10 Must Try Services for WordPress Webmasters

There is more to running a sophisticated portal than just knowing how to install WordPress. As a webmaster, you are going to have to wear multiple hats. You will also need tools to backup your site, protect it against hackers, and measure its performance. These 10 tools can help you with those tasks:

VautlPress: this service simply safeguards your website against hack attacks and disasters. It provides site backups, disaster recovery solutions, and security notifications. (more…)

10 Ways To Manage Bookings And Events on WordPress

Some of us make a living out of attending all kinds of events. Artists, business professionals, speakers, and consultants all have to keep track of their bookings and events from time to time. Thanks to WordPress themes and plugins, you can handle these on your website easily. Here are 10 ways to do just that:

Themes for Appointments & Events:

These themes let you display your events on your site and allow your visitors to book appointments with your business.

Appointment for WordPress: a versatile theme that lets your visitors book their appointments with your business. It supports payments too.

Event for WordPress: a simple and clean theme to manage events on your website. You can use it to tell your visitors about your upcoming events.

Diarise: shows your past and future events on your site. It allows your visitors to add events to their calendars (or book their spots) fast.

Booking & Events Plugins:

These plugins let webmasters handle bookings and manage events without having to make major changes to their theme.

Booking Manager: a superb plugin for handling all your bookings. Takes advantage of jQuery and AJAX to provide you with a dynamic experience. The pro version supports exporting to CSV, advanced filters, and much more.

RSVP Plugin: a useful plugin for those of you who will be managing events. It lets you get a better sense of who will be attending your events.

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3 Advanced Web Hosts for WordPress

Choosing a web host for your WordPress website is not a decision you can take lightly. When you are starting with your first WordPress site, you probably afford to go with one of those cheap hosting plans. Once you hit it big with your portal, you are going to need a web host that can handle traffic spikes and keep your website up at all times. Nobody likes coming to your website and seeing an error page, so if you care about the credibility of your website, you’ll invest in a decent virtual private server or cloud web hosting service.

There are plenty of companies that offer these services. We can’t speak for all of them. But here are three that our team has tested in the past:

VPS.net: we got familiar with this web host when we decided to switch our website to Nginx. Nginx is a light-weight web server that can outperform Apache in many areas. This service allows you to set up your server and do as you wish on your virtual private host. The good news is you are in control of how much resources you want to dedicated to your server (set of websites). You pay as you consume. (more…)

10 Best WordPress Cheat Sheets

I am (as most of you are) a big fan of everything WordPress. There are just so many things one would need to know and remember to develop themes and do all kinds of neat things with WordPress. That’s why I love WordPress cheat sheets. They can help you remember those important WordPress topics and can save you time too. These 10 awesome WordPress cheat sheets offer that and more:

WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheet: a good looking cheat sheet that covers all those page and tag functions. Your office needs one of these.

WordPress – What You Need To Know In One Sheet: a pretty handy sheet that covers as much as one can do in one sheet. Paul Maloney has done a wonderful j0b with this. (more…)

Add Social Media Buttons To WordPress with Web Informer

I am a big fan of those social footer-bars. If you have tried Wibiya toolbar in the past, you have gotten a taste of these social media bars as well. Many WordPress webmasters put all their social media buttons at the top of each page. While that is a sound strategy, it never hurts to integrate your buttons at the bottom of each page on your website to give your visitors a reminder to submit your pages after they are done with your posts. Web Informer’s social footerbars do just that. It’s a very dynamic and easy to use service that lets you add those top social media buttons to your blog in a non-intrusive fashion.

Web Informer offers you two themes to choose from. One can be used as a dynamic button after your posts. The other adds an attractive social media bar to your footer. It includes all those top sites, including Facebook, Google Buzz, Twitter, and even Mixx. Here is how your social-bar will look like.

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5 Best Keyword Spy Tools for Webmasters

Whether you are trying to optimize your website for the search engines or want to get your feet wet with paid advertising, you are going to need to focus on the right keywords. Sometimes it’s helpful to look at what others are doing in your field and learn from their positive strategies. That’s why spying tools are so handy. They give you all kinds of information on campaigns, keywords, and landing pages of your competitors and help you come up with some ideas of your own. With that said, here are 5 keyword spy tools that can help you take your business to the next level:

Compete: Compete is for power players. It gives you all kinds of information on your competitors and helps you optimize your own strategies. Whether you are looking for more keywords, want to increase your traffic, or find out what your competitors are doing right, Compete has you covered.

SEOmoz: not only has some of the best search engine optimization tips around, it has a set of tools that can help you find out more about your website (and more importantly your competitors’ websites).

SpyFu: the ultimate keyword spy tool for search engine and advertising professionals. Can dig up your competitors’ keywords and campaigns. Its Kombat tool lets you compare your website against those of your competitors’. (more…)

22 Best Toolbars for WordPress

No matter how powerful or dynamic your WordPress theme is, there are always more things you can offer on your website. That’s why I love those fancy (and sometimes not so fancy) toolbars. You can use them to promote your website more effectively, make it easier for your visitors to navigate through your content, and even share with them your latest news. Interested? Here are 22 WordPress toolbars that can help:

Wibiya: one of the most exciting social bars available for WordPress (we are using it on this site too). It has free and paid plans and let your visitors connect with you more effectively.

Meebo Bar: lets you add Facebook, Twitter, and other social sharing capabilities to your website. You can use it to chat with your website visitors too.

ShareBar: a powerful plugin that adds floating social sharing buttons to your website. Similar to what Mashable is doing on its website.

Digg Digg: very similar to the previous plugin but there are some differences between them. This one has more options and services, but it is slightly less flexible than ShareBar.

Gigya Toolbar: adds 80 social destinations including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Yahoo to your website. It loads after your page has finished loading, which means your visitors won’t notice any speed difference on your site.

TurnSocial: a more compact solution than some of the above toolbars. It does support top social networks and local websites (such as Foursquare).

Skysa Bar: a simple to use social app bar for WordPress. It has plenty of apps and give your visitors all the tools they need to help push your content.

Apture: sits at the top of your website and shows itself when your visitors go through your content or search for something. It can increase the number of hits on your website and can help your visitors share your content with their friends.

iconcy.com WordPress toolbar: adds a vertical bar to your website, giving your visitors the ability to find their way back to your home page, RSS feed, or Twitter presence easily.

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