I’ve had a ton of people ask me lately how to get started marketing online, and more importantly how to get up their first website and start making money in the fastest time possible.

Most of you guys know, I am not a big techie person. And I always tell people that the best way to get started marketing online is by setting up a free WordPress blog. You can set up and update your blog with a few easy clicks!

Even if you don’t know anything about HTML or setting up a web page (I still don’t know HTML!), let me show you a real easy way to get a web page set up in minutes—literally!

Here’s what I did–first, I set up a WordPress blog. It was really easy setting up a blog.

I just went into my cpanel within my Host Gator web hosting account, and I clicked the Fantastico button, and my WordPress blog was set up automatically.

Boom—instant website! How’s that for easy?

Now the thing about WP blogs is that WordPress sets up the shell, but then you can customize it and make it look however you want.

You do this by installing themes and plug-ins. There are millions of free themes to choose from, and more plug-ins than you can ever hope to use. I’ll list the plug-ins that I am using so that you don’t have to go searching endlessly for the right ones.

I found a free theme for my WordPress blog within WordPress; I downloaded it, and then uploaded it with my FTP software. I then went to get some plug-ins for my WordPress blog (and you can search for these various plug-ins from within WordPress).

The plug-ins that I decided to use and that I recommend, are the following:

- All in One SEO Pack
- Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button
- Viper’s Video Quicktags
- WordPress.com Stats
- WP-EMail
- WP-EMail Widget
- AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Ultimate Google Analytics
- WordPress Video Plugin
- WP-SpamFree
- WP tags to Technorati

There are a lot of these plug-in, and millions of free themes to choose from with WP. You can tweak your blog, and add widgets, and start adding content that is important to you—that is the best things about blogs! Blogs are so unique and personal—you can really make them reflect your personality and your business any way that you want.

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When I purchased my first blog web hosting account, no one told me that I’d need certain features. I manually uploaded the WordPress program to my hosting account, followed the directions to install the MySql database and all the other nifty techie stuff I needed to make a blog work. Problem was, I’m not techie! It wasn’t easy and it took me about two days to get it up and running.

Fast forward. Many of today’s blog web hosting providers offer one click installation of WordPress and other blogs. Heck, if you pick the right blog web hosting provider, it should take you less than 30 minutes to have a fully functional WordPress blog up and running!

Here are 5 Features you need to make sure that your blog web hosting provider includes before purchasing a hosting account.

1. CPanel – The blog web hosting provider you choose should have CPanel so you can easily maintain your blog. There are other companies like DreamHost, GoDaddy and 1and1 that have their own custom dashboards that work as easily as CPanel does.

2. Fantastico – This is an auto installation program that will install a number of programs and scripts for you with minimal effort. Often times with only a click of a button. It makes it really easy to set up a blog or personal website. Programs such as WordPress, bulletin boards, photo galleries and much more. Most web host provide Fantastico with CPanel, but not all.

3. Multiple Domain Hosting – If you’re just looking to host a personal blog, then this will not matter to you. But if you’re looking for easy web hosting so you can run multiple blogs or websites, then make sure the blog web hosting provider offers the ability to host multiple domains on one account. Some will only let you host 1 domain while other will allow you to host more than one.

5. Domain Registration – Although it’s pretty easy to buy a domain in one place and then host you website in another, not everyone wants to fool with this. For this reason, you may want to make sure the blog web hosting provider you choose offers domain registration. What’s even better is if the blog web hosting provider will give you a free domain for buying their web hosting services.

5. Customer Service – Before I sign up with any blog web hosting provider, I email the company and ask a few simple questions. I already know the answers to the questions before I send them. What I’m looking for is how quick they get back to me and how informative their answers are. This gives me an idea how well they take care of their customers.

Don’t worry too much about storage space or bandwidth. If you’re running a small to medium sized blog, chances are you’ll never have to worry about this.

