December 8th in Premium Themes by Wordpress Jedi . 
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.
Continue Reading December 6th in Wordpress Tips by Wordpress Jedi . 
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world and it’s used by most folks as their primary website creation package. Folks just don’t use WordPress to create blogs, but they also use it to create serious corporate or other types of sites. Popularity has a price, however. Hackers are always out there to target the most popular software packages and sites that are using these packages. The attacks on WordPress blogs have been nothing short of intensive.
One way folks can figure out how to attack your site is by figuring out what plug-in you are using or hacking your WordPress account. While there is no foolproof way to avoid getting hacked, there are ways to protect it. Here is how:
You should Prevent others from uncovering your plug-ins: many hackers use plug-ins that you have installed against you. Many of these plug-ins are not up-to-date or come with security holes that can compromise your blog. Folks just type in your plug-ins URL to get a list of plug-ins that you have in place. I personally use Redirection plug-in to redirect all invalid requests to home-page. You can also put an empty index file in your plug-ins and themes folders.
You should disable user registration: a lot of folks like to give their readers the ability to register accounts on their blogs. That is simply not a good idea as it makes protecting your blog more complicated that in needs to be. Disable registration to give yourself some peace of mind.
You should Hide Your WordPress Info: you should try to hide your WordPress version from public eyes. Many of us don’t apply the latest patches instantly, which means our blogs could be targeted by hackers. You should take out all the references to your blog presence from the public eye.
At the end of the day, you should try everything in your power to make life hard for hackers. You are never going to be able to protect your blog against hackers, but the above techniques give you a start.
In the 2nd part of this post, I’ll talk about other ways that you can protect your blog against hackers. So stay tuned.
Continue Reading December 4th in Wordpress Tips by Wordpress Jedi . Folks in the Internet marketing world are obsessed about losing their rankings on Google. Google drives a whole lot of traffic, and you simply cannot compare it to Yahoo! or other search engines when it comes to traffic potential. I used to be one of those folks who had this obsession with my rankings. If I lost a place on the SERPs, I would just get mad or completely overhaul my blog. I would check my rankings every hour to see if there had been any changes. Those are the dark age days…
Google does slap folks and sites that allow folks to take a shortcut to the top of the SERPs. Search engine optimization is all about hard work, and you cannot expect to buy or shortcut your way to the top. Now, you may come right out of the gate and have the best site in your niche, but Google and other engines are not smart enough to realize if you are “legit.” Besides, consistency matters as well, and website who have been around more than you have may get the nod over you.
Unless you haven’t been paying attention, a whole lot of folks have been complaining about their sites having dropped or disappeared from the face of Google results pages. That could be devastating if your mortgage payment depends on it. But blaming WordPress for your failure to comply with Google guidelines is just another way of not taking responsibility for your actions.
Google has prepared a whole list of guidelines for all webmasters to read, and just because you are running WordPress, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. For instance, WordPress does suffer from duplicate content issues, and you will need to modify your .htaccess to fix those issues. In addition, you need to make sure you have the right permalink structure to maximize your SEO rankings. Now this is important: ALWAYS look out for nasty errors in your code. My site disappeared from Google a couple of months ago, and I tried everything I could to get it back. Nothing worked. I was lucky to try W3C validator, and found out that my code had a nasty error in it that was blocking the whole validation process. Now if the validator can’t go through your code to figure out more errors, there is a good chance Google bot can’t either. Needless to say, I was back in the SERPs two weeks after I fixed the error.
It’s true that your WordPress site can get slapped by Google. But it’s also true that you should be responsible enough to take care of your WordPress site. Blaming the platform for your woes in the organic search channel is pointless and a waste of time.
Continue Reading November 30th in Wordpress Tips by Wordpress Jedi . 
I don’t know about you but for a long time I believe WordPress was only a blogging platform that could be used for blog sites only. It was in my dark hours with Blogger but still there is no excuse for that attitude. WordPress is one of the best content management systems ever made. I don’t care what the folks at Interwoven or Joomla say, but a well-done WordPress site trumps those “wanna be” solutions any day.
Membership sites are now becoming very popular these days. You basically identify a popular niche. You create a super duper resource site for that niche, and then you offer a membership plan to help fund your future research. It’s being done by all the top gurus in the Internet Marketing industry. And most of them use amember solution. There is no question in my mind that amember is a great script, but it’s not free, and you have to pay $100+ per each license. Why pay that kind of money when you can have thousands of membership sites made for free!
