The Wordpress blogging platform has many strengths, and this is why it is by far the easiest platform to use, and the best. If you are new to Wordpress, there are many options to explore, and after a little use will leave you nodding your head in admiration.

To get the best out of Wordpress, it is essential that you learn about plugins, widgets, and themes. These will enhance your blog both from an aesthetic perspective, and help bring your blog to a wider audience. This way, you will hopefully attract a wider readership.

This being the case, this article deals with the essentials of what you should do to make the blog the best it can be from the beginning.

Theme

We have dedicated whole articles to this very topic, but in essence is about creating a mood. Try and think of it as a feeling rather than an appearance, and obviously the theme should be related to your blog. A music blog for example, may want a theme of a venue or club. One that rotates around music learning, may want to give the feeling of learning scales in a studio. Try and think about what you are after and apply your theme accordingly. Try not to get to entangled in specifics of columns, and sidebars. Just try and recreate online, what you would like to experience offline.

Plugins and widgets.

Plugins, are for me one of the best inventions known to humanity. It must rank number three after the flushing toilet and the wheel? Anyway, plugins add features to your blog, and either work in the background, and handle functions such as search engine optimization, and statistical data collection, or they enhance the appearance of the blog, often creating sidebar widgets. The beauty of plugins is they are largely created by Wordpress users to address limitations of the basic Wordpress platform, and in doing so improve Wordpress overall. Many are free, though a donation to the creator is polite, and they all are very easy to install. When finding plugins, only use ones that are compatible to your version of Wordpress. Ideally, your current version of Wordpress should be the most recent.

Widgets are elements that sit in the sidebar and generally make it easier for your readers to do, or access something. Some are used solely for display purposes, and some are just for fun. There are all kinds of widgets that have practical functions too. The general rule is less is more, but rules are meant to be broken. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Personally, I just drop in the ones I like, and don’t worry too much about anything else.

The essential Wordpress plugins you should be thinking about installing for that first blog are:

Platinum SEO plugin. All things SEO related are contained in this plugin, as spreading the word of your blog is just as essential as writing one.

Google Analyicator plugin. This plugin makes your Wordpress pages visible on your Google Analytics account. This way you can see what posts and pages are popular, and which ones are not. Other data from Analytics is also visible such as the sources of your blogs traffic, and how many visitors the site is receiving.

XML Sitemap plugin. This plugin is another must, as it creates an XML sitemap of your blog which is food and drink to Google’s webmaster tools. Here you can see how many sites have linked to yours, what keywords conjure impressions on search engines, and gauge the healthiness of your blog.

WP Captcha Free. This plugin puts a captcha on your comment posting but only if the poster is non human. This clever plugin works on timing, and is indeed a work of genius.

Other Plugins you should consider are ones that go to promote the mood of the theme. If your blog is about cookery, then a plugin that lists menus from different restaurants could be a great one for your site.

My own site is all about my freelance writing endeavours, so I have opted for an intimate theme that gives the feel of reading long into the night. The plugins and widgets I have opted for either go to promote story telling, or have a functional use such as social networking.

Once these have been installed, and are working you are then ready to write your first blog. Whatever the subject matter, the content has to be vibrant, relevant, and compelling, no matter how small the niche. The themes, the plugins, the widgets are great, but none can override stale content. Content is King, all the rest of it are members at court.

When writing the blog, think about what is the most important and most interesting elements to it are, and concentrate on bringing these to the foreground. Try and imagine what you would want from your blog if you were a reader, and strive to bring that to life.

Other factors which make blogs more popular are:

Pictures – A picture grabs a readers attention and can break up large passages of text, which can be off putting to many web readers.

Content – As mentioned before keep it compelling, vibrant and relevant. You may want to consider short paragraphs if possible. One thing to remember about a blog is that titles catch the eye, so a more creative one will probably get more readers.

Posting regularly – It is better to post regularly than erratically. So the key is to stick to a schedule. A post here and a post there, does not aid your quest to retain readership.

Many new bloggers are tempted to post all the time, which is great if you can do it, but if the content is not hitting the right chords, then this will make little if not no difference to attracting and retaining readers. Remember that content is truly King, so if you are going to post make sure that the content is as described above. Two good posts are easily worth five average ones.

Promote discussion – Discussions always go well with blogging, so it is a good idea to try and get people to join in with the post. As long as you’re not deliberately controversial, you will find more interest from your readers if they can put forward their view on a post.

Attracting readers

After your blog has been written the next stage is to get people to read it. You could be the next Shakespeare, and not a soul would know because your words are read by no one else. Wordpress and blogging is all part of the web 2.0 phenomenon, like social media. Therefore social media is a good tool to get visitors to the blog.

