It is so important to have a contact form on your WordPress blog. Having a contact form gives other bloggers or potential clients the ability to contact you easily and in a straight forward manner. This will add functionality to your WordPress blog. How to add a contact form couldn’t be easier as you will see as you follow along.

The way in which we are going to add a contact form to your WordPress blog is in the form of a plugin, there are various plugins available to you for adding a contact form but I will be showing you using ‘Contact Form 7′

The first thing you will need to do is login to the Dashboard area of your blog. Once there, click on the plugins tab over on the left hand side and then the ‘Add New’ tab. You will now be able to enter a search term, enter the name of the plugin ‘Contact Form 7′ and click ‘Search plugins’. You will now see the plugin appear in the list which you are presented with, all you need to do is click on the ‘Install Now’ link under the plugin name. You will be asked if you are sure you wish to install the plugin, just click OK. Once the plugin has finished installing you can click the ‘Activate Now’ link to activate the plugin. Your contact form plugin is now installed and active.

You now need to add your contact form somewhere on your blog and I always find this works well as a separate page with the name ‘About Us’ or ‘Contact Us’ but the choice is yours, for this example I’m going to add mine to the ‘About Us’ page which is automatically created when you install a new copy of WordPress. How to add the contact form is simple enough, if you go over to the left where all your tabs are you will see a new tab called ‘Contact’ – click it to go to the contact form settings.

You will see a contact form called ‘Contact Form 1′ has automatically been created for you. If you are happy with the tags and the email addresses it has added you can simple copy the text it tells you to or you can add in or take out any tags you would like and change the email address before you copy the text. Once you have copied the information click on the ‘Pages’ tab.

Once you arrive at the ‘Edit Pages’ page you will see the ‘About’ page which was pre-installed with WordPress, hover your mouse over it until a menu appears then click on the ‘Edit’ button. You will need to edit the text to suit your blog, once you have done this, paste the text which you copied from the contact form settings and click ‘update’. If you now click on ‘View Page’ at the top of the page you will see your new page with the contact form in.

As you can see this is easy enough to do and really adds to your blog, and your readers will love having the ability to contact you easily.

Alester

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alester_Fox

If you have never built a website before, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get your first domain live and operational in only minutes is to install WordPress on your website.

WordPress is a blogging platform that allows you to have a pre-built website for free that will allow you to focus on the more important items like content, and if you desire it, sales and profits.

WordPress Benefits

In more than a decade online, I have literally built dozens of websites, many from the ground up… But since I discovered the ease of use and powerful flexibility of the WordPress platform, I am building most of my newest websites under this Content Management System (CMS).

The reasons I prefer the WordPress blogging platform are many, but I will sum it up with the following five key benefits:

1. Quick and Easy Installation – If you have a web hosting company that runs cPanelX as your webmasters’ control panel (many of the more popular web hosting companies do), then you will find an option in your control panel called, “Fantastico De Luxe”. When you click on the Fantastico icon, you will be taken to a page where you can add a multitude of free applications to your website, by following some simple instructions. Just click on the WordPress link to install WordPress on your website. The software will ask you some basic general information, then do the full install of one of the most recent WordPress builds into your website.

2. Website Themes – Few webmasters want to use the generic WordPress Theme that ships with WordPress. The default WP Theme is plain Jane, and to my taste, perfectly drab. There are many people who design custom WordPress Themes that you can easily upload to your domain, to change the appearance and feel of your WordPress website. Some of the WP Themes are paid versions, but most of them are free. There are more than one thousand themes loaded directly into the WordPress website ( wordpress.org/extend/themes/ ), from which you can choose, although you are not limited to just the themes loaded into the WordPress website.

3. Website Functionality – Just like with the WordPress Themes, if there is a specific functionality you want your blog to perform, there are programmers out there who have made WordPress Plugins that will do for you those things you would like to do. There are nearly 8,000 WordPress Plugins on the WordPress.org website ( wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ ), and thousands more that are not in the WordPress database. If you find a Plugin you want, just download, unzip, and upload it to the appropriate Plugin directory on your blog. After you have uploaded the Plugin, simply go to the Admin area of your Blog to activate the software.

4. Open Source – WordPress has been built in PHP, and its source code is visible to everyone who wants to look at it. On top of that, WordPress has included comprehensive documentation and a range of functions to help programmers work within the WordPress Codex. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of PHP can program WordPress Themes and Plugins, without too much effort.

5. Self-Updating – In recent versions, WordPress has included a feature that will notify you if upgrades are available for the basic WordPress operating system or your chosen WP Plugins. When upgrades become available, you will be notified, and often you only need to click a link to automatically install the upgrades and updates.