The one exception would be if you’ll be uploading a lot of files to your blog web hosting account. In that case, I’d host those files at a third party site and just like to them from your blog. For example, if you want all your Family pictures up on the web for family members and friends to see, I’d use a service like Flickr. There are many WordPress plugins that will show your Flickr photo’s on your blog.

There are many blog web hosting providers out there currently that offer all the features I listed above. Don’t be fooled by price alone! Expect to pay in the $5 to $10 a month range for affordable and reliable blog web hosting.

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So, you’ve been writing on your Microsoft Word and you have become accustomed to the program automatically converting the URLs you type into clickable links.  You’ve been posting in several forums and you’ve become used to the system creating hyperlinks for the web addresses you share without having to onerously type those [URL] and [/URL] BBcodes.  You’ve been posting ads on popular classifieds on the web, and you have grown confident that the email address you type will immediately be hyperlinked and such can result to an increased response rate.

Why, then, do you have to take a step backwards when it comes to your WordPress blog?

Why should WordPress, the industry standard when it comes to blogging platforms, have to make life harder for you by requiring HTML encoding just to create correct hyperlinks for the email addresses URLs you type?

If you’ve been maintaining a WordPress blog for a significant period of time, you’ll know what we’re talking about.

-          When a URL is succeeded by a period, a parentheses or another character necessary for the correctness of the sentence structure, WordPress will also add that character to the hyperlink it will generate, hence causing visitors to be taken to an invalid URL.

-          When a term is typed that includes the character “@” in the middle, WordPress mistakes it for an email address and automatically hyperlinks the same even if it corresponds to an invalid email destination like joey@work or Johnny@play.

-          When a URL is too long, WordPress still displays it, which often results in distorted pages that makes viewing less convenient and enjoyable.

Indeed, WordPress’ hyperlinking system is flawed.

This is where plugins come in.

The best plugin that remedies all the shortcomings of WordPress’ default hyperlinks is Auto Hyperlink URL.  This clever little add-on has become an absolute necessity for WordPress bloggers.

Aside from correcting all the problems of WordPress’ default hyperlinking system which we have enumerated above, the Auto Hyperlink URL allows blog operators to:

-          Truncate URLs after they reach a certain number of characters;

-          Include words that will precede and succeed truncated URLs;

-          Allow text URLs to show only the hostname;

-          Open a new window when a URL is clicked so that visitors won’t have to leave the blog page;

-          Make the blog page “nofollow” to prevent the proliferation of spam on the comments section;

-          Read class B domain references (links that are not preceded by “www”).

Installing the Auto Hyperlink URL WordPress plugin is just as easy as installing other plugins.  Simply download the Auto Hyperlink URL plugin and upload the same to your wp-content/plugins folder.  Thereafter, install the Auto Hyperlink URL from your WordPress Plugin menu in the admin panel.

In this day and age when linking has taken central stage in the race for top search engine positions and when read rate is determined by interlinking blog posts within the same blog, the Auto Hyperlink URL WordPress plugin has become a mandatory addition to any WordPress blog.

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By changing the theme of your blog, you can change the layout of your blog, if you are using the WordPress. There are many free blog templates or WordPress themes available on the internet. By making thorough search, you can also find the unique theme designed for you and you can also buy a pre-made theme. Actually, the WordPress is a collection of files and these files will create graphics for your blog. They will work as a cover for your blog, as a person sees the cover of the book first and then decides to purchase the book, the same case is with the WordPress Themes, they work as a cover for your themes and people visit your blogs to a great extent due to the unique themes. By selecting the theme that suits the topic of your blog, you can make your blog memorable.

There are two types of themes of WordPress that come with the basic installation of your blog. There are more than 500 themes available in the directory of WordPress and with the passage of time, this number is growing. By looking at the directory, you can easily see the list of most popular themes and there is also a list of the newest themes as well. There is also another section that will show you list of the themes that have been updated recently.

