1. Twitter Blog:  this plug in is great for increasing your external links, which is vital for search engine ranking.  What it does is tweet your blog post, then check for any replies to your tweet and put them in the comments box under your post.
2. WordPress Thread Comment: a great plug in for creating a dialogue of comments, which motivates people to join in the conversation and keep coming back for more.
3. Top Commentators:  this is actually a widget for your sidebar which motivates people to comment more and more, as they fight for the top spot of Top Commentator.
4. Comment Approved Notifier: this is such a simple plug in that emails a commentator to tell them their post has been approved.  This has a double advantage, not only pinging the author again to encourage them to come back, it may also motivate them to check any replies to their comment.
5. CommentLuv: motivates you as the blogger to comment more and more because it shows the latest blog post at the end of each comment you make.  This fosters a community spirit and makes your blog highly interactive.
6. IntenseDebate Comments: this really gives your WordPress comments area the wow factor, using Ajax to write, reply and rate.  It also includes comments voting and allows users to connect to Twitter and friendfeed, which enhances promotion of your site.
7. Highlight Author Comments: this plug in makes your words stand out from the crowd by automatically displaying author comments in a different and distinctive style.
8. Do Follow: this is great for search engine ranking because it removes the “no follow” attributes in comments links, enabling search engines to follow them.
9. WP Content Filter: nobody wants a blog full of swearwords, so this filters out any unwanted words automatically and replaces them with wild card characters.
10. Custom Smilies: allows users to put in emoticons to comments, adding color and fun to your blog.
11. Whisper Comment: this allows commentators to “whisper” their comment to one or a group of other users.  A great tool for allowing enhanced interactivity and a sense of ownership for subscribers, which could encourage them to revisit and bring more people with them.
12. Live Comment Preview: do you want your commentators to be able to preview their comments before posting?  This plug in enables them to do just that.
13. Comment Rating: a brilliant way to allow subscribers to feel some ownership of the blog, by voting on posted comments.  Time to let your readers decide which comments deserve to be shown!
14. Most Commented: a widget that allows users to quickly access the most popular posts, by displaying those with the most comments in the sidebar.
15. Akismet: finally don’t forget that spam can be an issue with any WordPress blog, with comments boxes constantly being bombarded.  This is an essential add-on to any website builder and this is one of the most popular to kick spam comments out.

If your pages are taking too long to load, people are not going to wait. They expect lightning speed in their browsing activities and they are quick to move on if they get bored waiting for your content to appear. What can you do?

There are actually several things you can do to speed up your WordPress site’s loading time. Begin by finding a site that offers a free website speed test to find out just how long it is taking your pages to load. If it’s taking more than just a few seconds, something needs to be done. Here are some tips you can use to help increase your site’s loading speed:

All Plugins mentioned in this article are available in our Plugins Directory.

Adjust Your Theme

It’s possible, likely even, that your chosen theme is using PHP rather than HTML. Every time your page loads, it has to translate the PHP into HTML. You can install the WordPress Super Cache plugin to automatically convert your PHP into HTML.

Plugins Bogging You Down

Perhaps when you first built your free WordPress website, you went a little overboard with the plugins. Go through and get rid of any plugins you don’t need or use on a regular basis.

Check Your Web Host

Sometimes you get what you pay for in a web host. It could be that your web host is hosting more sites than it can efficiently. Do some research to determine the best website host to choose.

Control Your Image Size

If your images are large files, the chances are good that they could be slowing down the loading process for your site. Use a photo editing program to reduce the file size of your images.

Adjust Your Database

If your database is not optimized, it can really slow the loading time down for your site. If you know how, manually adjust your database. If you don’t know how, get a plugin that will do it for you like WP Database Optimizer which is in our Plugins Directory.

Disable Hotlinking

If people are copying your images and linking to your site, this will also drain speed from your loading time.

Post Revisions Are A Drag

Every time you revise a post, WordPress is adding a file to the database. Disable the “Post Revisions” option and get rid of old posts that have been revised. If the site doesn’t have to read and load them every time, it will speed up.

