Jackie Lee posted:

Using a hosted wordpress blog is a great way to build a quick and easy website. You can use these sites for just about anything. Wordpress is not just for blogging anymore.

If you want to see your wordpress site show up in the search engine results you are going to have to do a little on page search engine optimization.

Here are 4 quick SEO tips that will make your site even more search engine friendly.

All in One Seo Plugin

If you only use one plugin on your wordpress site,make it this one. This one little plugin will help your site be Google friendly, and you don’t even really need to know what you are doing.

In the setting area of the plugin make sure you put your site title in, making sure your keywords are in the title.

Add 5 keywords in the meta area, that are related to your site. Do some good keyword research before you start and you will be driving traffic in no time.

Add a Footer Link

If you go to the design – theme editor area you will see a place to edit your footer area. Make sure you put a link in the footer. This link should have keyword anchor text as the clickable part of your link.

A footer link will give you an anchor text link from each and every page of your site, including all tag pages, posts and pages. As your site grows that will be a lot of links.

Keywords In Title

When you are naming your website it’s fun to be cute or tongue in cheek, but if you are trying to drive traffic to your site it’s best to use your keyword in your title.

You can add words before or after your keyword to make the title make more sense, but get the title in there.

The title of your site will be what people see in the search engine results. It also shows up in the top blue header in google. It’s one of the most important things the search engines look for when providing targeted results to a searcher.

Change Permalinks

This is one I see a lot of people, not only beginners, forgetting to do. A permalink is the link to a specific post or page that people can use to go directly to that particular page of your site.

The default permalink structure will not help your SEO efforts at all. You want to customize your permalink structure to show your post title after the title of your blog.

Just go to your wordpress admin area. Under settings you will see a permalinks area. At the bottom of the list you will see a place to check custom. Click that and then in the area provided type /%postname%/ this will get your keywords for each and every post in your permalink. Just make sure you are using keyword in your post titles.

There you have it 4 quick SEO tips to increase your onpage optimization. They shouldn’t take but a minute to do, but you will notice a big difference once it’s done.

Blogging Postsor asked:


Review theme, Wordpress is right to go!

So you’ve decided to set up a review site.  Smart choice!  You get to influence a customer’s decision right when they’re on the cusp of purchase, as well as promote more than one affiliate product on a site.  Setting up a review site truly is one of the best decisions an Internet marketer can make.

To make it easy on yourself, consider using a review theme.  Wordpress is a blogging platform that allows you choose from and install thousands of different themes, making your website almost endlessly customizable.  Of those themes, you should look for one that is set up as a review site theme.  This sort of theme takes out some of the traditional blog formatting that most Wordpress themes come with, such as dates on every post and organizing by date.  Instead, you use a theme to set up a professional looking site in minutes.

But don’t just look for any review themes!  Many require a working knowledge of HTML to customize.  If you want your own header or a different layout, you may find yourself editing PHP pages constantly.  Try to find one that’s easily customizable, so you can use it on several different sites.  Also, make sure it’s customizable by simply filling out a form – some say customizable, but they still expect you to go into the PHP files!

Also, look for a theme that provides support.  Some designers make their themes and set them out there, but don’t catch all the errors.  And if it’s a free theme, they might not care enough to help you fix them.

At the same time, don’t pay a ton of money for a theme.  Customizable themes could run you $79, $89, or $99!  I’ve found a theme that is priced for much MUCH less.  It’s attractive, easy to use, and provides support.  Check it out here! Wordpress Review Theme

Danny Wirken asked:


One of the most serious problems with any blogging system, including WordPress, is that the comments area is wide open to that scourge of the Internet, spammers. In this case, it’s comment spam.

Comment spam is created by people seeking to boost their Google rankings by having lots of links pointing to their own websites. This causes a wide variety of problems:

• When Google detects content spam, they will often block the site it’s coming from because it messes up their ranking system.

• It takes up your valuable time and bandwidth to eliminate these posts.

• If the onslaught of spam is heavy enough, it may result in a denial-of-service attack, intended or not, which is a situation in which the server tries so hard to post bad information and/or deliver notification emails to you that it denies service to the legitimate requests. In at least one case, a blogger received over two thousand email notifications of comments that needed approval; as he dealt with these, he continued getting more, ultimately crashing his mail server.

As you can see, even if you have your comments set to post only upon approval, this can be a serious problem. One solution is the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Akismet Plugin and Other Plugin Options for WordPress

Akismet is designed to help you filter out those nasty spammers, and it’s not hard to get it installed into your WordPress system. Download the plugin, and upload it to the blog directory on your server in the plugins subdirectory under wp-content. Activate from the WordPress plugins menu. If you have a notice that you need the Akismet API, go to the WordPress website and look or ask for one.

