With so many blogs being produced every day, it’s a mystery to a lot of bloggers how to make their blog stand out. It is easy. People want to read great content material, and with good content material comes ad revenue. Well, perhaps it’s not that easy… We’ve lastly unleashed the secrets of successful blog advertising.

Do note that these aren’t guaranteed to enhance your click-through ratios and they will not bring good karma to you or your ads.. If only.. Nonetheless, these tips should benefit your weblog and make it much more user-friendly, more easily accessible, and much more content-enabled.

There are lots of kinds of blogs or purposes for blogs along with a particular quantity of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so right here is really a -short- list of suggestions for advertising and optimizing a blog:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing website www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that don’t permit you to use your own domain name! 2. Acquire and install customizable blog software program – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.

three. Customize weblog look and feel templates – aka design. four. Study key phrases and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research. five. Optimize the blog: * Template optimization – RSS subscription choices, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap * Add helper plugins particular to WordPress or MT * Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary) 6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality. Seven. Create Feedburner Pro account and allow feed tracking. 8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission. 9. Identify authoritative blogs, internet websites and hubs for outbound resource hyperlinks and blogroll. ten. Format archived posts, related posts. Eleven. Enable statistics for tracking – Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks. Twelve. Submit RSS feed and Weblog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines like google. 13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign. 14. If podcast or video content material are obtainable, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories. Fifteen. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt. 16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing weblog. Seventeen. Request feedback or reviews of one’s blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help other people, point to it. 18. Research and comment on relevant business related blogs and blogs with substantial centers of influence. Nineteen. Post regularly. If it is a news oriented weblog, 3-5 times daily. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but every post should be distinctive and of high value. Twenty. Monitor inbound links, traffic, feedback and mentions of one’s weblog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds. 21. Usually respond to comments in your weblog and whenever you detect a mention of one’s blog on another blog, thank that blogger within the comments of the post. 22. Make contact with associated bloggers on AND offline if possible. 23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and do not be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve created. 24. Use online community services, forums and discussion threads to connect with bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you. 25. Keep in mind when web sites had been a new idea and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

If you want more information on Wordpress Tutorial, don’t read just rehashed articles online to avoid getting ripped off. Go here: Wordpress Templates

Blogs are a very preferred ways of advertising your product or service. They are easy to install, simple to administer and easy to update. And search engines adore them as well. But what’s a blog with out traffic?Exactly.

Here are five quick methods to boost visitors to your weblog and start seeing those large sales.

1.Build a list of weblog services to ping There are a lot of weblog services you are able to ping. This indicates that you notify this service, that you have updated your blog. These services then list your new posts and you get the traffic from them. I’ve created a list of 50+ blog services you can ping on my website. These list are also obtainable in the event you do a google search or any other internet search engine for it. That should be enough to give an initial boost to your visitors.

2.Add buttons to well-liked news readers What does this mean? Well you will find sites like yahoo or google or bloglines etc, which have a members region where you are able to choose websites with RSS feeds to fetch the newest updates from different blogs. That way you are able to have the latest updates from let’s say 50 blogs listed on one page. I’ve a list of these popular pages on my web site plus the buttons which link to them. Users can then effortlessly add my blog to their news reader members area.

three.Update your content regulary Search engines and blog services love frequent updates. It is very likely that you will get targeted traffic from search engines if you post regulary. That indicates you need to make a brand new post to your blog at least once daily. But be careful. Too many updates per day can harm your search engines position and hits. What’s too many? 10 or much more.

4.Post in forums Post in forums, but don’t spam them. Post some thing fresh and interesting and put a link to your weblog in your signature. Don’t just post in any forum. For instance if you are selling cds, post in forums which are about music and cds. Don’t post in automobile forums if you’re selling furniture. By posting in forums you will get one-way links which are great for search engine position in search engines like google or msn or yahoo.

5.Submit to weblog search engines You will find masses of search engines available, that list only blogs. Just google for blog search engines” and you need to find at least 20 of them. These blog search engines will help you with targeted traffic. Make sure to write a great title along with a good description to your blog, so that people will easily find it and click on your link.

Follow these five actions and you’ll start seeing plenty of traffic to your weblog. And also the so lengthy awaited sales will begin coming in. And do not forget to update your weblog with fresh unused content which you write your self.

