Like I said, Wordpress began as a simple content management system for bloggers. It was pretty light, fairly simple to install and use and worked great for what it was meant for: blogging. I’m here to tell you it is still light and easy but it has grown to be much more than just a blogging platform. Extensions and non-blog Wordpress themes have done a great job making it into the CMS it is today and through the upgrade process, many of those useful extensions have been built in and now it works great running all sorts of sites.

This article will introduce you to 5 non-blog Wordpress themes that will show you how well Wordpress does on sites that aren’t necessarily blogs.  A few of the site types you’ll see are: magazines, church sites, portfolios, and photography sites. I have looked around and found some of the best themes for the jobs and I hope you enjoy.

Newspress – A Great Magazine Wordpress Theme

Magazines have hit the internet and they’ve done well creatively. I think a good magazine site will be colorful, easy to navigate, highlight main or new articles and will draw your attention to the content. When it comes to magazine themes, layout makes a big difference.

Newspress does a good job of immediately getting your attention. Across the top, you will see articles being highlighted with pictures from the individual articles. I believe the theme does this automatically for you. There are some customization options and a widgetized footer for further flexibility.

Churches Can Use Wordpress Too

I think Wordpress lends itself very well to running a site like a church site. That’s because of the amount of changes a church site could see on a weekly or monthly basis and Wordpress is a fairly simply CMS to learn. Churches don’t always have the budgets for professional webmasters or design professionals so a simple CMS and free non-blog Wordpress themes make life a lot easier.

The Delta Theme is a very amiable choice for a church website. It’s layout is very easy to figure out and shouldn’t be all that unfamiliar to someone who frequents church sites. With easy page navigation up at the left of the banner, and a thin sidebar directly beneath, and a wider right sidebar, there is plenty of room for things like services times, contact information, and calendar widgets.

Easily Setup A Portfolio Site Using Wordpress

If you are a design professional of any type these days, you’ll be wanting a presence on the internet. You’d want something to grab and hold attention, using graphics and photos that are large enough to show off your skills. You’ll also want it to be easy to navigate as to not frustrate any potential clients.  Wordpress makes setting it up easy… with the right theme of course.

The WP-Creativix theme may just be the portfolio theme you’ve been looking for. In my opinion, one of the best portfolio themes, WP-Creativix has many of the features a design professional may be looking for. It has easy page navigation along the top, large pictorial previews of each project just below the page navigation, and an easy scroll through of the rest of your projects.

Show Off Your Photography Skills With Wordpress

A good photography site or blog will actually get out of the way and allow the photography to take center stage. That not only means that the design should not be distracting, but also that the navigation should be unobtrusive. You can also have a page set up for each photo explaining about it. Wordpress, with the right theme, can help you accomplish all of this quite easily.

Viewport is one of those photo blogging themes that gets out of the way. Notice how the page navigation is small and subtle. There’s a search box but it’s not distracting. There are arrows on either side of the photo allowing you to easily flip through the photographs. There’s also a caption and quick description which also allows you to click through to a post that tells more about the photograph. All you can ask for in a photography theme, right?

Use Wordpress as an Internal Communication Tool with P2

As mentioned in an earlier article, How To Use Wordpress As A Twitter-Like Communication Tool, if you make use of Automattic’s P2 Theme, you can also turn Wordpress into a tool that may help pull your business or organization out of the uncommunicative rut.

The theme takes much of its usability from Twitter and it allows you to easily, and in real time, post and reply right from the front page. Want to know more? Just check out the post.

Wordpress, even though it began as a simple blogging platform, can be used in many different ways. These are some of the best non-blog Wordpress themes highlighting many of those non-blogging uses. What other uses (and themes highlighting those uses) can you think of that Wordpress may be good for? Let us know in the comments.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

This guide will help you make that decision by showing you how to compare apples to apples. By understanding what hosting companies mean by what they say, you’ll be able to decide which hosting company and package best suits your needs.

1. Price

This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider; however, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. When you see price differences it’s helpful to remember the old maxim that we get what we pay for. Jumping on the cheapest offer you see isn’t necessarily the best idea, especially if you rely on your site to make money. Things like non-outsourced support and quality hardware cost money, and a hosting company that charges $1.99 per month likely won’t offer these features. Take a closer look at the features that each host provides, and THEN compare prices.

Further reference(s):

• HostMonk – A site with comprehensive list of hosting companies and their packages. Use this site to compare prices of almost any web hosting companies’ hosting packages.
• WebHostNinja – Another good site for web hoting price comparison.

2. Area of Focus / Specialties

It’s a fact that not all web hosts are right for all different kinds of customers. Some offer great shared plans but don’t have solutions that are good for growing businesses, while others have great enterprise solutions but aren’t the right fit for someone with a small recipe blog. Look into a company’s specialty or area of expertise before you buy, and go with one that understands your particular needs as a customer. You can find reviews and recommendations on the Web, and many of these will talk about a particular company’s strengths and weaknesses.

3. Tech Specs / Limitations

Take a good, honest look at your site and figure out what you want it to do. If you’re hoping to host a blog, an e-commerce site, rich content, and videos, then you shouldn’t go with the cheapest hosting package you can find. A cheap hosting plan probably won’t have the RAM, processing power, and disk space to serve all these needs, and you’ll spend more time dealing with downtime or load issues than you would like. Look to see what you are getting with the cheap host and what features are included in the cost. Do they charge for additional domains, support, backups, etc.. Call them. Ask questions. Tell them what you envision your site’s needs to be. Just don’t take it for granted that they take your site as seriously as you do.