Here’s the magic: the only instruction in Akismet is “forget that spam was ever a problem.” You don’t have to do anything else at all – the spam will simply be bounced. You will not receive a notification, nor will you have to go out and delete spam.

Another plugin for eliminating spam from bots is the “Did You Pass Math” plugin. This one makes the user perform a simple math problem before submitting a comment. As most humans can handle this and most spambots can’t, it’s pretty likely that a comment posted through this is a legitimate comment. You should add a note of caution that your comments will be deleted if you answer the math wrong, though; a wise commenter will use an offline composition tool, not post directly to the comments area.

If This Still Doesn’t Work

If you still can’t eliminate spammers with these plugins, you can eliminate them by denying them access to your comments area. This does not mean you have to disable your comments section, only that you need to set up a filter.

It’s not usually as simple as just blocking their IPs. Serious spammers use random IPs, while blocking IPs may get rid of them for a short time, it will ultimately prevent legitimate comments from being posted. Spammers are also notorious for hijacking other people’s IP addresses. But as a short-term emergency solution, you can try it. The IP address is included in the information packet for the comment; it’s similar to a traceable phone number. Look for clear patterns in your IP numbers.

Use the .htaccess file to block unwanted IPs from even seeing your blog. For instance, these lines can be added:

order allow,deny

deny from 123.123.123.123

deny from 456.456.456.*

deny from 789.789..

allow from all

IPs are four-part numbers, such as 192.168.0.1. Typically, if you see a pattern with the first two sections being identical, you can block all IPs of that type by simply listing them as 192.168.., as you see above. This screens out all these IP numbers. Blocked IPs will get a 403 error page; customize yours so that your contact details are listed in case you’re blocking out a legitimate user. Don’t use your regular email; a spammer can harvest that too, for a whole new set of problems. Instead, encode your email so that it’s not automatically readable.

When you think you have your problems addressed, you can remove the block from your .htaccess file. If it still doesn’t work, or if you don’t see an IP pattern, it’s likely that spambots are hijacking someone else’s machine to attack your site. In this case, do not use the IP block.

Again, if you don’t have an IP pattern of attack, this may not be worth doing. Remember, too, that with IP addresses, the first numbers affect the largest number of computers, like a reverse address: USA, California, Sacramento, X Building, Ste. 101, Joe Schmo. An IP follows roughly the same pattern, with the last of the four sections referring to the specific computer it is attached to.

Google’s Nofollow Attribute

Of course, if it’s a waste of their time to spam you, spammers may just skip you altogether. For this reason, you can use the Google Nofollow attribute for links: . This attribute is embedded automatically by modern versions of WordPress.

It does not eliminate links, which is what spammers are working on adding to your site. Instead, it makes those links irrelevant to Google. The end result is that it doesn’t hurt your rank in Google, and it doesn’t help a spammer to send data to your site. It also marks you, for spambots looking for an easy target, as a waste of time.

This is not an immediate fix. But it is a way to make your blog resistant to spammers in the future. If you’re already a target, you’ll have to work with it slowly, incorporating all these fixes. If you aren’t a target, the very least you should do is turn on the nofollow option in your WordPress system; this will deter any hungry spambots. Upgrade your version, or look for one of the plugins that provides this service for you.

Gen Wright asked:


WordPress first appeared in 2003, is now on thousands of websites. This is a simple open-source blogging tool that in two ways, both hosted option or download free software option.

WordPress offers many additional features that might otherwise know as a WordPress plugin. This WordPress plugin allows you to create your blog to both the public and the gender of your site.

There are many WordPress plugin to choose from, if you are new to blogging is not possible to know what is best for you. Here is a list and explanation only to some of the most popular WordPress plugin available.

Top WordPress Plugin:

? All in one SEO – WordPress this thorn in optimizing for search engines, and automatic generation META tag. It gives you the opportunity to cancel the licenses and all the META description and keywords you want. Depending on the version of WordPress that you are using 2 / 3, you can simply install this plugin for WordPress and it works now.

? Akismet – this is a fantastic tool that helps in resolving the confusion of spam. Once installed, this WordPress plug-examine all of your comments against the Akismet web service to analyze whether or spam look like something real, which then allows you to check what has been found in the “comments” section of your blog in WordPress so that you can we decide whether you want to delete or not.

? Statistics WordPress – although there are many ways to acquire data and statistics about your site, most also offer many details, especially if you are new to blogging. The statistics WordPress system was specifically designed to get more information “needs a popular blogger.

