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I have learned a lot about blogging, and free blog marketing tools generally are my best teachers. I have been setting up WordPress blogs on various subjects as an internet marketer, and I am usually pleasantly delighted at all of the free plugins that bring me traffic, help me to optimize my blog, and allow me to market my blog with each post. Here are some of my favorite blogging tools, along with the reasons I really like them.

All In One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin This is generally the first plugin that I install after I create my WordPress blog. It optimizes your blog for the main search engines, and it’s because you can add the title, excerpt, and keywords to each post so that the search engines can pick up your post quickly. It’s an excellent traffic generator.

Google XML Sitemaps Generator This WordPress plugin is a must to create a sitemap easily for your WordPress blog. They can get you indexed quickly by major search engines. Sitemaps are useful for the search engine indexes, as sitemaps automatically list your new content so that the search engines can crawl it.

Onlywire Social Bookmarking Plugin I have been using Onlywire for several months, because it is free, fast, and you will get a lot of traffic and backlinks using this plugin. It is so much easier to install the WordPress plugin than having to add your content each time.

These free blog marketing tools help me to automate a lot of my daily tasks as an online marketer. I really like the freedom of being able to create and market my content online for free. Grab these plugins and test them out, I guarantee you that you will like them too.

You may want a website for your business or just to share with your friends, but no matter what the reason is, you’ll need to learn how to make a website before you can build one. Either that, or you’ll have to pay someone to make it for you.

When you’re preparing to make your first website, you first need to decide what type of website you want to make. A good way to start is with a blog. These sites are easy to set up and you can update them and add new content quickly and easily. You can also set up a blog to look like a typical HTML website if you really want to.

Blogs are easy because there is a platform already set up so that you don’t have to do any coding to get started. You can start a blog on a blogging website such as Blogger or WordPress, or you can get your own hosting and set up a WordPress blog on your own domain. Just make sure the hosting package you subscribe to offers installation of WordPress through Fantastico. That makes things a lot easier.

For a more traditional type of website, you can get an HTML editor that uses a WYSIWYG interface to design your site. The WYSIWYG editor will allow you to see exactly what your webpage will look like right in the editing program. That way, you can tweak it to get it just right before you publish your website to the Internet. Download a few WYSIWYG editors and test them before deciding which one to use for your site. Some are much easier to use than others.

You don’t even need an editor at all to build a website, but you are really making things difficult on yourself if you try to write the code by hand without the benefit of a preview window to see what things will look like. However, it can be done. Just write your HTML code in a text editor and save as an HTML file. Upload it to your host to see what it looks like.

You can find a free HTML editor by searching for it online. There are quite a few available. Of course, some are better than others. You can try a couple of different programs to see which one you like best. You might also want to check and see if your hosting package includes any website templates. These can save you a lot of time. If you really want to be geeky, you can try writing your code in Notepad and saving it as an HTML file to upload to your host. That might be overdoing it a bit though.

If you’re new to designing websites, I really recommend that you start out by setting up a blog. That is by far the easiest way to go. Your second choice should be using a good WYSIWYG editor to design an HTML site using templates from your web host. Better yet, unless you want to seriously pursue website design or blogging as a hobby, you’ll probably get the best possible results by hiring a professional web designer. Many of them are quite affordable, and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.

WordPress Plugins

also known as extensions, are used to extend WordPress functionality and give your site more oomph. In this article, I will list a few basic plugins that will improve your WordPress in, well, basic ways.

First up is the Bad Behaviour plug-in by Michael Hampton, which blocks automated spam. It is at heart an anti-spam program that uses a different way of tackling the problem, which is to scrutinise the messenger and delivery way of a message, instead of looking at the message itself. Interestingly, almost all comment spam are delivered by automated bots; so if you use this plug-in, you would be virtually free from comment spam!

Have you ever gotten frustrated that the search capability of your WP is limited to the boundaries of your articles? Download the Search Everything plugin! Dan Cameron and other contributors have come up with a plugin that extends WP’ search capability to pages, tags, excerpts, comments, etc. Best of all, you can adjust the defaults and get a tailored search, just by clicking a few check boxes.