If you want more information on Wordpress Tutorial, don’t read just rehashed articles online to avoid getting ripped off. Go here: Wordpress Themes

If you’ve been a WordPress user for a few years, then you know that WP and themes have come a long way. Remember when the most you could hope for would be choosing a layout with 1 or 2 sidebars. If you’re lucky, you’d get a full-width option.

No longer are restricted with only a few layouts. The community kept wanting more customization and the theme developers have responded. One theme developer in particular that has responded in spades is Catalyst Theme.

Catalyst is a true do-it-yourself, build your own WordPress website from scratch theme. I bought it being a little sceptical about its claims with respect to the degree of easy customization. However, after using it on a project, I’m astonished.

I state “easy customization” because if you know HTML, CSS, and PHP you can pretty much do anything with any theme. The aim of Catalyst Theme is give customization control to people who are not coding experts. I know my way around a CSS style sheet and even some PHP, but I’m by no means a PHP expert. Hence, I had a lot of fun with Catalyst Theme.

3 Reasons to Use Catalyst Theme Are As Follows:

1. You Get Complete Layout Control

When I review a theme, the first thing I look for is the degree of layout of control I get without diving into the PHP. Webmasters and bloggers want the ability to create custom layouts for specific pages and posts. Catalyst delivers on this important criterion in spades. You can create any type of layout for any individual page or post you can devise. The layouts are customized with widget placement using hooks. Since Catalyst makes it easy to place widgets pretty much anywhere, you have easy layout customization control.

2. You Enjoy Fast Default Website Setup Options

Sometimes you simply need to get a website up and running fast. Catalyst also understands that not every user will be designing from scratch. Therefore, they wisely included what they call an EZ panel loaded with default layouts, styles, etc. You choose layouts and styles from a series of drop-down menus. What could be easier or faster?

3. The Devil is in the Details

I’ve built hundreds of sites in WordPress. I’ve used many themes including several “WordPress theme generators” and there is no doubt that Catalyst Theme focuses on the details. What I mean by this is the degree of design and style options is mind-blowing. For example, when you create a custom widget placement section, you can, through a series of drop-down menus, fully stylize that widget with respect to font, background, padding, margins, etc.

These are definitely the most important features and benefits you gain using Catalyst. It comes with an easy and intuitive series of 3 design panels. If you are a coder, you can insert your custom code as well.

3 other key points worth mentioning are as follows:

1. You pay only one time to use the theme. This means you get free updates for life.

2. Your 1 time payment provides you lifetime access to Catalyst’s support forum.

3. Unlimited domains: You can use your Catalyst Theme on as many domains concurrently as you wish. You aren’t restricted to the number of projects on which you use Catalyst.

My only real complaint with Catalyst is the skins offered aren’t that great. I wouldn’t use any of them for a website. Granted, they’re designed to get you started quickly with a default design. However, I’d love to see some superb designs that could be used “as-is”.

Next, read my full Catalyst Theme review to discover the many benefits and my other minor complaints at Website Template Reviews.

Frankly I have no idea why a restaurant would choose to pay thousands of dollars for a website when there’s WordPress and WordPress themes designed specifically for restaurant websites.

WordPress, if you don’t know, is free except for a nominal $5 to $8 monthly hosting charge. Once you pay a one-time cost for the right theme for your restaurant website, you’re all set. You can have a fantastic restaurant website up and running for less than $200 for the entire first year. That said, if you’re looking for a restaurant WordPress theme, there are some criteria you should look for in a theme.

5 Tips for Choosing a Restaurant WordPress Theme

1. Menu page

A restaurant website has one unique requirement, and that’s a menu page. This is probably the most important page of your site. Many website visitors will make their decision based on the presentation of your menu page. You want a WordPress theme for your restaurant that has a built-in menu-formatted page that is incredibly easy to set up your menu so it displays very nicely. It’s imperative you menu page include photographs of your dishes. Ideally, each menu item will click into a full page explaining the dish in detail.

2. Location page

Most visitors looking at your location page have already decided to visit your restaurant. The only failure here is having a location page that doesn’t assist your visitors. Visitors on your location page are your customers to lose. Therefore, find a Restaurant theme that includes some easy form of Google Maps integration. A map is important because many guests will be using mobile phones looking for your location. The Map makes it easy for guests to find your establishment.

3. Built-In blog

This is where many restaurants go wrong with their website. They don’t have a blog. Fortunately, WordPress themes are essentially blogs. This makes it easy to set up a blog on your WordPress restaurant website. But a blog platform is useless unless you use it. Blog consistently to get more traffic to your restaurant website. A blog is a wonderful tool for search engine optimization. Instead of having a website with 5 or 10 pages like so many restaurants, create a powerhouse of a website with 50, 100, 200 pages of content. A blog makes this easy.

