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WordPress Plugins – 5 Great WP Plugins For Your New Blog Or Website

By on July 25, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress Plugins – 5 Great WP Plugins For Your New Blog Or Website

WordPress is an amazing Blogging platform which makes it really quick and easy for anyone to publish their own blog or website.

WordPress Plugins are clever little programs created by Plugin Developers which can be quickly installed to produce literally hundreds of different features, effects and benefits for your blog.

So if you want to add video to your blog or website – there are many plugins to choose from. If you want to add photo galleries to your blog – then again there are lots of options to choose from. There is probably a plugin for virtually anything you can think of.

For the first time blogger or newcomer to WordPress I would recommend the following 5 Plugins to give you an idea of the range and versatility of WP Plugins. There are lots more if you need them, but the following plugins will literally give you the potential to transform your blog saving you lots of time, stress and hassle.

Here is my recommended list to get you up and running, you can find them from the Plugins Menu in your WordPress Control Panel – Just choose the option to ‘Add New’ and then just search for the following plugins:

List of 5 Recommended WP Plugins for Newcomers to WordPress Self Hosted Blogs

1) Smart Youtube WP Plugin – Add Youtube Videos

2) Photodropper WP Plugin – Add Flickr Images

3) Contact Form 7 WP Plugin – Add a professional Contact Form

4) AddThis WP Plugin – Add a ‘Share’ button to each blog post

5) Twittercounter WP Plugin – Add a Twittercounter to your sidebar

1) Smart Youtube Plugin – Add Youtube Videos

This is a plugin which allows you to quickly and easily add virtually any Youtube video to your blog post or blog page. You can easily customize the appearance of the video player in terms of color and size to fit perfectly with your blog theme and design.

To use the plugin all you need to do is copy and paste the Youtube video url into your blog post and then make a tiny amendment to the url (add the letter ‘v’) and that is it. It’s really quick and simple – no other code is required.

2) Photodropper Plugin – Add Flickr Photos

This plugin allows you to search for images by keyword from within your WordPress Control Panel. So as you are writing a blog post, you can just search out an appropriate image and Photodropper will present you with a list of photos which you have permission to publish.

All you do is simply select the image you like and publish it to your post. Again, like the Smart Youtube plugin – it is really quick and easy.

3) Contact Form 7 Plugin – Create a Contact Form Page

This plugin is really useful, apart from making it really easy to create a contact page for your blog it can also be used to produce more forms – so you could use it to collect other feedback from your readers and followers.

If someone leaves a message on the contact or feedback form, it sends you a copy of the message almost instantly to your designated email address. So you will get the feedback very fast making it easy for you to react quickly.

4) Add This Plugin – Add a ‘Share’ Button

This is fast becoming one of the most popular ‘Share’ buttons around. It allows your readers to share your content really easily through the option of selecting one of many social bookmarking sites and social networks.

Once you have installed this plugin, it will automatically place a ‘Share’ Button under every post you submit maximizing the chance for your work to spread around the web.

5) Twittercounter Plugin – Let everyone know how many Twitter Followers you have

This plugin is probably more for fun than anything, but if you do have a lot of Twitter followers then this might just boost the credibility of your blog.

Once you have installed it you will have a choice of Twitter counters, so you can select the one you think is most appropriate for your Blog.

What are you waiting for?

So, what are you waiting for – go ahead and try installing these plugins and you will be amazed at the results! Once you have tried some out you will find it much easier finding more plugins and customizing your site so that it does exactly what you are looking for.

One word of warning – don’t go installing too many plugins as each one will slow down your site a little – so just stick to the ones you really need.

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Blogging has become a phenomenal trend

By on March 18, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Blogging has become a phenomenal trend of the century with the birth of free web hosting such as WordPress, Blogger, Xanga and LiveJournal. One of the most prominent webs hosting in blogosphere, WordPress is most preferable for its versatility in tutorial posting and editing. Layouts in WordPress blog are designed by Kubrick, which is also known as Default Theme. Kubrick has been around for years as the main template of WordPress. However, custom theme has soared as the next big thing in WordPress.
Custom theme in WordPress is slowly replacing Kubrick theme as blog layout. Users prefer to customize their blogs to make them outstanding among millions of blogs in the Internet. This especially true for famous and influential bloggers who hired professional IT individuals to encode new CSS and HTML required for new layout design.
Although changing codes might be difficult for beginners, there are various tutorials that can be learned via World Wide Web. With advanced technology, there are even websites that offer to customize blog theme for free. WordPress users take this advantage to revamp the whole layout look. Beautiful and extraordinary layout or theme displayed in the blog is believed to attract more readers and create heavier traffic into the blog. People do this to increase online income through advertising in their blog. Hence, custom theme is preferred as the first step to better layouts for their blogs.
Some people also love to create layouts from scratch. They believed that their layouts need personal touch to make their blog really special and one-of-a-kind. Tutorials in YouTube are big help in such matter. Professional IT individuals sometimes created blogs of their own to spread knowledge about customizing blog layouts. In their blogs, some innovative suggestions are given that makes Kubrick theme seemed so outdated and old- fashioned.
Fresh layouts and themes are also available in design-oriented sites. All WordPress users need to do is downloading the theme that caught their attention. Later on, they just need to upload the custom theme onto their WordPress sites. Such convenience made Kubrick theme less popular because rigid theme is no longer applicable to cyber world that requires constant makeovers.
The smart ones designed more themes to be sold to big companies and famous bloggers as side income. People see this coming as the next revolutionary change in WordPress which created job opportunity for graphic designers. This is why Kubrick theme is much forgotten by users especially to experienced bloggers. In the Internet, you might find plenty of sources to provide new design themes to WordPress blogs.
WordPress documentation and application tabs also makes layout changing less frustrating to many. Instructions are stated for people to follow which makes more users opt for major layout makeover. Some users alter Kubrick theme instead of the old Kubrick theme to make their layouts less boring. However, the downside to Kubrick re-adaptation is sometimes the CSS files are in header files, not in style sheet that might be confusing for beginners. It is not recommended if users want totally different design since altering Kubrick theme means you will still stuck with Kubrick look with minor changes.
Although Kubrick theme has served people as the main theme in WordPress all these years, it is time that people move on to world of creativity and changes. Custom theme is here to stay to dominate WordPress sites unless Kubrick theme changes into a better and more eye-catching theme.

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