If you want to find the theme that suits to your blog, you should use the search feature at the top of the page, and you can search the theme by typing the phrase or word and you can see the list of the themes that suit to your blog. After selecting the theme, you should read the directions which are given by WordPress for the installation of the theme because every theme has its own set of direction which is followed to install the theme. There is another option for header in the same section where you will see different themes; however the selection of header is different from the selection of themes because the header does not affect the entire blog but it is a different graphic at the top of the blog.

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When users complained about inline links that are becoming way too obtrusive, someone was bound to find the answer. Jeremy Curry has created the WordPress Plugin Linknotes. These are like footnotes, only with links.

Plugins

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform that focuses on aesthetics, web standards and usability. Plugins are the tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins provide a way to offer custom functions and features that will enable each user to tailor their site to their specific needs.

As the purpose is to extend functionality, not all WordPress users require plugins. At best, some may only require a few and not every plugin that is available. The choice list is long thus it is up to the user to determine what is required based on his/her specific circumstance.

WordPress plugins are designed by volunteers and are available for free to the public. However, plugins are the responsibility of the author and the user. They are all works-in-progress as WordPress continues to grow and expand.

The creators of plugins are the people who saw the need and came up with the solution. Many needed the solution for their own site thereby providing the opportunity to see the plugin in action. Others develop plugins for someone else when they had the time to do it.

Not all plugins are easily installed but authors and developers try to make the process as easy as possible. There are a few things one needs to know before installing any plugin. Since there are several versions of WordPress currently available, different plugins are likewise available for the different versions.

The first thing to do is to get the correct information before installing. This can be done by reading through the readme files and web pages including any comments regarding the plugin on an author’s website. Installation is much easier when equipped with the right information. Plugins require downloading and uploading to install.
Plugins may also require modifying WordPress files and templates thus familiarity with PHP, HTML, CSS and CHMOD may be necessary. Make a note in the code of any changes done to the files or templates by using comments before and after the changes and also in a text file saved to one’s site and on one’s desktop to serve as reminder of any additions or modifications to default files or templates. This will assist the user if there is any need to repeat the procedure in case of any future problems with the site.

Before installing any plugin that will result to dramatic changes, frequent backups of database and files should be made. Some plugins work independently of a blog’s content and file and only adds a little something special to the page. Others would require modification of content and file, including changes in database. The user should make sure that the plugin will work in his/her existing version. Upgrading is an option to consider when a plugin cannot work for a particular version.

Troubleshooting Plugins

Problems arising from plugin installation or one that stopped working after upgrading would request some steps to remedy. The user should check whether the author’s instruction has been followed to the letter. Any plugin tags or usage within the template files should be checked for correctness, right spelling and appropriate placement. The file should be uploaded to the plugins folder under wp. content. When a new version is being uploaded to replace the old, the old version prior to uploading should be deleted.

The user should check whether the plugin has been activated in the Plugin Panel of his/her Administration Panels. Deactivating and reactivating the plugin would verify if it makes it work. Visiting the plugin author’s website which is typically linked from the Plugin Panel will show if there are other people having the same problem and if an answer has been posted. It also updates the user whether a new version has been released.

The plugin authors can be directly contacted through their website or email requesting assistance. It is possible that someone else might have found the answer to the same problem a user is experiencing. Searching the Internet for the name of the plugin and the trouble being experienced can provide the elusive solution. Another way is to visit the WordPress Support Forum and post a clear question about the plugin and the problem. If the problem persists and there seems to be no solution in sight, the user should check other similar plugins to use.

Some plugins may become outdated and may no longer work with the newer version of WordPress. Most authors will upgrade their plugins to accommodate the newer version. Others will not thus the plugin becomes obsolete with the improvements in WordPress.

The Linknotes Plugin

This plugin allows the user to make links in his/her blog posts appear like footnotes. Installation is very easy as in other WordPress Plugins. However, the text should be formatted appropriately for usage. Normal links would simply need to have the Link. quicktag clicked in the Write Post page to enter the URI.

