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Learn to Use Wordpress.Org, Part-1

Today we will explore together how to get the free wordpress blogging software so that you can load it on your own hosting company.

Before we move further, please refresh your memory if you have already read the following posts. If you have not read the following blog posts, then it is well time spent before you read this post.

1. Why Wordpress software is the right choice for you?

2. Learn about the Wordpress.org here!

So let’s follow the simple steps now.

Step 1: Go to Wordpress.org.

Step 2: Read the information and press on the ‘Download wordpress’.

Step 3: Once you press the ‘Download Wordpress’ button, it will take you to another page wordpress.org/download/  and here you will find two options under the box called ‘Download the Wordpress’. These two options are .zip file or the other one is .tar.gz.

Step 4: If you want to download the .zip version which I prefer, then just press the ‘Download Wordpress’ square box and then save the download to your desktop.

Step 5: Now you will notice that this file is a .zip file which means that you need to extract the files. You can use any utility like winzip, winRAR (my favorite one) or an other file extractor program. Your files will be extracted in a folder called ‘wordpress’. If you click on this folder to explore further, you will see the following files there:

1. wp-admin folder
2. wp-content folder
3. wp-includes folder
4. 21 php files
5. 1 readme HTML file
6. 1 license text file

You should not get scared with all the above. Just make yourself familiar with the above.

Step 6: Click on the wp-content folder and then you will see two folders and one php file. These two folders are called ‘plugins’ and ‘themes’ folder.

Now it’s time to relax as we will load these files into our host during the next blog post.

Until then just make yourself familiar with the above,

Jay Author

 So I hope you want to know what is this funny acronym called RSS!

What is RSS?

I have been so buy with my consultancy work that I had to quit blogging for few months. I am hoping that now at least I can do blogging once or twice a month.

Recently I came to learn about a new course called SEO Bully Method and I explored it further. I am really impressed with it.

Here is a link for you to explore it further: Check SEO Bully Method

This is what you get when you buy SEO Bully method course:

The SEO-Bully Course Includes:

1. How to choose Your Keywords?
2. Insider Click Through Strategies
3. Web 2.0 Competition Crusher
4. Mass Submitting Articles
5. Article To Audio
6. Push Button Podcast – This is one section I really enjoyed, because if you’ve ever tried to get a podcast up this one simple trick could be worth the cost of the course.
7. Quick and Easy Video – Jason actually walks you through video creation…
8. Video Distribution
9. Mystery Video 1 – I don’t want to give the following techniques away because they are too valuable if you don’t know them.
10. Mystery Video 2 – More leverage…
11. Leverage Part 1 – This video isn’t about outsourcing, but is about leveraging your work to umpteenth degree
12. Leverage Part 2 – Find more about this after buying the course…
13. RSS Domination
14. Social Bookmarking
15. Easy Instant Traffic Technique

After watching the first video of the SEO Bully course you can already see you’ve made the right decision. Jason’s created 17 videos walking you through the basics of an SEO affiliate promotion he’s done giving you an inside out perspective of what you need to do.

Each video covers a specific topic and actually shows you how to take the necessary steps to succeed. I am  very happy with the quality of the SEO Bully Method course.

Download the SEO Bully Method Course Now!

SEO Bully is for anyone looking to increase their internet marketing exposure. If you’ve been looking for a simple, easy to use system for funneling customers into your affiliate promotions this is for you.

Don’t forget to check out and download the SEO Bully Method Course!

What Blogging Platform should I use?

First of all let me share with you some of the available blogging platforms with you so that you can explore these options.

Here is a short list of available blogging platforms:

Blogger - Claim your free blog here. Blogger is the place where you can create blogs with your google account.

Wordpress.org – is free open source blogging software that is available to anyone to run on their own hosting account. This is the fully featured and heavily customizable version. Wordpress has long been one of the top platforms among bloggers for years. Because it’s open-source, it’s a good choice for those that require the ability to customize everything. There are a plethora of easy to install templates, plugins and other goodies for Wordpress. If you are looking for a free, open-source, fully-featured platform with room for customization and a supportive community of users this may be the best choice for you.

Wordpress.com – is a hosted blog service very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It does not allow the ability to upload plugins or themes, and has some other handicaps, but it’s free, easy and because it’s hosted & free you can get started within minutes.