Combine Javascripts

Reduce the number of javascript codes you are running on your page. Often, five or six can be reduced to two or three, and that can make a big difference.

Compress the CSS

You can compress your CSS into a single file using special compressing tools online. You can also do this with your javascript.

Clean Your Options

One plugin you should install and keep is the “Clean Options” plugin. It will remove any remnants of deleted plugins.

There are other ways to improve your site’s speed, but these 10 steps will help you create a website that loads with impressive speed, and will stay that way.

By using a free website builder to create a WordPress site, you’ll have complete control over what happens to your images, the amount you charge and how much you reap from their use.  This article has some priceless tips on how to sell your photos online, ensuring your WordPress photography website is a huge success.

Creating a WordPress Photo Website

If you plan on selling your photos online, you need to create a highly stylized photo gallery that’s easy to navigate and presents large quantities of photos.  Successful online photographers uploads thousands of images and it’s the best way to make money.  You may only generate a small amount per image (one or two dollars for stock images), but if you have thousands of photos, you’re guaranteed to make a decent income

First you need to choose a theme that has been designed with the professional photographer in mind.  Here are some of our favorites, which are all available on our resources page.  Do bear in mind that some of them cost a little to buy and use, but the investment will be well worth it to ensure you give your portfolio the maximum impact.

• Photoblog: this is a simple yet powerful presentation for photos that lets the images do the talking.  It has some really nice features such as drop-down menus, home page slide show and social media site icons integrated into the program.  The best bit is the built-in dynamic image resize, allowing you to upload very large images which are then resized with links to the various size options.  This is great for customer downloading.  The cost for this theme is $49, but it’s well worth it for the professional finish you’ll end up with.
• Photocrati ViewFinder: this theme is created specifically with professional photographers in mind.  It’s edgy and eye-catching, with a black theme and a single large image with thumbnails along the bottom of your homepage.  It costs $59 but really has the wow factor.
• FlashFrame: a very clean, simple and elegant WordPress theme for photographers.  The homepage displays one image at a time, creating a slide show that fades from one photo to the next.  You can then create a blog and gallery of photos on your secondary pages.  The price is $79.95.
• Photo Nexus WordPress Gallery 2 in 1: this costs just $27 and is a highly stylized two tone theme, great for visual impact.  It’s modern, minimalist and simple to use.
• SnapShot: a free WordPress theme which allows users to rate your photos.  This could be great for business.  It comes with three color themes – red, blue or green.

How To Get Buyers To Your Site

Now that you’ve set your site up, you need to work on getting people to see it and buy photos.  Concentrate on search engine optimization as this will bring you high up on the search engine ranking, vital for ensuring people click on your site.  Here are some tips on how to do this:

• Use Keywords: research which keywords are going to work for your images and make sure you use them in the title for each photo.  This is vital for selling success.  Use concepts to describe your photos, such as power, success, romantic, comic, alongside more descriptive keywords to describe what is going on in the photo, such as man on a bicycle, woman meditating.  The SEO Friendly Images plug in can help you do this by automatically updating all your images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes, which is vital for search engine ranking success.
• Find out what sells: any successful professional photographer will tell you that stock images need to be simple, top quality and evoke a theme.  Don’t use family snaps or endless landscapes.  Find something you’re passionate about and make that your niche.  You could focus on emotions, or become an expert in photographing food products.  Whatever you choose, you need to provide hundreds of photos on your portfolio to give buyers plenty of choice.  Natural photos of people going about their everyday business are also very popular, because buyers can use these in advertising campaigns and on their own websites.
• Don’t forget local coverage: don’t forget that your WordPress photography website will also sell your services to local clients.  Get yourself listed as a Google local business so that whenever anyone searches for a local photographer, your beautiful WordPress portfolio will appear.

