Setting up WordPress in your own website is quick and easy. It is even easier if your web hosting provider offers a quick installation of WordPress from their web host control panel since it usually comes with some nice themes to choose from. Even if there are no themes available, the default template for WordPress 3 looks fresh and nice, but may not be the theme to use if your blog is for business purposes or if you want to make an impact on your readers. To solve this dilemma, you can either choose to download free themes or pay up to enjoy some premium WordPress themes. Before making a decision, it is better to compare them head on.

Design and Functional Quality

If a designer is asking money for a WordPress theme, you can already conclude that it offers something more or different than the standard WordPress theme being offered for free. It usually means that the designer spent a significant amount of time perfecting the visuals and layouts of the theme or made sure that the theme allows more functionality than the ones derived from the default theme.

If you take a look at the online stores that sell premium WordPress themes, you may get the idea on why this particular theme could be worth the money. Many premium WordPress themes target people that manage business blogs since they know that these webmasters need a professional design to make profits.

Support Quality

Good theme designers make sure that the theme fully works in all of the latest browsers before releasing it to the public. There are instances where users can run into problems especially if their blogs have numerous extensions and add-ons. Those that design WordPress themes for free may not have the time or resources to tend to those situations although there could be some exceptions. However, premium theme designers are more likely to be more accommodating to these issues so that they can send a subtle message to the customers that paying for the theme includes free dedicated support as well.

Abundance

Free WordPress themes are a lot more abundant than the premium ones. In fact, the WordPress website features dozens of themes available for those that cannot host their own WordPress site. This makes searching for free themes quite useful as there may be a chance where you can encounter a nice theme with a free download attached to it.

Overall Value

Your decision in picking a free or premium WordPress theme depends on your comparison between quality and quantity. Fortunately, just about all designers offering free or premium WordPress themes have a screenshot of the theme so they can visualize how their website will be if the theme is applied.

Premium themes are priced differently as well so you really need to take some time in choosing a commercial WordPress theme. Your choice won’t be disappointing at all if you look at the premium theme at all angles. It is unlikely for a free alternative to surface since premium themes usually take longer to make and require a lot of skill.

So you have hunted high and low and found the perfect WordPress theme. Now you need to know how to install WordPress theme or it will just be a pretty file collecting dust on your hard drive.

Installing a WordPress theme is not as complicated as many people think it is. The thing that tends to confuse people is that there are two different methods you can use when trying to figure out how to install WordPress theme.

Manually install WordPress theme

First I will go over how to install WordPress theme manually to help you get familiar with the WordPress structure.

1. To install a WordPress theme manually you will need to download the theme, which I am assuming you have done by now.
2. You will also need to unzip the WordPress theme to a folder on your hard drive (try not to forget where you put it).
3. Now you will need to fire up your FTP program and FTP to your site.
4. At this point you will want to navigate to the themes folder by going to the ‘wp-content’ folder and then the ‘themes’ folder.
5. Once you are in the themes folder on your web site, you will want to navigate to the theme you unzipped on your hard drive (you did remember where you put it, didn’t you?).
6. You will then need to upload the theme on your hard drive (folder and all) to the themes folder on your web site.
7. After your all FTP’d out you will want to go back to your browser and log into your WordPress blog on your site.
8. You will then go to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side menu and select the ‘Themes’ option.
9. At this point you should be able to see your theme listed as an option. If not then you probably uploaded it as a folder within a folder and will need to double check it.
10. You should now be able to preview and then activate your theme by selecting the appropriate options listed under your theme.

Automatically install WordPress theme

If you are lazy like me you will want to let WordPress do all the work for you. So now we will learn how to install WordPress theme by letting WordPress get down and dirty.

1. To put WordPress to work you will need to first log into your blog.
2. You will navigate to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side of the menu.
3. Next you are going to click on the ‘Themes’ option located under the ‘Appearance’ tab.
4. Once you are under the ‘Themes’ section, you will see ‘Manage Themes’ at the top of the page. Next to the ‘Manage Themes’ tab you will see the ‘Install Themes’ tab which will probably be grayed out. You will want to click on the ‘Install Themes’ tab to make it the active tab.

Now you have a couple options here.

