Feed your WordPress Demons!
Thesis Wordpress theme is one of the most popular themes in the Wordpress community. It is known for being super SEO friendly, and a lot of super-bloggers use it as a starting point for their blogs (see an example here). Thesis is an extremely clean, simple, and yet powerful theme for all bloggers and those interested in starting their very first blog.
Thesis is a three column premium theme (content + 2 – column sidebar). You can modify the theme easily to have the column show on the right or left side of the content. The theme is coded in PHP + HTML + CSS, but the developers have kept SEO as their high priority. What I like about this theme is the contrast of colors in the design. Have you ever been to a blog that you really like but hurts your eyes badly every time you try to read it? That’s not what you get with Thesis.
Thesis theme has a lot of real estate for ads, if you are interested in monetizing you blog. You can also customize the headers as you wish, which means you don’t have to create a blog with this theme. You can even use Thesis for your corporate site.
In summary, here is why many super bloggers are using Thesis:
You can get your hands on Thesis for $87 but you will have to leave the footer intact and use it on only one site. You can get a professional license for $164, but you get to use it on multiple sites, and you can remove the footer. If you are looking for a killer Wordpress theme, you won’t go wrong with Thesis.
The good folks behind NattyWP have released another attractive magazine theme for the Wordpress platform. Mayones is a good looking theme that is designed for folks who want to own their own magazine site. You also get 6 styles with this theme and can customize it easily.
You can buy a single license for $45 or the developer license for $150. You can also sign up for a membership to access all the themes by NattyWP. Watch this space for a more complete Mayones review.
Demo this theme here.
Magazine Wordpress sites have been on the rise. There is no question that Wordpress makes it easier for people to manage highly complex magazine-style sites, and thanks to the Wordpress community there are lots of magazine themes available to the public. Vanity is another cool magazine Wordpress theme that allows you to create your very own magazine-style website fast.
Vanity is not only very attractive, but it is also very flexible, which means you can make changes fast and create your own unique version in no time. The theme comes in two colors (Pink & Aqua). What I like about this theme is the placement of the newsletter (RSS) box. As long as you can drive traffic to your website, you are going to get a lot of leads as it will be hard for folks to ignore your newsletter feature. Vanity comes ad ready. You can easily ad your Adsense or third-party ads to the top of your page and start making money from your website.
The Carousel article slider is very useful too. You can load up your top stories there and let your users slide through them. The stories include a passage from your original articles plus the thumbnail version of your images.
The meat of the theme brings you a lot of opportunities to provide value to your users. Not only you get to display your posts on the left side of the theme, you can integrate your videos and pictures on your sidebar. The middle-bar is designed to allow you to promote your sponsors and monetize your website.
Vanity is a fully-fledged magazine theme, which means you get everything you need to create a sophisticated site fast. Here is a summary of features that you get with Vanity:
If you are looking for a good looking theme to start your own magazine , you should strongly consider Vanity.
Blogging is a tough business. It may look easy on the surface, but you have got to research your topic, check your sources, look for images, and do all kinds of things to write a great blog post. Many bloggers struggle with getting more done in less time. You can always cut corners, but that’s the best way to kill a blog. Productivity is a big issue when blogging, which is why you should use as many tools as possible to become a more efficient blogger.
Lizzer is a Web 2.0 platform that allows you to get more work done on your Wordpress blog. It is designed to help you find great content for your blog. Whether you are looking for a piece of news or an interesting image on Flickr, you can do it all with Lizzer. Lizzer provides you with a bookmarklet that you can open up over your Wordpress interface and grab content from. Here is how it works:
First you got to sign up for an account on Lizzer.com. It’s free, so you don’t have to worry about paying them anything at this point (though the service is well worth the money). Once you are in, you are going to see the following interface.
This is where you can customize Lizzer for your blog and install it too. You can customize the services you are interested in under “Edit Services” section. Here is what you get:
Once you have added your 7 favorite services to Lizzer, you are ready to get started with some blogging.You can start Lizzer by referring to Intall Lizzer section. Here is what you’ll see:
As you can see, you can search for your topic at the top of this widget, and it finds appropriate content for you based on your keyword. The good thing about this widget is that it is not dependent on Wordpress. You can use it on Facebook, Wordpress, and even Twitter. It comes on top of the service you are using, and from there you can grab content and insert it to your blog without too much trouble. Here is how you would insert video to your blog:
You can insert just the link or the whole video to your blog by clicking on the appropriate button under the video. You can also save the video for future uses by clicking on the heart symbol.
As you can see, Lizzer is a great way to find content and add them to your website fast. Depending on your keyword, you can find all kinds of content on Lizzer. And it gives you access to all your favorite services. Best of all, it works with Twitter, Facebook, and other top sites as well. What’s not to like?
So you spend hours putting up your Wordpress blog and writing content for it. You put your best effort forward and create super useful content. But you don’t get any comments. Sounds familiar? In reality, it’s not really that hard to get folks to comment on your blog. But you need to find a way to get folks engaged. Some of us are more lazy than others. We read articles but don’t like to take time to comment. In fact, a lot of folks find it pointless to leave a comment on other blogs. A lot of other folks don’t leave comments on a post that has no comments on it already.
So why are comments important? It’s simple. The more comments you get on your blog, the more confident you can be about your work. If people take time to leave comments and respond to others on your blog, it means you have done something right. The more comments you have on your blog, the more time people spend on your blog. And let’s not forget that you don’t have a community until someone has commented on your blog post.
Wordpress Magnet is a simple plug-in that makes it very easy to get comments on your blog. Conceptually, it’s very similar to Digg Bribe or StumbleUpon Bribe scripts on the market. I know bribing is not looked upon as an ethical tactic in the real world, but in the world of Internet marketing it is a must do especially if your blog is young. Wordpress Magnet allows you to give away all kinds of things. The more content you giveaway in return for comments, the more momentum your blog gains.
Here is how you can get more comments on your blog with Wordpress Magnet:
Once your readers leave a comment on your blog, they receive an e-mail containing the link to their prize. You can define multiple prizes if you prefer, and you get a chance to write your e-mail on the back-end.
Overall, Wordpress Magnet is a very simple and easy-to-use plug-in that is designed to help you bribe your readers to comment on your blog. As long as you offer something of value to your readers, there is no limit to the number of comments you can get on your blog.
