I was scrolling and strolling around the internet just viewing various blogs with an overview of the designs and in particular, looking at the inventive footer notes some sites have. Several had absolutely no footer at all which surprised me. Not a scrap about privacy or the legal stuff or even a contact section.

It surprised me in two aspects, one why are they even there if they don’t want people to know about them and two the fact that they have got on to the net and put a website, blog up, but know nothing about the laws of the world.  Most of the time these items appear in the footer, although the footers have got more inventive over time and host a great deal more nowadays.

The fact remains, they need to have them somewhere. I looked at the footers to try to check out the nicest ones I had seen.

I am going to share a couple with you and hope they stay up long enough for you to enjoy too.

Spoongraphics

Created and written by Chris Spooner this British site has an interesting footer in that he has created three separate graphic behind the three columns each with a paper feel but with an interesting touch in design. I sat looking at it for a while trying to figure out how he did it.  He writes about Photoshop stuff most of the time and also does tutorials on digital stuff. Interesting website all round. Thanks Chris for the views and ideas.

Bcandulo

I found this an interesting use of footer.  The normal information isn’t given here but what they have done is make this into a very clever use of a contact form.  Brad Candullo gives his contact info plus a way of contacting him using a contact form and a full resume for download. It was a very clever way of doing a whole lot in a little space.

Web Designer Wall

I really enjoyed the way Nick La had set this footer out. The writing on the top gave it an intimate touch. He set it out in a three part and the first two had that intimate look I mention while the third one was a no nonsense straight forward message about who he is and what he does. It is all backed with a background image that gives a light touch to it. Very well done Nick!

Sam Rayner

Sam Rayner is a young designer in Britain, and he has some interesting ideas. The footer he has used is a sort of add on to the page but in a blended color format. It is in actual fact a five part add on, but it gives the appearance of being in three parts. It shows another link to his portfolio, which is situated next to a vertical link to recent projects. Then comes a link to his Amazon monetize link with a second vertical link to items he considers worth checking and more of the books from Amazon taking the last space.

Most people use wordpress.com for their blog and leave it at that. But there are ways to expand the use of this free hosted blog. When you have set up your blog and been running a while you might want to change your type of blog around to reflect a different way of working. You have the choice of moving you pages around and starting with a static page which is then your opening home page.

Select a theme for your site from the themes available on WordPress.com. You can not import a theme but must use one of the themes on WordPress. This being said you can alter the theme to suit you by changing the photo etc as well as the script used. You can also upload your logo. When you are choosing a theme, be sure to choose one that has a top bar menu. The picture you use should be one that you can associate with your company. The same picture will appear on all the pages.

Create a circle of pages around that such as you contact info as well as the “about page”.

All the normal things you would find on a website. Remember to do the contact page with all your business contact info on it but use a contact form. This will prevent a lot of spam appearing.

Your about page will of course reflect what your company does and info such as who the CEO is and the whereabouts of the company.

Tell the public who the main people are in your company and what they do.

Tell your visitors what kinds of products you sell or what services you supply.

If you are in more than one country or state it’s an idea to tell people in order that they know where they might find you. You might have a satellite company in another country that has another name but this is where to tell people that you are connected.
Your navigation bar on top should not have more than 5 or 6 links to pages so try to keep the number down. These linked pages can have additional pages to expand on the info such as what products. You can have a page for each product. Try to keep it as simple as possible. You don’t want people getting lost in the number of pages. Once you have completed all the pages you need to ensure that you have the navigation properly in place by means of a site index in the top bar.

Remember to keep lots of white space around your info. It needs to look clean and uncluttered.

You have the ability to add Google Aps to your Blog now and this is advisable to do. This enables you to do many new things with your blog.
Make sure Google hears about your site and the best way of doing this is to post to other blogs. Do not spam but use other blogs that allow you to leave your www. on their site to let Technorati to pick you up. In the old days you could submit your site to Google and they would eventually get around to picking you up but that doesn’t work too well anymore. By using blogs it means their spiders that crawl round blogs all the time will find you faster. If you also ping the blog when you make the post this will be picked up and they will come to see what was posted.  Make it a good well thought out post.