I have a friend who is a PHP coder by trade. I try not to mention WordPress in his presence, because every time I do so, I get an ear-full of “WordPress Sucks…”

To be honest with you, I still like WordPress… I like it, because it is easy to install and maintain, and I can improve it easily by using templates and plugins.

I am a coder, but life is too short to spend all of my time coding new websites… I am happy to spend my time creating content that will lead to sales… So for me, WordPress is good, and I am happy to put it on as many websites as I need to do…

If you are new to the Internet, then you might agree that WordPress is a blessing to those of us, who have more important things to do than to recreate the wheel…

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Before I go too far into this piece and tell you why anyone would want to clone a WordPress blog, I am going to tell you straight up. I am a blogger, and I love to blog. However, on the side, I am also an affiliate marketer, and this is really where this sneaky little trick comes in handy.

As an affiliate marketer, having things ready to go within a very short time frame is essential to managing your time value. And one of the lengthy tasks that I (used to) undertake is the installation of a WordPress blog when it comes time to create a new affiliate site. The only problem here is that I like to keep my finger on the pulse, and work on the developmental side of things, so in essence, creating a WordPress blog takes me away from that.

So, lets look into it. How long does it take to install a WordPress blog? If you have fantastic installed, it takes 3 minutes to install, plus an additional 30 to 45 minutes to set up the plugins, and install the theme that you would like to use. If you are a successful affiliate marketer, this could be money down the drain, and as it happens, I reduce this down into a simple 10 minute task that I can easily outsource. Let me guide you through this.

Some time ago, I installed WordPress for another site that I run, and a handful of plugins. Now, to get to the gist of this all, and give you a better understanding, I will give you the nuts and bolts of a WordPress installation, and what it consists of. It consists of two things. A set of files installed in the domain directory, and a mySQL database. Both of these can be backed up and exported within a matter of minutes. So, at this point, I had the perfect WordPress installation, and I simply uploaded all of the themes that I own to that installation, and backed up two things. The domain directory, and the SQL database.

So, How Did This Help Me?

Well, first of all, as an affiliate marketer, I live day to day on an “as it happens” basis. If I come up with a good idea, I want it to be live by the end of the day, with as little pondering around as possible. By using the above method to clone a WordPress blog, I have managed to reduce the time it takes to get a blog up and running by anywhere up to an hour or more. It is as simple as that.

To finish off, I will mention what I refer to as “time value”. This is the calculation of the time that we work divided by the total cash flow that we receive from this work. Keeping your finger on the pulse is the most essential part of being a business owner, and at the same time, minimising the work that you do away from the developmental stages of your business. By taking the steps above to clone a WordPress blog, you are only reducing the time it takes to do one task,. Don’t get me wrong, there are millions of other tasks out there that will take up your time, and in the hope that I can help you get more ale from your time, this should help you understand that there are ways to boost your own efficiency, or even your outsourcers.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_T_Malone

Free WordPress templates can be a great way to give your blog a breath of new life with just a couple clicks. You don’t have to change the information on your site because WordPress is a database driven CMS. You can simply change the template you are using and then your whole site will instantly look different and all your posts, comments and pages will be right there, it’s that easy.

This is just one of the big advantages of using popular CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. For any webmaster who has used MS FrontPage in the past you know how easy using themes can be, but the best thing about using a CMS application is that you don’t have to keep uploading files to the internet and synchronizing your “webs” like you used to have to do in FrontPage. You can find, install and activate new themes and plugins right from your administration panel when you login to WordPress. Changing your theme on any website can not only add a new look, but in many cases can add new functionality to your website as well.

Now that WordPress 3.0 is out, many of the new themes are taking advantage of the new “menus” feature and adding in some of their own tricks like twitter plugins and much more. You can go search for specific plugins you like and add them to pretty much any existing WordPress theme, but so many new free WordPress themes are coming standard with their own plugins and features that many times you can get everything you need by adding one new theme. The best thing about these WordPress templates is that there are so many that you can find for free you never have to worry about spending money to find one that will fit the main theme of your website.

You can find many great free WordPress themes on the official WordPress site by clicking on the “extend” menu or you can always search Google and find many websites that are offering their own free WordPress themes. No matter where you find a great theme for WordPress make sure that you do leave the link back to the originators site, it is only fair after all they have put into creating the design template for you to use for free. Many people worry about these links and think that these will effect their seo efforts and in most cases they have absolutely no effect on your page rank or search engine standings. They are a single link and are at the bottom of the page which Google values the least of any link on the page. So don’t worry you will be fine!

