Marketing your WordPress Blog 1-2-3

Posted on May 17, 2012 by admin

1. Marketing your WordPress blog is the same as marketing a website or other type of blog. No one will know your blog is on the net unless you tell them. the easiest was to g=do this is with a ping service. world pres shas feature where you can tell it which ping service to notify when ever you post an article. this located under Settings -> Writing. the most common ping servie is http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

2. Submit your blog’s url ( http://www.yourblogaddress.com ) to Google, Yahoo and Bing. To find where to do this search Google submit website, etc.

3. Submit your website to local directories, for example if you had a blog about London, submit to London Directories. to find them do a search in the search engines. Also, consider doing paid advertising, for example if you have a blog about the Middle East and your target audience is folks who live in the Middle East consider doing search engine marketing in the Middle East. Or you could do paid advertising through google with Adwords or with Bing via Microsoft Advertising or Yahoo’s Search Marketing program.

Top Ten Media Sites

Like It:

A Basic Guide to Using WordPress

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

By Patric Seeley

If you have ever read a blog, chances are you may have already stumbled on to a site made with WordPress. It is one of the most popular blog-hosting services in the world today, powering over 73 million sites world- wide and hosting an estimated half of that number. Perhaps one of the biggest drivers for its popularity is the fact that virtually anyone can create a website for free using WordPress.com. Installation and setup takes as little as five minutes and then you should be ready to create your first post.

But before you get started, you should know about WordPress.com and WordPress.org. These two sites are from the same WordPress company but have different functions and it is important that you know which one to use before you get started.

Getting Started

WordPress allows you to create free blogs hosted on the site so that you get a blog address like myfirstblog.wordpress.com. There are over 180+ themes available to satisfy the basic blogger, but customization is limited. You can pay for premium features such as extra storage, ad removal, or use of premium themes.

It is on the other hand, where you can download open source WordPress software to use on your own website so you get an address like myfirstblog.com. Customization is unlimited but you will have to set up the software on a server and manage the web server (or pay for third-party hosting services).

Think of the org site as the source of the software and the com site as the demo site for the capabilities of the software. Still confused? Don’t worry, WordPress is aware of the possible confusion their two sites may cause and have created a support page to address this.

The easiest way to create a blog would be to sign up with WordPress. You can always choose to upgrade or transfer your blog to a personal web host, if you decide to do so later. To sign-up, simply head to WordPress.com and click on the Get started here button.

Creating Your First Blog

Choose a blog address and a username that is unique (WordPress automatically checks if the address is available or not after you stop typing). On the same page, you will be asked to create a secure password, provide an email address, and select your language.

To create a free blog, click on Create Blog. WordPress will send a sign-up confirmation email to the address you provided. Simply open the email and click on the Activate Blog button.

Once activated, you will be asked to Choose a starter theme for your blog. Click on Show More Themes for more options. This is perhaps the most exciting part of the blog-creation process, since you are now actively deciding how your blog will look like. You can always change it later if your posts do not match with your theme, so select the first theme that you like and then proceed to your WordPress.com home page. Take a few minutes to read the Welcome Screen and its helpful pointers to take note of the layout of the home page.

Now you are ready to start posting. To create your first post, click on New Post, the first tab on the WordPress homepage.

Compose your first blog post and make sure to provide a catchy title. Standard formatting options are available; make sure to click on the Kitchen Sink button to activate more formatting options. Once done, click on Publish Post and voila, your first custom post on your first WordPress blog has been created!

Now you have mastered the basics, make sure to keep adding new posts to your blog to make it grow. Keep blogging!

About the Author:

Patric Seeley is a Global Brand Manager at Mattressnextday.co.uk/ Mattressnextday stocks a LARGE assortment of beds and mattresses, probably the largest collection on-line today! In fact, Mattressnextday also offer over 80 different varieties of mattresses and over 50 styles of beds, bed-frames, and divans

Like It:

Do you need a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

Posted on May 1, 2012 by admin

What is a Virtual Private Server?

It is space on a server dedicated to a specific website, group of websites, or function(s). Virtual Private Network, Virtual Root Server (VRS) and Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) and Cloud Servers are other names for the same thing. For example, it is your partitioned portion of a server for your website(s) that you pay a web hosting fee for to a webhost or ISP.

Do all VPN’s – VPS’s come with stacks – pre-insalled software?

No, not all VPN’s offer pre-installed software (Stacks) like cPanel, PLESK,LAMP, Minecraft, Microsoft Sql Server, Microsoft Web Server, PHPList, Ruby on Rails, WordPress and more.

Having pre-installed software it a real plus for most webmasters. It makes installation a snap and helps even the most novice webmaster look professional.