I am moving the furniture today. It must be spring no matter what the weather is. Well let’s face it; it must be spring or early summer somewhere in the world. Even if it’s autumn outside, it’s going to be spring for WordPress. I want to do some furniture shifting. You know the good old adage. A change is as good as a holiday. I would far rather be here than mowing the lawn.  What the heck am I babbling about? Well, by moving things around a bit on WordPress, we can change the whole look of it and give it very different uses. We can take it in a whole new direction and make it more of a website than just a blog. Oh, the blog will still be there, but it will be an accessory to the website rather than the main function.  Think of all the additional uses you can use your pages for. They might be static pages but there’s no reason not to update them regularly. You can develop a whole host of different pages around different subjects. Well, you know, at the end of the day, your blog on WordPress doesn’t have to be the page that’s viewed first or its main function.

Who’s on first? (Set an existing static page as your front page)

That comic Abbot and Costello still makes me laugh 60 years down the line. I think its 60 but I could be wrong.
Simple fact of the matter your blog doesn’t have to appear as the front of your pages. You can take any static page and make that viewable first. Just a little manipulation through the WordPress admin panel is all it takes. Go to the panel and navigate over to the radio box.  Here you will find one of the buttons, which says static page. You should have a drop down menu that shows you all the pages available. Choose one and highlight it. Then save the changes. Voilà! Your front page has changed.

Where’s my blog? (Having a blog on another page)
Well, we moved our front page, but we don’t want to lose the interaction from our blog, so we need to install it elsewhere and tell people where to find it.
We need to change the blog page in a similar fashion to the front page.
Navigate back over to the WordPress admin panel>Reader Settings Page>Posts Page. Select your page and add the information they want displayed such as how many posts are allowed on the page at a time as well as if you want to show syndicated feeds. Click ok and you should have a new blog page. Don’t forget to make sure it now shows as a link on the front page of your WordPress.
Well, we now have a WordPress that’s a whole lot more than just a blog. We can now set about using it to post many things we are interested in and have the blog as an extra where discussion on the subjects takes place.

Blogging is the name of the game folks. You can’t be private any longer. You have to tell the world what you are doing and what you are thinking. Share and share and share again.

Your Weblog or Blog is the IN thing. It’s been around longer than you think 13 years, in fact. However, in the last three, thanks to WordPress, it has become a household institution.
Now if you are thinking of setting up a blog, there are certain key elements you do need to apply if your page is going to turn out correctly and become successful.

Let’s take a look that those.

Be unique

You need to stand out in the crowd. People need to want to come back to you for your original thoughts. If you are just saying the same thing in different words that the public has read on 100 various websites, they won’t stick around, and they won’t come back. You need to be distinctive and have original thoughts. Amazing as it is, they come to learn, and, unless you produce the goods you are just another also ran.

Get noticed

Boring I know but in this day and age Facebook and Twitter are necessary to get noticed. However, you also need look at posting on other blogs with a link back to your blog. If the blog has an area where you can comment, use it. Search on line for places with blogs relevant to the subject matter you intend concentrating on and make relevant and interesting comments on the bloggers’ post. Use this to also gain back links. Yes folks, SEO although it seems silly, is appropriate and back links is a good way to go. The higher the website or blog is in the rankings the better a one way back link will be for you. If you don’t want to be known that it is you, and you live at such and such, then create a non de plume from the start. It’s actually a good idea as the internet stalking can be very real and can be dangerous. If you are going to have a non de plume, make the same one for all the websites. Keep consistent.

Hashtags

Hashtags are part of the Twitter community and the # symbol in front of the means being part of a “grouping”. It’s a tracking device on Twitter, which follows keywords for following a particular subject. It can be a useful tool once you have established an identity and subject on this social media site.

Facebook

Create a specialized page on a particular subject matter and get fans. Companies and celebrities are creating more and more of these Pages to tell the world what they are doing. Something must be right about it. It surely keeps someone or two in writing jobs if nothing else. Remember though it can be a huge amount of work, but it’s a good way of interacting with people and getting their constant feedback. People are curious about people. Its one of the reasons celebrities are mobbed and made into super stars. It’s almost like a feeding frenzy. So be prepared.

