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.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20 bytes) in /—/—-/—-/yourblogtools.com/—-/wp-admin/menu.php on line 142

This simply means, memory allocated to PHP, is running low. If you’re running WordPress, reducing the number of wordpress plugins you have installed should help reduce the load.

Alternatively, you can try increasing your memory limit.
Simply, open your wp-config.php file and include the following line of code in the declaration section

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

Instructions

Before editing any source file – always backup your work.

(1) Locate your wp-config.php This can be found within WP Content folder.

(2) Using notepad or your favourite editor, include the following in the declaration section (Authentication Unique Keys).

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

You can always increase the size to suit your requirements.

After spending some time offloading some of the plugins and a bit of faffing around, I decided to rollback WordPress to version 2.9.2.

Here what I did

(1) Back up database using PHPAdmin and plugin
(2) Downloaded and extracted WordPress version 2.9.2
(3) Using an FTP client, I simply uploaded and replaced existing WordPress files with version 2.9.2, preserving wp-config.php
(4) Refreshed my admin
(5) That’s it

I was quite surprised that this method worked – took about 10 mins to do.
I’m sure there are better and more systematic ways to approach this. But in my case, I simply wanted to get the task done in record time.

I’m sure I’ll eventually upgrade to 3.0 in the future, but for now 2.9.2 does the job for me.
Have you had any issues with WordPress 3.0?

“what the deuce!!” – Stewie
This is sometimes uncomfortable to watch, especially if your content isn’t ready for public viewing. I’m getting used to it now, but I still watch it just to make sure.

(2) When presented with a white screen right upgrading WordPress

“errm, what do I do now??”
From experience, a simple page refresh normally brings things back to normal again.

(3) Dodgy WordPress plugins that breaks everything on your blog.

“arghh”
In some cases, it takes a while to identify the culprit plugin.
Before installing a plugin, I normal check its compatibility status . This can be found at wordpress.org/extend

Do you have any moments to share?

Personally, I have had one or two blooper moments, which has led me to keep a mental note of 4 things to do before hitting the publish button.

(1) Set Your Permalink

Permalinks are unique URL that points to your blog post.
Set your permalink to something short, descriptive and search engine friendly.
For this post I have adjusted my permalink to (before-you-publish)
So my URL now reads:

http://www.yourblogtools.com/before-you-publish

instead of:

http://www.yourblogtools.com/4-things-to-check-before-hitting-the-publish-button

(2) Use Relevant Tags In Your Post.

Picking relevant tags helps to connect related topics together.

(3) Select Appropriate Categories

If a post belongs to a particular category then specify it.
It helps with the overall content organisation of your blog.

(4) Spell Check Your Title.

To avoid embarrassment, double check your post titleS.
By default, title text fields does not spell check your words.
However, there’s a quick hack that can enable spell checks within text fields.
The magic happens within your browser settings

In Firefox

- Simply type about:config into your browser address bar and press enter.
- You should now be prompted with confirmation screen, press OK to continue
- In the filter field, type the value layout.spellcheckDefault
- Once value has been located from list, change parameter value of layout.spellcheckDefault from 1 to 2 (by double-clicking it)
- Close the configuration page
- All Done, Now go ahead and check your text field. It should now underline any spelling mistakes.

Although, I haven’t tried this with other browsers yet? but Google Chrome appears to have acknowledge the change.
Does it work for you?
Do you keep a checklist of things to do before publishing?

Hosting locally means running a duplicate copy of your live blog on your local machine. In other words, your PC becomes your web and database server.
Having your own development area is a bit like having your own playground, with freedom to test and tweek as you please without affecting the live system. Web developers generally adopt this approach before deploying.

Hosting your blog locally is a very straight forward process, and would require the following;

• Installing a web server on your computer.

• Creating a database.

• Downloading the latest version of wordpress.

• Tweeking one wordpress file.

There are several ways to achieve this, but one the easiest ways is using a tool called XAMPP, which happens to work across most operating systems.

Step 1

Install a local web server

PC

This is quite straight forward on a PC, simply visit http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html to download and install XAMMP Lite executable file.

Linux

For Linux users, applying a few commands in your terminal should get you up and running. Simply visit http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html for download and install instructions.

MAC

MAC users, download and extract XAMPP file from here http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html

Step 2

Create and active your database
Using the downloaded XAMPP tool, you can create a new database for your local blog. Simply open XAMPP control panel and select the Admin button next to MySQL. This should then take you phpMyAdmin page.

On this page, under MySQL Localhost section, you can create a new database name.

At this stage, to make sure everything is working fine, start the Apache and MySQL services, it will notify you once it starts.
You should also see the XAMPP splash screen when you type “localhost” into your browser.

Step 3

Download and Extract WordPress
You can download the latest version of WordPress by visiting wordpress.com Once downloaded, extract the zipped file and move it inside the htdoc folder. On a windows machine, this can be located under c:\xampp\htdoc

Step 4

Update your wp-config.php file
In this file, you will have to define your database parameters to enable connection.
In your wordpress folder, c:\xampp\htdoc\wordpress\

1. Rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
2. Define your database name – (‘DB_NAME’, ‘test‘);
3. Define your database username – (‘DB_USER’, ‘root‘);
4. Define your database password – (‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘test‘);

You can find your database information from the phpMyAdmin page, located under the MySQL section

Step 5 and final step

Configure and Install
Run install.php file by pointing your browser to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php and hit enter.

1. At this stage, you then see the configuration file, complete the fields with the same information as your wp-config.php file.
   
2. Complete your blog title along with your email address and hit Run install
   
3. ALL DONE – You now have a copy locally.

To transfer files from server to local machine, I would recommend using a an FTP client such as FileZilla.

What are your thoughts on testing locally?

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.