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Top Seven WordPress Plugins For Your Blog

By on November 14, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Top Seven WordPress Plugins For Your Blog

Many bloggers are using WordPress and with good reason. It is the most popular blogging software in use today and one of the biggest reasons is the ability to add functionality through the use of plugins. Plugins can turn your run-of-the-mill blog into a high powered online tool capable of bringing traffic and profit to your site. Consider using the top WordPress plugins on your current WordPress blog or on a future blog. You won’t be disappointed. Happy Blogging.

7. Page Mash

This is a simple WordPress page management plugin. The Ajax interface allows you to drag-and-drop the pages into the order you like, modify the page structure by dragging a page to become a child or parent and toggle the page to be hidden from output. You can also see the id of the page which is often helpful for theme developers. If you have a WordPress site with more than just a handful of pages, PageMash is extremely helpful.

6. All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack plugin automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engine by allowing you to fine tune things like your page title and meta tags. This plugin is extremely easy to use as it works great straight out of the box. If you are an advanced user, you can customize virtually everything. And if you are a developer, this plugin has an API so your themes can access and extend the functionality of the plugin.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

Perhaps the most downloaded WordPress plugin, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin not only automatically creates a site map linking to all your pages and posts, it also notifies Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com when you make changes to you site. If you want to include pages that are part of your site but not part of you WordPress managed content, you can do that to.

4. WP Super Cache

If you have a popular WordPress website you should seriously consider running WordPress Super Cache to improve the performance of your website. If you are not caching your pages, then every time a visitor comes to your site, WordPress has to pull together various pieces of information out of a database to put your page together. If you have a high traffic site, this is can really become a problem. WP Super Cache will store a copy of each of the pages on your website so that after the page has been assembled from the database once, WordPress can rest and just keep serving the static html copy of the page. This might be a bit techie, but the idea is you can dramatically speed up your site and reduce the load on your server by using WP Super Cache. If for no other reason, use this plugin so you don’t have to panic when your friend says, “”I just Dugg your site.””

3. NextGEN Image Gallery

If you want to display a photo gallery, show a series of product images, or just publish a slide show from your most recent vacation, the NextGEN image gallery is the plugin for you. NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. Among the many features, NextGEN Gallery includes a thumbnail generator, sortable albums, and a water mark function.

2. cformsII Form Plugin

If your looking for a free form management plugin, cformsII is an extremely powerful plugin for setting up contact forms on your WordPress site. You don’t need to know any PHP or write any code. You can visually build forms in the WordPress admin panel. Then, navigate to the page or post where you want to use the form and there is a button in the WYSIWYG editor that you click and up pops a list of forms that you have made. Simply click on the one you want and your form is inserted into your page. Update your page and you the form is live. You can specify required fields, default values, and there are plenty of styles to make your form blend in perfectly with your site.

1. Gravity Forms

If you want the best forms plugin WordPress has to offer, you need Gravity Forms. Gravity Forms is an amazing plugin for managing online forms. Some of the incredibly useful features include conditional form fields which means you can show or hide a field or entire sections of the form based on a value selected in another field. You can pre-populate form fields using querystring, shortcode, function or hooks.You can even schedule when forms are available by assigning a start date and end date for when your form is live on your site. Supposed you want to run a contest where the first 50 people that fill out the form win a prize. Gravity Forms lets you set a limit on the number of entries a form can receive. Pretty much anything you ever wanted a form to do, Gravity Forms can do it.

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Interested In ElegantThemes Premium WordPress Themes-Discover ElegantThemes Here

By on October 3, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Interested In ElegantThemes Premium WordPress Themes? Discover ElegantThemes Here

Overview of ElegantThemes

When you start learning about ElegantThemes, a premium WordPress theme developer, there are two things that really grab your attention.

This is one of the most affordable premium theme developers out there today, yet their quality and attention to detail remains very high.
Their customer service and dedication to pleasing clients is exceptional. You won’t find that combination in many theme developing services today.