4. Tech Support

In most people’s opinions, this is the big one. When my site, for some unknown reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live person on the phone? And, more than that, can they find out what’s wrong and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my site back online? Before going with a host look into their reputation for customer support. See what kinds of different ways you can contact them when you need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on. Are they staffed 24/7? Do they outsource support?

You’ll find that, like in price and technical specifications, all hosts are not equal. Some hang their hat on their support crew, and some view customer support as an afterthought. Steer clear of the latter.

5. Features / Add-Ons

This area of consideration comes down to the following question – What makes this hosting company special? What extra incentive do they provide to make hosting your site with them just a touch more attractive? Whether it’s multiple data centers, energy-saving practices, or additional features such as regular data backups or free domain privacy, hosting companies often offer more than just servers. If you see one that offers something you need or find important, that can be a good indicator that you should look into using that company.

6. Hardware

You might have to do a bit of reading (or question-asking) to get to the bottom of this one. What kind of machines does your hosting company use? Are they top-of-the-line, out-of-the-box new machines, or are they cobbled together from what might be spare parts and chicken wire? If the hosting company doesn’t say what kind of servers they use, you’ll want to ask, since hardware can affect the performance of both their servers and your site.

Further reference(s):

• Key factors in selecting Web hosting hardware

7. Customer Reviews / Satisfaction / Reputation

This is one of those factors that you’ll have to get a little creative to get the real story on. Do a Google Blog search for a particular hosting company, or look them up on Twitter – whatever you have to do to see what their current (or former) customers are saying about them. Are they easy to contact for support? What’s the average time it takes to respond to a ticket? When they find a problem with a site, what’s their course of action? This is one of the great things about social media – ask a question about a company, and you’re more likely than not to get a few answers.

Further reference(s):

• LifeHacker readers’ favourite web hosting (list)
• Web Hosting Talk – one of the largest web hosting community on the net.
• Web Hosting Jury – reviews submitted by users themselves.

8. Email Features

This is one of those areas where you might not have considered asking your host for help. If you have a spam problem, then it may be because your hosting company doesn’t provide an adequate solution to stop it. Look into or ask about your provider’s spam solutions and general email practices. No matter what they say, email isn’t dead quite yet.

9. Control Panel / User Interface

Even if you’re the least tech-savvy person in the world, there are some things – installing WordPress, setting up email, setting up FTP accounts – you should be able to do without calling your hosting company’s support line. Does your provider use cPanel or Plesk to make updates and modifications easier, or do they use some clunky interface that no one can figure out? You’ll most likely be the one working with it, so if you can’t figure it out, then that’s going to be a problem.

Further reference(s):

• Try a cPanel Demo
• Try a Plesk Demo
• cPanel vs Plesk

10. Scalability / Room to Grow

Finally, an important thing to consider about your hosting provider (and the plan you choose) is whether or not they fit into your plans for the future. In other words, what you consider adequate hosting now might not meet your needs two years from now, once you start selling your wares online and getting some good traffic to your site.

Any web-based enterprise should have its eye on growth, so if a hosting company might have difficulty accommodating that growth it could pose an issue. Does the host have VPS or Dedicated Server solutions? Will they be able to easily upgrade your account? Transferring from one host to another takes valuable time and effort which could be avoided if the company can scale their solutions for growth. As with all these factors, do some research, get some opinions, and make an informed decision.

11. Bonus

Last but not least, we’d also like to share with you some useful resources that might be handy when it comes to web hosting.

• Ruby on Rails Hosting – A comparison of services that provide ROR hosting.
• Understand Cloud Hosting – ‘Cloud Hosting’ has been quite a buzz these days, but do you know what it means?
• 10 Solutions For Your Cloud Hosting Needs – Sitepoint and their fair share on cloud hosting needs.
• Who Is Hosting This – Find out who is hosting which website

(Via hongkiat.com.)

Typography is an integral part of design. Think of all the different uses of typography on the web, from large headlines and bold blocks of text to smaller-sized text in body copy, and you’ll soon realize that not only is it a crucial part of a web design, but that it’s a pure combination of art and science.

We’ve come a long way since the start of the internet, but the use of typography is as important today as it was back in the day.

Typography Basics

Typography is the use of type in a design. Typography seeks to create a greater meaning by thoughtful and deliberate selection font, size, color, layout, alignment, and other factors that affect the design of type on a page.

There are two major classifications of fonts to choose from: serif and sans serif fonts.

Serif fonts have serifs or extra embellishments at the end of stokes; some call them feet or tails.

Sans serif fonts are without serifs; no extra details are found on the end of each letter.

Things to Consider for Typography on the Web

There are many differences in handling type in print versus on the web. Things to think about with text on the web are contrast, color, readability, and size.

Colors on a monitor screen are created by light, and it becomes more important to think about contrast because it’s straining to look at and read text with poor contrast. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read because it provides the most contrast. Color theory and color choice play an important role in web typography.

Sans serif fonts have been proven to be more easily read online in body copy because serifs make it tougher for the eye to follow, while the opposite is true for printed text.

