WordPress for Absolute Beginners is brand new free PDF ebook that can be downloaded now and comes with full giveaway rights, allowing you to share it freely with others.

Unlike many WordPress basics type books, this 20 page PDF cuts through all the jargon and explains all the things that so perplex many who are completely new to WordPress.

It explains what WordPress is, how to use it, the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, the requirements for each and exactly how to get up and running.

It was written in light of the huge number of misguided, albeit often well meaning, comments that are regularly thrown around online telling people “Get WordPress, it’s easy” so casually thrown out as “advice”. Such advice often comes from such a wide variety of WordPress users that it soon becomes apparent that the value of such advice might often be somewhat questionable. Someone who uses WordPress.com for example, who has never even heard of WordPress.org is hardly in a position to remark on how simple the self hosted path might or might not be and are often completely unaware of the difference. An experienced hard core WordPress designer or coder is equally reckless if they tell a beginner how easy WordPress is to customize or manage without even considering the recipient’s knowledge level.  This is the problem – most people who post throwaway one liners on twitter and other social networks do so without considering either a). the knowledge and experience of the person to whom they give the advice or b). their own knowledge and experience in relation to the advice.

It is not uncommon to see pleas from people who have spent money on a premium theme or plugin only to discover that they can’t use them on WordPress.com. Others tell people they can host their own domain name on WordPress.com (true) but do not understand that this is completely different from hosting WordPress on your own domain with a hosting company. The list is endless and it is hardly surprising that so many people end up lost and confused. As the saying goes, free advice is so often worth what you pay for it.

In simple terms this book explains things such as getting a domain name, a hosting account, installing WordPress, and the basic first steps you should take as a brand new user with your first WordPress installation.

It is aimed squarely at the complete novice although a few nuggets will also be enlightening for more seasoned users – most people can learn something from this ebook. It’s free to download and you can give it away to others, the only proviso being that the content remains unaltered in any way.

If you have an audience you think might benefit please feel free to offer it as a gift to them – blog readers, newsletter subscribers – you can even add the book to giveaway events and similar.

Download Your Copy Of An Introduction To WordPress For Absolute Beginners Here

PDFBrander is an excellent server side PDF rebranding solution for webmasters and bloggers. Unlike traditional rebranding tools which invariably require the end user to download a PDF file and an executable rebranding program, PDFBrander offers a much cleaner and simpler solution.

PDFBrander is a script that requires installation on your server but it is extremely simple to set up and there is no need to mess with databases or anything very technical at all.  The script is well supported with very thorough video and PDF documentation so even the less technical should have no difficulties getting it set up.

Once installed PDFBrander is also simple to use from the built in control panel.

Once you have created your PDF, the script will find all the hyperlinks within the document and offers you complete control over which of those links will be rebrandable. You can choose to let the end user replace both full URL’s or a selected segment.

After completing the simple form, your rebrandable documents are then ready for people to download and can be integrated into your website in a variety of ways. You can see an example of how this works on a WordPress powered site at the following link on one of our own articles here – it will open in a new window for you:   Twitter & WordPress Marketing

As you can see, all the end user has to do is add their own affiliate links, click a button and their personalized copy becomes immediately available for download. There is no complicated software for them to install and no messing about figuring out “placeholders” or how to format their links. This ease of use makes it much more likely that your affiliates and visitors will make use of the service and that others will do the same.

viral marketing of this nature is extremely effective but only if it is made as simple as possible for people to use. PDFBrander provides that simplicity. If you have an affiliate program of your own, think how much this will help your affiliates to promote on your behalf and the likely increase in exposure and traffic you can generate. Even if you don’t have an affiliate program, rebrandable reports are a great way to encourage others to promote your PDF’s as they have an incentive to do so in the form of their own links being contained in the reports.

You can read the official promotional material below. Overall we can highly recommend the script to affiliate program owners and anyone who is interested in generating more traffic through viral marketing with rebrandable PDF documents and you know that this comes from a customer with genuine hands on experience of the product.

You can use existing PDF documents or create new ones. If you are looking for a good PDF creation software we use a free program which makes it extremely easy to create PDF’s and in the spirit of sharing we have made it available for you to download through the following link:

Get Easy PDF Maker Here.

You can download your copy of PDFBrander Here

Free PDF Report You Can Rebrand and Share

If you are using either Twitter or WordPress or both, this new short report will help you to get the most out of both. Whether you are looking to drive more traffic to your WordPress powered sites or to your affiliate marketing offers, the tips and tools in this concise guide will help.

The report is 18 pages in length and introduces some of my own tried and tested methods but will hopefully inspire you to do some creative thinking yourself.

You can download a copy of the Twitter and WordPress marketing report, rebranded with your own affiliate links (See the form below) and you are free to use your branded copy in your own promotional and marketing efforts. Rebranding is a simple case of adding your own affiliate links in the boxes filling out the captcha and downloading your PDF.

When you give away your branded copy containing your links, you can pass on the same rebranding rights to your visitors, subscribers, readers and customers.

Such rebrandable PDF books and reports can be a great draw and the simplicity of the brand new server side branding method we have installed makes the whole process far less painful than the more traditional branders that made people jump through so many hoops that they often lost heart and never rebranded anything.

With a few mouse clicks this report can be personalized and downloaded ready to be shared. No complicated brander software to download to your machine and no learning curve. This will encourage your visitors to rebrand and pass along the report and heightens interest in your own blogs and sites by virtue of the fact that you offer something of perceived value.

Try it for yourself and see how simple it is.

You can then use the report in a variety of ways – add it to your blog as a gift, share i with your subscriber list, add it to giveaway events, use it as an opt-in reward to build your own list, write a post about it and link to the download. Those are just a few of the things you can do to increase the viral effect of your report and how you can achieve a viral effect for your affiliate links. Think creatively!

We will be offering more ebooks and reports as time goes by so please subscribe and be the first to know – the early bird catches the  worm!

(IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not have a Clickbank affiliate link you can get one here and you can get a free SocialOomph account here

If you leave any of the boxes empty the links in your PDF will not work correctly)

The WP Mail Ads plugin is an excellent addition for almost any WordPress user. Most people are familiar with WordPress and the different emails sent out by the system – you get an email for a new account, for a lost password, for comments etc…..not to mention all the other plugins that tie in with the WordPress email system. Think of all these emails going out to your customers and all they are getting is a boring WordPress system message..

They get it, look at it quickly and then go off and do their thing. The power here is, people almost ALWAYS read WordPress system emails because they usually contain important information. For example, if someone signs up for your site, they are going to want to read their username and password email, right?.

With WP Mail Ads you can now add whatever message you want to the end of every message sent by your WordPress site(s). Just take a second and think of the opportunities here. You can use it to add links to related offers, add support messages, get people like your FB profile, sell advertising space….and loads more, all from the built in WordPress email system where people are automatically drawn to opening the emails.

Your WP Mail Ads Plugin comes with a multi site license so you can use it on an unlimited number of sites. The uses are only limited by your imagination but how about using WP Mail Ads in some of the following ways….

• Cross promote other sites
• Sell it as a branding service to your clients!
• Link to affiliate products
• Add a Follow me link for twitter/Facebook
• Add a “Made by” message
• Link to your product FAW
• Add an Upsell offer
• Add an extra newsletter subscribe link
• “Thanks for commenting” message
• Add a custom signature
• Add a link to your favourite post
• Ask a question to encourage interaction
• Add a survey link, Feature a users site
• Top commentator of the month…..and really there are so many more ideas you might come up with!

There is no other WordPress plugin out there that does what WP Mail Ads can do.

It works with all major plugins that trigger WordPress to send emails and will keep a record of all stats for up to 12 months. So, wjy not start to take full advantage of all the emails that WordPress sends out – for a very low one time cost you can have this neat plugin up and working for you just minutes from now.

You can order your copy of WP Mail Ads Below – Payment Is Via PayPal and your download will be delivered to you immediately after payment is received.

QR Codes are gradually becoming more and more familiar both online and off and they can be extremely useful and profitable. Now that they are mor

e widely recognized, they are becoming even more so.

If you are not familiar with QR Codes yet, they are basically a simple bar code that can be scanned using modern smart phones and you can embed within those codes all kinds of messages, web addresses, phone numbers etc. They are commonly used to provide exclusive offers and many big name companies are now utilizing them on offline advertising materials. You can use them online, add them to signatures, use

them as profile images, print them and distribute them offline, use them on business cards, posters, flyers etc.

Sample QR Code

For the non technical it might seem like wizardry and seemingly complex but if you know how to create codes you can often sell them to local businesses anxious to mimic the big boys or simply to widen their audience.