Jeremy Curry, the developer of Linknotes has added quicktags to the plugin. This addition would no longer require the replacement or editing of any files just by downloading VO.3. Linknotes is considered by many as the blog version of footnotes. Linknotes only affect the post content and pages but not excerpts or any other body of content.

Curry developed this plugin when he read that someone was in need of such as a solution. He went off to the WordPress Support Forums and couldn’t find anything that was exactly what he wanted. He then proceeded to work on it.

Since it was difficult to do it from scratch, he used the Textile Plugin as the base. He removed some features from it and added a bunch of modifications. He came up with the Linknotes plugin which was more customizable, bloglines- friendly and has quick tag buttons which can easily be turned on or off in the plugin file. This answers the requirement of making a link to open in a new window.

The quicktag also adds a superscript number beside the word or phrase which was hyperlinked. This would tell the reader that there has been a Linknote added which he/she can refer to after consuming the whole post. This plugin hopes to do away with the disruptive practice of having hyperlinks in the middle of the sentence.

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When it comes to setting up your Blog, there are many options and it’s enough to drive you crazy.

Here is some information for each option…

Blogger Versus WordPress

- WordPress offers a lot more customization and has more marketing and SEO power.

- Some people think since Google owns Blogger it gives you a boost – that is not true.

- Blogger has more rules you must follow and it could potentially limit a marketing technique or tactic.

My experience and personal opinion is that any Blog is better than no Blog but if you want to get the most out of your Blog – go WordPress.

There are other Blog platforms as well, but I consider the two main contenders to be WordPress and Blogger so that is all I have commented on.

Once you’ve decided on your Blog platform, you then have to decide on your Blog structure.

There has been a lot of debate about a Sub-Domain versus a Sub-Directory versus setting up a new domain.

A sub-domain would be: blog . yoursite . com

A sub-directory would be: yoursite . com/blog

A whole new domain would be: newdomain .com

If you go with a whole new domain, then you have no “trust” and history built up and it may take longer for the Blog to get picked up.

It used to be that a sub-domain was treated as its own separate site with a root directory so you got the benefit of link juice and you potentially got more listings in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Since December 2007, Google states this is no longer the case. So you aren’t really getting any extra link juice from this structure.

Matt Cutts, the public face of Google had this to say about sub-domains versus sub-directory (as related to the December 2007 change):

“Note that this is a pretty subtle change, and it doesn’t affect a majority of our queries. In fact, this change has been live for a couple weeks or so now and no one noticed. The only reason I talked about the subject at PubCon at all was because someone asked for my advice on subdomains vs. subdirectories.”

He then goes on to say: “My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content.

A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news .google. com or maps . google . com, for example.

If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.”

Although his feedback wasn’t directly related to setting up Blogs, it still applies. So, based on that feedback, and my own personal success and experience I too vote for a sub-directory.

Don’t forget, you may as well make it as search engine friendly as possible and rather than just call the sub-directory Blog (ex: yoursite . com/Blog) you could use a keyword or short keyword phrase (ex: yoursite . com/keyword-Blog or yoursite . com/keyword-phrase-Blog)

So in summary – any Blog is better than no Blog, but to get the most power from your Blog, go with a WordPress Blog in a sub-directory named with a keyword on your own server. Make sure you learn about all the necessary plugins and configure them properly to get the most out of your Blog. Hey – that sounds like a great article topic. Stay tuned!

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Limits of Free web hosting Services

Web Hosting Services

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If you are thinking about saving on Web hosting costs then you should consider free Web hosting services that don’t cost a penny and which, though they have not very great functionality, still allows you to have a presence on the Web. In addition, it is usual to get a sub-domain or even a directory to your name and it is often the case that free Web hosting services will also allow you to use domains that you have purchased separately. However, before choosing a free Web hosting service, you need to know about the top Web hosting services and makes sure that you are aware of the limitations to choosing the best Web hosting service. So, before reading up on Web hosting reviews look at what the limitations to using free Web hosting services are and then make your choice.

