BLOG DESIGN JOURNAL

In the sidebar of this blog, there used to be a color sphere widget for selecting blog colors visually and then getting the hex codes to use in your blogs and websites. It actually allows you to choose web-safe (or web-accurate) colors in several systems.

The widget was too wide for the sidebar area, and it got unwieldy, so I took it down. But it really was useful, so I have created a new page for it.

From now on, you can find the color sphere here, and there is a tab for it at the top of every page. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

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No matter whether you are going to build a blog dedicated to affiliate marketing, drop shipping, or your own product, it is very important to choose  a platform that will enable you to add content easily.

Today, WordPress and Blogspot are the industry leaders when it comes to the blogging arena. When you answer the following questions, it will help ensure that you are using the best platform for your new blog. Read the rest of this entry →

Image via Wikipedia

By Gino

1. Blog Post Graphics

While great content and catchy titles are important, eye-grabbing images work best of all. Many people respond very well to visual graphics, so if you can find colorful, clever graphics that work well with your blog posts you should be able to pull more people in and then keep them there once they read the title and post.

You should not only have thumbnails, but also work interesting graphics into the post content to help break up large blocks of text.

2. Easy to Read Post Formatting

Many readers like to scan blog posts before they commit to reading the entire post and some people will just scan posts for quick info and won’t even spend the time to read. This is why it is essential to use proper formatting such as sub titles, bold and underlined text. Read the rest of this entry →

I recently upgraded some of my WordPress sites to WP 2.9. Now I’m having problems with WordPress inserting trash code in posts and pages when I edit them.

That is, if all you do is type text with very little correction, you are fine. But if you type some text, save it, and go back later to add photos, you may be in trouble.

Whenever I start having strange problems, I check the source code. When I do that, I am finding repeated, redundant coding.

On one page I finally had to manually strip all the formatting code and reformat. That worked, but it took time. And that was a simple page with no photos.

When saving changes, after clicking the Update Page or Update Post button, I have actually watched as WordPress randomly inserted extra blank lines in awkward places.

Since 2.9 is not a security update, I am not updating any more of my WP sites to that version. I’m waiting and hoping the bugs get fixed in the next version.

I wish I could revert my WP 2.9 sites to the previous WordPress version, but I think it would take more time than I currently have available for maintenance. I’m not even sure where to get the previous version of WordPress.

Have you been experiencing this problem? If so, how did you solve it?

Note: I am a big fan of the plugin TinyMCE Advanced. I have been told that it can cause problems. Any comments you may have on these issues would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile….Happy New Year!

Kathleen Gresham

Image via Wikipedia

by Kathleen Gresham

When you say WordPress, people automatically think of blogging. WordPress is the blog engine supreme. It is free, easy to install and easy to customize.

Thinking of WordPress as just a blog engine, though, seriously limits your options. That would be a shame, because WordPress offers so many options.

WordPress is a full-featured content management system (CMS). It can keep track of multiple authors and their privileges, provide a place to store documents and allow users to download them, keep track of document revisions and allow you to compare them and reinstate earlier versions—and so much more.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with WordPress. And most options are freely downloadable somewhere on line at no charge.

1. Web Sites

WordPress allows you to build a static web site much faster than any website builder software. Especially if you are not a wizard with that particular sitebuilder. That is, unless you are a super whiz with, say, DreamWeaver, you probably cannot match the speed—and certainly not the ease—with which you can set up a web site with WordPress.

Nowadays there are some great themes with dropdown menus that look like high-quality web site templates and can be easily customized.

Not only that, the search engine optimization benefits of a WordPress site versus a conventional HTML web site are tremendous. There are so many blog networks and SEO plugins and other tools that you can use to promote a WordPress site that are simply not available for HTML web sites.

2. Forums

There are several free plugins that allow you to easily set up a discussion forum, using WordPress. You can use that forum to make money from advertising, offer support for the products or services sold by your company (on line or off line), meet like-minded people, and so much more.

3. Membership Sites

Membership sites are a great way to make residual income. You can charge a fee for joining, for example for a niche membership site, and/or charge a monthly membership fee. Internet marketers often use a membership site to post their products for purchasers to download, to offer affiliate marketing tools and status reports to their affiliates, and to offer support for their products.