There are plenty of online generators now but what we have here are two QR Code generators that you can install on your computer enabling you to create unlimited codes containing whatever you choose. One is a WordPress plugin and will work right from you WP dashboard allowing you to quickly create multiple QR codes of various types which will then be easily accessible from within your WordPress admin area.

I hope you will find them useful – with a bit of imagination, QR Codes can be extremely good tools to have in your marketing arsenal. I’ve also thrown in some great little niche marketing bonuses within each download which you’ll have access to when you download either software.

Download QR Code Easy – Click Here

The following video is a quick demo of the WPTagz plugin. This version is not rebrandable but is fully functional and works exactly as shown in the video.

Download WPTagz QR Code Generator For WordPress

Related articles

• Codee Software Launches Business Edition QR Code Product (prweb.com)

video Review Of  This Excellent video Marketing Software

Traffic Player review – A WordPress plugin that enhances videos from YouTube and any other video sources watch the video now for full details of this excellent video marketing software and how it can increase traffic and sales to any videos.

Catalyst WordPress Marketplace

Catalyst WordPress theme framework has been thoroughly reviewed by me already (Catalyst WordPress Theme Review) but the company recently introduced the Catalyst Marketplace and with that comes some exciting news.

Firstly, to celebrate the launch, you can get all editions of Catalyst, including the developer licence for a massive 25% discount until the end of October 2011. If that’s enough to spur you into action click here to download Catalyst now.

The marketplace is available only to Catalyst members and users and will contain an ever growing collection of themes, plugins etc. and many of these will be free for all users. As time goes by, the marketplace will be populated with more and more official content in addition to user generated content.

If you build your sites with WordPress and are not using Catalyst already, now is the time to get your licence. You will never need another WordPress theme again and once you discover the power of this framework, you will never look back. The addition of the marketplace is just going to make you, as a Catalyst user, even happier if that’s possible!

If you want to build great sites fast, I highly recommend Catalyst to every level of WordPress user and the Marketplace is just more icing on an already accomplished WordPress cake.

The following videos give a taste of what the Marketplace offers and some examples of what you can expect as a Catalyst user. For a more thorough run through visit the Catalyst website where you can watch a number of demo videos and look at the entire range of features.

The first video shows one of the newest Child themes recently added to the Marketplace.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Marketplace will be user driven to a large extent and if you are interested in becoming a contributor, the following video gives a basic introduction to how it works and how you can get involved.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WordPress Custom Widgets Plugin

A WordPress custom widgets plugin may not sound very exciting but if you are using a free or premium theme that does not include custom widget area functionality, this WordPress plugin could be just what you need.

So what are custom widget areas?

Most WordPress users are familiar with widgets and using them to add content to their sidebars but many people don’t know that widgets can also be used within the content of their blog or website too.

If you use a theme framework such as the excellent Catalyst you will have very flexible custom widget options already available to you within your WP-admin dashboard, and a good number of premium themes may also include some sort of custom widget options but if you don’t have them, this is where this plugin comes in.

Until you have used custom widget areas you probably won’t miss them much, but, like so many things, once you’ve used them it’s hard to do without them. You can use custom widgets just the same as you use your regular sidebar widgets to display all manner of things including javascript, banners, advertisements, sign up and opt-in forms etc. This ability becomes extremely useful when writing posts, building pages and tweaking the overall design and functionality of your site.

The plugin is simple to install and use. Once you have uploaded to your site you will see a new menu item under “Settings” titled “Custom Widget Area” where you can create your new custom widgets. You can then visit your widgets page where you can add widgets within those new custom widget area – let’s say you want to place an adblock or banner withing your post content as an example – you create a text widget containing the relevant code and then drag it into your newly created custom widget area and you’re set to go.

As you create your content, using the visual editor, you will see a new icon in the menu bar at the top. Place your cursor where you want to embed the custom widget area, click the icon, choose the desired custom widget and preferred layout and click add. The plugin will create and insert a shortcode to generate the desired content.

Once you are familiar with this simple process, creating and adding custom widget areas is fast and easy and you can use them anywhere on new and existing posts.

Full Details of This Plugin can be found at WordPress Custom Widget Areas Plugin

More Related WordPress Plugins

Widget Ninja

WordPress Widget Bundle

WP Pro Advertising System

Google Plus Widgets Collection

WP Social Lock is a WordPress plugin that was originally sold, I believe, as a WSO through the Warrior Forum but we came across it more recently when trying to solve the problem of locking specific content on a WordPress site until the visitor took a specific action – we wanted to make content available only after the visitor shared a specific page or post either via Facebook, twitter or Google +1.

This is not a new concept and marketers have been employing such “social content locking” methods for some time now but despite the fact that there are a variety of options on offer we constantly found that either the solutions didn’t work or were capable of only fulfilling part of our requirements.

We’ve listed most of the things we tried at the end of this review so that you won’t have to search as hard as we did!

The good news is that we found a winner in WP Social Lock, a neat little plugin now owned and distributed by Marc Hennes who has proved to be a very helpful and responsive plugin developer.

The video below sums up WP Social Lock in a nutshell if you don’t wish to read our entire post.

As you can see from the above demo, the idea behind WP Social Lock is to restrict certain areas of your site from public view, much as you would do with the various content locking plugins available as stand alone scripts or features of membership plugins, whereby only registered or logged in members can see certain content on your site. There are plenty of free plugins that can do this in the WordPress plugin repository. However, what this plugin allows you to do is restrict your selected content to only those who share your selected URL via one of the three main social networking sites and at present there are not any free plugins that do this as far as we know.

The benefits of this are obvious. First and foremost it will generate traffic from all three of the social networks as people Tweet, Like and +1 your page/post and give it exposure to potentially unlimited new visitors. It has excellent viral potential and used wisely can gain you a lot of visitors and perhaps a lot of customers or subscribers, whatever you are looking for in essence.

The claim that you will generate huge numbers of backlinks is perhaps true in part, although how much weight Facebook and Twitter links really carry is anyone’s guess to be honest and as for Google +1 it’s perhaps too early to tell how much an increased number of likes is going to impact your ranking or SERPS results. Ultimately though, none of these increases will do your sites any harm and you will get more traffic.

WP Social Lock has been around for a while now but its usage is still not as widespread as you might expect for such a neat little WordPress plugin. As we’ve already said, there are several others around, most more expensive and invariably incapable of offering shares on the big three networks. There are several Facebook only plugins but despite Facebook‘s massive reach there are still plenty of people who don’t use it. Restricting content based on a Facebook “Like” is a little tough on those folks, as indeed is restricting it to just Twitter. By using the three options in WP Social Lock you probably have the majority of internet users covered.

The plugin is easy to install and use – entering a simple shortcode before the content you wish to lock is all there is to it really.

So what about problems? Well, like many WordPress plugins, conflicts can arise with themes, other plugins you may be running etc. but Marc is helpful and responsive with his support so if you do encounter any issues they should be resolved fairly quickly. When you run other plugins that rely on the API’s of sites like Facebook and Twitter it’s not always the plugin’s fault when odd behaviour strikes.

One question that was raised frequently when the plugin was first launched and only offered Facebook and Twitter options was whether it would affect the spidering of your content by search engines. The answer to this is no – even though human visitors cannot see the content until they complete the required action, the spiders are granted full access to read and crawl the entire post or page so there should be no detrimental effects on the SERPS performance.

We had one minor issue with another plugin we were using on the site where we first tested WP Social Lock but after a quick process of elimination we isolated the conflict and informed Marc, who immediately set to work in the quest for a solution. We found our own fix in the end but our emails were all answered promptly and helpfully.

(If you would like to see a real world example of a page on which we deployed WP Social Lock here is one you can check out).

Overall, we love this plugin and recommend it to anyone who is looking for ways to boost their traffic. All we would add is that it isn’t something you should use indiscriminately. Selective restriction of your best/most valuable content is quite reasonable but overdoing it could be a real turnoff for a lot of people if you demand they share too much before allowing them access and they will be more likely to move on if you get too heavy handed.

If you would like to try WP Social Lock for free you can download WP Social Lock Lite free from here. (The Lite version allows you to lock content subject to a tweet on Twitter).

We hunted high and low for both free and paid solutions to social content locking on WordPress and came up with quite a few but in terms of value for money, user experience, layout, ease of use and features, WP Social Lock was a clear winner. Here are just a few others that we looked at, tried or rejected. All have their pros and cons, and as you will see, most are not quite as simple or well featured. We are going to be looking at a free plugin in the course of the next few weeks which although not really a competitor to WP Social Lock is pretty cool in its own right so watch this space for that one.

