Archive for the Wordpress Tips Category

“While I was busy modifying my website design, in which I have already spent weeks doing that, May Ong has shown me how easy it is to change blogs theme in seconds and all the content and items in the pages can be re-arrange easily. Without any doubt, May Ong has proven her expertise and knowledge in Blogging and this workshop is really an eye-opener for me.

I believe the new knowledge I acquired will definitely be very useful for me to further enhance my company’s business and I would like to thank them very much for the knowledge shared.”

Thank you and best regards.


Lee

Lee Te Hua

Managing Director

TH IT Resources Centre Sdn Bhd

Subang, Malaysia

I was enjoying my well-earned holiday in KL when I came across this ad about
how to learn to blog. After I attended the (3-hours seminar) preview, I was
impressed enough
to be one of the first to sign up!

Owing to the fact, my return flight was only about a week away, May Ong was most helpful and kind enough to make special arrangement for me to take part.

The Blogging Workshop was conducted to my satisfaction. When I got to know more about May Ong, I found her to be very hardworking, knowledgeable and caring teacher. There was enough time for practical hands on sessions in the classroom.

The instructor was able to answer all questions to my satisfaction. I found the blogging tips and strategies useful and not too difficult to implement. I would say that the blogging training content was adequate to start an average learner off in Wordpress Blogging.

Regardless, I would personally give this Blogging Workshop a high satisfaction rating, and would certainly recommend it to my friends.

eddie-wordpress-workshop


Eddy Cheong

www.JustFancyThis.com

Sydney, Australia

We would like to thank May Ong who has guided us in her blogging seminar which is very comprehensive, giving us step by step instructions,
it is so complete and simple that even a newbie can pick up the skill in a very short time and start doing a real business online.
May Ong only speaks of what she has personally used and tested without mincing any words and she tells it just as it is.
One thing we found missing in most seminars is the support given before and after the training. But May’s seminar comes with undivided pre and post-support to ensure that you put into practice what you have learnt. She even gave us personal one to one coaching. May Ong even gives her mobile number for us to call her if we encounter any problem along the way.
Who has heard of this kind of support?

She also cares enough to work toward our success. Not just in word, but a person who walk the talk. What really impressed us is her sincerity and commitment towards your online business success. This seminar has given us value for every cent we have invested.

We will definitely recommend this seminar to everyone regardless of whether you have blogging knowledge or not as it is suitable for all.

From your students:

cachan-wordpress-workshop jane-wordpress-workshop


C. A Chan and Jane

www.dotcommastermind.com

There are a few Wordpress 2.5 - 3 column Themes you might find useful, after you have upgraded since March 2008.

Andreas09 Wordpress Theme 2.5

andreas-theme

Features

  • 14 colour options selectable from your WordPress admin.
  • Horizontal menu with unlimited sub-page support.
  • Built in Widgets support.
  • Fully prepared for localisation - only one file to translate to any language.
  • Comments enabled on pages.
  • 3 column theme
  • Fluid central column
  • Full width
  • 14 different colors

Download Andreas09 Theme

Ayumi - Wordpress Theme 2.5

ayumi-theme

Features

  • Green and Red and a little bit blue color
  • 2 Right Sidebar
  • Widget Ready
  • Change About text via Admin Profile
  • Tested on WordPress 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x and 2.5.x

Download AYUMI Theme

Cutline 3-Column-Right 11 Wordpress 2.5 Theme

cutline-3-column-split11-theme

Features

  • Squeky clean, feature-rich theme
  • 3-column
  • Fixed width
  • Left sidebar
  • Right sidebar
  • Widget ready

Download Cutline 3-Column Right 11

Genki Wordpress 2.5 Theme

genki-theme

Features

  • 3 columns: Fluid-Fixed-Fixed
  • Sliding tabmenu on the left. Static when javascript is disabled.
  • Widget support
  • XHTML & CSS compliance

Download Genki Theme

Xplosive Theme

explosive-theme

Features

  • Full XHTML compliant
  • Web 2.0 theme
  • 3-column with two right-side bars
  • Blue-Orange color scheme

Download Xplosive Theme

Xplosive Reloaded Theme

xplosive-reloaded-theme

Features

  • Available in four flavors – Satin, Autumn, Aqua, Prairie
  • Style Switcher
  • Widget ready
  • XHTML validated

Download Xplosive-Reloaded Theme

Zyred Theme

zyred-theme

Features

  • Widget ready
  • Flexible width
  • 3-column
  • Content column min. width of 468 pix
  • wordpress 2.5 tested
  • widget ready
  • valid XHTML 1.0
  • templates for special pages included: archive, links and pages with comments
  • multilanguage; english and german language included

Download ZyRed Theme

Today I am going to show you several methods that can help you find ideas for your posts on your blogs, that are relevant to what your readers are looking for.

All it takes is a few minutes to come up with your own 10 or more ideas for your posts, by reviewing search terms.

