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Blogging With WordPress

By on May 20, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Blogging With WordPress

WordPress is a popular open source blog publishing application. First available to the blogging public in 2003, the current release of WordPress is 2.7.1 as of February 2009. Open source means that it is available free of charge for the people to use. It is therefore very common for people to do blogging with WordPress.

WordPress has evolved around the years with introduction of themes, plugins and widgets into the blogosphere. Those additions really made WordPress very popular with bloggers due to the flexibility and ease to modify and customize the blogs. They could produce very professional-looking blogs in a short time frame with WordPress compared to when they had to do it using the HTML codes.

Theme is a way to “”skin”” a blog. It provides control of the look and presentation of the blogs. Without changing the core software, bloggers have the flexibility to change the display of posts and the blogs. By simply modifying some template files included in a particular theme, we can customize the blog’s look on-the-fly without having to worry about compatibility with the application and other components used by WordPress.

Since it is an open-source application, there are many people willingly working on and sharing the WordPress theme with everyone. Most of the blog themes are available free of charge. You can just use search engines to find WordPress theme with whatever additional attributes you want to have. You will be presented with hundreds if not thousands of websites that have more information on themes. You can also visit WordPress Theme Directory for a complete listing of officially recognized blogging themes.

Plugins are used extensively to extend the capability of WordPress blogs. There are just too many things to list down what you can do with WordPress plugins. I guess you can find just about anything you want to do available. If you can’t find it, it is relatively quite easy to make one if you have some basic programming skills. Just like the themes, there are many plugins available. Most of them are also available freely on the web. Beside using search engines, WordPress plugins are also available at WordPress Plugins Directory.

Another benefit of using readily available themes is that many people have designed adsense-ready themes. Adsense is a way to monetize your blog. Adsense is simply an opportunity for bloggers to display google ads on their blogs. They will earn money when people click on the displayed adsense. With adsense-ready theme, it means bloggers can configure adsense easily just by entering their adsense pub-id into some parts of the theme files.

A good resource to learn about blogging with WordPress is available on the web. Using normal search engines to search for WordPress tutorial, there are many resources available. You can choose to do the blogging directly on http://www.WordPress.com Otherwise, you can choose to host the WordPress on your own web hosting.

Installing WordPress can pose a challenge. However, nowadays WordPress is included in Fantastico that you can use to install with just one press. If you don’t have Fantastico in your web hosting, you should be able to do an install following the instructions provided when you download WordPress.

Although WordPress is very easy to use, for first time users who are not technically savvy, it is advisable to start with some basic tutorials to understand the structure of how blogging can be done with WordPress. Once you get the basic, using WordPress will be just like using a normal word processor.

Happy Blogging!

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WordPress – The Pros and Cons of Hosting Your Website on the WordPress Website

By on May 8, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress – The Pros and Cons of Hosting Your Website on the WordPress Website

When starting out with your online business you probably want to set it up as cheaply as possible, and this includes the setting up of your website too. WordPress is often the platform of choice for those just starting out online, without the budget to hire someone to create a website for them, it offers the cheapest and most versatile option.

Setting up your first website in WordPress is a great idea for so many reasons. If you are unsure about which business you want to go into, setting up a WordPress site, whether it’s hosted or self-hosted, is a cheap way of making a mistake if you decide to change your mind and do something else, so there is little or no risk. You can get some WordPress experience through trial and error for very little cost that you can take with you to your next website or just perfect the website you already have.

For those with a very limited budget is can seem that hosting your website at WordPress.com is the best option, as there is no cash outlay, no real technical skills are required and being hosted on the WordPress site you would presume it would be very secure so no likelihood of anyone hacking into your website. However, there are some limitations with this method and to understand what they are you need to look further down the life of both your business and your website.

Although there are hundreds of free and paid WordPress templates available, you may want more flexibility on how that template looks. You may want to change the color scheme or change an image and customize the WordPress template more to your liking and for this you need access to the templates css (cascading style sheets) files. This is a paid upgrade option for those websites hosted at WordPress.com.

Many WordPress templates will come with a variety of options so that you can edit the template very easily from your WordPress dashboard. Just look out for these within the “”add new template”” option on your dashboard. To edit an image or a header and that option doesn’t appear in within the template dashboard, you need access to the images located in the hosting file, which you do not have access to. So just be aware of this.

Another thing you need to take into consideration is both your technical knowledge as well as the software you have available to actually edit your images. If you don’t have technical knowledge nor editing software then you should look for templates that you won’t want to edit in any way. This goes for self hosted WordPress websites too.

Also, if you want to offer free reports or audios to the visitors of your website, you will be unable to upload them to your WordPress site as you don’t have hosting access. Depending on how you see your website developing this may or may not affect your decision on choosing a WordPress hosted website or not.

If you want to just get used to WordPress and try different things out then by all means register your chosen website at WordPress.com. Please note that your URL, or web address, will be a subdomain of WordPress, for example mychosensite.wordpress.com and it doesn’t really give a professional image to your business, however it will make you more confident using your WordPress website. You can always buy a domain and forward it to your WordPress.com website if you decide to keep this as your main website.

