Tag Archives | Platforms

These Top 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins Help With SEO and Rankings

These Top 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins Help With SEO and Rankings

Website design does not need to be as difficult as it is made out to be. In the past, it was a requirement and a must to have to hire a web designer to setup your website. With the advancements in the website hosting platforms, and the amount of open source scripts, like WordPress, anyone can setup a professional website in a matter of minutes. If you go with WordPress, then there are going to be some specific WordPress plugins you will need to install to make the most of your site.

For starters, you will need a plugin to help with the search engine optimization. The one WordPress plugin I recommend for this is the All-In-One-SEO plugin. WordPress by itself does a bad job with SEO, so a plugin is required to help get your sites ranked well.

One of the SEO tips people fail to do is the interlinking of the internal pages of the site. There are a few plugins which do this, but the one I recommend is the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP). This plugin runs a calculation, and determines the most related posts on the site. It then lists these below the original post on the page. This helps with internal links and also with adding more topic related content on the page.

You will also need to analyze the website traffic. Most people use Google Analytics for the their traffic stats. And, while this is good, I like to use Statpress Reloaded. This is an awesome plugin that allows you to look at the traffic to your site while still in the admin area. I especially use it to see if I have any error pages, and then I can fix these immediately.

Here is one of my most favorite plugins: Wptouch iPhone Theme. It seems everyone has an iphone, or android, or the Blackberry. The problem with these is normal websites just do not look good on here. The Wptouch plugin determined the viewers Operating System (OS), and then displays your website based on this. This is a growing traffic area, so you should be making sure you have this optimized and monetized as well.

And, of course, you still need to let Yahoo, MSN, and Google know you have updated web pages. Installing the Google Sitemaps Plugin takes care of this for you. It only takes a minute to setup, and then it runs automatically for you.

Those are my top 5 WordPress plugins you must have in order to even begin to be a successful blogger. Since you can install all of the plugins directly from the admin dashboard, it makes it a piece of cake to get your WordPress blog/website optimized and ready to run. So, if you are using WordPress for your website, just make sure these additional powerful plugins are installed. Without them, you will have a much more difficult time being successful.

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How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes1

How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the internet today. Over 25 million site owners have chosen WordPress as their blog software of choice.  WordPress is easy to install, maintain and modify. It has a huge list of powerful features that can make your website very functional. Best of all, WordPress is free. Site owners can easily change the visual look and layout of their WordPress site simply by changing the themes.  There are a lot of themes available for free online. One of the best sites to get your WordPress blogging themes is the official WordPress site of WordPress.org. WordPress.org maintains a theme database where people can download WordPress themes for free. Themes are ranked based on popularity, date of first upload, as well as the date of the latest update. Currently WordPress.org ranks Twenty Ten, Mystique, Atahualpa, Constructor and LightWord as the five most popular themes based on the amount of downloads.

LightWord is the fifth most poplar theme in WordPress.org. It is a basic, intelligent black text on white theme that can have two or three columns. The theme is set to display at fixed width regardless of the browser size and screen resolution of a site visitor. It supports widgets as well as Google AdSense and covers all the basic WordPress functionalities.

Contsructor is the fourth most popular theme. A lot of people like this theme because it can have multiple layout settings. The theme can display six different sidebar positions and three layouts right out of the box and creating a new layout on this theme is fairly easy. This is a great theme to work with if you want to easily come up with a distinct original theme.

The third most popular WordPress theme is Atahualpa. They are highly customizable WordPress blogging themes. It boasts of 268 options for site owners to use to come up with their own original themes with the resulting design compatible with most web browsers. Designs can be up to 4 sidebars, fixed or flexible width as well as other customizable functionalities. The theme also has an active support forum where users can find help in fixing any theme related issues.

Mystique is the second-most popular them in WordPress.org. It currently has over 340,000 downloads since October 2009. It is a feature rich theme built over solid and stable design. There are a lot of useful widgets built-in to the theme as well. The best part with Mystique is that the theme settings interface is intuitively designed so users can easily make changes to the theme even while having only a little knowledge in PHP and CSS.

Currently, the most popular WordPress blogging theme is Twenty Ten. Designed to be stylish, simple and readable while still highly customizable, site owners can easily make a distinctive theme by just changing the header image, the background and designing a custom menu. This them is great to use when you need to come up with a theme that you can easily set up, modify to be distinctive and efficiently present your information without making any modifications to the actual theme files. This theme is great for website owners with minimal knowledge in PHP, HTML and CSS and just wants to have a theme that they can easily modify to look different and original.

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WordPress Blogs – The Quickest Way to Make Money Online

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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How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes

How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the internet today. Over 25 million site owners have chosen WordPress as their blog software of choice.  WordPress is easy to install, maintain and modify. It has a huge list of powerful features that can make your website very functional. Best of all, WordPress is free. Site owners can easily change the visual look and layout of their WordPress site simply by changing the themes.  There are a lot of themes available for free online. One of the best sites to get your WordPress blogging themes is the official WordPress site of WordPress.org. WordPress.org maintains a theme database where people can download WordPress themes for free. Themes are ranked based on popularity, date of first upload, as well as the date of the latest update. Currently WordPress.org ranks Twenty Ten, Mystique, Atahualpa, Constructor and LightWord as the five most popular themes based on the amount of downloads.

