Creating a Sticky Homepage in WordPress

The process is relatively simple and is very effective when you want new visitors to your site to read an introduction to your site, but have more instant news updates appear as well.

First, navigate to Posts > Add New and write the content you'd like to always be present on your homepage.

Under Publish > Visibility (top right side) click Edit. Next, click the check box to "Stick this post to the front page". Publish your document, then navigate to Settings > Reading.

The default setting for WordPress front page displays is "your latest posts" and this what you'll need to be set to for your latest post content to appear on the homepage. Now that you've made a "sticky homepage" that particular post will always be at the top.

Further customizations can be made under Reading Settings, such as the number of blog posts to show on the home page and whether to include the full text or a summary. In the case of our Site Sparker website, our blog posts are very short so we've chosen to post the full text. But if your blog entries are very long, then you should choose the Summary setting so that only a portion of your blog appears on the homepage. That will ensure visitors can scroll very quickly through all of your posts to find what they're looking for.

If this is at all confusing, you can find a video version of this tutorial at the link below, where it's explained visually, inside the WP interface.

WordPress - How to Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Blog

It is so important to have a contact form on your WordPress blog. Having a contact form gives other bloggers or potential clients the ability to contact you easily and in a straight forward manner. This will add functionality to your WordPress blog. How to add a contact form couldn't be easier as you will see as you follow along.

The way in which we are going to add a contact form to your WordPress blog is in the form of a plugin, there are various plugins available to you for adding a contact form but I will be showing you using 'Contact Form 7'

The first thing you will need to do is login to the Dashboard area of your blog. Once there, click on the plugins tab over on the left hand side and then the 'Add New' tab. You will now be able to enter a search term, enter the name of the plugin 'Contact Form 7' and click 'Search plugins'. You will now see the plugin appear in the list which you are presented with, all you need to do is click on the 'Install Now' link under the plugin name. You will be asked if you are sure you wish to install the plugin, just click OK. Once the plugin has finished installing you can click the 'Activate Now' link to activate the plugin. Your contact form plugin is now installed and active.

You now need to add your contact form somewhere on your blog and I always find this works well as a separate page with the name 'About Us' or 'Contact Us' but the choice is yours, for this example I'm going to add mine to the 'About Us' page which is automatically created when you install a new copy of WordPress. How to add the contact form is simple enough, if you go over to the left where all your tabs are you will see a new tab called 'Contact' - click it to go to the contact form settings.

You will see a contact form called 'Contact Form 1' has automatically been created for you. If you are happy with the tags and the email addresses it has added you can simple copy the text it tells you to or you can add in or take out any tags you would like and change the email address before you copy the text. Once you have copied the information click on the 'Pages' tab.

Once you arrive at the 'Edit Pages' page you will see the 'About' page which was pre-installed with WordPress, hover your mouse over it until a menu appears then click on the 'Edit' button. You will need to edit the text to suit your blog, once you have done this, paste the text which you copied from the contact form settings and click 'update'. If you now click on 'View Page' at the top of the page you will see your new page with the contact form in.

As you can see this is easy enough to do and really adds to your blog, and your readers will love having the ability to contact you easily.

Alester

'WordPress How To' is a valuable resource for anyone that wants to get started with WordPress. The tutorials are easy to follow in a step-by-step process. By the time you finish each tutorial you will be able to carry out what you have learned with ease.

Top 10 Reasons Why EVERY Small Business Website Should Be Built With WordPress

I'll tell you the same thing I tell every one of my new web marketing clients, "WordPress is incredible - and you should be using it for your website." It can save you both time and money, while making it far easier to build a beautiful and limitless website that you can manage and control yourself.

Once you learn more about WordPress, you'll understand why over 80 MILLION websites are built on WordPress, and why NOW is the time for you to learn what WordPress is all about too, and how it can provide immense value to your small business.

Here are my Top 10 Reasons why you should strongly consider WordPress for your website, regardless if you already have one or not.

1. Incredible Power Straight Out of the Box

Immediately upon installing WordPress, you'll have power features that make it easy to manage your website. You'll have a Content Management System that allows you to add/edit/delete your own content, including images and videos, a User Access system that controls who can access your Admin Center and what level of access they have, a powerful Blogging software, and a central location to manage virtually all aspects of your website.

