The Power of WordPress Themes Starting and maintaining a blog is not easy. One must think of ways to expose his blog in order to gain more audience and fan following. Aside from that, blogs usually contain articles, but articles are not enough to attract visitors. One must be able to have an interactive blog that keeps the visitor stay and read the blog. A blog that has lot of contents and eye catching designs are also one of the ways to keep the audience entertained and recommend the blog to other people. In order to do this, one must have such software that will manage his or her blog without delving into too much technicalities. A blog with a WordPress theme is very advantageous when it comes to its creation and management. WordPress is an open source CMS, content management system. What does this mean? This means that one, WordPress is free and will always be free. Second, a community of programmers, web developers, and enthusiast protects WordPress from any potential hacks and security lapses. Third, these people regularly try to develop WordPress and its plug-ins in order to improve its functions and features. A CMS is a content management system solely developed for websites, blogs and web pages so that they won’t have to hard code every aspect of their website. Why use a CMS? Better yet, why use WordPress among the other CMS? Here are some reasons:• It is free, has open -source licensing, has lots of WordPress themes available for download• It has lots of available plug-ins, widgets, and applications that can go with one’s web design• It is easy to use, outputs great end product, and gives you freedom in one’s design• Powered by PHP and MySql, WordPress has the ability to create and manage a website while at the same time, it has the ability to support and integrate a database to the website.• WordPress won the best open source CMS award on 2009 because of its excellence in the field of CMS and web development. Now, these are the reason why WordPress have an edge over other CMS. WordPress themes are available for download and it can be used in one’s web site, blog, or web page. This way, you will no longer worry about its core designs; WordPress themes would do it for the user. Of course, one would have the option to change or edit the WordPress them if it would not satisfy his tastes. By using WordPress one can hasten the design process while at the same time the quality of the site won’t be compromised. Web development takes a lot of time, WordPress however is a development tool made for blogs and websites that does not need too much abstraction but at the same time it has the elements of art and beauty. By using a CMS to manage one’s blog, it gives the user simple clicks here and there to update or change his blog without going into too much trouble. WordPress is here to make designing, creating, and maintaining a site easy. The Power of WordPress Themes
Tag Archives | Cms Content
How to Create a WordPress Theme
By Randy R on February 28, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
How to Create a WordPress Theme As most bloggers know, WordPress is an amazing platform for blogs, personal sites, businesses and portfolios to publish content, news, pictures and anything it comes to your mind. It’s very powerful and nowadays, it’s not just for blogs, most people are using it as a CMS (Content Management System). WordPress is for free & incredibly secure! It’s open source and one of the best thing about it, is that you can integrate plugins very easily from your WordPress admin panel. You can search for plugins all over the web, in the WordPress official website (WordPress.org) or anywhere else. How to Create a WordPress Theme
Designing a theme can be a hard task, specially because you can get a bit lost if you know nothing about html or php, but it’s definitely not impossible. With patience and perseverance anything is possible. Looking around the web you can find several interesting tutorials, very useful and easy to understand, they guide you step by step on how to use the codes and tags, but very few of them are precise about what it takes to build a WordPress theme from scratch and what you need to know beforehand. They usually assume you already know about html and CSS. First of all, you need to understand how HTML works. HTML is essential to learn how to create a WordPress theme. You need to find a way to learn and get familiar with the basic html tags and commands. How to Create a WordPress Theme
Use Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage to play around a bit and get used to the html structure. Without HTML, you are completely lost, because you are going to deal with a lot of coding! Simply Google and key something like this ""learn html from scratch"", ""html for begginers"", ""html for newbies"", ""html step by step"". After learning the basic html tags and functions, you need to learn how to style a webpage, that is to say, in other words, you need to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets ). Learning how to Style an html page will allow you to style a WordPress theme, with pics, colors, font sizes, etc. Why is this so important? HTML + CSS = CSS TEMPLATE. In order to build a WordPress theme, we need to create an HTML CSS layout first. It is the easiest way to build a WordPress Theme. How to Create a WordPress Theme
That would be an html page styled using CSS. As we already mentioned before, with CSS you can control the different font sizes, font styles, colors, layer positions, margins, etc. Once you’ve created a CSS template, THEN you will be able to easily convert it to a WordPress Theme. So, to sum up the first phase: 1- Learn html. 2- Learn CSS. 3- Create a CSS Layout. 4- Convert the CSS Layout to a fully functional WordPress Theme. Remember it’s a process that takes time but it’s definitely worth it if you aim to work freelance to make some extra money! don’t be afraid, use Google and search for tutorials, play around with Dreamweaver, and you’ll be able to create a WordPress theme! How to Create a WordPress Theme
Publishing On The Web With The Thesis WordPress Theme1
By Randy R on February 2, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
Publishing On The Web With The Thesis WordPress Theme
Publishing on the web has never been easier, thanks to the WordPress CMS. WordPress is blogging software used to create a website or blog. WordPress is a very easy to use, open source, publishing system, freely obtained from WordPress.ORG. One of the main attractions of WordPress is that it is absolutely free. In less than five minutes, anyone can be publishing on the web, building html websites, generating online income, or simply expressing their point of view.