1. Option one is that you don’t have a theme in mind yet and want to search for one. In this case you will select the options you are looking for and click Search. Once you have the results up on screen you can scroll through until you find one that you like and want to use. At this point it is only a matter of previewing the theme to make sure it is what you are looking for and if it is, then you can click Install and let WordPress do its magic.
2. Option two assumes that you have already downloaded the theme you want to use. In this case you will want to select the Upload option that you will find available under the ‘Install Themes’ tab. Once you have selected the Upload option you will want to browse to the theme file you downloaded and select it. (Yes WordPress will even unzip the file for you. How’s that for service!)

Then it is just a matter of clicking ‘Install Now’ and let WordPress go to town.
I prefer to let WordPress do the dirty work and install the themes for me. But it is a good idea to get familiar with FTP’ing to your site and taking a look at how things are structured within WordPress. That way if you have to edit, alter or repair your WordPress theme you will know how to find your way around the WordPress world.

Once you know how to install WordPress theme you will wonder why it seemed like such a complicated task. You may even find yourself customizing and making your own WordPress themes.

WordPress is a fantastic blogging tool and publishing platform, but is it optimised out of the box for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? Well, despite the fact that the search engines tend to love websites built on the WordPress platform, it isn’t particularly well optimised with a default installation. In the default WordPress installation, it does not include meta tags such as meta description and meta keywords. If you want to supply search engines with specific information, relevant to your websites pages, you are going to have to add the meta tag data yourself.

From my own experience with WordPress and getting WordPress based websites ranking well in the search engines, here are my Top 5 SEO Tips for WordPress:

1. Title Tags

The title tag will probably always be one of the most important factors in on page search engine optimisation to achieve high rankings in the search engines. It has been shown that just “tweaking” your title tags a little can help increase the number of times your link is clicked in a search engine. The title tag should contain specific keywords or key phrases relevant to the page content.

Originally WordPress placed the blog name before the post title. For example: “My WordPress Blog » Hello world!” In more recent versions of WordPress, the post title appears before the blog title like “Hello world! » My WordPress Blog”. There has been some debate as to whether it is necessary to have your blog name tagged onto the end of your post title, some people have even reported that removing the blog title from post titles can help improve your rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPS). The main advantage of not including your blog title in the post title, is that it keeps the length of your title at a more reasonable number of characters. Where possible, I always try to keep my titles to less than 70 characters or so. Obviously, having your blog name on the end of your page title may dramatically increase the number of characters in your title.

To change the way your title tags work on your blog, I would strongly suggest using one of the following WordPress plugins: All in One SEO Pack or Platinum SEO Pack. Personally, I use the Platinum SEO Pack, although both plugins are very similar. To change your title tags with Platinum SEO Pack, simply go to your WordPress Admin page, and click the “Platinum SEO” link in the left hand sidebar. Here’s how I have set the main three title settings for this website:

Home Title: Small Business Search Engine Optimisation
Post Title: %post_title%
Page Title: %page_title% | %blog_title%

I would suggest you have a look at the other options this plugin provides and tweak them to your requirements.

2. Meta Tags

There are three main components to meta tags: meta title, meta keywords & meta description. The meta title will be taken from your post/page title and if you are using appropriate, relevant titles, there is little need to adjust this with one of the previously mentioned plugins. When looking at the results for your query in search engines, you will see a section of content from your page beneath the page link. By customising the meta description tag for the page, you have control over what is shown in the search engine results. Your meta description should be concise and relevant, remember, after the title (link) to your page in the SERPS, your post description needs to encourage people to click the link to your site, so make sure your meta description is appropriate to your content. This is also a good opportunity to include one or more of your keywords/keyphrases. Try to limit your meta description to less than 200 characters.

*It is worth pointing out that a few months ago, Google announced that it no longer takes into account meta keywords when ranking websites.

Despite this, I still think it is good practice to accurately specify your keywords for your post or page. Platinum SEO has a nifty little option that will allows you to use categories or tags for meta keywords. This may be useful to some users, but if you only post in a few categories, you may be better specifying your meta keywords on a post specific basis. Try to be focused with your keywords, aim for 4 – 6 keywords per page, although you can specify more meta keywords if you desire.

