I am a serial book reader. Every new book that comes to the market, I try to get and read as soon as possible. You can always catch up with the latest developments in your industry by following blogs. But design books are also a solid choice if you want to learn the latest techniques and find out about the latest developments in the design world. But a lot of people prefer listening, watching, and seeing things done than just ...]]>

I am a serial book reader. Every new book that comes to the market, I try to get and read as soon as possible. You can always catch up with the latest developments in your industry by following blogs. But design books are also a solid choice if you want to learn the latest techniques and find out about the latest developments in the design world. But a lot of people prefer listening, watching, and seeing things done than just reading about them. That’s exactly what you get with interactive video courses on the market. Video courses are particularly useful if you want someone to walk you through a new technology in the shortest time possible. I personally prefer learning the basics in video format before moving to more advanced topics in advanced books and blogs. But your taste maybe different.

Total Training (and Lynda.com) are the two video training services that I have used on a consistent basis in the past few years. I admit that I am not exactly a master in Adobe products, but I have picked up a lot of good stuff from these training videos. Total Training courses are especially impressive as they teach you how to do things and show them to you in a straightforward manner. So you never miss a step and won’t have to spend time trying to figure out how to do things you just watched a video on.

Total Training courses are designed for newbies and intermediate designers. They keep you up to date with the latest technologies such as Web Expression, Flex, CS4, and beyond. They also show you how to master Photoshop and Elements. These are technologies that you will need to know about if you want to make it as a designer. So if you are hoping to get started with a career in design, Total Training courses come in handy.

Total Training has 4 classes of membership for designers. Some designers prefer using Microsoft products only while others use a combination of Adobe and Microsoft products. Whatever the case, Total Training has you covered. Here is a summary of what’s offered:

• Elements:
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (6 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (6 Hours)
  • Adobe Premiere Elements 7 (4 Hours)
• Microsoft:
  • Microsoft Access 2007: Essentials (6.6 Hours)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0: Building Web Applications (set 1) (10.2 Hours)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0: Building Web Applications (set 2) (10 Hours)
  • Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX (2.2 Hours)
  • Microsoft Excel 2007: Advanced (6 Hours)
  • Microsoft Excel 2007: Essentials (5 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Blend (8.2 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Blend 2: Essentials (6 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Media 2: Essentials (5.5 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Web 2: Essentials (10 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Web (10 Hours)
  • Microsoft Expression Web: From FrontPage to Expression Web (3 Hours)
  • Advanced Microsoft Expression Web (6 Hours)
  • Microsoft Office 2007: Getting Up to Speed (6 Hours)
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (9 Hours)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2007: Essentials (4 Hours)
  • Microsoft SQL Server Development (8 Hours)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005: Productivity with .NET Framework 2.0 (7 Hours)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008: Essentials – Featuring Windows Forms (6 Hours)
• Adobe:
  • Adobe InDesign CS3: From QuarkXPress to InDesign CS3 (5.8 Hours)
  • Adobe InDesign CS4: Advanced (7 Hours)
  • Adobe InDesign CS4: Essentials (6.5 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS2 (21.8 Hours)
  • Advanced Adobe Photoshop CS2 (8.1 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3: Advanced (8.5 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3: Channels and Masking (6.5 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3: Enhancing Digital Photographs (6.5 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3: Essentials (8 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3: Maximizing Productivity (4.2 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended: Essentials (8 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (6 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (6 Hours)
  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: Essentials (3 Hours)
• All Access:
  • Everything!

The above is just a summary of what’s available on Total Training. Essentially, most new and older technologies are covered so no matter which version you are using, you can always learn new things from these courses.

Here is how the subscription plans work:

So as you can see they are not that expensive either. I have personally used Total Training to learn new things in the past and continue to use them in the future. Your training doesn’t stop with these videos, but they do give you a good foundation so you can move to doing bigger, better things.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the U.S. economy is in the dumps. Companies are expected to cut even more jobs. If you are in a stable job, you probably belong to a exclusive group of folks who have survived the job cuts in the past few weeks and months. A lot of companies are hurting and if you lose your job, there is a good chance that you are not going to find a job that easily. But if ...]]>

If you haven’t been paying attention, the U.S. economy is in the dumps. Companies are expected to cut even more jobs. If you are in a stable job, you probably belong to a exclusive group of folks who have survived the job cuts in the past few weeks and months. A lot of companies are hurting and if you lose your job, there is a good chance that you are not going to find a job that easily. But if you have WordPress skills, you should definitely consider starting your own freelance business. You can spend months looking for a job and not find one or just start building business and earn money in the process.