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nick_Simpson

WPnow are a popular source for WordPress themes, and with the Boardwalk WordPress theme, they certainly do not disappoint. Gaining scrutiny from web masters, WPnow have been known for creating absolutely stunning themes for the blogging platform, however, they are quite heavy on most hosting accounts, loading slowly, and providing an overall unoptimized experience for visitors to blogs sporting their themes.

The Boardwalk WordPress theme still has not improved entirely on previous problems with their loading times, however this can easily be fixed using a super cache plugin. In fact, this is the only situation that I would personally use one of their themes. Having said that though, their themes are stunning, and require very little work with their included admin panel making customization very quick and easy, and regardless of the load times that can be fixed with the use of a plugin, this is a great theme that suits those who want a colorful blog that has an outdoors style appearance.

The theme itself has somewhat of a magazine style layout, not more suited to those who want to run a personal blog, but those who want to create an information based website. Posts are laid out quite well on the front page of the theme, making blog contents very easy to access. Navigation is also very well thought out, with the strange addition of “click to drop down” menus in the category navigation for second tier pages and posts, which although seems a little strange, is a welcome addition to this theme.

From an SEO perspective, the theme can be optimized quite well, however keywords would need to be emphasized in titles, as they are created using H2 tags. Text can be used in the H1 format for the blog header, however if the need to use an image arose, this would mean that you would lose the ability to have keywords in the header, however this can be emphasized by using title tags for the images by using the editor. Thankfully, the coding structure behind the Boardwalk WordPress theme is labelled well, and fairly easy to understand, even for those who have a very basic understanding of website coding.

Before I lead us into the part where I will cap off this article, I will make it very clear that this theme is a theme that is not suitable to all bloggers. Whilst there are some great themes out there, such as Thesis and Frugal that serve many purposes, and are heavily customizable, the Boardwalk WordPress theme is one that is suited to those who already like the layout of this theme, and are prepared to use that theme, as is, for their blog. Sure, certain customisations can be made willingly, if you have the know how, however, for the kind of layout that this theme uses, there is only going to be a certain level of customization that is available.

Having said that, this theme is an outstanding theme, it is easy to use, it is pretty to look at, and it is easy to customize within its own boundaries. It may not be as fast as possible, but this can be solved using the super cache plugin. The plugins that come with this theme are welcome, and offer extra functionality as well, all in all, for bloggers and publishers of news, out of the various top WordPress themes that re available, this one should turn your head a little.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_T_Malone

As many of you already know SEO or search engine optimisation has become so important in recent years especially with the advances and improvements in how search engines rank sites in their searches. Web designers especially now have a larger responsibility in creating web pages that are coded to standards and are search engine friendly. Some however still dispute SEO but believe me it is definitely necessary to achieve website success in today’s competitive internet world. Well, on this subject there is so much to talk about but here I’m just going to concentrate on WordPress SEO (most of which applies to basic web design as well).

Right let’s start with the on site basic. WordPress is very good in itself at being SEO friendly right from word go without having to do much at all. However like most things there is always room for improvement.

Permalinks

As standard WordPress creates permalinks using “p=postid” which as you can see isn’t very search engine friendly (no one is going to search for page id’s). You can have far more success with you permalinks just like your domain name if you use topic related post names and category names for you permalinks. To change the format of the permalinks just enter your WordPress control panel and go to Settings -> Permalinks and under custom structure enter /%category%/%postname%/. Now your permalinks contain keywords that users may search for increasing your chance of success.

Another thing you may want to think about doing to your permalinks to increase your WordPress SEO, is install the SEO Slugs plugin, this automatically removes stop words from your slugs once you save a post, this will stop those really long URLs being created if you develop a long post title.

Optimise Your Titles

This is a really important SEO factor. Titles are key when it comes to searching keywords. If your title doesn’t contain the right keywords or they are arranged poorly then this can have a dramatic effect on where you rank. Your keyword rich post name should always be at the start of your title. Search engines put more importance on early words so putting them later not only puts less importance on them but in search engine results they also may be hidden from view of the user.

Check your header.php file, and make sure that the code for is like this: wp_title(”);. This gives you full control over your title.

I would also recommend installing All in One SEO Plugin by Michael Torbert of Semper Fi Web Design. This gives you full control over all the important header meta information such as page titles. It will allow you to format your page titles whatever way you wish and will also allow you to customise page descriptions and add keywords for each post or page as well.

For me I have found the following formats work well:

Post Title: %post_title% | %blog_title%

Page Title: %page_title% | %blog_title%

Category Title: %category_title% | %blog_title%

And so on.

