. Free blog hosts have the possibilities of closing down in the future and then all of your hard work would also be lost.

I tend to not enjoy leaving my blogs in the hands of someone else and I personally have never used a free blog host and never will. When you have a successful blog on a free host not many people really care and your monetization methods are slimmer for private advertisements. Private ads are a huge part of blogging monetization and without the option you’re cutting yourself short. When you have a blog on its own domain then you’ll easily be able too sell links, banners and more once you get traffic.

The benefits of coughing up $20 to own your blog is well worth it and can save you from lots of headaches down the road. You never want too leave your web properties in the hand of someone else and by using a free blog host you’re doing exactly this. Now for children and teenagers I understand using a free blog host, but if you’re an adult and serious about giving the online world a chance then you shouldn’t be scared about paying $20 for a domain and hosting as this will be the least of your investments.

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WordPress Company Sites

By on December 4, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

A decade ago, it is not surprising and embarrassing if large corporation did not have their own websites. Now, a company without its own website loses its credibility and respect due to vast demand in online business. WordPress websites are made for companies and individuals to compete in this competitive cyber world. Whether it is for commercial or personal purpose, websites are staples in the Internet as a form of communication approach. The success of a website depends on how appealing it is to search engines. To make websites easily accessible, WordPress are created to be SEO friendly.
WordPress can be customized easily to optimize search. The term ‘SEO’ which stands for search engine optimization, is used as a tool to gauge traffic and volume of a website. It is not difficult to change WordPress URL into a more SEO friendly one with a few simple steps. Users just need to change and update their permalink structures. The reason behind this is to create a new SEO keyword-friendly URL structure. Bloggers need not worry about their old URL because all incoming links which are associated with the old URL will be directed to the latest optimized URL.
Being a platform of blogs and commercial websites, WordPress is user- friendly in terms of site administration and configuration. Users do not have to be highly- skilled in IT knowledge but to learn a few advanced technical optimization to prevent duplicate contents and make their blogs SEO friendly. Some useless archives in the blog need to be disabled to avoid duplicates which will adversely affect blog ranking in search result. It is also wise to exclude unnecessary links and pagination.
Using suitable WordPress themes can shoot your blog to stardom with better SEO. Users can download SEO friendly templates to revamp their blogs to increase popularity and readership. The secret to choose the best template that fits your blog is the matching the theme with blog contents and blog name. Search engines will easily recognize the keywords and WordPress theme used when the blog fulfills certain SEO metrics such as highlighting its contents, onsite optimization and appropriate look and feel.
On top of that, WordPress is blog- publishing software that is compatible to many useful and SEO friendly plug- ins. Killer plug –ins like Comment Luv, Feed Footer and Who Sees Ads give your blog more functionality. WordPress is already great software by itself. With enhanced features by plug –ins, your blog will be more manageable and SEO friendly. Plug – in like Google XML Sitemaps helps to make your blog more visible for search spiders. Marking the online presence of your blog through sitemaps makes you a more successful blogger.
Also, WordPress blog is made to host a more well- structured layout. It is a design stage for corporation and individuals that need no fancy design features. Moreover, design features such as Flash and Javascript might hamper search effort as they are not SEO friendly. Search engines prefer simple but loud layouts that clearly reflect the identity of the website. WordPress websites are not heavily designed so that the websites can appear easily and quickly in the search result.
You can also optimize your WordPress front page with texts. Texts, preferably permanent ones, are personalized to make blogs more visible in search engines. More tags on the front page also optimize search especially the unique ones. You can even replace the “Read More” link with something more meaningful to your every post. This little thing makes a huge difference in your WordPress SEO.
To conclude, many people underestimated the power of SEO in elevating their WordPress websites to greater height. Through intelligent comprehension and understanding of SEO, blogging is not a mere entertainment anymore, but a sign of success in blogosphere.

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Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website

By on November 30, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website?

