Great WordPress Plugins: Identifying Another One Of Them Another of the great WordPress plugins that deserves special mention is ""Simple 301 Redirects"". One thing about essential WordPress plugins is that if you do not know about them or do not know how to use them, you do not realize how great a functionality you are leaving out of your content management system. ""Simple 301 Redirects"" is a good example of this. I recollect that I have been in and out of internet marketing three times over the years before this my final stay. Each time I resurfaced on the internet marketing scene, had I known about this great WordPress plugin, no doubt my search engine rankings would be higher today. I simply would have deployed it to transfer my old blog posts to the new amended/updated pages and thereby seamlessly preserved the old pages rankings. But alas, each time I resurfaced on the internet marketing scene, I simply discarded the old blog posts and posted new/updated pages of these old blog posts on my new blog without linking the two. That is one of the many setbacks great WordPress plugins like ""Simple 301 Redirects"" set out to correct. It provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web. It’s especially handy when you migrate a site to WordPress and can’t preserve your URL structure. By setting up 301 redirects from your old pages to your new pages, any incoming links will be seemlessly passed along, and their pagerank (or what-have-you) will be passed along. Note that ""age"" and ""number and nature of backlinks"" are critical factors in search engine rankings. Any action you therefore take to preserve these for your blog posts will definitely positively impact your search engine rankings. I’ll give you a perfect example here. I wrote a blog post in December 2009. At that time, I still was not as thoroughly grounded as I am now in search engine optimization (SEO) and so was not optimizing effectively for my intended keywords. I recently changed the title and made some minor adjustments to the body of the blog post and were it to be before, I would simply have left it at that. Does it strike a chord in you that anytime you do such and leave it at that you are simply beginning your SEO for that post all over again? All the backlinks to the previous post will be gone forever. So also the age, as the new blog post will now be indexed afresh while the old blog post on subsequent visits by the Google bot will read ""not found"", again compounding your crawl errors in your Google webmaster tools. Note that all these ultimately negatively impact your page rank. So what did I do? I simply inserted my old url in the ""Simple 301 Redirects"" interface and pointed it to my new url which I also inserted in the interface and saved. Just as simple as that and wow! a whole lot has happened with those simple steps. The backlinks and age of my old blog post will be seamlessly passed over to my new blog post and the page rank of my web page preserved. Let me explain another purpose to which you can deploy this plugin that I have identified as one of the great WordPress plugins. If you go into your webmaster tools account, you will see indicated, crawl errors that resulted while the search engines were trying to crawl your web pages. You can rectify some of these errors and thereby have a more ""efficient"" website which will impact positively on your search engine rankings by utilizing this plugin to redirect some incorrectly specified links to their originally intended destination. Those links that you have control over and can still amend such as your backlinks in forums, you can make amends to. But what of incorrectly specified links that you no longer have access to? For example, links on your articles republished on other sites. This is again better explained with an illustration. I erroneously inserted a link in one of my articles which was republished on another site and noticed the error from ""crawl errors"" in my Google webmaster tools account. The link led nowhere i.e. 404 page and I subsequently redirected it to its originally intended destination, thereby preserving that backlink. This becomes very important when you realize that you can have many of such errors over time.The ""Simple 301 Redirects"" plugin’s many uses can only be limited by your imagination. In summary, the ""Simple 301 Redirects"" is one more of the great WordPress plugins.
Tag Archives | Content Management System
How to Create WordPress Theme. Divine Elemente Workflow
Divine Elemente (www.divine-project.com) is a Photoshop plugin which is intended for PSD to WordPress conversion. This short 5-minute video gives the information about Divine Elemente and its work – (0:10) Installation, – (0:35) New PSD template creation, – (2:15) WordPress theme publishing, etc. If you are new to Divine Elemente, you should watch this video first. What’s the difference between this video and the previous one? This video is with the real human voice 😉
How to Make WordPress Themes1
How to Make WordPress Themes
Many blogger swear by WordPress as the best platform for blogs, websites and content platforms to publish content, pictures, videos etc. Though popular for blog, people are using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is open source and the best thing that makes it an absolute favorite with web developers and bloggers is that you can incorporate plugins effortlessly from your WordPress admin panel. You can get these plugins by doing a simple Google search or through the official WordPress site.
