Jeffrey Norris asked:

Artisteer is an amazing new software tool that has WordPress (and other) users jumping for joy. If you have any WordPress sites, you’ve obviously ran into the bottleneck of trying to find a suitable theme to get your site looking just right. If that’s you, Artisteer can make your life much easier.

Sure, you can go purchase a premium theme, at a premium price. You can also search through the endless number of free themes and hope that you don’t download one that has malicious code embedded, but why would you want to?

Now there’s no reason to do either. With the availability of Artisteer not long ago, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, CodeCharge and ASP.NET developing just got much easier and faster. With such an intuitive, easy to learn interface, and such powerful capabilities, nearly anyone can create stunning themes/templates in just minutes. Before, you’d better know HTML and CSS very well before even attempting what Artisteer makes so easy.

WordPress has become the platform of choice for many Internet Marketers, and that’s for several reasons. Obviously, the first thing that is very attractive, is that it’s free with any cpanel hosting account. Even so, a bad product is bad regardless of the price. WordPress is also popular because it is just a well designed, efficient, easy to use product. It was good right out of the gate, and it gets better with every new release. The developers deserve all the praise that they receive. Also, WordPress lends itself well to nearly any task. With the many plugins available you can make it do nearly anything you could possibly want from a marketing website.

So, you’ve got a fantastic, free, versatile product in WordPress. It installs with just a few clicks using Fantastico Deluxe. What could make it any better? Artisteer is the missing link that you maybe didn’t even realize was needed. I use to weigh the options of paying for a custom theme, buying a premium theme, or jumping from site to site looking for that free theme that was just right. Those days are long gone, I bought Artisteer and what used to take at least many hours, I can now do in minutes.

With a cool option to suggest ideas for your new theme, creativity isn’t even necessary to create awesome themes and templates with Artisteer. If creativity was required, well, let’s just say I would be out of luck with this program. I have no creativity, but yet even I can create great looking WordPress themes using Artisteer.

You’ve heard the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ It’s true, and the image a visitor gets from any website that you build, better be a good one immediately. If you have a horrible, ugly or confusing site, people aren’t going to hang around and give you a second chance to make that first impression. I’ve seen sites, even just a single sales page produce a staggering amount of money consistently, not because they necessarily offered the best information or product, but because they were so visually appealing and did offer something that immediately caught the visitors eye.

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Munish Chopra asked:

WordPress is nothing without its widgets and you cannot enjoy the real power of WordPress without widgets. WordPress offers thousands of widgets for your website. I may not be wrong if I say that widgets are the main reason for the popularity of WordPress. There are large numbers of widgets available, which you can install at your website. Each of these widgets belongs to different categories and serves different purposes. In this article I am going to talk about top WordPress widgets.

1. All in one SEO: No need to hire any SEO services for your website. Just install All in one SEO and it will take care of all your Search Engine Optimization needs. This widget optimizes HTML, tags and keyword density of your website. Use this widget to rank higher in search engines.

2. Featured content gallery: I love this widget. Featured content gallery gives your website a beautiful look and helps your visitors to easily navigate through the recent articles. This increases user experience and increase your page views.

3. Font Resizer: Font Resizer allows your visitors to change font size of your text with just one click. Users can increase or decrease font size by single click.

4. WP Polls: Involve your visitors in your blog with WP polls. WP polls helps you to create new polls and display them on your WordPress blog. Visitors and select any option and submit their vote.

5. WP SpamFree: Remove spam from your website with WP SpamFree WordPress widget. This widget detects useless comments and remove them.

6. Secure WordPress: Secure WordPress restrict directory listing and secure your website’s content. This widget also checks for security flaws like wrong site map, htaccess etc.

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Richard Adams asked:

WordPress is designed to make it easy to create a content-rich website, which many people have found regularly attract significant numbers of free visitors from the search engines.

For anyone who is interested in making money from their WordPress site(s), the next question is how to add some adverts to their site. But this is where things get a little bit complicated.

You see, while WordPress has all sorts of features built in to create and manage articles, together with the links to the articles, site structure and so on, there is little or no support for how to add adverts.

Sure, a programming expert can quickly figure out where to paste the code for their ads, but what about the rest of us? The answer is of course the host of WordPress advert plugins that are specifically designed to help non-coders like you and me to quickly and easily add adverts to our sites.

