When you set up a Wordpress blog on your Web site, you’re going to have to choose whether you want a free theme or one you need to pay for. There are pros and cons to each of the two different kinds of themes, and deciding what kind of theme to choose should be determined by what you want to use your blog for.
If you’re just starting out on blogging and you haven’t yet got your feet wet, you probably want to play around with some free themes before you begin thinking about putting money down on something more elaborate. There are about a thousand free themes from you to choose from on the main Wordpress Website. there, you can get a feel for what you’re looking for in a theme and what will work best for why you’re creating one.
Some themes are for specific purposes. If you’re trying to sell something, you probably want a different theme than someone who is running personal blog to rant on. If you’re running a blog for a company, you probably want it more clean-cut than one that has more style and styling.
Once you figure out what you want in a theme and you’ve learned the different kinds of options that are available, you may be ready to look for a paid theme. Paid themes can be a lot better built, and can have a lot more options than free ones. Something like the Thesis Wordpress Theme has a lot of options to choose from, and can work really well for a wide range of people. If you’re just looking for a theme that looks really professional and can display content really well, the themes over at StudioPress can definitely get the job done.
Another different between a paid theme and a free one is that the paid themes are usually better built to be SEO friendly. This means that it’ll easier to search for search engines to crawl them and index their content in places like Google, Yahoo and Bing. If you looking to get even more SEO friendly, you should consider hiring and affordable SEO firm that can bring your optimization to the next level.
In the world of blogging, there are many specific types such as regular old blogging, microblogging and liveblogging. Why do they keep adding more? The rise of Twitter has sparked many people to update other users on the status of their lives at any moment they choose, but limit that to 140 characters please. Liveblogging is similar to tweeting and even can allow you to tweet what you are liveblogging through Twitter, but you can write as much as you please, even if it goes over the magic 140-character number. It’s geared more toward professionals and businesses who are looking to update others on a conference or event that they are attending. Twitter is more of an overall life update/highlight where liveblogging would be more akin to making a real-time synopsis of events or speeches going on.
This idea benefits the average blogger because as with microblogging, they can have information on things as soon as it is mentioned, no time for revisions or research. I would imagine that those on Twitter will probably stick with it and businesses who are looking to get away from the typical “my cat is staring at me” updates will flock to liveblogging more on different sites. I think that it could be a good form of news to those who want to know the path of a story, not just the end result. We’ll have to wait and see how this takes off though, and it won’t be surprising if Twitter continues to lead the way.
If you haven’t explored them yet, there are a few plug-ins out there that allow you to embed flash games in different ways on your Wordpress blog. Some of these plug-ins allow you to put games in your sidebar as widget, and others just allow you to embed game players that offer thousands of different games.
These aren’t the highest quality games ever created, but they could be fun for your readers, and they’re free to use. The games are usually flash-based and have cartoony animations, which can be fun, but don’t expect anything too in depth.
Although the games aren’t graphically intensive, they can still be fun, and some are even multiplayer. This can be a great way to keep readers on your site longer, and can possibly make them click on more things on your Web site as they wait for loading screen while playing games. Anything to keep people on your site and away from others can be a good thing, and could be an interesting idea to check out.
Keeping people on your Web site with nothing but text can be difficult. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how great your text is, a lot of people don’t like reading as much as they enjoy looking at picture, watching video, or playing video games. Make sure to include all kinds of media on your site to keep readers involved and enjoying themselves. If you don’t, they may find what they’re looking for elsewhere.
Check out the menu of games below to see what I mean. Click and drag inside the player to center to game screen:
Today’s blogosphere is much different than it was five years ago. The amount of people with blogs has been increasing exponentially, and many people have more than one blog they work on. A lot more has to be done now in order to pull your blog above the rest so it can be seen by the masses. One great way to get your blog more exposure is to use social media sites, as long as you know the rules and etiquette to using them.
It’s important to know which sites to use for your blog. While some sites can be used to promote any kind of blog, there are also sites that cater to specific categories. If you’re writing blog posts about hiking and fishing, make sure not to submit your posts to N4G or Sphinn. These communities will reject your posts, and they’ll end up wasting your time. Sites like Reddit,StumbleUpon or Digg will be more accepting of your posts, as long as you submit your articles to the correct category within the site.
