Run a Professional Blog with Office Theme

By going open source, Revolution has revolutionized the theme market in WordPress industry. Revolution now offers many premium quality themes for free (fee required for support).

Office theme is the latest open source that has been released by Revolution. Revolution is a 2-column Widget-ready theme for WordPress that comes with a image slider at the top.

Office is a really simple theme that can be used for corporate sites. It’s very good looking but at the same time it is convenient. You can’t get it cheaper than free. Very simple. Does the job.

Verdict: 4/5

Addressing Duplicate Content Issue on WordPress

Running multiple WordPress blogs can be time consuming and challenging at times. If you are a one man company and you intend to get into the adsense business, you are going to have a tough times creating and managing hundreds of blogs, unless you are using a service such as WordPress Direct. You can also grab PLRs and use them on your site as content. But one problem that most folks forget about is content duplication penalty.

Duplicate content is frowned upon by Google, and you can be penalized heavily by Google if your content is deemed to be duplicate of someone else’s. In essence, having duplicate contnet on your blog is the fastest way to get yourself into the supplementary index on Google. Many folks believe (incorrectly) that using private label articles helps them get around the duplicate content issue. But that can’t be further from the truth. If you can buy the articles and others can do too, then you are going to have duplicate content.

That’s what I love about Synonymizer. This cool plug-in allows you to spin words around and make your articles unique. In other words, this is like injecting steroids to your automated WordPress blog. What makes Synonymizer different from article spinners is that it not only spins all your blog posts, it directly works with WordPress.

Synonymizer is compatible with RSS2Blog and WP Auto Blog. Better yet, you can work with HTML, Javascript, and even PHP. And you are not limited to PLRs. You can also work with RSS feeds and still avoid duplicate content penalty. If you are one of those Adsense guys or just want to use auto-blogging solutions to keep your blog updated when you have no time to do it yourself, Synonymizer is a must have (see the video here). Who says you can’t be a lazy blogger?

Are you a WordPress douche bag?

WordPress is dominating the blogging world. Most bloggers don’t even look at other options available, and there is a reason for that. I may be biased but WordPress is the best platform out there. But when you adopt a platform, you have to take the goods with the bad. In the case of WordPress, we are talking about the douche bags. There are plenty of them around. Some of them know they are being jerks, while others are just not educated enough to know what they are doing is wrong.

You are essentially a WordPress douche bag if:

• personally spam WordPress blogs: every newbie to the marketing world try this technique before learning it the hard way. SEOs keep telling folks about using blogs to get links back to other sites. Well, there is a right way and wrong way to do it. If you just post a stupid comment to get a link back, it’s going to show. Now, you are a class A douche bag if you use an anchor text such as “top web hosts” as your name. That’s like being a douche in a douche bag town.
• spam WordPress blogs, period: you may tell me that you don’t actually spam WordPress blogs by hand. You are actually smart enough to pay some jerk to write a program to automate the process. That makes you the smartest idiot in town.
• you are a troll on other blogs: you may not spam other blogs, but if you go around insulting folks on other blogs, you are definitely a douche. You don’t need to have two big horns to be an idiot. Your actions speak louder. Always respect others’ opinion. Name calling and insulting others is not going to get you anywhere.
• copy others’ ideas without giving credit: I hate copycats. That’s just it. If you copy me, at least give me some credit. I don’t mind that. But if you take my idea, copy it to your site, and don’t even think about giving me a mention, then you are an e-jerk.
• grab contact info without consent: we are entering the black-hat territory here, but there are actually folks out there who grab your e-mail from your “contact us” page and send you unauthorized e-mail. That’s not only wrong but illegal.
• keep reminding me about my typos: evrybody makes meestakes. Don’t try to be a wise-*** by bringing up every single typo that I make on my blog. Nobody’s perfect. Just because I have a few typos here and there doesn’t mean I am an idiot. But by bringing it up, you are going to make me feel like one. Why?
• hotlink to my images: let’s say you go around reading ten blogs a day. Then you see a nice article with an even nicer image on it. You should always ask permission before grabbing the image. Better yet, you should not link directly to that image. Download the image to your own server and link to it. Don’t be a douche!

Did I miss anything? Anyone?

