April 13, 2012

Difference Between Free and Paid WordPress Themes

By Dragan Palla -

Setting up a WordPress blog on your own website is fast and it is easy. The entire process becomes all the more simple if the installation is offered by the web hosting provider that you are already with. The web hosting company can install the WordPress blog from their own control panel and they will give you a choice of free WordPress themes or premium WordPress themes, also. If this is not possible you still have the choice of the default theme that is WordPress 3. However, if you are using your blog for your business or to attract a large amount of readers, using the default theme will make you look like everyone else which is not good for business. You can still obtain free themes or you can spend from your business budget and obtain a premium WordPress theme. Before doing anything, you should research so that you know the difference between free and paid WordPress themes.

You will notice the difference between the two due to one very obvious reason: one type is free and the other, premium, is paid. If you are asked to pay for a website, there will be obvious aspects of the theme that make it premium, such as different layouts or increased functionality. The default theme is very minimal in its functionality options which is just one of the reasons that this is a non-paid theme.

The support that you receive should be of quality if you opt for a paid WordPress theme. Theme designers test and retest their themes to assure the end user that the end product will be user friendly and free of viruses and any bugs in the system. There are also add-ons and extensions that you can purchase to extend the use of your theme, and some are even free. The main difference between the two is that the designer of a premium theme will pay much more attention to the design and the outcome of the theme, whereas designers of free themes do not put in as much work to ensure that the theme will work correctly simply because there is truly nothing in it for them except for the notoriety. It is also noteworthy to mention that the support that you receive if you have paid for a theme comes freely given.

As a rule of thumb, there are many more free themes than paid themes. In fact, if you do not want to host your own site, you can have your site hosted by WordPress itself. This is a great way to find fantastic free themes and the hosting for free, as well, which is one of the best parts of WordPress.

Regardless if you choose a free or a premium WordPress theme is a matter of some research, comparison, and finally, personal choice. You will even be able to get a screenshot of what your final site would look like before actually setting it up and paying (if you are getting a premium site).

I am a father of two gorgeous kids and lover of WordPress. My first intention was writing reviews on top webhosting and domain name providers but with time I’ve got more involved with WordPress and Web Design and I love it. You can visit my site DomainsFlow.

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How Do I Make Customizations to My WordPress Site That Won’t Get Lost After an Upgrade?

By Sarah M MacGregor -

For most of us with WordPress websites we like to tweak a little bit of everything to make it look just so, and the beauty of WordPress is that you are able to do this. BUT, if you’re simply modifying the files that come with the theme then every time you do an upgrade you have to re-apply the changes that you have made.

Ever lame!

A super easy solution to make sure that your theme customizations aren’t overwritten is to create a child theme.

I know, I know, you’re not a developer and you don’t want to have to create a whole new theme all by yourself, right? Not to worry my friend, it’s far more simple than you’re imagining. A child theme basically borrows the files from your regular theme and acts as a holder for your customizations, so you’re not re-creating everything from scratch after all.

Here’s how you create a child theme to go along with whatever WordPress theme you’re currently using:

1. Using FTP, navigate to your themes folder and create a new folder. You can call it whatever you want.

2. Create a text file called style.css and put it in this new folder.

3. Add this header info into the css file:

/*

Theme Name: whatever name you want your child theme to have eg. SMac’s Child Theme

Description: whatever description you want here

Author: your name

Version: 1.0

Template: twentyten (or whatever the name of the theme is that you’re currently using)

*/

The Template field is particularly important, make sure to type the name of the theme folder exactly as you see it in the themes folder, it’s case sensitive. In the example above I’ve used twentyten as my main theme. The Description, Author, and Version fields are all optional.

4. Add this nifty line into your css file (after the header info) to import the css info from your main theme:

@import url(“url of the main theme css file”);

Now all you have to do is add any css changes you want to this new css file in your new theme folder and anything you put here will override the main theme’s css.

