Why You Should Use WordPress As Your Choice Blogging Platform

There is no doubt that the blogging has changed the internet as we know it today. The days of boring, stale, static content websites are over. Bloggers have become a source of fresh and interesting content for internet users across the world. The blogosphere is constantly evolving and changing thanks to this seemingly unending stream of interesting information published by regular people like you. The great thing about the blogosphere is that <em>anyone</em> can contribute to it. You can start blogging and get your word out there today with a great open source blogging platform known as <strong>WordPress</strong>. Install this software on your website and you can have a blog up and running in no time. Never heard of WordPress? Well these top companies and publications have:

<ul>
<li>The New York Times</li>
<li>Yahoo’s Corporate Blog</li>
<li>CNN’s Political Ticker</li>
<li>Sony Playstation Blog</li>
<li>Southwest Airlines</li>
</ul>

The list goes on and on…

You’re probably thinking: if all these huge companies use this software called <strong>WordPress</strong>, it’s probably too complicated for a beginning blogger like me. That is just absolutely wrong. WordPress is very simple to use and <em>anyone</em> can start blogging with it. The reason why such large companies and small-time bloggers alike use WordPress is the simplicity, flexibility, and easy of use. Let’s not forget WordPress is absolutely <strong>free</strong> and <strong>open source</strong>. Here are some of the benefits of using WordPress as your blogging platform of choice:

<ul>
<li>An easy to use blogging platform. Write in a WYSIWYG editor, save drafts, and publish when you’re ready.</li>
<li>A huge community full of support, free templates, plugins, and additional addons and modifications for your blog</li>
<li>A dynamic theming system, change the look of your entire blog with one click.</li>
<li>Generate “SEO-friendly” permalinks with the click of a button.</li>
<li>Built-in RSS feed functionality.</li>
<li>Categorize and tag your blog posts.</li>
<li>Create static pages.</li>
<li>Integrated search box.</li>
<li>Automatic pinging to the top blog ping services.</li>

The possibilities are literally endless…

With the thousands upon thousands of other blogs running WordPress, it’s popularity is undeniable. Give it a test drive yourself by signing up for a free hosted blog at WordPress.com or take the plunge and host it yourself. Take advantage of the variety of free tools and resources associated with this popular open source blogging software. Happy blogging!

 

When WordPress Permalinks 404

The 404/Not Found error message is one of the most hated screens on the Internet; it indicates that though you, the browser, were able to communicate with the server, the page you need was not delivered either because it was not found or because the server for some reason was configured to not fulfill the request (which is happening in some countries with pages containing illegal content).

The page you actually see is not generated by your computer; instead, it is a special page on the server you’ve tried to contact. Many web sites create their own special 404 pages either for artistic reasons, or because the site owner wants to put specific data, like contact or redirect information, on the page. In Apache, having your own special 404 page is as simple as modifying the .htaccess file. (The only caveat: the page must be larger than 512 bytes or IE will not display it.)

In most cases, the 404 error comes up when a page has been moved or deleted from a site. However, in the case of WordPress, an annoying bug can cause permalinks to point to the 404 page instead of the page you want to have it bring up.

How Do WordPress Permalinks Work?

Permalinks are permanent URLs generated to point to your individual weblog posts, categories, and weblog lists. Other bloggers will use a permalink to point to your post from their own articles, or you can send links to other people via a permalink. When they are linked to an individual post, the URL is supposed to be permanent, not dynamic (changing).

The three types of permalinks WordPress delivers are the Default (aka “Ugly”) form, mod rewrite (“Pretty”), and PATHINFO (“Almost Pretty”).

Default links are formatted according to the default settings of a new WordPress install, and will work on all server environments. It looks like this: http://example.com/?p=N , N being a number. It is neither neat nor elegant, but it does the job. Pretty mod rewrite links look more like this: http://example.com/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ . These permalinks require Apache’s mod_rewrite module, and won’t work on other server types. PATHINFO permalinks look like this: http://example.com/index.php/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ , and will work on other server types besides Apache.

Because you’re going from a dynamic to a fixed environment with your permalinks, a variety of things can go wrong with them. For instance, if your server includes Frontpage Extensions, permalinks will not function at all without doing a manual fix. Without this fix, any changes to the permalinks section from the WordPress admin interface will corrupt the Frontpage server extensions because it interferes with the .htaccess file.