Do you have a lot of pictures on your site? Shutter Reloaded is a plugin that uses the Lightbox effect – a script that is used to overlay images (pictures, etc) on the existing page – for your images and picture galleries. Shutter is unique because it doesn’t use an external JavaScript framework (MooTools, Prototype), and therefore is very light – read: fast!

Imagine if you’re at a certain page, say a page on gardening and would like to read other similar pages. Instead of having to exit that page and Google ‘gardening’, you could actually use Similar Posts, a plugin by Rob Marsh, SJ, which is a list that displays similar posts and/or pages. ‘How?’ you may ask. Answer: It calculates similarity based on a page’s content, title and tags.

Subscribe To Comments is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that allows your commenters to decide if they would like to be notified of new comments on your WordPress page. When you install this plugin, commenters will see a check box that they can tick if they wish to be notified via email of new comments on the page. Do it; your commenters would be pleased!

Last but not least, backing up your database is extremely important, if a bit of a hassle. WordPress Database Backup by Austin Matzko, is an automated and on-demand backup program that saves you the hassle of doing it manually all the time, as it’ll send copies of your database to your inbox at regular intervals. However, it must be noted that Database Backup does not save files (images, videos, etc), only database (posts, written comments, etc).

These basic plugins will make a lot of difference to your WordPress page, convenience and safety-wise. All of them are plug-and-play, work well with WordPress 2.7, and most importantly are licensed under the GNU GPL. Oh, and they’re free! What are you waiting for?

There are many reasons you might want a website, whether it is for your business or personal use. Whatever your purpose, unless you plan to have someone else do the work for you, the first thing you’ll need to learn is how to make a website.

Before you decide how you will go about building your website, you should look at the various options available. If you want to go the easy route, try starting a blog. That’s a special type of website that is usually used by people who want to post information frequently, but that doesn’t mean you have to. You can set up a blog to work like a regular website pretty easily.

The reason blogs are the easiest way to create a website is because the software does most of the work for you. You don’t have to worry about learning how to write code. You can either set up your blog on WordPress or Blogger, or you can set it up using your own domain through a web hosting company. If you get your own hosting, make sure they offer Fantastico and check to make sure that WordPress can be installed through it. It’s much easier to do it that way than install it manually.

Another way you can set up a website is by using an HTML editor. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, try to find an editing program that uses a WYSIWYG interface. That means ‘what you see is what you get.’ In other words, the graphics, text and other elements that you use in the editing program will appear the same way in your browser as they do on the screen. Look for a program that allows you to drag and drop elements where you want them. You need something that is user-friendly and allows you to design a website completely without looking at the code.

On the other hand, if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty and do the coding yourself, you can do that too. Most WYSIWYG editors also have a tab you can click on to view and edit the HTML code. Using one of these editing programs allows you to switch back and forth to see what the page looks like as you make changes to the code.

You can find a free HTML editor by searching for it online. There are quite a few available. Of course, some are better than others. You can try a couple of different programs to see which one you like best. You might also want to check and see if your hosting package includes any website templates. These can save you a lot of time. If you really want to be geeky, you can try writing your code in Notepad and saving it as an HTML file to upload to your host. That might be overdoing it a bit though.

When it comes down to making the final decision, I urge you to go with a blog if this is your first time making a website. Blogs are just so easy to use that it doesn’t make sense to waste your time learning another way of building a website. In fact, many experienced website designers prefer to use a blogging platform to build their sites instead of an HTML editor. Another option, of course, is to hire someone to build your website for you. This is probably the best choice of all if you don’t plan on having more than one site. You can find someone who will set up your site for a reasonable price while you spend your time doing something more enjoyable.

The blogging community, known these days as the blogosphere, is one spoilt for choice when it comes to blog hosts. Despite the abundance of these hosting websites though, one manages to stand out from the rest.

So, what is this blog hosting site that has hosted more than-0000 blogs and running as of today with more than 5000 people per day downloading it? It is a name that has served Blog Writers for 5 years now, one which almost all Blog Writers especially the more seasoned ones are used to; WordPress.