? Twitter tools – this plugin integrates your Twitter account to your WordPress blog. Twitter is a micro-blogging and social networking service.

? Get Recent Comments – This plugin gives you full control over the appearance of excerpts of comments included in your sidebar. You can determine the order, the number of tracks and duration.

? DMSGuestbook – The guest book can be easily customized, which allows you to change not only color, but allows you to set mandatory fields, in which a user must provide a range of information. You can completely manage user entries and edit / remove the bodies before they are displayed.

? Video All in One Pack – This plugin for WordPress offers all necessary functions for video and rich media. It allows you to record / upload videos and import directly to your elected post.

Each of WordPress plugin has its unique advantages and can really help your blog to something easy to use. With so many to choose from plug-in value of spending some time searching through the offer and the selection of the plugin will benefit both you, your website and your readers.

New additions are constantly being added and developed to ensure that you control, so you do not miss something that could be beneficial.

Jeff Schuman asked:


ou first start blogging choosing the best platform for your blog is critcal. This and your marketing efforts are the keys to your blogging success.

Many people get online to start blogs, but don’t know what platform to use. This is why you need to know why wordpress is the best blogging platform.

Here are the reasons why wordpress is the best blogging platform you can use to start your blog.

One: The blogging platform is very easy for anyone to use. It is designed to be simple for even beginners to use. When you make a post, you will write the post in the WYSIWYG editor, which allows you to save drafts and publish at your convenience.

Two: With wordpress, you have a full support team to help you when you need it. They provide you with a lot of plugins, free templates, add-ons and modifications for your blog.

Three: It is very simple for anyone to change the way your blog looks with just a click of a button. You can easily change the look of your blog very ith so many different templates available. This is very important because you want to have a site that is unique to you, so you can even get a custom wordpress blog made if you want to. In other words, you have total control over how your blog looks.

Four: When you are blogging, it is important that you are able to create permalinks. With just the click of a button, you can easily do this in wordpress.

Five: Because it is free to use is one of the main reasons why wordpress is the best blogging platform. All you have to do is to download it and then upload it to your webhosting. What could be simpler than that?

Six: With a wordpress blog, there is automatic pinging to the main blog ping services each time you make a new post.

These are just a few of the reasons why wordpress is the best blogging platform. There are many other reasons that you can learn about with some research. So, if you are serious about blogging, you definitely want to use the wordpress platform.

You will never find one that is as easy to use, even for beginners. Start your blog today and before you know it you will be hooked on wordpress blogs.

Priyanka Kapil asked:


The most hyped consumer electronics device ever created,The Apple iPhone Third Generation(3G) has finally landed in India.Apple Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS, support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more amazing features in your hands. And just like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one —a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device.



 

 

Image Source : www.apple.com/iphone

Apple iPhone3G is the latest iPhone3G from Apple. There are many features of iPhone3G. It combines 3 products in one – a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod and a breakthrough internet device with HTML email and full web browsing. There are 3 models which are available: a) 8 GB in Black Colour b) 16 GB in White Colour c) 16 GB in Black Colour.

Wordpress Introduces the first Open Source application that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Version 1.1 is now available in the Apple App store.

This version includes several performance improvements and bug fixes including:



Proper handling of multi-byte / accented characters, which fixes the crashes many of you were experiencing.

The preview system that no longer creates a temporary empty post, which may have interfered with certain plugins like Twitter Tools.

More helpful and descriptive error message, no more PC LOAD LETTER.



That’s the number of people worldwide who have installed the WordPress for iPhone App recently. These numbers, supplied by Apple, do not count updates for people who upgraded from 1.0 to 1.1.

Here is a chart with the global breakdown of installs:



The iPhone Developer Standard and Enterprise Programs provide the development resources you need to create your iPhone applications, test directly on iPhone and distribute. Even though Apple created iPhone as a closed device, several developers bought them with the express purpose of designing and running third-party software. Who have run third party applications on their iPhone, but its concepts and code examples have shown to be remarkably similar to Apple’s official SDK,

Royce Tivel asked:


It’s soon going to be time to redesign my web site for the “Web 2.0 Age.” I have seriously looked at two platforms, Drupal and Joomla, with which to accomplish this.

Drupal and Joomla offer comprehensive packages that, in the case of Drupal, includes a blog and forum as core modules. Theming these platforms can be accomplished through both CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and PHP (Personal Home Page or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) code modifications. However, these platforms are complex and learning enough to install, manage, and customize these platforms can be a daunting task.

After studying the two platforms, including using them both on my test bed platform and on the Internet, I decided to take a look at WordPress as a possible solution to my future Web needs. I was surprised to discover that the latest version of WordPress is easy to install, easy to use, and easy to theme.

