WordPress is a great platform for very simple blogs but in order to give them a more professional look and to make them function more efficiently themes and plugins are essential.

Basically a theme is what makes your blog look the way it does whereas plugins take care of a lot of the functions behind the theme. Think of the theme as being the outside look of your car, WordPress itself as the engine with the plugins being the things such as the lights, indicators, warning lights etc that are good to have but not essential to run the engine of the car. I am no mechanic but you get the idea.

What are WordPress plugins?

I guess the simplest explanation is that they are a bit of code that make things easier to do or allows you to do things that without the particular plugin are very difficult to do and beyond the capabilities of anyone other than a person with a technical knowledge of WordPress.

Why use WordPress plugins?

They allow you do to do things with WordPress that without them would be either time consuming and may also require technical expertise in WordPress beyond that of the majority of WordPress users.

What are some examples of WordPress plugins?

Akismet is a popular plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “”Comments.”" Without such a plugin your blog could easily become full of undesirable comments that you certainly do not want your readers to read.

All in One SEO Pack is Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. You can use this plugin to tweak the default options for title, description, keywords and duplicate content.

Google AdSense, Chitika and Kontera plugins allow you to monetarize your blog and make an income from an information only blog.

Contact Form 7 allows you to create a “”Contact Us”" page with a form people can fill in for further information or questions about your products.

These are only a few of the many plugins you can use on your blog and it all depends on what you want your blog to do as to what plugins you need to install to make it work more efficiently and save you extra time in maintaining your blog.

Have you gone searching for plugins recently? There are a bazillion and one of them (and I don’t believe that’s an exaggerated number!). Knowing which you need on your blog can be very confusing. Worse, is that you start downloading and installing dozens of plugins and you don’t really know what they’re for and/or how to use them.

I can help you make wise plugin choices for you blog.

WordPress Plugins – Choose Wisely

Plugins add features and functions to your WordPress blog above its core functions as is with an ‘out-of-the-box’ installation. Plugins are one of the things that makes WordPress so powerful, because there’s a plugin for nearly everything (and once someone creates a plugin so my WordPress will give me my morning coffee – I’ll proclaim WordPress 100% perfect ; however, just because there are so many plugin choices, does not mean you should download and install them all. So how do you choose?

You Start by Identifying a Need

If you find you have a need for a specific feature or function on your blog, that’s when you search for a plugin to fill that need. Not before.

So the plugins you may use, might be completely different than the ones I might use; because our needs are different.

Know and Understand Your Plugins

If you’ve identified a need, then searching for plugins to fill that need is the first part of knowing and understanding why you are installing a particular plugin. You will find many ‘Top Recommended Plugins’ lists on the web, and there’s nothing wrong with those lists, but you need to know and understand the purpose and function behind a plugin before you download and install it. If you don’t, then you are not going to be using that plugin to its full potential; or worse, it could be slowing down your blog, or not be compatible with another plugin you’re using.

So don’t blindly install plugins unless it is filling a need you have on your blog.

Plugin Maintenance

Every time you need to upgrade your WordPress, there’s always a chance that one of your installed plugins will not be compatible after the upgrade. For the more popular plugins, their developers are usually on top of these things, and an upgrade is made available very quickly. However, not all plugin developers continue updating the plugin and if that’s the case, you’ll need to find another compatible plugin that will do the same thing your now outdated plugin did.

Too Many Plugins?

There is no set number of recommended plugins; other than to only use those that you need. However, keep in mind that many plugins use a lot of resources and some may really slow down your blog’s loading time. If you find that you’re using a resource hog plugin, try to find a ‘lighter’ alternative that provides similar function/features.

My Top 15 Recommended Plugins – and Why They are Useful

Ok, now that I’ve given you the lowdown on plugin selection and things you need to be mindful of; I do have a list of 15 plugins that I personally use and I’ll share with you their function, so you can decide if they would also be useful on your blog. If you don’t want or need the function/feature any of these plugins provides – do not install them. Simple as that.

