WP Premium WordPress Theme 2 and 3 Split Column

January 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

WP Premier Theme

The WP Premium theme is a split 3 column theme. In otherwords the right side column is one column on the top half and splits into two columns below. The theme is bundled with three colors: brown, black, and soft red. The soft red is pictured above. Changing the color scheme is as easy as opening the style.css and changing the color style name to the one you prefer. Instructions are in rthe eadme.txt file in the theme folder. The WP Premium theme contains separate css for layout and color. I like having separate css because looking through a huge list of styles is not my favorite task!

R. Bhavesh of WP Remix is the creator of this fabulous WordPress theme.

The WP Premier WordPress themes is full of cool features!

  • 3 color schemes
  • Separate css for layout and color.
  • Multiple Search option with Tabber Functionality
  • RSS e-mail subscription form
  • 2 and 3 Column sidebar
  • Three 100 x 100 pixel ad blocks in sidebar.
  • Easy Editable, Light weight, Strategic Code
  • SEO Optimized
  • W3C Valid
  • Table Less Coded
  • Optimized XHTML code
  • Short Hand CSS
  • FREE!

Demo

Download

I like the versatility of the split column. The theme does not limit you to a smaller column width for the length of the column, just the lower half.  I like the text menu buttons across the top, below the header. It’s a nice touch. 

The wider top part of the column is not in a widget so you’ll need to know how to make changes to the “Sidebar Featured” PHP file. If you do not know how to work in the PHP file, find a friend who can help.

I am not sure if I “love” the tabber functionality in the upper part of the column. The  Search, Categories, and Archives are part of the tab function. My philosophy is “out of sight, out of mind.” For example, will anyone bother to click on the tabs to view the Categories? Or does everything need to be neatly laid out in the column in plain sight?

Overall, the WP Premier is a nice-looking, feature filled WordPress theme that anyone should be proud to show off their blog!

Filed Under: 2-Column Wordpress, 3 Column Wordpress, Wordpress Themes Tagged With: , , , ,

Nine WordPress Plugins That You Need for Your Blog

January 10, 2008 By 4 Comments

Wordpress Plugins

WordPress is the ultimate blogging software. There are hundreds of WordPress Plugin tools available to make your WordPress blogging experience smoother, better, and really cool. Head over to the WordPress plugin respository and have a look around – so many plugins to choose from! If you are just getting started with blogging, and not sure which blog platform to use, read my article. “Get Your Own Domain Name and Host for Blogging“.Here are nine WordPress plugins to drop-in and start using to maximize your blogging experience for both you and your readers:

Akismet – the ultimate spam killer
Akismet is a default, preinstalled WordPress plugin. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.  Youll need an API key. Get a free one by heading over to WordPress.com and signing up for an account. Have you ever been excited to see comments in your Moderation queue only to find they were all spam!

Daiko’s YouTube Video Widget
This super cool YouTube Video plugin adds a sidebar widget to display random YouTube videos of your own choice. Make your own videolist in the widget-control-panel and  add your favorite tag(s), user(s). It’s easy to set up and gives your readers something to do in case they get bored. The YouTube video widget is also  great way to share your favorite YouTube videos with your readers. You can view in the sidebar.

Recent Comments
The Recent Comments plugin shows  excerpts of the most recent comments and / or trackbacks posted to the articles in your blog. This is a great way to increase readership and page views on your blog. It is part of WordPress already, so use it!

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
The Internet is all about community and communicating so it makes sense that you should provide a way for people in the blogosphere to contact you. The Secure & Accessible contact form is designed to make contacting you from your website easy, accessible, and secure. It will definitely deter spam emails from arriving in your mail box! It’s super easy to install too – a must have WordPress plugin.

Digg This
The Digg This WordPress plugin detects incoming links from Digg.com to your WordPress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post. Then, people can easily digg your story. When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the blog administrator. The detection is based on the referrer URL, which has to come from digg. Not sure what Digg is? Head over to my article, “Eleven Awesome Social Bookmarking Site” and start digging!