Having tested literally dozens of the options over the last few years allow me to tell you about three WordPress advert plugins that I think work best for most situations.

Firstly the OIO Publisher advert plugin is the best solution for adding paid adverts to your WordPress site. That is, if you want to allow other companies to pay to place adverts on your site then this is the plugin that you want to use.

Secondly if you are looking at add AdSense adverts to your site then the WhyDoWork plugin makes this quick and simple to achieve. You simply paste in your AdSense code to a box, decide where you want the adverts to appear from a range of options and then click the button. Your ads will start showing immediately.

The last WordPress advert plugin I want to mention is for affiliate marketers who want to add banners, text links and so on to their sites. This plugin is known as WpSplitTester and not only allows you to quickly add adverts to your site, but to even track their results to see which ones make you the most money.

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Peter R Zaby asked:

The need for effective blog posting software is not only needed by those wanting to write and post blogs, but also for business owners operating on the internet. You can effectively increase your SEO rankings for whatever you sell which could be products or services online. Lots of businesses are operating using the medium of internet to ramp up sales.

WordPress

Fresh content is the need of the hour and among the only ways to keep customers engaged 24/7 and brings them over to your home page again and again. There are several auto blog posting software available in the market these days for the benefit of online business owners.

If you use WordPress, you don’t need to install software. All you need to do is to self host on your own domain. It does not allow ads like Google AdSense for your blogging account and programming features for lead capture forms.

Instead, using a WordPress like blog posting tool, you can get links added to other people’s blogs. There is the chance of limited customization with loads of free themes although custom premium themes cannot be used.

If the blog is integral to your business, then the auto blogging software of WordPress is best to get on with your marketing effort. There are loads of widgets and plug-ins that are continuously developed.

Firepow and blog matrix

There are tools for traffic luring, lead capturing and getting more visitors in as well. You can also place ads without risking any shutdowns that are common in community hosted blogs. You can instantly save 30 percent of your money by using Firepow.

Brought in by an Australian called Andrew Hansen, Firepow is also a favorite with bloggers wanting to kick start their marketing efforts for their product or services.

You can manage all the blogs from one control panel and also manage the control for your site, edit configurations, get article content from the web and also RSS feeds.

You can manage your tasks more effectively and keep track of them; search tasks for all types of promotional methods and also create task plans all day for individual sites with the help of the auto blogging software.

The blog matrix software is fully automated auto blogging tool and a one stop solution as well. You can identify the niche market with the help of the auto blogging software and make loads of marketing gains.

You can jumpstart several steps to creating a market and ramping up sales. Blog matrix software is a popular solution for online business owners. You can record streaming radio programs and download podcasts with this auto blogging software.

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Josiah Staggs asked:

In a nutshell, Tumblr is a stripped down, more social version of WordPress. There are advantages to using both services but I’ll go into detail a bit more and let you make an informed decision. I myself have been using WordPress for several years and have had the chance to test out Tumblr for about a year. WordPress is a blogging platform that has been around sense 2003 and has really exploded and proven itself to be the most popular blog service with a wide variety of WordPress themes and plugins driven by a very devoted and enthusiastic community. Tumblr is a new venture originally started by two fellows out of New York City, with the help of several investors, Tumblr proves to be the easiest and quickest way to have a great looking personal blog as well as to make sharing and interacting easier than ever. Tumblr has limited features but offers a more social platform as well as unique tumblr themes.

Lets begin by talking a little about WordPress. WordPress has a few years on Tumblr so naturally it is a much more developed product. WordPress features a fully functional admin panel and offers the ability to be hosted or self-hosted on any server. WordPress.org is the community site that houses all information, discussion, ideas, issues, plugins, addons, and themes. It really is the driving force of the platform. Users can setup a WordPress.com account in a matter of seconds as well as install the stand-along version on many servers within a couple of minutes or less depending on their host’s features.

Although WordPress is a blog platform, with it’s plugin database, WordPress becomes whatever you want it to be, a review site, an ecommerce site, whatever motive you may have, there is a good chance that both free and paid plugins can get you there. The only thing that may prevent someone from deciding to use WP is the admin panel. Beginners tend to take a step back when they see the admin panel. This is where Tumblr shines.