Akismet: this is one part of my two part spam-fighting system on my blog to combat comment spam. This plugin actually comes already installed on every WordPress blog, you just need to activate it with an API key you get from WordPress.com.
All in One SEO Pack: awesome plugin that allows you to set unique blog post and page titles (i.e. keyword phrase specific titles that should be unique to every post and/or page you write) and set meta descriptions and add meta keywords as well.
Articles: this plugin allows me to select ‘featured’ posts that will then display on a separate page on my blog for quick and easy reference. Not the same as a sitemap, as only those posts you select will be visible, so a good way to keep your most popular posts all in one easy to find location.
Audio Player: a nice plugin that makes it very quick and easy to add an mp3 audio to a post or page. Great for adding interviews or audio sound bites to your page. I prefer this plugin over the built-in audio player in WordPress.
Comment Redirect: this plugin will redirect all first time commenters on your blog to a page or post of your choosing. I have a page created where I thank them, as first time commenters, for visiting my blog – you could even offer them a free downloadable report on this page, invite them to subscribe to your mailing list (include an opt-in form on this page!) or whatever you want. Make them feel special and appreciated!
Dagon Design Contact Form: by far the best and easiest to use and setup contact form I’ve found. It includes a captcha to control contact form spam by bots.
Dagon Design Sitemap: this is a human-friendly sitemap, made to make it easier for your blog visitors to find all of your posts and pages in one spot. Has a place to enter the location of your XML sitemap (see below)
Google XML Sitemap: this is a sitemap for search engines. Yes, you need both a human-friendly sitemap and this XML sitemap, so works well with the Dagon Design Sitemap listed above.
Sexy Bookmarks: this is a social bookmarking plugin that will add social bookmarking icons below every post and/or page on your site so your blog visitors can easily Stumble, Digg, Tweet, etc…. your site content. This is great for traffic generation!
Similar Posts: adds a list of similar or related posts at the end of your blog posts.
Subscribe to Comments: allows site visitors to receive notice of any new comments on a specific blog post.
Thank Me Later: will send a fully customizable follow up ‘thank you’ email to anyone who has previously commented on your blog, but has not been back. Great for reminding folks about your blog and getting return visitors.
Twitter Tools: allows you to integrate your blog and Twitter account. This is the tool I use to automatically send a tweet out when I publish a new post on my blog. You can also add your latest Twitter activity in your blog sidebar.
WP Database Backup: this an extremely handy plugin that everyone really needs to use. Not only will this plugin backup your database, you can schedule regular database backups with this plugin and have those backups emailed to you. I highly recommend that you install this plugin and schedule at least daily backups of your blog. Do not assume your web host is doing regular daily backups of your site.
WP Super Cache: if you have a blog that gets a LOT of traffic, or you could potentially get a surge of traffic (like through Digg, Stumbleupon or a trending topic), you need this plugin. It will save you from crashing your bandwidth during high traffic surges.

As you have no doubt seen by now, WordPress is perfect for building high quality websites and blogs in record times. It is also great for attracting visitors from the search engines at zero cost.

But where it falls down is in the monetization aspect of a site. Quite simply, how do you quickly and easily add some adverts to your WordPress site that can make you some money? Whether these are banner adverts, text adverts or some other kind, with WordPress alone you’re likely going to struggle.

Luckily there are some very good solutions to this question – namely WordPress banner plugins.

These WordPress plugins allow banners to be quickly and easily added to any site without you needing to know any coding at all. You simply take the snippet of code that the respective affiliate program gives you and then paste it into the plugin. As if by magic the banner this then start to appear on your website.

The biggest problem with WordPress plugins for banner management is that they are typically designed for only one thing – and that is displaying banners. What they won’t help you to do is to work out which banners are actually getting clicked and making you money. Because after all what is the point of pasting dozens of banners all over your site if nobody is actually clicking them?

A basic plugin simply for putting banners on your WordPress site is the WhyDoWork plugin where you simply paste the banner code in, decide where you want the banner to appear and it will start to show.

If you want to track the results and so make as much money as possible from your banners then the best solution is the WpSplitTester plugin.