5. If you want to make changes to any other theme files, eg. Loop.php, Functions.php, you can put them here too and anything that you add will be used as well as the main theme files. This step isn’t necessary, the only file that a child theme absolutely must have is style.css.

6. Activate your new child theme – if all is ready you can log into your wp-admin as usual, go to the Appearance section and you’ll see your new child theme sitting there ready to be activated. Go ahead and activate your child theme and voila!

All done! Super simple really, if you know a bit of coding, and let’s be honest, you probably wouldn’t be fiddling around with the guts of your WordPress installation files unless you already know a bit of coding, right?

Now you’re all set to do your next upgrade, and joy of joys, all of your customizations will still be there when you’re done! Yay!

Sarah MacGregor a.k.a. SMac is a Canadian Virtual Assistant, CEO of SMac To The Rescue, and Efficiency Expert who teaches small business owners and entrepreneurs how to increase their business efficiency and get unstuck. To learn how she can help your business with her Efficient Virtual Assistant Super Powers, and to sign up for her free Super Efficiency E-book series, visit her site at http://www.ToTheRescue.ca

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Anti-Hacking Plugins for WordPress

By Robert Plank -

Install these three simple plugins to WordPress to minimize the risk of hacking and intrusion. It’s never fun for someone to get access to your WordPress blog, but unfortunately it happens every day. Every day websites are deleted, defaced or simply taken over and you can avoid that by installing the login lockdown plugin, the HTTPS for WordPress plugin and the WP-Security plugin.

First of all, a very simple plugin called login lockdown simply blocks access to your blog if someone enters the wrong password too many times. A very common technique for hackers to get entry to WordPress blog is simply try many passwords over and over and over and over until something works. So login lockdown will block access to someone after a certain number of failed passwords. It’s a very simple plugin and it’s worth it to install this to make sure that any intruder is now locked out.

Another plugin to install is called HTTPS for WordPress. If you don’t know what HTTPS or SSL is it simply means that it is encrypting everything that gets sent to and from your WordPress site, including the username and password you use to login. Normally your username and password is broadcasted out in the open. That means if you use any kind of public WiFi anyone else on that WiFi can install a simple plugin and capture every password you type into WordPress. That is really not good. You can either not use unsecured WiFi or you can use this HTTPS plugin which will force you to use HTTPS when logging into your WordPress dashboard, therefore protecting your password from prying eyes.

And finally, the WP-Security plugin installs right into WordPress and scans all your folders for many security vulnerabilities. It checks it for any weak points, any holes, out of date plugins and gives you a very easy to follow list of things that you must do in order to keep WordPress secure.

Obviously, I can’t guarantee you will be 100 percent hack proof, but you need to at least take these basic steps to keep yourself safe.

Those three plugins will get you on your way to having a secure WordPress blog. Install Login Lockdown to lock out anyone after a certain number of failed attempts, install HTTPS for WordPress to make sure that any time you login to your dashboard it moves you over into SSL, and WP-Security scan your folders.

Have peace of mind and backup your WordPress blog on a regular basis using the tool at http://www.backupcreator.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_Plank
http://EzineArticles.com/?Anti-Hacking-Plugins-for-WordPress&id=6909741

 

 

Benefits of WordPress Websites

By Danny Watkinson -

What’s are the major benefits of having a WordPress website?

If you’re thinking about having a website yourself, you are probably asking that very same question. I could easily ramble on about technical things copied from forums and blogs, but that wouldn’t help anyone and would totally go against what WordPress is all about, simplicity and quality!

Instead, however, I can be honest and tell you about what I see as the benefits of a WordPress website, as an end user, not a web designer.

Firstly, our WordPress website, is easy to use. Very easy. We were in need of a content management website that we could easily control ourselves, and this ticked all the boxes. It looks good, it feels good, and does an ideal job. We chose WordPress because we needed to be able to update our website whenever we needed to. We wanted to be able to do this ourselves whenever we felt necessary, rather than having to constantly call a web developer asking them to change a list of things. Luckily for us, news, videos, blogs, testimonials and more can be added and edited in minutes!