The first tool we go and look into is 103bees. It is an search traffic analysis online service for bloggers, webmasters and internet marketers who focuses on natural search engine traffic analytics. Real-time statistics and in-depth information on search terms that targeted traffic to your websites are provided. This is not a 100% free site. You get a 30 day trial period upon sign up. They offer low traffic sites a one time fee of $19 and for higher traffic sites (more than 100,000 hits per month), the fee is $9 monthly.

The second tool you can use is Sitemeter. Their real time website tracking and counter tools give you instant access to vital information and data about your sites audience. Sign up for Site Meter Basic which is free, or got for the Premium starting at $6.95.These statistics here can show you some great ideas for blog posts. Go under Referral section and look for those that has Google.

The third tool is HitTail.com. HitTail Basic is free for lower traffic sites. It shows you the keyword search results as well as longtail keywords or phrases that people used to find your site and gives you suggestions on what you should post about for new content in blog posts or Pay Per Click campaigns. They have a “Plus” service for $9.95 per month with more statistics.

Other Ideas From Bloggers

* The other Free resources that you can look into are Google Analytics and FeedBurner.

* Shoot photos of ordinary things, and ask yourself what have these got to do with your blog. You may get a number of ideas generated from this trick.

* Comments from your own readers are actually the best signal of potential topics. Look for comments that get several replies.

* Subscribe to newsletters. You can usually come up with a few good topics from these.

* Frequented search terms are a great starting point for building a new article, as well.

* Bounce off topical issues, stories and events around original content “stale” topics creates fresh ideas which is interesting and easy to read.

*Search for articles about topics relevant to your blog categories. Look for any of those article small tips of stuff that you can write a full post about.

* Read books and printed newspapers and blog about it if it is interesting. Also check out the table of contents in books. If you have a special niche you want to write about, just get a book on the subject and look at the contents listings.

* Try out http://wiki.chainofthoughts.com/dt/en/. This is another source of brainstorming ideas. Just type in any word and it comes up with a long list of popular related topics.

John Chow has been making money by blogging about making money blogging for more than a year. This 42-year-old Richmond, British Columbia entrepreneur has been reportedly making his income from John Chow Dot com which has increased more than 50 fold since he began blogging. From a mere $353 a month to an annual income of $300,000. Chow makes an average of $25,000 a month for sitting at home doing what Chow describes as “rambling.”

And he is not the only blogger who makes money by blogging. Over the past year the blogosphere has changed significantly. With already-huge community doubling to more than 114 million blogs worldwide and as many as 175,000 new sites springing up daily, according to Technorati.

Many like Chow, Perez Hilton and Arianna Huffington whom all explored this new moneymaking service by exploring the territory beyond Google AdSense. Chow uses more than 100 ad networks, like AuctionAds and Kontera ContentLink to earn money online. He said people keep coming up with new services that can help bloggers make money.

A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research suggested that in the next five years, conversational marketing will attract as many ad bucks as traditional channels.

Chow’s traffic-generating success is not clouded by product sales, avant-garde content or attractive page design. He was not even selling “himself” like some personal expertise financial blogs. His blog content is a combination of his money count and what he had for lunch - blogging “about nothing”.

John Chow Dot com

With the free blog platform WordPress and an accounting degree, Chow has monetized “nothing” into a No. 39 ranking on Technorati’s Top 100 List of most-linked blogs. His reported overhead is about $550 a month and the remaining of that monthly $25,000 goes to the bottom line.

Chow’s other success was with his reviews-oriented blog site, TheTechZone. Chow used what he has learned at John Chow dot Com to help him monetize The TechZone and his new TZZ Media advertising network. Altogether, Chow’s revenue income came close to a $1 million annually, making him a web marketing expert by any sort of measure.

If you want to make blogging your career, Chow has a 59-page downloadable ebook at johnchow.com to help you monetize your business blog.

Blogging isn’t just a pastime or marketing gambit anymore; it’s a living.

If you are looking for another way to drive more traffic to your blog, then try out BlogCatalog.

Blog Catalog is one of the premiere social blog directory on the internet. This is a good site place for you if you are looking to promote your own blog or just find blogs on various topics.

They work similarly like MyBloglog. They regularly feature blogs, blog directories in major tag categories like Arts and Entertainment, Business, Blogging, Computer, Health, Food and Drink, Humor, Internet, Music, Political, Technology, Travel and Writing.

It is rather easy to join in. Just open a Free account with your Username and Password at Sign In and submit your blog in the various categories.

You may also add in a Recent Viewers BlogCatalog widget and Link Back buttons or plugins, that you can join for free.

I have a few ideas myself about how to determine the Successful Mindset for Blogging Beginners and in this post, I want to share them with you.