Long permalinks can get chopped off as well, with only part of it working properly or with the entire link disabled. This will cause a 404 error to be generated – but not because there’s something wrong with your permalink, rather because the title is too long. You can fix it by editing your .htaccess file to add a line:

RewriteRule ^post/([0-9]+)?/?([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?p=$1&page=$2 [QSA]

You can also make a habit of posting URLs with angle brackets () on either end. Most email and other problematic software won’t truncate URLs formatted this way.

Permalink Structure in WordPress

When your links don’t work, it’s often because you didn’t update your Permalink structure. Every time you add a new static page to your WordPress files, you must generate and update new rules to the .htaccess (which in newer versions is taken care of through the admin control area). If you don’t get a page returned at all, even a 404, and you use PHP 4.4 or 5 with Apache 2, you should look that up in the PHP bugs and issues pages. This is a specific known bug.

When you’re creating permalinks, another strange thing can happen: your WordPress blog must start the process of creating a permalink before it knows whether or not the page you’re creating one for actually exists. If it doesn’t, too late – your link is already pointing at a 404 page. To repair this, you need to include a 404 direction in the header of your .htaccess file so that your rewrite conditions allow for a not-found error, and simply eliminate that page from your permalinks task. Try adding the following line above the WordPress rewrite rules, outside of #BEGIN WordPress[…]#END WordPress. Some plugins will overwrite this part if you edit the permalinks structure if it’s in the wrong place.

ErrorDocument 404/index.php?error=404?

Another solution is to use this following:

ErrorDocument 404/foo/index.php?error=404

foo = the directory you are using as a blog. The structure should be like this:

/foo/%category%/%postname%/

If you call a nonexistent directory, however, you’re still going to get that 404 permalink.

You can automate your permalinks tasks with several plugins, though. The Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) has gotten some good reviews, especially for search-engine sensitive pages. Google Sitemaps is a good plugin as well.

One more thing: if you use the xampp setup, your WordPress permalinks won’t work at all in the default installation..

The ultimate solution is actually to install WordPress 2.0.2; this new version has repaired the permalinks problem as well as a number of other problems.

Always double-check all your pages before you start working with permalinks, and after you’ve permalinked them. In some cases, you may have to delete all the permalinks and start over, but in most cases just taking a look at what you’re telling your server to do will prevent you from making a lot of stupid mistakes.

 

What Can WordPress Plugins Do For You?

The function of WordPress has opened up endless possibilities recently, taking it to a new level no longer limited to a blog site. With a huge range of WordPress plugins already available, and many more being added constantly, website owners can put up custom designed pages in a few minutes with a little help.

WordPress plugins are scripts developed by various programmers to give users more options for their blog pages. For example, a WordPress plugin can be used to display recent comments, or as a spam prevention tool. WordPress templates are proving to be extremely popular for externally hosted websites, so having the ability to add more features makes the WordPress plugins a very handy source of free programming!

While many people set up WordPress blog pages to share personal and social stories, blogging has become an essential part of the marketing and promotion sector. With a separately hosted website, WordPress users can include advertising links or Adsense, and promote affiliate products. WordPress plugins provide excellent tools for customizing these types of sites, with add-ons in a wide range of categories including:

 Adsense management
 Advertisement rotators
 Search engine optimization
 User restrictions and password options
 Visitor and click statistics
 Search boxes
 Tracking tools
 Social bookmark tags (e.g. Technorati, Del.icio.us, Digg)

Since there are a large variety of WordPress plugins to suit all sorts of users, the level of expertise required to install some of these varies. You’ll need an understanding of FTP, and Zip files, and some knowledge of HTML. More advanced website owners can even develop their own plugins. A degree of PHP programming is required, and some WordPress plugins also use Javascript or CHMOD to function properly.

A note about WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Although these two sites sound the same, the services offered by each one are different and this often causes confusion for people. The difference lies mainly in the hosting side of things. While a free WordPress blog will be hosted on WordPress.com, the themes and templates are limited and users are not allowed to include advertising or affiliate links. WordPress.org on the other hand requires you to have your own domain and hosting in place, but is a much better option for advertising and marketing purposes, and this is where the WordPress plugins come into the equation!