The WordPress CMS (Content Management Software), which is software designed to easily allow the creation, distribution, and management of content for websites, is currently in version 3.0. It is a feature-rich piece of blogging software that is very easy to use and has a template driven design. This means that WordPress uses templates to generate the pages of a website, dynamically. Every WordPress installation includes a file editor that can be used to edit these templates, and other files, in a standardized environment.
The WordPress CMS is compatible with thousands of themes. Most of these themes are free, though there are many so-called Premium themes for sale, such as the Thesis WordPress theme. The Thesis WordPress theme is my theme of choice and almost every website that I create uses it. The Thesis WordPress theme is one of many professionally designed themes that go several steps beyond what you get in a free theme. There are tons of great free themes, including the Twenty Ten theme, which is the current default for the WordPress CMS.
Publishing on the web with a premium theme, such as the Thesis WordPress theme, gives several distinct advantages over the free themes. The WordPress CMS itself comes with an outstanding support community, however, support communities for premium themes are usually better able to help with theme specific problems. With the thousands of free themes, finding help for the particular theme you are using has the chance of being problematic.
With publishing on the web made this easy, it is small wonder why WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging software. There are literally millions of websites that utilize the WordPress CMS, and the rate is growing at an astonishing rate. More and more, professional web designers are turning to WordPress for their clients. The rapid development, power, flexibility, search engine optimization, and extreme ease of use, permits designers to reduce time to go from initial consultation to live, online website in a fraction of what it used to take. The WordPress CMS is definitely the way to build a website.
5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One
By Randy R on January 11, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One? WordPress is arguably the most used CMS (Content Management System) online. It is partly due to its flexibility as a blog platform, and partly due to the large number of plugins and themes made by its large community of users. However, this huge choice of plugins can easily confuse a new user. Therefore, for those of you who are unsure which plugins to use, here’s a list of the top 5 must use WordPress plugins: 1. Akismet – Akismet is pre-bundled when you install WordPress. It is made by the same company that makes WordPress. Akismet is a spam blocking plugin that works very efficiently to block out spam comments. If you run a large blog, you really need this plugin. The amount of spam doing the rounds online is tremendous. If you were to moderate these comments one by one, you would have to spend hours maintaining your blog. Akismet makes the whole process automatic and saves you countless hours of effort. 2. All in One SEO – What good is a blog if no one reads it? With All in One SEO plugin, all your in-site SEO needs will be taken care of automatically. It will create meta tags, meta descriptions, etc. on its own. If you want your blog to be found by Google or other search engines, this is a must-have plugin. 3. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin automatically creates a sitemap of your blog to aid Google’s spiders in indexing it. Sitemaps are just what you think they mean: a map of your site. They can make it much easier for Google to find and index your site, so this plugin is a must have, regardless of the size of your blog. 4. One Click Plugin Updater – If you’re like me, you probably hate to update your plugins one-by-one. Most plugins have several updates a month, and updating them can be a real pain. One Click Plugin Updater simplifies the whole process by giving you the option to update all your plugins with a single click. A huge timesaver if you find yourself using too many plugins. 5. WordPress Database Backup – You never know when some unfortunate accident may befall your blog. Once, one very large blog of mine got hacked and consequently, I lost my entire database. I didn’t have a backup database, so I had to create everything from scratch (something that took me over 100 hours). With WordPress Database Backup, you can get it to make automatic backups and mail it to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. So there you have it: 5 plugins that are essential to any WordPress installation!
5 Easy Steps To Build A WordPress Website
By Randy R on January 6, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
5 Easy Steps To Build A WordPress Website
Are you planning to build your own website and yet you don’t have enough technical knowledge and don’t have enough budget to hire someone to build it for you? Worry no more because building a website is not really difficult as it sounds and it cost only a few bucks. With WordPress, it is now possible for ordinary people to create their own website easily. What is WordPress? WordPress was launched in 2003 as a blogging platform, but it has evolve as a legitimate CMS (content management system) in fact it has numerous awards already, in 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award, in 2009 WordPress won the best Open Source CMS Award.
And in 2010 WordPress has won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards. More than 10% of the top 1 million websites uses WordPress already. Perhaps its growth is phenomenal because it is really easy to use. Here Are the Five Easy Steps in building your own WordPress website starting from scratch:
1. Choose a Domain Name – A domain name is the address that you type in your browser that ends with a.com,.net,.org and etc. You can register in an accredited domain registrar which is accredited by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN. There are hundreds of registrars out there, and the price of each domain is usually lower than $15 per year.
2. Host your Domain – A server that rents you a space so that your site will be visible on the internet. This would cost about less than $10 per month for a shared hosting account which is already reliable.
