There are certain applications on your site that you can and really should pass on to a third party to manage. By doing this you prevent unnecessary calls  on your server making the use of bandwidth that your site is taking a whole lot smaller and therefore faster as the server doesn’t get overloaded. It is something doesn’t think about until your server demands that you pay more as you are causing heavy loads. If your site becomes very popular these bandwidths increase exponentially. While that is fine in some ways in others its not. If your bandwidth is causing blockages it means that it will also be far slower loading.  So consider off loading some items that are actually both taking up too much of your time and your bandwidth.

RSS Feed

For example are you doing your own RSS feed? Rather hand it over to one of the services that specialize in this like Feedburner. This is a Google owned product which has recently been taken over by them and is a good way of saving your site from constant call by places like technorati where they are constantly looking for update. Google will know when you have updated your blog because there is an automated ping from WordPress so they will check and update.  It all then works together as the feed doesn’t come off your site except for the Google draw. This is then sent to you Rss list via Googles servers.

This is one that works on dynamic pages.  Most of the smaller ones work on static pages.

It is the better of the feeds and the one I would say would probably be best suited to your blog as it is well integrated with WordPress.

Site Search

Rather than use your own site search plug-in or panel ship it out to one of the search engines Google has provided you with the means to use their code to do a blog search with the insertion of an API key. You will need to join Google to obtain this but that is simple and if you already have a Google account you can use that to log in.

Yahoo has a similar search facility called Boss which works in much the same way. The difference is it doesn’t display ads and it is far better integrated into your blog. This is the one I personally would go for.

If you are using a lot of jQuery tools for things like slideshows and other Ajax features it would be advisable to make use of the Google Ajax Libraries API. Slideshows and other items that are run by the jQuery and other similar tools draw a lot off your site.  Google uses a network to distribute content and as a result the closest place to the person requesting the data will spring into use. This not only saves the load on your server but it will be a whole lot fast for the user.

There you have lightened your load quite a lot from your server.

Google does give a lot of items to you to use to boost your ratings and to keep you stats that are so necessary for all of us. It’s pretty easy for them to do. They have all the stats at their fingertips as they keep track of all the websites on a continual basis. Once must remember that by the time they give them out most of those stats are a day or more old.  The great thing is that from a very small selection of apps Google has finally decided to release a whole lot more as well as the ability to add third party applications. This means that you have a far bigger range than every before.

First of the apps is Google Apps Market Place

This is a selection of various applications you can use with Google. Some are free some have a limited timeline for the free sample and some are paid applications. There are so many different kinds available you would need to look to see what fit your needs.  The first thing you need to do is to sign up with your new blog or website.  This enables you to obtain up to 50 applications for the cost of “free”.

I looked through the selection and chose a few that I thought would be a good idea for you.

First was the Accounting area

We all need to keep track of our expenses and our receipts and there are several packages available.
Freshbooks is free if you have only 3 clients you need to keep track of, after which it costs $19.95 a month.

Brightpearl is their latest application which basically covers the full gamut of what is needed. It costs $30 a month for the USA model although the ecommerce model is $95 a month.

You can basically do your book keeping on this software which is held on line and to which all your personal appear to have access.  I don’t know whether I like that idea or not. Seems to me it might be too easy to hack although I am sure they have thought of that.

Implementation of Google apps on your website

If you are struggling to implement all the applications from Google on your website there is help out there. By clicking into this section you will find several firms around the net that are all willing to supply assistance.

If you need an application Customized for your use

Often times we have a problem finding the exact program we need for our special site. There are several website available that will customize applications to suit our needs.

When you are implement a project you need a way to manage it

When you are busy with a project you need to keep tabs on who is doing what. You are the one who is holding all the reins and you daren’t let on go loose or you will have chaos. To keep track of everything there are several programs that will help you and help is available on this list.

Hope that helped you a bit

Once you have worked out all the kinks of your website and got it up and working its important to let the world know its there. To do this we need to have it listed on search engines. As Google owns the major proportion of search engine traffic with a whopping 83 percent we will concentrate on getting it on Google. Yahoo has a 3% plus rating with Bing coming a little way behind that. Those were the figures the last time I looked.

The main item is to get on to Google and there are a few ways you can do this.