In this article, I will describe how to customize WordPress 2.5.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE JAKOB DESIGN

The current design for my personal web site, SelectDigitals.com, is based on work and philosophy of Jakob Nielsen , http://www.useit.com/. Nielsen’s work has been dedicated to making usable web sites that deliver content that is easy to find and easy to read.

The design of Nielsen’s site (and my site, by permission) is elegantly simple and has the primary goal of delivering content. WordPress also has the primary goal of delivering content. So, my first WordPress design will endeavor to maintain the look and feel of our sites with the added feature of visitor interactivity. I will refer to this as the Jakob design.

There are six major components that make up the look of the default WordPress blog:

1. Header Graphic,

2. Blog Title,

3. Tagline,

4. Page,

5. Background,and

6. Footer.

In order to make the Jakob blog load quickly, I decided not to use a header or footer graphic; and since the design will essentially be the default WordPress theme with a new coat, only a little graphic design work needs to be done. In fact, I only needed to create one graphic to to generate the blog page with it’s two column effect. The blog page will “float” centered in a dark-blue *body* background that will serve to frame the page.

Creating the Graphic

A look in the image directory for the default WordPress theme shows the default images used for the Kubrick look. For now, there is only one file of particular interest: kubrickbgwide.jpg. For the Jakob design, the other Kubrick images are not needed but will be needed for the “Fancy”, more complex design.

The blog’s page will be created from a “slice” through the center of the new design. The slice is a narrow image the width of the blog page.

I began my design by laying out a basic page (760px X 600px) in Adobe Illustrator. I like using Illustrator for artwork of this kind, although other programs could be used, too.

I filled the basic page with the page’s background color (not to be confused with the dark blue *body* background). The light background color will will “show-off” colored text, such as the blog’s title and tagline.

I overlayed the page with two rectangles, or “columns.” The left-hand, 510px-wide column is filled with a pastel yellow color; the right-hand column, 230px wide, is filled with a pastel blue color. The two columns fit within the basic page with a 10px border of page background around them.

In Illustrator, I then placed a 760px X 40px rectangle on the page and used this to make a slice. A slice is nothing more that a representative piece of a larger image, in this case, of the blog design. I saved the slice as kubrickbgwide.jpg. Kubrickbgwide.jpg will be used to generate the blog-page background. As new content is added to the blog page, copies of the slice will be stacked vertically to “grow” the two-column background. This is the only image needed by a browser to generate the blog’s home page. The Blog will, therefore, load very quickly.

Pretty easy so far, right? The rest of the design is accomplished through the theme’s CSS file and/or through the WordPress administrative interface.

CSS Changes

The default CSS file is in the wp-content_themes_default directory. The CSS text below shows the code changes to style.css. Before making any changes to the default CSS file, I always make and save a copy of the original. The CSS file can be opened and modified with any text editor. Text to be deleted will be shown within square brackets. New or modified text will be shown without brackets.

/* Begin Typography & Colors */

body {

[background: #d5d6d7 url('images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg');]

background: #636f89; /* Set the Body background color to blue */

}

#page {

[background-color: white;]

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border:none;

}

[#header {

background: #73a0c5 url('images/kubrickheader.jpg') no-repeat bottom center;

}

#headerimg {

margin: 7px 9px 0;

height: 192px;

width: 740px;

}]

#footer {

[background: #eee url('images/kubrickfooter.jpg') no-repeat top;]

background: #fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

}

h1, h1 a, h1 a:hover, h1 a:visited, #headerimg [.description] {

text-decoration: none;

[color: white;]

color:red; /* Make the title red */

padding-bottom: .5em; /* Put a little space between the title and tagline */

}

.description {

text-decoration: none;

color: blue; /* Make the tagline blue */

text-align: center;

}

/* End Typography & Colors */

/* Begin Structure */

#page {

[background-color: white;]

background-color: fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border: none;

}

#header {

[background-color: #73a0c5;]

background-color: #fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

}

/* End Structure */

After making and saving these changes to the style.css file, the newly designed blog page is accomplished.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE FANCY DRESS DESIGN

Although I like the simplicity of the Jakob blog design, it will not appeal to everyone. Lots of people just love “glitz.” The price of a fancy WordPress dress is often a slower loading blog with no increase in usability. However, for those who want to “dress up” the appearance of their blog, here are additional ways this can be accomplished.

First of all, it should be noted that the background of the default WordPress page uses header (kubrickheader.jpg) and footer (kubrickfooter.jpg) graphics. These graphics are not filled with a solid color, as in the Jakob design, but with gradients. There also appears to be a very small drop shadow under the page.