WordPress offers bloggers use of its open source project as a method to blog without spending a cent on blog hosting. All you need to do is simply go through the registration procedure which is the usual username and email whatnot. In a few seconds, you can get your blog up and running and doing this requires hardly any technical understandings at all as WordPress makes it as simple as it can be. Only your own creativity is the limit of blogging and with such convenient blogging methods these days, everyone should at least give it a go.

From its humble beginnings as a single bit of code self-hosted blogging tool back in 2003, WP has turn into the leading one today. Before reaching the top, it had the likes of two big guns in blogging, Greymatter and Movable Type to compete with. However, as WP started offering features unavailable in other web hosts, the bloggers slowly converted and new ones were pulled in making it the biggest player in the massive blogging market. Being that, it is unsurprising that WP blogs are being viewed by the millions each day as it has turn into the web host used most widely.

Among the interesting features which helped WordPress become the success story it has become are: ? Quick start-up, easy customization and the fact that its services are free with the option of payable upgrades. ? A plethora of great themes to choose from which is always updated according to Blog Writers’ feedback. ? Posting is made easier with spell-check, auto-save, previews and photo features as well as the ability to stream videos. Statistics regarding visitors and their response towards certain posts are available in the advanced subscription. ? WordPress assures you zero worry for spam. ? Blog Writers have the choice of either allowing anybody to view their blog or make that exclusive to members only. This is a nifty privacy feature especially to those who treat their blogs as online diaries. ? WordPress offers an easy to use ‘Import/Export’ function mainly for Blog Writers with blogs at other web hosts who wish to transfer their posts to WordPress. ? Any blog creation problems can be solved with the help of their 24-hour support team. ? Page Management allows users to treat the blog as a website depending of how they choose to manage it, a flexible option made possible by WordPress.

By providing features like these, it is no wonder so many bloggers worldwide are embracing WP. It is truly one for the bloggers. So, when are you going to be part of the blogosphere?

WP Plugins

Also known as extensions, are used to extend WordPress functionality and give your site more oomph. In this article, I will list a few basic plugins that will improve your WordPress in, well, basic ways.

First up is the Bad Behaviour plug-in by Michael Hampton, which blocks automated spam. It is at heart an anti-spam program that uses a different way of tackling the problem, which is to scrutinise the messenger and delivery way of a message, instead of looking at the message itself. Interestingly, almost all comment spam are delivered by automated bots; so if you use this plug-in, you would be virtually free from comment spam!

Have you ever gotten frustrated that the search capability of your WordPress is limited to the boundaries of your posts? Download the Search Everything plug-in! Dan Cameron and other contributors have come up with a plug-in that extends WordPress’ search capability to pages, tags, excerpts, written comments, etc. Best of all, you can adjust the defaults and get a tailored search, just by clicking a few check boxes.

Do you have a lot of pictures on your site? Shutter Reloaded is a plugin that uses the Lightbox effect – a script that is used to overlay images (pictures, etc) on the existing page – for your images and picture galleries. Shutter is unique because it doesn’t use an external JavaScript framework (MooTools, Prototype), and therefore is very light – read: fast!

Imagine if you’re at a certain page, say a page on gardening and would like to read other similar pages. Instead of having to exit that page and Google ‘gardening’, you could actually use Similar Posts, a plugin by Rob Marsh, SJ, which is a list that displays similar posts and/or pages. ‘How?’ you may ask. Answer: It calculates similarity based on a page’s content, title and tags.

Subscribe To Comments is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that allows your commenters to decide if they would like to be notified of new comments on your WordPress page. When you install this plugin, commenters will see a check box that they can tick if they wish to be notified via email of new comments on the page. Do it; your commenters would be pleased!

Last but not least, backing up your database is extremely important, if a bit of a hassle. WP Database back-up by Austin Matzko, is an automated and on-demand back-up program that saves you the hassle of doing it manually all the time, as it’ll send copies of your database to your inbox at regular intervals. However, it must be noted that Database back-up does not save files (pictures, videos, etc), only database (articles, comments, etc).

