Easy to understand and free of cost

What makes WordPress the most lovable is its open source nature. This software is free of cost. You do not need to pay anything to download it from its official site. Also, it is very easy to configure and use WordPress. It offers great customization possibilities for your websites and blogs.

Customize as per choice

Diversity in the types of themes is said to be the most vital feature of WordPress. The cherry on the cake is that it is very convenient to customize the themes to suit your online business requirements. All kinds of WordPress themes and templates are available. The Thesis theme is a unique framework that allows one to add unlimited things to WordPress and it is quite SEO friendly too. Users can download the themes according to the category required and their needs.

Hassle-free

WordPress is an amazing too, considering that it can run on any operating system, be it Windows, Linux or Mac. In case you want your blog to get maximum exposure, WordPress can do that for you, as it supports Ping-O-Matic. Its user system is unique in the fact that it allows upto 10 levels of users.

One of the most important and indispensable feature of WordPress are its plug-ins. WordPress plug-ins are a great way to add feature and functionality to your website or blog. This plug-ins has the ability to make your website look lively and feel dynamic. And, the best part is that they can be downloaded within seconds. For instance, the All in One SEO Pack Plug-in can be of great help in case you are clueless about Search Engine Optimization. Further, if you want to boost the speed of your WordPress site, then go for W3 Total Cache Plug-in. One can also add videos to blogs easily using plug-ins like the JW Player.

Tools to assure complete safety

If spam worries you, let WordPress take over your concern. The platform brings in a basket of built-in tools that keep your blog well secure. Two of such tools are the integrated blacklist checker and the proxy checker. The official website of WordPress offers a horde of community-contributed add-ons which are accessible and free for download. An additional benefit is that WordPress is in full compliance with the standards of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It also fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards.
In case you are planning to renovate your website and make it look better, novel and more interesting, there is nothing better than WordPress to suit your needs. Catch on to your web developer and experience the benefits of being a WordPress user.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger love spending on gadgets, especially mobile phones. She has an envious collection of sunglasses and watches and ray ban sunglasses are personal favorite.

High speed delivered

WordPress 3.2 has proved its speed performance against version 3.1. The changes made under the hood, have resulted in faster download, and posting speeds.

Vibrant Twenty Eleven theme

Named after the current year, version 3.2 revives itself with a theme more vibrant and vivid than ever before. This theme uses an all-new header, which looks livelier in comparison to the previous Twenty Ten theme. The new theme is offered in two versions, light and dark. You can also change the layout of the theme and move the sidebar to either left or right of the page. Color customization is also available.

Detailed admin bar

The administrative bar now features many more tasks while you browse via internet. The basic layout has not been changed. The new Admin bar allows you to make quick links to a new plug in that you have downloaded. You can remove and add these through the ‘Add New’ option. Those who find it too cluttered, can remove the whole bar in customization.

Header image options

The Twenty Eleven theme also provides an option to select various header images. You can upload your own header image in various formats like PNG, jpeg, giff etc. It can be disabled too. Concisely, this theme accustoms itself to your needs.

Distraction free writing

While writing a blog post, one’s attention might get distracted because of the busy writing panel. Distraction free writing will prove very useful to those writers who seek undivided concentration. A short keyboard shortcut ‘Alt + Shift + G’ turns this mode on or it can be accessed by clicking the ‘Full Screen’ icon. This transition from writing panel view to full screen is quick and appealing.

Goodbye to old, hello to the new

The WordPress 3.2 has certain new features that replace obsolete technology for good:
1. WordPress 3.2 does not support Internet Explorer version 6.
2. It would not support Internet Explorer version 7 when new updates are released in further editions and updates.
3. The obsolete technology of PHP 5.0 and MySQL 5.0 is not compatible either.​
4. Many new updates are promised in the near future.
Blogging enthusiasts can keep a check on this version’s every movement at the WordPress trac.

About the author:

Alia Haley is an avid writer, also having a keen interest in getting updated with the latest news on tech help and innovations. She frequently splurges on gadgets and tech apparels and recently bought a cool workstation for herself.

Website and internet technology are constantly evolving into more efficient and more robust platforms. It is important to incorporate new technologies in order to maintain a competitive and marketable internet presence. Redesigning a website should take a few basic factors into account: the platform used, the user experience for visitors, and website host.

Website Platform

There are various platforms that may be used to build a website and programming languages that may be used for the new design. These languages include PHP, static HTML, and content management systems that use a combination of PHP, CSS, Scripting Languages, and HTML to build a new site.

Static HTML websites were the standard for many years in site design. Static HTML requires each page to be built separately, and then get linked together. Changes made to the layout or graphics of a static HTML site must often be repeated on each page, which creates more work and more room for error when updating a website. If a website owner in considering updating a static HTML site, it may be a good time to consider updating the code to dynamic PHP or a content management system.

