John Evans asked:


There are lots of web site software tools out there but one of the very best is free and provides lots of excellent features and benefits especially if you are building affiliate websites. It’s called Wordpress and you can download it for free at www.Wordpress.org. Now being free is in itself not a massive advantage if you are serious about developing a long term affiliate strategy and want to have websites that you feel sure can be supported. The last thing you need are websites that go down and cannot be resurrected. However, Wordpress solves the critical support issue by having a fabulous user and developer community.

Now, let’s talk about some of the key benefits offered by Wordpress. The software itself can best be described as content management software (CMS) and some of the key benefits for affiliate marketers are as follows:

1. Easy to install especially if you have web hosting using Fantastico. If not, fear not, it really is simple. All you need is a web hosting account and a suitable domain name.

2. Easy to use and it has a great WYSWYG (what you see what you get) interface that converts your text into html. Just write your articles and simply enter into the article box.

3. Automatic archiving functionality so you don’t need to use a sitemap. Your articles are stored automatically.

4. A wide variety of free themes so you can change and amend the look and feel of the web site to suit your affiliate promotions.

5. A wide range of plug-ins are available so you can further customize your Wordpress site. E.g. web stats, anti-spam tools, automatic related posts links etc.

6. Excellent backup and security features so you can ensure the stability of your web site.

7. RSS feeds are built in so you can update various news and blog sites when you add new content. This helps get your content indexed very, very quickly.

8. Ability to have other authors add content to your website remotely, as long as they can access the internet. This is a huge benefit.

9. You can create posts or pages of content, the choice is yours. No need to worry about formatting in html. All the work is done for you.

You can spend a great deal of money on website building software but like most things there is a learning curve and I have yet to see any that have the same breadth of features combined with a relatively simple learning curve. I use it for most of my affiliate websites and because I employ writers I can have them upload the content directly via their own login access details from the comfort of their own homes. It’s a fantastic free software tool and not just for bloggers.

Go check it out today and start adding to your growing affiliate income.



Caffeinated WP AutoBlog Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

Luca Di Nicola asked:


Blogs have become very powerful and can do fantastic things for a business. Because they are very Search Engine friendly they can work to increase traffic to your website very quickly.

A blog is simply an easy way to share your thoughts, ideas and even promote your products or services. People are on the internet searching for information that interests them and once they find a site that provides good updated content about their interests they will most likely keep coming back for more

Implement some of these strategies and you’ll see traffic building fast.

1) Wordpress is the best blogging platform

I recommend Wordpress self hosted platform for a number of reasons. If you’re into Internet Marketing or just Blogging for the long run you’ll want to brand yourself and make it easy for people to find your site.

2) Get your own domain name

As I mentioned before you’ll need to brand yourself and having a domain name related to your product or service is the first step. There are many hosting companies that offer great service and pricing but Hostgator is one of the best in my opinion. They will help you to set up your Wordpress blog or standard website.

3) Choose your Wordpress template wisely

There are so many free Wordpress templates available that it can become overwhelming. To start with choose one that is visually appealing and that is plugin ready. Plugins are free as well an can add additional functionality to your Wordpress blog.

4) All in One SEO Pack pluging is a must that will help to increase traffic

The -All in One SEO Pack- will help optimize your Wordpress blog for Search Engines. – It automatically optimizes titles for search engines – Generates META tags for you, – Avoids duplicate content that can be a problem with Wordpress blogs

5) Google XML Sitemap plugin

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It will support pages Wordpress and custom pages. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap will be updated and all of the major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

6) Content for your Blog

You will need to work on creating original content for your site and updating it on a regular basis. Content refers to the articles or postings that you write and publish on your blog. It should be relevant to your niche so that when people search for information about your niche they can be referred to your site by the search engines.

7) Getting more traffic to your site

There are many free ways to get additional traffic to your blog. Article Marketing is one way. Posting comments on related blogs is another and visiting forums and becoming part of the community will also get you more visibility.

Having a popular and successful blog will take some time even though some may tell you otherwise. It will take hard and consistent work as well as good content and the willingness to educate yourself about SEO and web traffic. If you will take the time to write good content and work on getting traffic you will have no trouble increasing website traffic over time. Staying focused, having a plan and not giving up too quickly. After building a readership you will be able to keep them coming back as long as you post on a regular basis and give your readers information they’re interested in.



