Archive for December, 2008

Socialize Your Wordpress, Blogware Or Blogger Blog With A Single Click Of Your Mouse

Sunday, December 28th, 2008
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Blogs(A.K.A. – Weblogs) are the BIGGEST thing going right now online because of there many uses for both the Web Surfer and the Internet Marketer.

But, you probably already know that so for the purpose of this article I’m not going to talk about ‘Blogs’ in general because I’m sure you’ve read enough about them by now and/or you already have a few kicking around the net.

What I’m going to share with you Right Now is something I discovered while surfing the net researching Tag and Ping tactics and Social Bookmarkleting because I run more then a few blogs online and wanted to find out how I could take advantage of this whole Tag and Ping and Social Bookmarkleting thing with as little effort as possible.

If your new to this whole Tag and Ping game then let me give you a quick summary of what a Tag is and what a Ping is so there’s no confusion as you continue through this article.

Tags – Tags are simply category names and are selected by you using keywords around whatever niche your blogging about and are included within each post you make, that is, if your blog is set up for Tags.

Ping – By Pinging your letting the weblog trackers(like Technorati for example) and the search engines now that your blog has been updated with fresh content and is ready for their spiders to come and crawl your blog for indexing into their databases.

This is where the – Tags – come into play for your blogs posts because as soon as the social bookmarkleting service spiders your blog, it will list your post under that given Tag you chose. So it’s very important you choose your Tags wisely.

Now that you know the basics of the Tag and Ping concept, lets now get into what I discovered so you too can incorporate it into your blogging mix, whether you use Wordpress, Blogware or Blogger as your blogging software.

But before I do, lets first talk about what Social Bookmarkleting is for a quick minute.

Social Bookmarkleting, just in case your not quite sure, is simply a collection of your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, photo’s or whatever it is that you find interesting on the web and is saved into your public profile through whatever Social Bookmarkleting service you choose.

Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us, furl are just a few Social Bookmarkleting services available on the web which is why I’m writing this article because I discovered a COOL plugin that you can use on Wordpress, Blogware and Blogger blogs that will connect you to over 50+ social bookmarkleting services through one click of your mouse giving your blog audience multiple options to share your blog post or blog with the world which in turn will increase your traffic and popularity of your blog.

Lets face it, adding 50+ social bookmarkleting buttons to your blog would be a VERY tedious endevour so why not take the short cut for a change and install this plugin and let your reader make his or her choice.

To take advantage of this plugin right now go to Socialize-It.com ==> http://www.socialize-it.com

This plugin is absolutely FREE and only takes minutes to install on your blog.

Make sure your choose your Tag wisely as well. I recommend you go to Technorati – http://www.technorati.com – and look at the TOP 100 tags since Technorati is the BIG Daddy in the blogosphere.

(TIP: The bigger and bolder the Tag the more popular the topic is.)

After you’ve done that, start Blogging.

The more posts you make, the more pages you’ll generate with the “Socialize-It” button helping spread the word about your blog and getting your blog added in whatever Social Bookmarkleting service database your blog reader is apart of.

I hope you found this article helpful and take action on what you have just learned.

Good luck!



By: Cory Threlfall

About the Author:

Cory Threlfall is a PROVEN Internet Marketer and is the Editor and Publisher of a Online Business and Marketing publication called The Internet Wonders eZine. Go subscribe today and receive ’Daily’ via the Web, RSS or eMail quality Articles, Product Reviews, Resources, Tips, and More on how to Promote and Build your business online. Go NOW To ==> http://www.internetwondersezine.com



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New Features in Wordpress 2.3

Sunday, December 21st, 2008
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WordPress 2.3 was released Monday 24th September, bringing major advances to the engine that powers many millions of blogs. Slated as a release candidate, this version has been thoroughly tested and is already featured as the latest stable download.

This release isn’t just an incremental update with security patches, it includes a host of new features such as native tags, core and plugin update notifications, enhanced entry management and improved handling of draft entries, native support for canonical redirection, atom feeds, and a bunch of other updates too numerous to mention here.