You have a sense that you are in good hands when you take up your ElegantThemes membership. All themes are guaranteed to function properly in the dominant browsers and have been tested to ensure that. It is also noteworthy that all sidebars on these themes are ready for widgets and some are ready for AdSense ads right out of the box.

Easy Theme Customization with ElegantThemes WordPress Themes

One of the nicest features of a WordPress theme from ElegantThemes is the easy customization using the famed ElegantThemes ePanel.

The ePanel is the mechanism in their themes where you customize and set your website layout. You can dictate the navigation, home page, color scheme (if more than one color scheme is offered by a particular theme), search engine optimization, blog settings, and more. The best part is you can do all this customization in the ePanel without knowing any coding at all.

Pricing & License Model

This is one of the most interesting points about ElegantThemes. As a premium WordPress theme developer, the service is definitely one of the more affordable options. Everything operates off a membership system and there are two licensing options.

The basic license after joining gives unlimited access to all themes for a full year and you are allowed to make any changes to customize the theme to your personal needs without giving credit or stating anything about ElegantThemes on the site. The only restriction is that you can only use the themes on sites that you personally own. No redistribution is allowed.

The cost for a personal membership with the basic license is $39 a year (as of the time this article was published). This is definitely one of the best membership pricing models on the market today for an all-theme access premium WordPress themes developer. Yes, for $39 you get access to ALL the themes created – including future themes for the duration of your membership.

If you want to use one of these themes as a part of a professional web design or development service, you need to pay the one time distributor fee of $89 when you sign up (at the time this article was published). This gives a more advanced license to use all themes on as many domains as you like, with any modifications that you like, and this includes putting them on sites that will be sold to others.

The distributor license does not include selling the actual theme itself. It must be packaged with a domain name that is sold as a complete project to your clients.

PSD Files Included

Every theme offered from ElegantThemes comes with the PSD files that makes editing the graphics fast and easy within Photoshop. Also, each theme comes with blank logo images so you can do some customizations even if you don’t have access to Photoshop. Often PSD file inclusion is a premium cost with other theme developers.

Technical Support

Technical support is one area where other theme developers could learn something from ElegantThemes. They stand behind their themes and openly offer to fix any problems with installation or functioning. There is an active support forum open to members and an FAQ file that answers practically any question you could have, including defining basic terminology and concepts for beginners.

The catch here is that they are willing to keep their themes compatible with future WordPress releases as long as you are a member of the service. Once you cancel your membership and a new version is released, they may not be as willing to get it up to date without a restored membership.

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Premium WordPress Themes – What Makes Them Premium

By on August 26, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Premium WordPress Themes – What Makes Them Premium

Over the last couple of years WordPress has become a hugely popular open source blogging and publishing platform. The ease-of-use as well as the abundance of free themes and plugins have contributed to the attraction and popularity for using WordPress. While there are some great free themes for WordPress, traditionally most only offered basic functionality and simplistic designs.

Since the end of 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250.

Initially only a handful of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers released paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system (e.g. magazine, news, portfolio or ‘traditional’ web site). However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spreads, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon and filled up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes, trying to cash on the new trend.

However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what exactly makes a premium WordPress theme premium and worth the money you have to pay for it? Below are some features that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme:

1. Unique Design, Quality and Sophistication

Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free. “”Better”” is an individual interpretation, so unfortunately it has to be left up to the designer and the buyer to decide what is better for them.

2. Live Demo or Preview

There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

3. Full Supporting Documentation

Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

4. Full Support

If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalised individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

5. Flexibility and Customization Options

People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customisable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

6. Features

While every theme is different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more ‘Features’ than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: Javascript/DHTML, ‘Ajax’ or dynamic sections, ‘Featured Posts’ areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

7. Well Coded and No Errors

There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards. You should also make sure the theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers.

8. Free Updates

WordPress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

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