The following provide good foundation for social media exposure.

Twitter, write a blog, tell your followers

Digg, write a blog, get digg to show it

Delicious. Same as above just slightly different

Facebook. Creating a page for your blog and link it to twitter is always a good idea.

My Space. Tell the world about your space.

There are hundreds of other social media out there, that can be utilized to bring you exposure. Some are more appropriate than others. Many social media sites can be linked to each other, which saves you time in getting the message out there.

It can be a daunting prospect when you first start blogging. New worlds and new methods will open up before you, but you will have fun exploring them, and soon it will feel like you have been blogging for years.

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.

Many bloggers start out by using a free blogging tool such as blogger. In the first instance this makes sense as it has many advantages if you are a complete beginner. It is free to use, you do not need to know anything about web design to start using it, and you do not need your own domain name to get going. It is often a question of hitting the keys to bring your message to the world.

Very often though, you feel that you need to add more to your blog to take it that extra step forward. The blog is fine for what it is, and you may well have attracted a strong readership, but blogger and co. can only be taken so far. It is a little like riding a motorcycle, you start out with a 100cc, but pretty soon you want a 750!

This is where you start thinking about Wordpress. If you dabble in contributing to the web it is almost impossible not to have come across it in some way. It has many users and has won many plaudits, and really, unless you have particularly sophisticated needs for your blog, this is the where you should be looking to take your blog up to the next level.

Wordpress has many strengths

One of the amazing things about Wordpress is that it is completely customisable. The range of free themes is simply breath taking. Many websites feature them for download, and these are a good way to get you up and running. As time moves on, you may fancy a change or just simply want to move in a different direction, so you may want to buy a theme for your blog. These themes are normally the crème de la crème of web design.

As you learn about Wordpress you will no doubt learn about web design. This could be because you have to fix a problem, but just become a little curious, or most likely install a plugin or widget. You may also want to design your own theme, especially if you are familiar with Photoshop and other graphic design applications.

The theme makes a blog. The content is important, but a good theme not only enhances the content but contributes to it. Good themes will be appealing on the eye and layout the information just as you want it. I firmly believe that you do not chose the theme but the theme chooses you.

Wordpress is also incredibly well supported and has many contributors to its development. The open source platform is constantly being updated, and should you run into any problems, Wordpress has so many contributors that you will find that the problem has been encountered and fixed before.

This has risen to Wordpress’s many plugins and widgets. These also help not only to enhance the appearance of a blog, but also have many practical applications such as SEO, RSS feeds, and traffic recording. They can also be fun and who knows, you may try designing a few of these too.

It is also very easy to monetise your blog through the use of Google Adsense and other kinds of advertising for your blog. Once you have gained regular traffic, it is often just a question of choosing the right ad.

Wordpress’s phenomenal success is easy to understand and is simply a class way of telling the world about your genius. If you are looking to take your blog to a new level, then you should look no further than Wordpress.

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.

The demand for Wordpress plugin developers has grown with the popularity of Wordpress. This amazing blogging platform, has been designed to be customized and improved from day one, and as a result plugin developers are busily employed coming up with new plugins, and improving existing ones. The ease of use of Wordpress, is one reason why people love it so much.

Ubiquity. This little ditty allows you to search PHP and Wordpress documentation which obviously is a great facility to have at your finger tips. Mozilla labs developed this add-on for Firefox, and as they also developed Firefox, they should know what they are talking about.

The Wordpress plugin ideas forum is exactly that. Ideas for developing new plugins. Any kind of creative, development process will sometimes stall and hit brick walls, so this could be just what you need to give the creative juices a nudge in the right direction.

Wordpress plugin directory. If you are wondering what advantages there are to having your plugin hosted at this directory, then consider the following points.
- You do not pay for hosting and bandwidth
- You get SVN repository to manage your plugin versions
- You get free download statistics
- You get free promotion for your plugins

It only takes around thirty minutes to get up and running, and once you do, you have another opportunity to spread the word.

Creating a good readme file for your plugin gives you advantages in two ways. One, many people are more likely to download a plugin that has a readme file associated with it, as this provides information relevant to the plugin which are extremely useful to the user. The second advantage, is that when people start using the plugin, inevitably, questions that are support related will be asked. If you have provided a readme file then many support questions will be answered in the document, and this will also help you stay on top of the support question workload. The link above is a standard WordPress readme.txt, which gives you a good pointer in creating your own document.

Plugin in promotion is the next step after you have finished it and prepared the readme documentation. There are some tried and tested steps to follow, which are shown below.