2. Quickly Build Beautiful Websites with Existing

Themes Forget spending $1,000's on a custom website design when there are hundreds of highly professional themes for under $100. Simply find the theme that projects the right image for your business, install it in WordPress, and badda-bing, your new website has a top-quality look and feel to it. Any aspect of any theme can also be customized to suit your needs.

3. Add Powerful Features with Thousands of Plugins

Forget spending $1,000's on custom websites features when there are thousands of Plugins that can easily be installed and utilized instantly. Need a Calendar, there's plugins for that. A shopping cart? A Contact Us form? A Image Gallery? Yep. If it's a common feature, chances are you can find a plugin to use, most of them for free. If not, you can have custom features developed.

4. It's Completely Open Source

Is WordPress starting to sound like a website builder so far that you can buy for $5/month? In some ways it is, but here is where the similarities stop. WordPress is 100% Open Source, and is written in a industry standard web-programming language. This means that your designer/developer is able to work directly in the code of the software to make ANY changes to the system and your website.

For instance, you may have a theme in mind, but the colors don't match your logo. Your designer can easily go into the code of the system and change the colors, or the layout, or the images used, or anything. Perhaps you are using a Plugin, but it lacks an option that you'd really like to have. No problem, your developer can adapt it for you to any specification. With WordPress, anything is possible.

5. Focus on Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress gives you a big head start in the SEO race by providing the core features for you to implement your keyword strategy. You can use search-engine friendly URL's, edit the META tags for each page, and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. In addition, most theme designers take SEO very seriously and code their themes to strict SEO best practices.

6. Constant Development and Enhancement

Technology is progressing faster and faster, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are constantly being developed and released to take advantage of new technologies, to enhance existing features and security, and to develop new, cutting-edge features that make managing your website easier.

7. A Strong and Active Community

In addition to the team that develops the core of WordPress, there are millions of active users of WordPress that can help you in many ways. These users develop new plugins, new themes, provide professional services, and happily answer questions for you in WordPress forums around the world.

8. Keep Your Website Safe and Secure

You invest a lot of time and resources in your website and you need to know it's safe and secure. In addition to security being hardened in every release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep backups of all your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website in the worse of circumstances.

9. Never Outgrow Your Website

Your data, settings, and design files are completely separate from the core of WordPress. This makes it easy to upgrade any area of your site - whenever you want. And, since it's open source, you can build features as complex as necessary. Once you build your website with WordPress, you'll be able to grow your website to keep pace with your business, no matter how big your business grows.

10. It's Free!

Perhaps best of all, WordPress is completely free. Zip, zilch, nada. Just download it, install it on your server and start using it - without spending a dime on the software.

I hope this article has helped you get an idea of how powerful and valuable WordPress can be to your business. It will take some time and effort on your part to really understand how it works and operates, but it will be extremely well worth the effort in the long run.

How To Quickly And Easily Embed YouTube Videos In A WordPress Blog Post

In this article, I will describe step-by-step how you can quickly and easily embed YouTube videos in a WordPress blog post.

It's true, a blog with nothing but text can be pretty boring so it is a great idea to add things like pictures and video to your blog. One of the most common question we get asked over at Learn WordPress Visually is how a YouTube video can be embedded into a WordPress post. 

YouTube 

Step 1: Create a new blog post

Step 2: Give your post a title and type in any text that you would like in your post. Note: You can have a post that only has the video or you can have the video in the post along with text that you have added in.

Step 3: Click on the "HTML" tab

There are two tabs on the upper right side of the WordPress posting area. One tab is called "Visual" and the other is called "HTML"

Important: This is the step that most people forget to do so make double sure that you have selected the HTML tab and not the Visual.

Step 4: In another internet window, go to YouTube and find the video that you would like to embed in your blog post. This is the other step that many people get wrong. Make sure that you are not just clicking on the channel, it's important to actually click on the title of the actual video that you would like to embed.

Step 5: Click the "Embed" button which is located on YouTube and directly under the video window.

Step 6: You will now see the HTML code that is needed to embed that particular video. You will also see some options below that code which you can select. Once you have the options selected (you do not have to select additional options if you don't need them) click your mouse in the box with the code and it should automatically highlight the code. Once you have done that, right-click and copy the code (or click on "edit, copy") which will copy the code for that video.

Step 7: Go back to your WordPress window (or tab) and again, make sure that the "HTML" tab is selected. Click you mouse in the posting and put it where you would like the YouTube video to show up. Once you have done that, just right-click (or select edit) and paste that code into that area of the post.