Self-hosting website owners can make light work of designing their sites with WordPress plugins, creating unique personalized pages to attract their visitors!

 

Using WordPress As A Content Management System Or CMS

There has been talk about using WordPress beyond the typical blog set-up, into the realms of a full-fledged content management system or CMS. Yet, most people have no idea how this is even possible.

I have to stress that the default WordPress software is intended to be a blogging tool, so if you’re trying to make it work like a different type of content management tool you’ll have to use the correct plugins (enhancements) and have the a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

While the exact step-by-step method is out of the scope of this article, lets explore some of the ways you can use WordPress, as I have personally done before.

1) WordPress as An Article Directory

To make WordPress work as an article directory, you’ll need a special plugin, and a source for the articles. MyArticleMarketer.com is the perfect tool for this, as the articles there are usually human-approved. They also encourage free distribution of their articles to other article sites.

After you have set-up the WordPress plugin, you need to sign-up for Article Marketer’s distribution list. By filling in their form and specifying the categories (or choose all categories), you automatically qualify to receive all old and new articles that are submitted to MyArticleMarketer.com

However, with WordPress as an article directory, you’ll only be able to receive syndicated articles. Authors won’t be able to sign-up or create an account directly with you. It’s also against MyArticleMarketer.com’s terms or service to encourage authors to sign-up directly with you.

2) WordPress as a Membership Site

You can set-up a free or paid membership site using WordPress. All it takes is a few simple plugins to get the job done. Once you’ve installed the plugins, members will need to login to your site in order to view the content. You can also place a login form in your WordPress theme files to make it easy for users to lo in and out of your membership site.

However, the plugins only create a simple membership system, so if you’re looking to create different membership levels and more advanced features, you’d probably want to sign-up with a professional membership system like AmemberPro.net and use their available plugins to ingrate with WordPress.

At the time of writing, AmemberPro.net has available plugins for a reasonable cost and these will be installed by their support team, so you don’t have to worry about the technical setbacks.

3) WordPress as a Classified Ads System

WordPress can work like any other classifieds website too. Users can sign-up on your site and place classifieds in the form of new blog posts. They can even set expiry dates for their ads and specify listings or “wanted” ads.

However, you will need to create all the necessary categories and even create a sign-up information page to teach your users how to place ads. The upside of using WordPress as a classifieds site is that you can also use tagging tactics to get traffic from social bookmarking sites and sites like Technorati.com

4) WordPress as an Audio / Video Training Site

Using the membership plugins mentioned above or AmemberPro.net’s WordPress compatibility plugins, you can create a membership site with WordPress. Then, all you need to do is to add the “Podpress” plugin which takes care of all audio and video elements on your website.

You will be able to display and stream MP3 audio or FLV video using their built-in players. The Podpress plugin is really robust and also allows you to specify setting on iTunes, so you can make this commercially and available to the entire iPod / iTunes community.

As you can see by now, there’s a whole lot of possibilities when it comes to using WordPress to the extreme.

I’ve created an entire video training system to help newbies and advanced marketers alike master WordPress. Yet, every day brings new possibilities to using WordPress as a complex CMS instead of the modest blogging tool it was designed to be!

 

The WordPress Plugin Repository

WordPress is a great open-development community that encourages its users to innovate. But a few years ago, it started getting hard to keep up with those innovations. That’s when the WordPress Plugin Repository was born (currently hosted at http://WP-plugins.org).

The repository is a place where all WordPress plugins are pulled together and shared with the community of users. But more than that, it’s a place where developers can go to see what’s already out there, what they can base their new work on, and what needs to be improved. In addition to end-user utilities that anyone can download for their WordPress needs, there are plenty of development tools, including wiki-based version control and a bug tracker, that the WordPress development community is welcomed to use. Everything is licensed under GPL unless noted in the source, so almost everything is open.

If you’re new to the WordPress plugin repository but not to the WordPress support forums, you should login with your forum username and password; they are currently synced. If you have any problems, you should email the forum webmaster to ask what’s going on. Only logged-in users may edit on the Repository, though everyone is welcome to view what’s going on.

What’s Available on the WordPress Plugin Repository?