In a previous life as a systems engineer protecting system data, having the resources to recover from a fatal melt down and frankly protecting clients from the headaches that come with lost data was a daily focus. As many of you reading this, my daily activities rely heavily on the performance of WordPress and its incredible reliability. To that point a significant chunk of my revenue is dependent upon WordPress performing as many of us take for granted.

Let me ask you as question: When was the last time that you backed-up your database? How about your site files?

Do you keep your WordPress up to date with the latest updates? How about any plugins that you make use of, do you keep them updated?

Let me tell you a quick little story.

A very good friend of mine uses WordPress as the foundation for his website and as you would expect WordPress has performed flawlessly. No real shocker there as that is the norm and pretty much what we have all come to expect.

However, as he and I were working together to prepare for a major email announcement that was being sent out for him (to 9000+ contacts) by a referral partner the unimaginable happened. With the anticipation of hundreds of people hitting his website because they were driven there by a highly reputable college we discovered that his website was not working properly.

To make matters worse neither of us had been making any updates to the site, no changes: no WordPress updates, no WordPress plugin updates, no site changes and yet, the site was displaying a solid white page. Even with a minor hint of panic setting in, I made up my mind that I would simply get into the admin section of the site to figure out what was going on.

This is where things got very interesting (meaning more panic) as I discovered that they admin interface was giving the same results as the public side of the site.

With a string of progressively more stressful events, we finally had some good news. A few weeks back I had setup the WordPress Database Backup plugin to automatically email me a copy of the database each day. That’s right, the extent of work that I have to do each day is simply save the backup that is waiting in the inbox of my email.

After opening my database management tool in the web browser, I uploaded a backup from a few days prior and we were back online. For what could have been a major disaster we were back online and running with a sigh of relief within about 20 minutes.

WordPress Database Backup (WP-DB-Backup) has a great admin interface that will allow you to make quick backups of your WordPress Database tables anytime that you are preparing to make updates, but more importantly and a feature I have not used consistently, the plugin will allow you to schedule backups that will be emailed to you on your schedule.

Even though the WP-DB-Backup plugin will allow you the option of saving the backup file to the server, I would strongly discourage you from leaving your database backups on the server. In a perfect world and if all is configured properly, then you or your technical support would be able to gain access to your database backups. However, in the middle of a major melt down I am not so sure that is a chance that you will want to take.

If you are running a WordPress website that contains important information that you would not want to lose or that website is an important component of your producing income, I would strongly encourage take a moment to check out the WordPress Database backup plugin (WP-DB-Backup).

Additionally, if you have plugin that has been useful to you in helping maintain your WordPress website please tell me about it as I am always looking for great new WordPress resources.

To Your Success!

WordPress.org maintains an official directory for themes. As of this writing they have over 1,200 themes with thousands more to be found outside of their system. Each theme in the WordPress directory has been checked and inspected for basic functionality. This is a good start and generally the safest place to get a theme if you are new. In this article we will learn that finding a good theme can be more than finding a “”pretty face”".

If you are a business, it can often be easy to forget that it is not what you want but what your customers want. You may like an edgy black theme but if your customers want more white space and a fresher look, that’s the way you should go. A good way to understand your customer’s preferences is to research similar sites that your target audience frequently visits. Assuming at this point you have a realistic vision of your customers preferences, what do you need to do next?

How do you find good themes?

There are a LOT of good themes available and a lot of them are free. The key to a good theme is not only what the theme does have as much as what it does not. Let’s start with a list of those things your theme “”Should not have..”"

Author is unknown or unavailable – Old themes are revised or used for quick generation of more themes, often they originated with an author that no longer is available.
Not cross-browser compatible. – There are still a lot of people using old browsers.
Does not support Web standardized structure. This is becoming less these days, but it still can be a problem.
Theme that was built over an old theme (and therefore contains some old issues that may cause problems with new plugins or WordPress upgrades) Look for a “”version history”"
Hard to customize – Access to CSS and code should be there for those that want to do something extra.
Malicious intent. (Hidden code with less than benign motives.)