You may have seen several WordPress themes and may feel that even you can develop such theme. For those who want to know how to make a WordPress theme, here are some pointers:
1. Designing a theme does require hard work and patience. It is always better to know html or php and the good thing is there are many resources online that can tell you how to learn them.
2. Go to an html and php tutorial website online and find how to use tags, codes and plug-ins. If you are a novice, go to a tutorial site that shows you to build a WP theme right from the beginning teaching you the basics of html and CSS. For those who already know these, you can also go to tutorial sites that show you how to build themes assuming you know these two programming languages.
3. HTML is the most important language, which is absolutely necessary needed to make WordPress theme. So make sure you learn those basic HTML commands and coding. You can make use of Microsoft Frontpage or even Dreamweaver to experiment with HTML codes.
4. Styling a webpage and jazzing it up is the next thing to do after you become familiar with html functionalities. This is where your CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) knowledge come in. When you know CSS, you will know how to make a stylish WordPress theme with colors, fonts, pictures etc.
To sum up, in order to know how to make a WordPress theme, you have to know to create the CSS template which is nothing but HTML and CSS combined. In other words, this is an HTML page stylishly done with CSS. So learn the four following things to make an attractive WordPress theme, yourself:
1. Gain knowledge about using HTML codes and tags2. Learn CSS3. Use the above two to create the CSS layout.4. Convert this CSS layout to form an attractive WordPress theme.
Best WordPress Plugins
Best WordPress Plugins
Before getting into the best WordPress plugins out there, let’s cover a couple of definitions for the uninitiated among us.
WordPress is the world’s most widely-used open source Content Management System (CMS). While it is often employed as a blog, WordPress is strong enough to run entire websites. So it isn’t just a blogging platform. WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, and has exciting features such as templates and plugins that make building fantastic websites relatively effortless. WordPress is used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites in the world, no small feat considering the breadth of options available.
Plugins are simply applications that augment the capabilities of WordPress and make it better to work with. Most plugins are free.
Here are the best WordPress plugins out there. My opinions are highly subjective, but these are plugins I want you to know about.
#1: All-in-One SEO Pack
The All-in-One SEO Pack makes on-page search engine optimization simple. For this reason, it’s my top pick. With this plugin, adding Meta tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords has never been easier. This is a good thing, as too many websites are missing these crucial elements (and missing out on online lead generation and/or online sales as a result).
#2: Askimet
Askimet allows you to quit moderating comments. It automatically checks comments left on your website against the Askimet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If it’s spam, they toss the comment out. To keep the service honest, you can analyze the spam it catches to make sure the plugin is doing its job accurately. There are two things that make using this plugin vital. One, your readers will never have to type in a CAPTCHA again. Two, your readers will never have to wait for their comment to be moderated again (this drives me nuts when we visit other blogs).
#3: Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps will produce a special XML sitemap which will allow search engines to index your blog. If that sentence makes your head hurt, just know this: it makes it easier for Google to read your website. That’s a good thing. If Google can’t or doesn’t read your website, that’s bad. You want them to read it so they can share your website with people that use the Internet. Consider this a crucial WordPress plugin if you enjoy trading your labor and/or skills for money.
#4 Subscribe to Comments Reloaded
Consider this one a cherry on the top of your delicious WordPress sundae. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded will change the way people use your blog. Without it, people just stop in, leave a comment, and never return. With this plugin, your readers can click a box saying they wish to be notified of follow-up comments via email. This email notification will (in some cases) cause the reader to return and leave a comment. This will give you more Web traffic, more comments, and it will make your blog more conversational.
#5: TweetMeme
Guy Kawasaki once called this the most important button on the Internet. It probably isn’t at that level today, but it is certainly still highly useful when it comes to getting your message to the masses. Twitter has proven to be a highly beneficial viral marketing tool. If you have something important or interesting to say, odds are Twitter will go a long way in getting your voice heard. Within the Twitter-sphere, there is nothing more valuable than a ReTweet. A ReTweet occurs when someone that reads your content re-broadcasts it to all of their followers. When this happens, viral marketing magic happens. TweetMeme makes it convenient for your blogs’ readers to ReTweet your content, which will bring you more traffic, more comments, and (hopefully) more business.
So there you have it. Those are, in my estimation, the five best WordPress plugins out there.