1. Go to WordPress Plugins and Hacks forums.
2. Create a new topic.
3. Create a template for your plugin, including a description and URL. Simple but informative is the rule here.
4. To maximize the plugins exposure, create a topic at Weblog Tools Collection forum using the same template. The great thing about doing this, is that after the Weblog Tools Collection Team reviews the topic, it is added to their regular news posts which appears in the dashboard of every Wordpress user. For exposure, this is pretty amazing.
5. As users look for plugnis at wp-plugins.net make sure you post your plugin on this site.
6. To gain more exposure, ensure that you add your plugin to the WordPress Plugin Compatibility list. If you haven’t done so already, you need to register.
7. Announce the plugin on your blog. Maybe over the course of a week, just to maximize the plugin’s exposure.

There are more plugin developer tips which we hope to bring you in the near future, in the meantime, these are a good place to start.

If you are a Wordpress plugin designer, it is essential that you market the plugin with the same zeal that you developed it. If you do not, then your plugin may never get the wide spread appeal that it should get, and that would be a tragedy.

Any Google search for “WordPress plugins” will return millions of hits on the subject. Most will be lists and tips in some way, “Top ten Wordpress plugins”, and generally speaking, they do tend to feature some of the best plugins available to Wordpress. They do however, tend to feature the same, and the old saying of once you’ve read one “Top ten Wordpress plugins” article, you’ve read them all, is kind of true.

This is now no longer the case, as this “Wordpress plugin” list, lists the ones that are not called Askimet, or Adsense Deluxe, but features little known but extremely useful plugins, not often featured on these lists.

Head Meta description

This plugin is easy to install and will place a meta description tag on every page of your Wordpress blog. This will be based on the first few words of the page, or it will be based on post excerpts. Search engines still give credence to meta description tags, which makes this underrated plugin, a good one to have.

Exec-PHP

As Wordpress utilises PHP code, this plugin ensures that PHP code inside static pages or posts is recognised by Wordpress. This is extremely useful as plugins and other Wordpress features wont run in static pages or posts, without it. Though there are a few plugins that claim to the same job, this one is by far the most reliable.

Custom Query String

It can be frustrating if you want to list a certain number of posts on the homepage, or some on a different page, or some on another, and as you well know, from the control panel, this cannot be done. Enter Custom Query String plugin to save the day, and allow you to do what you always wanted to do, but could not.

Clean Archives

Nearly every Wordpress blog has an archive where blogs are stored by month. This wastes precious space, and in general is a complete waste of time. This plugin lists them on a dedicated page, on a month by month basis. This structure is far more efficient, and presentable. You may need Exec-PHP to get it working properly.

Chunk URLs

Well we’ve all had URLs that are made up of endless letters and symbols, posted on our blogs. Not only do they look unsightly, they also could break how your website is displayed on certain browsers. Chunk URL simply condenses the string to a manageable length, and you can dictate how long the length will be.
Sig2feed

This plugin simply puts a copyright symbol on your feeds, with a link to your site. A very good method of stopping feed stealers.

Feedsmith

This plugin is used to track accurately how many feed subscribers your blog has. This is one of the many indicators of success for your blog, and so could prove highly useful.

Jerome’s Keywords

By installing this plugin, you will be able to create tag clouds, tag individual posts and create an internal tag system. You can also generate a dynamic meta keyword tag. So this is a good one.

WP Cache

This plugin’s role, is to lighten the load on the server. This is especially useful for a sudden influx of traffic from social networking sights. The plugin also increases the responsiveness of your website, and is very road bust. It works by creating static versions of your pages and uses them instead of querying mySQL database.

We hope these not so well known plugins prove useful to you, and that you can use them to their full potential, as they will help your blog in many different, useful ways.

In web design, most people agree that content is king, and that this is by far the most primary aspect of any web design, taking precedence over custom graphics, or any other feature. This is also true when it comes to blogging, but with a few subtle differences that work in both the background and the foreground.

The role of Wordpress and your blog, is more than just a tool to support it. It is also a holistic representation combined of what you say in your blog, and the theme you choose to support what you say. The theme and the blog combined, serve to make a holistic approach to the reader.

In its own way, Wordpress has taken the concepts of web 2.0, and pushed it that little bit further, by extending the features of communication, expression, interaction, and opinions, and giving them a stronger platform, so that more and more people have a voice.

In no small way, is Wordpress, together with social networking, is the largest contributor to web 2.0. This is quite an achievement for a blogging platform.

There can be no doubts that the theme is an extremely important aspect of your blog, as it serves several functions in one. It makes your blog more readable, provides easier navigation between articles and out going links, and can in its own right, draw attention from readers.