Tagging Your Posts

With the explosion of sites using tags to search for content, Technorati and Flickr being two obvious examples, it was only ever a matter of time until WordPress joined the club. Version 2.3 sees the first implementation of tags by the development team, although in true WP style, they tell us they haven’t implemented tag management yet, so no editing or deleting, they want to assess the need for this before committing extra code to the base.

Inexperienced users might grumble about this, but one of the strengths of WordPress is the range of plugins available, and several tag plugins already exist, it won’t be long until v2.3 management of tags is accomplished. The plugin route may be preferred by many users anyway given the range of customization options that are a typical feature of third party plugins. The tag functionality built into 2.3 works well, tags are displayed along with the entry and clicking the tag link displays all entries with the same tag.

Webmasters with existing tags using ‘Simple Tagging’, ‘Jerome’s Keywords’, ‘Bunny’s Technorati Tags’, or ‘Ultimate Tag Warrior’ are able to convert their tags to v2.3 using the Import function found under the Manage tab in Dashboard. Converting your existing WordPress categories to tags is also possible for user’s who want to remove categories altogether.

Update Notification in Dashboard

A significant addition to v2.3 is the core and plugin update notifications that have been added to the Dashboard. Long overdue, this feature, not without controversy over privacy issues, is likely to become the main selling feature of WordPress 2.3 as users realize they no longer have to search for plugin homepages or latest versions to ensure their installation is uptodate.

Here’s how it works. WordPress is configured to automatically contact the WordPress servers, api.wordpress.org and query for updates to core files or plugins registered in the WP plugins repository hosted on wordpress.org. When new updates are available, these will be displayed in Dashboard with a direct link to the files or download page. A notable absence is the ability to automatically install the update, although rumors abound this may be included in future versions.

A criticism of the update notification service has been leveled at the ‘always on’ nature of the feature. Privacy and potential hacking scenarios have been raised, along with request that the service be patched to allow an opt in/opt out mode. It will be interesting to see how the developers deal with this issue in future releases given their rationale that it is better to reduce the volume of support queries and insecure installations by providing the notification service.

Enhanced Post Filtering and Improved Draft Entry Management

This is a welcome addition for any blogger with more than a handful of posts. WordPress aficionados should immediately notice the enhanced filters in the manage posts page. Posts are now filterable by status, month and category making it much easier to find specific posts to edit.

The status dropdown is particularly welcome with options for selecting published, draft, scheduled, or pending review. Managing unpublished entries has never been easier in WordPress.

Native Canonical Redirection

Any WordPress webmaster familiar with the duplicate content penalty arising from www or no www, will be delighted with v2.3’s native support for canonical redirection. Simply enable this from within wp-admin, under Options to experience seemless redirection, most users will never even know that they’ve been redirected unless they look at the address bar. This should make it easier to track SERPs on WordPress powered sites.



By: IC

About the Author:

This article was written by DynamicAds, DynamicAds is an Ad Placements Rotator plugin for WordPress that is fully compatible with WordPress 2.3, it allows you to control how you want to rotate your ads at various locations on your site. Visit us at http://www.articleecho.com/



Press Release Software

What Makes a Premium Wordpress Theme Premium?

Saturday, December 6th, 2008
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WordPress has become a hugely popular open source blogging and publishing platform. The abundance of free themes and plugins as well as its ease-of-use have contributed to the attraction and popularity for using WordPress. While there are some great free themes for WordPress, many only offer basic functionality and simplistic designs.

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes.

However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design

Premium WordPress themes should be just that - Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Features

While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Customization Options and Fexibility

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

Live Preview or Demo

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

Full Support

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

Supporting Documentation

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

Free Updates

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

Well Coded and Error Free

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



By: Marlon Burrows

About the Author:

A comprehensive showcase of premium WordPress themes can be found at Premium WordPress



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