What are the important things to look for in a VPS package?

Price, disk space, memory and pre-installed software and Raid Back- up. You can find about 40GB disk space and 4GB memory and a Raid backup system ,which mean sa mirror image of what you have on the server is available for back up if needed, for less than $50 a month.

Customer serve is important too. Try calling the ISP before you purchase to see if you can get a real person on the phone. This is very important if you have any problems or need special assistance. Trouble tickets and email are often just not enough.

Like It:

Creating Stock Photography

Posted on April 5, 2012 by admin

Love taking pictures, but stumped on how to create stock photography? Turning your personal photo collection into stock photography is easier than you may think and can be very gratifying if you are able to create something people want to download. Follow these steps and tips and you will be creating stock photography in no time.

1) Use a quality camera

When it comes to creating and selling stock images , you want to make sure that you are providing the highest quality image possible. If your image is taken with a lower end camera, potential buyers will know and choose a competitor with a clearer, crisper picture. Invest in at least a decent camera and it will pay off over time as you get better at creating and selling stock photography online.

2) Focus

The focus on your camera can have a huge effect on the final product and can make the difference between getting a lot of downloads and getting none. You can use focus to draw attention to a specific part of the photograph, but it is also a matter of image quality as out of focus pictures will look blurry and of less quality.

3) Lighting

Lighting is something that can be easily overlooked and is understood better with experience and time. Having good lighting for your pictures is more than making sure the sun is on the right side. Just like investing in a good camera, it would be beneficial to invest in proper lighting equipment to produce the best photos possible.

4) Shoot multiple angles and perspectives

Taking multiple shots from different angles and perspectives has a couple of advantages. The more angles you have, the more potential pictures you can have in your stock repertoire and you can also test which perspective looks best for whichever particular shot you are taking. Even if you end of scrapping some, looking at the object you are taking a picture of in different ways will help spark creativity.

5) Experiment, track, and learn

Most stock photography sites have pretty good analytics allowing you to track which of your stock pictures are performing the best and for what keywords. Feel free to experiment with your photography and submit a broad range of quality photos at first. Over time you can see which ones are more popular and create more pictures like that and stop investing time in the types of photos that don’t sell.

6) Know your keywords before you shoot

There is never anything wrong with taking random pictures as you encounter unique scenery throughout your day. However, researching keywords and planning around which categories you want to sell in will give you good direction to begin and will focus your efforts on what is going to make your pictures successful online.

Getting started is often the hardest part. Once you become more familiar with the process and know what you are doing, creating stock photography will be fun and efficient. If you create pictures that are popular enough, you can even begin to earn royalties off of your work. Make sure you get whatever feedback you can so you can grow from real peoples’ opinions.

Like It:

How to edit photos on android phones?

Posted on March 29, 2012 by admin

By Abhishek Raj

Photo editing has always been a popular topic especially among the teens. With the rapid smartphone revolution in the past decade, photo editing has reached a whole new level. Gone are the days when one had to sit on a computer or a laptop for editing a bunch of photos. Today, the world craves for only one form of editing – Pocket or Mobile Editing!

In this post, I am going to show how easy and convenient it is to edit photos on your android powered devices. Forget Photoshop, Picasa or PhotoScape… Photo editing has never been this easier and funnier to do especially when you have an android phone or tablet.

Top 3 Photo editing apps for android:

1. PicSay Pro

This is the lightest and yet the most feature rich android app for photo editing. There are so many effects, stickers and editing options that you will definitely love to use this application. I bet, once you install and use this app you will never ever think of uninstalling this awesome app.

2. PicsArt Photo Studio

PicsArt photo studio is the most powerful and the most feature rich photo editor on android. Just think of any photo customization and it is possible with PicsArt photo studio. You can choose from a variety of frames, callouts, borders, stickers and effects. The possibilities are simply endless with this unique photo editing app. The only downside is that you always need an active mobile internet to use all possible features.

3. Little photo

As the name of the app says – this is a little sized photo editor having crazy number of effects but only a little customization options. This photo editor is for those who love to add a variety of effects to their photos. Some of the popular effects include – black apple, night flash, pencil sketch, lomo and tilt-shift.

So, if you have recently bought a new android phone and are looking for some serious photo editing, then do try out these three photo editing apps. You will definitely love them!!

About the author:

Abhishek Raj is an avid photographer and photo editor. He runs his own website Digital Camera Photography where he shares unique photography tips, photography basics and photo editing articles.

Like It:

Guide To Backup The Database Of A WordPress Site

Posted on March 28, 2012 by admin

If you own a website then you would be aware of the website database and how important it is to keep a backup of it. As far as a WordPress website is concerned, taking its backup is not as difficult as it may sound. WordPress is well known for providing one of the most user friendly Content Management System to website owners and allows them to manage their websites on their own without much assistance from any software development company.