Although at an increased size and with more leading—the amount of additional vertical space between lines of type—sans serif fonts can still work fine in body text on the web. Serifs work great in headlines and headings because they give a special accent to a headline and because serif fonts are easy to read when dealing with smaller quantities of text.

Size is an important factor to consider when choosing your font styles. Text that is too small is hard to read, but text that is too big takes up too much space. Find a size that works well with your design and is easy to read.

Taking Control of Fonts

There are many settings that control the way your font appears on a web page. Font size, as mentioned previously, is certainly important. The three most popular units of measurements are: em, percentage (%), and pixels (px).

Declaring font sizes in CSS is simple, here’s an example of paragraph elements being assigned a unit of 1em.

p {
 font-size: 1em;
}

Em is a widely used form of typographic measurement for web designs because it scales well and can give you finer increments of size (i.e. 1.35em).

Pixels are measured relative to the screen resolution and give you a bit less control as you can only use whole numbers (i.e. 2px).

Many people like using percentages for font sizes because they give the user control of font sizes. The size is determined by their browser’s font size settings.

Kerning and leading can also be controlled with your CSS. Kerning is the space between characters and can be controlled with the letter-spacing property. Leading can be controlled using the CSS property, line-height. Both are great ways to control the look of your text.

Other possible and less popular units of measurements are:

• points (pt)
• pica (pc)
• inches (in)
• centimeters (cm)
• millimeters (mm)
• x space (ex)

Using pt is great for print stylesheets because they are a print unit of measurement. Points shouldn’t be used in your web pages because there are big differences between browsers when using points; Mac OS computers tend to show text 25% smaller than PC computers.

Web Safe Fonts

What is a web safe or web standard font? These fonts make up a group of a select few fonts that are available on most computers. This is what currently limits font choices on the web under CSS2 specifications.

Choosing from the web safe fonts available will ensure better control over what your text looks like on all browsers and operating systems. The consensus for the most popular fonts are:

• Arial (Mac OS equivalent is Helvetica)
• Times New Roman (Mac OS equivalent is Times)
• Verdana
• Georgia
• Courier

Other popular fonts:

• Impact
• Lucida Console (Mac OS equivalent is Monaco)
• Lucida Sans (Mac OS equivalent is Lucida Grande)
• Palatino
• Tahoma (Mac OS equivalent is Geneva)
• Comic Sans
• Trebuchet MS

When using any of these fonts—especially the ones from the second list—it’s a great idea to include a few options to fall back on in your CSS, as explained in the following section.

Setting Your Fonts

There are a few methods to choose from to display fonts on your websites. If you’re using a web safe font, you can declare it via CSS, such as in the following example:

font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 

It’s important to include several fonts just in case someone doesn’t have your first option. This gives your user’s browser something to fall back on. This list of fonts is called a font stack.

Redefining ‘web safe fonts’ with CSS3

Current CSS3 specs allow you to choose from any licensed OpenType or TrueType font at your disposal. You can do this by using @font-face, as shown in the following example:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Journal; src: url(journal.ttf) format('truetype');
}
h1 {
  font-family: 'Journal', sans-serif;
}

Font replacement tools

There are several font replacement methods at your disposal if you are still unsure about using @font-face in your designs.

Cufon

Cufon is a favorite font replacement tool to use because it’s relatively painless to integrate into a website. Plenty of documentation is available on their website, as well as the text generator that spits out code you’ll need. Although it’s a good, solid solution, it’s not without it’s downsides—currently text rendered by Cufon is not selectable by users.

sIFR

sIFR is a Flash-based text replacement method and is just as nice as Cufon. You’ll need Flash to create a font file for your site. It’s best used on headlines or very small blocks of text because the load time can drag on a bit if you use it extensively on a web page. The downside is that it doesn’t work without Flash enabled in your browser, but the upside of sIFR versus Cufon is that text is selectable.

Web Typography Mistakes

Lack of typography consistency is one the biggest mistakes new web designers make. Font properties are best controlled globally, and it’s good practice to set the font family, size, color, line height and weight for the body element of all your pages through CSS, such as in the following example:

body { font: 1em/1.3em Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #000; } 

You should set heading styles globally as well for h1, h2, and h3. Link styles should also be set globally.

Choosing fonts that are too similar is not a good choice, and should be avoided by carefully looking at the style of fonts and the design of the site to choose something that is appropriate. Most serif headings pair well with sans serif fonts for body text. Pairing two sans serif fonts is a bit trickier but is certainly a viable option.

(Via Six Revisions.)

Wordpress is the best all round blogging platform. You can use it for a simple online journal or to power huge websites such as our very own MakeUseOf.

I guess thats why so many bloggers trust it to get the job done on an everyday basis, as well as keep their site looking great with themes and widgets.

That being said, there are times when we need specific features and that’s where plugins come in. Many of us will use plugins to make our blog comparable with another service such as a social network or to improve server response time, but today I want to take a look at three cool Wordpress plugins I use which just make blogging easier and more enjoyable.

Theme My LogIn

The WP login page hasn’t changed much since the platform was first released so it’s cool to be able to jazz it up with this plugin.

What it does is simple: it transforms your login page into a page of your blog when wp-admin redirects you to the login page. The login area is displayed where your post would normally be with the rest of your blog being the same. You can still use the normal login page by going directly to wp-login.php.