These basic plugins will make a lot of difference to your WordPress page, convenience and safety-wise. All of them are plug-and-play, work well with WordPress 2.7, and most importantly are licensed under the GNU GPL. Oh, and they’re free! What are you waiting for?

WP Plugins

also known as extensions, are used to extend WP functionality and give your site more oomph. In this article, I will list a few basic plugins that will improve your WP in, well, basic ways.

First up is the Bad Behaviour plugin by Michael Hampton, which blocks automated spam. It is at heart an anti-spam program that applies another process of confronting the problem, which is to scrutinize the messenger and delivery technique of a message, rather than considering the subject matter itself. Interestingly, almost all comment spam are delivered by automated bots; so if you use this plugin, you would be virtually free from comment spam!

Have you ever gotten frustrated that the search capability of your WordPress is limited to the boundaries of your posts? Download the Search Everything plugin! Dan Cameron and other contributors have come up with a plugin that extends WordPress’ search capability to pages, tags, excerpts, comments, etc. Best of all, you can adjust the defaults and get a tailored search, just by clicking a few check boxes.

Do you have a lot of images on your site? Shutter Reloaded is a plug-in that uses the Lightbox effect – a script that is used to overlay images (images, etc) on the existing page – for your images and picture galleries. Shutter is unique because it doesn’t use an external JavaScript framework (MooTools, Prototype), and therefore is very light – read: fast!

Imagine if you’re at a certain page, say a page on gardening and would like to read other related to pages. Instead of having to exit that page and Google ‘gardening’, you could actually use related to articles, a plugin by Rob Marsh, SJ, which is a list that displays related to articles and/or pages. ‘How?’ you may ask. Answer: It calculates similarity based on a page’s content, title and tags.

Subscribe To Comments is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that allows your commenters to decide if they would like to be notified of new comments on your WordPress page. When you install this plugin, commenters will see a check box that they can tick if they wish to be notified via email of new comments on the page. Do it; your commenters would be pleased!

Last but not least, backing up your database is extremely important, if a bit of a hassle. WP Database back-up by Austin Matzko, is an automated and on-demand back-up program that saves you the hassle of doing it manually all the time, as it’ll send copies of your database to your inbox at regular intervals. However, it must be noted that Database back-up does not save files (pictures, videos, etc), only database (articles, comments, etc).

These basic plugins will make a lot of difference to your WP page, convenience and safety-wise. All of them are plug-and-play, work well with WP 2.7, and most importantly are licensed under the GNU GPL. Oh, and they’re free! What are you waiting for?

After you possess chosen your theme and possess all the wordpress plug-ins you want to use installed then you need to begin writing content for your web blog. Without any content there is no value to your readers so make sure you add a good amount of written posts to your web blog in the beginning. Typically I will spend the first week writing three written posts a day and submitting them to social bookmarking websites. This will allow you to possess roughly twenty written posts on your web blog and all of them should be indexed from the social bookmarking.

Twenty written posts is a good amount of content to start off with and after the first week you can begin writing only one post a day. This will give you more time to market and promote your web blog to the masses of people out there looking for information. We’ll talk more about this later in the guide as for right now I want to talk about the content you write.

Either you or a writer will be doing the content creation for your web blog and you’ll need to decide this on a few factors. You’ll need to make sure you possess time each day to write a web blog post and you’ll also need to possess some writing capabilities. If you possess neither then you might want to consider hiring a writer for your web blog. Of course this costs money and takes away from money you could be making so if you can I would write your own web blog written posts. This way you can become more involved with your web blog as well since you’ll be writing the web blog written posts.

Don’t expect just to throw up short meaningless articles on your blog and expect the traffic to start pouring in. You need to add valuable content to your blog that isn’t found elsewhere often. If you just regurgitate what everyone else talks about then you’ll find it difficult to get readers since they read it elsewhere also. You need to have content that people can’t find and is valuable to them. Your blog posts should be anywhere from 300-1000 words a piece depending on what you’re going to talk about that day. Some topics will require more detailed posts while others can remain short and to the point. Make sure you always offer some value in your posts though.