The backup of WordPress database can be taken by many methods and we are going to discuss four most popular methods of taking database backup of WordPress websites.

Through WordPress Plugin: One of the most important advantages of using WordPress is the availability of plugins for almost every possible functionality. You can always find plugins that will allow you to store the database of your website securely. WP-Db Manager is one such plugin that is considered to be among the best plugins for this requirement. It also allows users to repair and optimize their Web-pages. Plugins are usually created by a professional software development company or highly talented individuals therefore performance is usually good.

Export the database from WordPress Panel: Log into your websites admin section and navigate to “Tools” section. Here you will be able to see a tab labeled “Export”. Click this tab and download the XML file and you have the backup of your website. This XML file contains everything that you have uploaded till now including the pages, content, comments, categories, tags etc. This XML file could be directly imported in case the online files are lost and everything would be restored.

Use Control Panel to Take Backup: The database can be directly backed up through cPanel interface or the custom interface, depends on what is provided by the hosting company. The procedure is very simple. First you have to login into your hosting account and select the option “Manage Account” or any other that is similar to it. Next you have to click on the icon saying ”Database” and select MySQL. Now you will be able to view and edit the details. Here you will find an option that will allow you take the backup of your website and restore the database whenever required.

Backup Through PHPMyAdmin Section: You can also take the backup of your websites database through the PHPMyAdmin section on your web host account. While some consider it a more technical approach but in reality it is a much shorter method for experienced users. All you have to do is select “Open Manager” and you will be taken to a page. After you enter the database login information you just have to select the database that you want to export and choose the SQL file and you are done.

You should always have latest backup of your website whether it is a 5 page site or a 500 page site. Make it a habit of taking backup on a regular basis and you will never find yourself at loss in case of site crash or hosting provider’s mistakes.

Ami Patrix is a mobile application developer at Xicom technologies, a reputed Mobile Application Development Company and a software development company offering high end mobile apps development solutions and software solutions to 500+ satisfied clients spread across diverse geographical locations on the globe.

Like It:

Top 10 Social Media Sites

Posted on March 20, 2012 by admin

Since the inception of social media more than five years ago, no one was within the scope of predicting its exponential growth to the level that it has scaled to this day. It has practically become part of our lives in many aspects and it cannot go unnoticed. Logically speaking, it has become practically impossible to achieve success online without allowing the social media to give a helping hand in whichever way you can imagine. Social media sites have revolutionized the way blogging and marketing is being done. For this reasons, social media sites constantly crop up every other day to claim a share in this arena. Many social media sites may want to lead the group while the rest follow, but the list below gives the 10 best social media sites;

FaceBook

This site redefined the term social media; it has become hard to define social media without mentioning Facebook, being one of the best and fastest growing sites over time. Here you can find your friends, current and former classmates and have a chance to interact with them, share photos videos, blogs, market your products and much more.

Twitter

Twitter is best known for its marketing capabilities, being a micro blogging site in nature. Through it you can have free back links for your posts to help you increase your page ranking. In the social media world, its well known competitor is FaceBook.

MySpace

It works superbly when integrated with other social media sites. Website owners make use of it to facilitate the growth of their websites. Incase you are on the search for something new this is the site you need t join.

LinkedIn

Widely and worldly recognized in the online business circles by increasing the back links to your site hence improving your page rank and it simultaneously boosts your profits.

Reddit

Site owners and bloggers are quite familiar with this site for its importance in increasing their page rankings.

Digg

This is one social networking site that is quite fast in getting better page ranks and quite a number of people have benefited from this.

Shetoldme

This site is similar to Digg and through their Adsense revenue sharing program site owners have a chance of earning a good amount of revenue.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us has been used to come up with a way of social bookmarking to better business with social sites, giving an opportunity to users to publicize their interesting items through networking and tagging, and like the other sites, it also helps increase your page ranking.

Squidoo

By designing profile pages which helps other members viewing answers to questions that have been asked, hence useful knowledge is shared, and with this site you can as well create a back link to your account to increase your search engine rankings.

Stumble Upon

This site provides a great opportunity to share loads of stuff with millions of other Stumblers who are online.

Kat is a regular contributor to the ‘social space’ and enjoys her time blogging for her employers who offer business consultancy on matrix structure benefits and the different types of cross cultural training.

Like It:

Create Ways to Sell On the Web

Posted on March 2, 2012 by admin

Car dealers are way ahead of most businesses in using the web to sell their products. Companies like Show Room Logic even offer Dealer SEO to draw search engines to websites.