This last aspect of Wordpress, is the difference between Wordpress and standard web design. Though websites win awards for their navigation and appearance, it is hard to remember any that stand out. Due to the ease of creation, distribution, and customization, Wordpress themes stand out and draw comments from readers for their appearance alone.

It has become a necessary and important aspect of blogging, to choose the right theme to support it.

Of course, ultimately, the blog is the most important element to draw and retain readers. The content is still King in the blogging world too, and by creating interesting, topical, humorous, informative and opinionated blogs, will gain you notoriety and success at blogging.

Behind the scenes of your blog, Wordpress also helps in other ways too. It databases all articles, and groups them by category. This happens automatically so finding a blog, or pointing the way to one, is fairly straight forward.

It also helps comments to be regulated, so that you do not get pointless, random, or annoying posts cluttering up your blog. These are well known for driving readers away.

The role of Wordpress and your blog is an issue that can be debated over and over again. The customization properties of Wordpress, does ensure that if you do not get the right feel first time round, a trial and error approach will help you in getting it just right.

It is arguable that Wordpress has taken blogging in a new direction with the ability to monetize from the blog. Google has added much weight to this with the introduction of Adsense, and many bloggers now use this.

The blog and Wordpress seem to by synonymous, especially as Wordpress is so easy to use. If you have something to say, you have a perfect platform, and as Wordpress is being updated constantly, the options to change, expand, and add to, in support of your blog, currently appear to be endless.

The role of Wordpress and your blog, continue to grow and change day by day. Though what you say is still the most important aspect of your blog, it is thanks to Wordpress, with all its amazing functions, such as themes, plug-ins and ease of use, that your blog, like millions of others, finds a voice.

Everyone knows that Wordpress is an excellent blogging tool, as it is easy to use, and the content that is uploaded is nicely presentable. This combined with its easily customizable themes, make it a very appealing package.

But there other uses for Wordpress, that some people are yet to realise, as there is more to this blogging platform than meets the eye.

Though it has its critics in this role, Wordpress as a content management system, or CMS has many advantages over other platforms in this field. As it is possible to customize Wordpress away from the traditional blogging feel into a magazine type of layout, Wordpress as a CMS tool, becomes a viable proposition.

The cost is a big plus for Wordpress, especially as it is not unheard of for other CMS packages to cost around $50,000+. Also, these larger CMS’s generally have strict multi seat licensing, that is also not cheap. You may have to buy a license for someone that uses the CMS twice a year, for example. Wordpress has no restrictions over license per say, or a restriction on the number of people that can use it.

The other advantage Wordpress has over other CMS’s, is that it is so easy to use. Wordpress users are normally trained in minutes rather than days, and the support and documentation for Wordpress is also first rate, as there are so many people using and customizing it.

Another use for Wordpress could be for a reviewing site. Each post can either be a review in its own right, or, and this is also not widely known, you can configure Wordpress to show an index on the main page, with each link in the index taking you to its own permalink page. This gives you the scope to make reviews stand out. This can be used for just about anything that you wish to review: Movies, television programs, computer games, DVD, theatre performances…

Did you know that it is possible to incorporate a chat option in Wordpress? Well you can, and you can also link this to Aim.

Using the prologue theme can give you many additional uses, that you may not have considered before when using Wordpress.

Did you know you can set up reminders using Wordpress, but rather than just ping up a message telling you something is due or overdue, they will email reminders to whoever is set up to get them. It can be done by rigging a Twitter stream through your RSS feed. Normally, reminders over a day ahead may not be too accurate, as there is no way of knowing when Twitter will use your RSS feed.

Another use for Wordpress is that it can be set up as a Log book, tracking expenses and recording dates of meetings. It is possible to input the information on a cell phone, which Wordpress stores until accessed and organised on a spreadsheet. If you’re a bit of a coder, you can automate this process.

The same techniques can be used for a to do list, or grocery shopping. It is recommended by those in the know to use an iphone for this, as it is the easiest to read and use.

There are many uses for Wordpress, and though it has forged its reputation as a blogging tool, it does have many features that are often overlooked.

So if you come across an internet related problem, or even something that is relatively simple on the surface, look into how Wordpress can be used, as its other uses for Wordpress, are just as impressive as its blogging capabilities.

Not all blogs are money making goldmines for a number of reasons. It could be that the subject matter is aimed at a small niche, it could be that the blog does not attract much traffic, or it could be that the blogger has no wish to make money from the blog.

However, many bloggers do make money through their blogs, and in some cases, this can go into five figures, so how do they do it?

Well there are several ways to do it, but one of the most popular is through advertising via Google Adsense, which is a pay per click program.