Step 8: That is all there is to it. You can now click back to the "Visual" tab to get back to your normal view. You probably won't be able to actually see the video until you publish your blog post so go ahead and click "Publish" to publish your post and you will now have a post that has a YouTube video right in it which means that people can watch the video without even leaving your blog!

Final tip: When you are choosing the embed options on YouTube, I usually uncheck the "show related videos" box which means that when the YouTube video is done being viewed on my blog, it will not someone else's related video.

WordPress Permalinks

A "permalink" is how the URL (website address) of a WordPress post appears. It is very important that you set your desired Permalink structure first thing after building your new website for a few reasons. First, because search engines index your blog based on your post's URLs, and if you change from one to another you will loose any rankings that you have already received for that post. 

And second, any other incoming links to your post from other websites will no longer work causing you to loose out on any traffic from those links as well. As a general rule of SEO, it is best to have the keywords that you would like any given post to rank for located within the posts permalink.

So then which Permalink Structure Is the Best?

To configure your Permalinks click the "Permalinks" tab in your WordPress Dashboard located under "Settings" on the left side of your screen.

Well now that we know that having your keywords which you wish to rank for located within your post's permalink is best for SEO purposes, it is obvious that the "Default" and "Numeric" settings are not your best options. The "Day and name" or "Month and name" option will place your post's name (which should be the keywords that you are targeting for any given post) into your post's permalink, but they also include a lot of numbers before hand which is not ideal for SEO purposes. The most ideal permalink would be your website address followed immediately by your post's name (which again should be the keywords that you are targeting for that post).

Example: [http://www.YourWebsiteAddress.com/post-name]

Custom Structure Permalink Settings

To accomplish this you want to use the "Custom Structure" option to display your permalinks. You can use a number of different variables to define your Wordpress permalinks, but most of the time you will really only need two. These are the %category% and %postname% permalink structures. You will need to enter these into the "Custom Structure" option box using forward slashes ( / ) to separate these variables so that they look like this: /%category%/%postname%

This structure will display the category that the post belongs to as well as the post's name in your permalink. If you are not using categories to separate your posts or you simply do not want to include the category in your permalink (which I personally do not do, again because the "optimal" SEO permalink is the cleanest, shortest, and simplest) then you can instead just place the /%postname% structure into the option box so that your permalink will only display your website address and the post's name.

If you do chose to use the /%category% structure and your post belongs to two categories, then the one with a top category ID will be selected as the category name (note that the category IDs are assigned according to the order you created them and not according to alphabetic order).

Build Your Own Wordpress Test Lab

In this tutorial we'll go through how to get Wordpress running on your own PC (running Windows) so you have your own personal Wordpress installation to experiment with or learn from. Yes you could experiment with Wordpress on your live website but if you don't have a web host or don't want to play around with your live Wordpress blog then this tutorial is for you.

Firstly we need to install your own personal web server to run Wordpress. Wordpress requires a web server, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language to run. Installing and configuring these in the past was hard work but there's now an application called WAMP (Windows - Apache - MySQL - PHP) which installs and configures everything to get your own personal web server up and running.

Normally you'd pay a web host to host your website or blog and they'd provide the web server, database server and scripting but we're going to install our own personal web server so we can do anything we like in our own personal Wordpress test lab at zero cost.

Visit the WAMP site and download the WAMP Server. Once the file has downloaded double-click it to install the WAMP software.

Once the install begins accept the license agreement and all the default installation options and select to create a desktop icon at the end of the installation.

Once installed and running you'll have a WAMP icon down in the system tray in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen (it looks like a semi-circle)click the WAMP icon down in the system tray and select phpMyAdmin - if the phpMyAdmin page displays then this tells us that the webserver is running and the php script can connect to our MySQL database so you're up and running.

We now have a functioning WAMP web & database server running on our PC. This server provides practically all the functionality that a paid hosting account offers but costs nothing and is for your personal use or use on an internal network if you're teaching Wordpress. It would be possible to use WAMP to host your live blog but we'd advise that it's much better for your live blog to be hosted at a web hosting company rather than allowing people to connect to your own PC running WAMP as there are security, speed and availability issues in running your own publicly accessible web server.

We have our web server now all we need to do is install Wordpress. If you haven't already started WAMP start it by double-clicking the WAMP desktop icon. Open 'My Computer' or Windows Explorer and navigate to C:/WAMP/WWW and then create a new folder in the WWW folder called wordpress.