4. Stylish slide show on the home page

Make your home page attractive to look at and dynamic with a stunning slide show of you, your employees, your establishment (outside and inside) and of course your dishes.

5. Photos, photos, and more photos

Get a theme that makes posting photos all over your website easy to do with automated thumbnail resizing. The WordPress platform on its own makes it very easy to upload images into your individual posts and pages. A quality theme will then pull those images into strategic locations on key pages such as your home page, location page, menu page, etc.

Get professional photographs taken of your dishes and establishment and then use them. Put them all over your website. Be sure to take photographs of your restaurant when it’s full of guests. But, inform your guests that it’s a photoshoot as a courtesy. In fact, consult a lawyer about the use of such photographs. Alternatively, you could fill the restaurant with willing participants who have signed an authorization giving you express permission to use their photos in your marketing materials.

Next, check out the MyCuisine WordPress theme which is a theme designed specifically for restaurants offering 5 color schemes. Or, check out this list of Restaurant WordPress Themes to expand your search.

The Genesis Framework by StudioPress is one of the best website building developments since WordPress hit the scene (in my view). Using Genesis is easy and powerful for building professional websites.

It’s a full website template package because you can create any style and design you like by easily installing child themes – of which there are dozens to choose from.

What Do You Get With the Genesis Framework?

1. Dozens of Designs to Choose From

There are dozens of child themes to choose from. Like anyone, I like some more than others (my four favorite child themes for a small business are Venture, Metric, Enterprise, and News (for a small business blog). You can have a beautiful website using the out-of-the-box themes in minutes (plus the amount of time it takes you to write your content).

2. SEO-Ready

I’m an SEO junkie. In fact, before I started building websites, I did a lot of SEO (off-site) for my business website. One nuisance with many other WordPress themes is the need for a 3rd party plugin in order to do on-site search engine optimization. Not with StudioPress.

The Genesis Framework has a comprehensive SEO panel where you have total control over the search engine optimization within your site – both for the site as a whole and individual posts and pages. You can even Noindex and Nofollow individual posts, pages, and archive pages (i.e. category listing pages to prevent the dreaded duplicate content).

3. Create Custom Sidebars

With most WordPress themes, your sidebar(s) is the same on every page in your site unless you opt for full-page layouts. Having the same sidebar content is not always optimal.

Suppose you have a business with different services. You can customize the sidebar content for each type of service for optimal conversion and navigation.

In order to create more sidebars (you can create as many as you like), simply install the “Genesis Simple Sidebars” plugin (free plugin) and create new sidebars – as many as you like.

4. Complete Menu Navigation Control

We all don’t want the same old navigation in our websites. With Genesis you have complete control over your menu set up – whether your menus contain pages, posts, OR BOTH. Yes, you can create menu bars that contain both pages and posts.

In order to maximize your menu customization, once Genesis is installed, install the “Genesis Simple Menu” plugin (it’s free). Once installed, you can totally customize your menus in the Genesis panel and WordPress menus panel (under Appearance).

5. Six Layout Options for Any Page and Post

Traditionally, any theme you bought had a pre-defined layout for every page – whether a 1, 2, or 3 column layout. StudioPress changes this by offering 6 layout options FOR ANY PAGE OR POST.

This means that some posts can have 2 columns and other posts 3 columns. The 6 page layouts you can choose from are as follows:

Content/Sidebar Sidebar/Content Sidebar/Sidebar/Content Sidebar/Content/Sidebar Content (full width)

Using this feature with the customized sidebar function means you can make every page unique – both in content and sidebar(s).

6. Customized Footers

I can’t count how many times I’ve installed a theme and messed around trying to customize the footer. More often than not I’m guessing with trial and error hoping I get it right. No more guessing with StudioPress themes.

Simply install the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin (free plugin) and you can easily write anything in the footer, including placing any links, you want without the need to know PHP coding.

7. Home Pages Are Widget-Based

Widgets are so useful in WordPress because you can place anything in a widget. Traditionally, the only widget options were in sidebars.

With Genesis themes (all child themes) you have widget placement options in the main content areas of your home page. This make it very easy to create “sections” of content on your home page (and sidebars of course).