3. Heading Tags

As I have discussed in this blog post: The Importance Of Heading Tags, Heading tags are a crucial part of a well optimised page. Where possible, you should only include one H1 tag in a page (usually the title), but you may have multiple occurrences of tags H2 – H6. In rare circumstances, it may be appropriate to have more than one H1 tag within a page, for example where you discuss two equally important, clearly defined topics.

The H1 tag should surround the main heading/title of the page relevant to the content and should be positioned at the top of the content (not in the header or sidebar, but at the top of the main content area). For example, if you sell fruit, and you have an article or page about “Apples”, this should be in your H1 tags. If you discuss various types of apples within this page, you might use H2 or H3 tags for these sub-headings eg “Golden Delicious” or “Granny Smith”.

Using Heading tags will help the search engines determine the importance of the words in your content when it crawls your site.

4. Permalinks

Permalinks are URLs that point to specific blog posts and remain the same indefinitely. A permalink is what another blogger may use to link to your blog post, article or category, or how you might send a link to your blog post in an e-mail. More importantly, it is the link the search engines will use to identify your blog post, page or article. It is commonly accepted that keywords in the permalink can help contribute to a pages, posts or articles position in the search engines.

Optimizing the WordPress permalink structure is one aspect of WordPress Search Engine Optimisation that most users can do to configure a more desirable, readable permalink structure.

There are three basic types of WordPress permalinks: default, mod_rewrite & pathinfo.

Default WordPress Permalinks

The default WordPress permalink looks like: http:// exampledomain.com/?p=N

Where N is the Post ID number. It works on all server environments, but it doesn’t look as nice as some of the other options.

mod_rewrite WordPress Permalinks

Using mod_rewrite you can produce much nicer permalinks. There are many different formats, but the most common, and most commonly used looks like http:// domainexample.com/category/post-name/

This permalink structure is sometimes referred to as “Pretty permalinks” and is most commonly used on Apache web servers with the mod_rewrite module.

Pathinfo WordPress permalinks

Pathinfo permalinks look very much like mod_rewrite (pretty) permalinks but they have /index.php inserted before them, for example: http:// domainexample.com/index.php/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/

Otherwise, they are the same as the “pretty” mod_rewrite permalinks, and are similarly flexible.

It’s very easy to change your WordPress permalink structure by going to Settings -> Permalinks in your WordPress admin panel.

You can select one of the options using the radio buttons on the screen. To use “pretty permalinks”, you need to select the “Custom Structure” option and specify how you want the structure to be. WordPress provides numerous options for the custom structure but the most commonly used custom structure by bloggers is: /%category%/%postname% /

Permalinks are easy to set up and can influence how your blog is found & seen in the search engines.

5. Sitemaps

The generation and publishing of website sitemaps is quite often underestimated. There are basically two types of sitemap, one is a HTML sitemap which is readable for human visitors and helps them navigate throughout the website, the other is a XML Sitemap which helps the search engine spiders navigate through the site.

There are many advantages to using sitemaps, for example:

- they help simplify website navigation for both visitors and search engines
- they help the search engines accurately index your site content
- they help advise the search engines how frequently your content changes and when it was last modified

Sitemap generation in WordPress can be achieved easily using one of various plugins available. One of the most popular plugins for generating Google sitemaps is: Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask etc to better index your blog.

Usage of this plugin is nice and straight forward, simply install the plugin, then navigate to Settings -> XML-Sitemap in your WordPress admin panel and build the sitemap the first time. The plugin will automatically update your sitemap every time you publish a new post. It also worth telling Google exactly where your sitemap is, you can do this using the Google Webmaster Tools.

Interesting WordPress Links

WordPress Enables Blackbird Pie

Introducing WordPress For Nokia

Creating Custom WordPress Theme

WordPress Plugins, Themes and Apps

Latest Premium WordPress Themes

In this tutorial we’ll go through how to get WordPress running on your own PC (running Windows) so you have your own personal WordPress installation to experiment with or learn from. Yes you could experiment with WordPress on your live website but if you don’t have a web host or don’t want to play around with your live WordPress blog then this tutorial is for you.

Firstly we need to install your own personal web server to run WordPress. WordPress requires a web server, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language to run. Installing and configuring these in the past was hard work but there’s now an application called WAMP (Windows – Apache – MySQL – PHP) which installs and configures everything to get your own personal web server up and running.

