WordPress becomes the worldwide use publishing platforms these days. Indeed, many individuals find it very interesting because of many features they have, that actually different from the other blogging sites. They are not the typical publishing sites with limited features only.

In fact, it has several styles available that are included in the WordPress setting such as pages, posts and most popular the customizing admin area. Apart from, it has newly updated content management system for keeping all the procedures intact. In fact, WordPress is considered as one of the excellent CMS existing today. It is because they have various features that cater for all types of users, whether you are a publisher, co-authors or average consumer. Moreover, they have systematized graphic interface, which needed for commands. Just like, for instance, in handling several posts, editing and Export feature.

However, the WordPress to some people is difficult if you don’t have any idea on the main features. Furthermore, we are making now this information a lot easier for our valued customer as well as customizing the admin area. This process can be done individually by following diligently the steps below.

Removing Meta Boxes with the use of Editing Pages

Usually, the user interface for editing and making post or pages is commonly used, especially in the Admin area. Sometimes, it is the visible features that you normally see when you open your blog. Although, some considered this clutter and needs to be remove. However, removing this will help you at the same time to download your theme a bit faster.

Moreover, if you don’t need the excerpts field or custom fields, you can either delete them from your site by using accurate snippet code. Usually, the snippet code is remove_meta_box() function. Then again, set all the parameters first before starting a new process. Actually, the first parameter will look like this: meta box’s HTML ID, but this is only the sample feature you want to remove. Apart from, you can use the Web Developer Toolbar if you want to determine your ID feature value in such section in which consisting of <div>. Just, for instance, your Custom ID is #postcustom, therefore, the parameters you’re going to use is postcustom. Then, your second parameter is the page, but actually it can be either of the following: link, post and page. Moreover, you can also delete the trackbacks checkbox and custom field as well as status of the comments.

Deleting Items from the Page Columns and Post

Typically, the WordPress Admin area can display all your content lists by using tables in grid or columns. However, if you change your mind and decided to delete the columns, you can actually do it by using add_filter() WordPress function. In fact, a filter is also functions that are looking for data being call from the source of database.

Customizing your Favorites Dropdown

Actually, favorites can be found at the top most of the Admin area bar as well as the new tasks. Including Comments and New Post, though you can still modify them if you want.

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.

Iphones are part and parcel of our lives nowadays and one wonders what they will come up with next to extend the applications that these phones can do. I read recently that because of these phones the point and click cameras have had a sharp decline in sales. I wonder how many people have turned off the internal tracking and marking of photos in their phones. It is one of the features that is not so good if you have a stalker on line. This can be a very dangerous feature as it documents where you are and pinpoints your whereabouts. Be aware of the fact when you post your photos online. Your whereabouts and your possessions and if you connect it to the fact you are going to be away can all make you a target for burglars.

The first application we are going to look at is Evernote for iPhone

This application allows you to take photos and also record voice notes which you can then recall to refresh your memory. You can of course also write notes. You really need to read you notes that came with the phone to find out about safety.

Omnifocus

This application gives you the ability to keep track of your business with phone touch ease.  You can synchronize all your applications with your phone and your Macs to be able to all work together by using any one of the server applications like Mobile me or a webDav server. You can change the mode in the application with just a tap on the screen. You will need to set these up to suit you but once set up it’s merely a case of a tap. You can even making a map of where you want to do things and it will tell you when you are in the right neighborhood to do something. For instance if you have a shopping list and tap on the phone while close to a shop, it will point out the closest shop for you to do your shopping and give you your shopping list.
It has a full search function where you can search through it for what you need.

Fring

This application allows you to do free video calls and live chat to all types of phones like Nokia, android and other iPhones. It is a new kind of social streaming media with the ability to catch tweets and facebook new updates.  It combines all your social media into one. This might not be a good thing. Make sure you have very good antivirus and a good antispam on the phone.

PixelPipe to make your phone the latest in iTunes

This application links you through iTunes to enable you to download the application. Once you have downloaded it, you can use it to share photos on applications like Flickr and all the other major photo sharing apps including Twitter and WordPress.

Air Sharing

This application allows you to use your iPhone as an External drive. You can move files from your phone to your phone and visa versa. It can be used as a wireless drive to your pc.

As web designers it’s always useful to find new online tools we can use to help us in our work. Often we don’t really have time to browse through sites to find these items and rely on people to point them out to us. There are only so many hours in the day and designing takes a lot of our time and thoughts. Therefore it is all the more important to make note of new tools when they get pointed out to use. Sharing these tips on where to find things is a great way of giving to fellow workers on line.