We then need to download Wordpress so go to the Wordpress web site and download the latest version of Wordpress. Once it's downloaded extract/unzip the installation file and copy the contents of its 'wordpress' folder to c:/wamp/www/wordpress.

If you've downloaded Wordpress and successfully copied the Wordpress files into the correct folder you can open a browser and go to http://localhost/wordpress - you should see a Wordpress page asking you to create a configuration file. So go ahead and click 'create a configuration file'.

Wordpress then asks for the database hostname, username and password to connect to your MySQL server. Wordpress is a dynamic content management system so anything you post in Wordpress is stored in a MySQL database so when a visitor visits your blog or you edit a post Wordpress dynamically pulls this information from the database displays it. In order to do this we need to create a blank database with a username and password so Wordpress can connect to it. Wordpress will do all the hard work of populate this database with all the correct tables but we have to manually create the database and username and password before Wordpress can do this.

Click the WAMP icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen and select phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin should now load in your browser so then in the 'create new database' box enter wordpress_db and click 'create'.

Now we need to add a user to the database. In phpMyAdmin click the 'Privileges' tab then click 'Add a new User'. In the 'user name' box enter wordpress_user (or a username of your choice) and enter a password in the 'password' and 're-type' boxes. Ensure that under 'database for user' the option 'Grant all privileges on database "wordpress_db"' is selected and then click 'Go' down at the bottom right.

Now if we go back to the Wordpress installation screen we can enter the database name, username and password we just created using phpMyAdmin. The database host should be localhost and we'll leave the table prefix as wp_.

Now click 'submit' and Wordpress should say that it can now communicate with the database. Click the 'run the install' button. We then can fill in the options for site title, username and password - this username and password is the Wordpress username and password that you'd like to use to administer your Wordpress blog so you can make up your own username and password which can (and should!) be different from the database username and password we created earlier.

Click 'install Wordpress' and Wordpress should then say you've successfully installed it and if you click the login button and enter your Wordpress username and password you're up and running!

Just remember to make sure your WAMP server is running first otherwise you won't be able connect.

How to Use WordPress - 5 Quick Steps For The Geek Impaired

If you have even sniffed around the idea of building a website you've probably heard the name WordPress mentioned by any number of sources as being the best and easiest website software available. If it's that fantastic it must be kind of pricey right? Wrong, it's absolutely free. As you read this article you're going to find out how to use WordPress to get your blog up and running in a matter of hours and start taking advantage of the amazing features the platform offers.

But first why is WordPress so popular and how to use WordPress?

The quick answer is it's a professional open source platform that is incredibly easy to use by non-technical people. No code writing, no CSS or HTML, no geeky stuff at all really. If you can point and click you can design and administer a WordPress website.

Functionality, flexibility and automation are also key features when using WordPress. What would take days to put together using static HTML design is done literally in minutes. The automation features not only make your site more receptive to search engines but saves you an enormous amount of time as well.

Did I mention Google loves WordPress. It loves the ease and simplicity that the software offers the web spiders. It loves the permalinks. It loves the fact that each page has meta tags for easy recognition of keywords. When Google loves you it pays you back with quick indexing and good ranking for a keyword.

So just how easy is it to set one of these up? We're going to give you five quick steps that will have your blog up and running in less than two hours from start to finish. There's not enough space here to cover all the options but this will get you started.

In order to effectively use WordPress, and own the real estate you are going to have to buy a domain (about $10.00) and get a hosting service (about $10.00 a month). There are two steps here that are going to slow you down because you really want to think about them.

The first is selecting a domain name. If you're a local business and the name of your company is Smith and Son Plumbing, and you service Kansas City, it probably would be better to get plumberskansascity.com rather than using your company name.

Think about that for a minute. If you live in Kansas City and your tub backs up and you use the internet to find a plumber, what would you enter in the search? Probably Plumbers Kansas City right? Remember, the domain name does not have to be the name of your site. When visitors go to plumberskanasascity.com they will arrive on a site whose name is whatever you make it like Smith and Son.

So now you have a domain and a hosting service. Go to the hosting service control panel or C Panel and find the red icon for Fantastico and click it. A menu will come up and you want to click WordPress. You'll be asked for the URL for the site, site name, create a user name and password and enter a valid email. Click install.