Normally you’d pay a web host to host your website or blog and they’d provide the web server, database server and scripting but we’re going to install our own personal web server so we can do anything we like in our own personal WordPress test lab at zero cost.

Visit the WAMP site and download the WAMP Server. Once the file has downloaded double-click it to install the WAMP software.

Once the install begins accept the license agreement and all the default installation options and select to create a desktop icon at the end of the installation.

Once installed and running you’ll have a WAMP icon down in the system tray in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen (it looks like a semi-circle)click the WAMP icon down in the system tray and select phpMyAdmin – if the phpMyAdmin page displays then this tells us that the webserver is running and the php script can connect to our MySQL database so you’re up and running.

We now have a functioning WAMP web & database server running on our PC. This server provides practically all the functionality that a paid hosting account offers but costs nothing and is for your personal use or use on an internal network if you’re teaching WordPress. It would be possible to use WAMP to host your live blog but we’d advise that it’s much better for your live blog to be hosted at a web hosting company rather than allowing people to connect to your own PC running WAMP as there are security, speed and availability issues in running your own publicly accessible web server.

We have our web server now all we need to do is install WordPress. If you haven’t already started WAMP start it by double-clicking the WAMP desktop icon. Open ‘My Computer’ or Windows Explorer and navigate to C:/WAMP/WWW and then create a new folder in the WWW folder called wordpress.

We then need to download WordPress so go to the WordPress web site and download the latest version of WordPress. Once it’s downloaded extract/unzip the installation file and copy the contents of its ‘wordpress’ folder to c:/wamp/www/wordpress.

If you’ve downloaded WordPress and successfully copied the WordPress files into the correct folder you can open a browser and go to http://localhost/wordpress – you should see a WordPress page asking you to create a configuration file. So go ahead and click ‘create a configuration file’.

WordPress then asks for the database hostname, username and password to connect to your MySQL server. WordPress is a dynamic content management system so anything you post in WordPress is stored in a MySQL database so when a visitor visits your blog or you edit a post WordPress dynamically pulls this information from the database displays it. In order to do this we need to create a blank database with a username and password so WordPress can connect to it. WordPress will do all the hard work of populate this database with all the correct tables but we have to manually create the database and username and password before WordPress can do this.

Click the WAMP icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen and select phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin should now load in your browser so then in the ‘create new database’ box enter wordpress_db and click ‘create’.

Now we need to add a user to the database. In phpMyAdmin click the ‘Privileges’ tab then click ‘Add a new User’. In the ‘user name’ box enter wordpress_user (or a username of your choice) and enter a password in the ‘password’ and ‘re-type’ boxes. Ensure that under ‘database for user’ the option ‘Grant all privileges on database “wordpress_db”‘ is selected and then click ‘Go’ down at the bottom right.

Now if we go back to the WordPress installation screen we can enter the database name, username and password we just created using phpMyAdmin. The database host should be localhost and we’ll leave the table prefix as wp_.

Now click ‘submit’ and WordPress should say that it can now communicate with the database. Click the ‘run the install’ button. We then can fill in the options for site title, username and password – this username and password is the WordPress username and password that you’d like to use to administer your WordPress blog so you can make up your own username and password which can (and should!) be different from the database username and password we created earlier.

Click ‘install WordPress’ and WordPress should then say you’ve successfully installed it and if you click the login button and enter your WordPress username and password you’re up and running!

Just remember to make sure your WAMP server is running first otherwise you won’t be able connect.

WordPress is turning 7 years old this year and is currently the most popular blog publishing application available today. Over 200 million websites are using WordPress, but it can be a bit difficult to tell because of how easy WordPress customization is. Through the use of templating and widgets integration, WordPress blogs can be customized to the web master’s liking and they do not even need to know PHP and HTML coding although those that know can benefit even more. Therefore it is important to make full use of the WordPress customization techniques to make the most out of your blog.

Benefits of WordPress Customization

While the default WordPress theme is simple and elegant, customizing the theme allows you to give your site a personality and identity. You can put business logos or brand names to give people a better idea on what blog they are reading. It also serves as the basis for what color scheme to use since color schemes often revolve around the logo.