The Repository is designed to be a complete, organized, efficient method of seeing what’s in development and what has been developed for WordPress. As such, the core offerings here are the plugin directory and a robust version control mechanism. You can also use a special interface, downloadable for free, to work with the Repository more easily. The Repository is powered by Trac, a source control management and project management tool. Subversion is a wiki tool providing version control, and is also the source management tool WordPress is using today.

Developers using this directory can host all their WordPress developments for free, even organizing teamwork through the WordPress Plugin Repository. By hosting here, they have high visibility, can easily manage their code and track bugs, and develop wiki-based documentation with end users more easily than they could ever do it by themselves.

But developers without users are like stores without customers. WordPress users, too, are welcome to download plugins that are in alpha or beta form, or to download and use the plugins that are fully-functional but not integrated into WordPress yet. There are tools available for users to:

• Browse plugins and themes available at the Repository
• Download all desired plugins and themes from one stable location
• Give their own feedback and suggestions to developers by using the tracker.
• Help develop documentation and improvements by using the plugin’s wiki page.
• Know what’s going on at all times by using RSS feeds.

Anyone developing or looking for WordPress plugins and themes is encouraged to use this resource. An email will get you the hosting you need for your project, and just coming and looking around will tell you a lot about what’s going on in the WordPress development world.

What Plugins Are Available Right Now?

While plugins are changing fast, a few core plugins are available and certainly worth the time they’ll take to check out. The best ones right now include:

Main Categories for WordPress allows you select “main” categories on your blog’s navigation bar. This allows you to highlight the parts of your blog you find most important, while still displaying everything else.

The WordPress DBManager manages your WordPress database so you don’t have to. Instead of worrying about lost data, you can use this manager to optimize, back up, restore, delete backed up databases, and even run queries for specific data.

WordPress Email allow you to send your blog entries to friends, enemies, or anyone you choose.

WordPress PageNavi gives you advanced page navigation.

WordPress Polls allows you to run the ever-popular polls and make the results public when you’re ready.

WordPress PostRatings allows you to have rating systems for your blog posts.

WordPress PostViews lets you display for users and for yourself how many times a post has been viewed.

WordPress Print will display for the user a printable version of any given WordPress blog post.

WordPress RelativeDate displays a relative date beside your post or comment actual date.

WordPress Stats displays WordPress statistics you want to brag about.

WordPress UserOnline allows you to note which users are currently browsing your blogs

WordPress Wap allows you to use a Wap-enabled cell phone to brows your WordPress blog entries from anywhere.

Other projects that are in development include:

• Joystick controls
• RPMView
• A WordPress XHTML validator
• Tons of tools for Python, including MySQL tools
• Recording level monitor
• An admin themer
• A post editor enhancement
• Fix broken links
• Palm usage manager

There are always new things in development in the repository, like new themes and small fixes such as a way to make WordPress allow dashes.

Even if you’re not a developer or interested in expanding your blog beyond what it has now, it is a good idea to check out the Repository. It’s certain that many of the plugins provided or in development today will eventually be incorporated into the newer upgrades of WordPress. By keeping an eye on the Repository, you’ll know what new developments are around the corner – and by logging in and discussing them on the wiki logs, you’ll be able to give your own input regarding how things ought to be done. While there are other places to find WordPress plugins, it’s to be hoped that most people will use the Repository in the future, making life easier for everyone.

 

The Latest On WordPress Themes

As WordPress and blogging become more and more popular, the list of customization options continues to grow. One can attribute that to each user wanting his or her blog to be unique or very much personalized. Who knows, one day a theme can be just as unique as the blog’s author! The following is an overview of the latest developments on WordPress themes.

WordPress Widgets

The blog software developer has recently come up with an edition of this plug-in for the full-version WordPress. A Widget here refers to those tools you can use to modify your site—its sidebar, design, or general layout—without having to know and use HTML codes. About a hundred Widgets are featured in the WordPress Widgets blog, and they are classified in categories such as photography, music, discussion, video, income, and links, among others. It is a fun and easy way of customizing your site, so that it features everything you care about, and nothing you don’t.

Not all themes are ready for these Widgets, however, and some modifications need to be done to include this fun feature in the sites that make use of such themes. http://Automattic.com gives full instructions on how to go about making your WordPress site Widget-friendly. WordPress is continuously adding to their already-vast selection of Widgets to suit their user’s whims and personalities.

