Tag Archives | Nutshell

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.

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In Search of the Perfect Blogging For Money Tutorial

In Search of the Perfect Blogging For Money Tutorial

It is no secret that you can do very well blogging for money. So now everyone wants to learn how, and I don’t blame them. But, in this article I would like to point out the ingredients that make the best tutorial guide about blogging for the beginning blogger.

There is lots of opportunity to make some real money blogging. Many people have started with nothing and have become a success, seemingly overnight. Needless to say, this “”golden opportunity”” has spawned countless products aimed at teaching the blogging newbie just how to succeed at this lucrative trade.

But, like any other market, a lot of these products aren’t worth the digital pages they’re printed on.

I would like to point out to you, from experience, what you should look for in a product that claims to teach blogging, if you truly want to be successful at blogging for money!

Blogging like a pro is more than just setting up a blog, (anyone can do that), and making a couple of posts, and then writing some articles to submit to Article Directories in the hopes of driving traffic to your blog.

In a nutshell; It takes perseverance, know how, and smarts to make money with a blog over the long haul.

Here is what you want to look out for, when buying a blogging tutorial, or “”how to”” guide.

To begin with, you need a blogging guide, tutorial or coach that can show you how to set up a blog that’s not susceptible to being hacked by every two bit hacker and his brother on the planet.

I’ve seen so-called experts, who sell blogging “”how to”” guides for 30 and 40 dollars, and teach their students how to install blogs using Fantastico, a program that is included in most half-decent hosting accounts.

But they fail to tell their students how to secure their blog against hackers, and Fantastico WordPress installs are famous for being easily hacked.

Most of these so call “”experts”” won’t even show you how to back up your blog’s files, so that should the unthinkable happen, (server crash, or malicious hacker attack), you can get your blog back into cyber space again.

These self-proclaimed blogging gurus will gladly tell you that you should write articles, and join social book marketing sites, and pick your keywords appropriately, and on and on and on, with their rhetoric…

And they will charge you a small fortune for their self-proclaimed, profound, and earth shattering knowledge.

But I wonder, if they can’t or won’t teach you how to properly set up a blog, then how much of their “”other”” information is worth the outrageous amounts of money they are prepared to charge you for it?

To learn about blogging for money, here’s what you want to look for.

1.) Find a guide, preferably a video tutorial, that will teach you exactly how to set up a blog that is secure from hackers. (Blogging platforms, like WordPress, are very susceptible to hacker attacks when installed using the popular installer, “”Fantastico””)

2.) Find the blogging coach, or tutorial guide that WILL teach you how, and why to back up your blog. (Do NOT leave this up to chance!).

3.) Look for a blogging coaching guide that will give you a real plan for putting content on your blog. (Most of these guys just say “”keep your blog updated with fresh content””, but there’s lots more to it than that).

4.) Look for a blogging tutorial that will tell you exactly how to promote, and market your blog… (not just some general advice that you can find for free at any blogging forum).

5.) Look for a blogging guide that will tell you exactly what plugins to use to make your blog search engine friendly, as well as interactive with the visitors to your blog. (most of these experts just say to use a couple of plugins everyone knows about, and they leave it at that).

“”Do these gurus who write this junk really know how to blog themselves, or are they just selling you a burnt out ebook they found somewhere, and then rewrote?””

To make a long story short, it is not easy finding a blogging tutorial guide that will really teach you how to start blogging for money successfully, but it can be done.

Don’t just fall for the first well written sales page you click on.

You’ll recognize the phony sales pages. They come with all kinds of outrageous promises, and pictures of the authors PayPal account, showing you how much money he made last month or last week with their blog.

Remember, you can do just about anything with graphics. Anybody can make it appear like they’ve taken in a million dollars through PayPal with the right graphics editor.

Use discernment and common sense when buying a tutorial that is supposed to teach you anything about marketing online. You can’t make money spending all your money on junk!

And keep this in mind when searching out a tutorial that will teach you blogging for money, “”all that glitters isn’t necessarily gold””!

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

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

WordPress is a wonderfully flexible blogging framework.

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

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

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

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

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

That is all you have to do.

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

Start with an Existing Theme

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

Copy the Them to a New Theme Folder

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theme Name: Theme name hereDescription: Description of theme here

Version:
Version number

Author:
Your Name

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

Licensing Information

A filled in version would look something like the following:

Theme Name:
John Doe

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

Version:
1.00

Author:
John Doe

This theme is offered under the GPL License.

Upload the Theme Folder to Your Web site

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

Activate the New Theme

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

WordPress should now be using your theme.

Check the New Theme

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

Summary

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

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