WordPress Ecommerce training not only has everything you need to create a membership site, but it also comes with 109 themes that are suitable for such sites. Running an e-commerce website with WordPress is like a breeze really. You need to figure out what form of payment you accept, and integrate that with WordPress. In addition, you need to know what you will be selling. Finally, you need to find a way to manage your customers.
An E-commerce website is not for everyone, and you shouldn’t get on the bandwagon unless you have specific plans to go about making money, but if you have decided on running an e-commerce shop, you are better off putting your trust in WordPress. It has never disappointed me, and regardless of how good other scripts are out there, they are still not WordPress.
Continue Reading November 28th in Wordpress News by Wordpress Jedi . 
Now, I personally think that Black Friday should be about gadgets only, but it’s fun to see WordPress guys jumping on the occassion and offering deals for this cool Friday. The good folks at DIYThemes are now offering a one day deal on their flagship theme “Thesis.’ Here is the deal:
The first 150 people who buy this theme today get 20% discount. Your totals will be:
$69.60 for Thesis Personal
$131.20 for Thesis Developer
$61.60 for Developer Upgrade
Here is the coupon code that you should use for today: 20D03977D0. Remember, this code is valid for only 150 people…
Continue Reading November 28th in Wordpress Tips by Wordpress Jedi . 
I don’t know about you, but coming up with new ideas for my blogs has always been a challenge for me. I remember my first year of blogging very well. I was so excited, and I was having all these crazy ideas for my WordPress blog. But then, I started running on empty idea tank. I started rehashing stories and looking at them from a different angle. Whoever said blogging was easy!
The truth is, blogging is not easy, and it was never meant to be. It’s true that a lot of folks got away with talking about their lunch experiences a few years ago, but unless you have good solid content to share with folks, you are not just wasting your time.
Using WordTracker to identify new ideas
WordTracker is a blogger’s best friend. The keyword research service has been around for so long, and has helped many blog their way to success. What WordTracker does is it allows you to use a set of keywords and dig deeper to find small niches and long-tail searches. Long-tail blogging is an awesome way to target small niches and get folks to follow your blog.
WordTracker Questions is a powerful new addition to their keyword research arsenal. The service uses advanced techniques to make sense of what folks are searching for. Let’s say I want to write a blog post on WordPress on WPJedi. It would be easy to figure out what folks are looking for in this market by using WordTracker:
Some of these questions may sound pretty silly, but believe it or not a lot of folks don’t know these things. You can apply this to any niche. You may only get a few ideas for this tool, but you can certainly get enough to come up with your own ideas. And let’s not forget that you should have a set of keywords ready to dig deeper and find new ideas. Folks won’t stop asking questions and looking for answers, and you shouldn’t stop trying reading their minds either!
Continue Reading November 26th in Free Plug-ins, Plugins For SEO by Wordpress Jedi . 
If you have been involved in the blogging world, you are probably familiar with the importance of tracking your blog’s stats. So what do I mean by blog stats? The number of visitors you get everyday, the hits, the browser type these folks use, their surfing habits and more. Sure. You can get all this with Google Analytics (GA), but wouldn’t it be nice if you could access these info right on your WordPress blog, without having to log on to Analytics every single hour?
Stattraq allows you to keep track of everything that goes on your blog. You get the following information from Stattraq:
- Hit Counter: shows you the number of hits and your hits trend over a specific period of time.
- User Counter: Stattraq can track the number of visitors who come to your blog by putting a cookie on their computers.
- Page Views: shows you how many times your pages are viewed and for how long
- Browser: shows you the browsers used by your visitors.
- Referrer: shows you who has referred folks to your blog. In other words, where traffic is coming from.
- Search Terms: shows you what search terms have brought folks to your site.
- SE Saturation: shows you how many of your pages are indexed on major search engines.
- IP Addresses: shows the IP addresses of folks who have visited your site.
Stattraq is not a super Analytics software, but it gets the job done. The software is for free, and it’s easy to install (you can get it here). But here is the catch. You should still use your Google analytics for more comprehensive analysis, but you shouldn’t have to check it on a daily basis if you use Stattraq.
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