Canvas Plugin

This blogger-friendly plugin has recently allowed blog users to create their very own theme for their WordPress blog. The good news is that this plugin allows users a pretty good level of customization without them having to study and use codes. The result: a site that looks very professional built within the range of a few minutes to a couple of hours. Even better news is that this plugin comes for free.

This stand-alone plugin opens up to a bare starting point, with a selection of blocks that you can include in your layout by drag-and-drop method. Among the many features of Canvas are Banner, RSS, Static Text, Feature, Digg, Flickr, Random Tagline, Comment, Category List, Asides, Archive, Description, Calendar, Search, Post, and Navigation functions. Meanwhile, an Ink tab gives the user the freedom to determine the styles to be used on the page, sans the need to check the actual stylesheet. This tab proves to be quite useful for beginners, because it features help links that corresponds to each theme component, the style of which you may be about to identify. These links load the template with an indication of the part in question, to give the user a clear idea of what effect the change will have.

“Being Moderated” Notification

It does not come as a surprise that some comments are being moderated by the recipient blog’s owner or moderator. However, it would be nice for you to let your eager comment writers know that you have received their comment, when the system is programmed to delay posting of comments on your blog until it has been read and approved by you. Without this notification activated, some of your readers may think that their comment just got lost and they’ll have to write their comment all over again, when in fact your blog has secured it and it’s only waiting for your approval. However, the blog author may need to be familiar with code to activate this feature. Nevertheless, it is one way to deter comment spammers from infiltrating your blog. Your may also word the notification in your liking. Here’s an example: “Thank you for your comment. It may take a while before your comment may be published. Please check back later.”

More Themes to Match Content

While it is all up to the blog author to decide, it would be quite useful to have a theme that will give first-time readers of your blog a pretty good idea of what to expect by simply looking at the design in use. For this reason, WordPress theme designers are coming up with more specific themes to match a variety of specific types of content. Experts say that the first several seconds spent by a visitor on your blog determine the impression they get of your site. So if your site fails to capture attention right away, then it’s most likely that you’re losing potential repeat readers or site visits.

When designing your site or choosing the appropriate theme, keep in mind that the first concern of a site visitor is whether or not the site has the kind of information needed by him or her. The visual elements, being much faster to grasp than the textual, will help in a big way. If the theme you choose does not correspond to the general content of your site, then attracting more followers will need more effort. Whether we like it or not, looks matter for a lot of people, as this is how beliefs and opinions are initially formed.

WordPress Theme Contests

To ensure your steady stream of new themes, WordPress and certain partners have organized theme contests to discover and recognize the best themes that have cropped up lately. Last year even saw several competitions that attracted theme creators and users alike. This year, however, the WordPress camp has witnessed a slowing down in the production of themes, perhaps due to the fading novelty of it all, not discounting the fact that a lot of those who submitted themes before did it for free.

Nevertheless, customization of WordPress blogs still holds quite a lot of promise, with the arrival of new customization features, such as the Canvas and Widgets plugins. It also promises more highly-customizable themes in the future. For now, you would already be missing out on a lot if you are not already trying out the latest WordPress customization plugins. You can also try modifying some basic features, such as whether your front page should show excerpts or the full blog entries, or changing the number of posts that will show up on your blog index, or both. Whatever you choose, there are hundreds of themes available and other options for you to use, to get as close as ever to your most desired look for your blog.

 

My Troubles With WordPress Themes

It all began in the late 90’s. I wanted to put some news on my website. A diary. A list of forthcoming events. I started with simple HTML. One page, with sections for every post. Simple.

Then I heard about ‘blogs’ and ‘blogging’. Being smart, I picked WordPress, the most popular software. How clever, I thought. If you get the WYSIWYG editor going, anyone can put up a web site. Very democratic.

This encouraged my to post my outermost thoughts; on politics, London, and personal gripes. As a webmaster, I watched to see Google index them. “Here we go”, I thought, “soon, my jewels of extrospection will belong to the ages”.

Except Google didn’t like my blog. It wouldn’t index much beyond the front page. Why, why, why?

Duplicate content? I set it to put only one post per page.

No improvement.

I looked at what Google was indexing. Then I looked at the blog HTML. Soon, all became clear.