MovableType is SixApart’s free, perl-based, open source blogging platform. Like Wordpress.org, you download this software and host it on your server. The software is slightly more complicated to install than Wordpress, and comparably customizable with plenty of templates and plugins available from the MT community of developers. Business wishing to get a blog up and running should consider MovableType’s paid services which offer great support and features.

Typepad is the hosted version of Movable Type. Basic pricing starts at $5/mo. Typepad allows customers to set-up a clean, professional blog with ease. There are about 50 available widgets from partner sites, but the downfalls are that it doesn’t allow 3rd party javascript or creation of static pages.

If you want a bigger list, you can check out here for more.

Now let’s talk about if you should go for a free hosted blog or a self-hosted blog. Since I don’t know your position, I am going to share with you pros and cons of both the approaches and then you can decide which one suits you most.

Free-hosted blogs

Pros:

1. Free or very cheap – most hosted options are free except TypePad.
2. easy to set up – most of these types of blogs can be set up with a basic default template within minutes. The set up is usually just a matter of filling in a few fields with your options and choosing a template design.They are ideal if you know nothing or very little about the technological side of blogging.
3. Simple to Run – Once you’re through the easy set up process hosted blogs are usually pretty simple to run. You will obviously need to learn some basics, but these days most blog platforms come with very user friendly features. Posting is as simple as filling in a few fields and hitting publish.
4. Updated Automatically – if the blog platform updates it will automatically do so for you.
5. Indexed in Search Engines Quickly - It takes time to get indexed in the search engine indexes. But because the blogging platforms do have a higher page ranking, it is relatively easy to get indexed here. 

Cons:

1. Less Configurable – If you want to personalize your blog, then you will find the limited options. You will have to live with what the blog hosting company allows for.
2. Less Control – You can’t break their rules. If it says that you can’t monetize your blog, then you can’t do it.
3. Generic URL – You get a standard URL with this scenario. So if you are looking for a sense of professionalism and memorability to a blog, then you should go for self-hosted option.

Self-hosted or Standalone blogs

Pros:

1. Full Control of Design – Depending upon your ability with web design standalone blogs generally are very adaptable. If you are a designer type, then this is the option for you.
2. Adaptability – I like this feature a lot. If you want to add a poll, you can get that plugin and add the poll very easily without making any major change to your blog. This is one of the best features of standalone blogs.
3. Free Platforms – You don’t have to pay for blogging software. You can download from their sites e.g. wordpress and install it on your host.
4. URL – You can use any name and you can brand it in any way.

Cons:

1. Difficult to Set Up – Initially I found it very difficult to understand but as I kept reading about how to install it, it became the second nature. Also there are many products available to make it very easy for you.
2. Cost – While the blog platform itself might be free you need to factor in the ongoing costs of having your own domain name (a yearly fee plus a one off registration fee) and hosting fees (again yearly). There are many great deals out on these so it need not cost the world – although if your blog gets a lot of traffic the costs do go up and you might want to consider going onto a more professional and expensive plan.
3. Updates – Most blog platforms go through different and versions over time. Updating from one to another can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. This again depends if you are using some of the available products which makes installation and updating easy, then you should not have any problems.
4. Hosting Issues – Of course now you have to pay for your own hosting. So this is going to cost you yearly fees. If you are monetizing your blog, then you should plan for recovery of all this cost and over the time to make money from your blog.

When I started blogging, I jumped to self-hosted ones as I wanted to keep the control on my domain name. You can’t have the control on the free-hosted ones. Over the time you learn and start understanding more about the blogging, then it becomes easy for you to take this decision. You can notice from this blog, this is purely to spread the good things about blogging. And I also want to help every one especially new bloggers to start their blogs on the right foot.

Often I recommend that you should start with a free-hosted blog first to get yourself familiarized and then move up to self-hosted blog when you are ready. I love wordpress and that’s what I will be using to show you how to start blogging.

In summary, you should use a self-hosted blog if you want to do blogging seriously and have aspirations for your blog to be at professional level. You might say that you are technically not ready for that but it’s worth spending a little money to get it set up with a designer or even better still, to learn how to do it yourself.