Google (XML) Sitemap Generator for WordPress
This Google Sitemap plugin generates an XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO, and MSN Search. Wondering what a sitemap is and why you need it? Head over to Sitemaps.org. Be sure to check out Google Webmaster Tools as well. The Google Sitemap tools are great for knowing exactly where you stand with Google search.

Wasabi Related Posts
The Related Posts plugin will display a series of “related” entries (based on keyword matching) for an individual blog article. The Related Posts plugin is yet another great tool to keep readers on your site and gain even more exposure to more article. Increased pageviews for you! 

WordPress Database Backup
Yes, you need to backup your WordPress database! What would happen if some huge Web server crash destroyed your entire database and all known backups? With this plugin, you will still have a backup of your WordPress blog! You can have the backup file emailed to you or download on the spot for convenience. The Database Backup plugin is preinstalled with WordPress, so use it!

Adsense Deluxe
If you are a fan of Adsense then you need the Adsense Deluxe plugin for WordPress. AdSense-Deluxe provides advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.

What’s your favorite plugin?

Filed Under: Blog, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin Tagged With: , , , ,

Eleven Awesome Social Bookmarking Sites

January 8, 2008 By 1 Comment

Social bookmarking sites

Web 2.0 is a term that has been thrown around a lot lately. What is Web 2.0? Simply put, it refers to this ongoing transition of the Internet, often characterized as the second generation of the Web. The Web is morphing into an “always on” environment, bursting at the seams with creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. It includes a plethora of new technologies that enable you and me to commune in this place that we have come to know and love: the Internet.

With that in mind, here are eleven social bookmarking sites you should make a point of using. With social bookmarking sites, you can save your favorite bookmarks and then share them with others within a particular network. Tagging and categories allows other users of the same social bookmarking communities to find your bookmarks, visit those sites, and vote sites up or down!

You will, of course, need to register on each individual social bookmarking site in order to submit blog links and articles.

With social bookmarking, you have the potential to get a lot of traffic and attention!

Digg: get your site listed on Digg, and through sharing and voting, you may even make the homepage and get lots of attention!  Be prepared to pay for all that extra bandwidth from your Web service provider.
Alexa Rank = 135 

Technorati: Blog search engine that tracks over 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media (don’t get lost in the crowd!) Seriously, Technorati is an authority on what is happening on Web in real time. Always on, always updated! When I launched my blog, Technorati was on the case within 24 hours!
Alexa Rank = 383

del.icio.us: store your favorites of anything on the Web and share with the del.icio.us community.
Alexa Rank = 378

StumbleUpon: discover and share websites. StumbleUpon uses rating to form collaborative opinions on Website quality. If a popular “Stumbler” stumbles across your website and likes it, watch out! You’ll end up with hundreds, even thousands of visitors. This happened recently to a blogging buddy of mine, whose visitors increased to over 500 visitors per day – up from 20. All it takes is one Stumbler!
Alexa Rank = 294

Propeller: part of the AOL Network (Time-Warner company.) Submit stories and get votes from other members!
Alexa Rank = 1647

Reddit: Another source for what’s new and popular on the web. Vote submitted links up or down.
Alexa Rank = 1046

Slashdot: Slashdot is owned by SourceForge, Inc. Slashdot is for geeks. If you are one, head over to Slashdot and submit some good content.
Alexa Rank = 1041

Blinklist: I haven’t used this one. If you have, leave a comment. You can make lists and share, have them appear in your links on your blog.
Alexa Rank = 5431

Fark: An interesting news aggregator and collection of edited social networking news. Their slogan is, “It’s Not News, It’s Fark”. Head on over and join in the fun.
Alexa Rank = 2528

Newsvine: Now owned by MSNBC.com. Newsvine is a great place to read stories from established media organizations like the Associated Press and ESPN as well as individual contributors from all around the world. So the little people, like us, can publish our stories and get them read by the masses too!
Alexa Rank = 5854

Furl: Furl is part of the LookSmart family. Furl archives a personal copy of every page you save. When you want to recall it, you can find it instantly by searching the full text your archived items. Each member has a personal archive of 5 gigabytes (GB), large enough to store tens of thousands of searchable items.
Alexa Rank = 5662

Have you used social bookmarking to boost your Blog traffic?  What’s your glory story?

