BLOG DESIGN JOURNAL

The bestselling guide to WordPress, fully updated to help you get your blog going!Millions of bloggers rely on WordPress, the popular, free blogging platform. This guide covers all the features and improvements in the most up-to-date version of WordPress. Whether you are switching to WordPress from another blogging platform or just starting your first blog, you’ll find the advice in this friendly guide gets you up to speed on both the free-hosted WordPress.com version and WordPress.org, which

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What kinds of things are on my holiday wish list as a blog designer? Not necessarily what you might think.

Most of us go ahead and buy whatever software and computer accessories we need to boost or uphold productivity, so my wish list contains things I may not really, actually need, but I just think would be fun or helpful to have.

I think the secret to getting some of these things as gifts is to send or post your wish list all over the place, along with a link to somewhere like Savings.com so that your significant other, parents, or other benefactors feel like they are getting even more bang for the buck by giving you a spectacular gift at a super savings.

And here is my blog design wish list for December 2011:

iPad 2 with 64GB and G4 connectivity

Super cool iPad case of some sort, preferably real leather

Styluses to go with the iPad. I want to draw directly on the screen.

iPhone lastest and greatest (nothing stays latest and greatest for long)

Super cool cases for the iPhone. You cannot have too many of these. I want different styles and colors for different occasions

Kindle Fire

Bluetooth headset (deluxe model)

High-capacity memory stick. I love those things, and the more storage space the better. You cannot have too many of them, especially if you are mobile.

Little robots and other desk toys. Just for fun and entertainment when writer’s block or design dearth sets in.

Some of these make great gifts to give others, too. Cases, for example, can range from formal and corporate to silly or glitzy or just plain wacky. The same person can enjoy using a variety of different cases at different times, for different purposes.

As you can see, the items on my wish list are generally not cheap, so it is a good thing that we can find great deals at Savings.com.

So what’s on your wish list? Come on, share! We might see some things we want to add to our own lists. Leave a comment and tell us your favorite gift and wish list items for this year.

You never know. You just might get them.

Other WordPress books on the market discuss WordPress only in the context of blogging: how to set up a blog, how to write a blog, how to optimize a business blog. A few books offer detailed technical instructions on a specific aspect of the software, such as plugin or theme development. Beginning WordPress is the first to discuss WordPress as a general content management system that can compete with other popular open source projects like Joomla or Drupal. This book also aims to be one of the

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Wicked WordPress Themes is a step-by-step guide to creating beautiful themes for the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress. By following the book’s advice, readers can produce designs that are aesthetically stunning, consistent, and for-purpose -whether it’s for their own use, or to drive a high price on the theme marketplace. All facets of theme design are covered: from design, coding, and deployment, to ensuring readers’ designs are ready-to-go as soon as they’re installed. Wicked WordPress

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Blogging began as a simple way to express oneself on line, to share thoughts and ideas. How times have changed!

Bloggers started accepting ads and sponsorships and putting links in their posts to products for which they received commissions for sales made through their links, and so on. Blogs evolved into money-makers.

What we now refer to as a blog is often a commercial website that just happens to be in a blog format or built with a blogging content management system, such as WordPress. Blog design has changed, for sure. And the laws affecting blogs have also changed.

When you sell goods or services through your blog, even when you just link to other companies’s sales pages in hopes of receiving commissions on sales, you move into different territory. You enter ecommerce. And not everyone involved in ecommerce is honest.

As ecommerce booms on the Web, the U.S. government is taking a closer look and tightening regulations. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has tightened regulations to prevent phishing and other scams and to limit claims made by online merchants to those that can be proven.

The laws governing doing business on line can be extremely confusing and sometimes highly technical. The average general attorney is usually not familiar enough with Internet law, intellectual property law, and web technology to advise bloggers and blog designers to keep them out of trouble with the FTC or to keep them from getting sued by other Internet businesses.

I found that out the hard way when a larger company demanded I give them my company’s domain name in 2000. Their lawyer made all kinds of threats, and I hired a general attorney recommended by a friend. Big mistake. My lawyer knew much less about intellectual property law than I did, and she tried to browbeat me into selling my valuable domain name cheap—because she would get a share of the proceeds.

We recommend getting in touch with an international e-commerce law firm and becoming familiar with what they offer and what they recommend that you do to stay safe—before you need them.

Because when the unthinkable happens, you will be glad you made that connection in advance.

Are you ready to create a WordPress website in 7 Days or Less? This report is broken up into seven pieces that you can do all at once or over the course of seven days. There is no reason why you can’t go from complete beginner to website owner in very short time, even if you’ve never built a website in your life!I’ve been told time and time again that I make things easy to understand and easy to take action on. I hope you’ll find this true as you go through this

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Smashing WordPress shows you how to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, and provides a creative spark to help you build WordPress-powered sites that go beyond the obvious. The second edition of Smashing WordPress has been updated for WordPress 3.1+, which includes internal, custom post types, the admin bar, and lots of other useful new features. You will learn the core concepts used to post types, the admin bar, and lots of other useful new features. You will learn the core concepts

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