Some of the limitations to using free Web hosting services include limits on the size of the hosted file, tinier bandwidth each month, does not allow hot linking to files and it may not have the facility of certain files such as MP3, MPEG and ZIP files. In addition, with free Web hosting services, you may have no alternative but to place the Web host Banner or even Popup advertisements into each of your Web pages, and worst of all, there is no guarantee of how much uptime you are going to get. Nevertheless, the free Web hosting service could provide some extras such as control panel that is Web based, transfer of files using FTP and use of scripting languages and even relational databases as also guestbook.

There are some methods used of giving out free Web hosting that includes instant activation, approved activation, and post for hosting as well as forum hosting. In the case of instant activation, you will generally be given very small storage space and there is very little bandwidth allowance as well plus you have to put up with many other limitations as well. And, you will also be at risk of being spammed.

In case you go for approved activation you will get plenty of space as well as good bandwidth though there will be few features and such approved applications are generally needing approval of administrators who are employed by the free Web hosting service and who need to validate your application depending on the information that you have supplied, which is really meant to help avoid spamming from occurring and also discouraging your Website from becoming a phasing Website.

It is also usual for some free Web hosting services to require that you post on a forum and free hosting that is forum-based will require that you contribute a number of posts before you are given free hosting with them. Such forum based free hosting usually runs on the basis of points for each post which can be used in order to get a free hosting account.

Another thing that free Web hosting services discourage is use of their service for file or image to be hosted and you will not also get a Web page because that is where they put out their own advertisements. Also, in case your files exceeds a certain limit, the free Web hosting service may not allow it though you can avail of some file hosting service for free that do permit extra large files and also hot linking.

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For beginners like me, it is often difficult to differentiate between genuine blog comment and spam comment. I  receive 15 to 25 new comments each day most of which are spams and it is already difficult for me to manage them. So I googled over this issue and found some very useful solutions which i am going to share with you.

Akismet (Automatic Kismet) plugin : This plugin comes with every WordPress installation and is a trusted plugin for filtering spams from genuine comments. It checks each and every comments,  pingbacks and trackbacks submitted in your blog. In order to activate it, you need an API key, which you can get for free  by simply signing in Akismet.

Re-CAPTCHAplugin: This is another effective method to reduce spam but it might reduce the number of your regular comments because most people find it annoying to enter CAPTCHA for posting comments in a blog. The idea behind Re-CAPTCHAis to display an image with distorted words and ask users to type the word before submitting the comment. This way, spam bots will be prevented to post their comments in your blog.

Mollom: This is one of the largest website spam filtering system which drastically reduces the burden of blog moderation. You can install the Mollom WordPress plugin for free and need to create an account and activate the plugin. Molllom uses Akismet-type spam filtering technique combined with CAPTCHA to check spam comments.

Close comments on older posts: Older posts that receive a good traffic are often the best targets for spammers, so closing comments on older posts  is a good strategy to fight spam comments . Just go to Settings -> Discussions. Click on the “Automatically close comments on article older than” check-box and enter the number of days. The disadvantage of this method is that your post might miss some useful comments over long time.

Editing .htaccess file: If you find some IP addresses are constantly sending spam comments in your blog posts, you can block those IPs by editing the .htaccess file. First of all, download the .htaccess file from the root directory of your web server, edit the file by adding the list of black-listed IPs as deny from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx and upload it.

order allow,deny
deny from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from all

It is highly recommended to backup your .htaccess file before editing. Thanks shoutmeloud for this tip.
Have a spam free blog 

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The Widget Ready WordPress Themes is like a plug-in program but this is designed to allow a simple way to arrange the variety elements of your sidebars content and known as “widgets” without having to change any code and the widgets sub-panel will explain how to use the various widgets that will come along to deliver with wordpress and the widget pages will automatically explain how the “widgetize themes” and plug-ins will be use.