Boom. You have your blog. Okay it's a lumpy looking blue thing that is the default but we can fix that. What we want to do first though is clean up the default. There are a bunch of categories that will not be relevant to your subject so we just go into the dashboard and start deleting with a click of a mouse, those headings that we don't want and adding the ones we do.

Now to get rid of the default design or theme as it's called. There are over 1,000 free themes available for you to choose from so this is the other time killer. Switching themes, once you selected one you like is a snap. And if you don't like it no worries, you can swap it out for another.

The only thing missing now is content so we need to add a post or article. You'll find that the tool for this resembles Word and you can simply cut and paste an article into it or create it in the tool. What's really cool is you can add meta tags to this page and that goes a long way to making it Google friendly. Click a button to publish and your blog is up and running.

This doesn't even scratch the surface of all the cool things you can do with plugins and other features. It just gives you an idea as to how to use WordPress and how easy it is to create a professional website without any design skills. If you need a site you need WordPress.

Manually Updating a Local WordPress Installation Using Windows XP

Introduction

Just recently, I updated WordPress from 2.8 to 3.0. Most tutorials including WordPress's Codex, tell you how to update for a live blog, which is stored at your web host's server. I could not find any information regarding manually updating an installation on a local computer (such as a testing server for theme development), so I wrote this article.

You may be asking, "Why not just use the auto-update feature?" Well, as documented by typing something like "WordPress 3.0 hangs at Unpacking the Update" into Google without quotes, I ran into the problem of the auto feature halting while updating. I had to install manually.

Manual Installation Basics

It turns out manually updating was pretty easy, but was very difficult at first because of pitfalls I did not pay attention to. Those will be documented in the "pitfalls" section below. Although I won't put together an in depth tutorial, I will tell you how I updated my test blog in a very basic way. This same method is similar to the instructions in the Updating WordPress codex page.

1. First, I backed up the database by going to Tools, then Export in the Admin panel. I then selected Download Export File. This method is documented in the article "How to back up your WordPress blog in 60 seconds" by Christopher S. Penn. Type this article title in Google to find out more.
2. In the Admin panel, there were the buttons Install Automatically or Download [WordPress version number]. I chose the download link for a manual installation
3. I navigated to the folder the file was downloaded to. This may be a My Documents, Documents or Downloads folder. In my case, it was a Downloads folder within My Documents
4. I unzipped the folder (wordpress-3.01.zip) by right-clicking and selecting Extract All
5. Following the Extract All wizard opens up the extracted folder. I double clicked the wordpress folder
6. From here, I opened up a second Explorer window by going to Start menu, My Computer. From there I navigated to my original WordPress installation. I installed mine in Local Disk (C:), Program Files, Apache Software Foundation, Apache 2.2, htdocs, wordpress
7. Once inside my original wordpress folder, I copied (Ctrl-C) the wp-includes and wp-admin files from my WordPress 3.01 folder and pasted (Ctrl-V) to the original (WordPress 2.8) folder
8. Although I did not do the following step during installation, as my folders were already set up this way, it is a good idea to set up your folders in Windows XP so they show the full path in the title bar. To do that, go to the Tools menu item, Folder Options..., View tab, check Display the full path in title bar and Display the full path in address bar. This way, you can know at a glance which folder you are in
9. As mentioned in the Updating WordPress codex page, I did not copy the wp-content folder, as this would overwrite my current themes and plugins. For WordPress 3.0, I copied the twentyten theme folder into the wp-content, themes folder to get 3.0's newest default theme
10. Finally, I copied all of the files from the top level folder, wordpress, including index.php. Then I pasted these into the original (2.8) folder. I did not overwrite the.htaccess file or the wp-config.php file, leaving these as is. Usually, these files are not included in a typical install. I renamed the wp-config-sample.php file in WP 3.0 as wp-config-sample2.php just in case
11. From here, I was asked to login to my Admin panel again and prompted to update the database, following the provided link
12. Installation was successful!

Windows XP Related Pitfalls

Installation was successful after a lot of trial and error and cursing at my computer screen, that is. I was trying to follow the above advice to install manually after the frustrating hang at "Unpacking the update" in the auto install. When trying to manually move the wp-admin and wp-includes folder from the 3.0 folder to the 2.8 folder, I was getting "Cannot create or replace wp-admin: Access is denied" error messages. What was even more frustrating was that I was getting these messages after sending the original file folders to the Recycling Bin via deleting them. I couldn't even Restore the files as access was denied! Surely I thought I scrapped my entire WordPress installation and couldn't upgrade.