There are also a few rules to follow to make sure you aren’t labeled as a spammer. No matter what social sites you plan to promote your blog on, it’s important to know how to act. Make sure to have some friends who can help you promote your material, it can be a big help, and make sure to act like a human being. Make sure to join Twitter and begin creating a base of followers that are interested in your material. It’s not going to work if you try to demand people to digg or retweet your posts. Be nice and return the favor whenever possible.
A lot of blog promotion is about common sense. Think about the kinds of strategies you’d respond to, and do those things. People aren’t dumb, and they feel insulted when it seems like you believe you can manipulate them. No matter what your blog is about, there is probably a demographic who will respond to it. Make sure to focus on that demographic, and become part of the community surrounding it.
Microblogging is taking over the world tweet by tweet. The success of Twitter and other microblogging services has given rise to a “need to know things as they are happening” attitude. It’s like gossiping with the whole world, but you don’t have to be seen,heard or even known, for that matter. Taking that idea, Google may be incorporating a microblog search into their current searching software. There is no confirmation of it, but it seems to be more likely to happen than not.
They would be keeping ahead of the times if they were to do so. Twitter has a search of its own, but it’s very limited and definitely doesn’t include other microblogger sites in its results.
There is no confirmation on how they will incorporate this into their searching, so there are a few speculations. They may just have a link to recent microblog posts related to the search or they may even have an interactive sort of result where a user can view recent results, old results, sort by specific microblogging site, or whatever else you could imagine.
So now, along with finding images and webpages for a search on the term “overlord,” you may end up being able to see what people have written on that same subject that same second. You could then find a way to post your opinions and thoughts if you desire, so that you may be included in the search results for the next “overlord” searching user.
You have to keep up with the gossip somehow, right?
Here we go again, another blog site with different blogging software. It’s not as bad as you think though, because it’s a site where people who aren’t as computer literate as others can start their own blog and potentially be as successful with it. So why is one blogging software good for a certain kind of person, and the other is good for me? USA SEO Pros has taken a look at SquareSpace and Wordpress to see what we can find.
Wordpress has a very simple, more programmer-ish type look to it, while SquareSpace has a very attractive, user-friendly look. They do the same things, but one with more “eye-candy,” if you will. Blog posting tends to have a very similar set up, where you have similar options on both sites, so this isn’t really a deal breaker if your trying to choose between the two.
As far as ease of use, Wordpress gets down to the nitty gritty where you can log in, write your blog, add a bunch of feeds, links and what have you, and then be done with it. SquareSpace on the other hand, requires more load time; the need to refresh pages more often and just takes a little bit longer during every day use. SquareSpace make adding things a bit easier for the less computer savvy individuals, but at the cost of a bit more of your time.
“How much is this going to cost me?” you ask. They both are around 15-20 dollars a month to have, so really, they are very comparable. The domain and hosting costs you have to provide with Wordpress are taken care of with your monthly payment to SquareSpace.
You have to figure out what kind of abilities you have and how much you really want to do with your blog. Wordpress allows the user more control over their sites where they can make templates and be extra creative, and SquareSpace limits those abilities and limits the templates to keep it simple for its users. One of the few things SquareSpace can provide that Wordpress really can’t is a good custom forum on your site.
For less experienced bloggers, I’d recommend they go with SquareSpace, but it all depends on what you’re looking for.
It seems that the battle between the New York Times and the highly regarded tech blog, TechCrunch, has come to sharp jabs. The New York Times has declared that blogs are nothing more than rumors and essentially, bring about fear for no reason at all. Such as the time Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple was reported to have suffered a heart attack when he was in perfect health. At the same time, the bloggers argue that it’s about saying things that you hear and going with it.
Blogging is about being real. TechCrunch replies by saying that they stated in the blogs that the rumors were indeed rumors, but they were newsworthy enough to be blogged about because that was the “scuttlebutt” at the time. They never falsely reported anything because they made no attempt to hide the fact that it was indeed a rumor.