By combining creativity with WordPress customization, you can impress your visitors with a unique design that encourages them to subscribe to your feed or come back to check out some more content when you make updates. If you already have a fully designed website, you can utilize the WordPress customization features to enable your blog to integrate perfectly with your web site’s theme for complete branding.

How to Obtain WordPress Themes

Starters can begin by looking for the many free WordPress themes made available for download on the web. WordPress’s very own website has its own search bar where you can look for WordPress themes that are linked from other WordPress blogs. Social bookmarking websites often post links to free WordPress themes as well. Downloading is as easy as clicking the download link and saving it to your desktop. Themes are usually ZIP files that contain several PHP files and a style.css file.

Another way to get WordPress themes is by buying them from sites that sell premium WordPress themes. These types of WordPress themes look more professional than the free ones and offer greater WordPress customization possibilities. Some free templates may suit your site’s theme well, but it is better to check out the WordPress premium themes and move on to a better design to create a better impression.

Installing WordPress Themes

Whether the WordPress theme is premium or free, installing the WordPress theme is also easy. Just extract the ZIP file to a folder and then upload that folder to your “themes” folder inside the “wp-content” folder. You will need an FTP program to do this or utilize your web host’s FTP tool. Once the upload is finished, activate the template by logging in to your WordPress via wp-login.php. Go to “Design > Themes” and you should see the new theme in selection. Click the “Activate” link and refresh your website.

Review your website and see if you need to do anymore WordPress customization adjustments. Remember that you can always edit the template files once you learn the structure so you can end up with modified and unique designs based on your favorite templates.

If you have never built a website before, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get your first domain live and operational in only minutes is to install WordPress on your website.

WordPress is a blogging platform that allows you to have a pre-built website for free that will allow you to focus on the more important items like content, and if you desire it, sales and profits.

WordPress Benefits

In more than a decade online, I have literally built dozens of websites, many from the ground up… But since I discovered the ease of use and powerful flexibility of the WordPress platform, I am building most of my newest websites under this Content Management System (CMS).

The reasons I prefer the WordPress blogging platform are many, but I will sum it up with the following five key benefits:

1. Quick and Easy Installation – If you have a web hosting company that runs cPanelX as your webmasters’ control panel (many of the more popular web hosting companies do), then you will find an option in your control panel called, “Fantastico De Luxe”. When you click on the Fantastico icon, you will be taken to a page where you can add a multitude of free applications to your website, by following some simple instructions. Just click on the WordPress link to install WordPress on your website. The software will ask you some basic general information, then do the full install of one of the most recent WordPress builds into your website.

2. Website Themes – Few webmasters want to use the generic WordPress Theme that ships with WordPress. The default WP Theme is plain Jane, and to my taste, perfectly drab. There are many people who design custom WordPress Themes that you can easily upload to your domain, to change the appearance and feel of your WordPress website. Some of the WP Themes are paid versions, but most of them are free. There are more than one thousand themes loaded directly into the WordPress website ( wordpress.org/extend/themes/ ), from which you can choose, although you are not limited to just the themes loaded into the WordPress website.

3. Website Functionality – Just like with the WordPress Themes, if there is a specific functionality you want your blog to perform, there are programmers out there who have made WordPress Plugins that will do for you those things you would like to do. There are nearly 8,000 WordPress Plugins on the WordPress.org website ( wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ ), and thousands more that are not in the WordPress database. If you find a Plugin you want, just download, unzip, and upload it to the appropriate Plugin directory on your blog. After you have uploaded the Plugin, simply go to the Admin area of your Blog to activate the software.

4. Open Source – WordPress has been built in PHP, and its source code is visible to everyone who wants to look at it. On top of that, WordPress has included comprehensive documentation and a range of functions to help programmers work within the WordPress Codex. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of PHP can program WordPress Themes and Plugins, without too much effort.

5. Self-Updating – In recent versions, WordPress has included a feature that will notify you if upgrades are available for the basic WordPress operating system or your chosen WP Plugins. When upgrades become available, you will be notified, and often you only need to click a link to automatically install the upgrades and updates.

I have a friend who is a PHP coder by trade. I try not to mention WordPress in his presence, because every time I do so, I get an ear-full of “WordPress Sucks…”

To be honest with you, I still like WordPress… I like it, because it is easy to install and maintain, and I can improve it easily by using templates and plugins.