Widget Ready WordPress Themes is a source which is for free templates suitable for any blogger and users. By means many plug-in developers are redeveloping their plug-ins to make widget compatible to work with many theme designers that are also designing their themes widget to be compatible here in widget ready that guaranteed free widget ready themes, information and reviews.

By this will show you how: Make sure that theme is a “widget friendly”. In creating a functions. “php file” to make your sidebar register. This is enclosed with static sidebar in the dynamic sidebar conditional tag. You have to make multiple widget-ready areas and there are other creative ways to use widgets.

To start widgetizing your themes you must study the important things in widgetting. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that your sidebar or whatever you are widgetizing is what you call a “widget friendly”. This is involves formatting the HTML in a particular way with the ideal sidebar item in a widget-ready wordpress theme that is coded.

To register the sidebars is the next step, one is not a problem, two or more is not a problem either but you can even have them formatted in different ways  as long as they are friendly. To create the functions.php file inside the theme directory, this is a file you can use to modify the wordpress functionality with PHP code without using a plug-in or editing the core code.

The Sidebar Conditional Tags will check if the sidebar is registered with widgets and if they are active at the top of your sidebar or where you want widgets to start being displayed just the code. Just make sure that you have the endif; after the opening statement at some point or your entire theme will break.

The Multiple Widget Ready Areas with few additions and changes in your functions.php file and a few more statements in your theme files, as you can have as  many widgetized areas as you want, each with their own unique name.

Take note the new name part of the array, you can name this whatever you want but try to be descriptive and when you go to your sidebar.php file or whenever each of your sidebars are located in your theme, you will use the following conditional tag with the name of the sidebar you chose in the functions.php and also make sure this file doesn’t have any erroneous  spaces or line breaks, as it may cause warning messages to pop up while editing things.

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In the part of the decade, the online world was fused to a new form of authors. These were the first crusaders of blogging. It was not long before WordPress blogs started showing up all over the world. With its powerful website CMS that enabled better blogging systems and a more intuitive interface, WordPress soon become the blogging software of choice.

WordPress was often just seen as blogging software. Few seen it as anymore than just a way to post a few personal notes. It was basically the first twitter. But an increasing number of marketers are finding that you can also use to create a tremendous amount of money in a very short amount of time. The most powerful function of WordPress lies in its ability to manage large amounts of text, audio and video content. After a dozen pages it becomes difficult to manage a static HTML site. Although you can use template-driven software as well like SBI or DreamWeaver, nothing beats the ease of WordPress.When it comes to ease of use, you will find no other software that can beat it.

In its native form, it does come with some useful tools and you can find a lot of useful free plugins that can increase it usefulness. Yet there is nothing that can come close to using premium blogging tools which easily transform the creation of a static website, an article directory, a WordPress based membership site system, a complete e-commerce site, an auction sites, a portfolio site and so much more. As a matter of fact you can also just about use it for anything. SEO, no worries, there are even premium themes created that can box with the best of them. Google is pleased.

search engine Optimization is another important element. By default, WordPress is pretty good at optimizing and creating SEO friendly content. However you can also get more serious and utilize simple WordPress plugins to further increase your SEO rankings and get better Yahoo or Google rankings.

Flexibility is one of its main strengths. Within minutes you can switch between hundreds of themes, plugins and widgets. You can do this all for free. Is there any software on the market that can boast free plugins, themes and widgets?

If you aren’t using WordPress, then I have one questions for you. Why not? The learning curve has reduced substantially in the past 3 years. A newbie can easily setup a blog within minutes. I am not kidding when I say in minutes, because when I first started blogging, I knew nothing about WordPress. It took me about 30 minutes to get my WordPress installed and publish my first post.

2009 and 2010 will be a new era for WordPress. The future of blogging will be WordPress. If you do a search on the internet you will find so many programs and systems that are geared to the success of someone using WordPress. Developers are creating some amazing software that can literally do anything you want with it. No matter your needs or ideas, there is a plugin that can make it happen. Some are paid and others are free, but none the less it can be done and it can be done well.

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