Filed Under: Blog, Social Bookmarking, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Morning After – WordPress Magazine Theme 3 Column

January 6, 2008 By 5 Comments

themorningafter.png

The Morning After is a WordPress magazine style theme with 3 columns. The two smaller columns sit to the right. The Morning After theme is clean, well-organized, and simply coloured   This magazine style WordPress has the following features:

  • A three-column home page
  • “Featured” post highlighting
  • Associating images/thumbnails with recent posts
  • Customisable logo/header image
  • Easy CSS classes for adding captions and wrapping text around images in posts
  • Asides
  • Option for readers to email posts to friends
  • Option to switch to a print-friendly view to print posts

The author of The Morning After WordPress theme also includes these plug-ins with the download:

The author, Arun Kale, includes instructions on installation and how-to’s about various usage and customization of The Morning After theme. He even has a forum you can visit in case you need more support.

Demo

Download

All in all, this WordPress theme gets a big thumbs up from me! I love the magazine style themes! So why don’t I use one on this site? I plan to install one this week although it’s been hard to pick one … they are all so fantastic! Which one do you like?

Stay Tune’d!

Filed Under: 3 Column Wordpress, Wordpress Magazine Theme, Wordpress Themes Tagged With: , , , ,

Structure Magazine Style WordPress Theme – Tabbed Columns – Free

January 4, 2008 By 2 Comments

Structure WordPress Magazine Theme

Structure is a nice, clean looking WordPress theme using the up and coming news / magazine style create by Justin Tadlock (thank you!).  This magazine style WordPress theme uses content blocks that you can easily place anywhere on the page. There is also a spot for a video, which comes in handy.

This WordPress theme allows you to display feature articles, has feed integration, and flickr URL integration. It is customizable and uses widgets, making it easy to move stuff around.

You can choose from two different home page styles: the magazine style or the traditional blog style. Whichever you choose, the design is clean with nice colors that are easy on the eyes. 

Compatible with WordPress 2.3+.

I like this theme a lot which is why it’s included in this blog. The magazine style themes are a departure from the traditional looking blogs and add a nice creative element to a blog. I am not a big fan of the blog home page that goes on and on forever, I prefer to see snippets of various articles that I can choose from.

Demo

Download

Filed Under: 2-Column Wordpress, Wordpress Magazine Theme, Wordpress Themes Tagged With: , , , ,

Build a Niche Store 30-Day Challenge

January 1, 2008 By 3 Comments

Build a Niche Store has become a fast growing money maker in the last year. I heard and read so much about it that I just couldn’t resist the temptation to try it out for myself. I have been a “traditional” affiliate marketer since 1998 – creating websites with content that I wrote about products I like and adding affililate links manually.

The more I read about “Creating Niche Stores“, the more intriguing the idea became to me. With the promise of a simple 5-step system, I decided to give it a try.

BANS (Build A Niche Store) is a website builder that enables you to create a network of traffic pulling, money making niche websites focused around the eBay affiliate opportunity.

The claim of Build a Niche Store is simple:

  • Choose your niche
  • Build and develop your site
  • Promote
  • Make money
  • Repeat

So today, the first day of 2008, I purchased “Create a Niche Store“. For starters, I downloaded the necessary files and  printed the 70-page manual, which so far, clearly outlines How to Build a Niche Store.

I plan to follow the instructions to a “T” and see what happens within 30 days. Is Create a Niche Store everything it promises to be? More importantly, will I make money?

Until then, the Niche Store challenge is on. It could be the perfect answer for me since I have many domains just sitting around waiting to be filled with affiliate links. My first Niche Store test is with a UK domain that is not profitable anymore. I won’t be revealing the domain name during my self-imposed 30-day challenge because it wouldn’t be a fair test of how well the Niche Store idea works.

Stay TUNE’d for the next exciting episode of my Create a Niche Store 30-Day Challenge. AND, if anything spectacular happens before my 30-days is up, I will certainly let you know.

Ta-ta For Now!

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blog Profits, Niche Store Challenge Tagged With: , , ,
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