If you just want a blog for fun and to keep a record of your life for your friends and family and you don’t have the time, money or patience to put into it then a hosted option might work well for you too. These blogs are quick to set up and easy to blog.

Other Related Posts:

• What is a blog?

Available in HD Todays Local Knowledge video tutorial is a two-parter (this is part 1 of 2) so be sure to catch the second half by watching here. This lesson shows you how to add a new blog post to your WordPress small business website while also optimizing your post for search engine optimization. Youll love this information if youre a small business owner who wants to generate more sales leads from search engines like Google. To accomplish this, youll want to pair frequent website updates with our search-engine savvy blog post formatting tips. Julian Seery Gude editor, LOCAL Na8ion www.localna8ion.com

Learn about the Wordpress.org

If you read the last blog post, then you must be familiar with wordpress.com now. If you have not explored that, I suggest you should read that post first before you read this post.

Do you remember the last para where I shared with you the wordpress.org snapshot with you? Here it is shown again:

If you have not visited the wordpress.org, then you should do it now. This will make you feel familiar with the wordpress. Do you remember that I mentioned in the last post that you can get free blogging software here if you are going to use your host. This software is so easy to use that initially you will feel too techie if you are new to blogging world but my suggestion is to stay and not abandon the ship.

The current version is 2.7 and don't get scared but just go to button "Ready to get started – Download Wordpress 2.7" and click it. You will be taken to the following page where you can download this software.

 You will notice that there is a hyperlink handy guide for the wordpress installation. Now we will explore how to install in the next blog post but here is the page snapshot for you:

While in the bext post, together we will explore how to install the software, you should in the meantime explore the above links and be familiar with the software and the features.

You can also in the meantime explore what hosting package you want to buy. I use Hostgator and Godaddy for all my blogs and websites and I strongly recommend these to every one.

Until next post, keep exploring the blogging with Wordpress,

Jay Author

PS: I found a great resource on the wordpress blog for businesses today and I am sharing that link over here.

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Today I found this webinar on the YouTube and I found it very interesting, so I decided to share this with our readers. This webinar was held on July 1st to expose the “7 deadly sins of landing page design”, and explained how to fix them.

Tim Ash, one of the Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, led this webinar and shared many insights and best practices to help advertisers improve their conversion rates.

You can also watch this

7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design

webinar at YouTube.

Enjoy the above webinar,

Wishing you all the success,

Jay Author

Get Top Wordpress Thems for Affiliates Here!

I think every blogger should switch over to become an affiliate as their blogs become more successful. What are the benefits of becoming an affiliate? The main one is that you can start making money by sellling other’s products at your own blog. You might say that you are already doing it by providing banners and links. Yes, you are right! But if you want to use your blog to do pay per click (PPC) campaigns for quick money making opportunities, you can use your main domain folder to load the affiliate themes and start running the PPC campaigns.

The biggest challenge for the affiliates is to make their themes unique and relevant for thier product themes. You can achieve this by doing research for the available free wordpress themes or you can buy memebership of a premium club which provides all such themes at one place besides extensive training.

First I am providing here a premium resource for all the affiliates activities:

Affiliate Themes Club

This club is one stop solution for all of your wordpress themes needs. Here are some of the main features of the themes you can get here:

• Separate Blog Functionality with Layout Control
• Display Media Boxes on a post-by-post basis
• Display images and now VIDEO in Media Boxes
• Call To Action Buttons now have rounded corners
• Control over the what header graphic/logo link to via Theme Options
• Control border color and border size to the page via Theme Options
• Modify sidebar title and list item font, color and font size via Theme Options
• Improved footer navigation controls

Affiliate Theme from Unique Blog Designs on Vimeo.

 Now you can also explore some of the good quality free wordpress theme resources here:

• Smashing Magazine collection
• Top WP Themes
• WP Snap Collection
• natty WP

Of course there are many more such sources but I think time is the biggest problem for all the affiliates and one reliable source every month is a better solution for affliates than researching all the day.

I have tested the affiliate themes and it really works!

Enjoy the above wordpress themes for affliates collection,

Jay Author

Learn all about the Best Blogging Software Here!

I have received few emails from our blog readers who are asking why I promote only wordpress blogging software at this blog. I believe that all the blogging software are very good but users like you and I decide which blogging platform is better than other blogging software.