Create SEO Friendly Descriptions

In the categories section of your WordPress admin area use a decent and friendly keyword related description for you categories. This will not only entice people to click on a search result but can also be matched for your chosen keywords as well.

One important thing to remember when creating descriptions is not to allow for auto generation of descriptions. This is a poor technique and will not achieve the success you are looking for. Always manually add keyword related and post related description to all your posts, pages and categories for optimum success.

Image SEO

Many designers always overlook the importance of images to get some extra web traffic. It may not always be the traffic you want but any traffic is good traffic. By always making sure you add good alt tags and title tags to your images you are not only helping out yourself in terms of image search engine results, but it is also good practice to keep all your pages coded to web standards (another important topic) and help lesser able to make sense of your pages.

Navigational Breadcrumbs

You may want to consider adding a navigational breadcrumb to all your post pages. This isn’t really to help your search engine results but will really help your users understand where they are in your site and help search engine understand site structure. It may look like this:

HOME >> DESIGN >> SEO

All breadcrumbs should link back to the home page and indicate the category the post is in. There are numerous breadcrumb plugins out there for you to find to help with this.

Headings

You’re probably using a WordPress theme that is already doing this well but if not the use of H1, H2, H3, and effectively. H1 should be used for blog name on home page, category name on categories page and post name on posts. H1 should be used once on a page, maybe twice and more again.

Clean Limited Code

Less code is good practice. Don’t have code in pages that is not needed. This will not only help pages be rendered quicker but will also benefit yourself when editing the pages in the future. Remove javascript and css from pages and place in external files. Remove unnecessary php as the more calls to the server will slow down your page load times.

Load Times

I now know many of you reading this are now smiling as this isn’t always in our hands. There are however a certain few things we can do to help the process.

Like I said earlier remove unnecessary php and calls to the server which can slow down load times. If its not needed remove it.

Add a caching plugin to your site such as WP-Total-Cache or WP-Super-Cache. This will cache pages and return the user to visited pages quickly. Depending on which plugin you choose that may be in the form of a html created page, or some plugins will allow the use of a CDN (content delivery network) to quickly load images, external files etc.

Finally and probably the most important is choose your hosting provider wisely. The cheapest is never going to be the best or the quickest.

Links

Don’t fill your pages with unnecessary or unrelated links. I know sometimes we like to help others out by giving them links but one link on one page is more than enough. Giving anyone an unrelated or site wide link doesn’t help them or you anymore than one quality related link.

Duplicate Content and NoIndex

With WordPress as standard there can be a lot of duplicated content in your site as well as search engines. Using The All In One Plugin I mentioned earlier there are options to reduce a lot of this duplicated search engine pages. If you create a post you are placing it into a date archive, a category, a tag all of which can be indexed but all of which are essentially the same. Using the plugin settings you can use the noindex option allowing you not to index all the content. I personally choose just to index the tags as this is usually the most post related.

Page Numbers

If you want the search engine bot to be able to find all of your category posts or archive posts then it is necessary to have a direct link to them from every page. To do this simply add a pagination plugin and make a few tweaks to some of your template pages (index.php, archive.php etc) and hey presto all your posts can be easily sourced by the bot. To download a plugin either type into Google WordPress pagination plugin or visit my site where you can find a plugin.

Remove Unnecessary links

Another simple little alteration you can make to make your pages more SEO friendly is to stop linking to your login, registration or RSS feeds on every page. There is no problem in a adding a link on your home page or a RSS feed link after each post asking users to sign up but it is not needed on all pages.

User Comments

Its funny that blogging is actually meant to be about
interacting with user and other bloggers alike. However sometimes comments, especially a lot of comments, can actually ruin our posts in terms of SEO rankings. Comments destroy our carefully constructed keyword density posts. Obviously if you want success with your blog comments are necessary however a few small alterations can help. First if you have important or successful posts then why not after the initial period of release turn them into pages with the same URL. This will remove posted comments but why does this matter as you’ve already got your users discussing by posting it as a post. Another tip is to add a function to close comments after a short period of time. This allows our regular and loyal readers to add a comment but reduces the amount of comments which can destroy the carefully constructed keyword density. A simple function to close comments can also be found by searching on Google or visiting my site.

Related Posts

To give search engines a hand and allow them to easily find older posts is to add a related posts feature. Again there are many plugins out there to add this feature so give it a go.

Comments

I hear you say how can comments affect my status. Well probably more than you think. If you invite people to comment and get people discussing ideas on your site then people will feel engaged and fulfilled when using your site. If people feel involved and welcome them they are much more likely to link to you therefore improving your page rank.