How To Become a Rockstar Freelancer teaches you exactly what you need to know to build a super freelance business fast. The authors own a very popular blog on the very same topic. In this book, you are going to learn how to:

• Take the first steps: you want to quit your job or you have just lost your job. It doesn’t matter. You are going to learn exactly how you need to prepare yourself for a career in freelancing.
• Brand yourself or your business: how to create a brand that lasts a life time. You’ll learn the pitfalls in your way towards creating a killer brand
• Interact with clients: you want to provide real value to your customers? Not sure how to brief them or how to approach your leads? You can gain valuable insights here.
• Run your business: whether it’s writing the proposal, getting the right fee, or hiring folks to do a job for you, you are going to learn them all in this book.

If you are planning to start earning money from your skills, the time is now. Even if you are working, you should prepare yourself for the worst. There are not many stables jobs in these tough times, so don’t expose yourself to the risk of unemployment.

Download your copy here.

One of the biggest challenges that WordPress newbies face is mastering the art of PHP. You don’t have know anything about PHP to get your WordPress site up and running, but you’d be surprised how much more you can accomplish if you know your PHP. Now, if you have never programmed in your life, picking up PHP may seem very difficult. After all, not only you are going to have to figure out how to program in PHP, you are ...]]>

One of the biggest challenges that WordPress newbies face is mastering the art of PHP. You don’t have know anything about PHP to get your WordPress site up and running, but you’d be surprised how much more you can accomplish if you know your PHP. Now, if you have never programmed in your life, picking up PHP may seem very difficult. After all, not only you are going to have to figure out how to program in PHP, you are going to have to learn how to work with mySQL and Apache.

Simply PHP is a training course that is designed for those who are new to WordPress but want to learn enough PHP to be dangerous. You don’t have to be the best PHP programmer to customize your WordPress pages or even tweak your existing plug-ins. You just have to pick and choose your spots — be a PHP hacker if you will. The same can be said about mySQL and Apache. Simply PHP is designed specifically for PHP beginners and teaches you how to get things done without subjecting you thousands of pages of LAMP theory.

Simply PHP shows you how to:

• personalize your WordPress pages
• set up your own auto-responder
• optimize your .htaccess file for your WordPress site
• use Javascript on your blog to enhance its functionality
• code simple games and online tools (awesome for link-baits)
• set up cron jobs on your server
• work with mySQL and myPHPadmin to change and backup your DBs

The fun thing about Simply PHP is that you don’t have to be a super geek to learn what you need to start customizing your WordPress blog. I know a lot of folks rather hire someone on rentacoder.com to do the job for them, but you shouldn’t really hire someone to install a plug-in on your WordPress blog. You are also provided with all kinds of scripts and examples that you can just grab and plug-in to your WordPress blog.

Verdict: B+. I found Simply PHP to be a very useful course for folks who are new to the world of PHP and WordPress. You are going to learn everything you need to know to customize your WordPress and work with databases. This course is not going to make you a PHP guru, and that’s a big plus. Your goal shouldn’t be to become a programmer but rather do what you do best. By learning the basics of PHP, you can things done faster than before without having to hire anyone to do the simplest things for you. Who wouldn’t like that?

Many folks use WordPress to create and manage their blogs. But WordPress is not just good for blogs. You can create fully-fledged websites (e.g. business, retail, …) with WordPress without any major issues. Better yet, WordPress makes things so easy that you can buy a domain, set up your content, and sell your site in a fairly short period of time.

Building up assets and selling properties are nothing new in this era. Folks have been doing it in the real ...]]>

Many folks use WordPress to create and manage their blogs. But WordPress is not just good for blogs. You can create fully-fledged websites (e.g. business, retail, …) with WordPress without any major issues. Better yet, WordPress makes things so easy that you can buy a domain, set up your content, and sell your site in a fairly short period of time.

Building up assets and selling properties are nothing new in this era. Folks have been doing it in the real estate business for years. Real estate pros buy a regular place. They build it up and sell it for big profits. You can do the same with your WordPress site. Site Rush is a course that is designed to specifically show you how to flip your WordPress sites fast and make some cash in the process.