One of the things I really hate Web Site Hosting is the limited bandwidth. There were times in the past on my hosting accounts are suspended  just because my site uses more bandwidth and server space that was shared of course. So I did a little research on this particular issue, and I found some very good ways to save my bandwidth and space on my blogs. So I’ll share some of the forms here, which will be useful for many.

It is possible to display your WordPress blog on Facebook, and connecting them is not as hard as you may think. There are plugins designed to do exactly that, and with everything social network based, anything that allows you to spread the word can only be a good thing, especially as Facebook applications tend to snowball, and gain more followers.

To integrate the blog you must use the Wordbook plugin, which was developed by John Eckman in 2009. The advantages of using the plugin are clear, as your blog now has two lives, one from the original web page, and one on Facebook.

To set up the connection, you use the above plugin and the Facebook API’s. You will need the following information to connect them.

Root directory of your blog.
Secret – You will receive this from Facebook after registering as a developer
API Key – You will receive this from Facebook after registering as a developer
Wordbook plugin.

Follow these steps to connect the two.

Register as a developer on Facebook, you must already have an existing FB account to do this. Follow this link to register. Once you have agreed the terms and conditions you will receive the following:

Secret

API Key

You will need these later.

You will be asked to submit the “post-authorize call back URL”, and the post-remove call back URL”. In both fields you enter the root directory of your blog with a trailing slash. Effectively, these handle authorizations when a user posts or removes the application.

Next create a canvas page, and enter the root directory with a trailing slash in the “Canvas Call Back URL” field. If you miss the slash, then internal links on your WordPress blog will not work with Facebook.

Under canvas page settings, you are given two options to render the page. iFrame, of FBML. FBML is Facebook’s XML scheme to use Facebook tags such as profiles and so on, and it also access procedures. The Wordbook plugin however, works using iFrame. This option should make the application work a little faster, and only internal links will have to be adjusted on the blog to make them work.

After this is complete install the Wordbook plugin. This installs using the normal WordPress method. If you are unsure how to do this, follow this link.
Once installed you can enter the API key and secret into the relevant fields via the settings panel. You will also need to enter the URL of the canvass page, to enter in the canvass page field. In this field be sure you only enter the name of the blog AND NOT http://apps.facebook.com/. So for my blog I would just enter “Teahon”, and not http://apps.facebook.com/Teahon

The only thing left to do is to choose your options from inside the setting panel on your WordPress blog, and you’re done. Play around a little bit and see what suits you best.

A quick note about privacy on Facebook and how it views websites and blogs. When you link your blog with Facebook, it will view it as another application, and subsequently it will pull through any personal details such as date of birth etc. This is how Facebook creates its social networks. This will also allow the administrator of the blog information about you as a user.

However, by connecting your blog to Facebook, there are possibilities of communities being established around it, and thus with it advertising opportunities you would not normally have had.

In the social networking world, the better connected all your social networking sites are, the better the traffic you generate. In many cases this is the name of the game.

Following on from our previous article, we could not in all conscious leave you without more ways to get the most with RSS feeds. These are extremely handy as you know, and makes it easy for your readership to hang on to every word of wisdom you write. This can only be good, as we know.

Our previous RSS post dealt with how to analyse and track RSS feeds, and how to configure and manipulate them. Though there are several here which can do that, there is also a few that allows you to add different, or additional information to what is shown in your blog, and one which allows an additional feed that you can manipulate.

So here are some more RSS plugins we feel you will find useful. As before, just install the ones you really need, as too many and your blog will be as fast as a Skoda!

RSS Atom Avatar. You can add avatars should you wish to an RSS feed without this plugin, but it is a very hard feat to accomplish, like mountain climbing and printer maintenance.

RSS Footer. This lovely plugin allows you to add a note at the bottom of an RSS Feed, so you can display extra content for subscribers more easily, your copyright, and so on and so fourth.

Special Feed Items. This is handy for drawing attention to a post in an RSS feed. It adds a Unicode heart to a post, so the eye is drawn to it. This does not change anything on your actual site.

RSSupplement. This little ditty lets you add extra information in your WordPress feeds, such as copyright notices, post author credit and sociable buttons. Handy!

Disable RSS allows you to disable the facility. It is aimed at people that use WordPress as a content management system, rather than a blog.