The idea of Adsense, is that Google places ads on your blog, and then for each click on that ad from your site, generates a little cash for you.

These tips for making money through Wordpress and Google Adsense, will not be an all encompassing guide, as it is such a vast subject that people have written books on how to use Adsense, but it should point you in the right direction to bringing in a little cash.

The first thing to do is to register with Google Adsense. This is a fairly straight forward process, but Google does impose the following rules:

Your blog cannot contain excessive profanity, drug use, pornography, etc. In essence, it needs to be fairly ‘clean’.

Google Adsense, never used to allow blogs of a ‘personal nature’, but only accepted blogs which were on specific subjects. This rule seems to have been relaxed a little, and more blogs are now acceptable to Google Adsense.

To be accepted into the program, Google Adsense require that the blog should have considerable text based content, and contain no competing or excessive advertising. Also, the blog should have good navigation, and be written in one of the following languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese.

It is not stated in the policy document, but the smart money to get acceptance on to the program, believes that the blog should be professionally designed, and be attracting a fair amount of traffic. As previously stated, this is not a proven fact, but speculation amongst the blogging community.

Going by the above rules it is probably worth building up the content of the blog before applying for Adsense. You can contact Google, however, and they will tell you if your blog is suitable or not.

So once you are accepted on the program, you should bear in mind these four elements to bring in the cash.

Traffic. The more traffic you have the more revenue you generate, as there is more chance that someone is going to click on an ad. Obvious I know, but this leads on to, how do I generate more traffic to my blog? There are several ways to do this, but for the time being, just remember the more traffic equals more money.

High paying ads. Another obvious one, but one worth talking about none the less. If you can get some of these on your site, the more money you will bring in.

Relevant Ads. If the ads are relevant to your site the more chance people are going to click on them.

Positioning and design. The better the ads are designed and positioned, the better the income will be. It is a waste to have created a great ad only to place it in a place that will never be seen.

It is crucial that you follow these elements and work on each one to make Google Adsense work for you. It can be hard work, but it also can make you good money, so do not neglect any of the elements, and by following there tips for making money through Wordpress and Google Adsense, will let the money roll in.

WordPress has been established as an open source blogging software that helps people in setting up their own blogs and web sites. Open source blogging has been very successful and risen from a small number of users to the most used blog tool.

This is because it provides:

• Ease of use: WordPress blogging can be used by all from the novice to the advanced programmer. The blog or web site could be designed without editing the PHP or HTML code. Working on WordPress is very simple and easy even if you are not a coder.

• Rich interface: WordPress has a rich text editor which has advanced multimedia support.

• Expandable: The WordPress community distributes numerous modules for all web site features.

• Open Source: WordPress is open source meaning free install, use and distribute.
Beside quality content on your blog or web site, the overall presentation and appearance of information and content is also very important. Thus, blog layouts and themes play an important role in the building of a blog or web site.

WordPress has a huge variety of themes which have varied layout schemes. These themes have been continuously growing. Today a market for these schemes has developed and people make lots of money designing WordPress themes and layouts.

After you have completed the 5 minute installation of WordPress on your computer, you will get to know more about the amazing features it has. The variety of free themes and layouts is so huge that it could become difficult, selecting the right one for your blog.

This article aims to provide some WordPress layout tips to make your page stand out.

The first WordPress layout tip is keeping it simple. A simple, clean and easy to use blog or web site, will always be a pleasure for readers to read. This does not mean that the design has to be minimal. It should be eye catching but simple.

It is important to have a central layout for your WordPress theme. The blogs should be positioned centrally. This is because centrally located layouts are much more impressive.
Earlier all trendy and popular blogs had three columns. However now two column layouts are more popular because the fewer columns on one page, the more simple and clean it looks. A simple blog would put across the message more clearly.
Easy navigation around the blog or web site, is a key factor and one of the most important.

WordPress layout tips. For this, the top section should be separated from the rest of the screen. The main branding and global site routing area must be distinct and not merged with the main content. Separate sections enhance the usability of the blog. Easy navigation will help readers to know what choices are available for operating further. This would help them in selecting their interests. If there are other links on the page apart from the top section, it is important to place them separately from the content.

The search box should be placed on the top right on every page as this is the most common place. The color, widgets, fonts, colors and schemes should be considered before selecting the final layout. A catchy layout would definitely make the first impression good. Proper titles on all pages will also make them easier to understand and user friendly.

Thus, the visual presentation will always have an impact on readers. It is as important as the content, that the blog holds and must be taken seriously. A depressing looking web site or blog, would not work for too long even if its content is remarkable. Vice versa, the layout and scheme used by a blog could attract readers even if the content is not up to date.

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