Once upon a time the WordPress CMS (content management system) was designed for blogging sites, which could be created easily by the bloggers themselves. As the platform became more robust over the last few years, WordPress has come to be considered as the basis for traditional and e-commerce web-sites as well as just for blogs. It can be the perfect way to go for
your business if you use a professional web developer.

The Advantages of a Professionally Built WordPress Website

For a simple personal blog site, where graphic design and flexibility are not so important, you may be able to get by with a do-it-yourself site that is hosted by WordPress. However, such a hosted site (“”yourbusiness””.wordpress.com) is not recommended for your business. Your business should have a professional set up a
self-hosted web-site, with its own domain (like “”yourbusiness””.com). You will be able to display ads, have more control of SEO (search engine optimization) and have all the flexibility you need into the future.

While the WordPress development platform is fairly easy to learn for someone with web programming experience, a do-it-yourselfer, with no programming experience is very likely to have trouble tackling this endeavor. The professional who is familiar with web development, can navigate the nuances and get you a better, sharper result in far less time. And, if you do attempt to build this website, and you get stuck, then a professional can generally come to the rescue.

Your Site Can be Up and Running Quickly

The beauty of this type of web site, that is based on a CMS, is that a professional web developer can build your site in a straightforward manner from a starting theme and customize it for your needs. Then you, the not-so-programming-savvy site owner, can add content and post updates with relative ease.

Your web developer can get the job done generally much more quickly than with traditional programming in HTML or php or JavaScript. Yet, this professional will have those web languages at their disposal, if needed, to make customizations not supported by WordPress or your starting theme. Also, if you want to have your existing traditional web-site ported to WordPress, then knowledge of traditional web development languages and techniques is a must.

You get so many advantages right off the bat via the myriad plug-ins written for WordPress by independent programmers. Your web professional will know how to utilize these plug-ins to the fullest for your company’s site. The following, can be done very quickly:

– Adding protective backup support- Great web metrics like Google Analytics- Traffic enhancers like SEO- Photo and media galleries- Being able to easily print your web-pages in print-friendly format

What is the Cost to Create Your WordPress Website?

The cost of creating your site will depend primarily on five things:

1. The number and size of the web-pages2. Does your content exist in publishable form3. How fancy you want your graphics, photos and other media4. Whether you will have an e-commerce site (i.e. be selling things)5. Is this a brand new web-site or will it be created from an existing site

Say a website for a small law office has a few pages of credentials and biographies of the counsels plus contact information, with 15 total web pages. This site would typically cost a lot less than a website that is a virtual store with a two hundred page catalog, a shopping cart, etc.

Making Your Site Better Over Time

One of the great advantages of a WordPress site is that it is fairly straightforward for a web professional to take your simple website and add the latest features over time. After a while, you may want to change aspects of the site, such as how it looks, its navigation or to add e-commerce (if not already there). The original designer/developer or another professional can get the job done much more quickly than if the web-site were built with traditional programming methods.

What Are You Waiting For?

So if you want a new website for your business, then you should consider having a web professional build one that’s polished and maintainable. This will help to attract and keep your customers’ attention.

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Updated WordPress.com – Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog

By on November 28, 2011 in Randy Roedl

Chris Abraham walks you through how to join the fastest-growing and most elegant free blogging services, WordPress.com. Go from the simple acts of joining all the way through set up and administration. Become a blogger in less than and hour. Most folks only need the first 15 minutes to get you started. Chris is a professional blogging instructor. Enjoy! All of you have been asking me to update my step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress.com as a blogging platform — please check it out and please let me know what I have missed.