Other Social Content Locking plugin options for WordPress users:

WP Like Lockout – we haven’t personally tested this one but the sales page itself employs the lockout which seems a bit counter productive if you ask us. It would appear to be an OK plugin if you want to use Facebook likes alone but it uses popups which are a lot more intrusive and potentially frustrating for visitors than WP Social Lock’s interface. Much will depend on the settings you elect to use on the popup. It is also more expensive by around ten bucks so in terms of value for money it’s in last place here on that basis alone – there are better and cheaper choices as you can see. If you want to see it in action there is a video at this link WP Like Lockout

Google +1 Content Locker – simple, easy to use and cheap at just $7.00. If you’re going to go for a single content locking option Google might be the best bet as opposed to Facebook. Only time will tell. You can get Google +1 Content Locker here.

WordPress Like Locker – from the same author as the above and also cheap at $7.00. We have used this in the past and it’s effective enough, not overly intrusive and simple to use. If all you care about is Facebook likes it’s a good enough choice. See the details at WordPress Like Locker

Social Traffic Pop  – the third option from the same stable as the previous two plugins. Works on all three major networks – Google +1, Facebook and Twitter. Comes in at $18.00. We like this one and have used it in the past but still prefer the non pop up approach to content locking overall. Having said that, this is the cheapest of the plugins that support all three networks and represents good value for money. Read more about Social Traffic Pop.

This list is not exhaustive and there are other products out there which may or may not float your boat but if you want an easy professional looking social content locking plugin, our recommendation for WP Social Lock is one we are happy to make.

Please let us know what you think in the comments section. Have you ever used WP Social Lock? What do you think about social content locking in general? Would you ever try it or do you think it would  put off your visitors? Do you have any experience of other WordPress solutions that we haven’t mentioned?

WordPress SEO tips are everywhere nowadays and discussions of the subject invariably leave me cold. Frequently, the people giving the advice seem to be doing so from very insecure positions, often having sites that rank nowhere in the SERPS and have very little traffic.

For this reason I thought I’d not only help to dispel a few myths but to tell you exactly what I do when I want to rank for a particular keyword. This is not rocket science but instead of giving you a load of waffle and hypothetical fluff I will tell you exactly what I do and give you a quick case study too.

Before I go on, remember that not all WordPress sites are equal when it comes to optimization, but if you follow these  simple guidelines you should find that your rankings in the SERPS will improve in a lot of cases.

If you have a free theme that is not SEO optimized, use a plugin like All In One SEO or Yoast’s excellent SEO plugin to give you the basics for your site and the options to tweak your posts and pages. If you’re already familiar with these SEO plugins or have your own favourite installed, great, and if you have a decent theme with built in SEO options even better. There is still more you can do so read on…….

When you write a post on a WordPress site, decide what keyword you want to optimize for. In the example I give below we were writing a review of a product so we wanted to target the keyword/phrase “Virtual Sports Cash Review”.

Simple enough so far? I didn’t need to do a whole heap of research on competition etc. for this one, it’s not exactly something for which multitudes of people will be searching. The point is, it is a review and therefore we only need to think about what people who already know about the product are likely to search for when they are thinking of buying it – most people will go and seek out reviews and we want them to find ours. Unlike the thousands of lame posts out there that talk about optimizing for the term “weight loss” we’re going to show you how to tweak your SEO for real world results on realistic keywords and phrases.

The obvious title of the post is going to be our keywords or, if you prefer, keyphrase. You can add more to the title if it’s needed to make a coherent heading but your keywords should come first. For example, we could title our post “Virtual Sports Cash Review – A Customer’s Experience. You get the idea. Having entered that it’s time to write the post itself. There is no need to pepper the article with your keyword – write naturally, for human visitors. You can add some refinements later as you will see, without the need to sound like a broken record.

A few more basics to remember:Your permalink structure – get it right from the outset. Don’t use defaults. I prefer just postname but some lean towards category | postname. Either is OK, your choice, just be sure when you set up a WP site that it’s one of the first things you do as changing them later has detrimental effects even if only short term.

If you are including any images, be sure to name them with your keyphrase too – in the title and, if you like in the “alt” attribute of the image as well. I tend to vary the “alt” slightly but it’s up to you, just be sure to use them both and don’t leave them empty or filled with meaningless characters.

As we will be linking to a product we will choose our anchor text for any links carefully “Virtual Sports Cash” will suffice in this case.

When you’re done writing, use the additional fields offered by your SEO plugin of choice to refine your keywords and meta tags and in the excerpt or description field (as in All In One SEO), use your keyword first. The keyword field provided by many SEO plugins isn’t all that important any more, particularly to Google but fill it in anyway, using your main keyword first and add as many related and variations on your theme as you see fit. Then copy all those keywords and paste them into the “tags” section on the right hand side of your WordPress dashboard. Tags are important, don’t neglect them.

By now you might well be thinking; “Is that it? I read this post for that?” Well, yes and no, that’s the basics and you may well be doing most or all of that already but here is where I give you that extra something that will improve your rankings much further.

You will need to install a copy of the SEO software I use regularly it’s a free download from this link: Download Free S-E-O Software – it will open in a new window for you. Just hit the free download button and then install it once you’re done.

Once you have written and proofed your post, publish it to the web. When you’ve done so, open up your new free software and click on the “Page Analysis” button in the left hand menu. You will then be presented with a screen like the one below:

Enter the full URL of your post and then your chosen keywords/phrase in the keyword box alongside it. Hit the “analyze page” button at top right. After a few seconds the job is done and you need to click on the “Report Summary” tab. You will then be presented with the results and recommendations by the software and your page will have been given a “grade” “- just like school A being higher than F

What you want is an A or even an A+ so follow the advice given in the summary – if your post does not meet the criteria the software tells you it should, then change it so that it does. Normally, with WordPress, you will need to add things like an additional H1 tag to your post and probably tweak your meta keywords and description – just do what the software recommends and with each change you make according to its suggestions your grade will increase. Run the URL through the software again each time you make a change and you will see your grade improving with each little tweak. When you get an A or better you’re done.

You can see from the screenshots above that we made these simple minor changes to our post , and we achieved our A rating. Even though our initial post was written with a keyword in mind, those little extra tweaks make all the difference, even in a WordPress installation already built on a well optimized theme framework.

Here is a quick video overview of the very latest version of the software. The Pro version contains a whole lot more tools for analysis but the free version will let you do all the basics and you can always upgrade later if you find it helpful and want even more SEO features:

If you check Google for our keyword you will find the page in question in first place, on Yahoo and Bing we have the number two spot.

Did we do anything else? Well, I tend to go over to Pingler and ping certain new posts even though I have a good list of sites already loaded into WordPress. We did a bit of tweeting and sharing on Facebook and added a few select social bookmarks but other than that, no, nothing in particular. The SEO was taken care of and there’s no need to get hung up on all the other stuff when you could better use the time to write some more quality optimized content.

You can see the post and exactly how it is laid out at Virtual Sports Cash Review. For the record, the site does not use any SEO plugins as it is built on the excellent Catalyst Theme Framework which is optimized extremely well in its own right. The link will take you to our review of Catalyst and at the time of writing offers a massive 25% discount coupon – it’s one of the best WordPress investments you will ever make, guaranteed.

OK, this may not be a keyword for which there is much competition, we concede that, but the point is we achieved our aim of good rankings on all three major search platforms and as Google offers up over 2.2M results for that particular search, it shows what can be done with just a little extra planning and implementation.

Bear in mind too that the domain in question is virtually brand new and has practically zero backlinks so don’t let the SEO “experts” tell you how much more complicated than this it needs to be. Write good original content, make sure you have sitemaps submitted to Google, Bing and Yahoo – get the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin if you haven’t already and use Google and Bing webmaster tools to monitor your sites. Google indexes far faster than the other two but put in a little extra effort via Bing’s webmaster tools and you’ll soon get any decent site indexed pretty smartly. I’m not telling you that this will work on a hugely competitive term with thousands of searches every five minutes and that it will be your key to earning mountains of easy cash – I’ll leave that to the marketers, SEO experts and snake oil salesmen whom you can choose to believe or not.

If you write your posts this way you will improve your rankings – the more competitive your keywords the harder it will be to get on the front page but you will definitely do better than if you rely on complete randomness. It’s worth that little bit of extra work I reckon. There are actually a lot more things you can do but we’ve covered enough in this one post, enough to give anyone SEO brain freeze so we’ll talk more about some other clever stuff another day.

You don’t need to spend a ton of money on SEO, you don’t need to worry about building massive numbers of links, just concentrate on the simple stuff. Write good content and people will read it and link to it voluntarily. Monitor your sites regularly using the webmaster tools offered by the search engines and be patient. In all the years I’ve been online I’ve learned that tearing out your hair over algorithms, sandboxes, slaps, link building and all the other nonsense is invariably a fruitless exercise destined to end only in exasperation.