Personally I prefer using Wordpress because I believe that there are more users and better support in terms of forum, development communities, more plugins, more themes etc. This makes a real difference when any one compares Wordpress with any other blogging software.

Here are some of the earlier blog posts I wrote supporting why wordpress is better and you can be the judge if you agree with it:

• Explore Wordpress.com Part-1
• Explore Wordpress.com Part-2
• Explore Wordpress.com Part-3
• Explore Wordpress.org Part-1
• Explore Wordpress.org Part-2

I am also going to share with you here all the other blogging software so that you get the opportunity to explore all other blogging software before you share your experience over here.

Wordpress – Wordpress has both a hosted service (Wordpress.com) and downloadable software to run on your own server (Wordpress.org). We’ll cover both of these:

• Wordpress.org – is free open source blogging software that is available to anyone to run on their own hosting account. This is the fully featured and heavily customizable version. Wordpress has long been one of the top platforms among bloggers for years. Because it’s open-source, it’s a good choice for those that require the ability to customize everything. There are a plethora of easy to install templates, plugins and other goodies for Wordpress. If you are looking for a free, open-source, fully-featured platform with room for customization and a supportive community of users this may be the best choice for you.

• Wordpress.com – is a hosted blog service very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It does not allow the ability to upload plugins or themes, and has some other handicaps, but it’s free, easy and because it’s hosted & free you can get started within minutes.

Blogger is a free hosted blogging service available from Google. Compared to Wordpress.com’s hosted solution, Blogger has some advantages like being able to modify templates (even the css) and drag-and-drop a variety of modules and third party tools. Blogger is worth considering as your platform if you are looking for a free & hosted solution with cool features. The ease of Google Adsense integration is another reason many webmasters choose Blogger. Blogger also gives the option to host your blog at your own Web site by FTPing posts to your site.

MovableType is SixApart’s free, perl-based, open source blogging platform. Like Wordpress.org, you download this software and host it on your server. The software is slightly more complicated to install than Wordpress, and comparably customizable with plenty of templates and plugins available from the MT community of developers. Business wishing to get a blog up and running should consider MovableType’s paid services which offer great support and features.

b2evolution – Is a free & open-source blog platform which you download and install on your own server. It includes features such as file & photo management, advanced skinning, multiple blogs support and more. If you are looking for a super-powerful, flexible CMS that can also provide multi-user blog engine — this could be for you. However, bloggers without such needs may find b2evolution too bloated and complicated.

Typepad is the hosted version of Movable Type. Basic pricing starts at $5/mo. Typepad allows customers to set-up a clean, professional blog with ease. There are about 50 available widgets from partner sites, but the downfalls are that it doesn’t allow 3rd party javascript or creation of static pages.

Serendipity is worth a mention as a PHP-powered, flexible Blogging/CMS application that you install and run on your own server. Some features worth mentioning include: BSD-liscenced, easy to use plugins (over 120 of them), and it uses the Smarty templating engine.

Typo runs off Ruby on Rails – if you don’t know what that means, this isn’t the solution for you. But for Ruby on Rail fans, this is a great choice for blogging software.

LifeType Why pay at all when you can get everything that MovableType offers free of charge from pLog? Both applications have virtually the same basic features and personally, I think pLog is a lot easier to customize. pLog is ideal for anyone wanting to easily host a blogging community (with its summary.php page), and has added functionality for extras like podcasting built into the core.

Drupal - Drupal is an excellent content management system or focussed community management application that doesn’t really cut the mustard when it comes to providing multiple blogs. Technically perfect but is limited by a focus on the group rather than the individual. Worth a look as this might be what you’re after.

I strongly recommend you to browse the above resources at your own pace as this is a large collection. I recommend you to use the above resources to do your research and decide what meets your requirements.

Bookmark this page and visit often to take maximum benefits from these resources without any rush!

Hope this clarifies many of those email questions which I received from the blog readers,

Wishing you blogging success,

Jay Author

Levels: intermediate to advanced. Topic: Use of nursery rhymes to develop sense of RHYTHM. Part 1 of two parts. Related teaching ideas: englishwithjennifer.wordpress.com englishwithjennifer.wordpress.com

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