About two months ago, the folks behind press75 announced that they were discontinuing their themes forever. But I have just noticed that the program is back up based on popular demand. All the original themes are now available for purchase. These themes are highly customizable for vloggers. Read the reviews here.
You can demo the themes here.
0 CommentsChoosing the right name for your blog can be the difference between catching fire or having a blog that no one cares about. If you look at the top 1000 blogs, the majority of them have decent, catchy names. Naming a blog can be easy on the surface, but it really isn’t. A lot of us struggle to come up with an original catchy name.
I am sure you have heard of all the buzz that was going around a while back about folks using “Digg” to model their names. Then we started having “gg” at the end of 100s of new websites. While I can appreciate folks trying to use Digg’s success to come up with catchy names, it’s just too unoriginal to use the same letters. I mean I would get if you use “waterr.com” as your domain (even though it’s still not catchy).
Here is the thing. Folks want to have unique domains but they often think too hard about it. You don’t have to come up with some magical domain name to be successful. You want to have a domain that is:
Once you have found your desired domain, you should try to register it. Forget about registering anything obvious these days as everything is taken. You may want to consider buying a domain if it’s registered but that comes down on how large your budget is (you can expect to pay anything from $200 to $2M for a good domain). There are plenty of good domains still available to purchase. Just make sure you find a unique one that has the above characteristics (and is a .com).
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I don’t know what it is about creating attractive polls that gets to me. I love WP Poll, and it’s a great plug-in to host your own polls on your blog, but there is no question that there are limitations. If you really want to create a kick ass poll, you should try PollDaddy.
PollDaddy is a web 2.0 poll online application that allows you to create polls on the fly. It not only allows you to create attractive polls, but it also comes with features that you wouldn’t get from a mere plug-in:
There you have it. PollDaddy, which is in beta, is no joke. It’s more powerful than anything you get on WordPress or even Facebook. And best of all, it’s for free. Can’t beat that.
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WordPress has been the talk of the town lately. After all, everybody has waited so long to their hands on WordPress 2.7 that it’s not even funny. But not me. I decided to switch to WordPress 2.7 Beta a couple of months ago. Me and my folks own over 60 blogs and we updated all of them to 2.7 Beta. It has been so easy that I wonder why many other folks didn’t do it earlier.
Usability
WordPress 2.7 is much easier to use than WP 2.6. You can see your posts, comments, drafts, and everything else in between. You can also press quickies on the fly with the new interface.
Plug-in upgrade
Unlike previous versions of WordPress, no longer do you have to download plug-ins to your PC and then upload them to your server. With WP 2.7, you can do all this in one process. You can search for plug-ins using the interface, and then upload them and activate them on the fly. Can’t get any easier than that.
Version upgrade
WP 2.7 takes care of the dreaded “there is a new version of WordPress available” message that you would get when your installation is out of date. You can now update your installation by clicking a button from your tools menu. Very easy to manage 60 blogs like that.
Compatibility
When I started upgrading my blogs to WP 2.7, I was really nervous. I have bought many premium themes and have spent thousands of dollars in the process. If these themes and plug-ins were not compatible with WP 2.7, I would have had to find a way to upgrade them or stay with WP 2.6. I have not seen any major incompatibility which is great. I wish Microsoft could learn from the WordPress folks with this whole thing.
There are thousands of other reasons that make migrating to WordPress 2.7 a no-brainer. But the above reasons were the main reasons I made the jump a couple of months ago. It’s just so easy to patch your installation now, and I feel bad for folks who make a living out of hacking out of date WordPress blogs. There is simply no exucse for not having the latest update installed on your blog with WP 2.7.
What’s your take? What do you like the most with WP 2.7?
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Happy Holidays! This year has gone by awfully past, but it has been an absolute pleasure blogging about information and sharing and learning from all you guys. Let’s hope for a magnificent new year for everyone, and may God bless our economy.
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If you have been following WP Jedi, you may have already heard I say that WordPress 2.7 is the best and greatest CMS ever made in the history of mankind. I may be biased, but there is not a lot to argue this with the new features that have been implemented in 2.7.
Many bloggers argue that WordPress has changed so much from 2.6 to 2.7 that it feels like a whole new content management system. That may be true, but WordPress’ interface has become more intuitive and the CMS has become very powerful. But if you still can’t find your way around WordPress, you can always get WordPress Foundation.
WordPress Foundation 2.7 is a comprehensive book + digital media (ebook, video, ..) course that is designed to help webmasters master the art of using WordPress 2.7. The book is designed with folks who are more into reading. But the video material is much richer in content, and it is designed to help newbies get hands on training with WordPress 2.7.