What Are The Top WordPress Widgets In Use For Blogging
What Are The Top WordPress Widgets In Use For Blogging?
WordPress as a content management system is very popular. In my opinion one of the main reasons for it’s popularity is the WordPress widgets. If you are new to this blogging platform you may be asking yourself “”What are widgets?””. Well, in an nutshell they give you full control of the content in the side bar of your blog. Widgets allow you to insert HTML code for banners of various shapes and sizes, they also allow you to insert contact forms otherwise known as autoresponders.
I would like to discuss the top WordPress widgets, that I use on a daily basis.
1. Wp Spamfree. This widget removes spam from your website. It finds unnecessary content and gets rid of it.
2. Wp Polls. This allows interaction between your visitors and your blog. This widget helps you create new polls and display them on your blog.
3. All In One Seo. This will take care of your search engine optimisation. This widget takes care of optimising keywords, tags and HTML. This widget helps in getting your site ranked higher in the search engines.
4. Featured Content Gallery. This widget gives your site an nice look and give your visitors an nicer experience while on your site.
5. Font Resizer. Font resizer give your site visitors the opportunity to change font size with just a click.
6. Secure WordPress. This widget secures your website content.
7. Follow Me. Twitter has become very popular and there is a widget called follow me, which allows site visitors to follow you on twitter, thereby increasing you twitter following. You can in turn market your site or blog to your increased twitter following.
8. Sexy Bookmark. With this widget you can give your visitors the choice of bookmarking any useful content on the various social bookmarking site. This is an excellent tool for website promotion.
9. Recent Comment This one is self explanatory, it displays recent comment.
10.Related Posts. This one encourages your blog visitors to stay longer on your site by reading related posts. They may even bookmark your site and read more content at a later stage.
These are just a few of the top WordPress widgets I use. WordPress widgets are crucial for your website or blogs design, functionality and promotion, so enjoy and take action.
How to Build Your Traffic on a Blog
How to Build Your Traffic on a Blog
Blogs have become a webmasters best friend and it’s allowing everyone with or without programming skills to create very appealing websites. With the content management system so flawless on WordPress and so many different themes that you can choose from, a lot of the work is already done for you. Most people had to design there websites by scratch which limited them in the amount of time they had to build the traffic on their websites. With blogging you’ll have lots of time to build the traffic on your blog and it will be one of the main projects of making your blog successful.
Traffic doesn’t magically appear, well it could I suppose but if you want targeted traffic then it’s going to take time and work too accomplish. The first thing you need to do as a blogger is make sure you have added a nice amount of content onto the blog, you should also be posting new content on a daily basis in the beginning so that people can see you’re adding new content regularly. A lot of people will just leave the blog if they notice that there hasn’t been much activity going on, and this is what you’re trying to avoid. You want the traffic to stay on your blog and come back in the future so you need to offer lots of great content to do this successfully.
Once you have the content generation down to a science then you need to work on the actual building of the traffic. This will consist of building links in high traffic areas and also in areas that will help increase your search engine rankings. Traffic from the search engines is the most targeted and valuable traffic that you can get for your blog and you should be focusing on ranking for keywords that will bring you traffic. It’s not easy to take over search engine rankings and you’ll need to do a lot of link building in order to take over your competition, but in time it’s definitely possible.
There are also some other traffic generation methods that you should look at for your blog which consist of social bookmarking, article marketing and traffic trading. Sometimes trading traffic isn’t the best choice, but it’s an option so always keep it in mind because you’ll never know when it could work out for your blog. Social bookmarking and article marketing are both ways to increase your traffic and also increase your search engine rankings, so doing these two things are very important. The traffic you get isn’t the best, but it all helps and the backlinks you build from doing it will also help you get traffic from the search engines.
Your blog traffic is always at risk, which means if you decide to stop posting for some reason then over time you might lose all of your traffic. People go back to blogs because they like what you’ve written in the past and want to see what else you have to say, but if you don’t post then people will quickly stop coming. A blog takes constant work, and even though you might like the idea today in a week you may have changed your mind which is what most webmasters do. If you’re in it for the long haul though then you’ll find it takes at least three months before you notice any steady traffic from your blog.
How to Install and Activate a Premium WordPress Theme
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.
The Power of WordPress Themes
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