Davill Design

Let’s face the facts; there are a gazillion websites on the internet. You don’t have the luxury of publishing a mediocre site when, at most, you have only a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention. Your site design is the web with which you catch your fly. Whether they stick and stay is up to your content. One of the main reasons Thesis Wordpress Theme has become so popular, is that it provides a clean, elegant design with enough flexibility to allow you to tailor it to any need.

Design - Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.3

Thesis Version 1.3 continues where previous versions left off, by providing stellar typography, user accessibility, interface design and search engine optimization. The overall look is professional, with sufficient gravitas to lend authority to your content. Elements of the overall design are endlessly customizable through the easily navigated user interface. Layouts and fonts are controlled without the need to fiddle with the site’s core code. Everything is laid out in an intuitive manner which doesn’t require an advanced degree in computer science to navigate. This attribute alone makes it a perfect choice for anyone deploying a site for the first time. The interface abounds with nice ergonomic touches such as the inclusion of an asterisk next to web-safe fonts on the selection menus. And let’s not overlook the “B.A. Save Button”! But even this trademark item is customizable, although Chris Pearson, Thesis’s creator, doesn’t advise it.

Changes from Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.2

Many improvements were added to version 1.3 however, there are three additions that deserve special mention. The new Thesis Layout Constructor allows you to mix and match the column order any way you like, maximizing the possibilities between one, two or three column layouts. Content can be located in the middle or either side of the sidebars, all with the click of the mouse. This is possible due to a new HTML module structure creating six new possible layouts. In addition to this added flexibility, Thesis Wordpress Theme now adds a Framework Selector which allows you to select between a page framework and a full-width framework. In full-width mode, your headers and footers carry to the edge of the browser’s viewable space. Again, the concept is flexibility without having to touch the underlying core code. The third major improvement over version 1.2 is a more robust hook system. Previously, if you wanted to customize your theme, you hacked away at the HTML for each individual template file. This process was time consuming at best, and a recipe for disaster at worst. Once you worked out all the bugs, you were off and running, but what if you decide at some point to change your theme? Guess what? You get to do it all over again. The hook system, which was introduced in version 1.2, solves that problem by creating one of the most critical ways to customize your theme without touching the underlying code. Even more importantly, hooks do their work while assuring forward-compatibility. Thesis Wordpress Theme now has thirty-one hooks which allow you to add and subtract content such as ads, pictures, design attributes etc.

Thesis Wordpress Theme And Search Engine Optimization

The whole point of a website and/or blog is to drive traffic to it so that you can share your unique content. To do so, you must optimize your code for search engines, without landing in the dreaded Supplemental Index. To begin with, Wordpress is designed to be very amenable to SEO, but even with that on your side, the way your theme(s) are built have an enormous impact on how search engines view your site. Thesis Wordpress Theme includes code that is optimized for search engine retrieval without any customization. With Thesis Wordpress Theme you can easily optimize the content of a page and manage keywords for better pass-through. Of course Thesis plays well with plug-ins like SEO Title Tag for more control, but out-of-the-box, Thesis handles SEO well.

Thesis Wordpress Theme - Pricing And Support

Thesis provides purchase options to fit the needs of every level of user. The basic package, or Personal License, sells for $87 and includes a single seat license for one production site and one development server. The catch with this package is that the footer information must remain intact, although this is truly a small nit to pick. For a little less than double the price of the basic license, or $164, you get the Developer’s License which gives you unlimited use of the theme on any number of sites and the ability to remove the footer link. If you’re unsure, and just want to dip your toe in the water, you can opt for the Personal License and then upgrade to the full-up Developer’s license later for an additional $77. What do you get for your money? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot: Theme upgrades are free for life. You get total access to Thesis Forums, free tidbits to customize your theme such as styles, images and the like, all available for download, and unbelievable support. This touches on an itchy subject. We all know that claims of superior user support are, more often than not, marketing hype designed to make you feel better about putting forth the green. Except that in this case, it happens to be true. The creator of Thesis, Chris Pearson is often the one providing support, often within a day of posting your question. But you don’t need to take my word for it, just check out the testimonials page.