Dynamic PHP can incorporate a variety of changing elements into a website to maximize the user’s experience and increase functionality. Shopping carts, location based information, and interactivity are just a few of the excellent features a PHP based site can deliver. PHP based sites have risen in popularity over the last 5 years and are now considered the standard in website design.

One simple and effective way to incorporate a robust PHP system into a new site design is to utilize content management systems. Content management systems, commonly known as a CMS, is a pre-built website coding system that incorporates PHP functionality and an administration interface to make changes and updates to a site. Visit the many sites of each of these content management systems to explore the features they offer.

Most Content Management Systems are open source software, meaning they are completely free to install and use on any hosting server. They may also be used for both personal and commercial applications, making them a good choice for any type of website. The most popular Content Management Systems available are: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. If a content management system is chosen for the redesign, it will be necessary to hire a skilled designer to theme the website for a professional appearance that matches existing business marketing efforts.

User Experience

The experience for site visitors is essential for success. A website redesign should seek to capitalize on what users liked from the previous site design, plus add new features to improve their experience.

A good place to start to gather data on about user experience is to analyze data from a previous site design. Most websites have some type of analytics or reporting tools installed that provide essential information about what pages users visited, what pages ended up in a conversion, and what content was not seen by visitors. It is relatively safe to assume content that received little traffic and no conversions was not an effective part of the site design.

Many site owners also seek out comments from customers and other professionals during the early stages of a site redesign. It is not uncommon to send out surveys to elicit responses about what visitors liked and did not like about the previous site design. Once this information is gathered, it can be used to drive the changes and updates that are to be made on the new site.

Increased functionality is important to build into a site redesign. If a redesign is using a content management system, there are a variety of plug-ins and modules that will easily and quickly add functionality to a site. This may include items such as contact forms, shopping carts, surveys, polls, and social media integration. Improving the functionality of a site will enhance the user experience and improve traffic over the long run.

Another key aspect of the user experience for a site is the ability to find a website. If a previous site design is already receiving search engine traffic, the site redesign must be focused on maintaining rankings in search engines. Maintaining search rankings during a site redesign should focus on 3 key elements: Content, Page Structures, and Link Structure. A new site should mimic these key elements to maintain current rankings.

Website Host

Having a trusted website host is critical for success. A website hosting company should minimize downtime and provide a high level of customer service and technical support. A reliable website host provides enough server space to house the files the website needs and enough bandwidth for users to be able to effectively utilize the site. Bandwidth will depend on the size of files and how many visitors are received. Consult a designer to get an idea of how large the files are, and what the bandwidth requirements may be.

One of the effective hosting to choose is ASP hosting. This means the hosting company uses servers that run on the ASP.net platform from Microsoft. This allows a website to use server-side scripting (such and PHP) to dynamically present information to visitors. ASP hosting also allows websites to use MySQL databases to store and retrieve essential information for visitors, an essential service for any site.

AUTHOR’S BIO
Chloe Henderson
Chloe Henderson is 23 year old media practitioner who engages herself in the world of social networking, blogging, gadgets and reading. She is also doing some free-lance writing on several web hosting companies, and is currently with webhostgear.com. She loves to write stuffs about anything that would interest her,and sharing it to the world wide web.

It is a very slick looking popUp opt-in box which is guaranteed to boost your opt-in rate significantly.
It’s being created and developed by a fellow blogger Michael Dunlop over at Income diary, which uses on his own blog.

What’s different about this tool is the ability to customise its look and feel to match your blog. Plus it has a high impact feel about it – which means more subscribers.

There are 4 templates to choose from which can be altered to suit your taste.
Popup domination is also compatible with the major email marketing providers such as Aweber and many more.

The plugin provided the following configuration options:

Look and feel

- Choose template
- Pick buttons and layout colours,

Mailing list HTML

- Choose your Email marketing provider i.e. Aweber

Template fields

- Input your content

List Points

- Highlight important messages using bullet lists.

Schedule

- control PopUp timing sequence.
…and more

There’s a video tutorial of this plugin. See it in action >>
Start converting your readers into email subscribers using PopUp Domination.

You can pick up this amazing plugin for only $37 – a complete bargain if you ask me.

Get yours now!

This is particularly useful for monitoring progress of a particular part of your blog or to track banner campaigns within a given date range.

How does it work?

Google does this by placing an overlay of mini indicators next to clickable links on your webpage.
Stats from this tool can prove useful for a blogger in determining which area of the blog is performing well.

Generally, the first fold of your webpage gets the most level of activity. This is the part that is viewed immediately before the reader scrolls down to view the rest.