3. Installing WordPress Software To your Web Host – You can install or upload WordPress software using an ftp client like Filezilla or some hosting companies provide one install click to make it easier.
4. Making a static page – It is important to make a static page so that your site does not look like a blog. You can make a static page easily in your WordPress dashboard.
5. Selecting A Theme – There are thousands of free themes that you can choose, themes are extremely important because the appearance of your site depends on it. There are also premium themes available that are quit expensive but free themes are good enough. The bottom line here is that WordPress is really a great software to start-up your new website.
Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website
By Randy R 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.
How to Create a WordPress Theme1
By Randy R on November 4, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
How to Create a WordPress Theme
As most bloggers know, WordPress is an amazing platform for blogs, personal sites, businesses and portfolios to publish content, news, pictures and anything it comes to your mind. It’s very powerful and nowadays, it’s not just for blogs, most people are using it as a CMS (Content Management System). WordPress is for free & incredibly secure! It’s open source and one of the best thing about it, is that you can integrate plugins very easily from your WordPress admin panel. You can search for plugins all over the web, in the WordPress official website (WordPress.org) or anywhere else.
Designing a theme can be a hard task, specially because you can get a bit lost if you know nothing about html or php, but it’s definitely not impossible. With patience and perseverance anything is possible.
Looking around the web you can find several interesting tutorials, very useful and easy to understand, they guide you step by step on how to use the codes and tags, but very few of them are precise about what it takes to build a WordPress theme from scratch and what you need to know beforehand. They usually assume you already know about html and CSS.
First of all, you need to understand how HTML works. HTML is essential to learn how to create a WordPress theme. You need to find a way to learn and get familiar with the basic html tags and commands. Use Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage to play around a bit and get used to the html structure. Without HTML, you are completely lost, because you are going to deal with a lot of coding! Simply Google and key something like this “”learn html from scratch””, “”html for begginers””, “”html for newbies””, “”html step by step””.
After learning the basic html tags and functions, you need to learn how to style a webpage, that is to say, in other words, you need to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets ). Learning how to Style an html page will allow you to style a WordPress theme, with pics, colors, font sizes, etc.
Why is this so important? HTML + CSS = CSS TEMPLATE. In order to build a WordPress theme, we need to create an HTML CSS layout first. It is the easiest way to build a WordPress Theme. That would be an html page styled using CSS. As we already mentioned before, with CSS you can control the different font sizes, font styles, colors, layer positions, margins, etc.
Once you’ve created a CSS template, THEN you will be able to easily convert it to a WordPress Theme.
So, to sum up the first phase:
1- Learn html. 2- Learn CSS. 3- Create a CSS Layout. 4- Convert the CSS Layout to a fully functional WordPress Theme.
Remember it’s a process that takes time but it’s definitely worth it if you aim to work freelance to make some extra money! don’t be afraid, use Google and search for tutorials, play around with Dreamweaver, and you’ll be able to create a WordPress theme!
Installing WordPress Plugins – A Little Goes A Long Way
By Randy R on August 20, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes
Installing WordPress Plugins – A Little Goes A Long Way
WordPress is the most popular blogging and CMS (content management system) platform used by inexperienced webmasters. The reason it is so popular is because you can add plugins to increase the functionality of the site without having to have any kind of technical knowledge. However, there are some very important factors you should know about before adding plugins to your WordPress website.
What is WordPress and What is a Plugin?
WordPress, on its own, is a very powerful and stable program. It is an OpenSource (free) program that is installed on a database and is designed to manage the content that you input into it. It is updated regularly to correct any known issues or to add more features to the core program. You should always make sure you are running the newest version on your website. Upgrading to the newest version is as easy as the click of a button in your user dashboard.
Plugins are scripts that are developed as add-ons to the existing program. These give you the ability to add new features to the program to help customize the site to your needs. Because WordPress is OpenSource, it means that any web developer can use the source code or API to create new scripts for the program.
Caution is Needed When Adding Plugins
Because plugins are created by all different developers, they are not always compatible with each other. When compatibility issues arise, it can make the database unstable. In other words, the engine driving your website will begin to fail. This can result in your site crashing.
Another reason to exercise caution when installing plugins is because every one you add on to your site adds more code to the core program. Adding too many will bloat the code and make your website slow and sluggish. It can also hamper the ability of search engine bots from crawling your website effectively.
Which WordPress plugins should you install?
I cannot give you a definite answer to this since every webmaster and every website has different needs and functions. What I can advise is this; only install the plugins you really need. Typically this would be an SEO plugin such as All In One SEO, a database backup plugin such as WP Database Backup, a contact form plugin such as Easy Contact, and a social plugin such as Sociable or Share This. These are the plugins I consider to be essential.
Any other plugins you should only install one at a time and tested for compatibility before adding any more. Always do a database backup before adding new plugins as a safety net in case any issues arise and you need to restore your website.
WordPress plugins are wonderful inventions and can help you create the website of your dreams, but before you go on a wholesale plugin installation spree, be aware of the consequences.