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The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

By on February 26, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness WordPress has come a long way in its journey to become the #1 blogging platform out there today. As the features and functionality have increased over time, the possibilities for what can be done with WordPress as a website solution have increased. With today’s features, WordPress can be used to create an entire site in most cases in addition to just a blog. This article discusses which pages should be created in any WordPress blog. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

1. Landing Page or Home Page The landing page or home page, depending upon the type of web site, is critical in being able to convert your visitors to taking a specific action. It is very difficult to do that with blog entries as the home page. When people land on your blog home page, they usually land on a page with a lot of content and nothing really directing them to do anything. If any of your blog titles happens to catch their attention, then when they click on a specific post, you may be able to convert that into an action, but only if your post is written up to do just that. If not, then you will just have a reader who may or may not come back to your site. Having a landing page will allow you to prepare the visitor and guide them through the site the way you want them to go. 2. Contact Us Page WordPress makes it easy to put a contact us form on your website that will get emailed back to you when the visitor submits the form. There are a few ‘contact us’ plug-ins that give the website owner a lot of flexibility in getting the kind of feedback that will be most beneficial to them. One of the contact form plugins that gives a lot of flexibility in creating great forms called ‘Contact Form 7’. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness.

The benefit of having a contact form instead of your email is it is easier to manage communications, you can outsource your customer support much more easily and you can guide the visitor much better with the information you need from them so you can better serve your visitors, prospects and customers. 3. Blog Postings Page If you are going to have a WordPress website, then you should have a blog as well. WordPress is a blogging platform so it pretty much comes with the territory. In this case, you will need to create a separate page to direct the blog postings to. When setting up the blog page, you will need to be sure to label it something that is very clear and enticing if you want your visitors to read your blog postings. Labels like ‘Blog’, ‘Articles’ and ‘Content’ are fairly popular. This is the name that will be on the navigation link for that page as well. This is why it is important to make it something that is easy for visitors to understand. Creating an entire website from WordPress is easy to do with the latest versions of WordPress. It is very easy to create the basic pages that will allow a small business owner to get a website up and running very quickly. Having a landing page, a contact us page and a blog page is a great foundation to build from. Once that foundation is there, additional pages and features can be easily added. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

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An Introduction To WordPress Plugins

By on January 21, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

An Introduction To WordPress Plugins

WordPress is an amazing CMS system that is renowned for its flexibility as not only a blogging platform, but a platform for those who are simply seeking to publish content based websites to the Internet. It is for this reason that usage of WordPress has skyrocketed over the fast few years, as such, a very active community has given the platform support by developing what would have to be the largest directory of plugins for a single platform in history. So, what is a plugin?

A WordPress plugin is a simple script or software package that extends the functionality of the WordPress platform further than what the original developers of the platform have decided upon. It is for this reason that the CMS is quite raw, and offers only basic functionality such as creating posts, pages, and editing basic code. A plugin is generally installed via the plugin administration area in WordPress, and can either be done automatically from the plugins directory hosted by WordPress, or can also be done manually via FTP, or via an upload in the back end of WordPress.

In most cases, you will never need to install a plugin manually, however, as the availability of premium plugins is rising significantly, this is happening more and more. There are two plugin types that you will more than likely find. Freely available plugins, and premium plugins.

Free plugins are usually available en-masse in the WordPress plugins directory, and are searchable based on set keywords and criteria, however premium plugins are usually available via their own marketplace or shopping cart. Needless to say, the need to pay for a plugin generally warrants extra functionality such as code tweaks, creation of clone WordPress installations, and so on, more often than not, functionality that exceeds its own monetary value significantly.

Plugins can transform WordPress almost into its own separate systems. For example, there are many premium shopping cart and membership site plugins that will transform WordPress from a blog to a paid of free membership site. Some will also transform the installation into a sales letter with a payment portal, and other plugins will offer much more simple functionality such as admin extension, social media links, and clone wordpress backup files for your own security. To get started, simply enter the plugins area within your WordPress admin area, and select ""add new"". In this area, you will be able to explore plugins, and their functionality further, and most importantly, you will be able to experiment with different plugins and get a grasp of this brilliant functionality that lies within WordPress.

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5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One

By 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!

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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 Blogs – The Quickest Way to Make Money Online

By on December 8, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress Blogs – The Quickest Way to Make Money Online

Blogs are one of the best and easiest ways for you to make money online. You can set a blog up within minutes, get in indexed in a couple of hours and then turn your attention to traffic generation and earning.

Many people turn to free blogging platforms to host their blog, not realising they are putting the fate of their business in the hands of another …

Whereas it may never happen to you, it has happened to other people. The free blog companies will delete your blog first and ask questions later if they think you are even slightly in violation of their terms of service.

This can be a serious problem – your earnings could disappear over night along with some very valuable data.

You can mitigate against this problem by hosting a WordPress blog on your own domain. The costs of this is minimal. A domain will cost you under $10 a year and some webspace is well under $10 a month.

Yes, this is some investment, but you end up looking professional and have complete control over your blog. You can install additional plugins that will allow you to earn even more money from it. You have more flexibility and can do anything you want with the blog to make it your own. There is no big corporation staring over your shoulder making sure you tow the party line.

Whenever anyone sees a free blog the instant assumption is that it is an individual blogging. When they see a domain name and a self hosted WordPress blog they no longer know that – it could be a company, a guru, or anything.

This obviously puts you in a better position of establishing yourself as an expert in the field and in earning.

Once you have created one WordPress blog that is earning you money, it is very quick and easy for you to create more – you have the domain name and webhosting so you can start creating an empire of money making blogs.

Through this, you are on the road to financial freedom.

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