Tumblr strips away all the complexity, which does effect it’s range of features, but offers ease of use and social networking to make up for those lack of features. Signing up for Tumblr takes about 5 seconds and making your first post takes even less then that. Tumblr offers many Tumblr themes in their theme garden. Something unique about tumblr from a web design perspective is it’s use of shortcode and one-page layout making designing tumblr themes very easy. Tumblr offers the ability to follow and like other Tumblr user’s posts. When you follow a user you will see posts by them in the dashboard. From there you can comment, like or reblog posts that come in. This is the simple and unique features of Tumblr that set it apart from other blog services.

Both WordPress and Tumblr offer different features and it’s up to your personal wants and needs to decide what is the best route to go. IF you want something that is fast and just works then Tumblr is probably your best choice. If you are looking to create a website for your business or just to have more features to work with then WordPress would fit best.

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Liz Lavender asked:

When you use WordPress for your blog or website, you will have to pick a theme to use for your overall look and feel of the site. At times the theme that you really want might need some changes because it’s not quite the style you want or has a few elements on it that you don’t want your site to show. There are some answers to the most common theme editing questions with WordPress.

How do you change the title on your WordPress template?

Each page is going to have what is called a title tag. Whatever is between this is going to show up at the top of the page in the title bar on the browser. Sometimes there is information there that you might not want on your blog or website. You will have to change this if you want it to be different.

In order to make changes you will have to click on “Appearance” then “Editor” on the left side your WordPress Dashboard area. This will bring up a box in the middle with some files along the right side. You will then need to select the “Header” which will be where you can edit this. Place whatever you want between the title tags to make this change and save it.

How do you get rid of the date or the author on your WordPress posts?

Some do not want to have an author or date on their posts at all. Go to the same editor as discussed above and look for either your posts template or the main index template. Look through this code and delete out the author and date to take it away.

How do you turn off the comments?

You could edit them out of the theme completely but this might take too much work for some. When you make a post or page, there is an option to turn off the comments completely if that is what you want.

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Michelle Shaeffer asked:

Here are seven of the plugins I consider essential for any WordPress website I setup. These can help your WordPress site be more secure, more search engine friendly, easier to deal with, and more engaging for your visitors.

To find these plugins, login to your WordPress administrative area, click “Plugins” on the left menu, then click “Add New.” You’ll see a page with a search box you can type the plugin name into and then install the plugin.

Akismet: Blog spam is out of control and can be overwhelming if you have to delete it all yourself. Let Akismet deal with it for you instead.

All in One SEO Pack: This is a great plugin to help make WordPress more search engine friendly. It gives you more control over various elements on your pages.

TinyMCE Advanced: The default editor in WordPress has an extremely annoying habit of removing line breaks and spaces. It also doesn’t allow an easy way to change the font. This plugin fixes those problems.

WP Security Scan: Make your WordPress site more secure with this plugin. It scans for common vulnerabilities and things you can change to keep your site safer from hackers.

Subscribe to Comments: Encourage your visitors who comment to come back and stay engaged in the discussion by giving them an option to receive an email when a new comment is posted after theirs.

Similar Posts: Help your readers find more information they’re interested in so they’ll stick around longer with this plugin. It will add a list of similar posts at the end of each of your blog posts. You can see how it works below (it’ll list 5 posts that are related to this one in case you want to read more of what I have to say about WordPress or plugins).

Social Bookmarking Plugin: There are lots to choose from, just be sure you’ve got one! You can use Sociable, Sexy Bookmarks, Share This, or others. Make it easy for your visitors to share your posts with their networks online.

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Edgar I. Boutaric asked:

WordPress is a great platform when it comes to make changes to your site. Appearances of whole sites can be changed just by uploading a new theme to your directory. With thousands of themes available you should not have a problem to find themes that suit you. But how do you choose the perfect theme for your WordPress-based blogs?

Choosing a WordPress theme is not only a cosmetic decision that you will have to make. Many webmasters simply overlook this and ends up putting a theme that is irrelevant to the website content. If you are designing a blog for a company then you will have to keep it professional and choose a theme that will give you this formal appearance. On the other hand if you are blog dealing with fashion and trends it is important that at all time your blog remains at the forefront in terms of design and style. In one sentence just choose a theme that appeal to your audience.