Thesis Wordpress Theme : The Conclusion

Yes, there are thousands of free themes out there available for download, and yes, you can create your own with Wordpress template functionality, but why? If you’re a novice webmaster or just starting to blog, then you probably don’t have the requisite skills to do all the hard-core coding. On the other hand, even if you have god-like coding fu, why bother? You have far more important things to spend time on such as researching and writing content and managing your ad revenues. Especially if you are in the latter classification, Thesis Wordpress Theme will pay for itself rather quickly. There simply is no other Wordpress theme available that delivers so much for so little. That is why Thesis is one of the best choices of Wordpress theme available today. And for the same reasons, I use Thesis Wordpress Theme for my blog.

Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.3.2 is already out. And the newest version of Thesis includes more fantastic features that makes blogging more efficient. Some of the added features are: more SEO options and improvements, fixes on SEO plugin compatibility, improved multi-media box functionality, new page template functionality and hooks, design and layout changes, and MANY MORE!

What do you think of Thesis?

WordPress is a blogging platform that has podcasting support. A podcast is a pre-recorded audio program, very much like a radio program that is listened to on the computer. Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0 or atom as WordPress creates all the necessary links for the site.

Using WordPress for Podcasting

WordPress works for podcasting. It starts with the creation of a video or audio that is intended to be shared. The file is uploaded to a server and the line to the file is posted in the weblog. WordPress automatically includes a link to the file in the RSS/Atom feed. Listeners will then subscribe to the feed where new files are downloaded automatically.

Podcasting is supported by WordPress 1.5. Linking to an audio file in one of the posts will result to WordPress automatically adding the enclosure tag to the RSS2 feed to make it usable as a podcast. It is important to use a complete and absolute URL when linking to an audio file or WordPress will not be able to make an enclosure for it.

The RSS2 feed should be made available by putting a linking somewhere on the page. As of WordPress 1.5, the RSS 2.0/Atom links are located at the bottom of the page by default. This only works for posts and not for static pages. When a linked file is inaccessible upon publishing of the post, WordPress will not be able to collect the information it needs from the linked files.

A change in the linked file would require refurbishing of the posts so that WordPress can update its file size information about the file. In order for WordPress to recognize m4a and m4b files as podcast, the web server has to be configured to serve the right content type. An XML at the end of the RSS/Atom URL may occasionally be needed for it to work properly.

Dedicated podcast feeds can be made by creating a category in the Admin>Manage>Categories panel for the audio files, and a post containing an audio link must be assigned to every category. If audio file are being hosted on http://archive.org, a custom field called “enclosure” should be added and the full URL is posted for the MP3 file in the value field.

Podcasting allows anyone to create his/her own audio programming and deliver it via the web. The usual way of distributing podcasts are through RSS enclosures as it allows the reference of binary data from within the RSS feed. Podcast readers subscribe to the RSS feed and download the audio files contained in the enclosures. The downloaded audio files are then moved to a portable audio player for later consumption.

Of WordPress Plugins

There are resources that will help in getting to know the WordPress blog platform better. The WordPress podcast features easy and understandable commentaries about WordPress plus a couple of plugins. It is a great learning resource for any skill or experience level. The Diagnosis plugin presents the detailed information about the server, operating system and the database. It is presented in a way that could be understood by the least technically-inclined person using it. Most will be able to appreciate its rich tech content.

The PodPress plugin is designed to make podcasting with WordPress as easy as possible. It has several features that will make its use fruitful to the user. It has full featured and automatic feed generation as well as auto generation of enclosure tag. It provides a preview of what the podcast would look like on iTunes. The podcast is able to download stats and there is support provided for premium content for pay accounts. This plugin makes adding a podcast to a post very simple and makes possible the viewing of MP3 files’ ID3 tag information. The contents of the ID3 tags can even be copied into the post.

It likewise provides control where the player will display within the posts. Support for various formats including video podcasting is given while it facilitates support for unlimited number of media files. It has automatic media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI and others. It also includes in-line and Pop-up Windows support and provides preview image for videos.

The Mechanics of Podcasting

Podcasting’s publish/subscribe model makes use of the push technology wherein the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. As a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program which is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player, podcasting makes use of an automatic mechanism that transfers multi-media computer files from a server to a client. Podcasts are generally analogous to a recorded television or radio server.

The content provider starts by making a file available on the Internet usually by posting the file on a publicly-available web server. However, it is not technically necessary that the file be publicly accessible but it is required that it be accessible through some known URL or a general-purpose Internet address. He then acknowledges the existence of the file by referencing it in another file known as the feed.