While this doesn’t make blogging any easier per se, it does give you a little bit of individuality and fun.

Future Calandar

This plugin will be of great benefit to those who post on their blogs every few days or so and like to keep their posting pattern regular. Obviously, if you own a bigger blog then some of the point is lost because all of the days will be highlighted but it might still be useful to you to decide which day a post would be best suited to.

It’s a basic plugin but one of my favorites. A small calandar will appear once the plugin is installed, to the right of your posting area. The days when you have post scheduled for the remainder of the month will be highlighted in green as seen above. The current day is highlighted and bolded.

I find this really handy when posting as I just have to glance at the calandar to check my frequency and to decide what day/date would be the best for the post to go live.

Photo Dropper

A picture is worth a thousand words and like most bloggers, I like to start off an article with a big, high-quality picture that really captures the theme of the article. The trouble is that when posting creative commons images you have to source the picture on a separate website such as Flickr and post an attribution link.

Photodropper however, creates a small icon in the post editor as shown. When clicked a search bar will appear. This enables you to search Flickr for CC images. When you click on one of the results and select the appropriate size (the largest being 500px), the image is placed in the post and an attractive link along with the Creative Commons logo is placed below.

I think this makes the post look very professional and also saves you a lot of hassle.

So there you have it. Three cool Wordpress plugins to make your blogging life a little easier. Do you use any interesting plugin which helps you blog or just to liven things up?

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

The drama comes when you actually become a full time designer. The friends and family who drew upon your talent during your newbie years are still standing around with their hands out, and now you also must contend with two more groups of favor askers: clients and anonymous foreigners who contact you through Twitter.

Here are 8 of the most common and eye-rollingly annoying favors all designers encounter at one point or another. For ease of reference, we’ll call the offending party ‘Dude.’

1. ‘Hey, can you take a look at my site and tell me what you think?’

At first glance, this seems like a harmless five to ten minute project. Dude asks for your opinion, and you both know that you are an esteemed and dedicated design pro. You optimistically click on his website link, and you’re teleported back in 1998 with a Geocities-reminiscent design so horrifying it makes MySpace look professional. After you try hard not to lose all respect for Dude, you carefully suggest that he get rid of the Flash intro. You are then met with an uncomfortable defensiveness, where Dude refuses to accept your professional advice.

Lesson learned: Decipher whether your friend is looking for actual advice or just a pat on the back.

2. ‘Um, would you mind designing my site… for free?’

It’s shocking how many people feel truly entitled to a free web design. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of introducing yourself as a web designer, you may notice the wheels instantly starting to turn in your acquaintance’s mind. Everyone, even those without any product or any relevant thing to say, want, demand and need a website. These are the people, especially, who will want such a website produced for free. They may lure you with the distant hopes they use to fuel their own insanity: ‘Once I get some visitors, I’ll direct them to your services’ (Standard practice, regardless).

Lesson learned: Limit your charity cases to those you can do in your free time and only do it for charity because the only reward you’ll reap is psychological.

3. ‘Can you help me design my site to look like ______?’

This request is closely related to the first two requests. Perhaps Dude has taken it upon himself to designed a website, already had a moment of epiphany and now realizes that it sucks. At least you’re on the same page. Then comes, ‘I’d like my site to look just like Avatar. You know, all 3D and stuff.’ Once you realize that Dude is serious, another realization also sinks in. If you take on this ‘consulting’ project, all of your time and energy will be engulfed by this vortex, and you won’t be getting paid for your trouble. What’s the solution? Direct Dude to Yahoo! Answers? No, he’ll never go for that, because this is a top secret idea.

Lesson learned: Find your inner ineptness and apply it to this situation. Feign ignorance, suggest peripheral design ideas such as blue color palettes and wait for your friend to get bored of the idea and come to his senses.

4. ‘I think I have a virus.’

No one likes to hear these words, and if someone’s sharing this information with you, they usually want one of two things: sympathy or help, sometimes both. When you hear these words come from a client, you must assume they are referring to a computer virus (let’s hope). This your client’s passive/ aggressive way of getting you to offer assistance. If you, wisely, remain silent, he or she will shamelessly ask you for your help. Just because you work in front of your computer all day does not mean that you qualify for tech support. You have to Google things just like everyone else.

Lesson learned: Get the courage to finally direct someone to Let Me Google That For You. However, for professional relationships, avoid the snark and actually lightly research the problem, but make no promises and waste no longer than 15 minutes.

5. ‘Let me help you with any of your extra work.’

This favor comes in the form of a donated favor. In other words, Dude is suggesting that he’s doing you a favor, when he’s actually just trying to get paid. One morning you open your email box, and there’s an email from some dude you’ve never heard of. He wants you to lend him some of your work. Depending on your level of job-related stress, you may be inclined to offer him some work, but what’s this? No portfolio? No website? No spell-check. Wait, is Dude even located in the same hemisphere as you?

Lesson learned: You get what you pay for.

6. ‘So, it’s been a minute… How much longer is it going to take?’