One last thing worth mentioning about SEO in this post – the speed of a site is now taken into consideration by Google at least. If you’re concerned about that or have no idea what it might mean for your site head over to our recent post titled “WordPress Speed | Faster Load Times” for more information.

Need More Quality Backlinks? Try Our Backlinks Search Engine

WordPress speed and load times have become increasingly important, particularly since Google decided that the speed of a website would be included in their search ranking algorithm. If your site is very slow to load, not only will this now put off a percentage of your visitors, it might conceivably affect your ability to achieve certain ranking levels in the SERPS for your chosen keywords. It’s just one more thing to consider if you run WordPress powered sites.

WordPress is a great dynamic platform but it is easy to forget that as time goes by, the more content and features you add, edit and remove, the more you need to keep on top of your sites’ performance. Housekeeping is a boring and tedious task but we’ve put together some resources designed to make the chores a little easier.

So, how do you know if your sites are running too slowly in the first place? The first thing we recommend you do is open a Google Webmastertools account if you don’t have one already.  This is something that everyone running any kind of website should have for the wealth of important information and diagnostics it provides you with.

Next, add both the Firebug and Page Speed extensions to your Firefox. (Also available for Chrome if you prefer Google’s browser).

You can now go ahead and load your page and test it with the extensions you have just added. If the results are horrible and don’t mean a thing to you, never fear, read on to discover a number of ways to bring your website up to speed.

WordPress Plugins for Performance

The following WordPress plugins can all be useful in your quest for greater performance and are listed in no particular order aside from the first one which we highly recommend all WordPress users should install on all sites.

W3 Total Cache Plugin – download and install W3 Total Cache and follow the instructions carefully. It is probably the most complete and stable caching plugin currently available but, it needs to be set up carefully because some settings may actually make your site perform worse in certain areas. This will depend on several factors including your hosting arrangements and everything that is running on your site, themes plugins etc.

The good news is that there is plenty of help available if you need it. As you tweak the settings, check the effects it has on your page speed performance using Firebug or the Google Page Speed option that W3 Total Cache can install on your WP-admin dashboard if you select that option. W3TC can be tweaked for shared hosting, VPS users and dedicated servers. It places a new set of options in the left hand menu of your WP-admin panel.

Also check to make sure that all the features of your page are still displaying correctly and if you are using any kind of pop ups check that they are working – often the minify settings can mess with such things.

It is a great cache plugin but the options available also make it easy to end up with conflicts or even slowing down your site – there is a great guide already published on Zemalf.com and we highly recommend you read it and follow the set up instructions provided at their site – W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin Setup Guide

IF things go wrong the important thing is not to panic! We have had a situation where all we got after configuring the plugin was the dreaded white screen = no admin dashboard and no site. If this happens the simple fix can be found at HackTrix – How To Fix The Blank Page Or Blank Screen In WordPress

If you find yourself having major problems with the plugin – and some sites do seem to have them, so be warned, there are alternatives. We installed and configured W3TC on one site and it seemed to be performing fine until we saw the error logs on cpanel which had grown to over 2GB!We can’t tell you what happened but the site was throwing up 500 internal server errors and that was enough for us to uninstall the plugin. We did try messing with the settings but all was to no avail, so it had to go. After deleting the plugin there were several display problems and only after much frustration and head scratching did we get things working normally again. If you have this problem it might be worth waiting a while to see if your site returns to normal after uninstalling W3TC because in our case it seemed to fix itself  after a couple of hours so maybe there was some residual caching going on – we really don’t know.

If you do have issues we would recommend you give  Hyper Cache for WordPress a try instead. This is a far less intimidating plugin to install and works straight out of the box in our experience. When we installed it on the aforementioned site the page speed ratings were within one or two points of those achieved with W3TC  and we didn’t have to spend ages carefully configuring it. We will monitor it carefully but so far it’s looking very capable indeed and isn’t causing any obvious problems at all. Top marks for Hyper Cache. This is the plugin that we use on this site and although it is not as effective as W3 Total Cache, it gave us far less issues. With W3TC, if you are using manual settings to minify javascript and CSS, you will have to keep those settings up to date each time you add/remove plugins etc. and to be honest, the speed advantage over Hypercache wasn’t worth the hassle but that is just a personal preference, and, as the saying goes, your mileage may vary!

In addition to W3 Total Cache, or Hyper Cache or even in isolation the following plugins can also be helpful in speeding up your WordPress page speed.

Clean Options WordPress Plugin – If your blog has been around for some time you’ve probably added and removed all kinds of plugins, themes etc. This plugin Finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table. You could have hundreds of orphaned options and this will help you clean house in that area. Be careful and make sure you are definitely only removing genuinely orphaned items though. You might be well advised to back up before you make any changes just as a precaution but on the whole the plugin is reliable and does a good job.

Better Delete Revisions WordPress Plugin – use this plugin to delete the revisions that WordPress automatically creates and stores every time you create ot alter posts and pages. These files can build up over time and take up space and impact on performance. This plugin makes it simple to find a delete all the revisions clogging up your WordPress. If you want to prevent revisions being stored in future you could install the Revision Control plugin to make the job easy. If you do this, you can remove the Better Delete plugin once you have set Revision Control to not save revisions in future.

If you have access to PHPMyAdmin through your hosting account you can then optimize your MySQL database. It’s easy to do – just click on the db name (WDRP1 or similar) highlight all the tables and select optimize from the drop down box at the bottom. That’s it, done. This can make a surprising difference to your site’s performance all by itself.

If you prefer not to mess with your databases in this way, try installing the TentBlogger Optimize WordPress Database plugin and do it from your WordPress admin with one click. The plugin will always tell you when your database is optimized and if not how much space you can shave off by optimizing. Couldn’t be simpler. It works on most sites although we did have a poblem with it on one WP site but to be fair, it’s an old site and the theme conflicts with a fair number of plugins so that was probably the culprit as opposed to the plugin itself.

Another useful plugin is WP Smush.it, basically an image compression plugin that will reduce the size of all the images in your WordPress media library and consequently improve load times. The quality of the images is not adversely affected and once installed it will automatically compress any images you add to your pages and posts. You can also apply it to all existing images in your library. Worth looking at if you have an image intensive site.

As you implement these things you should find your performance rating in Page Speed / Firebug starting to improve after each step. Take note too of the other recommendations that Firebug offers in respect of optimization. You may not be able to achieve a green check mark against every item, but the more you can get, the better.

There are various online services that will test the load time of any webpage although the disparity in the results that you will get prove that in reality they can only give a vague indication of how quickly your visitors will see your page load. This is because there are so many factors that affect that load time – their physical location, their equipment, their connection to the web, their browser type and version etc. etc. If you want to try some of them however there is a list available at PCDrome.com – 10+ Best Web Tools to Check Website Loading Time

While you’re doing all this housekeeping and tweaking, it is also a good idea to check for broken links on your site, particularly if you’ve never done so or haven’t had a clean up in a long time. We use Xenu’s Link Sleuth  for this (which can be downloaded for free) but there is also a WordPress plugin (isn’t there always?) that can check your WordPress sites for links that are  no longer functioning. It may not be compatible with the latest version of WordPress yet you can give it a try and see if it works for you. WordPress Plugin Broken Link Checker.

If you those results spend a lot of time tweaking your on page SEO, don’t let the results of your hard work be negatively impacted by ignoring the performance factors of your site(s)

Catalyst Theme For WordPress Review

The Catalyst Theme is really a lot more than a traditional bolt on WordPress theme – it’s actually a framework that enables you to do some pretty amazing things when it comes to designing and building WordPress driven sites, whether they are blogs, static or dynamic sites or a combination of all three.

There are no longer any coupon codes published by Catalyst – sorry. However, they are currently having a one year anniversary sale and you can grab a lifetime Personal Edition membership for just $77.00 if you order during this special offer.

With Catalyst Theme, you are not limited to a single layout, one, two or three sidebars, one widget area or all the other restrictions that come with a single WordPress theme. With the Catalyst theme framework you can basically build unlimited custom page layouts, custom widgets, custom hook boxes and more, enabling you to design and construct every page and post template on your site exactly as you want them. You can have an individual header or footer for every single page if you so desire!  The real beauty of it though is not just the almost limitless customization available to you, but the ease with which you can implement them all.

Catalyst Theme - Order Your Copy Now

Firstly, Catalyst comes with 22 custom skins, which in and of itself might not sound like much, but with the Dynamik Child Theme that comes as part of the Catalyst bundle you then have over 600 No-Coding Design Options, meaning that combined with the base skins, you have at your fingertips an absolutely huge range of design options. Whether you are a beginner or an accomplished WordPress user, customizing your WordPress sites has never been easier or more efficient.