Finally I realized what the problem was. I was working in a Limited account in Windows XP. I do this purposefully for safety, because I don't want to be online with an Administrator's account. To follow the above instructions, copying and moving files in the Program Files folder and such, I needed to log in to an account with Administrator's privileges.

I never figured out if the Limited account issue was why the Auto-Upgrade feature didn't work. However, this advice is warranted: if upgrading WordPress manually for a local installation, make sure you are using or have access to an account that has Administrator privileges. I hope this article will be useful for those who may have come across the same problems I did. Thank you for reading.

How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business

If you haven't heard of WordPress, listen. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform -- but it's so much more than that. In fact, this article will teach you some things as to how to use WordPress to automate your website and therefore your business, leaving you time to do the things you enjoy without having to keep your finger on every little "nook and cranny" job that needs to be done. Here are just some of the things WordPress can do.

AdSense

If you use AdSense to earn extra income on your site, the AdSense Integrator can both dad and then manage the AdSense ads you put on your blog, effortlessly following the last AdSense rules and updates without your having to keep on top of them. This is one way when it comes to how to use WordPress that you can really earn passive income without having to do anything except for adding the initial plug-in.

Google Analytics

When it comes to how to use WordPress to track your customers, Google Analytics will help you keep track of who's visiting your page, where they're from, and a lot more information that's valuable when it comes to knowing your customers. The Google "Analyticater" offered by WordPress makes it very easy to add this to your website.

XML Sitemaps

The XML Sitemaps plug-in will make you much more visible to your customers -- in fact, if your customers can't find you, it's not likely you will have any business at all to speak of. However, Sitemaps easily makes you visible to search engines as they crawl your site, which gets you seen on the web -- and therefore gets you more customers.

AWeber

AWeber is a service that, although not free, can really help you explode your business. Used with WordPress, it's another way you can really automate your business. With this service, you can basically turn autoresponder functions into guaranteed customer draws. You can create website sign-up forms, which will help you attract customers; instead of simply having visitors anonymously visit your site and then go away, you can simply include a sign-up form on your blog using AWeber's simple "point-and-click" interactive functionality.

That's not all, though. While most auto responders will send canned messages to subscribers after sign-up and other functions, AWeber actually provides you the ability to give personalized e-mails to subscribers or customers in an automated sequence that's really going to give you the ability to connect with your customers -- and your potential customers, too. What's more, you can also schedule autoresponder functions so that they'll go up when you know your customers are likely to be thinking about reordering, as applicable. Again, this is all automatic, and he will only rarely have to lift a finger after initial setup.

All of this and more is available if you know how to use WordPress and associated plug-ins and services to fully automate your business. Of course, your business is still going to need you to run it, but automating it as much as possible for the simple day-to-day mundane tasks such as those described above will to free you up to focus on the really important part of your business, which is to provide quality products and/or services.

Internet Marketing Course - 4 Recommended Plugins for WordPress Blogs

WordPress is probably the best interface for anyone who wants to setup a blog style website but has little or no HTML coding knowledge. I had to write HTML codes for websites generation when I was in college. When WordPress was born, it is heaven to many. I personally believe that WordPress was one of the key reasons to an explosion of websites launches over the past decade.

The following are essential WordPress Plugins for anyone who wants to monetize a website, especially one with a blog style.

1. Akismet

Most Blog style websites have a comment box at the bottom of every post that allows the readers to leave their feedback or comments. These comments are great for SEO traffic. However, the comment box is also a magnet for spam.

Akismet is a Plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam and allows you to review the comments before approving it. To activate Akismet you will need a WordPress.com API key which is free for personal websites use.

Although Akismet is a good tool, you will want to check your comments folder regularly because some good comments may actually get filtered out. This plugin works like a computer anti-spam software that automatically put junk mails into your junk box. If you know how it works, it is not perfect. But this is not to say that you don't need an anti-spam software.

2. Social BookMarking Links Plugin

This plugin automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! Furthermore, you can also send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more. WordPress version 2.6 or above is required though.

When you integrate social bookmarking with your posts, visitors can bookmark your web page with their social bookmarking accounts and that creates great backlinks for you that are well-liked by Search Engines.

3. Google Sitemaps Plugin

Google sitemaps creates a compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom created ones. What's cool about this plugin is that every time you create or edit a post, your sitemap gets updated automatically and all the major search engines that support the sitemap protocol such as ASK.com, Google, Bing and Yahoo are notified about the update.