Depending on your setup, by default, site overlay would only track internal links and not external.
Not only does it display number of clicks on a particular link, it can display revenue or profit associated with each link or page

Requirements

• Google Analytics account

• Google Adwords (Optional)

Procedure:

• Login to Analytics account

• Select your web profile

• Select Content from your side menu

• Under Click Patterns, select Site Overlay

I may be the only person on the planet who isn’t aware of this – but Google gives you a history of web activities performed on their services.
You can track and manage activities such as, Google searches, visited web pages, images, videos, maps and more.
So far, I have activities dating back to two years ago – bizarre!

Simply visit www.google.com/history to access yours.
(You will need a google account to view this)

My apologies if you’re already aware of this, I just had to share my latest discovery
We sure are moving into the cloud computing age.

With a growing blog, comes the responsibility to meet its needs and demands.
Blogging platforms are great, however, they also tend to use up a lot of resources as they grow – it’s just their nature.
So therefore, to keep the ship steady, regular maintenance is essential.

On this blog, I’ve had a few blackout moments, when everything grinds to a halt, nothing seems to work, and in most cases, I’ve had my hosting company to thank, for placing me on a dodgy server (145) hmmm.
It’s still an on-going process in my quest for better performance.

Why is My Blog Running Slow?

There could be many reasons for this :

• Traffic Levels.
• Growth/size of your blog.
• The size of your images.
• Badly written codes.
• Too many components.

What is Slowing Down my Blog?

Well, the answer to this is relative. It really depends on your setup.
That said, there are tools that can help you identify some problem areas.
Pingdom is free service that provides information of how long your web page takes to load, and also breaks down what actions are being performed and the time taken.
This detailed stats would give you some indication of areas that may need attention.

How Do I Increase My Loading Speed?

There are several approaches you can take to solve this problem, they range from optimizing your blog, to drastic ones, such as changing web host.
I would recommend doing some general house-keeping FIRST before considering switching hosts. You don’t want to end up with the same issues even after switching hosts.

Below are some possible solutions that may improve things.
I will assume at this stage that you are using WordPress, although some of these tips can be applied to other CMS platforms.
These recommendations have been tried and tested on this blog [Wordpress Build 2.9.1]
Although, there’s still room for improvement, there has been a noticeable improvement in loading speed. Trust me, it was extremely slow before.

At this stage, your first action is to back-up your database.
You may already have a scheduled job in place, but if possible, carry out a manual back-up.

[1] Remove unused plugins
You’ve probably stumbled across a fancy plugin in the past that you no longer use – get rid of it.
It is of no use having themit sitting on your server. The aim here is to get your server as lightweight as possible.
Procedure: Under Manage Plugins > De-activate > Delete.

[2] Optimize Your Images
If you regularly use images within your blog post, ensure they’re optimized.
You can use programs such as Photoshop or Fireworks to optimize your images for the web.
Procedure: In your favourite graphics application, export images using ‘Save for the web‘ option.

[3] Remove unused Images From Your Server.
It quite easy to accumulate images in wordpress without realising, some of which you don’t use.
Especially duplicates or images of different sizes residing on your server.
Procedure: Using an FTP client, browse to images folder, normally titled uploads in wordpress. Next remove unused or duplicate images. Test to make sure you haven’t broken anything.

[4] Upgrade your Blogging platform.
Always be on a look for the latest version of your blogging software. In most cases, a release build would address bug/security issues, performance related fixes and so on.

[5] Update Plugins.
The same goes for plugins, update them when you can. But note, any previous changes made to a plugin may be lost during an update.

[6] WP Super Cache
If you haven’t done so already, I recommend you install WP Super Cache.
This is quite a popular wordpress plugin to have – because it works.
Here’s what it does:
Instead of loading heavy PHP scripts each time a user visits your page, WP Super Cache generates and presents most of your users with static HTML files as oppose dynamic content.
In a nutshell, It minimizes server load and presents heavy stuff only on-demand.
Get Plugin: WP Super Cache

[7] Remove Post Revisions
As you edit and create new posts, WordPress keeps a revision of your work. Which is a good thing.
But on a flip-side, these revisions can easily accumulate and be a burden on your database.
Some webmasters have actually decided to get rid of this functionality altogether, by hard-coding their ‘config’ file in wordpress.
Alternatively, you can grab a cool wordpress plugin called ‘Delete Revision’.
The plugin allows you review your revisions before deleting.
In my case, I removed 1361 revisions – that’s a lot.
Get Plugin: Delete Revision

[8] Database Optimization
To increase your page’s loading time, It’s always good practice to regularly optimize your database.
It’s a straight forward back-end process located within the PHP Admin section of your hosting control panel.
If you’re not comfortable doing this, there is a simply lightweight plugin that does the job. It actually states how much overheads you have accumulated and how much you can bring it down by.
Get Plugin: Optimize DB

[9] DB Cache Reloaded
This re-worked plugin does a neat job of caching database queries for a given page.
Get Plugin: DB Cache Reloaded

[10] WP CSS
WP CSS zips and strips away whitespace from your CSS files.
Get Plugin: WP CSS

[11] Refactor Your Code
Try to minimize the number PHP requests in your code. Where possible replace them with HTML.
Your Headers and footer files are usually good places to start.