Mentality of a Successful Blogger or Person

1. They are always Aware of Why they need to Invest in Continuous Learning, Education or Training
2. They Apply what they have learned
3. They Make Mistakes but they quickly Learn from them
4. Always Willing to Learn
5. Always Willing to Explore New Opportunities or Open to New Ideas
6. Willing to part with little investment to improve their Learning experience
7. Do not give up easily
8. Know when to Ask for help
9. Shares knowledge with others
10. When you Teach Others, You will also Learn More yourself
11. Have Realistic Expectations of their Results

On the other hands, I want to share some of my views about the Mindset of an Unsuccessful person.

1. Always remain Skeptical about New Ideas, Methods or Strategy, Unexposed
2. Has stopped Continuous Learning since college
3. High Expectation of Results without little Effort put in from their part
4. Does not Invest in Upgrading their Knowledge
5. Remains in their Comfort Zone
6. Does not Invest in Time or Effort
7. Has no Future Planning
8. Does not Learn from their Mistakes or Improve
9. Gives up Easily, No Persistency and Staying Power
10. Do not Ask for Help
11. Expects Knowledge to come to them for FREE

Joel Bauer, the Persuasion Guru has once told us that to be successful, you need to have a Successful Mindset of A Winner to begin with. He also went on to say most people expects Different Exponential Results by Doing the Same Thing over and over again. These same people Expects to become a Millionaire by using the same methods. They have not thought about trying out Different Strategies and Approach or even open up their minds on how to do things differently.

My Formula for Success is “Effort + Time + Knowledge + New Ideas = Different or Exponential Results“.

If you continue to do whatever you are doing right now, and expecting different results = No Change in your Results. So do not expect to become a Millionaire overnight but not putting in any effort, time, investment for new knowledge and a successful mindset.

Did you know that there are many different types of blogs on the internet?

Here are a short list of some of those.

1. Content blog, like this blog that has alot of helpful and valuable information for newbies and beginners

2. Artlog are blogs that talks about art

3. Photoblog talks about photographs and images

4. Sketchblog talks about sketches

5. Vlog mainly focuses on video blogs

6. MP3 blog concentrates on music

7. Audio blog focuses on podcasting broadcast

8. Corporate weblog are used by corporation and businesses to publish company content and are use by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of using a blog is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. A business corporation can have an Internal blog, an External blog or a CEO blog.



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There are five ways to customise your blog’s design in anyway you prefer.

1. Template Driven Design

WordPress uses templates to generate the pages dynamically. You can control the presentation of content by editing the templates using the Template Editor tool and the Template Tags.

2. Template and File Editor

Every installation of WordPress comes with a file editor you can use to edit your templates and other WordPress related files, right in your browser without having to worry about downloading and uploading the files in order to edit them.

3. Template Tags

Template tags make it easier to design the content and information displayed on your weblog. You don’t need to be a PHP whiz to design your weblog.

4. Themes

You can skin your weblog using readily available themes, or styles. You can also create and share your own themes.

5. Plugins

Plugins extends the core functionality of your weblog. A large number of user-developed plugins are already available and can be used to do virtually anything you want to, with your blog.

There are three tips you can use to publish your wordpress blog for beginners.

1. Feeds

The RSS 1.0 (aka RDF) (http://purl.org/rss/1.0/), RSS 2.0 (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss) and ATOM (http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php) specifications are fully supported by WordPress, and further more, almost any page on your weblog has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to. There are feed for the latest posts, for categories, comments and many others. Literally, feeds for anything you want.

The more options your readers have to keep track of different sections of your weblog, the easier it is for you to spread the word around the world. WordPress also fully supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so adding mp3 files (such as podcasts) to your RSS feeds is a great idea.

2. Cruft-free Permalinks

The URLs for all the pages in your weblog can be made to conform to a standard, cruft-free system, and all the links are structured, sensible, and understable to human and machines, including search engines. Clean URLs are required for search engine optimization and an improved user experience.

3. Inter-blog Communication

In an increasingly connected world, WordPress comes ready for PingBack (http://www.hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback) and TrackBack (http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mttrackback.html), two very useful ways of connecting to other weblogs, and to enable them to do the same.

This is how you can install your Wordpress blog for beginners.
You can have your wordpress weblog locally installed.

This means WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, or shared hosting account, which gives you complete control over the weblog. Unlike third-party hosted services, you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your weblog, in case you need to. This also means that you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet.

Second method.

You can install Wordpress weblog at http://www.yourdomain.com public_html folder - ie. the public “root” of your webserver or hosting account.

Otherwise you may want to store the wordpress related files and directory tree in http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress, that is, public_html/wordpress.

WordPress is well known for their 5 minute installation process and ease of use. Upgrading your weblog to the latest version of WordPress is also easy, and this should take lesser time than the installation. Time and time again, you need to keep an eye on updates of Wordpress version.

A tip for beginners is to gain some experience in installing any Wordpress weblogs templates in to your server. After a little practise, the process becomes easier. Just remember the correct file path to follow and you will not go wrong.

Lastly, before I forget, you are required to pick the Wordpress template, download the zipped folder and unzipped the files in it. Next, upload all these files via FTP to your server.