The feed is a machine-readable list of the URLs by which episodes of the show may be accessed. One episode refers to the originally made file while the list provides other information such as publish dates, titles and accompanying text description of the series, and each of its episodes. This list can either be published in RSS format and less frequently in atom format.

Feeds may contain entries for all episodes in the series but are usually limited to a short list of the most recent episodes. A feed from one author is commonly used for standard podcasts but the practice of having multiple authors contribute episodes to a single podcast feed is fast becoming popular. The location known as the feed URI or feed URL at which the feed is posted by the content provider is expected to be permanent. This is to be made known to the intended audience.

The user enters the feed URI into a software called a podcatcher or aggregator which retrieves and processes data from the said feed. A podcatcher is a program which starts when the computer is started and runs in the background. A set of feed URIs is managed by it which is added by the user and downloaded at a specified interval. Any substantive change in the feed data from the time it was previously checked will trigger automatic downloading of the location of the most recent item to the user’s computer. Some podcatchers make the newly downloaded episodes available to a user’s portable media player. Downloaded episodes can be played, replayed, or archived like any other computer file.

A lot of people are marketing online nowadays and there are tons of different options when choosing a platform for promoting your products or services.

A really effective strategy that I have found is called WordPress Marketing. You can use it for promoting affiliate offers - for example building a chicken coop.

If you are not familiar with wordpress it is a FREE blog service that allows you to create your own website (blog) for free! You can your own domain name (wordpress.com/nameofyourblog) and anybody with an internet connection can view your page by visiting that web address.

Now, you are online! You can promote products as an affiliate OR you can promote your own products or services from there too. Another popular thing people do when marketing online using a wordpress blog, is to write about something that is very popular at the moment (or always) and get traffic to your site that way. Then, you can place ads on your site for Google or Yahoo (also FREE) and YOU GET PAID anytime someone just clicks on one of the ads on your site!
This is a very popular way of making money online.

What else is WordPress Marketing good for?

Yet another awesome technique for making money with your blog is to build your opt-in list of email subscribers by giving away something of value for FREE right from your blog, in exchange for the email address of your reader. It may in form of e-Books, e-Courses, software or a short report. You would not believe that most people will exchange their email address with these free stuffs. If it is useful for them, they will be your loyalty customer in the future easily.

You can sign up for an auto-responder service for less than $20 a month and easily set up the email address capture form where the customer must enter their first name and email address in order to receive the free download (a short, informative report that you write on the same topic as your blog or promotion).

If you do not want to pay for monthly cost, you can try some free auto-responder services. But it would be a better idea to invest on the paid auto-responder service as it will provides a much more stability and durability.
Once you harvest their email addresses you can promote (legally!) products and/or services to them via email and then you can make some serious money!

If you want to make more money, just create your own product and promote them. If you do not want to create your own product, you may finding some affiliate products to promote. That is Wordpress marketing in a nutshell!

Seree Woradechjamroen
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/how-to-use-wordpress-marketing-to-your-advantage-496332.html

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, building a chicken coop, web design, website design

It was only a short while ago that the “Wordpress” developer team has successfully launched their latest version of Wordpress, called “Wordpress Ella”. Numerically, the version number is called version 2.1.  Now we’re already up to 2.8.4 with 2.9 in beta.

To the uninitiated, news like this seems like a normal announcement from software developers and are often passed on by. However, from the eyes of a trained mind and savvy businessman, the news of “Wordpress Ella” contain many benefits that online business owners can immediately tap into and profit from.

“Wordpress Ella” comes with the following enhancements which are a great resource for online business owners.

1. First on the list of enhancements from Wordpress Ella is an ‘autosave’ function that ensures you will never lose a post again. This is an invaluable tool especially at times when you have spent a lot of time in front of your computer screen, brainstorming on what to write to promote your business.

Imagine the horror or frustration especially in instances where the battery of your notebook died and you forgot to save. Or perhaps there was a blackout or you accidentally closed the browser window without saving your work.

“Wordpress Ella” autosave function is a real time saver and is an abosolute must for any online businesses.

2. Next in line on “Wordpress Ella” is the “Import” and “Export” functions. Let’s talk about the import function first.

The latest release of “Wordpress Ella” has an import function that allows you to import your blog created from other popular blogging platforms such as ‘Movable Type’, ‘Typepad’, ‘Livejournal’, ‘Blogger’ and so on, into Wordpress itself.