Just when you’ve got your Good Samaritan on and decided to help Dude during your free time, he starts becoming a diva. Never mind the impossible requests to make his website look just like *let your imagination run wild on this one,* or the countless revisions to a perfectly designed logo, or the endless hours you spent over IM trying to explain why putting an invisible list of keywords at the bottom of the webpage is unnecessary. When you least expect it, expect to receive a phone call, email, direct tweet saying, ‘Hey, so, um… when’s the project going to be finished?’ You reply back, ‘Dude, I told you I was going to fit this in between my actual work from actual clients that actually pay.’ To this, Dude replies, ‘I didn’t think it was going to take this long, maybe I should just get this professionally done.’ Oh, that’s a killer. First of all, Dude has no consideration for the amount of time you’ve invested in this project. Secondly and more importantly, you are a professional. Why not offer you money so that you can prioritize his project?

Lesson learned: Clearly state from the beginning that it will take you some ridiculously long amount of time to complete the project for free and if Dude’s still on board, he’ll be happy if you finish it sooner than expected.

7. ‘Can I use your server until I get my own hosting?’

What’s so wrong about this request? You have extra space and you can afford the bandwidth. The problem is that Dude will never get his own hosting, and eventually he’ll forget about his site. A year later, you’ll remind him, ‘Hey Dude, you know you still have your stuff on my server? I’m moving to another server, so is it alright if I get rid of it? You have a back up, right?’ Dude will do one of two things: he’ll respond with indignant anger, upset that you’re rushing him to get his act together or he’ll pretend to be okay with it, all the while, holding a grudge.

Lesson learned: Friends don’t let friends use their servers.

8. ‘Hey, I volunteered you to re-do my co-worker’s step-daughter’s wedding album.’

You can replace this with any task in which your mom volunteers your services for free. It’s always lovely to deal with someone who’s happy to accept your honest labor for free, because we all know they won’t make any unreasonable demands. The most difficult part of this ordeal is having to contend with your mother in her role as the merciless middleman who nags you for quality, timeliness and her good reputation.

(Via Web Design Ledger.)

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

What’s the most important piece of your business’s web presence? Your website, of course.

Creating a website requires a good deal of thought; it’s important to plan what information you want on the site, what the layout will look like, and how you’ll connect each piece together.

Think of your website as your hub; it’s what people will see when they look for you. Here are four elements of a successful business web presence that can help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

Before We Begin

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Your very first step should be to define the goals of your website. Most businesses should have at least three: to create an online presence, to differentiate your business, and to capture leads.

1. Creating an online presence is the most basic reason for building a website. This means building a site that includes your business information, highlights what makes you special, and gives consumers a way to contact you.

2. Making your business stand out takes a more advanced strategy. Maintaining a blog that portrays your thoughts and insights can help your website stand out and help consumers better understand your business.

3. A good business website can be used to capture potential leads. As the site grows it becomes a community for customers and potential consumers. Connect with potential consumers and find a way to continue marketing to them. Your website can be the elevator pitch and your connection the long sell.

The Website

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With our goals in mind, we can begin to explore specific elements of a strong website.

The homepage will generally be the initial point of contact with your consumers. A good homepage will answer the questions ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Why should I trust you?’ Consumers will make a split-second decision on whether they’ll stay to learn more or go to a competitor. Don’t lose them at the start.

An ‘About’ page can further reinforce the trust factor. Explain exactly what your company does, in-depth. I want to know who you are, why you do what you do, and what makes you special. This page should make an impact and impress your consumers.

Finally, create a ‘Contact’ page. This page should clearly explain to your customers how to get in contact with you. Make sure it outlines your address, phone number, email address, and any other way someone can reach you. You might even want to include a Google Map with directions to your store or office.

These three pages create a basic online presence, but not much more. If you want to set your business apart from everyone else, the best way to do that is to create a company blog.

The Blog

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For some reason, many business owners shy away from blogs. What they don’t realize is that most business ‘News’ sections are blogs. ‘Blog’ simply defines any continually updated news or content section of a site. In fact, this is technically a post on a blog.

So why is a blog important? For one, it shows that you know what you’re talking about. It helps you identify yourself as an expert or unique. Secondly, a blog is constantly updated. It gives readers a reason to come back to your site. The more contact you have with your consumers, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Also, consumers have become savvier and will search out information. They want more than a simple explanation of what your product does. They want to know how to use your product, examples of interesting things people are doing, and how you can make their life easier.

After you have a site with information and a blog that is ever-growing, you’ll begin to experience a growth in site traffic. It would be a shame to ignore these potential customers. Which leads us to our next step; lead capture.

The Newsletter

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It’s here that we begin building leads from your website’s visitors.

The first and most important element is a newsletter form. I use Aweber to handle my own personal newsletter sign ups and delivery. I just write the actual newsletter and format it.

There are a number of other services you can use too such as MailChimp and ConstantContact; it simply depends on what you want. Do your research and choose a program you like. The newsletter cost quickly pays for itself. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate sales.

Getting consumers to sign up for your email list means you no longer have to wait for them to come to you, you can go to them. You can offer your core consumers specials and keep them up to date on new products or changes.

Social Media Accounts

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Another option for capturing leads is social media. Microblogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can help you connect with and contact those within your core community. For this strategy to work, your blog should serve as a central hub. The hub sends consumers to your respective social media profiles to build the connection.

Businesses with a Facebook Fan page can include a Fan box on the site to make it an easy process to fan the business page. If you have an active Twitter account, consider adding the ‘Follow Me on Twitter’ button. These two elements can help turn a one-time reader into a connected consumer.

When you’re building an online presence, the most important aspect is your website. It’s your hub and your first impression. Are you using the right elements to maximize your website’s effectiveness?