This simply means your blog pages will be more SEO friendly.

4. Google Adsense

This plugin provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. It is a very simple and yet almost maintenance free way of generating passive income from your blog. After you install and activate the plugin, go to the widgets under appearance and then add the AdSense tool to the sidebar or any where you like on your blog.

Before you install this plugin, please ensure that you have an approved AdSense account from Google, which may be a painful process for some because Google mercilessly rejects your application if it thinks you are generating junk sites.

For more WordPress tutorial and SEO tools, check out Adam Short's Niche Profit Programs which offers countless video tutorials for the serious Internet Marketers in mind.

Website Creation - 4 Steps to Setup WordPress After a New Installation

You've got WordPress freshly installed into your hosting account, and you're ready to start posting content to the site and driving traffic to your content. Before you start that, there are 4 steps that you need to take after you install WordPress for the first time in order to extend WordPress' functionality.

These steps help you secure your website against spam comments, Add users and change the look and feel of your website. Here are the changes that you should implement as soon as you install WordPress to your hosting account: 

1. Change the default usernames, if any. If your hosting provider adds a user account named "admin" or any other pre-installed user into your WordPress installation, delete those users by going to the: Users control panel > select the user > click on delete under the user name
2. Configure the author, reader and comments defaults. If you want people to register before they can leave a comment, or if you want people to be able to register themselves to write on your site, you can set this up by going to: "Settings" > Under Membership > put a check mark in "Anyone can register" > Select a user mode for the new registrations. Be aware, that if you allow this functionality, anyone that registers on the site will be able to perform whatever function you allow them to. Be specially careful since people may be able to post spam articles to your site, if you allow them to
3. Configure your plugins. There are 2 plugins that you really want to have, one is akismet which is anti-spam the other plugin is SEO WordPress which will help you with your search engine optimization. There are others, but these 2 should be your primary ones. Before these plugins start working, you need to activate them. To do so, go to "Plugins" then select the plugin you want to install and select "Activate" from the menu on the right. You may need to obtain a WordPress API key, follow the instructions on the screen to obtain a key if you don't already have one.
4. Configure themes. Themes control the look and feel of your blog. There are many free and paid themes to pick from. Figuring out the look and feel of your site can take a lot of time, so make sure that you dedicate some attention to how your site looks. To change themes, go under: Appearance > Themes WordPress has a depository of themes that you can search through, but you can also perform an online search for "WordPress themes" and see if you find some that you like.

How to Choose Your Web Development Tutorial Site

If there is one thing a web developer needs, it is free help to fix those difficult problems along the web development way. Depending on the level of expertise, a difficult problem for one may be a novice problem for another. For this reason, it is important for a free website tutorial site to cover all aspects of web design and web development.

The Beginning Blogger

As a beginning blogger, there are times when just choosing the right platform seems like the biggest problem on earth. There are various choice in blogging today and many of them are free. But, the tutorials online are often aimed toward the more advanced user. The little details like how to create a blog and how to upload a photo to that blog are the simple tutorials that should be available on the same site with the more advanced, HTML editing instructions.

An All In One Stop for Free Web Development Tutorials

As the novice web developer progresses, the will no doubt want to learn more and more intricate tricks of the trade and when a free web development tutorial site is found, that site should grow along with the web designer. Why should the designer have to find a new source of information or various sources of information that must be compiled before the solution can be found? They shouldn't and that is the difference between a great site and a site that is just there for hits.

The Importance of the Update

If there is one constant on the Internet it is that everything is constantly changing. There is nothing worse than finding what seems to be the perfect tutorial site only to be look down and see the publish date as 2004. In the lasts 4 years, a lot has changed in web development and the tutorials on the site you choose need to be updated with those changes.

The web developer, no matter how novice, needs to find a web designer resource that is regularly updated, filled with instructions aimed at every level of designer and accurate. Once they find that site, they need to share it with the world because good tutorials can mean great websites.

Quick Blogging Tutorial on Traffic!

Aside from the everyday questions about creating a blog, like hosting and registration, visitors should be your top priority. To get these visitors, there are many tactics but appearing in the organic results is the best. To appear there you have to follow a few simple steps.

Indexing is easy and important!