8. Featured Posts on the Home Page and Sidebar(s)

Do you like those websites that have a list of titles and excerpts on the home page – much like newspaper websites?

With the Genesis Framework, you can set out any list of pages, posts, and/or categories anywhere you can place a widget (which is a lot of places).

9. Refunds are Available

I can’t believe it, but yes, you can get your money back within 30 days of purchase. This is pretty rare in the paid WordPress theme industry.

If you’re looking for the best full website templates to learn how to build my own website, check out Website Template Reviews.

Attention to detail is clearly one of RocketTheme’s approaches to WordPress theme design. RocketTheme started developing WordPress themes in 2009. Refraction theme is one of their early efforts, yet it’s a fantastic design (one of my favorite RocketTheme designs). If asked to sum up RocketTheme with one word, I’d say “stylish”. When you check out RocketTheme WordPress themes, you’ll appreciate the incredible attention to detail. Refraction theme certainly qualifies. However, Refraction doesn’t stop at just being stylish. It has great functionality and customizable options as well. But the best part of Refraction and other RocketTheme WordPress themes is the attention to detail in the graphics and feature set.

Refraction Theme Features In Detail

Widget-Ready Big Time

The home page has 14 widget locations. All inner pages offer 10 widget locations. The use and importance of widgets for WordPress has exploded recently. Widgets are a primary vehicle for customizing your theme. Where there is a widget placement, you can pretty much insert any type of content – text, images, video, etc. without knowing any php coding at all.

Ten Color Schemes and Designs

Another common feature among RocketTheme WordPress themes is they come with several color-schemes. The Refraction theme comes with 10 color schemes. You change the color scheme simply by clicking a button. This gives you great design flexibility. I have a poor sense of design, so I like relying on the color scheme and designs that are the default in themes and templates. That’s why I like themes that offer several design options built-in. Not only do you get color-customization, but you can choose from several typography settings. We all don’t like the same font. RocketTheme understands this and offers several typography styling options that cover titles, headings, and content text.

Slide Show on the Home Page

Many websites these days feature a slide show above the fold on the home page. With the Refraction theme, the slide show presents a featured post with a link.

Featured Posts and Automated Thumbnail Resizing

Make it easy to display your best posts on your home page and/or sidebar using the featured posts function with the Refraction theme. Go to any newspaper or magazine site and you’ll see excerpts of stories on the home page with a small image next to it. These are “featured posts”. Refraction theme has this option for you as well. You can list your best content with thumbnail images on your home page if that’s the look and navigation you want on your website. Even though the featured posts layout is commonly found on newspaper and magazine websites, you’re seeing it more and more on business and corporate sites as well. It’s a stylish and effective way of presenting your most important information on the home page. Featured posts is also a convenience feature in that you don’t have to manually configure post titles and excerpts appearing on your home page and/or sidebar.

Widgetized Footer

Most WordPress themes I use have a widgetized footer. I much prefer a theme with a widgetized footer because it makes it very easy to display many types of content on every page including navigation menus. The old-school WordPress themes made it difficult to place content in the footer. Footer content is content that appears on every page and post of a website. It’s like a sidebar but at the bottom of a website. The Refraction theme offers a widgetized footer so you can place any content in your footer very, very easily. Although not a necessary feature, it sure is a convenience.

Theme Support

Do not undermine the importance of support with a premium WordPress theme purchase. With a purchase of the Refraction theme (via RocketTheme club membership) you get 9 tutorials to help with setting up and customizing your Refraction theme. At the end of the day finding and then buying the perfect WordPress theme is a big decision. Shop around. Continue your WordPress theme research until you find the perfect theme. These tutorials are helpful and make setting up your Refraction theme pretty easy.

Next, check out these yoga studio WordPress themes at B2Web – a website template reviews and small business marketing website.

Magnificent is actually the name of the theme. I’m not referring to some random theme. But it’s a good theme (not my favorite by ElegantThemes, but it’s solid). I’ll jump to what is probably the greatest feature of buying a WordPress theme from ElegantThemes. Of course the themes look great, but it’s the price that makes ElegantThemes stand out. There are no shortage of WordPress themes selling for $50 or more per theme. However, you get ALL of the themes from ElegantThemes for $39 per year (at the time this article was published).

Yes, you can sign up and download all the themes and then never renew. However, as an ElegantThemes member, I know they roll out new themes often – so renewing your membership for the pittance price is well worth it if you’re in the business of building more than one website, membership to ElegantThemes is a terrific deal.