Developed from blogging software and created by a professional WordPress Web Design team, the WordPress user interface is easy to use and takes only minutes to learn and master if given the right tuition. So, updating your WordPress website is a really simple and easy process, but what other benefits do WordPress websites offer you? Well here’s a swift little list of some of the most useful points:

SEO! – You can optimise your website easily by adding tags to all your pages and posts. Its also very easy to update regularly, and Google loves new content!

Customisation! – You can change the look and colour of your website in a few clicks. There is a simple editor which is easy to use, along with many different themes available.

Social Media! – WordPress is fully compatible with all forms of social media. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, can all appear on your site.

A site for life! – WordPress is always being updated! If you want to add a new section, page, post, to your website, you can easily do it in a couple of clicks. Want a site that can expand and change with your business, this is it!

Integration! – Newsletters, online payment systems, social media, contact forms, E-commerce, WordPress has a plug-in for all those, and many many more.

Some are very simple whilst you might need a WordPress expert to help you out with some, but any good web design company can help you in seconds.

A real technical web expert could probably tell you even more benefits that i don’t know, but I do know that, as an end user, the WordPress sites work perfectly for us and provide everything we need.

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Top WordPress Plugins For Serious Bloggers

By Tyronne Ratcliff -

Top WordPress plugins are free and there are literally thousands of them. Keep in mind that having too many plugins will slow down load times for your blog so make sure the only ones you have activated are the ones that you are actively using.

The way you find those top WordPress plugins is in your plugin directory, you can search for plugins with the search box provided. Once you find the one you need you can upload it and it will be installed instantly.

So what is a WordPress plugin?

A WordPress plugin is basically an add-on that either extends or expands the functionality of your blog. You an install them directly from your dashboard or upload them from your computer as a zip file.

So here my top WordPress plugins from what I’ve experienced with blogging.

1. All in One SEO Pack

If you are serious about getting better visibility on the search engines this plugin is a must have. What it does is optimize your blog posts for the search engines. What I like about it is the user friendly interface and it just makes your life a whole lot easier. It will automatically create descriptions, meta-tags, titles, and other things related to SEO as well.

2. WP Super Cache

I can’t explain to you how important this plugin is. What this plugin does is give your blog faster load times. What it does is store a static version of your site so your site visitors don’t have to use as much CPU power to load your blog. Load times are also another factor Google will take into account when ranking your site on search engines.

3. Google XML Sitemaps

This is another must have because it will make it easier for Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to index your blog. Another feature I like about it is that it will actually notify (ping) the search engines any time you add new content to your blog. It’s also good for SEO purposes.

4. Linkedwithin

This top WordPress plugin will show a thumbnail image of topics of you’ve already written about. What this does is give your readers access to other blog posts you’ve written. What I like about them is they’re eye catching and they convey to your readers something that plain old can’t do. A good way to keep visitors on your blog.

5. Comment Luv

What this plugin does is allow blog commentors to display their last blog post if they comment on one of your posts. It’s a good way to get more people commenting on your blog posts and create more engagement.

6. WP DB Backup

This is a good plugin for running your sites backups. It is absolutely crucial that you backup your WordPress blog for obvious reasons. I should of put this on the top of my list. There are backups you can pay for but this will work if your just getting started out. It is highly unlikely that your site could go down or get hacked, but its better to be safe than sorry.

Well there you go, here are a couple of plugins that I suggest you get, make sure you bookmark this article because I will be making updates to this article in the near future.

For more information on my top WordPress plugins and anything related to internet marketing visit my blog at http://tyronneratcliff.com today!

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What Is WordPress?