Second Impressions on WordPress 2.7

We are getting awfully close to the release date of WordPress 2.7. I personally believe that WordPress 2.7 is the most significant upgrade for the WordPress platform. If you are a professional blogger, you are probably familiar with the goods and bads of WordPress 2.6. WordPress 2.7 is far superior to WP 2.6 in almost all areas. Here is why:

• Simplicity: WordPress 2.7 is programmed for idiots. Not literally, but if you upgrade to WP 2.7, there is no excuse for not getting things done. Almost everything is placed where it needs to be placed. If you can type and you can press a button, you can blog. The teen bloggers are highly technical these days, but even if you are old like me, you can still do what you love without having to master the art of PHP.
• Usability: WordPress 2.7 is simply in another world when it comes to web usability. WordPress 2.6 and below were good enough in this area, but WordPress 2.7 is designed to get you more productive. No more fooling around with countless menu items, searching for things.
• Backward Compatibility: I can’t tell you how impressed I am with WP 2.7 in this area. I have over 60 blogs that me and my staff manage on a daily basis. We have not had to make any significant change to make our themes compatible with WP 2.7. Better yet, we have not updated any of our plug-ins and things are still working great. The only minor problem that we had was with All-in-One SEO plug-in, and that was solved by the programmers.
• New Features: WP 2.7 seems to be designed from scratch which makes using it a pure joy for a WP junkie like me. But lots of new features have been added to bring more convenience and security to your WordPress experience. For instance, you can now search for plug-ins by tag or keywords and download them to your server automatically. You can also update your WordPress installation without having to mess with FTP and all that stuff. If this is not simple, I don’t know what is…

Overall, WP 2.7 is one of the best upgrades ever (including Windows XP over Windows ME). The full version will be released in a flash, so get ready!

Your take: how would you improve WP 2.7?

WordPress 2.7 Released!

After months of waiting for WordPress 2.7, it’s finally here. The good folks at WordPress just announced that the new WP 2.7 is now stable and available for download. It’s truly history for the WordPress community. WordPress has come a long way in the past couple of years, but WordPress 2.7 now pushes the CMS over the top.

I highly encourage you to download WP 2.7 now. It’s going to save you a whole lot of headache. It’s very easy to use, and it’s designed to be more secure. The innovative features added will truly make the update worth your while. Here is where you can grab your own copy.

Auto Update Your WordPress Installation with Easy WP Installer

I don’t know about you but updating all my WordPress blogs to the latest edition of WordPress is not only time consuming but plain exhausting. And let’s not forget that sometimes you make a mistake and delete a folder that you shouldn’t have, and things get more complicated. Now there are paid plug-ins that allow you to auto update your WordPress blog, but the good folks at Fun Scripts have written a freeware that essentially takes care of the most of the process.

All you have to do is install Easy WP Installer. You are then presented with a form that contains your DB and connnection information. Once you have entered the correct information, you can set this and almost forget it. It’s a very easy to use Plug-in and a must have if you want to keep up with the latest WordPress updates.

If you have been hacked before, you know how important it is to stay out of trouble and protect your blog. Easy WP Installer is not a hacker buster but it does put the latest WordPress patches on your blog. I am just not sure why the guys who wrote this are not charging us for it.

Create a Gaming Site with eGamer WordPress Theme

Creating a gaming site used to be too tough before. Sure. You can pay someone to write you a website that is attractive, but I rather not waite for someone to do it for me (and obviously charge me $1000 or more for it). Well. The good folks at Elegant Themes have released a super new theme that takes care of the whole problem.

eGamer comes with a right color contract (I would say) for a gaming website. You get the standard “recent game reviews” section in the sidebar that has a star-system ranking well-integrated in it. Like all Elegant Themes, eGamer is compatible with Safari, Opera, Firefox, and IE 6 & 7.

What I like about eGamer is the fact that you get the Photoshop files for the theme as well. In essence, you can change the logo if you know Photoshop, which is something you’d have to do from scratch with other themes. I also like the fact that you can play with the footer and remove the copyright if you like. Not that I recommend it, but some themes have annoyingly long copyright notices, and that turns me off.

Overall, the theme looks fit for a gaming, or even a wrestling site. The featured article section is optional but great for promoting the best your site has to offer. I also like the fact that you get all the updates for this theme and a bunch of others for only about $20 a year. That’s way too cheap to ignore. Good luck with your WordPress gaming site.