Once you have installed the Catalyst theme and the Dynamik Child Theme you can start to explore the power and flexibility of the framework using any of the Dynamik child themes as starting points, using those from the marketplace or just creating your own. Catalyst makes design very straightforward and intuitive.

At this point it might be prudent to show you an example of what Catalyst can do, and bear in mind this site was built over the course of a couple of days, starting completely from scratch after a request for a redesign of an existing WordPress website – Catalyst Theme Powered Site – Arteccentrix

You can even create your own custom child themes with a single mouse click, something you will not find anywhere else, not even with the mighty Thesis.

All the following features come with the Catalyst WordPress theme:

22 Custom Skins on which to base site design.

600+ Dynamik design options to tweak your site’s design to perfection. (no manual coding or CSS required)

Add any Custom CSS you likeBuilt-In Image Uploader to add the images that make your site shine.

Fill in a few fields, click a single button and download the themes you build. Use them for anything you want – your own sites, client’s sites etc. You can even sell them for profit if you wish.

Huge range of  Custom Widgets including Excerpt Widget, Author Bio Widget, Ad Widget a PHP  Widget and lots more!

Catalyst works with WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-User)

Receive Free Updates for Life ( with automatic update feature)

You will also have access to the new “MarketPlace” where you will find more custom themes, skins and other add ons for your Catalyst powered sites that have been created by the Catalyst members themselves. Many of these are free but there are also premium products available within the store.

All this sounds impressive but if it’s also a little overwhelming don’t worry. Installing the theme is pretty much the same as you would follow for any other theme,the only real difference is that you actually install it in two steps, first the Catalyst Theme Framework followed by the Dynamik Child Theme.

Once you’ve done that you will be able to access all the theme‘s options from within your WP-Admin area. There is a lot to explore, and the more you look the more you find but you will also find an excellent support forum and some pretty comprehensive video demos and members support area that answers all the most common questions and shows you exactly how to use the powerful features.

Once you start to play around with the options you’ll soon feel comfortable and it’ all accomplished from within the theme itself so if you’re not CSS savvy, don’t worry. Things that can be a huge headache when working with regular WordPress themes are amazingly easy to achieve with Catalyst’s user friendly and clearly laid out interface.

I should add that when it comes to SEO, Catalyst has been fitted out with a pretty decent set of options that will ensure every post and page you write can be quickly and simply optimized for the search engines at the time of writing and can be easily tweaked at a later stage. Since using Catalyst I have, for the first time in my WordPress career, not bothered to use any SEO plugin and judging by the results, Catalyst does a very nice job at optimizing for targeted keywords.

A lot of thought has gone into the entire package and the developers have delivered a clean, logical and well laid out admin interface which is very intuitive to use and the tutorial videos are all anyone will need to understand and use the multiple options available.

For a good overview take a look at the following video while you’re here:

To sum up, I am so happy with my own purchase of Catalyst that I intend to eventually move the majority of my WordPress sites across to the platform. It is really that good and will make tweaking my sites in the future a whole lot easier. The latest release which came out a couple of days ago includes even more goodies that I have yet to explore.

Don’t think that this all comes at a premium price either – an unlimited site license for the Catalyst Theme comes in at just $77.00 (Basic Edition) or $127.00 (Personal Edition) and this includes lifetime updates. In that sense alone it is a genuine bargain. There are other frameworks out there but Catalyst is not only powerful and extremely flexible it is also fantastic value for money. Visit the site to understand the differences between the aforementioned license options which are extremely generous.

For those who need or want even more there is a developer edition ($197) which gives you access to an exclusive forum and more special features that are not available to regular members. Full details can be found at the site, so we’ll leave you to decide if the developer license is something you need.

Order now and take advantage of the special anniversary pricing options.

You Can Find Our More and Download Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework here

If you would like to see some of the sites built using Catalyst have a browse through the Catalyst Showcase

WordPress users – a fully automated sales, thank you and download system for Paypal, Clickbank and Ejunkie merchants.

If you are in a hurry you can download Digital  Product Demon Free Here -

If you are selling digital products through your WordPress sites, or if you would like to but have never been sure how to go about it, we have an easy and free solution for you.

Digital Product Demon- Sell Digital Products

If you want to use WordPress as a platform for selling digital products, need Paypal an Clickbank support and protection for your products to avoid them being accessed by those who choose not to pay for them first, Digital Product Demon might just be the answer for you.

Would you also like a tool that makes it easy for you to market products as an affiliate and effortlessly cloak your affiliate links?

Maybe you have a number of products you would like to sell through the Clickbank marketplace but can’t afford the multiple set up fees required or just don’t want to pay them? What if you could sell multiple products from just one account and pay only one set up fee of $50? Digital Product Demon can do this for you too.

Digital Product Demon combined with WordPress will let you:

Easily sell digital products with just a PayPal account - PayPal is easy to use, but it doesn’t provide a way to hide your ThankYou page or protect your download links.

Digital Product Demon makes it easy to do both. It’ll hide your Thank You page so that only valid customers can access it and it will expire your download page and encrypt your download URLs so that your links can’t be shared or posted on “pirating” forums.

Support multiple products in a single ClickBank Account - Digital Product Demon lets you use separate sales, thank you, and download pages for each product you define. That means that you can place multiple products in one ClickBank account but still display individually crafted sales pages for each product.

Automatically cloak your affiliate links – The benefits of cloaking affiliate links have been discussed frequently here and elsewhere. DPD’s AFFILIATE mode handles this for you automatically!

Protects your Download Pages – Download pages can only be accessed through a link that includes the buyer’s purchase information. These pages are also set to expire after a period you specify – usually 3-5 days after the purchase.

Protects your Download Links – create ugly, cryptic, expiring links that can’t be easily shared or posted on forums and other websites.

Hide your digital product’s actual URL – anyone who sees your download link won’t have a clue about what your download filename is. Everything is generated using numbers, letters, and special characters that don’t mean a thing to anyone but YOUR software.

Automatically generate PayPal, ClickBank, and EJunkie payment buttons – saving you tons of time fighting PayPal’s button factory or customizing your own ClickBank buttons.

AND….because this is a WordPress plugin it’s very simple to install, use and customize! I’m offering it free to all my readers so you have nothing to lose and I’m not even going to ask for your email address – download the plugin, install it and see if it’s for you!

Click Here To Download Your Free Copy Of Digital Product Demon For WordPress

As an added bonus I’m giving you master resale rights to the product along with all the sales page graphics so you can use Digital Product Demon however you choose to help grow your own online business – sell it, give it away, use it to help build your list etc.

However, if this is still all too much for you and all you want to do is sell your own Ebook online, you can now take advantage of a completely free service that will take care of the entire process for you – building a sales page/website, marketing your ebook, and paying all the Clickbank set up fees for you. Check it out now at We Sell Your EBooks

Blogging For Beginners is another free ebook for my visitors and, as the title suggests, covers the basics of starting out as a blogger.

The book covers both the free Blogger platform and the WordPress option, giving the newcomer a good idea of the differences, advantages and pitfalls of either choice. The book is a short and to the point read of 26 pages that does a good job of explaining many of the things that many of us simply take for granted, but for those just starting out, it will be a helpful read.

There are no outlandish claims or rhetoric and the book is clearly laid out and isn’t consistently selling to the reader. There are actually very few links inside.

The only thing that is a little laborious is the section on installing WordPress on a hosting account – not incorrect, but it goes the manual route and doesn’t mention that there are simpler ways to do it, particularly if you choose a host who offers Fantastico which most decent providers using cpanel do nowadays.

That aside it’s a reasonable book for the beginner and it’s free to boot.

Remember, you can use the book as a giveaway on your own sites too either on its own or as part of a package of goodies etc. I have even provided a complete editable sales page with all the graphics so you can easily sell or give away the book using your own dedicated site or page. Unzip the file and everything can be found inside.

Download The Book and Sales Page Graphics – Click Here

The Indexing Tool plugin for WordPress is something that will interest anyone seeking ways to improve their website traffic and backlinks and uses some simple but clever methods to increase your website’s visibility. If you are using article marketing in your promotional efforts, sit up and take notice of this plugin because you are going to like what it can do for you and your position in the search engine results pages or SERPS.

(You can check the plugin homepage here – WordPress Indexing Tool – it will open in a new window for you).