You can even use the power of Google PPC For Car Dealers – AdLogic to get various size ads displayed on a multitude of websites. Include your phone number and people can just click it to call you!

Many of these techniques work for all kinds of products. In a recent article about Google PPC – Importance Of CTR, Unimportance Of Bounce Rate, I learned that the higher your CTR (Click Through Ratio) the lower the cost of Google Adword ads will be. So be sure to design web pages and ads in a way that attract interaction –and get a high CTR (Click Through Ratio) .

Ad placement on the page has much to do with getting a high CTR. Many studies have been done to find out where the best places on a web page are to place an ad. Current wisdom suggests, upper left and center are the most likely to attract click throughs

And don’t forget to use Facebook’s marketplace, Facebook ads or one of the many specialized Facebook apps to sell your products. Using Facebook to sell is much more than just spamming your friends. By tapping into the 500 million strong Facebook community you have an opportunity for your sales to soar.

Like It:

The Best Gift to Buy an Apple or Mac Fan

Posted on February 23, 2012 by admin

Do you have anyone in your life who is an avid Apple fan (honestly there is always at least one in every family)? In my family we call them “fan boys.” Every time a birthday, or holiday rolls around I have the challenge of finding a perfect gift for that person. I don’t have thousands of dollars set aside to keep buying iPads or Macbook Pros. Well, look no further! There is actually an ideal gift to buy someone who loves anything Apple… A MacBook Decal.

Macbook Decals, or Apple Decals (as some people call it) are basically high quality plastic stickers that you can put on your Apple device. They provide a non-permanent and inexpensive way to add a little personality to a standard Macbook Pro or iPad. You can think of decals as a temporary tattoo for your computer. Most decals incorporate the Apple logo into a creative design. For example, this Iron Man MacBook Decal uses the Apple inside Iron Man’s suit.

These decals have started gaining popularity in the online internet community, but have yet to catch on in most main stream stores. Apple fans are suckers for elite products. Buying them a decal will give them the added bonus of being the first of their friends to own one!

The coolest thing about a decal is the fact that they come in thousands of designs and colors. The largest selection of Macbook decals can be found at TheDecalGuru.com . You can find designs that are shaped like anything from Superman to The Giving Tree. No matter what, you can find a Decal to fit any style or personality.

Are Decals Safe? Yes, I’m someone who cares a lot about my Apple products, so one of my first questions was “will it leave a mark when you take it off”? All of the decals sold at TheDecalGuru (which has the largest selection anywhere and is a safe and trusted store) uses the highest quality vinyl materials. In fact, you can easily remove a decal at any time and it will come off in a few seconds without leaving any marks behind.

Whether you are buying a decal for that special princess in your life, or your father who collects Star Wars memorabilia, a Macbook decal is the perfect gift. Here are a few of my favorite designs. You can browse on over to thedecalguru.com to find one that fits your personal style.

Like It:

Ecommerce Web Hosting

Posted on February 21, 2012 by admin

In order to successfully operate an ecommerce site you need at webhost that supports ecommerce. Some web host specialize in ecommerce and offer ecommerce software and/or ecommerce website builder in your control panel.

Not all web host are set up for ecommerce, you should make sure that you have access to the php.ini file so you can change settings for image size, global settings and for safe php, which depending on your shopping cart may need to be on or off.

Shell access if also important so that you can you can modify your site’s settings to make it fast loading and Google friendly.

Ecommerce web design is also important, the look and feel of your site and shopping cart will make a difference as to whether customers trust you, and can easily navigate your site to find products and complete the sales transaction.

Doing shopping cart testing for ease of understanding instructions and accuracy of calculating total due and sales tax is very important. You will also need to decide if you are going to set up merchant account to take credit cards or just use services like PayPal or Google checkout.

Taking time to plan you ecommerce site will pay off as well efforts to find the best web host for your ecommerce site.

Like It:

RSS Feed

Advice and Info

Blogging Coach

A Non techie's guide to Wordpress

Marketing your WordPress Blog 1-2-3

A Basic Guide to Using WordPress

Creating Stock Photography

1) Use a quality camera

2) Focus

3) Lighting

4) Shoot multiple angles and perspectives

5) Experiment, track, and learn

6) Know your keywords before you shoot

How to edit photos on android phones?

Top 3 Photo editing apps for android:

Guide To Backup The Database Of A WordPress Site

Create Ways to Sell On the Web

The Best Gift to Buy an Apple or Mac Fan

Ecommerce Web Hosting

Advice and Info

1) Use a quality camera

2) Focus

3) Lighting

4) Shoot multiple angles and perspectives

5) Experiment, track, and learn

6) Know your keywords before you shoot

Top 3 Photo editing apps for android:

Advice and Info