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Why use Sideblog in WordPress

By on November 25, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Why use Sideblog in WordPress?
For the blogging community of WordPress, it is well-known that there are lots of plugins available for your blogging experience. It would be impossible for one to utilize all of them and not all are suitable for your taste and style. Thus it takes time to learn the advantages and disadvantages of each of the plugins and whether they are serving the purposes they were built for. Some of the plugins are known to make your sites wonderful, while there are some that are just disasters.
One of the popular plugins is Sideblog. It is a small blog that sits in your sidebar. Here, you can post short entries on anything such as personal updates, recommendations of websites, links or updates of your blog.
Why should you use a Sideblog? There are several benefits for using Sideblog. You will be able to obtain more frequent updates. There are active bloggers who update several times a day, however for those who do not there will be a period of inactivity of their blogs. The only update they are getting is from the comments of the readers and visitors. A Sideblog will be useful here as it allows you to break up the inactive period.
For those who do not have sufficient time to post up a full blog post, Sideblog is useful as it allows the bloggers to post up short and quick updates. This is helpful to those who have a thought or update to share, but the amount of time is limited.
There are some readers who only read from RSS, and thus they may never have visited your blog although they may be loyal readers to your blogs. A Sideblog is separated from your main blog post feed, and thus readers will check in often to read the posts on your Sideblog. This will not only increase the number of visitors to your site, but also giving them a chance to leave comments or ad clicks.
With Sideblog, you will be able to add links to other sites that your friends are blogging, even if they are non-related to the contents of your blog. It comes with options such as preventing the search robots to search the Sideblog, and thus Sideblog allows you to add non-related links to your site. With this, you will be able to gain more friends by linking your sites to theirs and to link to friends that you have made, but cannot be linked from your main content.
Sideblog also allows the bloggers to show some of their true sides. In the blogging community, professionalism is important and bloggers work hard to retain this in their posts. This leads to good quality of articles they produced. With this plugin, a blogger will be able to show a little more of their true self. Sideblog is more personal compared to the main contents of a blog site.
The reasons to why should you use Sidebar plugin in your blogs are listed as above. There are positive feedbacks from the blogging community on this plugin.

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Why should you use plugins for WordPress

By on November 22, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Why should you use plugins for WordPress?
The default WordPress comes with only basic features. Thus to make your blogs more colourful and attractive, there is a large variety of plugins available to suit what you want and your taste. These plugins will not only enhance your experience as the owner and the blogger, but also to make it more pleasant for the readers to read your blogs, leave comments or to link to your blog site.
Some of the useful plugins for WordPress users are listed as below. One of the useful plugin is WP Cache. This plugin works by caching WordPress pages and storing them in a static file for future use. It is very useful especially if you have a site with low performance server or high traffic. Instead of loading and compiling the whole PHP code before building a page from the database, WP Cache will use the files stored in the static file when needed to save more time.
For those who are selling things on their blog sites, WP eCommerce is an useful plugin. It is easy to use and you can setup the shop within a few minutes through the Admin panels. It is a shopping cart plugin for WordPress users who are selling products or services on their blog sites. There is a wide range of setting for your product or service such as downloadable products, promotions, coupon codes or product variations.
Intouch Ajax contact form is another plugin for WordPress blogs. This contact form has been known to be useful and it filters all spams. Apart from filtering all spam messages, it has the option where you can customize the email subject, addition of form fields and thank you messages. It allows you to insert a custom-made contact form and the information will be sent via email.
Ajax Post Rating plugin adds a 5-star Ajax rating system to your pages and posts. It allows readers to rate your pages and posts either daily, weekly or monthly. Another similar plugin is Ajax Polls. This plugin is very flexible with lots of features. Other option available for this plugin is it allows you to archive the polls and the layout is customizable via Admin panels.
Another useful plugin is Ajax Comment plugin. It is a simple but effective comment plugin as it checks whether all fields are filled correctly, makes sure that there is no duplication of comments and it has flood protection capability too.
Digg This is another WordPress plugin which detects incoming links from Digg.com website to your WordPress posts. It will then automatically display a link to the post from Digg.com so that people will be able to digg your story. An email will be sent to the admin of the site once a dig is recognized.
The above are only a few of thousands of plugins for WordPress bloggers. It is worth the time to research around to search for plugins that will enhance your blogging experience. Plugins are a necessity not only for the blogger, but also for the readers.

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