I am a coder, but life is too short to spend all of my time coding new websites… I am happy to spend my time creating content that will lead to sales… So for me, WordPress is good, and I am happy to put it on as many websites as I need to do…

If you are new to the Internet, then you might agree that WordPress is a blessing to those of us, who have more important things to do than to recreate the wheel…

Most plugins can be found and installed easily. You do not have to leave your WordPress website because you can install most plugins quickly from your dashboard. The search for plugins is just as simple.

Where do I find Plugins?

Simply login to your WordPress dashboard. Scroll down to “Plugins” then select add new. In the new window that opens to the right there is a search box. You can also see a tag cloud of popular searches. Type in your term or select one of the words.

How do I select a Plugin?

Now there should be a list of plugins for you to choose from. If you know exactly which plugin you want check the name and the plugin author to make certain you have the right one. Otherwise you want to decide which plugin will be the best one.

What can I learn from this list?

Without clicking install there is a lot to learn from this list of plugins. You can see what the name of the plugin is. The average rating, however you do not know how many people rated that plugin. Then the description of the plugin. See if the description meets your particular needs. The plugin may be related to what you need not do what you need. If you still like the plugin at this point click install.

Does it pass the Installation Screen?

A Install pop-up screen will appear. This will tell you even more about the plugin. Here you can read more about the description. To the right you can see when it was last updated. This is in days. Next you can see if it is compatible with your version of WordPress. If the version is fairly current then even if it does not list your version it will probably work. You can also see how many people download it and how many people rated it. This is good because one person giving it a 5 means less than 100 people rating it a 4.5.

Still not certain about this WordPress Plugin?

Look towards the top of the pop up. You will see description, which is what you are looking at. Click Installation, Screenshots, and other tabs. These tabs change depending on if it has information or not. Visit the Plugin Site which is on the description tab. Then visit the WordPress plugin page. Hopefully this will get you enough information.

What about installation?

If you are satisfied enough, try the plugin. Just click install, then activate. Remember you can try a plugin and if you do not like it uninstall it. Simply click installed under the plugin tab. Scroll down the list of plugins to the one you want. Then click the word deactivate. If you do not plan on using it further, click delete next. But most plugins are free, and easy to deactivate. So when you need a new one, try it, you might like it
Are you wondering how to get started online? Or need a little how to help?

Are you currently stuck on your results do to the lack of traffic that you are receiving? If this is your problem, then you should know that there are ways to improve your AdSense revenue simply and easily. Blogger makes it easy for you to incorporate Google AdSense onto your blog but this ease doesn’t necessarily mean that you will earn a lot of money with it.

You have to find new ways to get traffic to your Blogger blog if you want to earn a nice residual income with AdSense. It’s a good idea to have an email newsletter also since this is a great way to bring visitors back to your blog. Hopefully you’re operating in a niche because this is a great way to build a list of rabid subscribers, and is also a great way to get relevant ads to show up on your blog.

Now that you know that traffic is important, let’s take a look at some ways that you can get traffic to your blog. If you want to improve your AdSense income, then you will follow the advice listed in this article. Here’s tip number 1.

1) Article marketing

I know you’re interested in getting traffic for free, so this article will focus on the techniques that can get you free traffic. The first is article marketing. Some say that article marketing is dead but it can still bring you a lot of traffic to your website. The trick with article marketing is staying at it. You have to put up a lot of articles to see the results that you crave, and you should strive to write 5-10 new articles a day if you want to see your efforts pay off.

After writing your 300-500 word article, you will want to submit them to the top article directories. The top 5 article directories rank well in the search engines and can deliver to you a lot of traffic to your blog. This is a free way to get traffic and to earn money with AdSense on your blog, but like I said earlier – you will have to stick with it in order to see the results that you desire. Here’s another free way to get traffic.

2) Forum marketing

You can really skyrocket your traffic by joining a high traffic forum in your niche. When joining a forum, you will want to stick with giving great ideas that the members will find useful. Sometimes people join forums just to use it as a vehicle of spamming their message across the forum boards. This is something that you don’t want to do. Instead, stick to giving helpful advice. Most forums allow you to advertise your marketing message in the signature of your forums, so this is where you want to place your blog information at.