Of course not everyone has the skills or experience for website maintenance.  But WordPress makes it easy, with essential plug ins that do most of the work for you.  As soon as you’ve downloaded your free website builder program, install these 6 essential maintenance plug ins from our resources page.  They are completely free to download and give you peace of mind that your blog is running smoothly and your visitors can easily enjoy your great content:

1. Redirection: this plug in deals easily and effectively with broken links, which are really annoying for your visitors and lead them to blank pages or a 404 error message.  Broken links can be created for many reasons, the most common is when you change a webpage file name, perhaps to improve search engine optimization.  This changes the URL address, which means that any search engine with the old URL address will direct visitors to the broken link.  This might annoy your visitors but also affects your search engine ranking.  The Redirection plug in is so easy to use and redirects visitors who click on broken links to a different page on your site.  For more information on how to use this plug in and repairing broken links, this article about fixing broken links is packed with information.
2. Maintenance Mode: from time to time you may need to do some front end maintenance that means shutting down your website for a short period.  This plug in creates a splash page that informs your visitors that the site is under maintenance and for how long, which will encourage them to come back later rather than simply going away for good.  While you’re working on maintenance, as blog owner and administrator you can see the site and check how your updates look.  
3. WP-DB Manager:  this is a really useful plug in that helps you to protect your valuable customer information.  It allows you to back up, optimize and manage your database with a simple tab in the admin panel.
4. Akismet: one of the most annoying things for visitors and bloggers is spam.  No one wants to read a comments page full of it and it’s a real pain to remove and check your site regularly.  That’s why WordPress is such a great free website builder program, giving you plenty of plug ins and tools to deal with spam.  Akismet is a favorite of bloggers worldwide, taking the hassle out of spam prevention and keeping unwanted code at bay.
5. Antivirus:  another really useful plug in for security and maintenance.  It checks your blog daily for malicious code that could inject spam or even worse a virus.  Security is a huge issue you need to be aware of and if you don’t protect your site you could end up losing hours of work.  As soon as you’ve downloaded your free website builder, install a plug in such as Antivirus to protect your site.  This plug in gives you an alert message if code is inserted and tells if you a virus is suspected.
6. Theme Tester:  part of maintaining your blog is ensuring you keep the content fresh, up to date and with an impressive visual impact that grabs your visitors quickly.  There are hundreds of themes released every month and you don’t want to change your theme too often.  However every once in a while you may want to give your website a fresh look.  This plug in is a perfect addition to your free website builder program.  It allows you to test a theme without changing it permanently on your site, giving you time to decide whether you like it before you install it. 

It’s pretty clear that no matter what your end goal is, be it sales, click-throughs, sign-ups, or referrals, embedding videos into your blog increases the chances of you reaching that goal.

Video Works:

From 2007 to 2008, the global viewing of retail videos online increased from nearly 25 million unique viewers to almost 35 million, an astounding jump of 40%. Video been proven to reduce abandoned shopping carts and generate higher sales; since actual visitors only increased by 4%, any site featuring video has a clear head start on the competition.

Embedded video will keep your visitor’s attention and keep them actively involved in a purchase.  It creates a central focus point with a set duration (the length of the video) that requires the full visual and auditory commitment of the visitor.  This keeps them on your site longer, building your brand recognition and increasing the odds they will look at other parts of your site.  And implementing video is pretty simple with an easy website builder like WordPress.

How to Embed Video:

The easiest way to pull video from a site such as Youtube or Google Video is copying and pasting the embed code.  You can traditionally find this code on the site just under or right next to the video you wish to embed (Youtube’s is right below the summary, for instance).   Some sites may have a “share” button instead; just click that button for the code.

The other option is using a plug-in.  For instance, the aptly named “Embedded Video” plug-in will allow you to embed videos from a variety of sources (including your own uploads) with very little headache.  This plug-in currently supports Youtube, Google Video, DailyMotion, MyVideo, ClipFish, Metacafe, Myspace Video, and quite a few more.  You can find this plug-in here: Embedded Video for WordPress

If you’re serious about creating a lasting relationship with your customers and building a business, then you have to find ways to engage them on your site.  Embedded video is a powerful weapon in your arsenal and will help ensure your visitors stay on your site longer.  When used effectively, you should see not only an increase in the duration of visits, but an increase in sales, sign-ups, or whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish.  Use your WordPress website builder to add embedded video to your site and see the results for yourself.