Because of the complexity of the default page, additional graphics are required and, thus, more slices will be needed. Additionally, when a more complex body background is desired in which to “float” the page, a “seed” image for this might also be required (this is what the kubrickbgcolor.jpg image is for).

As before, I created a drawing of the blog page in Illustrator. The page, with rounded corners, floats on the default WordPress background, has a yellow gradient, and has a small drop shadow.

I first created a 760px X 600px rectangle on the Illustrator artboard. I filled this rectangle with the background color (C:8, M:6, Y:6, K:0).

Next, using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, I drew a 736px X 584px rectangle and filled it with the yellow gradient. Essentially, I made the page as large as possible within the background while leaving enough room for the drop shadow.

Finally, I gave the rounded rectangle a small drop shadow.

In order to insure that the slices will merge perfectly into the *body* background, I created a 60px X 60px square of the same background color (C:8, M:6, Y:6, K:0) and saved it as kubrickbgcolor.jpg. The small image will be used to “paint” the body background. This is an important step as the background used for the body and the background used for the page must match perfectly for the Fancy design.

Creating the Slices

Using the Rectangle Tool, I placed a 760px X 200px rectangle on top of the layout described above. I positioned this rectangle at the top of the layout and used it to make a slice for the header graphic. Before doing this, I disabled stroke and fill.

I saved the slice as kubrickheader.jpg.

I created the footer and page slices in a similar fashion and renamed them as kubrickfooter.jpg and kubrickbgwide.jpg, respectively. Kubrickfooter.jpg is 760px X 63px and kubrickbgwide is 760px X 40px.

There are two other Kubrick images in the images directory: kubrickbg-ltr.jpg and kubrickbg-rtl.jpg (left to right, and right to left). These images are the same as kubrickbgwide.jpg. So, I made two copies of kubrickbgwide.jpg and renamed them accordingly.

CSS Changes

The default CSS file is in the wp-content_themes_default directory. The CSS text below shows the code changes to style.css. Square brackets show which code to delete and new code is shown without brackets. Before making the change, I copied and saved the original file. For the Fancy design, the CSS changes are minimal.

/* Begin Typography & Colors */

body {

[background: #d5d6d7 url('images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg');]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg’);

}

#page {

[background-color: white;]

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

}

#header {

[background: #73a0c5 url('images/kubrickheader.jpg') no-repeat bottom center;]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickheader.jpg’) no-repeat bottom center;

}

#footer {

[background: #eee url('images/kubrickfooter.jpg') no-repeat top;]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickfooter.jpg’) no-repeat top;

}

h1, h1 a, h1 a:hover, h1 a:visited, #headerimg [description]{

[color: white;]

color:red; /* Make the blog title red */

padding-bottom: .5em; /* Put a little space between the title and tagline */

}

.description {

text-decoration: none;

color: blue; /* Make the blog tagline blue */

text-align: center;

}

/* End Typography & Colors */

/* Begin Structure */

#page {

[background-color: white;]

background-color: #e7e7e7;

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border: none; }

#header {

[background-color: #73a0c5;]

background-color: #e7e7e7;

}

/* End Structure */

After the design and CSS work, the WordPress shows it’s new clothes to the whole Internet.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE NO-GRAPHIC DESIGN

Nothing every goes wrong when a browser loads a page from the Internet, right? Even if this were, in fact, the case, it is still wise to consider how a page will display in case the graphics can’t be found.

In the case of the Jakob design, if kubrickbgwide.jpg did not get downloaded, for any reason, the page would not display acceptably. Because of the light background used for the header and footer, they display normally on the dark-blue background assigned to the body. However, the page content becomes difficult to read: it almost gets lost in the dark-blue background. A lighter background for the body might have been a much wiser choice.

The creator of the Kubrick design solved this problem by assigning alternate background colors to be used if the graphics were not available. The assignments are made within the style.css file:

body { background: #d5d6d7 url(‘images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg’); }

#header { background: #73a0c5 url(‘images/kubrickheader.jpg’) no-repeat bottom center; }

#footer { background: #eee url(‘images/kubrickfooter.jpg’) no-repeat top; }

If the images are not available, the alternate RGB color value will be used.

If the graphics are not available, the default WordPress blog is still presentable and usable. For an initial page redesign, starting with the basic Kubrick design, without graphics, might be a good place to begin. This can be accomplished by simplifying the statements above:

body { background: #d5d6d7; }

#header { background: #73a0c5; }

#footer { background: #eee; }

The colors can then be changed to try out various blog color schemes. Just change the RGB color codes, save the CSS file, and refresh the browser to see the changes immediately.

Yours for a more successful blog,

Royce Tivel