Tech Crunch then stated that their form of news produces more results because more people are ready to defend rumors that have been posted on a major source and will then give up information to dispute the rumor. The process leads to better news in the end, instead of waiting until they try to talk to everyone involved, who usually don’t want to talk about rumors. They also brought up examples of the New York Times messing up major stories in which they were called out by major people and had to go back and reprint the stories. So in essence, they did the same thing that blogs do and had to update.
TechCrunch maintains that they have “100% transparency” and that’s what their readers like, while the New York Times has time to rewrite stories before they officially say anything at all. Blogs are similar to neighborhood or office chatter, and we’ve all had a part in some of that. You know that it could be true and that it could be false, but you still talk about it and have an opinion and it gets people talking. This then forces the object of rumors to dispute or agree with it and then everything is really put to bed. You can decide what kind of news is better for you, as we know, no one can ever agree on anything.
We have some professional Web designers working for us at USA SEO Pros, but we realize a lot of people aren’t as savvy. For a good chunk of the population, a free theme might be good enough for their Web site.
There are many different ways to build a personal Web site, and it’s important to think about why you’re doing it before you begin. From creating a personal blog to creating a themed portfolio site, there are plenty of different themes to choose from. But how do you know you are getting the right theme from a design, as well as a functionality point of view? As a professional in the Web design field, I am here to give you some examples of what you should look for in a blog theme or a personal portfolio theme, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
I decided to do a little investigating on this since I was looking for a theme for a new site of mine as well. The thing is, I came across a lot of themes that had flaws in design and functionality. This got me thinking that other may be encountering the same problem.
Instead of harping on the negative, I feel I should give you a little direction into choosing some of the themes I have found out there that could work. Now, the problem is not a lot of people know what to look for when choosing a theme.
Here is a short list of free Wordpress themes I found to be useful to use in some specific endeavors:
1. Soul Vision - A very good looking theme that catches the eye, has a large RSS icon and two sidebars to fill up with extra content.
2. Remedy -For a Web site that has a lot of different kinds of content to include. This theme allows for great organization of material.
3.Arena Deluxe -A very professional-looking theme that could work for a variety of different businesses.
4. Recipe for Entrepreneur -Interesting colors that could work for a gaming blog or something else fun. There are also designated places for ads.
5. The Relief in Music -A nice place for ads right at the top, and a theme that could definitely attract musicians or music lovers to a site.
While these themes may not work for everyone, depending on your field, they may be worth giving a try. Every theme offers different things to the user, and it’s up to you to figure out what works best for you.
A couple of rules to keep in mind: keep it simple, only pick a couple for colors, and make sure it’s something you wouldn’t mind looking at yourself.
Google’s “Wave” was announced yesterday and will have a very interesting effect on blogging once the application is publicly released. Wave does a lot of different things. It’s difficult to quickly describe what Wave does, but in general, it makes that Internet a lot more collaborative and real-time. Messaging, sending files, editing, games and many other things become real-time activities with Wave, and Wave allows you to invite whomever you want to be able to edit the same Wave page you are.
Wave pages are like live-streaming Web pages that begin with one person and can end up with many editing and adding their own content to the same area. Whether that’s a conversation, a meeting, a collection of pictures or videos, a game of chess, it doesn’t matter; almost anything on the Web seems like it can be done within a Wave. Right now, the app has been opened up to a few thousand developers who can now create their own add-ons for it and expand Wave’s capabilities. It’s too early to tell what Wave will turn out as once it’s released, but we do know it will change blogging in certain ways.
Any Wave can be embedded into a blog post. This means that any blog post can become a streaming collaborative effort that has more potential lasting power. Waves in blog posts can keep users coming back and keep people interacting in a single post for a long time. If a blogger happens to create an interesting Wave, that post could go viral and cause a lot of people to contribute to your Web site in a lot of ways they didn’t before.
There won’t be any spam in the Wave, because you can make it so only people you add can edit it. If you have several passionate people working on a wave on your site, it can potentially drive a lot of traffic and create some great content.
The Wave is supposed to be released later this year, and it’s important for bloggers to look at it’s potential as more more information is released. This can be a great tool, and if you don’t pay attention to it’s uses, you can be sure others will. Wave will create a lot of new ways for users to be involved with your blog. It’s not just about polls and comments anymore.
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