All of that sounds obvious, but given the research required, this can become very tedious process of finding a “”good theme”". Well, it is!! Often you can short cut the process by hanging out on the WordPress forums and listening to the chatter about different themes. The good ones will stand out quickly, because the community can be very hard on those that take short-cuts and produce garbage.

Next, we will assume you have a number of possible themes that you have vetted either using the above list or based on recommendations of others on the WordPress forums.

Choosing a Theme that works for your business

To decide what is right for you, you should develop a series of criteria based on your target market and your basic business needs. Following is a list of ideas that you might consider to get you started. How you weight these issues will depend on your needs, and only you can decide that..
Is this a business or a hobby? If a business you might want to consider a more professional theme with a better chance of long term support.
What is your target market? Your theme should reflect that market.
Does your theme look like a “”WordPress”" site? If you are blogging as a hobby, then that would not be a bad thing. But if you are a business with professional aspirations, then it could be a “”very bad thing”"..
Does your theme provide SEO functionality? Does it use Header Tags correctly?
Does your theme provide the basic functionality you need for your business? It is always good to find a theme that gets you “”part way there”" in the basic structure and design.
Is there support?
Does your theme support widgets and tags?
Does your theme validate at http://validator.w3.org? If it does not, run, do not walk, away from that theme.
Is your theme structured with CSS modifications in mind? Many themes have tools for changing the site without code, but it is very likely that some day you will need to have a professional make some changes. Will that be possible? Will that be cost effective? A well constructed theme that uses web standards structure (CSS) will make this more likely.

A word of warning: Good maintenance of your WordPress website will require regular updates. This means your theme choice has to be compatible as you upgrade. This is what makes this process so detailed and critical. Therefore, do not rush and think through carefully your choices. A bad choice would bring your website to its knees just when you least expect it.

Good luck on your quest for the perfect WordPress theme!

Are you excited about being directly involved in building and maintaining your own website? If so, WordPress may be for you.

WordPress has fast become the most popular website building and blog platform for small businesses and individuals. What started out just as a blogging application has grown with extensive plugin extensions and themes to a powerful tool for building dynamic websites. The keyword here is “”dynamic”" and there is a price to be paid for that feature. That price is a learning curve and a commitment by the site owner to learn and do the work.

Your initial excitement can quickly be dashed as you struggle to figure out the best way to get started. You have three major hurdles to climb before you can feel confident that you are on your way:

How do I get WordPress?
How do I make it look the way I want?
What else do I need?

We will tackle the first step in this article. You have a number of options for getting WordPress. The first point is that you don’t really “”get”" WordPress; you either have it installed or you subscribe to a service that provides a WordPress site. The following outlines your options:

Subscribing to a Service

The most direct way is to go to WordPress.com and create an account for a free WordPress website. Within 5 minutes you can have it running. The downside of this service is that there are limited themes (designs) and very limited plugins. Most of the upgrades have a monthly or yearly cost attached. The plus side is you don’t have to maintain anything, it is all done for you. So if your needs are very simple, this is a good option.

Do-it-yourself

You can go to WordPress.org and download the software and install it yourself. WordPress has some very extensive install documents so if you are technically inclined, it is not that hard.

Hosting Service Installation

Many hosting services have WordPress as either a standard option or as an enhancement option. They have an install wizard that sets everything up for you. This is great with a few limitations: First it may not be the latest version -, it is up to you to check on that. Next because of that version issue, many themes or plugins may not work unless you upgrade.

Installation Service

Many web development companies provide installation services. It is usually advertised on their website. Pricing can vary a lot so you need to fully understand what you are getting

Choose the options that best meet your needs, time, resources and skill level and remember that WordPress is a hands-on website. Now that you know how to get started, you can explore the possibilities.

Enjoy

When I started creating websites via HTML and Adobe Dreamweaver I thought to myself, “”Wow, you really need to have a lot of time and patience to do this stuff!”" I enjoyed creating them but going back and doing updates was really a hassle. Then a colleague told me about Adobe Contribute (wow, what a revelation!) Now I could make updates to my static pages painlessly. Then I got into blogging, but to link my blog to my website was messy.