A few that came fall under my gaze recently that I thought I would point out to you so that you can make use of them too.

Fontstructure

Font structure requires you to have an updated Adobe flash player.  Here you can find a full gallery of fonts. You are required to sign up to use them but it is free and has been sponsored by Font Shop. There is also a Font structure tool which you can use on the site to play round with how you want to show your fonts. It’s rather a neat way of taking a font into a drawing element and editing it to what you want to show.

FromaColor

This is an adobe product. What you can do with this is color your themes and thus create themes as well as share them. There is an online tool which you can use to do this. Again it is a requirement to have Adobe flash installed. I know a lot of people don’t like flash because of the dangers of hacking attacks but most of these sites do require it. Once can always turn it off with your firewall in between times.

Photo Editor on Line

Presented to you by Pixlr this is a pixel editing tool which you can use for photo editing.
Somewhat similar in the way it’s laid out to Photoshop, it performs some of the basic function you would find in Photoshop.  It is one of the many photo editing tools on line.

Color scheme designer

This tool is great for helping you mix and match your colors so that your scheme blends perfectly. All the tools are there just waiting for your experimentation.  You have a color wheel and the pad waiting for you. Adjustments are possible and the presentation can be complete. You can place your colors in blocks of light or dark and mix and match all you want.

Typesetter

This is an online site for you for using various types of font.  All of the standard ones ar there and you can also add your own personal ones. To be honest I can’t say it worked very well for me but then I tend to have a good tool on my pc so maybe I am just fussy.

TypeNavigator

Another font shop tool.  This makes identifying the type you want to use easy. When you see a particular font you like on the web this site makes it easy to get the name and the font. It’s a very useful tool.

A fact of daily life Twitter is often the first thing people do when anything news worthy happens. In fact it was remarked recently that someone was totally horrified to see how many people grabbed for their cell phones to twitter a tragedy instead of going to help. If it’s a sign of the times it’s a sad statement for humanity.

Twitter can be made for more effective for your own use if you do a few tweaks to it.

If you have several friends and people you tweet with about a certain subject use a grouping function so you can easily see tweets on a particular subject. This is a facility that is available and often not used. Create your groups and move the people into groups.

Hashtags # have been talked about a lot recently and making use of them is a good idea either by associating it yourself to a tweet or picking up the one that someone else has already associated it. What this does is associate a keyword tag to a tweet.
You can also auto complete other tweets by using things like the @ to auto complete a word.

Use text links by pointing the receiver at the article rather than providing the URL. This saves considerably on your number of characters used. To do this you need to enable the hyperlink facility.

Couple your tweets with the reply this will give you a way of actually following the conversation. This is what is called threaded tweets.

Now that you have grouped people you can enable group tweets by enabling double@ for a group tweet. This can save you having to tweet a number of people individually about the same subject.

The Hover principle can be used on your twitter as well as your blog by using tooltips.

This is an interface that allows people to see more info about the tweeter by the little info box that attaches to the nic. It’s another way of getting more info far more quickly than to having to log in and view the profile. This helps spread more info about yourself so that you can have an interesting little bio up there that will make people want to follow you and also visit your blog.

You can have twitter feed in your side bar to show not only the replies and Hashtags but all relevant current tweets. By using the right hand sidebar for your tweets you are using one of the eye hotspots of your blog.

Make yourself a tweet page on your blog where you can display all the tweets which have your twitter name. You can even use some of the great ways there are to display them that have been made available by some of the newer plug-ins. It is nice to organize them in a way that will give the reader a thread they can read without having to jump from one area to another. This is a great way to extend your followers especially if people find your quotes and link to them. This will increase your follower base exponentially.

The phone and internet connection seems to be growing at an alarming rate. If you don’t have an iPhone or a Blackberry you are in the dark ages. They forget what damage that they can do but I guess they are here to stay. More and more plug-ins are being developed for these phones as add ons that can improve your phone and internet experiences. The use of these phones to get on line seems to be the latest thing for the net. That said lets get right to showing you what they are. These are all of use to you if you use phone applications in your blogs.

WordPress for Iphone

This application enables you to write posts directly on your phone and upload including photos. This means you can be available for you blog even when you are away from you PC. You get full support for both hosted wordpress as well as the self hosted option.

Another Iphone application. ShapeWriter

This application allows you to send emails using their keyboard as well as store all the needed notes. There are a full series of help notes to teach you how the application works. Top right of the screen is your start point. This enables you to type up your emails. This program soon recognizes the words. A secondary key panel is used for punctuations and other symbols.

Your Twitter phone.