Now onto the Magnificent Theme Review – Features

1. Four Column Layout

How many 4-column themes do you find? Not many. Sure, they’re out there, but are they as functional and stylish as the Magnificent theme? I think not. Magnificent Theme is a four-column website. This makes for an interesting style – most websites are 2 or 3 column layouts. It’s nice to see the 4-column option for websites where a 4-column is desired. 4 columns isn’t for everyone, but if you like offering narrow columns, then a 4 column layout is for you.

2. Easy Customization

ElegantThemes uses what it calls an ePanel for customizing your website in a variety of ways. The ePanel is a fantastic feature with all ElegantThemes. It enables you to make all kinds of changes without knowing any coding language at all. Changes you can make in the ePanel include layout, home page display, color scheme, navigation, and SEO configuration. If you’re not a coder and like “click and change” WordPress themes, then ElegantThemes is worth checking out.

3. Seven Color Options

You have 7 design options with the Magnificent Theme:

Red

Blue color scheme

Green color scheme

Lights design

Radiate color scheme

Wooden color scheme

4. Home Page Slide Show

I’m a sucker for using WordPress themes that have a graceful slider or slide show on the home page. ElegantThemes often incorporates a sleek sideshow into their themes’ home page. The Magnificent Theme is no exception. The above-the-fold slide show gives you the opportunity to highlight your best content. Sliders make a website look professional – yet it’s so easy to set up.

5. Support Offered by ElegantThemes

A membership to ElegantThemes includes access to its robust forum where all kinds of questions are answered. It’s a terrific resource to help you further customize the Magnificent Theme (or any other theme from ElegantThemes). If your question isn’t answered, you can post a question; an answer is typically provided quickly.

Next, check out these yoga business WordPress themes at B2Web – a website template reviews and small business marketing website.

If you are tired of WP themes or other website templates that do not provide the flexibility you need, then pay attention – there’s a whole new concept to WordPress in the form of the Builder Theme by iThemes. I recall learning about the Builder theme concept before it launched in late 2009. I pre-ordered, and when it was released, I couldn’t be happier with it.

In fact, if you’re averse to coding, but want to build a WordPress website from the ground up, then the Builder Theme is for you.

I don’t think I’ve run across a perfect theme, and Builder is not exempt. Let me get the bad out of the way. The Builder theme child themes are not the prettiest. If you want a WP website that looks fantastic out-of-the-box, then Builder isn’t for you. However, the beauty of Builder is you can so easily build a website entirely from scratch without knowing a single line of code. So where it lacks in design, it’s makes up for this with incredible control and flexibility.

Now Onto the Good

Have you heard about parent and child theme WordPress set up? Builder uses a parent / child theme framework. This is the optimal WordPress arrangement. It makes upgrading your theme a breeze. The child theme is essentially your CSS style sheet – which is separate from the actual parent theme. At first I was a little reluctant about using the parent and child theme set up, but since I’ve adapted, it’s my preferred type of theme framework.

Next, I go into specifically how the Builder theme makes it so you can customize your entire website.

You create layouts – as many layouts as you like simply by clicking a mouse. The layouts are blocks that use widgets in which you place content. Then when you develop a post or page, you choose your custom layout.

Do you need a different header in different sections of the website? Not a problem – just select a different header in your layout. How about different slideshows on different pages or posts? Again, not a problem. Simply create a new layout using drag and drop technology, and then place your preferred slideshow plugin in any widget you like?

HTML Module

iThemes also responded to the need of creating html pages. For instance, suppose you have a great html template – a squeeze page or landing page – you can simply insert the html in the html module on any given layout and your page is totally customized.

What About SEO?

Builder Theme comes with a built-in SEO panel. Actually, it’s an iTheme plugin you install. Then you have a complete SEO configuration panel. Each page and post has SEO options as well – including NoFollow and NoIndex options.

Designing Builder without going into the CSS style sheet.

I’m not a CSS expert, but I know my way around a style sheet. Yet, when available, I like styling a website with a drop down menus. iThemes has this covered as well and has dozens of drop down menus to style your theme. Want red H1 tags? No problem. How about orange hyperlinks? Yup, no problem. iThemes provides a free style plugin you install which gives you a full style panel. No more digging around in a CSS style sheet. Instead, you just click away until you get the look and feel you want. It really couldn’t be easier to create a great website in WordPress – something entirely your own.