By Adam Dicker -

WordPress is an open source (free) content management system (CMS) that is very popular and used most often for publishing blogs. It is used by about 15% of the one million biggest websites. Released 2003, it has been downloaded over 32 million times since its initial release.

One reason WordPress is so popular is because of its web template system. Users can re-arrange the templates without bothering to edit the PHP or HTML code. They can switch themes easily and edit the code for more advanced customization. It has a search engine-friendly, clean permalink (a URL that points to a specific page) structure that bloggers and website owners alike find very convenient.

WordPress supports tagging of articles and postings, which make it ideal for sites that want to optimize their search engine rankings. It includes automatic filters that do things like converting regular quotes to smart quotes so that visitors can click those words and travel to another website for related content. It also has a superior plug-in architecture that allows you to add features beyond its basic capabilities. There are thousands of plugins, themes and widgets that enable users to do nearly anything they wish with their blog or website.

The designs in WordPress are theme based, made of images and webpage layouts to make it easy to customize the feel and look of the site. You can use a pre-existing theme with a new page layout imported from another application. You don’t have to know HTML or any other code and the editing interface is simple to use.

WordPress is very similar in operation to a word processor. It can be configured to grant access to others on limited or all levels so that people can contribute to your website or blog. This is one reason it is popular with bloggers, as it allows for frequent updating and lets people subscribe to the site’s content using RSS. Search engines love fresh content and by allowing others to contribute or comment on your site you optimize your search engine rankings. WordPress also allows you to receive and respond to comments from readers. Naturally, this feature makes a blog or website very topical and exciting.

WordPress’s interface is web-based so you can create and edit pages from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Professional bloggers on the go, members of the media, politicians and others all use WordPress for this reason-it is available to them nearly everywhere they go, allowing them to update their sites or blogs immediately instead of waiting to return home or to their office. WordPress plug-ins includes the latest Twitter tools, too.

Once you download WordPress and set up your account you can explore the all the options offered. You can play around with the set up and appearance of your site then get started once you’re satisfied. Blogging or maintaining a website with WordPress is so simple that beginners will love it but thousands of professionals appreciate its simplicity and variety of tools and options, too.

Once you download WordPress and set up your account you can explore the all the options offered. You can play around with the set up and appearance of your site then get started once you’re satisfied. Blogging or maintaining a website with WordPress is so simple that beginners will love it but thousands of professionals appreciate its simplicity and variety of tools and options, too.

Visit the best domaining forum and register a free account today at — http://www.dnforum.com/

Adam Dicker – CEO – Dnforum.com

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WordPress Development: Get A Customized Business Website

By Amenda Smith -

In the present era of globalization and immense competition, it becomes necessary for companies to adopt some advanced methods of doing business. Website design and development is one of these advanced methods. With the help of websites, the companies can promote and advertise their products and services not only within their countries but also in other countries. There are several open source development technologies like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress development that enable the companies to develop their websites in the most efficient manner.

In this article, we are going to discuss on the WordPress CMS (Content Management System). This is an open source technology that is written in MySQL and PHP languages and helps you to build feature-rich websites. WordPress has a great number of advanced attributes like multi blogging & multi user blogging, plug-ins, built-in engine analytics, widgets, templates, custom design services and many more. These unique features of WordPress make it much popular over other open source development tools among the developers. Further, all these features together enable the developer to create website as per your needs and business objectives.

WordPress development is the most prominent way of building a website and used by a great number of enterprises either large or small. This system enables the business owner to update, edit, change or modify content of their website in the most convenient manner. This is a robust system that creates an excellent website understanding your business needs and requirements. The best thing about WordPress website is that there is no need to contact your developer every time as it is simple to use and changes in content can be done by the person himself / herself.

This open source offers highly customizable templates and designs through which you can change images, fonts, banners, logos, widgets, graphics, etc. very easily. If you are planning to build your own WordPress website, then you can hire any leading offshore website designing and development company. There are various companies available in the market and offering these WordPress website development solutions at cost effective rates.