Why? Well, whilst there is no denying that articles and content syndication are still one of the best ways to build quality backlinks to your site, there is still one fly in the ointment and it’s a very frustrating one. The fact is, while you are busy writing away and submitting all that quality content and inserting those all important backlinks, often the search engines simply won’t index those links. When that happens, whilst they are not worthless, they are not doing much to help your rankings either.

Getting Your Links Indexed Is The Most Powerful Way To Boost Your Traffic!

Your first reaction might be  be to say “yes, they already are” but then you might start to think about the “what if” scenario.. What if you have 100 articles and only half of them are actually working to push your pages up the SERPs?

Sure you will be getting some direct traffic from them, and who doesn’t like an extra 5 or so visitors a day direct from your article? But are you missing out on the 1000 visitors a day you could be getting if that link was pushing your site up to the number 1 spot in Google?

Google Does Not Index Every Page It Finds

Article sites are huge. They all have thousands of pages added to them every day.. there are hundreds of Squidoo lenses and Hubpages created every day, I hate to think how many new profiles are created everyday on various sites. Google will not index them all.

So, what can you do? Well, here’s where this simple plugin can help – if you want a more thorough explanation of the whys and hows of it all head over to the plugin homepage which sets things out very concisely.

In very simple terms, this plugin leverages the power of RSS feeds in combination with your WordPress site(s) to virtually guarantee that they get indexed. It takes your feeds, any feed, checks if the pages in it are indexed and if they are not it posts them as links on your pages. Then when Google spiders your site, it finds the links and follows them to your un-indexed pages. Google will then index those pages. It’s really that easy.

Once you install it and set up your RSS feed you can forget it. The plugin checks periodically on a timescale you select, to see if the links are indexed and if they are it removes them from your site and replaces them with new ones that still need indexing. It’s a sweet little operator. You can easily mash up several feeds to make one too and the owners of the Indexing Tool Plugin cover all of this in the accompanying video and PDF documentation.

As an added bonus you’ll also get an additional Trackback Feed plugin that creates a feed of all the trackbacks to your WordPress sites and can be used in some ingenious ways in combination with the main product.

The authors of this plugin provide some great instructional PDF’s and video, offering a lot of good ideas on how to make this plugin combination work best for you and your sites. Installation is a snap and provided you are running WordPress version 2.8 or later it will install and function without a glitch.

This is a very useful plugin and if you already understand the potential of RSS feeds you will know that this is a powerful, simple and effective method and you’re probably already on their sales page!! When choosing premium WordPress plugins it pays to select them wisely but this one really is worth your consideration. Users of all the big article directories and places such as HubPages and Squidoo along with countless other content syndication sites should really put this one on their shopping list.

Indexing Tool WordPress Plugin Can Be Found Here

SEOPressor has certainly gained a huge following in WordPress circles and is now claimed to be installed on over two and a half million WordPress blogs.

If you are looking for help in maximizing your on page optimization it is a very useful tool and gives you advice on exactly how to improve your rankings for a chosen keyword. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you will suddenly find yourself outperforming everyone else for that keyword but it will certainly put you in the hunt and in a better position than millions of others.

A great plugin for anyone unsure of how to optimize a page or post as it leads you by the hand and tells you exactly how to improve in an easy to understand and implement manner. You can grab a free trial of SEOPressor through this link:

Download SEOPressor For WordPress

SEOPressor is a plugin that is used by wordpress bloggers all over the world for their on-page optimization needs. Simply put, this is a plugin that can definitely elevate the standard of your website, it helps your blogs on page optimization set up for maximum exposure out on the Internet.

The simple logic here is that if your blog can reach out to more people, it will have more traffic, and that’s exactly what SEOPressor helps you achieve.

As you get even the top position on Google within your niche-which is something that SEOPressor has achieved time and again-it becomes very a much a given that your business prospects are going to improve.

SEO Pressor is the ultimate SEO tool for any wordpress blog.

Instantly gain high ranking websites in search engines such as Google, Ask, and Bing.

SEO Made easy, simply click and select settings, and watch your site get a high website ranking.

Get Your FREE Trial Of SEOPressor Here

Helpdesk or support desk software comes in many shapes and forms and I have used osTicket for the past year and been very happy with it. The choice was a simple one because the free software is a script that is included with cpanel and Fantastico from my web host. Most users of cpanel will probably also have access to osTicket and a one click install if they also have Fantastico, along with several other help desk options.

For WordPress users the following video explains the features of a support ticket plugin called “Technical Support For WordPress” which might be a more attractive proposition for those who use WordPress exclusively.

This is a promotional video for the Technical Support for WordPress plugin. You can get more information about the plugin at  kovshenin.com

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Image via CrunchBase

Goosegrade is a WordPress plugin that enables your visitors to notify you of mistakes in your content and make suggested edits to resolve the problems.

For those who are particular about the quality of their writing but know that mistakes still occasionally slip through the net, this could be an attractive plugin as any edits will be sent to you directly via email enabling you to approve or reject the changes suggested by your readers.

Once you approve a change it will automatically update the post in question.

So, if you want to allow your audience to become citizen editors, GooseGrade is a free service that allows your readers to post spelling, grammar, factual, and other errors straight to you. After you or any other wordpress admin approves the edit, the gooseGrade plugin will automatically fix the error. It’s like magic.

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www.jackhumphrey.com Learn how fast you can turn your WordPress blog into a social community with the Mingle WordPress plugin. It’s easy and adds a whole new social network-dimension to your blog. Great for local bloggers or any niche blog where you want to provide readers with more interactivity.

I have installed Mingle on one of my local sites and can confirm that it is simple to set up and use and adds a reasonable amount of interaction functionality for visitors. Recommended if you would like your user base to have a more social experience on your website or blog.

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WordPress specialized hosting exists in various places nowadays but in this post I’m going to introduce you to a service that goes a little bit further than just giving you server space to host your WordPress site or blog.

The following video shows you just how easily and quickly you can have your own WordPress blog using your own domain name, set up and ready to start publishing literally within two minutes.

WordPress Hosting Services – We Only Host WordPress Sites

I think you’ll agree that’s a pretty impressive and amazingly simple way to get started with WordPress. As the company say, “Easy Like WordPress.com with the freedom of WordPress.org” and for those who are put off by technical issues and the entire buying a domain name, buying a hosting account, installing WordPress on their domain and then setting up the blog and choosing the right theme and plugins this could be the ideal solution.

page.ly basically take away all that and enables you to set up your first blog with a few mouse clicks. No need for FTP, no need to learn cpanel, no need to even know anything about the beautifully simple script installer Fantastico.

If you can click a mouse and fill in a few boxes there is now no reason why you cannot have a really smart looking blog on WordPress without knowing much about anything that goes on underneath the hood.

Purists and those with experience might sniff and turn their noses up at a service like page.ly and that’s fine because it isn’t really aimed at the techs or geeks or experienced WordPress users. What it provides is a complete solution for anyone who has always wanted a stylish WordPress blog without having to go through much of a learning curve and this encompasses a huge number of potential customers. So whilst experienced users may criticize the idea that knowing nothing about the mechanics does not really prepare users for striking out on their own, so what? page.ly‘s demographic are likely to be quite happy to stay with the service for a long time and let’s be honest, no matter how simple WordPress may seem to some, it’s always going to be a bigger headache for some who just want to get on with blogging and not have to worry about those aspects.  Let’s be honest, making things simpler and more accessible is not a crime.

If you visit their site and have a look at exactly what’s on offer, you will see that this kind of service is going to bring the joys of WordPress to an even greater number of users than ever before and that has to be a good thing.

As you have seen from the video, signing up and getting started is so simple that even the most technically challenged could realistically have a better looking blog than many more experienced webmasters without all the blood sweat and tears, so if you find it a bit sickening it’s probably a touch of elitism creeping into your viewpoint.

So what exactly are you getting and how much does it cost? Well, you’ll get a fully functional WordPress blog all set up with your chosen theme and running a suite of plugins selected  by page.ly to ensure that you have most important issues covered without shopping around for them yourself.  You can add and delete plugins and change themes as you see fit just as you can with any WordPress site. After set up you work through the normal wp-admin interface so familiar to WP users around the globe.

(Plugins installed with every setup are : All In One SEO, Google Analyticator, Viper’s video Quicktags, Akismet, Google XML Sitemaps, twitter Tools, Statpress Reloaded, Tweetmeme, Sociable and CForms which I think is a good starting point for any new WordPress blogger).

You can choose a new domain or use any existing one that you own. Should you choose to leave Page’ly at any time you will be able to do so and yes, you will be able to move your site and domain to a new host if you wish to. One point I could not find an answer to however was the price of the domains and the registrar used – something you may want to clarify so you know how much your yearly domain name registration is going to cost should you ever decide to move.

