Drive Traffic To Your WordPress Site with Viral Tweets!

I have got a confession to make. I love Twitter. I can’t get enough of it. There are so many cools on Twitter, and you don’t have to feel uncomfortable approaching anyone on Twitter. I have even messaged folks such as Colbert and the Real Shaq, though I have not heard back yet! The moral of story is, Twitter is a great way to communicate with other cool folks in your niche. Not only that, it’s a great place to shine and establish yourself as an expert. Once you manage to do that, not only you’ll get lots of followers, but also a lot of visits to the URL that you put on your profile. But what if I told you there is a way to increase your Twitter followers right from your blog?

Viral Tweets is a cool free script that allows you to create landing pages for your Twitter prospects. If you have build lists before, you know what it takes to convince folks to sign up for your list. The same can be said about Twitter. By giving away e-books, reports, gift certificates, goodies, and coupon codes, you can encourage folks to follow you on Twitter and spread the word around about your service.

Ryan is a guy who knows what he is talking about. That’s why I decided to borrow his landing page. Here is how it works. You get a piece of code that you can customize and use on your own landing pages. You can add YouTube videos, your freebie banner, or anything your heart desire to your pages and ask folks to tweet about it in order to get your freebie. As you can see, you can make it easy for folks to follow you at the same time. The script is very easy to customize, and you can brand it too (with a fee).

If you are looking to build your twitter list fast, you can’t go wrong with Viral Tweets. It’s very convenient, and it’s free too. Best of all, you are in control and can do what you wish with your landing page. Add a video to it. Put your premium podcast on it, or give your e-book on it for free and watch the number of your followers grow.

P.S. don't forget to connect with me on Twitter here.

Add YouTube Videos To Your Blog with YouTuber

By now, everyone should know about YouTube. YouTube has the largest collection of videos you can find anywhere on this planet. But it’s more than a video library. Many super-bloggers have been using YouTube videos to not only drive traffic to their websites, but also convey more value to their readers. For long, people have been complaining about embedding YouTube videos in their blogs. There are many hacks out there that show you how to disable your WYSIWYG editor on WordPress to make the process of putting YouTube videos on your blog easier, but I rather stick with a good plug-in to do that.

YouTuber is a simple free plug-in that makes it so easy to embed YouTube videos into your WordPress blog. It’s truly a set-it-and-forget-it solution for bloggers.You don’t have to do any coding to get this plug-in to work, and you won’t need to change any settings on your WordPress blog.

The URL format is very easy to follow. You won’t have to copy the embed code from YouTube. All you do is copy the portion of the URL that comes after the ? sign. YouTuber will do the rest for you.

YouTuber is one of hundreds of plug-ins that help you embed video into your WordPress blog. Unfortunately, there are many plug-ins that don’t do the job they promise to do. But YouTuber hasn’t disappointed me in that regard.

Set up Your Affiliate Website With Affiliate Theme

Let’s face it. Many WordPress users don’t really use WordPress for blogging. WP is more than a blogging platform. It’s a cool content management system that allows you to set up all kinds of website easily. And you know what that means. Affiliate marketers love content management systems that helps them set up affiliate websites fast. In this business, speed is all that matters. And what a better way to set up sites fast than using WordPress.

So you got WordPress. Wouldn’t be easier if you had a theme that could help you set up affiliate websites fast? That’s where Affiliate Theme comes in. It’s the ultimate affiliate marketing theme created for the WordPress platform.

Affiliate Theme is optimized to help you get more from your affiliate marketing campaigns. It’s optimized for SEO and PPC. In addition, you can change all the colors, fonts, and settings from the back-end. It’s easy to test all aspects of your website to find the setting that gets you the best conversion rate.

What I liked about this theme was the build-in color picker. While the theme comes with 6 layouts that you can use to create different landing pages, it always help to have a color picker to change your theme’s color for each and every niche.

The customization process is very easy too. The theme is very lightweight and easy to customize. You can practically change everything on your pages and test everything out. And if you know coding, the sky’s the limit.

Overall, Affiliate Theme is a life-saver for affiliate marketers. No longer do you have to hand code landing pages all by yourself. The work is already done for you. You can use the 6 layouts provided with the package to move things around and see what works for you the best. If you are a professional affiliate marketer, you can’t go wrong with Affiliate Theme.

Download your copy here.

Videoblog Like a Pro with VideoFlick 2.0

The folks at Press75 are responsible for some of the best video blogging themes available for the WordPress platforms. All their theme are highly customizable and come packed with tons of features. The latest theme for vloggers is VideoFlick 2.0. VideoFlick 2.0 has gone through dramatic changes that makes it a more attractive choice for vloggers. Let’s see what’s inside.

Video Flick comes in two flavors: dark, and light. You can change your themes settings easily on the backend without doing too much work. The theme is highly customizable as well. The logo can be changed easily. You can add ratings below each video (if you prefer). As you can see in the above image, your home-page comes with your posts and their associated thumbnails. Thumbnails can be easily added through a custom-field in the back-end. The theme has been updated to support threaded comments and other WP 2.7 exclusive features.

Video Flick 2.0 supports a number of services and formats including Vimeo.com, YouTube.com, MetaCafe.com, Revver.com, Google Video, Seesmic.com and FLV (Flash Video), and the designer is planning to support many more formats in the near future.

On your sidebar, you have your tags and you ad spots. You can easily update them in the back-end. You also have a section for featured videos on your sidebar. So you’ll have plenty of opportunities to promote your top videos.