Old Post Promoter, is a clever little gadget that randomly selects an old published post from your site, and republishes it on the RSS feed. So examples of your genius that you thought were lost can reappear as if by magic. It does not work though, if your permalink structure includes dates.

Private RSS. This allows you to send out an additional RSS feed. This is handy for posts you only want a certain number of people to see, or subscribers. Many have used the main RSS feed to provide their readership with an outline for their blog posts, while the additional Private RSS feed, is for their subscribers, and contains full posts.

Soj Tag Feed. This plugin, allows you to create a feed about a specific tag in your blog. So if one of your tags is about “driving” for example, then any posts that fall under that tag are sent in the feed. Pretty good if you think about it.

The concept of RSS (Real Simple Syndication), has added a very nice touch to the world of social media, and WordPress especially. The ability to have access to a blog and indeed many blogs, has been made a whole lot easier through RSS.

It is aspects such as RSS that have made the concept of social media what it is. In essence it is having everything under one roof, that was available previously, just not really called social media.

For this reason it is important that you look out for plugins for features such as RSS, and use them wisely and with care. If chosen correctly, your blog will stand out from the crowd and please your readership.

As we all love social media, we all know that RSS Management though not knew, is a good extra component to make it easier for your readers to follow your genius, and words of wisdom. As the best blogging tool in the world, WordPress, has many options to add, tweak, and generally have fun with RSS Management.

Real Simple Syndication, (RSS), plugins are shown below. These should come in handy to record, track, and make it easy for your readership to hang onto your every inspired word. As a note of caution, just choose the ones that you need rather than what you like the sound of. Too many and the speed your blog moves at, will be comparable to a large political organisation.

Feed Campaign Tagger. This little gem will allow you to track what people are looking at from their RSS feeds from your site. It tracks the links they click on which is how you can determine what they’re up to. With this information you can refine your site for your readership, if you wish.

Feed Subscriber Stats. This plugin enables visitor tracking from the dashboard, rather than looking at the front page of your site. This back office function works via feedburner. It in essence, it gives you that little bit more information which means you don’t have to switch between screens.

Feedage Tracker provides buttons which enable people to subscribe to your site. Of course if they do not like your site, they wont press the buttons. This is a nice idea none the less, and it also provides subscriber stats as well.

Feedstats. This baby provides all sorts of useful RSS stats, and you can configure them to, to make the information provided more relevant. How many people are subscribing, what pages they’re visiting, and time on site are a few options you may find useful.

RSS Link Tagger. This plugin makes your RSS feed compatible with Google Analytics, which obviously means that all the Google Analytic toys are there to be seen.

RSS Image. This plugin effectively replaces the “align” tag which was removed by WordPress to bring it into line with web standards. This is handy for aligning pictures in your blog, as it makes it so much more easier, and keeps a lot of hair on your head.

This plugin allows you to make it easier for readers to access certain pages or categories of your blog. So now category pages, tag pages, search pages, author pages, and comment feeds for single articles and pages, are at the fingertips of your users.

Feed Comments Number will display the number of comments in a post as an image rather than text. This can be preferable to standard text as it dynamically updates faster in the feed. It simply displays “Add a comment”, if there is none.

Media RSS, as the name suggests is all things media related to your RSS. In effect it means you can add various types of media in your RSS feed, like video for example.

These handy little tweaks and plugins for RSS will make your blog more accessible and more easily manipulated for the reading pleasure of your readership. This not only makes your WordPress blog easier to use, but it also makes it more appealing to your readership, because in essence, you have made it easy for them to read the blog.

RSS is being used more and more by people to access blogs, so it is something you should be at least thinking about, if not looking into. Anything that enhances your blog has to be good.

It is no secret that WordPress and other blogging tools have brought a new dimension of usage to the world wide web. Together with social networking, the blog personifies web 2.0 in concept and design. It is not however, just a mere tool for bringing information to the world, but a way of attracting, and promoting your website.

How a blog pushes your website, is a little up to you, but the general idea is that by generating traffic through the content in your blog, will ultimately bring traffic to other parts of your website too. This lovely knock-on effect, means that if you are selling goods or services, you are bringing them to the attention of a wider audience, and this, as we all know, means more sales.