Let’s take a look and see what WordPress Foundation 2.7 has to offer:
Chapter 1: Introduction to the book. I never read these chapters. But be my guest.
Chapter 2: Blogging basics: this chapter is a must read for folks who are not familiar with the concept of blogging. Blogging is not about talking to folks about your lunch. It’s more complicated than that. You’ll learn the terminology here.
Chapter 3: Cover different versions of WordPress. Whether you want to outsource the hosting to WordPress folks or you want to go MU, you can get the info here.
Chapter 4: WordPress basics are covered here. You learn how to do all kinds of basic stuff such as setting up accounts and logging in, and more.
Chapter 5: If you are interested in finding your way through the new dashboard, this chapter is a must read too. You can learn using the new dashboard so fast.
Chapter 6: Covers more blog options. You learn how to customize your profile. You also learn how to moderate comments and all other little things that you will need to do for your WordPress blog.
Chapter 7: this chapter covers the writing panel. It’s amazing how many bloggers don’t know how to use all the awesome features that are available in the writing panel.
Chapter 8: want to create new pages on your WordPress blog? Got to read this chapter. It’s not that hard, but if you have trouble with it, this chapter will be helpful.
Chapter 9: is all about finding the right theme for your blog. Jason goes over 5 themes that you may want to use on your blog. He tells you about what it takes to make a good theme. At the end of the day, choosing a theme for your blog is very personal, but it never hurts to hear from someone who knows what he is talking about.
Chapter 10: have you heard of widgets? If you haven’t, you are going to learn how to use them on your blog.
Chapter 11: covers WordPress.com upgrades and extras. There are many options to choose from, and even folks who have hosted their own blogs sometimes need a hand here.
Chapter 12, 13: covers custom header image and how you can add a logo to your blog using this function.
Chapter 14: If you have owned a blog before, you probably know the challenges of moderating and managing comments. Managing comments shouldn’t be hard, and after this chapter, it won’t be.
Chapter 15: multimedia blogs are the way to go. Videoblogs and audioblogs are the next big things, and you are going to learn PDF, Mp3, and other multimedia files to your blog.
Chapter 16,17: this chapter is all about blogging strategies and where tags fit in the big picture. Chapter 17 covers more on tags, categories, and how you can get the best out of your blog.
Chapter 18: it’s about adding users to your website. Whether you want to add editors, admins, or authors, you can do so easily after reading this chapter.
Chapter 19: one of the more important chapters of this book. It’s all about security of your blog and content. It shows you how to implement password protection.
Chapter 20: covers blog roll. This should be a fast read.
Chapter 21: site maintenance is a big task once you get going with your WordPress blog. You will learn how to optimize your blog and how to protect your blog against spammers.
Chapter 22: self-hosted WordPress installation is covered here. You learn what you need to know to create a WordPress blog under 5 minutes. It’s so easy you wonder why you haven’t been using WordPress before.
Chapter 23: If you choose the book, this is where you are going to realize that you may want to get the video course to get everything there is about WordPress. There are more advanced topics out there that can get a bit more technical, which means you may need someone to walk you through those topics.
Video/Audio Course: the multimedia course covers more WordPress 2.7 for folks who are interested. You are going to learn how to create content fast, and you will also learn how to master the art of SEO for WordPress. Getting found by Google and other search engines means that you will have more “monetization” option. You will also get to master the art of videoblogging with this course. Nobody can teach you how to develop your online personality, but Jason does teach you how to run a video-based blog like a pro. You don’t have to get the video course to get the book, though I recommend it for beginners (you can get it here).
WordPress Foundation 2.7 is a decent course for beginners to WordPress. Don’t for a second think that things will get easier once you know more about WordPress. The truth is, once you know what you don’t know now, you are going to realize how you have not getting the best out of your powerful CMS.
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Joomla has given us WordPress crazy folks a run for our money. Joomla is a portal CMS that makes it easy to create membership communities. I personally prefer WordPress to Joomla and often get tired of seeing folks claiming how great Joomla is in comparison to WordPress. Well, with WP Membership, I really don’t see any advantage to using Joomla.
WP-Membership, which is going for $29.99 per domain, is a premium plug-in that makes it very easy to turn your WordPress website into a fully-fledged membership site (very similar to amember). For instance, you can define what pages folks have access to, and what pages is part of your premium membership program:
The nice thing about this theme is that it allows you to use PayPal effectively to make money. You can also define user levels (gold, silver), and give them different rights. You can create and register pages under these tiers, making sure that folks get what they pay for. Overall, WP-Membership is a nice addition to the WordPress community. WP-Membership may not be as advanced as amember, but it’s effective for small membership sites on WordPress.
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