What I like about Video Flick 2.0 is the fact that it’s very easy to customize, and it can handle videos of all sizes. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s compatible with many video services. The theme is tailor-made for vloggers, which is why most of the features revolve around videos. The theme is going to cost you $75, which is very cheap for a such high quality theme. If you need more than one license, you may want to go for the unlimited package that gives you 5 additional cool themes + unlimited license for all of them. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Download VideoFlick 2.0 here.

WordPress Plugin Development: a Review

WordPress Plug-in Development: Get your copy here.

Wordpress is one of the best content management systems out on the market. Not only it’s a free powerful CMS, WordPress also relies on its community to enhance its functionality by coding themes and plugins. Writing WordPress plugins is not very difficult if you know what you are doing. The only problem is where to get the proper information on how to do it.

A lot of these coders have to spend hours to research the ins and outs of the WordPress platform and read a handful of books to get a handle of the platform. With WordPress Plugin Development, you get it all in one package. The author takes you through the process that you need to go through to develop sophisticated WordPress plugins.

What I like about this book is the fact that it is hands-on. You don’t get a book that just delves into the theory behind writing plugins. The author shows you the way and takes your hand as you code your first set of WordPress plug-ins. Here are the plugins that you will have written by the time you are finished with the book:

• Digg This: add Digg This functionality to your blog.
• Live Blogroll: enhance your blog’s blogroll.
  
• The Wall: create a shout box for WordPress plugin.
• Snazzy Archives: beautifies your archives.
• Insights: access your articles and Flickr images from within the WordPress edit page.
• Post Types: enhance WordPress’ backend as you wish.

As you can guess, the plugins that you code get more complex as you delve deeper into the book. Every single plugin that you write in this book teaches you valuable information that you can use for the next. By the time, you are done with the last plugin, you’ll know exactly how to deal with custom fields, change the backend, and write sophisticated plugins to pretty much do anything you want.

Creating a WordPress plugin is more than just writing the code. You also want to think about security, deployment, and compatibility issues. WordPress Plugin Development teaches you how to:

• Master the WordPress code base, WordPress’s plug-in architecture, and the plug-in application programming interface (API).
• Manipulate data, handle user roles and permissions, and posts.
• Use actions and filters to write more sophisticated code.
• Customize menus, sub-menus, and the plug-in admin panel.
• Use AJAX and jQuery to write more dynamic plug-ins.
• Integrate your plug-in with WordPress panels and the tinyMCE editor
• Work with third-party APIs such as Flicker or Digg API
• Localize your WordPress installation.
• Publish your plugin to WordPress Plugin Repository
• Create safe WordPress plugins to protect the users against hackers.

Overall, WordPress Plugin Development another smash hit by Packt Publishing. This is a great book for anyone who’s interested in writing professional plugins for the WordPress platform. The book is very different from those books that teach you how to write “hello world” code but don’t show you how to code properly. The author walks you through the process of writing a few simple and complex WordPress plugins, and he shows you what you need to look out for to write better, more secure code. If you are planning to get into the WordPress Development business, you must read WordPress Plugin Development.

Create Your Company Blog with Corporate Theme

So you want to start your own business. You have a clear idea what you would like to do with your business. But, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars creating a theme for your corporation from the get go. If you are using WordPress for your corporate blog, you are in luck. Corporate Theme is an attractive and highly flexible premium theme from StudioPress that helps you put up your very own company blog in a flash.

Corporate is a 2-column Widget-ready theme created for WordPress that is specifically designed with small businesses and corporations in mind. At the top, you get your standard header links. You can mention your services or link to your portfolio right at the top. If you plan to write more than a few pages, you can categorize your posts and point to them from your header.

In the right side of your screen, you get a placeholder for your YouTube videos. Many companies are starting to use YouTube to spread the word around about their brand and pre-sell prospects. With Corporate, all you have to do is pass the parameters for your video, and you are all set.

The home-page is completely widgetized. Corporate makes it so easy to add new content to your home-page. All you have to do is drop the right content into the right widget place holder.

Corporate Theme is an affordable, yet attractive theme that can help you take your small business to the next level. I have seen too many poorly designed small business sites in the past few years, but there is no excuse for that these days. You get WordPress for free, and this theme will only cost you $59.95. Most small businesses afford that. StudioPress sells all its themes for $199.95 (designed for website builders). Either way, Corporate theme can give your company’s website the makeover you have been waiting for.

Three WordPress Books You Should Read!

I am a WordPress junkie. There is no shame in that. But you don’t have to be a WP junkie to appreciate a good WordPress book when you see it. The guys as Packt Publishing have 3 smash hits for WordPress bloggers that teach you everything you need to know to blog and design WordPress blogs like a pro. Let’s check them out:

1. WordPress Theme Design: for a long time I searched for a good book that talked about how to design my own WordPress theme. I guess the guys at Packt publishing heard me out. WordPress Theme Design is a sweet book that teaches you the ins and outs of a typical WordPress theme and how you can create your very own theme. You get sample code and all kinds of tips that you can take advantage of to get into the business of building WP themes.

2. WordPress Plugin Development: WordPress theme development is only one part of the equation. If you want to create your own WordPress factory, you’ve got to be able to write your own plugins too. Packt Publishing’s book on WordPress plugin development is going to teach you how to write WordPress plugins like a pro!

3. WordPress for Business Bloggers: You know how to write your own theme. You know how to write your plugin. Can you actually write for your own blog? WordPress for business bloggers is a solid how-to-blog book that shows you exactly how to write business blogs like a pro.

There you have it folks. Packt Publishing is one of the best technical publishers in the world. Their books on Open Source content management systems are often very solid. But they have hit a triple with their top 3 WordPress books. If you are looking to learn WordPress inside and out, you should consider picking up these books.