This is an application that enables you to both read and post your tweets direct to you Twitter account. Means you are never far away. People don’t need to even need to realize you are talking from your Iphone.

Jott for your iPhone.

This is a little different to the rest of them as what it does is turn your voiced thoughts into text on your phone for you to send as messages. It is a very good feature for someone who has any difficulty with sight. It also saves you from having to type on those tiny little letters. I always find myself having to back track as I have typed the wrong letter. That can be kind of a pain especially as the screen is so small.

ByLine.

This is a free with ads application or you can pay the $3.99 and have no adverts.  This means you get constant updates on news from both websites and blogs direct to your iPhone. Google has a Reader account which you can subscribe to which is a free product and this will allow these sites to come though to you. These include items like Rss feed as well as Atom feeds. The feed is basically automatic and also allows you to browser while off line. This means that even when out of range on Wi-Fi you can still get the feed.  It will also mean you don’t need to worry about the areas where you are in a no receive area as the news can also be stored in full.
This application is fully integrated with Twitter as well as Instapaper and Read It later.

Every now and again we need to go through our list of plug-ins for WordPress to make sure we have the ones we need. It is a good idea to collect and organize them for ease of use when they are required rather than to have to hunt for them when you need to do a particular thing on your blog. This way you also get familiar with how they work prior to having to the job that requires immediate attention. I recently went through the list and downloaded some that had been updated and some that I hadn’t seen before..

WP-DB-Backup

Backing up WordPress and your data files is always important. With the internet so prone to attack you can never tell when your site might be hit. While we all try for the very best security there are times when something slips through. This is a time when it is vital to have your backups ready. Instead of having to recreate the site from scratch all you have to do is log in and upload your replacement with the backup. I have several different versions of backups and it’s a good idea to do them often. You can even have this one sent to you by email which means you can hold it on yet another server. It’s always important to hold the information in more than one place. Although the chances of being hit in more than one place are remote, one can never be too safe.

Tidy Up

Scripts of your source code can become extremely untidy and unwieldy and it’s a good idea to run Tidy up to clean up your code and make sure its optimized. In addition to uses the Tidy conversion tool from WC3 which means it validates your XHTML.
This automatically does an update of your database with the new clean data.

Form Builder

Forms are a part of the internet life nowadays. It is far easier to have a form on your site than delete 600 spam emails a day. Form Builders enables you to build even really complex forms without knowing how to code. There are even pre-made forms on this that you can use just by changing a few items. There are all sorts of built in sections to prevent people from spamming which is an excellent idea. It can also be used for several different languages. With this plug-in forms are built quickly and easily and cam be easily inserted into your blog. I would recommend you to always use one for your means of contact.

Theme Preview

When you are building a theme it is annoying to keep having to activate it which means it’s live. Wit Preview you can now view it prior to going live. It is an excellent alternative.

WP Debug

WordPress might not have many bugs but when you have one you really need to know what is going on. With this plug-in you can see behind the walls and get to the basics of what is needed to be fixed.

By giving you a small clue to the biggest part of your new life, we are going to take a little look at the innards of WordPress.org. I don’t mind telling you that blogging can take over a big part of your life once you get started.

To start correctly you really need to understand how the basic platform works and what you can find in various sections of the basic program and what you might have to look for in other plug-ins and widgets. WordPress is the ultimate in mix and match.

Let’s look at WordPress from a newcomer’s point of view.
For that we need to have WordPress installed either on your pc at home or on your host on the World Wide Web.

If you want to install it on your own PC you will need to install a server packet on your PC. You can use either Xampp or Wamp as your server on your PC and then install WordPress. You will need to download the WordPress file.

Now you need to install this file on your PC or on the host file. I am going to install on a host server, and I am going to use Hostgator as an example of a host server as that is where I mostly go with domains. It’s inexpensive and it allows you to pay on a monthly basis.

Once you have your hosting account and your domain name, which has been pointed to your servers you need to log into your account. Ok Log into your Host and go to the panel to find the “smiley face” of Fantastic de Luxe in the software services.
Click on it and then go to the left hand side. Find the WordPress link. You are now going to install WordPress on your domain. Next find the domain name and access your domain name data and choose both a password and a name for this.

Remember to make and keep a note of these passwords and names. Do not use the same names for everything but make a special file where you keep all your info. I would also suggest that you either keep these on a remote server as well or write them in your diary offline. This way if your PC crashes you wouldn’t have lost them all. Believe me it happens. Now we need to do the Base configuration. This is where we choose what identity we are going to use in our posts as well as the email id and the domain name of the blog. Once you have that all filled in, click on the install. Send the email for all this info to yourself and one off your pc email address. (That’s a backup).
The install can take a few minutes so be patient. Once it’s installed, we will log in using the name and password we entered earlier. You should land in your dashboard.