(Via Mashable!.)

Lorem ipsum is a block of dummy text in Latin often used in design and publishing to fill space in a mockup. The brilliant Dummy Image Generator is like ‘lorem ipsum’ for images.

Like ‘lorem ipsum’, the Dynamic Dummy Image Generator offers a glimpse at what content might look like in a layout, but instead of placeholder text, it creates a placeholder image. Using the service is dead simple:

Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!

Example: http://dummyimage.com/640x480

You can even use a dummy image as a source in your HTML, like <img src='http://dummyimage.com/340x123' alt='A Dummy Image'>, which would look like this:

The Dynamic Dummy Image Generator is free to use, and is a bit on the geeky side, but if you’re a designer or just spend the occasional free minute tinkering on the web, it’s a really simple, well-executed idea.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Today, Twitter is ranked in the top 50 websites on Alexa, and in February 2009, a blog post by Compete ranked Twitter as the third most used social networking site.

The original intention of Twitter was to announce to your friends and family, in 140 characters or less, what you were doing, as you were doing it. People would be updated all the time on the status of their friends.

Nowadays, people have found tons of different uses for this social media site that answers the question ‘What’s Happening?’ 

I know many of you are already all over Twitter and are already familiar with its benefits as a professional working designer.

If you aren’t on Twitter yet, hopefully you’ll see why you need to join in the conversation and be a part of this social networking phenomenon. If you’re already on Twitter, I hope to share some tips with you that you may not have considered before. Here are 10 tips for using Twitter to help you network, find jobs, and/or build your business. 

1. Follow awesome designers and studios

They may not follow you back, but it gives you a good opportunity to join a conversation and get your name out there. Retweet their posts or comment on something they’ve said. They may also post valuable resources for you to check out. 

2. Use search.twitter.com to search for jobs or projects

People tweet ‘I’m looking for a web designer’ or ‘I need help finding a good logo designer’ frequently. Search often and you’ll be able to capitalize on those opportunities to land a client, or at the very least, spread the word that you’re a working designer and available for hire.

3. Help the community: answer fellow designers’ questions

Tons of other designers and developers ask questions about coding issues, program quirks, or client dilemmas and will be very grateful for the help you can provide. The next time they need help on a project or have too much work, they will hopefully think of you.

4. Share your design critiques with designers that ask for input

Network with other designers by commenting on the designs that they post. People generally love hearing what you think about their design (or else they wouldn’t have posted it on Twitter). This is a good way to connect with other designers and also showcase your own design tastes and expertise to your followers.

5. Post your newest projects and published websites

I love seeing what other designers are doing and enjoy it when designers post their newest projects. However, don’t spam your followers with tons of stuff you’ve done, keep it to one post to announce a new site being published or a new business card you’ve designed. Keep your tweets relevant and not (too) self-promotional, or else, you might find yourself losing many of your followers.

6. Tweet and discover new web resources

Post awesome articles and tutorials that you’ve found. I can’t possibly include every cool web design blog in my RSS reader (it’s already out of control) but I love reading the occasional cool post I see on Twitter from a blog I don’t subscribe to. Sometimes I find an awesome blog that I haven’t even heard of before! Twitter is a great way to trade information and knowledge.

7. Use #hashtags

Something I don’t utilize nearly enough, but is extremely valuable, is using hashtags to categorize and contextualize your tweets. It allows other people to find you on Twitter: someone clicks on a hashtag on their friends page to find similar content, and they land on your Twitter page. Voila – another connection has been made.

8. Find and follow people and businesses in your area

Design groups, design studios, and programmers are people you can find on Twitter. There are also many people near you, but outside of the design world that would be great to network with such as the chamber of commerce in your city or new businesses that need your services. You can use Twitter’s advanced search to find tweeple that live around your area.

9. Customize the design of your page

Create something that matches your blog or website and list the services you offer. You can use your Twitter background to display links to your other social media profiles. Customizing the look of your page goes a long way in terms of self-branding.

10. Build relationships

Creating relationships is the single most valuable part of Twitter in my opinion. It gives us the opportunity to network and socialize informally while sharing ideas and resources.

Join the conversation! Twitter may have started as a way to keep your friends and family updated on what you’re doing but it’s a valuable resource as a working professional these days.

Maybe you think that you don’t have time to get involved in another social networking site, but I think you can’t afford to miss out on the opportunities with Twitter.

(Via Six Revisions.)

1. All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack will help you the basic content of the blog search engine optimization elements, including a separate page title, Meta tags, keywords and description.
(Note: All in One SEO Pack is easy to slow down the system and some of its functions can be achieved manually change the code, you can refer to the egg of this article.)

2. Redirection
Modify the previous text of the old Bo, WordPress upgrade or modify the permanent link structure, especially in the blog after the move, there will be blog post link to change.
Generally speaking, each post has a unique permanent URL address, the address change may occur after the visitors unable to visit, redirection plug-in will bring visitors to the new address, to avoid the situation can not be accessed.
(Note: not just SEO, for many useful Windows host friends,, redirection can also help you to remove a permanent link in the index.)

<3. Robots Meta
Under normal circumstances prime search engine will crawl your blog, and contains all the pages, this can easily lead to the appearance of duplicate content, so you need to guide search engines included prime, Robots Meta will make your blog get more weight and flow.