This gives the role of a blog an additional dimension, and one that has been recognised by businesses large and small. Especially as the blog lends itself to search engine optimisation very nicely. Constantly updated content that can be configured to repeat certain keywords, as well as an opportunity to populate it without outbound links.

WordPress widgets are available that make your blog, more suitable for indexing by Google, the daddy of all search engines. As you have no doubt deduced, the traffic that comes your way from your already search engine optimised site, needs to further explanation.

As blogging has become a form of social networking, with discussions across thousands of blogs occurring all the time, it is not unknown that your website could have its name on a hundred others in minutes. This technique, which is also known as link baiting, is also a form of search engine optimisation, and has been adopted by many as a way of driving traffic to their website.

The beauty of the blog is that people will read it if it has something to say. People will be put off if it is a little dull, or just an excuse to display advertisements. It is with this in mind that you must understand that the blog will say a lot about your company or organisation, and so the better it is, the better its reputation will become.

This leads us nicely, to branding. It is a great way to promote your brand image, and a great way to reinforce it. As we have just discussed, make sure you use your blog in the way it was intended, as your brand may be damaged if it is not. The results though, if your blog is used well, could have you popping the champagne corks, for many nights to come.

If you think of your blog, as the best way to sell your ideas, share your thoughts, and promote products with clients, or customers, then you will be well guided to getting people to come to your website. This is the perfect way to increase revenue.

The easiest and best blogging tool is WordPress. Many aspects of it are free, and its customization capabilities are second to none. Even if you plan to a use a more sophisticated blog in the future, WordPress is the one to get you started.

How your blog pushes your website is largely up to you. The fact is that the most cases, the most interesting parts of a website, is its blog. Especially for people that work in the same field, or interesting in purchasing a product from you, and therefore they are potential customers. Therefore, arguably the part of the site to focus most on is the blog. If this is right, the rest will take care of itself.

WordPress is a free and open source blog publishing application. It has a template system which includes widgets that can be reorganized. Moreover this can be done without editing the PHP or HTML code. Widgets are a buzzword that has been given to the sidebar chopping plug-in in WordPress themes. Widgets are gadgets or gizmos that can help personalize your WordPress theme, and enable the user to add or rearrange different components without using HTML.

There seems to be a widget revolution that is going around on the internet. Everywhere you look, you are bound to find news widget, stocks widget, RFF feeds widget, content widgets, photo widgets, video player widgets, etc. It is an application that can be put on a blog, social profile or web page which provides visitors user specific and user friendly information, extra functionality and some fun!

They come in a ready to use format and are visually very attractive in the form of graphs, photos, statistics, numbers, pictures or just anything. It is a simple HTML code which is available on the websites that hosts free widgets. You can copy the HTML code and embed it on your web page.

With so many widgets, how can you choose the right widget for your blog? Read further to find out.

The first thing to look out while choosing the right widget for your blog, or web site is customization. If the widget is customizable, it would be able to fit your blog or website. A customizable widget will make sure that the widget will not clash with the layout, design or color of the blog or the web site. Plus you will be able to maintain some symmetry with the content as well. If your chosen widget cannot be customized, it is best to make sure that it fits with your blog or web site, and does not look different.

The next thing that needs to be considered while choosing the right widget is price. If you have price constraints, you are most likely to choose from the thousands of free widgets that are already available on the internet.

It is also important to study the kind of people and their demographics who would be visiting your blog or website. It is best to choose widgets that would be liked by them. Also make sure that your widgets would work with all browsers.

An important factor in choosing the right widget for your blog or web site, would be one that is relevant to your topic and content, and shares the same display and look of your existing blog or web site. While choosing the right widget for your blog, make sure that the widget can add substance to the existing content. For example, you would not like personal photos on a stock or technology website, or a stock sticker on your photography blog. It is also important to decide which out of the 6 standard sizes of widgets should be used.

Finally even though it may be very tempting to put numerous widgets on your website, do not make the mistake to do so. Only add those that you really need and you would really use. Too many widgets on a blog or a web site, could make it confusing and less efficient to use.

A recent research carried out by means of polling states the top 10 widgets on blogs and web pages are:

• Bookmark This
• Email Subscription
• Picture Badge
• Recent Visitor
• Search Blog
• Snapshot widget
• Twitter Update
• Playlist Video Widget
• Web Poll Widget