LightWord is the fifth most poplar theme in WordPress.org. It is a basic, intelligent black text on white theme that can have two or three columns. The theme is set to display at fixed width regardless of the browser size and screen resolution of a site visitor. It supports widgets as well as Google AdSense and covers all the basic WordPress functionalities.

Contsructor is the fourth most popular theme. A lot of people like this theme because it can have multiple layout settings. The theme can display six different sidebar positions and three layouts right out of the box and creating a new layout on this theme is fairly easy. This is a great theme to work with if you want to easily come up with a distinct original theme.

The third most popular WordPress theme is Atahualpa. They are highly customizable WordPress blogging themes. It boasts of 268 options for site owners to use to come up with their own original themes with the resulting design compatible with most web browsers. Designs can be up to 4 sidebars, fixed or flexible width as well as other customizable functionalities. The theme also has an active support forum where users can find help in fixing any theme related issues.

Mystique is the second-most popular them in WordPress.org. It currently has over 340,000 downloads since October 2009. It is a feature rich theme built over solid and stable design. There are a lot of useful widgets built-in to the theme as well. The best part with Mystique is that the theme settings interface is intuitively designed so users can easily make changes to the theme even while having only a little knowledge in PHP and CSS.

Currently, the most popular WordPress blogging theme is Twenty Ten. Designed to be stylish, simple and readable while still highly customizable, site owners can easily make a distinctive theme by just changing the header image, the background and designing a custom menu. This them is great to use when you need to come up with a theme that you can easily set up, modify to be distinctive and efficiently present your information without making any modifications to the actual theme files. This theme is great for website owners with minimal knowledge in PHP, HTML and CSS and just wants to have a theme that they can easily modify to look different and original.

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How to Add WordPress Plugins

How to Add WordPress Plugins

When it comes to utilizing the power of WordPress, the one thing that sets is apart from other platforms is the plugin system. Plugins allow you to easily add advanced functionality to WordPress and can help you perform a wide variety of tasks. However, you need to learn how to add WordPress Plugin before you can start using them on your own blog or website.

There are two different ways to add plugins to WordPress. The first one is to go out and find the plugin you are looking for on the internet. You can then download the file that they give you. From there, all you have to do is log in to your WordPress blog and select the add new plugin link. WordPress will then have you point to the file you downloaded and it will automatically upload it into the correct directory.

The second way to learn how to add WordPress plugin is to use the built in search feature. You can type in a certain keyword or phrase and WordPress will automatically show you the plugins that it finds based on your search. Best of all, you can also see ratings for each plugin and see which one is the best option for you.

Once you find a plugin you like, just click the install button and WordPress will take care of uploading the plugin for you. If you do this method, you do not even have to upload the files yourself. It is really that easy!

As you can see, there are a few different ways to learn how to add plugins to the WordPress platform. Regardless of the way you choose, you can quickly start adding a lot more functionality to your blog or website.

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6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme1

6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme

WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging platforms available on the web, giving you complete creative freedom and the ability to design the perfect website with minimum effort.

The WordPress directory contains thousands of great plugins whilst the web is abundant with thousands of free themes, all to give your blog project that unique personal touch.

Whilst there are many great free WordPress themes available on the web, only a very few of them have the security and custom ability of a professionally designed premium WordPress theme. And this is the subject matter of this article, where I’d like to share with you 6 valid reasons as to why you should use a premium WordPress theme for your web project, as apposed to one of the readily available free themes on the market.

Design Quality

The design quality often found in free WordPress themes cannot be merely matched to those found in premium themes, and this is down to several reasons; for example, the attention to detail is often reflected on how well the theme’s code was originally written.

A good example of this would suggest; a quality premium theme will rarely ever load with any concerning glitches, the layout of the theme itself will always load cleanly and smoothly with all the qualities found in a premium theme, whilst these qualities can sometimes be of poor forthcoming in the vastly freely available themes.

Features

Many free themes also lack of the essential features whilst premium themes often offer you many useful features such as featured posts plugin, dynamic content gallery, Twitter and RSS integration and a contact us form just name a few.

Customization

When it comes to customization free themes offer almost nothing in return, as many of these free themes are designed for one thing only, and that’s for gaining a free backlink to an external site used by the theme designer normally. However, many if not all premium themes available offer full custom ability with easy customisation of CSS, headers and footers amongst many others.

Security

One of the biggest reasons why many serious bloggers or webmasters tend to use a reputable premium theme is for its impeccable security features.

The guys over at WordPress work their hardest to keep us updated with the latest security releases for their platform, and many of the premium themes are designed to cater and reinforce these security updates to make your blog project as secure as possible. No body likes the thought of waking up to find out their blog or website has been hacked into or sabotaged.

Updates

With a premium WordPress theme you also receive the latest updates that are available for your theme; if a new version of your theme is available you’ll be offered the chance to upgrade with normally no extra cost.