3) Classified advertising

Don’t overlook the power of using classified advertising to bring traffic to your blog. There are a ton of people using Craigslist to drive a ton of traffic to their website, and you can do the same. There’s another site called usfreeads.com that you can use to drive traffic to your blog. You can use it to back link to your blog posts to increase their rankings in the search engines. Classified advertising still works but like anything, it takes a while for it to deliver the results.

All in all these techniques can help you to earn the money with AdSense that you desire.

If you’re blogging on the WordPress platform,the first thing you’ll probably do is to install a new WordPress theme. Even if you’ve been blogging for years you may still be a theme “addict”, wasting a lot of time doing minor modifications that when summed up merely distracts you from blogging itself.

It’s actually easy to see why this single aspect of running a blog demands so much attention. With the correct theme, you can accommodate all the nifty little widgets and codes, and may also mean better search engine rankings and tons of fresh traffic every day.

So what are the factors you need to consider to make theme-hunting easier? Here are five important ingredients:

1) Theme Width and Columns

Typically, WordPress themes come in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths ranging from 500 pixels to 960 pixels wide. If you’re blogging for non-profit purposes, a 2-column theme can look more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have less images of products or links to other sites to display, you can focus exclusively on the content without leading readers away from your site.

On the other hand, if you’re blogging for profit, you may want to consider a 3-column WordPress theme that will be able to accommodate your Google Adsense, Chitika and Text Link Ads codes comfortably without squeezing everything in the content area. 3-column themes allow room for expansion, but in the event that you’ve filled up all available space with ads, then it’s time you removed the non-performers and use only the advertising services that work for that particular blog.

2) Use of Images and Icons

A theme with images and icons can look good, but it rarely increases your web traffic or subscriber base. In fact, most “A-list” bloggers have plain vanilla themes with a simple logo on top. Reducing the amount of images also means faster loading time and less stress on your servers. This vital aspect of server load become apparent only if you have tens of thousands of visitors a day, but it’s worth designing for the future.

A image-laden theme also distracts readers from the content itself. This is the reason why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use images intensively in the content areas to add value to a post, but the theme itself is simple and rather minimalist.

Ideally, a theme should allow you to use your own header image for stronger branding purposes, yet replace images and icons with links and text, or just not use them at all unless absolutely necessary.

3) Compatibility with Plugins

Another time-sucking activity is installing plugins that improve the functionality of your site. There’s a plugin out there for almost everything you want to do with your blog, but while most of them are free and easily obtainable, it’s not always easy to install the plugins and insert the codes into your WordPress theme.

If your theme is too complicated, it may be a headache to even insert that one line of code you need to make a plugin work. This is often the case with advanced AJAX-based WordPress themes that have too many files and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred a simpler themes that stick to the default WordPress theme as much as possible, so I can cut back on the learning curve and just get on with my life.

Remember that the purpose of your blog is to deliver timely, relevant content to your readers, Any theme that preserves or improves the reader experience is good, any theme that subtracts from the experience is bad.

4) Search Engine Optimization

A lot can be said about search engine optimization, but at the end of the day if you have content worth reading eventually you’ll get the rankings you deserve. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need SEO; all it means is that what you really need to do is to make sure:

(a) Your

(b) All your blog content titles use the H1 tag, with the main keywords used instead of non-descriptive text for better SEO relevance

(b) Your theme has clean source codes, and if possible all formatting is linked to an external CSS file which you can edit independently

5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use

Can the theme be installed easily on an existing blog without having to move things around? Can the same theme be used and customized easily on your other blogs? These are some additional things you may want to consider when theme-shopping, especially if every minute of downtime on your blog may mean lost revenue.

While it’s hard to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of free and paid themes out there, it’s still a good idea to have a test blog site. Test any theme you plan on using, and make sure your test blog is also fitted with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used on your real blog. The last thing you want is for your readers start seeing weird error messages on your blog.

At the end of the day, a theme is just a theme. Instead of spending your time installing them, it may be wiser to outsource the task and focus more on your readers. Alternatively, you may also want to consider buying “plug-and-play” themes for a reasonable price. Dennis De’ Bernardy of ProWordPress.com has probably one of the best themes around, but if you’re short on cash there are certainly cheaper alternatives.