Second thing that you should look for in a theme is the functionality. It is one thing to choose a theme that looks good on the eyes and another to choose one that really works. I’ll explain. Sometimes you may need to make some modifications to a theme in order to provide services to your reader. For instance you may need to put a live chat box on your site. If the original designer have not make provision for this you may break the aesthetics of the theme just by installing a chat box. Similarly you may be interested to place some ads on your website. It is important that you take this into account when looking for a theme.

Another thing that you must be careful is cross browser compatibility. In the past things were not complicated as everyone was using Internet Explorer. But now with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera on the market it is a different story. It is important that you choose a theme that will look the same as far as possible in all browsers. The only way to do this is to make sure that the code is valid CSS and HTML. This will ensure cross browser compatibility.

WordPress is indeed a great platform in order to run your blogs. It is easy to install, configure, use and above all it is free. With the appropriate theme you can be in for some high quality blogs that are both appealing to your customers and also lucrative for you. Many webmasters simply neglect this basic marketing tool and ends up looking for more complex ways to improve their blogs.

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Richard Stooker asked:

Almost all WordPress plugins are free. There’re a few specialized ones you have to pay for, but unless you’re out to make money with your blog you will probably never even hear about them.

However, remember that every plugin you install is a drain on your web server and slows down the blog a little bit for your reader, You want to take advantage of what’s available that will really help you and your readers, without installing even the Kitchen Sink plugin.

Here’re my votes for the most useful ones:

Add to Any — lets readers subscribe to your blog with an RSS reader. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. But use this plugin anyway. It will help those of your readers who do use an RSS reader.

Akismet — blocks comments that look like spam and gives you the opportunity to review the others before publishing them. A must-have for every blog.

All in One SEO Pack — if you hope to get free traffic from the search engines, use this plugin. If your blog is just for friends and family, you don’t need it.

CommentLuv — encourages commentators by giving them a link back to their blog.

Google AdSense Widget — allows you to put Google AdSense ads easily into your blog so you make some money. You must apply to Google for an AdSense account.

Easy Privacy Policy — Adds an Privacy Policy to your website including the language Google wants included if you have AdSense ads displayed. This probably sounds like unnecessary eagle beagle bureaucracy and for most of us it is — but Google wants them.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer — Every time you publish a post or revise a post, WordPress sends outs pings to sites such as Technorati to let them know you posted new content. What if you keep making changes to your post, especially in the beginning when you’re not familiar with the setup? If those sites get too many pings from you they think you’re a spammer and delete your site from their listings. You don’t want that. This plugin prevents excess pings.

WP Security Scan — Performs security scans of your installation. Unfortunately it’s necessary. Some people have nothing better to do with their lives than to break into other people’s sites and blogs.

WP-DBManager — backs up and optimizes your WordPress database.

WordPress Mobile Edition — I got this so that people can read my blog on a cell phone. It’s a pain in the neck, because it does not have a familiar or automatic installation. Next time it’s upgraded I’m deactivating it. But until then you can read my blog with your cellphone.

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Folusho Orokunle asked:

Advanced WordPress Videos is consisting of video tutorials regarding easy setup of WordPress Blogs. The topics covered include basic CSS styling tricks such as changing colors or headers. There’s no obvious way to know the creator of this program. At the same time, there are no contact links for this program.

Advanced WordPress Videos claims to show beginners the basics of creating a WordPress blog for money-making purposes. According to the website, the content given w/ include basics about WordPress style blogs as well as HTML and CSS specific lessons. This includes guidelines on changing somewhat difficult styling tricks as well as minor marketing strategies. All the content is in the form of ten downloadable videos.

The target group seems to be new beginners on the Internet. More specifically, it appears to cater to end users who like to pick CSS tricks and tips the easy way. It also appears to be targeted at online entrepreneurs who like to cut costs on third party web design options. The overall implication is the setup of a website that will reel in traffic because of its look and overall layout.

The product is 27 dollars. There’s a 56 day refund offer, but it’s unclear if this is a 100 percent money-back offer. To this effect, there does not appear to be any way to call the creator. There are no contact links on this page or support pages. Thus, it’s hard to see how a client would be asking for a refund.

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