Creating a comprehensive niche website can take a lot of time and effort, but that’s not how the pros do it. Many pros claim that they work so hard, and that is why they are successful. In truth, these guys know how to take shortcuts and do more with less. Site Rush shows you the tools that you can use to:

• choose the right domain for your site
• optimize your sites for search engines
• optimize your content
• create websites fast

You also learn where to look for content and how to come up with your own. So what makes Site Rush different from other courses available on this topic? It’s pragmatic. This is not just one of those courses that doesn’t show you how to get things done. It actually shows you practical ways of flipping sites left and right.

Verdict: 4.5/5. Overall, if you are looking to get into the business of Internet real estate, you can learn a lot from Site Rush. Site Rush teaches you how to flip sites fast and sell them for a fortune on sites such as SitePoint. I strongly encourage you to visit SitePoint.com to get an idea what sites are selling well. And if others can do it, you can do it as well.

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 ...]]>

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.

Blogging to the bank 3.0 has finally been released by the Rob Benwell. Blogging to the bank is probably the most popular digital blogging product on the market. Now, I usually don’t recommend any digital product as most of these products disappoint. Blogging to the Bank is close to my heart as it helped me get started with blogging.

Blogging to the bank has something for everyone. If you are a beginner, blogging to the bank shows you how to set ...]]>

Blogging to the bank 3.0 has finally been released by the Rob Benwell. Blogging to the bank is probably the most popular digital blogging product on the market. Now, I usually don’t recommend any digital product as most of these products disappoint. Blogging to the Bank is close to my heart as it helped me get started with blogging.

Blogging to the bank has something for everyone. If you are a beginner, blogging to the bank shows you how to set up your blog from scratch. In essence you learn how to:

• set up blogs for fun or for your business
• drive traffic to your blogs through promotion and other methods
• blog for success (how blogging works as a business).
• how to promote your side businesses with your blog.

Now if you are a super expert blogger, you probably won’t need this product, but if you have set up your WordPress blog and want to follow a decent blueprint to build your blog up, then you should consider blogging to the back 3.

I have been searching for a PHP course that specifically addresses the issues surrounding WordPress, writing plugin for WordPress, and the ins and outs of WordPress plugins. Most books that are out there on Amazon tell you how to create an array in PHP or how to write a function, or how to connect to a database using PHP. It’s fair to say that there are a few sites that show you a little bit of this or that, but ...]]>

I have been searching for a PHP course that specifically addresses the issues surrounding WordPress, writing plugin for WordPress, and the ins and outs of WordPress plugins. Most books that are out there on Amazon tell you how to create an array in PHP or how to write a function, or how to connect to a database using PHP. It’s fair to say that there are a few sites that show you a little bit of this or that, but none present you with the information that you need to start from scratch and learn not only how to work with WordPress, but how to optimize your blog for search engines, and even how to write useful plugins.

So I searched, and searched. I must have read 10 PHP books before finding WordPress on Crack. I remember I wanted to learn how to write plugins for myself. Outsourcing is one way to go, but people suggested crazy numbers to write WordPress plugins for me. They told me that WordPress programmers are rare, and you’ve got to pay a premium to get them working for you. But WordPress is a PHP system. Everything in it is written in PHP.

There is so much content in this package that I haven’t been able to finish reading the whole thing in a month. Having said that, I started with the plugin programming part. I love WordPress and love learning how to do tweaks to CSS or RSS, but at the end of the day I was interested in WordPress plugin programming. Here are my favorite plugins:

• E-Mail Announcer Plugin: Notify others (with “post-to-blog” enabled) that you have made a new blog post.
• Squeeze page for WordPress: create squeeze pages and grab your readers’ information
• Search Tracker Plugin: Find out exactly what your readers are searching for.
• Opt-In Booster Plugin: Put an opt-in form right into the middle of your blog posts

There are a few other plugins available in WordPress on Crack, but once you get a hang of writing plugins, you’d be surprised how many ideas you come up with to enhance your WordPress blog without having to pay thousands of dollars to get others to do it for you.

Keep in mind that while this whole package is designed to teach you how to learn WordPress programming, you will need to have at least some programming knowledge to take advantage of the technical training in this package. You can obviously implement the SEO recommendations without knowing much of PHP. But if you know programming or some PHP, you are golden with WordPress on Crack