Caffeinated WP AutoBlog Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

Priyanka Kapil asked:


Wordpress is the best tool for Blogging. Moreover it has become popular as Content Management System. As its functionality can be enhanced by using pluggins .Content Management is total content control. With a content management system, or CMS, you can maintain consistency across your site with a few clicks. Whether brand messaging, news, or even look and feel, a CMS makes site wide maintenance simple and quick. But there’s more to it than that.

With the many capabilities of a Wordpress, businesses can leverage this technology to meet business goals, drive demand, and create deeper user engagement.

By immediately posting news, comments, and other information, a company can respond almost instantaneously to changes in the digital marketplace. Whether this means adding, deleting, or editing live content, a wordpress is a tool that should be carried in every webmaster’s toolbox.

Wordpress is easy to customize



Pick a theme that vaguely resembles what you would like i.e. 2 column, 3 column etc. I’ve chosen to use the default template for this example.

If choosing other than one of the defaults, download and extract the file to the your wordpresswp-contentthemes directory

Either extract the same downloaded file to the same place giving it a different name or simply navigate to the themes folder and copy/paste it into same directory giving it a different name.

You now have 2 identical themes one with the correct name and one with the name you gave.

From Your Theme directory, Open up the style.css file in your favourite text editor and edit the first few lines to suit e.g. Theme Name, Theme Description, version and urls. I made the changes shown below:

That’s it, save and close the style.css file. Then, if you haven’t already, upload those two theme directories (default and MY Theme) to the themes directory online.

Login and Open up your WordPress dashboard under Presentation > Themes you should see both themes, with the correct names beside them, activate the one with your name.



 

At this point this theme is exactly the same as the original (default), and if any edits you make to your theme do not do as expected, then you can do real-time switching back to the default.

Wordpress as a E-commerce Website

The lite version of this plugin allows you to sell products via PayPal only. Whilst it’s called ‘lite’ it’s not that simple as such. You can have your products in categories, there’s a shopping basket and it uses the PayPal IPN for instant notification. I’ve not gone through the whole process but I would assume that if you’re selling a digital product it will also then provide a download link to the buyer to download the product, as I’ve had the option to set how many times the product can be downloaded by the buyer.

WP e-Commerce is just like any other plugin for the installation. Just unzip the files and upload the directory to your plugins directory, and activate it in the WordPress admin. You then get an extra menu for it, where you can set your shop settings, other preferences, and start adding categories, brands and product information. It can deal with physical products or digital products, the latter was what I was interested in. You can also easily select which fields to have in the form on the front end, and which of these fields to send PayPal so that they’re prefilled. As I’m only looking to sell digital products I took the address details out as these are not needed.

Marketers need to remember that a wordpress gives them the ability to leverage unique pieces of content across multiple sites while providing multi-lingual support and content, a critical factor for companies with an international reach and online presence.

Wordpress as a Forum Website

WP-Forum is a WordPress plugin that enables you to have a forum directly attached to your WordPress installation. As one of the more popular forum software available today, SMF would be a good choice if you have no particular preference towards any forum solution. It’s still pretty bloated/bulky and can be difficult at times to customise (though less than many alternatives really), so I can’t say it’s my first choice solution at the moment. And while its backend integration with WordPress just requires the installation of a single WP plugin, I can’t seem to find a proper guide on layout integration yet. Here’s how you do it:

1.Install either one of two “bridge” plugins, i.e. WP SMF Bridge Plugin 1.0 or the CMS & SMF Plugin. While both provide user account integration (log into/register via WP = log into SMF/register into SMF), listing recent forum topics/messages on your blog, and etc., the latter plugin hooks WP to SMF via a portal CMS known as Enigma. This results in a more powerful setup, but also a more complicated one. So, for those who just want a forum to use with WP, I suggest using the former plugin.

2.Now that we have our backends integrated, layout is next. It’s a pity, however, that there doesn’t seem to be a step-by-step guide on how to do this. So, for now, you’re on your own on this. SMF does have documentation on how to create/edit its themes though.