Off Site SEO

Now we get to the real heart of SEO. You can do all the onsite SEO and improve your rank but still you may not be where you want. The reason for this is although the search engines love you they may also love other sites more as they are seen as more important due to how many people are linking towards them.

Twitter and Facebook

Nowadays these two social media giants control so much of the web. They are probably two of the most used sites out there so why not use them to your advantage. You can source so many new visitors by getting people to link to you on twitter or Facebook and people are usually more likely to comment on twitter than on blogs.

Follow Other Blogs

If people follow your blog then why not follow others. It’s so important to be part of the blogging community. If you comment on other people blogs and link to them in your posts it shows that you care and then they may just do the same for you.

Final Thought

Backlinks are important and we all know that so work hard and build them. The more you get, the easier it will be to get more. The more users you get, the easier it is to get more. But remember above all keep up the quality of your sites content and get people talking about you.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adie_Pirie

WordPress is in fact one of the most widely used open source application for publishing blogs. It is used by more than 200 million websites around the world. There are many factors leading to this widespread popularity of WordPress. There are a lot of free WordPress plugins available which incorporates various extra features to your WordPress blog site. The WordPress PayPal plugins enables bloggers to integrate PayPal with their WordPress blog site so that their users can make donations and payments via this PayPal application from their blog.

WordPress plugins are programming codes that are written to enhance the features of the existing WordPress. Such plugins will not alter the basic WordPress program but modifies them with a view to incorporate additional features to it. It is difficult to catch up with each of these users and design plugins to satisfy their personalized needs. But, the number of WordPress plugin developers have also seen a gigantic increase and therefore resulted in the release of more and more unique codes which are targeted at a wider range of audience.

There has always been numerous plugins available which enables various bloggers to conduct online sales through their sites. The WordPress PayPal plugins have made this process complete and easier. There are various advantages in integrating PayPal with your WordPress blog site. If your site is an online shopping blog site, your customers can make their payment through the PayPal application available in the site. This makes things easier for them, since they do not have to redirect themselves to the PayPal site to make the payment.

Another important feature is that such plugins can be installed in just a few easy steps and do not require any expert assistance. This application is highly market oriented, so that it enables the blogger to customize the site depending on the applications he needs to incorporate.

This plugin comprises a whole new lot of features which is capable of turning a standard WordPress blog into a fully fledged online shopping site. This has allowed bloggers to use their WordPress blogs as a powerful tool to promote their site and thus promote their products and services. There are certain blogs which are set up for a noble cause. Such blogs urges visitors to make donations for the cause. The WordPress PayPal plugin can make things easier for them since donations can be made right from the blog itself.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Satya_Narayan_Das

If you have hung around the internet and gotten a little whiff of the SEO updates, you would have already gathered that if you have your website optimized, you stand the chance of getting better hits and more profits and ranking on the search engines. However, it might seem like something unattainable since you might not have any idea of how you can get the necessary optimization for your blog.

At first, most bloggers are often undecided on the kind of software that would be ideal for their blogging enterprise, but with time, they come to settle on the WordPress option.

However, I am always amazed when I discover that many people who make use of WordPress do not actually know anything about WordPress SEO. They have basically no knowledge of the workings of the SEO tips and training that is imperative for their online success. I do not advise you to ignore that WordPress SEO training as you would be doing yourself more harm than good. Once you make a wonderful combination of SEO and WordPress, you would be amazed yourself at the possibilities that could result from such a combination. Trying to effectively tap into the wonders of SEO without using WordPress is essentially like trying to fill up a Jacuzzi with a basket.

Basically, I can tell you of two WordPress programs that would achieve the desired effect for you. I know that there are many people out there who would smile at the prospect of making money, but are decidedly hesitant about spending some investment along the way. For these people the WordPress SEO training would be quite good, since this affords them the opportunity to make money without spending any of theirs.

I am sure you are not disputing if I tell you this: WordPress is the best blogging platform. It has its reasons too; it is easy to install, free of charge and a very good friend of google. Here are some ways you can use in optimizing your blog for better visibility on the search engines.

Step 1: Keyword research. You see, the keywords are the main things that would determine how far you would go in the SEO soup. It is therefore important for you to have a well composed list of your keywords. However here is a little tip for you; the best free tool you can use for your keyword research is the Google keyword research tool.

Step 2: customize your WordPress blog for Google SEO. First of all, of course, you should log on to your dashboard, go to settings and permalinks. Once there, alter the default structure of your blog. Click on the radio button with the “custom” header and insert /%postname%/ in the box.

Step 3: Write content. Also, do not forget to write regularly. Don’t be irregular in your writing, and make sure your articles are quality, since there is nothing a search engine loves more.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Roger_Neves