In sum:

– WordPress was still duplicating my content, and

– It had no proper META tags, and

– There was a lot irrelevant HTML, and

– The layout obscured the content.

I had a quick search on Google to find search engine optimisation tips. There is a plugin ‘head META description’ ( http://guff.szub.net/plugins/ ). But I didn’t use that, oh no.

For some reason, I got the notion that a complete theme would be the ticket. I tried modifying an existing one myself. Better, but not perfect. Google was starting to index more pages, but they all had the same title. My missives to an uncaring world were being ignored.

So I got someone else to do one, based on my criteria, which were:

– Grab a META ‘title’ from the blog post ‘title’;

– Grab a META ‘description’ from the blog ‘excerpts’;

– Put a ROBOTS ‘noindex’ tag in non-content pages.

But that wasn’t enough. For best SEO results you need to configure WordPress brutally. You have to be _mean_ to it. You have to _man_ enough.

I did a bit of research and came up with to following tips.

WARNING: They are extreme. If you already have good rankings, making radical changes to your URLs may affect them. In my case:

– Moving my blog http://www.ttblog.co.uk to the root web directory,

– MOD_REWRITING its URLs, and

– Removing a 301 redirect,

… caused my PageRank to go to 0. BUT, page indexing was unaffected.

This was temporary, as Google saw it as ‘suspect’ behaviour. I had radically changed my site.

Here are the tips, for real _men_, who can look in the face of internet death and laugh:

1. Activate permalinks by going to ‘Options/Permalinks’. You may have to enable Apache MOD_REWRITE on your web account.

1a. Shorten the permalinks code to just the %postname% variable. Don’t bother with the date codes. This keeps your URLs short.

2. Point your blog in the uppermost directory possible. http://www.ttblog.co.uk is better than http://www.ttblog.co.uk/wordpress/

So a typical post would look like

http://www.ttblog.co.uk/Im-hard-as-nails-me/

rather than

http://www.ttblog.co.uk/wordpress/2006/08/03/Im-hard-as-nails-me/

3. Then install an SEO’d theme.

My blog posts are now being indexed beautifully. The Google ‘site:’ command returns all my posts, and little else.

For my next challenge, I take on Windows XP, and turn it into an operating system.

Internet Marketing: Making Your WordPress Blog Spam-Proof

As long as there is Internet marketing, there will be spam. A lot of it comes from overseas, but some of it is from people who just don’t know any better. They learn to go about doing things the wrong way, and some of them can get into trouble, as with email spamming. But the people who spam blogs, are by and large, just wasting their time.

Rather than waste valuable Internet marketing effort, people should do something much more effective like writing articles or posting in their own blogs. But some spend their money on “blog blasters,” which randomly spam blog comments throughout the blogging universe. What these people don’t realize is that they’ve wasted their money. But then, for every Internet marketing success story, there will be thousands of Internet marketing failures. People just don’t get it. Spamming WordPress blogs, at least, is a total waste of time.

WordPress blogs come with a plugin, already installed, called “Akismet,” and it will automatically pick out the spam comments and hold them for you, until you delete them. It’s pretty efficient, and catches about 90% of the spam comments that come in. To activate the plugin, click on the “Plugins” tab from your WordPress dashboard. You’ll see Akismet in a grey or green bar. If the bar is grey, you’ll need to activate the plugin so click on the link on the right-hand side that says, “Activate.”

To complete the process, you’ll need to get an API key from WordPress. This is a simple line of letters and numbers, and to get it, you just need to register with Word Press at http://wordpress.org. Once you’ve signed up, WordPress will email the API key to you. When you see it in your Inbox, go back to your blog and click on the Plugins tab again. To the far right, you’ll see “Akismet Configuration.” That will take you to a page that has an empty box for that API key. Fill it in and click “Update API Key.” Bang! No more spam.

Now, you’ll have to monitor the spam, so go to “Manage,” from your Dashboard screen. You’ll then see that “Akismet Spam” link. When you see there are spam comments, if there are only a few, you can check to see that they’re all spam. If so, then, click on “Delete All!” and they’re gone. Before my blog had so many spam comments, I found some legitimate comments and could weed them out to be approved. Now, we get hundreds of spam comments every day, so they’re just all deleted. Anyone wanting to spam my Internet marketing blog is out of luck.