4. SEO Smart Links
Internal links are SEO, one of the key issues, more importantly, the content should have more internal links, you can search within the chain, told the prime engine, what is most important. If the manual to create internal links would be very time-consuming and laborious.
SEO Smart Links will allow you to specify a word such as ‘search engine optimization’ and then the contents of the article it appears a ‘search engine optimization’ is the word, it will be automatically turned into the designated links.

5. SEO Friendly Images
Photo Also in the blog optimization play an important role, so to establish the correct label image becomes very important, and this is precisely the function of SEO Friendly Images, if you prefer to use images in the blog article, then the SEO Friendly Images is a must for small.

6. Google Positioner
Choose the right keywords is very important that this plug-in can help you to bring traffic to track the search keywords, you may aimlessly choice words and then create some content, in the hope to get a good result, but the SEO need to take the initiative to track the results.

7. Permalinks Moved Permanently
Blog main common mistakes is to choose a permanent link to the wrong structure, and start writing blog when you feel the most appropriate choice, but over time you may also intend to change the permanent link structure, and this time you may take several months prime time in order to be search engine re-included.
Permalinks Moved Permanently and Redirection role similar, but more likely a better way to manage a permanent link to change.
(Recommendation: no matter what the situation is not going to change your permanent link.)

8. Nofollow Case by Case
In the last two years, nofollow attribute has been deeply affected a blog, WordPress for all of the message of the connection have used Nofollow tags, which means that a message in the connection does not pass Page Rank (PR). If you want to attract more visitors comments, Nofollow Case by Case allows you to remove the message in the link Nofollow tags, which require exposure of a new blog is very useful.
(Note: Dofollow is indeed a good idea to publicize your blog, but the same will be destroyed Spam your blog, nofollow also the effect of weight change.)

9. SEO Slugs
Do not use was found to prime the engine ignores words, posts often have their title may be elements of search engines is meaningless word, so if you post entitled ‘What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings’, then the a permanent link to the default may be what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings, but you are not more like a permanent link to the following: immediately-higher-rankings
SEO Slugs can automatically link to permanently remove from the meaningless words, to help you achieve better rankings.

You took the leap and installed WordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and works. Now, it’s time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours.

What You’re In For

With all the hype around cloud computing and no-configuration-required hosted services, you don’t hear about the joys of running great software on your own server very much. The fact is, if you’re just a casual user who doesn’t know if you’ll stick to blogging over the long haul, or if you don’t want to spend a little time maintaining WordPress, you should sign up for a hosted blog at WordPress.com or Blogger or TypePad. (Also, this tutorial is not for you.)

But if you’re willing to keep WordPress updated religiously, you get access to a whole world of WP plug-ins that add features to your site, the opportunity to create and tweak custom WordPress themes, and a huge sense of accomplishment. In the most recent version of WordPress, keeping your installation up-to-date is a matter of clicking a link when you get notified to do so.

Everything you need to know about installing WordPress is right here. Got it up and running? Let’s get to customizing.

Initial configuration

The first thing you want to do on your WordPress blog is set up a new author with administrative access. Don’t use the default ‘admin’ user to write your posts; create your custom username and give it admin privileges. Then, log out of WordPress and back in as your new username. For security reasons, some folks like to delete the admin user completely (as some WordPress attacks have used it to do bad things to your blog). Once you’ve got your administrative account working, add other authors to the list of users who might be posting to your blog.

Now it’s time to cruise through WP’s settings area and configure things just how you like ‘em. First, set up your post permalinks to look prettier for both humans and search bots. WordPress’ default post permalink looks like http://example.com/?p=123. Instead, under Settings>Permalinks, select something like http://example.com/2009/09/welcome-to-my-blog.

Next up, configure how you want comments to work on your blog. Under Settings>Discussion, you can enable comments and set other advanced options, like whether or not users have to be logged into your site to comment, or if comments should automatically close on posts after a certain number of days, if user avatars show up, or what words in a comment should automatically mark it as spam.

Speaking of, spam comments is a ridiculously epic problem across the internet for all blogs, so how you set up comments will mean the difference between miserable hours spent gardening V14gRa and ‘check out my sexy webcam!!’ comments or not. Coming from Lifehacker’s ‘must register to post here’ model, I checked off ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment.’ If you don’t want to put up the registration hurdle in front of your commenters, make sure you install the Akisment spam-killing plug-in (more on that below).

Must-have plug-ins

Just like you can extend Firefox with feature-adding extensions, WordPress also has a pluggable architecture and a whole world of plug-ins that can soup up your blog. When youre logged into WordPress, click on Plugins, and search for the name of the plug-in you want to install (which you can do without involving your FTP client). You can also just search on keyword, too—to find Twitter related plug-ins, just enter Twitter. The plug-ins that you use will depend on how you want your site to work and look, but here are a few that every WP user can benefit from.

WordPress Database Backup (Backup): Running your own server and database means that if things go wrong, it’s up to you to have a backup. This plug-in can email a full backup of your WordPress database on a schedule to an address you specify. I’ve had great success building my WordPress site locally with the backup this plug-in created; however, the other resident WP expert here on staff, The How-To Geek, recommends using the old-school cron job for 'mysqldump -uUser -pPassword databasename > filename.bak' approach. No matter how you do it, make sure you’re backing up both your blog’s database and files. It’s worth consulting with your blog hosting provider about the best way for you to do this, too.