In the older days like two years ago you could do a submission to Google and eventually you would be added. But if you want to get on quickly and most of us do what you really need is a few good back links. This is actually very simple to do if you know a few good websites with blogs or if you have any articles you can submit to one of the article ezines. Article ezines will usually allow you to put your URL in as a place to link to and get more info. These sites are favored by places like Google because they give good contents. Places like Newspapers, good magazines, TV, .edu sites and what are normally called Authority websites that have blogs and allow you to put your URL in, are excellent places to get you on Google in no time flat. Spiders crawl these sites for new information regularly and will immediately pick up any URL that isn’t listed with them and include it. Just remember to do your links slowly in a natural manner. Any site that suddenly has 100 links where there were none before will immediately go on a suspect list. Link building is hard work and if you manage to get 10 or 15 in a week you will be doing well and will be on Google.

Do not go to link farms. These farms which send out links left right and center will get you in the bad books very quickly. They sound good and might get you a few for a while but what goes up quickly comes down with a wallop.

Web directors are a good option. This will eventually make Google find you but it wont get you traffic. But then the name of this game is to get Google to find you. Articles and back links which come in to you are the best way as this puts you up in the search engine ranks.

If you can get 10 authority back links a week you will soon be on the top rungs of the Google slippery sliding ladder. If you have a good and funny video, which you can put on to YouTube with your link to your website you will soon be found. That you can Twitter about and laugh with your friends about and it will link you in a very short time. This is especially true if you can get a few others to link to the video too.

You can include your link on Twitter and on Facebook as well as any other forum or membership site you belong to.
Give yourself three or four days and then check if you are listed on Google yet.

Log in to the Google search and type in your domain name without the http or the www. You can type site: before it and see what comes up.
You should see your main page get listed. If you do you are on Google.

That’s the beginning of your work. Now keep getting links and grow higher on the search engine ranking.

Top of the morning to you all, isn’t it a excellent day? I got an email yesterday to give me great news. My daughter and grand daughter are coming for a visit! Not a long one unfortunately. It’s only for a week. However, I really enjoy their visits. That little minx’s Megan can twist me around her little finger. Don’t tell her I said that, or I will have no peace. Her mother says I spoil her. Well maybe I do. However, she really is a light in my life. Not that I don’t love my daughter mind, and she knows it. However, that little charmer really can do no wrong in my eyes. We will see the mischief she can get up to in these few days. She always does. So I am really plugged into what she will be going to do. On that subject let us discuss if you have got the plug-ins that are really essential to your well being on WordPress.

1. Do you have the All in One?

WordPress has a very good SEO Plug-in which I recommend that you download and start using right away. This makes you ready for those little spiders that come along from the search engines. You want to be found don’t you? You need both found but to climb the rankings as fast as possible to make you appear on the front page when some places a search for the subject you were looking for. Statistics show that the first ranked site gets most of the clicks. And if you don’t appear on the first page instead of getting many visits you might get one to three million. I know there are millions of searches a day, but you want your pearls of wisdom to appear on someone’s screen.

2. Dynamic or Static?

You really need to turn your web pages static rather than letting them stay dynamic. So many more people will be able to real them and load them faster. For this you will need WordPress Super Cache plug-in.

3. Google Your Website

With the percentage of people who use Google as their search engine, (It was 83% overall when I last looked.) Google has taken control of the web. It would be foolish to dismiss this and not make your website Google happy. Give them a sitemap. They use this to search through your blog to pick up topics of interest and place them on the web. It is very important for your visibility on the internet to have those spiders crawl through, and you want the free access to lead from one page to the other and back again with easy. They also need to know when a new comment is made so they can return and check this for fresh content.

4. Are Your Comments, Spam?

You do not want to appear to be making comments that are spam. No sensible person would. This plug-in check to see if the comments you make to see if they appear as if they are spam. This will check through your comments and tell you the result.

5. Do You Keep A Copy?

Keeping a backup of your work is extremely important if you want to retain all your hard labour. Image if one morning you came along and discovered the site had been hacked, and all your hard labour was gone? It would take you hours to replace it if not days. It all disappeared with some mean person just to play games with you. We don’t want that, so we need to make backups.

Well, folks the garden is calling, so I will leave you to get busy downloading and setting those up, if you haven’t already. I will be back…..