Others simply charge a membership fee for members to get access to a host of free downloadable ebooks, software, or other original content in a particular niche.

4. Article Directories and Link Directories

Article marketing is a staple of online marketing, and articles sites have many purposes. If your article site becomes popular, you can make good advertising revenue. If not, you still have a good place to post original or PLR articles with links to your main blog or web site.

You can download free themes and plugins to build an article directory with WordPress. Or  you can build yourself a link directory with other free WordPress themes and/or plugins. You could, for example, add a links page from your main blog to all your other sites.

5. Blogs

Yes, of course, WordPress is still the easiest and most flexible blog engine for self-hosted blogs. The very popularity of WordPress means there are thousands of theme designers and plugin makers constantly providing excellent new free or paid products to add value to WordPress blogs.

6. Combination Sites

Lately I have been making combination website-blogs for offline and online businesses. That is easy to do with WordPress.

For example, see the site designed for Temples Gate, a charming metaphysical gift shop in Houston, Texas. The old site was unfindable on Google for any related keyword or phrase.

The new WordPress-based site rose to Google PR2 in just a few months. It gets traffic via Google searches from all over world.

The site continues to grow as we add more pages, posts, and photos. Google loves sites that steadily grow. And site visitors like to see new and different photos and text whenever they visit the site.

The embedded blog fits seamlessly into the web site, and the site is linked to a Google Calendar so that the store owner can easily add and update the classes, workshops, and other events held at the store.

We will soon add a shopping cart to encourage online purchases. WordPress makes it easy to do that, and several of shopping cart plugins are free. We are still comparing features and usability on a separate test site.

Flexibility and Free Tutorials

Some of the same features can be found on Joomla and Drupal, but nothing beats WordPress for design flexibility and the huge array of plugins, widgets and other accessories available to easily customize it. Also, there is so much free training available for WordPress. WordPress video courses abound, and many of them are free.

So think outside the box when deciding how to build your next site, whether for personal use, to enhance your offline business or for ecommerce. Consider using WordPress even if you are not building a blog. Your imagination is just about the only limit to what you can do with it.

Adding Extra Value to Your Blog

And consider all the options that the WordPress community offers for adding value to your blog. Even if a blog is your main goal, WordPress allows you to add a forum for your reader community or a paid membership area.

If you want to do business on line, WordPress is a great tool for that, too. The sky is just about the limit when it comes to WordPress.

Select Your Hosting Service Carefully

If you intend to build a business in online retail sales, however, make sure you have a good ecommerce web hosting service. Make sure  you use a service that fully supports whatever it is that you are trying to do.

My first hosting was horrible. We could not even get a simple WordPress blog to work properly on their service, and it was a nightmare. So look for quality, not just price, in selecting a hosting service, even if you are not currently planning to get into ecommerce.

What cool things do you do with WordPress? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Kathleen Gresham designs, writes, and promotes blogs and websites and consults on search engine optimization (SEO) and directory listings for online and off line businesses in Houston, TX. For more information, see Houston Blog Web and Web Fresh Leads.

As mobile phones become more advanced with many offering access to the web, there has been more people accessing and updating blogs and free WP themes from their cell phones. Whether it’s an iPhone, Blackberry or a smart phone, many are taking advantage of the access to post and read blogs on their phones. WordPress reports that more than 60 million page views a month originated from mobile devices.

In order to make blogs more user-friendly on mobiles, WordPress just launched two new themes that will automatically be formatted to blogs that are pulled up from a mobile device. For the iPhone and Android phones, a modified version of WPtouch will be displayed for modern web browsers. For all the other mobile devices, an older edition of WordPress Mobile will be displayed.

This is mainly to speed up the loading process for those who access blogs on their mobiles. So visitors will see a simple page with a scaled-down header and will feature the abilities to access posts, pages, archives and other content. It will also allow access to comment and load posts.

Deciding to make all the blogs automatically appear this way on mobiles was so all of them would load quickly. Some content in the past had been slow at loading or sometimes wouldn’t load at all. By doing this, WordPress clears itself of these issues and can ensure quality service for mobile users. It’s always fun to see new applications come out for WordPress and other blogging platforms. Blogging is made easier with quick access to the web and can continue to grow in the future.

Original article posted on Theme Fury’s blog about free WordPress themes.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/wordpress-revises-wp-on-mobiles-1360522.html