If you have a blog, you need that spam control. So, it’s not enough to just activate the spam filter. You have to approve your comments. From the WordPress dashboard, click on “Options,” and then “Discussion.” Set your preference to: “An administrator must approve the comment.” Then, you’ll be able to see every comment before it hits your blog. Akismet is a great blocker, but not 100%.

Akismet will handle most of the problem. When your blog is new, you may not have much spam, but once it hits the search engines, you’ll see it grow daily. Akismet is one great way to control this quickly and easily. Let someone else waste their Internet marketing time on stupid tricks. You won’t have to.

 

Installing A Blog ( WordPress )

WordPress is a fantastic piece of software, and what is even more amazing its Open Source, meaning it will cost you NOTHING!! And you get the source code too !!

Although its not one of the easiest software packages to learn to navigate, it sure packs heaps of power under the hood and once you start to learn some of the basics of WordPress and blogging in general, you will begin to appreciate these features more and more.

There are 2 ways to install WordPress.
1. You can visit wordpress.org and download the full application here, and then manually install it on your server. If you do go down this path, then make sure you check out the following installation guides

http://www.optiniche.com/blog/26/installing-wordpress-an-audio-visual-presentation/

and

WordPress’s Famous 5 Minute Installation guide (check it out at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install)

But an even easier way to install WordPress is to install it using Fantastico that is included with just about every cPanel installation on the planet.

You can log into your cPanel application, and at the bottom of all the icons you see on the main startup page is an icon with a “funny” name called FANTASTICO

Fantastico is way to install all sort of open source application on your server for FREE.

Find the WordPress link on the left hand side of the screen (in the blogs section), and click on it.

Then move across to the right hand side of the screen an click on the word that say “New Installation” – It actually a link but it doesn’t have an underline under it.

This pops up a very simple form (and the only form you have to fill out).

Put in your blog details, like what you are going to call it, what you want as login details plus a few other bits and pieces and press the button at the bottom.

Within seconds, you will be taken to another page that will show you the login details for your blog and away you go..

It just could not be easier way to install WordPress..

No messing about with databases, no FTP’ing files back and forth and no messing about setting file permission etc.

It sure is easy.. Check it out..

 

How To Podcast Using WordPress

Podcasting is the next step up from blogging. While blogging is done by armies of pajama-clad ordinary people, podcasting is done by many of these same people, though less often in pajamas, in front of a digital or audio recorder. Short pieces are recorded, then distributed via RSS 2.0 or Atom to their website, typically a blog site. Listeners and viewers can then download podcasts using podcast clients. A good podcast client (for example, Juice, CastPodder, or iTunes) will allow you to subscribe to the RSS/Atom feed of your favorite podcasters and automatically download the content to a computer or to a portable audio player when new items are available.

Most podcasters create their content in MP3 or MP4 audio or video files and upload them, linking to the file in a blog post. Users can then click the link to download the content if they’re not automatically subscribed to the RSS/Atom feed. The problem has never been in getting the content to the web page, but in getting the content to work through the feed systems. WordPress, in most cases, will automatically include new podcasting data in your RSS/Atom feed system. This makes it easy for you to deliver content and for your users to subscribe to that content.

For most people, WordPress 1.5 and above will podcast easily and automatically. When you link to the audio file in a WordPress post using the full URL address, it automatically adds it to the RSS/Atom feed and makes it usable as a podcast. Make sure you use a full address:

Wrong: My podcast
Right: My podcast

Your last step is to put a link to your RSS/Atom feed on your page. By default, the feeds are located at the bottom of your WordPress page. The link should look something like this if you’re using RSS:

http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2

If you’re using Atom, the link will look like this:

http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=atom

In earlier versions of WordPress, automated links work for posts only, not for static pages. Because WordPress needs to maintain accurate file size information, if you change a linked file you should be certain to republish the post containing the link. If you’ve linked to a file that for any reason is not fully accessible from your blog, your podcast won’t work properly when it is up because WordPress won’t have the correct file size information.

For Apache servers and others that use the .htaccess file, you’ll need to add a directive to the config file or .htaccess file to get the server to recognize podcast files (m4a and m4b) properly. You can simply add this line to the file you use:

AddType audio/x-m4a .m4a>