Great sunshine day here today and I am watching the grass grow. Shall I just pave over it? That might be an idea. No more mowing. That grass is the bane of my life. Either it needs watering or turns brown or when I water, I have to mow. Maybe I should move to a place where they do it for you, except, I don’t like to be crowded by a lot of other people. I guess I will just hire a garden service or call the kid again. Well, my lawn problems aside I have some interesting extensions for you by way of plug-ins for WordPress. We all know that the basic principle of WordPress is great straight from the box but by using a few little additions in the form of Plug-ins we can turn it into a whole new world. Let’s take a look at five of them here.

1. Making Great Titles

You know the way the titles in WordPress are not all that inspiring? You also don’t quite know what the people on the other side are going to be seeing. Well there’s an interesting plug-in called TTFTitles. They have a clever way of getting round the business of font changes by allowing you to use images instead. Do not, however, forget to give the images full tags or the spiders will not read your headings. You get images of the fonts you want and use those in place of your titles. There is an admin Interface where you can find and change things according to what you want to see with different styles and fonts. Color of course comes into the section on styles. It’s well worth investigating this one.

2.  Arrange Your Type Simply

The next plug-in has a big word for its title, but it simply means it arranges your type simply and gives you all the point sizes, line spacing, etc. that you require to make it look good. It is called wp-Typography The feed back for any issues with this plug-in seem to be good so if you do have any problems you will get help.

3. Fancy Caps

This next plug-in gives you the ability to make fancy capital letters for the start of your sentences. You can do things like shadows on your capitals, etc. It just gives you a bit of difference to the standard text you see all over. I was impressed with the rendering of the shadow and how much difference it made overall to the text. It really does make the difference to a blog. I might even look professional in the end. You can download it from Drop Caps Plugin. It has a large variety of available texts you can use. The one thing I really like about the plug-in download is that they are basically instant.

4. If you Quote

If you are someone who likes to quote others this little plug in is for you. It enables you to insert quotes easily and at the click of a button. Available from Simple Pull Quotes. You might like to try it out.

5. Google syntax or is that sin tax?

This little plug –in helps you with your Google syntax, which is always useful. You know those little code bits that you need well this highlights them giving them to you in screenshots. Might be worth your while to take a look and see if it is useful to you.

I will be back:  Shades of Zoro. I am about to go look and watch the grass grow.

Today folks, I am going to let you into a little secret. It’s rather an open secret, but if you are new to WordPress, you might not know. WordPress works far better if you use some of the plug-ins. In fact some are essential to its working. Now one would have thought they would all just automatically be included certainly in any upgrades they made but no that isn’t the case. Of course they are giving you personal preference but most of these just make perfect sense. Let’s take a look at 5 choices today.

My first choice

One thing I truly hate is all the stupid spam mail that gets sent if you are ever foolish enough to put your email address into literally anything on the internet. Even those sites that tell you “you are quite safe here we don’t sell your email,” are guilty. Put any email address into one of those and within two minutes spam will appear. For a start they aren’t on https servers.
So we need the anti spam Plug-in. This plug-in checks the comments on your blog to see if it could be spam or not and catches it before it posts, so you don’t get those annoying adverts for unmentionables being posted.

Analyze It

Everyone wants to know how, where, when or who comes to their website or blog and Google will tell you.  Makes you wonder the way they creep into your computer doesn’t it. Well they help you with this little Plug -in which tells you a lot of those things. Of course you do have to register your account with Google to do it. You need to add it to each page of your website for that page to show up but its quick and easy to do.

Make Money

Well in this day and age all the little bits add up. And it makes sense to many people to add the adverts from both Google and Yahoo to their pages in the hopes that someone might click on them. Personally, having been on both sides of that coin, I seldom ever click on them but there must be millions that do. What Google and Yahoo do is analyze your page and post items on it that are relevant to what the blog is about. This way, the people reading the blog might be tempted into going to see what that particular advert is about. The people who are advertising in turn pay Google or Yahoo for placing their adverts. If you buy from them they earn money, but either way they pay for placement of the advert.

Your own RSS feedd

RSS feed is all the rage. It keeps your topics up to date. And this is done without any real effort from you. This can be done with a plug-in from WordPress. As it works by sending your feed out to people have joined your RSS feed they are kept up to date the minute you post anything on your blog.
WordPress gives you the necessary plug-in to do this and you can download it here.

Last but not Least for the day

The secret to blogging is sharing. And the best bloggers know this. And to share you need this plug-in that shares saves and bookmarks all in one.
You can then book mark any of your sites with your button. Get one here where you download your plug-in and start sharing.
I will have more Plug-in’s to share with you shortly. Look out for them.