[12] Upgrade Your Hosting Service
After you have exhausted all options and you’re still experiencing loading issues, it might be worth upgrading or changing your web hosting service.
There are three main types of web hosting solution – Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server Hosting and Dedicated Hosting.
If you’ve recently started a blog, chances are your blog is residing on a shared hosting solution.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is basically sharing your hosting area with a bunch of other blogs and websites.
This is a popular option for most people as they are very cost effective to maintain.
On a shared hosting you are not guaranteed system resource, so if another blog within your hosting area gets a sudden influx of traffic, it may affect your blog.
Typical Monthly Cost: £3.50

VPS Hosting

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting environment that combines the benefits of both shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
It does this by creating a virtual server that runs inside a hardware server via a partition.
Each VPS partition runs its own operating system in a secure and private environment and cannot
be accessed or interrupted by its neighbouring blogs or websites.
On a VPS environment, you are sharing limited number of users and are guaranteed some system resource.
In comparison to shared hosting, they’re a bit more expensive to run, but you’re getting so much in terms guaranteed memory and disk space.
In fact, very soon, I am looking to move this blog to a VPS environment.
Typical Monthly Cost: £30

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated hosting is simply renting your own machine which you can configure to meet your needs.
Maintaining a dedicated server can be very expensive.
Typical Monthly Cost: £200

Better Performance Check-list

Here’s a quick checklist to help improve your blog’s performance.

• Delete unused plug-ins
• Reduce the size of your images
• Simplify your php and css code.
• Update your plugins
• When available, upgrade your blogging platform
• Upgrade your hosting package

Have I missed anything else?

The new year will be no different – and the numbers will increase as more gadgets are introduced to make social networking easier and easily accessible.

If you haven’t started thinking ahead of the new year – blog-wise – well now’s a good time to ask yourself, “Does my blog stand a chance among the others?”

You could make the answer to that question a very confident “Yes” by making one smart move that’ll ensure 2010 is a successful blog year – get stuck into latest, most talked about blogging resource – Beyond Blogging.

Learning from people already on top of their game will surely catapult you ahead. Applying winning principles that have been proved and tested will accelerate your success.

If you are considering starting a blog or have recently started one you don’t want to miss out on what Beyond Blogging is offering.

In case you have been missing in action in the last couple of days, due to the holidays. Well here’s what’s been happening.

Nathan and MikeCJ finally launched the long anticipated e-book and consultation service dubbed Beyond Blogging.

And since they did two days ago, hundreds of copies have been sold and rave reviews have flooded the net.

Here’s what I had to say about Beyond Blogging

Free Report

2010 and Beyond – The Truth about Blogging in the Next Decade.

[Video] The Making of Beyond Blogging

Watch how Nathan and Mike executed the project.

Get Your Copy

Get your copy of Beyond Blogging.

Promote Beyond Blogging

If like me, you have found great value in this book, why not promote it to your own friends or blog readers Promote Beyond Blogging on your blog

Again, the content of this book is truly amazing and I honestly believe it would kick start your 2010 campaign with a BANG!

Disclaimer: The links in this post are affiliate links.

But, in the midst of the festive chaos, your blog gets thrown down the bottom of the to-do list as hosting family members and shovelling snow off your driveway takes priority.

You’re not alone.
Thoughts of an abandoned blog have filled me with guilt.

But then I realised it doesn’t have to be such a painful thing to do.

As an avid mobile device (BlackBerry) user, responding to comments, and keeping up to date with my favourite blogs has been a doddle.

What’s made this even more natural to do, requiring less effort has been the RSS subscription service by Viigo. It’s made keeping on top of my blogging commitments a click and a scroll away – and at the most convenient of times.

Share Your Discoveries

Viigo (mobile) offers the much needed one-click access to keep in touch with your favourite blogs for new content. It also gives you the ability to share your favourite posts through its social media module which includes platforms such as Twitter, Friendfeed e.t.c

See the other amazing modules Viigo has on offer

How do you keep informed on the move?

Well, check out this standalone WordPress for BlackBerry application that connects to your existing WordPress server. It gives you the flexibility to create or modify existing drafts and even publish posts on the go.

I have been using WordPress for BlackBerry for several months now -
it is a must have blogging tool. WordPress is also available on the Iphone.

To install:

Simply point your BlackBerry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install and then follow the instructions.