More SEO For Wordpress

The Meta-Description is used by Google and other search engines to provide the description of a page. This is quite important – particularly since Wordpress by default does absolutely nothing about it. wpSEO can generate post descriptions in a variety of ways, however in most cases it makes sense to cite the actual postings – automatically. If you’d like to be more precise, you can also provide a brief summary for Meta-Description manually. The definition of used Meta-Keywords offers you more flexibility. If you are already using the plugins UT’W or STP, wpSEO can use your tags as keywords. Otherwise the keywords will be automatically generated from the article, which is not always a sound solution for efficient SEO. By default wpSEO generates keywords fully automatically, however you can let it extract text passages marked in bold or italics or in -tags. You can also use filters to ensure that only relevant data is being used

To install the plugin, it’s enough to upload it to the plugins directory (wp-content/plugins) and activate it in the Wordpress engine. You should avoid using two or more plugins (as mentioned before) at the same time. Previously installed plugins can cause conflicts, just like manual entries in your header.php file. To make sure the wpSEO is working properly, you should at least deactivate similar tools; better – delete them.

A last useful feature you might never use, but would be happy to have available once you need it: you may export all your settings as an XML-file and use them for another blogs. Therefore it’s very easy to maintain the optimal configuration and adjust it to a number of blogs.

At it’s very core, Wordpress content management is about reaching the right person, at the right time, with the right CONTENT. This creates an engaging user experience that drives demand. The dynamism of content management, and the re-purposing of relevant and engaging content, is an evolution in online strategy that will drive strong results for any organization.

 

 



Caffeinated WP AutoBlog

Richard Taylor asked:


is simply the best blogging platform on the planet! Being open source software, developers around the world have produced hundreds of plugins to enhance its basic functionality, as a result blogging has never been easier, and the search engines love it!

Blogging with Wordpress offers two huge advantages:

1. It’s FREE to download and use

2. The Search Engines, in particular Google, love Wordpress blogs

Wordpress is open source software, which means it’s free to use. When you choose a hosting account, try and choose one that uses a control panel called “CPanel”, because installing Wordpress becomes as easy as clicking a handful of icons, it really is simple!

So you’ve bought a domain name, found a hosting company with CPanel and installed Wordpress on your new domain! In theory you’re ready to make your first post! But before you do, read on!

Before you post, you need to configure your blog and optimise it for the search engines, doing this before you post makes life a lot easier for the future.

As Wordpress is open source, developers around the world have written literally hundreds of plugins that enhance the functionality of your blog, and again the majority are free to install. Take a look at Wordpress.org where you’ll find hundreds of free plugins. Ones I recommend are:

- Installer (install this one first, simplifies plugin installations)

- All In One SEO Pack (optimises your posts)

- Adsense Manager (adds Adsense blocks to your posts)

- Google XML Site Maps (creates a site map for your blog)

- Ultimate Tag Warrior (essential plugin for managing tags)

- Sociable (assists with social bookmarking)

Next, within your dashboard, select Options in the menu and then Permalinks. You need to change the settings on this page in order to optimise your post’s url for the search engines, this change will ensure your keywords appear in the url. In the Custom Options box, insert the following text:

/%category%/%postname%/

Typing this will optimise your posts, but you must be careful only to ever select one category per post in the future, and not change a post’s category after you’ve published it!

When you post with Wordpress, it automatically notifies (known as pinging) blog directories of your new content, they index it based on the tags you assign. The search engine robots regularly visit these directories, and as a result your new post will be indexed by them very quickly. Rapid indexing is one of the huge advantages of blogging!

In your blogs configuration, you should add as many directory sites as possible to ping, in addition to the default url. Simply search on the web for “ping list”.

Finally, you need to optimise the appearance of your site. You don’t want to use the basic template that comes with Wordpress. If you do a search online for Wordpress themes, you’ll find hundreds to download for free.org again in their themes directory. Whilst there are hundreds of free themes around, I never seem to find one that perfectly meets my needs, so I often end up buying one!

Once you’ve installed the theme of your choice, activated all of your plugins, and made the configuration adjustments I’ve recommended, you’re ready to post, so what are you waiting for!



Caffeinated WP AutoBlog for WordPress