For choosing the most suitable company that can offer you best WordPress Development solutions, you need to spend some time on internet to do some research. Also check the reviews and feedback of these web development companies before hiring them. Apart from this, you can also take help of other companies in the same field that can recommend you some suggestions.

Amenda Smith is an expert writer in ShahDeep International and shares her knowledge about WordPress Development. To know more about opensource and CMS visit our website http://www.shahdeepinternational.com

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Instantly Display Your Featured Articles in a WordPress Blog

By Ralph Iser -

Most search engines nowadays are going after fresh, unique and authoritative articles. And where do we get most of these articles? Yes, on the blog sites. Numerous blog sites today are competing not only for greater ranking but also to become the leading sites in search engine marketing. WordPress is one of those sites that have been proven to be authoritative in article publishing.

Here are some techniques that could surely help you display your featured articles in WordPress blog.

Featured Content Slideshow

This plug-in is perhaps the best WordPress theme plug-in in terms of displaying featured articles. It can actually show as many as five articles in a very attractive slide show appearance. It features titles and small description for every featured post, Java-script effects, an image for every different featured post, navigation possibilities (when hitting a “Title” the image appears) and a powerful administration back-end for posts and styles of the slide-show.

Featured Content Slider

This plug-in is more or less the same with the plug-in mentioned above. But an additional feature is that it has a very nice JavaScript slider or slideshow for WordPress design. In fact, it can be used anywhere in the website or blog site. Other features of this plug-in include featured posts with excerpt, a Java script / CSS effect when sliding to another post, arrows for navigating through the posts, an administration setting for category and post items and a nice image next to the text which is selected via custom field.

Featured Articles Plug-in for WordPress (Moo Tools)

This plug-in is designed to give WordPress design an attractive appearance using slideshow and navigation between featured articles. Its features include numerous number of featured articles to display, additional featured post section title, thumbs display, limitation of the number of character for description and the display order (random, new, and old). Using this tool, you can have a powerful Admin back-end where you can control the order in which the articles will appear and the plug-in will always call the first image from the featured post and number of featured articles to display.

J-Post Slider

This plug-in is designed to make your articles and photos look elegant and attractive in j-qurey box. Additional features of this plug-in include a powerful back-end where you can actually change the opacity, slider settings, colors, rotating time, post excerpt, number of featured articles, post order (latest, random, oldest), images for animation box, selection of featured category, rotating time and speed.

What a great way of displaying your featured articles!

Ralph Iser is a marketing executive that deals with people who are involved in online marketing. Interestingly, he wants to help those who are aiming for a successful online business by sharing his knowledge and expertise in the field of online marketing such as WordPress design, WordPress theme web development and other SEO-related topics. Moreover, he regularly writes blogs and writes articles about SEO topics.

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Build and Maintain a WordPress Based Affiliate Website in 3 Simple Steps

By Rajeev J Anand -

Everybody knows affiliate business is a very lucrative business. The pros of affiliate business are:

  • It’s free
  • No need to maintain any inventory by yourself
  • No need to invest in developing new products
  • Pick from a wide range of products already available with different merchants
  • No need to maintain a brick and mortar store
  • Earn handsome commissions

Yes, all this is possible, if, I repeat, if you are one of those few successful affiliate marketers.

I say ‘if’ because I know the pains involved in developing and maintaining an affiliate website first hand. I have revamped my website at least 4 times learning from each mistake.

Some of the cons of affiliate business are:

  • Time consuming website development
  • Unreliable outsourced vendors
  • High costs of promotion of website
  • Danger of being not ranking well on search engines due to duplicate content
  • Different affiliate networks provide their product datafeeds in different flavors
  • Lot of time and effort goes into customizing your store to display the products in a user friendly format

These are some of the challenges that kills the enthusiasm of many a web affiliate entrepreneur. Many affiliate marketers give up in the first 6 months. Please remember there is no overnight success in affiliate marketing. No matter what others say, you have to invest time, money and put in effort to ensure your affiliate business sees the light of the day.