This way, you don’t have to lose any important data such as your blog posts and comments. This flexibility is another reason why Wordpress itself is so successful and continues to gain a huge following and user base.

Why would anyone want to transfer their blog from another platform to Wordpress? Well, one reason is because with most of these other blogging platforms, the user has to pay a monthly fee. Wordpress, as almost everyone knows is free, and you can easily install with a few clicks using Fantastico from within your hosting account’s Cpanel.

Another reason to migrate or transfer the entire blog to Wordpress could be due to the limitation of some blogging platforms. Blogger, for example does not support the use of categories, which are critical when it comes to optimizing the blog to rank high for specific keywords related to the business.

Now, let’s discuss about the “Export” function.

“Export” as the name implies, will export all the Wordpress posts and comments into a file (called XML). This file can then be imported into other Wordpress blogs. It’s like a cross transferring of data between similar or related “Wordpress Blogs”.

This is useful when one is starting a new blog and perhaps need to populate the blog with useful content instead of just displaying news feed. For example, if you have a blog on muscle building, and you started a new blog on weight loss, you can import the content (which are the posts and comments) from the muscle blog into the weight loss blog.

This way, when you drive traffic to your new weight loss blog, you can at least provide the reader with some useful content while you build up the content around weight loss. Naturally there is some correlation between these two topics. After all, if you want to build muscle, naturally you need to burn off the excess fats and turn them into muscles!

3. Another enhancement of “Wordpress Ella” is the new search engine privacy. What this means is that you can indicate whether you’d like your blog to be indexed or ping by search engines, especially Google, Yahoo or MSN, which are the three top search engines online.

Most experienced marketers know about the pinging power of blogs. Everytime when a post is published, Wordpress will ping or notify specific blog directories about updates to your blog, causing them to index or visit your blog, brining you that additional and much needed targeted traffic.

As crazy as it sounds, considering that most business owners would like to get their site listed in the search engines, there are also times when you might want to hide or mask your blog from the radar screen of search engines. This is true especially in cases where it’s only meant for paid customers only. For example, you might be providing some sensitive information meant for paid customers and you don’t want anyone doing a search on the search engines to stumble upon your blog and have access to the information.

4. Another powerful upgrade that “Wordpress Ella” brings is the ability to specify a static page as the front page for your site or blog.

Most savvy marketers employ the use of a mini site or a one page only sales letter when marketing their products or services. Normally such one page sites will also contain an opt-in box, where visitors and readers are enticed to provide their email address in exchange for a free gift, software, e-course etc.

When they do so, they will normally be enrolled in an autoresponder course that automatically does the follow-up with the said subscriber which either results in a sale or no sale.

With a blog, however, the main page or the front page will always a display of the latest chronological posts. You can create pages for a blog, however, in the past it was not that easy for the layman to do so.

With “Wordpress Ella”, all you need to do if you want a static front page is to select this option in the Wordpress control panel. It can’t get any easier than this.

These are just some of the enhancements that you can immediately benefit from “Wordpress Ella”.

This article assumes you already have some basic knowledge about the marketing power of blogs in terms
of its syndication power, targeted traffic and search engine optimization capability for keywords.

Brandon Hong
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/profitng-and-benefiting-from-wordpress-ella-103768.html

Ten years ago, launching a website required a sizable chunk of money, quite a bit of time, and a technical savvy only possessed by a small percentage of business owners. Today, the widespread use of the Internet has changed the landscape of online marketing. If you want to have an edge over your competitors, an online presence is more than just a luxury—it’s an absolute necessity.

But what about blogs? These days, it seems like every business has one of those, too. Often written in a breezy, “from me to you” format, blogs can run the gamut from opinionated editorials to procedural guides to lists of product benefits. Many busy website owners choose to outsource their blog content to freelance copywriters, providing their customers with relevant, informative content that also entertains. But with 39 million blogs currently live, their prevalence begs the question: what’s in it for the blogger?