Even with the safe knowledge of being able to get the latest version of your theme as and when available should be enough to make you want to invest in a premium theme.

Technical Support & Documentation

Finally many if not all premium theme services now come with full online technical support as well as documentation with clear instructions on how to use your theme, giving you even greater peace of mind.

If you’re as passionate about your blog or web project as you think you are and are currently using a free WordPress theme for your blog, consider upgrading to a premium theme. For the sake of a few dollars it could mean the difference between your blog or website being safe and secure or being hacked into even without your knowledge.

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6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme

6 Reasons Why You Should Use a Premium WordPress Theme

WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging platforms available on the web, giving you complete creative freedom and the ability to design the perfect website with minimum effort.

The WordPress directory contains thousands of great plugins whilst the web is abundant with thousands of free themes, all to give your blog project that unique personal touch.

Whilst there are many great free WordPress themes available on the web, only a very few of them have the security and custom ability of a professionally designed premium WordPress theme. And this is the subject matter of this article, where I’d like to share with you 6 valid reasons as to why you should use a premium WordPress theme for your web project, as apposed to one of the readily available free themes on the market.

Design Quality

The design quality often found in free WordPress themes cannot be merely matched to those found in premium themes, and this is down to several reasons; for example, the attention to detail is often reflected on how well the theme’s code was originally written.

A good example of this would suggest; a quality premium theme will rarely ever load with any concerning glitches, the layout of the theme itself will always load cleanly and smoothly with all the qualities found in a premium theme, whilst these qualities can sometimes be of poor forthcoming in the vastly freely available themes.

Features

Many free themes also lack of the essential features whilst premium themes often offer you many useful features such as featured posts plugin, dynamic content gallery, Twitter and RSS integration and a contact us form just name a few.

Customization

When it comes to customization free themes offer almost nothing in return, as many of these free themes are designed for one thing only, and that’s for gaining a free backlink to an external site used by the theme designer normally. However, many if not all premium themes available offer full custom ability with easy customisation of CSS, headers and footers amongst many others.

Security

One of the biggest reasons why many serious bloggers or webmasters tend to use a reputable premium theme is for its impeccable security features.

The guys over at WordPress work their hardest to keep us updated with the latest security releases for their platform, and many of the premium themes are designed to cater and reinforce these security updates to make your blog project as secure as possible. No body likes the thought of waking up to find out their blog or website has been hacked into or sabotaged.

Updates

With a premium WordPress theme you also receive the latest updates that are available for your theme; if a new version of your theme is available you’ll be offered the chance to upgrade with normally no extra cost.

Even with the safe knowledge of being able to get the latest version of your theme as and when available should be enough to make you want to invest in a premium theme.

Technical Support & Documentation

Finally many if not all premium theme services now come with full online technical support as well as documentation with clear instructions on how to use your theme, giving you even greater peace of mind.

If you’re as passionate about your blog or web project as you think you are and are currently using a free WordPress theme for your blog, consider upgrading to a premium theme. For the sake of a few dollars it could mean the difference between your blog or website being safe and secure or being hacked into even without your knowledge.

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5 Ways WordPress Can Help Your Business Make Money Online

5 Ways WordPress Can Help Your Business Make Money Online

It is no longer a secret that without a website a business or organization is doomed as far as competition is concerned. This because most people are now conducting searches exclusively online to find the services they want and they must be able to find your business. If other competing businesses or organizations appear in the search engine first, then those customers will go to those businesses. Another layer of strategy that can help you as an online entrepreneur is blogging. Blogging has taken the online world by storm and many individuals, organizations and business entities are scrambling to have a blog presence and also to master the tools associated with blogging, the best being WordPress. But what is needed for one to master WordPress?

Before we get into becoming a WordPress expert, let us see why blogging is absolutely essential

Search engine dominance

One reason why it is absolutely essential to have a blog is because search engines love blogs. This is because search engines are content-driven and blogs are usually constantly adding content from the blog owners and the comments from the readers. Blogs therefore have constantly-updated content.

Interaction

If you have a business, a blog is the best way to interact with your customers and show the human side of yourself. Your customers are also able to sound off on your blog. The blog is also where you should be able to explain your products

WordPress is the blogging platform leader

There are many ways to set up a blog. There are also many blogging platforms. One of them is Google’s blogger, another is WordPress. There are many others but these two are the best. Blogger is easy to set up and has a huge following. But WordPress is the industry leader and standard. If you want to be an expert blogger, you absolutely have to tap into the power of WordPress and learn all that it has to offer. It is an extremely easy platform to learn and whether you are an expert or a novice, WordPress can transform your organization’s blog.

WordPress has a very large online support community. This means there are thousands of modules, plugins and coders that are wholly dedicated to enhancing WordPress. With this kind of support, WordPress can practically do anything from simply blogging to deploying complex and professional interactive websites.

Some people feel that WordPress is difficult to learn. This is simply not true. You can actually become a WordPress expert in 24 hours especially if you view video tutorials.

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