Next, check out many screenshots of the Builder theme panels (scroll down the target page). If you prefer great looking themes and aren’t interested in designing a theme, read the many great WordPress theme reviews at B2Web.

Wordpress blog theme can provide the best GUI or graphical user interface into your blog. Wordpress theme is fancies your content or posts. It makes your blog look attractive. Primarily, a theme is made of several files known as template files. They work together to make a presentation into your blog. The colors, wherein certain component of your blog’s interface as well as graphics is all part of the theme of your blog. If you could install your individual self-hosted WordPress blog at a web host you choose, then you could use anything theme you wanted.

WordPress theme can be downloaded from various sources on the Internet. Many of these are free. However, there’s an exception, for premium designs you need to pay for you to download them. There’s a plethora of themes that you can choose out there. Additionally, you can also design your individual WordPress blog them if you wish to. Designing a certain them is somewhat beneficial too, which you can able to earn if you make impressive designs.

If you are already bored with your WordPress blog theme, you don’t need to despair because you can have a chance to change and switch it by using WordPress Dashboard. This is one of the great means that can be offered by WordPress theme. This can be done by just a simple click only.

If you are like most WordPress bloggers, when you start a new blog, you could install several themes, which you can experiment until you find the best theme for you. This is the best thing about WordPress themes because you can test various themes you want to use into your blog. As a matter of fact you can also customize it according into your choice. This can make your blog look gorgeous and striking.

Choosing a WordPress theme will help your blog look striking, which is also helpful especially if you are advertising a certain product or service. An attractive blog will drag people to visit your blog regularly.

Lastly, WordPress themes also offers you the opportunity to alter the navigation bars or change the header or footer.php, which is a unique features of WordPress themes. You will not find it difficult all you have to do is to have a slight CSS, XHTML and PHP modification. Wordpress is undeniable the best platform on how you can able to have a successful blog.

Find out How To Make A Website that brings over $8,143 of income on autopilot. George Tee shares with you his money making blueprint on how you can make 5-figures of income every month with your websites online. Read our blog to find out more information on Make A Website that rakes tons of profits.

Also known as extensions, are used to extend Wordpress functionality and give your site more oomph. In this article, I will list a few basic plugins that will improve your Wordpress in, well, basic ways.

First up is the Bad Behaviour plugin by Michael Hampton, which blocks automated spam. It is at heart an anti-spam program that uses a different method of tackling the problem, which is to scrutinise the messenger and delivery method of a message, instead of looking at the message itself. Interestingly, almost all comment spam are delivered by automated bots; so if you use this plugin, you would be virtually free from comment spam!

Have you ever gotten frustrated that the search capability of your WP is limited to the boundaries of your articles? Download the Search Everything plugin! Dan Cameron and other contributors have come up with a plugin that extends WP’ search capability to pages, tags, excerpts, comments, etc. Best of all, you can adjust the defaults and get a tailored search, just by clicking a few check boxes.

Do you have a lot of images on your site? Shutter Reloaded is a plug-in that uses the Lightbox effect – a script that is used to overlay images (images, etc) on the existing page – for your images and picture galleries. Shutter is unique because it doesn’t use an external JavaScript framework (MooTools, Prototype), and therefore is very light – read: fast!

Imagine if you’re at a certain page, say a page on gardening and would like to read other similar pages. Instead of having to exit that page and Google ‘gardening’, you could actually use Similar Posts, a plug-in by Rob Marsh, SJ, which is a list that displays similar posts and/or pages. ‘How?’ you may ask. Answer: It calculates similarity based on a page’s content, title and tags.

Subscribe To Comments is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that allows your commenters to decide if they would like to be notified of new comments on your WP page. When you install this plugin, commenters will see a check box that they can tick if they wish to be notified via email of new comments on the page. Do it; your commenters would be pleased!

Last but not least, backing up your database is extremely important, if a bit of a hassle. Wordpress Database Backup by Austin Matzko, is an automated and on-demand backup program that saves you the hassle of doing it manually all the time, as it’ll send copies of your database to your inbox at regular intervals. However, it must be noted that Database Backup does not save files (pictures, videos, etc), only database (posts, comments, etc).

These basic plugins will make a lot of difference to your Wordpress page, convenience and safety-wise. All of them are plug-and-play, work well with Wordpress 2.7, and most importantly are licensed under the GNU GPL. Oh, and they’re free! What are you waiting for?

Want to find out more about Randy Roedl, then visit Randy’s site on how to choose the best Wordpress Information Randy Roedl