In applications designed for beginner users, like WordPress, you simply click a radio button in the back office and all the major search engines will be cleared to access and assess your blog. A suggestion on increasing the attractiveness of your blog to the search engines is to use a ping controlling plug-in. There are many free ones out there so just do some research and choose one. 

These control the number of pings your blog sends to the search engines when you edit or publish a post. This will keep you in good standing with them. Otherwise your blog may be seen as spamming the search engines with excessive pings, which probably is not your intent.

Can Ad-sense be used to attract Google's attention?

Yes, but not in the way you probably think. Putting ad-sense on your blog simply registers it with Google, and hopefully makes you some money. Being on their watch list helps your site get indexed and keeps the crawler coming back periodically to check for compliance if nothing else.

Using other ad services on your site works just as well, but may not get the attention of Google. You can always use a conglomerate of search engine ads so that you do maximize your exposure to them. Since the ad-sense ads are completely under your control you can choose to put ads on that do not compete with your goods or services. You can also decide what ad topic is displayed so that the ads may augment your content in an indirect, but easy to set up way.

Video Tutorial Guide to Lower Your Handicap to Create a Blog Easily

The only way to keep up with the latest about how to create a blog is constantly to stay on the lookout for new information. If you read everything you find it easily how to create a blog, it will not take long for you to become an influential authority.

If you base what you do on inaccurate information, you might be surprise by the consequences. Make sure you get the whole information how to create a blog from these informed sources.

Creating a blog using WordPress may not easy for any newbie. How to create a blog is the biggest daunting task and you may not want to touch it. Truth to be, you may find lots of information running around on Google search. Let me put these simple thoughts to you. Different people have different taste and not all people keep eating the same type of food. You will find many types of techniques and teaching different ways to create a blog using Word Press.

I did do a random search, compare and check to find the easy paths to allow anyone or newbie to create a blog easily. In it, you will be amaze to discover these simple following systematic guides how to create a blog. You might not know where to begin. The video tutorial consists of ten parts, which will guide you from starting to ending. You can do it within an hour by following these simple tutorial steps.

What to you need in your personal capacity to create a blog? Do not be afraid to dirty your hand to learn additional knowledge. Create a blog using Word Press is more blazing if you are able to understand simple instructions by following this systematic video tutorial guide.

The rise of blogging had given a boost for everyone to have a blog. Whether using it commercially or individuals or using it to generate an income online. There is always opportunity for you to use it to your advantage. You will also discover an advantage to owning a blog, given a right to have full control.

A little investment for domain name and blog hosting required. You will learn from these straightforward video tutorials steps how to create a blog easily. What are you waiting for? Step forward to join thousands today to become bloggers.

That is the latest from the HOW TO CREATE A BLOG authorities. Once you are familiar with these ideas, you will be ready to move to the next level.

Why WordPress? The Top 9 Reasons Why You Should Have a WordPress Site For Your Business

It helps to build your business quickly and easily. With WordPress, you will start getting traffic immediately after clicking the "publish" button. Why? Because the search engines love WordPress.  Click on 'Publish' and the search engine bots go into action.  Your content will be crawled and available on the market shortly thereafter.

Every post, new page, and new content in general alert the search engines that you've posted it.  With them crawling your site regularly, you get higher page rankings, and therefore more traffic.

WordPress is a super simple time saver-easy to move around in and get stuff done quickly.  It's extremely user friendly.  You don't have to be a computer expert to use it. Create content rather than mess around with your server settings. Most people find WordPress pretty easy to work in after they've had a chance to play around in the dashboard.

The WordPress platform is FREE regardless of whether you are running a personal website or a business site--saving you tons of money.  And you get the same, or even better exposure on the internet for a fraction of the cost of a website.  All you need is a domain name and hosting. 

  

WordPress is used by some of the largest companies in the world.  If they trust this platform with their multi-million dollar businesses, surely you can.

WordPress is open source meaning that there are people out there who are constantly tweaking it's performance, features, and any vulnerabilities.  You will always have the latest version available to you, and for free of course. Up-to-date software is secure and stable software.

It's a very secure platform to build your site on. Any WordPress hacking incidents are usually related to not updating to the newest versions, or because people are using passwords that are easy to guess and therefore, not secure. If you keep your site up to date, there won't be any issues with security.

Have you been looking for a platform for your group blogging aspirations? WordPress allows you to create user accounts that have different levels of privileges, making it easy for those who need a site with multiple authors.

WordPress sites are great looking, easy-to-navigate, and super optimized for the search engines.