Ok set up your dashboard in WordPress now and find the theme you want to add.
Now you need to have an FTP uploader. I use one I purchased called WS_FTP_home but a free one that is available is FileZilla.

Upload your main file for your theme. Go to appearances in the dashboard and click on Add new theme. It will ask you to upload your chosen theme. Upload the zipped file you have downloaded when you choose your theme. Now click on install.
You should now continue installing whatever modifications you want to get into your theme.

When one thinks of WordPress, by and large, the public consider it a little company’s platform to do things easily and without too much trouble but in actual fact you will be extremely surprised to learn that far from being the little person’s blog this platform is used by many quite large corporations for their blogging platform.

Yes the famous companies do blog. And they are learning more and more that blogging pays better than those huge adverts in newspapers and magazines.

Blogging is a medium that the small man and the man in the street tend to pay more attention to as it is not conceived as an advert.  When someone gives you advice in a blog this tends to be more regarded as an advice rather than pushing of a product.

Let us take a look at some of the big guys that are using this platform for their blogging.

Ever Considered where eBay Blogs?

Yes eBay is on WordPress. EBay uses it for EBay Ink, which is situated on http://ebayinkblog.com where you will find both a twitter link and a blog showing you how to set up your eBay selling account. This obviously is a full blown advert, but it works because people trust blogs.

Yahoo also uses WordPress

Yahoo uses its blog to display its company achievements mainly. This is more company oriented than global news, and they use it as such. It’s not the headline news stuff that you will see on the main search engine page. It’s about their internal company achievements and its quite interesting read.

Digg

Yes Digg uses it too. They use it to blog announcements about changes to their programs and things like that. It seems to be done via subscribers.

Ford

Called the Ford Story this blog is about people who have purchased Fords as well as any question people want to ask about Fords. And yes its on WordPress.

Wall Street Journal

The big boys like WordPress that is obvious. It’s so easy for them to set up and monitor by just having on their desktop or on their phones.

Sony

Sony has a blog here too. They call it the Sony makes believe. It has video snippets and the like on it. It is probably aimed more at youngsters and gamers than the older marketeering blogger.

People Magazine

This is an interesting magazine style blog with lots of news on all sorts of subjects. It is obviously aimed at getting you to buy the magazine as it is on the same sort of theme.

Samsung

A basic do gooder site where the company has good things to say about things they are doing as the community service.  Though it is interesting to see what they are doing the actual presentation gives you the impression of let us show you how good we are to everyone. One thing I think they need to remember is to use bigger type. It is difficult for older eyes to read that tiny script even with glasses on.

WordPress as it is downloaded already contains all the basic functions you need to run the platform. It’s a great way of getting yourself online and blogging without the real need to understand a whole lot of tacky stuff like code and various languages. Of course if you do understand a little of it, it is a great help, but it really isn’t a necessity.

We are going to take a look at the basic functions that the WordPress platform offer you in its out of the box setup.  Once you know what is there you will better understand what you might still want to look for in the plug-ins and widgets that are situated on the website of WordPress.org.

Do not make the mistake of thinking these can be used on workpress.com. That is a completely different operation where you are actually using their hosting service rather than using your own domain name and your own host.  The freedom that wordpress.org gives you is the ability to alter and change the themes and abilities that the program can give you.

Functions

The first function we are going to look at is Navigation.
This is the basic navigation of the site. Although this has been built in, there is a new plug-in available which extends this function and allows you to do far more with it.
The Basic function allows you to set up the pages as you wish them to appear. By default they will appear in alphabetical order. Your posts are done by alphabetical order as well. Remember posts and pages are two different things. You can change this by choosing the sort-column item. Here you will probably find 7 different options.

* Post-title – Sort alphabetically (default value)
* Menu-order – Sort by page order
* Post-date – Sort by date of creation
* post-modified – Sort by the time last modified
* ID – Sort by page ID
* Post-author – Sort by the page author ID
* Post-name – Sort alphabetically by post slug
You then have 7 different ways of making the pages order appear.

How you display your info

Called blog info, this shows how your info was input for that particular blog. This is useful if you use the same theme on many different blog sites. It will give you the blog name, the email address and a description of the blog in question.

Next up is the Sites URL

This is one of the functions as well. Here you will find the various URLS that are used for your particular site.  This includes extension like the logo you use as well as any images used. You can obtain the theme’s URL as well in this manner, you would use the Template- URL selection to find this, and it enables the use of the same theme on many sites without worrying about a conflict.