Add Social Media To Your WordPress:

So how do you take advantage of this audience and translate it into sales?  If you’ve ever visited a blog, and since you’re reading this we’re guessing that you have, you’ve probably noticed quite a few featuring a slew of icons or a “Share This!” button.  These buttons allow readers to recommend your posts to sites like Reddit and Digg, or share them directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

This is free advertising for you – if someone shares one of your posts on their Facebook, you are gaining visibility to their entire network of friends for absolutely no investment.  The best part?  These buttons are easy to implement.  Use a WordPress plug-in such as “Share This,” “Sociable,” or “Notable” to add these buttons with minimal effort and watch the traffic roll in.

Participate In The Community:

Sharing things to Digg, writing guest posts for other bloggers, and commenting on sites such as Technorati and Reddit are great opportunities to link back to your blog and generate additional traffic. Here’s a rundown on the big guns:

• Digg – Readers recommend posts and vote on them to increase their popularity.
• Facebook – Members share your content with a built-in network of friends.
• Twitter – Users link your posts which can then be re-linked by their followers.
• Technorati – Blog community with real-time searching and popularity index.
• StumbleUpon – Site that uses personal interests to recommend unexplored topics.
• Reddit – Similar to Digg with user-generated links and a popularity index.

It’s also a very good idea to create a company Facebook and Twitter.  As people visit your site and add themselves to your networking pages, your repeat-customer base (think of it as an opt-in mailing list) will grow, at zero cost.

Never underestimate the power of social media in building steady traffic and introducing your site to a broader audience.  If you make it easy for people to share your blog with their friends, you will notice an immediate improvement in your traffic.  The more customers see your company as a part of their lives, the more time and money they will be willing to put into it.

The internet is a dangerous place for personal information, and when you look at ecommerce sales it shows.   A recent survey indicated that nearly 32% of purchases are abandoned due to customers being uncomfortable with the site, and an even higher amount (41%) are lost because the checkout process is too long.  However, if you use a website builder like WordPress to manage your content, you can utilize the convenience and good name of industry leaders to push your customers through the final process.

Payment gateways allow your customers to make purchases on your site.  Here are the three most recognizable gateways currently available to WordPress users:

PayPal

Paypal is internationally recognized as the industry leader in payment.  Most of your customers probably already have a PayPal account, so if you use it as a gateway you’re one step ahead.  Money through PayPal takes about 3-4 days to go from purchase to your bank.  Install the plug-in “Are Paypal” and your customers can use their accounts to buy anything you wish to sell, instantly.

Google Checkout

Though a relative newcomer to the scene, Google Checkout is a great payment option for your customers.  People appreciate the convenience of not having to re-register for every site they visit, and with Google Checkout they can make purchases just by staying logged in to their Google accounts.  The all-in-one “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” is Google Checkout compatible, so it’s easy to implement for the novice website builder.

Authorize.net

The name might not be as familiar as Google or PayPal, but Authorize.net has been a powerhouse in e-commerce payment processing for some time.  Essentially, Authorize.net allows you to accept credit card or electronic check payments directly from your customers, without the need for a PayPal or Google account.  They also offer free customer support (for you), one of the fastest payouts in the business (1-2 days), and advanced fraud protection.  As with Google Checkout, the “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” suite will allow you to use this payment gateway.

With convienience and name recognition on your side, you will be far ahead of the curve when it comes time for you customers to make a purchase.  Avoid some of the most common causes of abandoned shopping carts and lost sales by using these simple plug-ins and watch the positive impact it has on your sales.

Finally, integrating one of these payment gateways into your WordPress is a strong step towards monetizing your WordPress and impressing your customers, but we recommend you make a purchase through one of these gateways or any plug-in you use to ensure the customer-side experience is streamlined.

Remember that your customers aren’t concerned with how easy something is for you.  If they find your payment options to be unwieldy or inconvenient, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere, so make sure you’re choosing the best tool for your customers and your business alike.