The secret to success of your affiliate business is to choose those products which are of interest to you, of which you are knowledgeable, for which you are passionate. These days it’s not just enough to display some products on a website and forget about it. It doesn’t work. You have to share your experience, answer questions that genuine users may have about the product that you will be promoting.

To do all this, you need a good content management application that would double up as a store for your affiliate products and also an informative resource for those products. Here steps-in WordPress, the most popular content management application on the web today.

WordPress is very easy to install. In fact most web hosts today provide an automated setup of the most stable recent version of WordPress.

Now comes the tough part. How do you add products to your WordPress website? It’s very easy. Use a WordPress plugin that supports the affiliate networks that you have registered with. They should take care of the various types of datafeeds provided by each of the affiliate networks. Should be easy to setup. Should be cost effective (a few dollars where your time is worth more than that). Has reliable and enthusiastic customer service who would help you if at all you are stuck.

One such service I would like to recommend is Datafeedr. Just take a look at their website and customer testimonials. I was bowled over by so many honest feedback from extremely happy customers. It is a tool any affiliate marketer must have.

Highly recommended tool for affiliate business store using WordPress
http://www.home-working.info/index.php/creating-a-wordpress-website-via-xml-rpc-using-affiliate-data-feeds/

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Build-and-Maintain-a-WordPress-Based-Affiliate-Website-in-3-Simple-Steps&id=6878417

 

 

WordPress EBook for Business Entrepreneurs

By Mikee Jones -

The businesses are looking forward to expand their web presence with the help of every available tool. Owning a website is one among the potential strategies that would help you achieve your marketing goals. WordPress, even though was introduced as a blogging tool, has evolved as a content management system. The static HTML pages are no longer being preferred due to the disadvantages that they provide to the webmaster. The novice business entrepreneurs in the online market can take a glance at the WordPress eBook available online prior to beginning the endevour. Even if the competition is tough, the relevant online content on your website and blogs can be of aid. However, this tool is widely being used by the small and medium size businesses.

Blogs are no longer teenage pastime entertainers, but a corporate requirement for business establishments. The list of companies investing their resources in blogs to reach the masses is impressive. The venture is growing so that you would require free WordPress eBook to ensure that you have up-to-date knowledge about it. The unparalleled proportions of growth have taken many companies to the topmost positions in the internet market. However, prior to investing your time in the free WordPress installation and course, you need to know the advantage of this tool. WordPress is open source software which allows you usage free of cost. Millions of people across the world are dependent on this free platform. The versatility is the second major benefit that attracts the business providers to it. It is user-friendly, and do not demand no great skill sets. Even the non-tech savvy people can attain expertise in this platform.

The WordPress eBook would let you know the extent of customization possible with this tool. There are multitudes of themes available for you to choose from. Those days where it took hours to change the look and feel of your website are long gone. Your website or blog can be equipped with every necessary feature to aid your business. Pictures, maps, applications and more are available for you to experiment with. As this is a CMS, it would help you in quicker data integration too. Collaborating data and sharing information would not be a tough task. The WordPress eBook focuses on the optimization features too. It is a well known fact that many search engines love this due its SEO friendliness. This has an automatic way of proclaiming the presence of new content thereby enhancing the speed of website indexation.

A typical WordPress eBook would emphasize on its other benefits like excellent security, great accessibility and easy installation too. The WordPress installation service can be hired to suit your requirements. A personal blogger would not want the professional business blog as he has no money making intentions. The WordPress install service would be able to offer you with installation plans like free, professional, money making and business. This largest self-hosted blog publishing platform simply would help your business to grow. The ability of this to accommodate the changes in future with the innovations in the industry is another appreciable feature.

Mikee Jones is the author of this article on free wordpress ebook. Find more information, about WordPress installation service here

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