FD Feedburner Plug-in (Feeds): Google-owned FeedBurner is a must-use for anyone who publishes RSS feeds, like your blog does. FeedBurner saves you bandwidth costs by hosting your blog’s feed and offers statistics about how many people are reading it; this plug-in will redirect your blog’s feed to FeedBurner for you.

WordPress.com Stats (Stats): See what posts are most popular using this up-to-the-minute statistics plug-in, right inside your WordPress dashboard. WordPress.com stats doesn’t count visits to your own blog, and unlike the richer Google Analytics service, there’s no day-long delay to see what’s happening on your site. To run this plug-in, you have to get a WordPress.com API key (it’s free) and enter it into the plug-in’s settings.

Search Meter (Stats): If you have a search box on your site, you’ll want Search Meter, a plug-in which shows you what readers are looking for and finding (or not) on your site. Search meter also offers widgets you can add to your site which show readers what other readers are searching for.

WP SuperCache (Optimization): The first time a highly-trafficked site like Digg links to your blog, you’ll wish you had installed this plug-in, which maintains high-speed, database-call free ‘cached’ copies of your WordPress pages on your server. Your site will run faster and won’t buckle under the strain of a lot of traffic if you’re caching it with this excellent plug-in.

Akismet (Comments Spam killer): Because comment spam can get so bad, WordPress now ships with the Akismet spam filtering plug-in. Since I’m requiring user registration to leave comments on my WordPress blog, I don’t have any experience with how good Akismet is (and haven’t had any spam at all), but word on the street is it’s absolutely essential for sites with open comments. Like WordPress.com stats, Akismet requires a WordPress.com API key.

Finally, to make your site as accessible to Google and other web search engines as possible, a few Search Engine Optimization SEO plug-ins help. I use All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps.

Make Your WordPress Theme Yours

If you’ve got HTML and CSS chops, you can make your WordPress theme sing your tune. (For advanced stuff, some PHP skills come in handy, too.) First you want to start with a base theme. WordPress’ default theme is ok, but if you google ‘free WordPress themes’ or take note of what themes sites you like already use, you’ll find an insane number of gorgeous and eye-catching site layouts. Picking your theme is one of the most fun (and most time-consuming) parts of setting up WordPress. It will be hard to choose!

Once youve installed the theme you want by downloading the .zip file and putting it in your WordPress themes folder, you can dig into the CSS and markup and make it your own. WordPress offers a theme editor in its interface which lets you update files on the fly (under Appearance>Editor). While this is convenient, its also dangerous if you hit the wrong key, save the file, and dont have a backup. My recommendation is to set up WordPress and your theme of choice on your own computer, edit it in your favorite text editor, and upload it to your live server when it’s perfect. I started my WordPress blog with Lucian Marin’s Journalist theme, and made it mine by adding color to the header and tweaking how comments look.

If you’ve got patience and custom HTML you want to turn into a brand new WordPress theme, copy the default theme’s files into a new folder and get to hacking. The WordPress Codex is an invaluable resource for both starter reading and reference as you go. That is, when you get to the part where you’re thinking ‘WTF is wp_list_comments?’, Google it and you’ll find the function reference at the codex. It took me a full weekend of pretty intense theming work to get my first custom theme done and ready to go live, so give yourself some time, and most importantly, have fun with it. Here are some tips and links from my Twitter followers on creating a custom WordPress theme.

Sidebars and Widgets, Oh My!

The easiest way to customize your WordPress blog without digging into code or your FTP client is to do so with widgets. The latest versions of WordPress offer drag-and-drop custom modules you can add to and remove from your blog. When you’re logged into WordPress’ admin interface, under Appearance, click on ‘Widgets’ to see what’s available and add and remove what you want on your site’s sidebar (or top bar or bottom bar, depending on where your theme puts it).

Advanced trickery

Here are a few more tips for advanced WordPress hackers who want to troubleshoot or try even more customization:

• Use multiple custom sidebars: WordPress’ sidebar and widgets feature is very powerful and customizable; in fact, you can create and customize multiple sidebars or site zones to show up on different pages. (For example, the sidebar that shows up on a post page can look different than the one on the front page.)
• Troubleshoot slowness and other problems with Firebug: Every web developer knows that the Firebug Firefox extension is absolutely essential when developing any site, and it’s true for WordPress, too. When my WP site went down because of multiple background 404’s doing resource-sucking searches, Firebug revealed the problem and so I knew how to fix it.
• Use tags to display content differently: You can use conditional tags to display different types of content on your blog in different ways, like a short link or big photograph. I use has_tag to display ‘quick links’ with smaller inline headlines on my front page by assigning the tag ‘brief.’
• Set up a ’staging’ server: Once your blog’s up and running and live, you don’t want to make huge changes to it with the whole world watching. Set up WordPress on your local computer, hack away on your theme and/or plug-ins, then upload your changes when they’re complete and ready.

This post only scratches the surface of WordPress customization possibilities. The good news is WordPress open nature and huge community means that you can find the answer to almost any WP question hitting up Google—or in worst case, asking the forums. Special thanks to the author of this CSS Tricks post who also writes the excellent Digging into WordPress blog, which I referenced for this post.

(Via Lifehacker.)