What is Spam?

Put simply, spam is any comment on a blog post that has no value to the discussion.  While a final call on what exactly this constitutes is up to you, most bloggers would agree that link spamming (where a robot posts dozens of links in your comment section) is their main concern.  People set up these link spamming systems to improve their page rankings with the major search engines and don’t really care if they have a negative impact on your blog or your readers.

What Can I Do?

There are several ways to battle spam when using WordPress as your website builder.  First and foremost, WordPress has quite a robust set of tools built right in that can help you deal with spammers.  Changing the number of links allowed in a post, setting a filter for spam words, blacklisting certain words from your comments, and restricting your comments to just registered users are all a default part of every WordPress download and should allow you a great deal of control over spam.

Besides that, WordPress also comes with the Askimet Comment Spam Fighter software.  This particular tool uses complex algorithms and user-modified inputs to learn which comments on your blog are spam, and which are not.  What’s really amazing about Askimet is that it can adapt to new threats as spammers change their tactics, so as long as you pay attention to your comments section you should be able to keep a tight reign on spam.

When using Askimet it is very important that you periodically check in on your Askimet Panel to ensure that no false positives are being trapped in the net.  Marking non-spam comments off in the panel will help the software to do a better job of discerning between legitimate and illegitimate comments and will ensure your readers are able to participate in your blog without worry of having their comments spam-blocked.

Spam comments and bad links can ruin the appeal and personality of a good blog.  If you’re interested in building a successful WordPress blog with many regular readers, protect them from spam by applying all of the techniques listed in this article.  Additionally, provide your readers with a way to get in touch with you should they have their comments block or pick up on some spam that you might have missed.  As long as you stop spam early or completely, you shouldn’t have a major issue keeping it under control.

If you value your WordPress site, here are some ways to protect your blog, and thus, your money:

Protect Your Login

There are a couple of things you can do right off the bat that make your WordPress less vulnerable to attack.  Install the “Chap Secure Login” plug-in to encrypt your login and prevent the bad guys from sniffing it out of a public network.  Additionally, install a plug-in like “Login Lockdown” that will track your login attempts from different IPs; this will prevent third party users from brute-forcing your password.

All WordPress blogs have “admin” as the default username, which is a glaring security hole in every site that uses this as a website builder.  Create a new user account and assign that user the role of administrator.  Log in with that account, then delete the old “admin” account (make sure to click “attribute all posts and links to” first!).  This will close the backdoor on your blog.

Be sure to use a great password too!  We recommend one or two capital letters, at least one number, and a symbol such as an exclamation point or percent sign.  And stay away from common password subjects like pet names or birthdays – people can usually figure these out.

Protect Your Content

Even if you’re certain you have the most secure WordPress blog on the planet, there’s always a chance of unauthorized access.  Install the “WP Database Backup” plug-in and make sure it backs up all of your data often, just in case. Then protect your plug-ins from prying eyes by creating a regular text file named “index.html” and uploading it to your “/wp-content/plugins” folder.  This will prevent people from seeing the plug-ins your blog is currently running and attempting to exploit any security vulnerabilities they may have.

Also, it is imperative that you put the lockdown on your admin folder.  This folder contains tons of important information and can cause a great deal of trouble for your blog if compromised.  The “AskApache Password Protect” plug-in will allow you to password protect the folder and keep unwanted guests where they belong (out).

While nothing that exists on the internet is 100% safe, it is far easier to prevent someone from hacking your WordPress blog than it is to clean up the mess a hacker leaves behind.  Follow safe browsing practices, use great security plugins, and regularly scan your computer for viruses, trojans, and other malware to ensure you are not potentially giving up all of your personal information to a keylogger.  Your WordPress blog is a valuable asset, so be sure to treat it like one!

The public’s appetite for online news is booming and more and more people are setting up their own news blog each and every day.  So we’ve put together a guide on how to create a newspaper or magazine website using WordPress.  This free website builder program has all the features you’ll need to create a visually rich, reader orientated site that you can manage yourself.

What Kind of News Website?