Similarly, you can obtain the RSS feed link and link it in.

Content on your blog

Until you start actually using your blog not much will show, but word press is creating a loop to connect all the different items.  If, for example, you want to show a connection to a different post on a different page jQuery would come into operation. This is your way of connecting the various pages together by creating a category and putting them all together.

You can then display posts by category as well. Should there be any posts you want to exclude from showing you would use the minus sign in front of the id of that post.

A new source of plug-ins for WordPress is always interesting to look at. The ingenuity of developers is a delight to behold. This is no exception I have a collection of new plug-ins that range over the spectrum. This time the range is extremely interesting as we go into areas not often examined.

Language translations

This plug-in gives your blog the opportunity for your visitors to translate your blogs into 52 different languages. Just imagine how many extra people your blog will be able to be read by if all the content gets translated. Its just so interesting when you think about it, most of us write in English but what percentage of isn’t actually English when the most spoken language is I am told Spanish. And that is just a small percentage of the world population and now this plug-in offer’s to translate into their own language automatically. It is available to download from WordPress and works with 3.02

WordPress WPML Multilingual CMS

Similar in operation as the last one but it apparently turns the actual site into a multilingual webpage. This has a full CMS navigation with all sorts of things like sidebars and drop menus.

qTranslate

This is another plug-in for languages which is a little simpler than the previous two. This will translate the site into a completely language translated site and they suggest using a separate URL per language. As you write, so this plug-in translates it. You have some languages already built in. Others are also available.

Indoeurropean

This translates a whole lot more languages and also has a no-follow rule in the code so you don’t loose you page rank. This actually is an important factor. Seems to have good ideas and might be a good way to go for your translation. With the amount of people you are missing in the world by not translating you really do need a plug-in to do translation.

Xili Translation

Another translation plug-in but it is a “on the fly” translator. But the actual theme has to be checked for the languages. You need to make sure your theme is “internationally compatible”

Buddy Press

For this plug-in you need to use WPML API language. It uses this plug-in to perform the actions of the translation and links the plug–in to the language of choice for the searcher. You need to switch the language director on in the in WPML. There is a language switch in the menu bar of Buddy Press.

Transposh

This can be a Buddy Press integration and also translates link Tags and titles.
There are 57 supported languages with this plug-in and it is said to increase your exposure for SEO.

Mlanguage

With this plug-in you need to tag the various languages and then it displays the various language flags. There is a good example of it at Gronmx. The flags can be changed under the options and you can add to and delete various Language tags or even change one to the default one. As yet there is no data on whether or not it works with WordPress 3.02 or not.

I am sure as a new comer to WordPress, you have landed here with all sorts of ideas of what you want to do but quite often no idea how to set about achieving them. I know the first time I saw WordPress I threw up my hands in horror. I was very much an old fashioned person who knew how to use Dreamweaver and load my pages on to a website and the idea of plug-ins was totally foreign. Here we have hundreds of people taking one tiny patch of grass and manicuring it with nail clippers.

The joy of that is that an item is looked at from all sides.  More often than not more than one person has the same idea and two or more different answers come up. This results in us having more than one option to look at to achieve the result we want. There are a few items that really need to go on to the must have list though and when you are new you might not find them easily unless you are pointed in the right direction.

1. I suggest you check out the step by step guide to installing a plug-in. Unless you have done it before you might be like me and hold up your hands in horror.

2. Activate your Akismet Plug-in on WordPress. There is no need to install anything as it is already part of the platform. All you need to do it activate it. This will prevent your blog from being spammed. You will need to go to the site and get your activation key. It is free for personal use and a small charge for businesses.

3. The next is a plug-in which you will need to download and install as per the guide above. This is All in One SEO. This comes in both a free and a pro pack. This optimizes your blog for search engines and is very important. The difference is that there are no adverts with the Pro and it costs $39. It is well worth the cash for the pro version as SEO is one of the most important aspects of any website. If you wish for on going support the costs range for the amounts of months you purchase. For example if you buy a months support you pay $10 but if you buy a years support you pay $49. This is a saving of $71.

4. If you want to keep in contact with people visiting your blog you will require some means of contacting you. For this you will need a contact form. A simple and easy one to use is Contact Form7. This is a free plug-in and has been translated into multiple languages.  It uses the Akismet anti spamming method. You can apply your own needs to the form and place it where you wish on your website blog.  I would suggest you use the above the fold method which all marketers on line recommend. This is one of the hot spots on your page and will get more sign ups. The layout of your page is important as to where viewers’ eyes fall. This is an interesting feature which several websites research.