Then I kept hearing about WordPress websites. For the longest time I just didn’t get it, wasn’t WordPress a blogging platform? At least that’s what I thought because I had a WordPress.com blog. Well, more and more I kept hearing about how great these websites were and I investigated. WordPress.org talked about how easy they are to install and all the great plugins and support available within their community. So I tried it, I installed it on my local system as a test.

Well, I was hooked. I primarily use WordPress now for my clients. Not only is the look professional and consistent from page to page, it is so easy to update. I like designing a website that I can then turn over to my client and with a little bit of training, they can perform their own updates quickly and somewhat painlessly. So here are my top 5 reasons you should convert to or start with a WordPress website:

1. They are easy to update yourself. There are sometimes that you just need to make a small change to your site like you changed a service or you want to add a phone number. Instead of having to wait for your designer, you can go right into the dashboard and make the change. If you can blog, you can make changes to a page in WordPress.

2. There are thousands of free plugins. Plugins are little add ons for your website that add functionality to your pages. There are things like contact forms, flash players, photo galleries and event management plugins. It is easy to add these in and make your site do just about anything you can image.

3. WordPress sites are beautiful. I have seen some pretty ugly static websites, but I have yet to see a homely WordPress site. Even the most simple of these sites has a professional look and feel. The built in consistency makes each page look like it belongs.

4. If you don’t want to do updates, you can easily find someone who can do them for you. Once you have a WordPress website, it is easy to find someone to do your updates for you if you don’t want to. Many Virtual Assistants offer this service.

5. There is so much support out there if you run into trouble. I have yet to have a problem that I haven’t been able to solve by visiting the forums or websites of other WordPress users. There are so many talented people out there willing to lend a helping hand to their fellow users.

This is certainly the short list of reasons to build your next site with WordPress, I could come up with many more. There is so much great information on the web about creating one yourself with the free open source platform found at http://www.wordpress.org that you could have a great site up and running in a short period of time. You could also easily find a web designer who uses the platform by doing a quick search. I hope this article was useful.

Things-You-Must-Do-Before-You-Submit-To-Article-Directories

The importance of articles in today?s websites and internet based companies are immeasurable. They dictate a lot in the success and the drive of traffic into one?s site. It has become a key element in making a site work and earns a profit. A website operator and owner must have the good sense to include articles in his or her site that will work for them and earn them the many benefits articles can give to their site.

Articles have been known to be the driving force in driving traffic to a website. Articles are a factor in giving site high rankings in search result pages. The higher a site ranks the bigger slice of the traffic flow pie he gets. With a huge number in traffic flow, there are more profits and more potential for other income generating schemes as well.

But, it is not just about stuffing your site with articles; they have certain requirements as well. These requirements must be met to obtain the maximum benefits an article will provide for your site. A well written article will catch the eyes and interest of your customers and keep them coming back for more. They would also be able to recommend your site to others.

Here are some tips to help you and assist you in making your articles. Below you will read about four things all articles must have to make it successful and helpful in making your site a profit earning and traffic overflowing site.

? Keywords and Keyword Phrases.

An article must always be centered on the keywords and keyword phrases. As each website visitor goes to a site, there are those who are just merely browsing but actually looking for a specific something. When this happens, a searcher usually goes to a search engine and types in the keywords they are looking for (e.g. Toyota Camry, Meningitis, Tax Lawyer and Etcetera). It could be anything they want.

The Important thing is that you have an article that has the keywords that are related to your site. For example, if you maintain an auto parts site, you must be able t have articles about cars and their parts. There are many tools in the internet that provides service in helping a webmaster out in determining what keywords and keyword phrases are mostly sought out. You can use this tool to determine what keywords to use and write about.

? Keyword Density

Know that you have your keywords and keyword phrases, you must use them fully. An article must have good keyword density for a search engine to ?feel? its presence. Articles should at least have ten to fifteen percent of keyword density in their content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results. Getting a high rank is what articles do best for a site.

Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article. The number varies depending on the number of words used in an article. An effective article must have a keyword density that is not too high or too low. With a very high density, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines. It comes off as overeager. A low number may be ignored by the search engines.

? Good Article Content

Like what is stated above, you cannot just riddle an article with keywords. They must also be regarded as good reading materials. Articles must be able to entertain people as well as provide good information and help for their needs. Articles should be written well with correct spelling and good grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your work good and well thought out.

People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic. As more people believe in you. They will be able to trust you and your products.

? Linking Articles

And another important thing to remember. If you are going to submit articles to ezines and/or contribute your articles to newsletters and other sites, DON?T ever forget to include a link to your site. A little resource box with a brief description of your site and you should always be placed right after your articles that you have submitted. If people like your articles, they will most likely click on the link directing them to your site.

Things-All-Articles-Must-Have-Don’t-Forget!

Writing an article doesn?t just mean putting down thoughts into words then typing and writing it. You have to capture the interest of your readers and get them to keep on reading. To send your message across you have to get the attention of the reader and have a firm grasp of their interest and pique their curiosity.

The main ingredient in baking up an article is a large dose of creativity. While creativity may come natural to many people, some just gets into a block or something to that effect that can drive someone crazy. Many writers have literally torn their hair out when they get writers block and just can?t seem to get their creative juices flowing.

Putting words into images in the readers mind is an art. A clear and crisp depiction requires a certain flair that only creativity can provide. Similes and metaphors help a lot, but the way an article gets entwined word for word, sentence by sentence then paragraph by paragraph into a whole article develops the essence of the article.

So just what do you have to do when nothing comes to mind? There is no surefire ways to get the perfect ideas but there are easy ways to get your creative juices flowing. No one can guarantee you of having the perfect mindset but many methods may aid you in achieving that state of mind. Here are five easy ways for that.

1) Keep a diary or a journal with you always. Ideas can be triggered by anything you may hear, see, or smell. Your senses are your radar in finding great ideas. Write all of them into a journal and keep it with you for future reference. You may also write down anything that you have read or heard, someone?s ideas could be used to develop your own ideas and this is not stealing. Remember that ideas and creativity can come from anywhere; it?s the development of the idea that makes it unique.

2) Relax and take time to sort things out. A jumbled mind cannot create any space for new ideas. Everyone must have a clear mind if one wishes to have their creativity in full speed. Get rid of all obstacles that can be a hindrance to your creativity. If you are bothered by something, you cannot force your mind to stay focused.

Try to relax every time that you can and think about your experiences and interactions with others. Your experiences are what shape your mindset and your opinions which could be reflected on your writings. Try to discover yourself, find out what triggers your emotions. Discover what inspires you and what ticks you off. You can use these emotions to help you in expressing yourself and your ideas, with this you can grow creatively.

3) Create a working place that can inspire your creativeness. Your working place can be quite a hindrance if it doesn?t make you feel happy or relaxed. Creativity comes from being in a good state of mind and a messed up workplace that causes distraction won?t be conducive in firing up your creative flow.

Surround your working place with objects that makes you happy and relaxed. You may put up pictures, or scents, objects that inspire, or anything that can get your creativeness cranking. A clean and well organized workplace also rids of distractions and unwanted hindrances. With a good working place, you can work in peace and never notice the time pass by.

4) Set the mood. Setting the mood requires you to just go with the moment or to induce your self to feeling what makes your mind works best. Finding out what makes you tick could help you find ways to get your creative juices flowing. Set the pace and tempo for your mood and everything else will follow.

There are many ways to set the mood. Some writers have been known to use alcohol, a little sip of wine to stir up the imagination. Some would like some mood music while others let the lighting of the environment create the mood.

5) Go on a getaway and just do something unlike crazy. Letting yourself go and have fun produces adrenaline that can make your imagination go wild. Take an adventure or a solemn hike. Whatever it is that is unusual from your daily routine can take the rut out of your schedule. In no time at all, your creativeness will make use of that experience and get your imagination to go on overdrive.

Easy-Ways-To-Get-Your-Creative-Juices-Flowing