The answer: plenty. Churning out blog content provides your business with an abundance of benefits:

• Encourages a community feel. The casual tone of most blogs, paired with the commentary function often included, creates an interactive environment and back-and-forth dialogue among users. This sense of camaraderie prolongs the length of customers’ visits and encourages them to come back more often.
• Lets your personality shine. Any website can sell candles. But when the products are paired with helpful blog articles on proper burning techniques, candle-making activities, and decorating ideas, the company will seem more credible and reliable in the eyes of potential customers.
• Increases search engine rankings. Yahoo, Google, and other search engines feast on fresh, dynamic content and external links. With new blogs and commentary added on a regular basis, along with strategic interlinking, your website will be more appealing to the search engines. Your net gain: a more prominent presence within search results and an increased flow of qualified traffic.
• Provides you with a cheap (or free!) marketing tool. With dozens of free or low-cost blogging applications, such as BlogSpot and WordPress, you can have an active blog in a few short minutes. If you’ve got the time, you can write and publish your own articles for free, or consider investing in a freelance copywriter to provide your blog content. Remember, originality is key: regurgitating content posted elsewhere could prompt search engines to blacklist your site.

Enhancing your website with blog content can be an easy, cost-effective way to market your product or service, create a rich and interactive community, and infuse your business with personality. The best part is, you don’t have to be a programmer or tech expert—anyone can become an expert blogger with a little time and practice.

Melissa Rudy
http://www.articlesbase.com/copywriting-articles/why-your-business-needs-a-blog-752072.html

There has been talk About using Wordpress beyond the typical blog set-up, into the realms of a full-fledged content management system or CMS. Yet, most people have no idea how this is even possible.

I have to stress that the default Wordpress software is intended to be a blogging tool, so if you’re trying to make it work like a different type of content management tool you’ll have to use the correct plugins (enhancements) and have the a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

While the exact step-by-step method is out of the scope of this article, lets explore some of the ways you can use Wordpress, as I have personally done before.

1) Wordpress as An Article Directory

To make Wordpress work as an article directory, you’ll need a special plugin, and a source for the articles. MyArticleMarketer.com is the perfect tool for this, as the articles there are usually human-approved. They also encourage free distribution of their articles to other article sites.

After you have set-up the Wordpress plugin, you need to sign-up for Article Marketer’s distribution list. By filling in their form and specifying the categories (or choose all categories), you automatically qualify to receive all old and new articles that are submitted to MyArticleMarketer.com

However, with Wordpress as an article directory, you’ll only be able to receive syndicated articles. Authors won’t be able to sign-up or create an account directly with you. It’s also against MyArticleMarketer.com’s terms or service to encourage authors to sign-up directly with you.

2) Wordpress as a Membership Site

You can set-up a free or paid membership site using Wordpress. All it takes is a few simple plugins to get the job done. Once you’ve installed the plugins, members will need to login to your site in order to view the content. You can also place a login form in your Wordpress theme files to make it easy for users to lo in and out of your membership site.

However, the plugins only create a simple membership system, so if you’re looking to create different membership levels and more advanced features, you’d probably want to sign-up with a professional membership system like AmemberPro.net and use their available plugins to ingrate with Wordpress.

At the time of writing, AmemberPro.net has available plugins for a reasonable cost and these will be installed by their support team, so you don’t have to worry about the technical setbacks.

3) Wordpress as a Classified Ads System

Wordpress can work like any other classifieds website too. Users can sign-up on your site and place classifieds in the form of new blog posts. They can even set expiry dates for their ads and specify listings or “wanted” ads.

However, you will need to create all the necessary categories and even create a sign-up information page to teach your users how to place ads. The upside of using Wordpress as a classifieds site is that you can also use tagging tactics to get traffic from social bookmarking sites and sites like Technorati.com

4) Wordpress as an Audio / Video Training Site

Using the membership plugins mentioned above or AmemberPro.net’s Wordpress compatibility plugins, you can create a membership site with Wordpress. Then, all you need to do is to add the “Podpress” plugin which takes care of all audio and video elements on your website.

You will be able to display and stream MP3 audio or FLV video using their built-in players. The Podpress plugin is really robust and also allows you to specify setting on iTunes, so you can make this commercially and available to the entire iPod / iTunes community.

As you can see by now, there’s a whole lot of possibilities when it comes to using Wordpress to the extreme.

I’ve created an entire video training system to help newbies and advanced marketers alike master Wordpress. Yet, every day brings new possibilities to using Wordpress as a complex CMS instead of the modest blogging tool it was designed to be!

Gobala Krishnan
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/using-wordpress-as-a-content-management-system-or-cms-90620.html