You are billed monthly by page.ly using either a credit card or Paypal, there is no minimum contract period.

The standard package costs a reasonable $14.98 per month – reasonable because your domain name is included in the price and you are paying for convenience and ease of use.  It might seem expensive to an established blogger or webmaster getting a sub $10 per month hosting account but as we’ve seen, page.ly customers will pay for the simplicity of the service.

One thing that I could not establish at the time of writing is the storage and bandwidth available for an account. If anyone could clarify that it would be interesting to know.

There are also several additional services that the company refer to as “power ups” which include things like FTP access and POP3/IMAP email accounts for a one off $5 each. For those who want premium WordPress themes you can access the entire collections from StudioPress  or 16 Woo Themes templates for $15 per month. There is an additional one time $10 setup fee to access either option. Ultimately, for a premium themed WordPress blog you would pay $39.98 for your first month and then $29.98 monthly thereafter.

Custom design services are also available – prices will obviously vary depending upon individual requirements.

That starts to look a little more expensive but again, for those with little or no knowledge it puts them in a position to have a blog that is up there amongst the best in terms of design and functionality.

Would I pay that? No, I have to say I wouldn’t but then again I’m not really a target customer and have years of WordPress experience under my belt as well as the confidence to run my own VPS. I also host more than just WordPress sites.

Do I think it’s good value? Overall, I would have to say that the basic package looks very fairly priced in view of what you are getting and whilst the premium themes options add a fair chunk of change, a lot of people are going to feel it’s worth it to have a stunning looking blog without paying designers or having to roll up their sleeves and learn about coding and such. For a non technical person, there probably isn’t an easier way to achieve that so to that person, yes, it’s probably good value for money.

Paying a one off  five bucks for FTP access or email services seems a bit mean, and the one thing I would criticize, although it’s hardly a lot of money and again, it’s horses for courses. Probably a lot of their users aren’t ever going to FTP into the server if all they are running is one WordPress blog.

If all this sounds good to you, I would suggest you head over to the site where most questions you might have will be answered.

Visit Pagely WordPress Hosting Here

In conclusion, page.ly will delight those new to WordPress but is perhaps not for the more experienced. They are actually quite candid about this on their own site. If you are considering your first WordPress blog, or have considered it and rejected it through fear of the perceived technical aspects, they could be exactly what you need.

We’d love to hear from anyone using the service or anyone who has used it. What were your experiences? Would you recommend it to others? How you found things like support and service as a paying customer and how your site performed in terms of uptime and loading speeds etc. Any other observations, questions or comments are also welcomed.

TCH

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Nowadays it seems that everybody is using video on their sites and whether you are just looking for a quick and simple way to embed a single video from YouTube into a page or post or are after more complex solutions for your WordPress video adventures, there is probably a plugin that can help you achieve the desired results.

The following list will be a good start in your search for the WordPress video plugins that best suit your needs.

TubePress.org is a great tool that enables you to add video galleries to your WordPress site as well as individual videos. The range of options is very impressive allowing you to create and customize galleries from both YouTube and Vimeo and tailor their appearance in a variety of ways. The plugin is free but there is also a pro version available for $10 one time.

Vipers video QuickTags – This plugin is a winner. Not only does it enable users to easily embed videos from a variety of video sharing sites (around 12 at the last count) but it will also do so without breaking your XHTML validated code. It also supports most of the common video file formats if you wish to use a video that is not on one of the video sharing sites.

YouTuber - A lightweight plugin for embedding YouTube videos on your WordPress posts and pages. Great for those seeking a simple clean solution.

Smart YouTube – one of the best known plugins and in use on this blog for some time. Another simple solution that works very well for those wishing to embed YouTube videos. Embed YouTube videos with ease , embed YouTube playlists,  supports latest high quality video protocols (360p and HD quality 720p),  allows full YouTube customization (colors, border, full screen…), Supports video deep linking, works on iPod and iPhone, provides a sidebar widget for videos as well,  produces xHTML valid code, very fast and light, no extra scripts needed.

ZD YouTube FLV Player – Display FLV and YouTube video in your blog in a Custom Player.

video Sidebar Widgets – A video Widget written in latest Widgets API. It enables the user to embed FlashVideo from various video sharing networks into the widgetised sidebar of a WordPress powered blog. Currently supporting video embed from 15 video sharing networks. Including, Youtube, Vimeo, Veoh, Blip.tv etc.. Now including Random video Sidebar Widget to randomly display 1 out of 5 preset video.

BubbleCast video For WordPress - lets you and your users embed video to your blog easily. When you’re editing your post you can click Bubblecast icon in Upload/Insert section, record or upload your video and have it embedded into the post immediately. Users can embed video into comments to your posts in the same way. Once you’ve published your post the video player will be shown and your visitors will play the movie. You’ve got all the power of WordPress in terms of blogging plus video capabilities. Works with WordPress MU and even allows you to add your own ads to your videos. A great tool for those using either their own videos or those on sharing sites.

ProPlayer video Plugin – Places online videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, Youku, Dailymotion, etc..) into your post by using JW FLV Player. 10,000 downloads in first 2 months, and still counting! Here are couple nice features: 27 different Skins, Custom Playlists, Youtube Playlists, video Ratings, Audio Visualizer, Displaying Watermarks, and much more..

WordPress video Plugin – supports a large range of video sharing sites and is compatible up to latest WP version although the plugin homepage seems to no longer be available.

WordTube – This plugin manages the JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER 5.1 and makes it easy for you to put music, videos or flash movies onto your WordPress posts and pages. Various skins for the JW PLAYER are available via http://www.longtailvideo.com

TubePress.net – this is a comprehensive plugin offering dedicated themes for those wishing to build a video site. I’ve not tested it or used it but apparently it is compatible with the latest WP 2.9.2. Worth a look if you are thinking of designing a video based blog or website.

WP VideoTube – this is an excellent plugin that will help you to find relevant YouTube content and post it to your blog automatically based on keywords chosen by you. The free version has limitations but is still a great tool for any WordPress blogger. There is a paid version available if you want to get really serious with it. Fantastic for generating post ideas in any niche and building posts around relevant video content.

All-In-One video Pack – This is not just another video embed tool – it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including playing, uploading and editing.

For those looking at solutions for marketing and video presentation that goes a few steps further there are a couple of tools that you might want to take a look at:

The Traffic Player For WordPress (free version available) – enhances embedded video in WordPress blogs and increases customer response dramatically.

Easy VideoPlayer – is not a cheap option but if you are serious about marketing with videos it’s the software that many pros turn to.

These suggestions really just scratch the surface and if none of them are what you are looking for you can try some of the alternative links below or go and have a hunt through the WordPress plugin codex here

If there is a plugin you think should be included please let us know via the comments field along with any other feedback of your own preferred tools and experiences.

Plugins | Youtube Video Box Plugin

With Youtube Videobox plugin you can add unlimited number of videos to your site in a painless way. All you need is to copy and paste code of the video into the.

8 Best WordPress Video Plugins

There are hundreds of video plugins for WordPress that give WordPress all sorts of video type functionality, but finding the best one that actually worked was a great difficulty! Here, I’ve listed 8 of what I feel the best video plugins …

Best jQuery Video Plugins | jQuery Wisdom

Integrating videos is no longer a hassle! Thanks to jQuery, there are a number of jQuery plugins that can help stream videos from your favorite websites easily. Display videos and video playlits in style with these jQuery video plugins.

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Normally you would not have to go through this process as resetting your password from the login page can be done far more easily by clicking the lost password link, entering your email address, and following the instructions in the email you receive.

If you find yourself in this position you might be the kind of person who really needs a free password manager such as Roboform which can save you a lot of aggravation when you are managing multiple logins and passwords. Just a thought.

For the hopelessly forgetful WordPress user however, using PHPMyAdmin to reset your password is always an option and is explained clearly in the video.

Forgotten your WordPress Admin password? Forgotten your WordPress registered email address? No problem, quickly change your Worpress password and access your site in less than a minute.

A Free WordPress Autoresponder

There are numerous autoresponder solutions and email marketing services available today, some free, some that cost, third party services such as GetResponse or Aweber and several others and scripts that webmasters can install on their own servers.

No time to read this post? Get Your Free WordPress Autoresponder Here

Whichever route you decide to follow there are benefits and drawbacks to each.

Third party services are most favored due to the fact that, at least with the two market leaders, deliverability is high and there is little chance of spam complaints finding their way to your door.  Features are comprehensive and due to their market positions, users of both GetResponse and Aweber usually find that integration and compatibility with other programs and services is generally high. The downside of course is the expense and some people are unable to afford or justify the monthly fees associated with the services.