If you decide to develop a news website or blog, it’s best to choose a niche market.  Unless you’re a journalist with a global reputation, there’s no point trying to compete with the big boys and start a global news channel online that can compete with the likes of CNN or the BBC.  Choose a niche market where you know you’ll be able to secure a good slice of your audience.

Perhaps you’re an expert in a particular field and want to create an online newspaper with the latest industry developments?  Or do you want to create a travel magazine about your local area?  Whatever you decide, do your research and ensure you have the knowledge to create a unique website that people will want to read over and over again. 

3 of the Best WordPress News Themes

Once you’ve downloaded WordPress as your free website builder, there’s a vast choice of free and premium themes available to suit your needs.  A theme is basically a software package that creates a design and layout for your website, to which you then add content and images. 

Here are our top 3 news and magazine themes, which are available to download from our themes page:

1. News Magazine Theme 640:  this is a free WordPress news theme that’s very clean and simple yet visually impressive.  It’s ideal for news or magazine blogs, with a three column display for every post and page, alongside plenty of customizable features to make your website unique.  You can also showcase 5 featured categories on your homepage, which is great for enticing your readers to click on your latest features and stories. 
2. Magazine WordPress Theme:  this theme is ideal for a magazine style website, with a simple and reader-friendly design that will showcase your headline stories and latest features.  Made by StudioPress, who are one of the leading theme designers, you get a lot of support with this package.  It costs $59.95 for use on one website, which provides access to detailed theme tutorials and future theme updates at no additional cost.
3. myMag:  this news theme is packed with features to enhance your readers’ experience.  You can add JavaScript slideshows to the front page to showcase your latest news in pictures, a built in news ticker, drop down menus and three widget ready sidebars.  You can choose from three color themes and there are multiple columns to display all your latest features and news stories.  This is a really great theme, especially considering it’s completely free to download and use.

5 Essential News and Magazine Plug ins

Whatever news niche you decide on, there are a number of key plug ins to help you bring in the traffic, visually impress your readers and ensure they keep coming back for more. 

Here are 5 essential news and magazine plug ins, which are all available to download from our resources page:

1. I Love Social Bookmarking:  if you want to publicize your blog you need to make it easy for your readers to share your content with their social networking friends.  This plug in creates a drop down menu after each post, which allows readers to quickly share the article through a number of social media networks, including Twitter and Facebook.  Another great social sharing plug in is ShareThis, which displays social media icons after each post. 
2. VideoPress:  readers now expect moving images to be part of their online experience, and this plug in makes it extremely easy to embed video from sites such as YouTube and GoogleVideo onto your WordPress website.  This plug in is the perfect complement to your free website builder program, and although it costs $59.97 per year, it really is worth the investment if you plan on adding a lot of video to your news website.  For more information about putting moving images on your blog, this article provides 3 Simple Ways to Add Video to Your WordPress website. 
3. News-Ticker: this plug ins allows you to create a sliding or fading news ticker of all your latest posts and articles.  This really brings your website to life and is the perfect way to showcase all your latest news and spark interest in your articles.  You can also display images in the ticker, set the number of posts to display and the ticker speed.  This plug in is definitely recommended for magazine and newspaper websites to create a modern style that’s up to the minute.
4. Magazine: if you have a website or blog offering news and features about the latest developments in your industry, you may want to keep your readers informed and provide them with a newsletter.  This unique plug in allows your readers to download a monthly magazine PDF that contains all your posts from the previous month.
5. WP Post Columns:  this plug in makes the job of converting your free website builder program into an impressive magazine or newspaper website much easier.  It creates columns within each of your posts or web pages, allowing you to easily produce the look of a magazine or newspaper, without having to write complicated html pages and tables.  This is ideal for a newspaper style blog, providing you with a simple method of producing a column or two of text, alongside an image.

WordPress makes it extremely easy to create your own newspaper or magazine style website and blog.  The key to success is to find the right niche, use social media to get the word out there about your site and then set about writing some highly engaging news stories that ensure your readers come to your site first for all the latest news.