Scripts are numerous but often installation is a nightmare and I’ve certainly tried a few only to find that they did not work as advertised or that support was non existent. There are paid and free solutions if you want to go this route, but, in all honesty, I’ve yet to find a genuinely great autoresponder script that is easy enough to get up and running for a person of limited technical skills and has all the features you might require or desire.

Having recently lost the services of my autoresponder and email marketing company, due to a major failure of their server and systems, I once again found myself cast into the tedious search for an affordable alternative to what was an excellent email marketing package. I wasted a lot of time trying and rejecting a number of scripts, looked at a few commercial third party services and was beginning to think that I was simply not going to find anything as good as I’d had at anywhere near the price I have been paying.

Enter the free WordPress autoresponder!

It was then that I came across the GWA Autoresponder for WordPress. A free WordPress autoresponder in the form of a plugin.

It was urgent that I found something as quickly as possible as all my opt-in forms were no longer functioning so it grabbed my attention because it was free, and because it was a WordPress plugin. However, I doubted a free WordPress autoresponder would have the functionality I needed and decided to take a closer look to see just what it could do.

I have to say that the free version will be more than adequate for a lot of WordPress users who just want to be able to set up an opt in form on their blogs and start building a list. It is really simple to install and set up and if you are a remotely competent WordPress user you can literally have it up and running in a few minutes. Basically if you can install a plugin, you can install the free wordpress autoresponder or GWA Autoresponder plugin too.

I downloaded the plugin and had it functioning very quickly but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a substitute for my previous service. Basically, it’s fantastic for those who have no need of anything more than a means of generating opt-ins on their WordPress site with a built in autoresponder facility that can be loaded with sequential messages and used to mail out to their list manually when desired. You can build your opt-in forms and use them on any webpages you choose, not just on your WordPress sites, which is good, but there are some limitations – hey, it’s free, so you have to expect some.

As a free user your opt-in forms will have a link back to the service which you cannot remove and your emails will all have a link appended to the footer too. If this really bugs you, you can pay a small fee of $5 to have the branding removed.

All in all it’s a great free autoresponder and I would recommend it to anyone who is not yet using any form of autoresponder or mailing software.

If you want to harness all the features and really have your own fully featured autoresponder which you can use to build an unlimited number of lists and forms, be able to redirect subscribers to any URL after opt-in, upon confirmation and on unsubscription, you will need to upgrade to the pro version.

Aha you say, here’s the catch! But really it isn’t, if you don’t need the extra functions you can use your free autoresponder forever and never worry about paying a cent. The beauty of upgrading is that it is an amazingly low one time cost of just $27.00 if you grab the one time offer that you will see when given the opportunity of taking the upgrade.

I bought a copy immediately because the value of the pro version would be very hard to beat anywhere. In terms of ease of use and customization options I’ve not seen anything better and certainly not from either free or paid scripts that I have experimented with. Also, support was very prompt and courteous and once you pay for the upgrade you will get access to some useful bonuses, and some comprehensive tutorials on how to use your new autoresponder in a variety of ways to get the best from it. It worked straight out of the box, requires no cron jobs, although you can use them if you need or want to, and there was no knowledge of script installation required whatsoever.

As a pro user you can import all existing subscribers into your lists without the need for them to opt-in again which is a bonus as anyone who has had to move a list before will confirm. The autoresponder is shared hosting friendly as it can be throtteld in a variety of ways to ensure you do not upset your hosting provider by overloading the server with your emails or falling foul of their hourly sending limits. Spam complaints are minimized by the fact that the autoresponder offfers double optin for all subscribers and records their information upon signup so their can be no doubt that they asked for your emails. Every email includes a one click unsubscribe link too of course. You would have to be an idiot to fall foul of the CanSpam Act using this software, but for those who are new to email marketing, there is plenty of advice within the interface as well as in the members area.

All in all a great solution for any WordPress user looking for either a free or paid autoresponder service. There is a lot more to the software but I hope this has given you a good idea as to whether it might be for you or not. The  free WordPress autoresponder is an entirely risk free proposition so why not try it on your blog and let me know what you think.

Download your free WordPress Autoresponder here

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WordPress plugin developers have produced some excellent plugins for improving the SEO aspects of WordPress sites. These plugins invariably have their own band of devout followers for one reason or another and some of them are indeed extremely valuable and effective in helping webmasters simplify and improve their on page SEO.

Headspace 2 is hailed by many users as the ultimate Worpdress SEO plugin, others will tell you that All In One SEO is the best free SEO plugin – add to these popular additions a large stable of  commercially available plugins that introduce even more clever tweaks if you are prepared to pay for them and you can soon accomplish some great things with your WordPress driven sites.

Headspace is popular because in addition to improving SEO it can be used to do other things and this video gives just one example of some useful additional features available within Headspace 2.

video courtesy of incomesinternational.com Headspace2 SEO plugin for wordpress does much more than just SEO. In this video I’ll show you how to use one of the advanced features to to manage other plugins.

It’s been a while since I posted about plugins so I thought it was time to take a look at what’s currently out there, including some of the latest on offer and what others are saying about them.

These cover a variety of subjects and do not constitute a “best of” list, just a collection of opinions about some of the great free and paid plugins out there that may interest you. Enjoy and if you have anything to add please leave your comments in the usual place.

WordPress Plugins in The News – April 2010

10 WordPress plugins to work with images « Robysottini’s Blog

who frequently handles images, Robysottini’s Blog has just posted a great article on “10 WordPress plugins to work with images”. I personally like Watermark Reloaded, WordPress Media Flickr, and Faster Image [...] …

Twitter Plugins For WordPress | Twitter WordPress Plugins

twitter WordPress Plugins: 9 Really useful and handy Twitter plugins for WordPress using which you can tweet your WordPress add Twitter follow button and more.

5 WordPress plugins to Control your Adsense Units › WordPress Vote

5 best WordPress Plugins in order to maximize revenue from your ads by banner management and adsense. An effective Ads banner management comprises random rotation, …

WordPress Plugin Releases for 04/03 « Weblog Tools Collection

The Grooveshark plugin is a WordPress plugin that allows you to insert a link to music on Grooveshark or a Grooveshark Widget that allows visitors to play music as they view your blog. WP-Stats-Dashboard. Displays the WordPress.com …

Top 10 Image Handling WP Plugins « Click on post

This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site. There is a pretty simple template provided which you can customize to 100% match the look and feel of …

10 Free WordPress Plugins Every Blog Needs and 5 Bonus Plugins …

It doesn’t matter what the aim of your is blog, whether you set out to become the next person getting rich in only 4 hours per week, want to run the hottest.

10 Best Google AdSense WordPress Plugins | Web Hosting Blog …

Are your web site advertisements not performing like they should? Would you like to have more control over your Google AdSense ads and how they are.

The Best WordPress Plugins Available Today | Elance

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11 WordPress Plugins To Manage Your Ads Banners

Effectively manage your WordPress banners is very important if you want to monetize your blog. This article shares 11 time-saving plugins which able to help you easily manage your ads banners.

scriptygoddess » Blog Archive » Really awesome membership plugin …

I had done some research on membership plugins awhile back and remembered only finding ones that were pretty pricey. One last ditch effort searching through the plugin repository on WordPress.org – I found one that I hadn’t remembered …

Free WordPress Traffic Generator Plugin | saweran.info

Most wordpress plugins are pretty generic, there didn’t seem to be a standout from the crowd, until now! The free wordpress traffic.

The Best Free WordPress Plugins Part II | saweran.info

I’m no internet expert, but I do own a whole load of blogs all run by WordPress. They are on a wide variety of topics from Gordon Ramsay.

Cool WordPress Plugins | Memphis Web Design & Tennessee’s Premier …

iSlidex is a WordPress Plugin that will showcase, in an elegant and minimal way (the Apple way), images taken from posts in a specific category. It is indeed a slideshow plugin, completely automated once you set the number of slides you …

The Best Free WordPress Plugins Part III | saweran.info

Here is the third and final installment in my The Best Free WordPress Plugins, all brought to you courtesy of the most amazing free tool,

Top 10 WordPress Plugins Your Blog Should Have (Part 2 of 2 …

How to Start a Blog & Make Money Online: bit.ly — Are you a blogger? Run your blog on wordpress? Then, here are the plugins.

So, that’s it for today, enjoy the links and the plugins if you come across any that are new to you.

Whilst all these plugins may be great and add some finctionality to your site, if nobody is visiting I recommend you take a look at the forty video series entitled “WordPress SEO Secrets Revealed” which I’ve made available at an unbelievably low price. If you would like to recommend the product as an affiliate, I’m also paying 100% commissions on the first three of every four sales, direct to your Paypal account – now that’s easy money!