Make sure you always offer some value in your posted articles though. For instance you can offer many things in your posted articles and you should focus on only one per post. You can write about news for the day, an educational topic or an opinionated topic. You can also write about how your day is going and whatever else you want at the bottom of your posted articles. This will help for the people reading your blog to relate to you. If the people can relate to your life then they will typically stick around and become a regular reader and contributor to your blog.

Once you have the initial surge of content indexed and ranking in the search engines you’ll start to see some search engine traffic. If you have chosen good topics then the number of visitors could be very large and it’s consistent. Your content is what will make you money online as a blogger so make sure you spend long enough writing your posts. Keep things like titles and keywords in mind when you’re writing the post so that it’s optimized for your needs.

Writing is easy if you open your mind a little bit and once you start writing on a topic the posts will begin to flow out of your mind. It’s always smart to write a handful of posts, I recommend a week worth and keep them stored away in a document. This way if you get sick or go on vacation for a week you can load the pre-written posts to your blog and have them posts on the same schedule that you usually post them at. This way you don’t miss any days of adding posts to your blog as it could result in lost readers if you do miss writing for a few days.

After you’ve picked out your theme and have inserted the wordpress plug-ins you want to use then you need to begin composing content for your blog. With no articles there’s no value to the viewers so make sure you add together a beneficent amount of posted articles to your blog in the beginning. Typically I will spend the first week writing three posted articles a day and submitting them to social bookmarking websites. This will allow you to have roughly twenty posted articles on your blog and all of them should be indexed from the social bookmarking.

Twenty written posts is a good amount of content to start off with and after the first week you can begin writing only one post a day. This will give you more time to market and promote your web blog to the masses of people out there looking for information. We’ll talk more about this later in the guide as for right now I want to talk about the content you write.

Either you or a writer will be doing the content creation for your blog and you’ll need to decide this on a few factors. You’ll need to make sure you have time each day to write a blog post and you’ll also need to have some writing capabilities. If you have neither then you might want to consider hiring a writer for your blog. Of course this costs money and takes away from money you could be making so if you can I would write your own blog posts. This way you can become more involved with your blog as well since you’ll be writing the blog posts.

Don’t expect just to throw up short meaningless written posts on your web blog and expect the traffic to start pouring in. You need to add valuable content to your web blog that isn’t found elsewhere often. If you just regurgitate what everyone else talks about then you’ll find it difficult to get readers since they read it elsewhere also.

Make sure you always offer some value in your posted articles though. For instance you can offer many things in your posted articles and you should focus on only one per post. You can write about news for the day, an educational topic or an opinionated topic. You can also write about how your day is going and whatever else you want at the bottom of your posted articles. This will help for the people reading your blog to relate to you. If the people can relate to your life then they will typically stick around and become a regular reader and contributor to your blog.

Once you have the initial surge of content indexed and ranking in the search engines you’ll start to see some search engine traffic. If you have chosen good topics then the number of visitors could be very large and it’s consistent. Your content is what will make you money online as a blogger so make sure you spend long enough writing your posts. Keep things like titles and keywords in mind when you’re writing the post so that it’s optimized for your needs.

Writing is easy if you open your mind a little bit and once you start writing on a topic the written posts will begin to flow out of your mind. It’s always smart to write a handful of written posts, I recommend a week worth and keep them stored away in a document. This way if you get sick or go on vacation for a week you can load the pre-written written posts to your web blog and possess them written posts on the same schedule that you usually post them at. This way you don’t miss any days of adding written posts to your web blog as it could result in lost readers if you do miss writing for a few days.

The blogging community, recognised these days as the blogosphere, is one spoilt for choice when it concerns blog servers. Despite the abundance of these hosting sites although, one and only manages to jump out from the rest.

So, what is this blog hosting site that has hosted more than-0000 blogs and running as of today with more than 5000 people per day downloading it? It is a name that has served Blog Writers for 5 years now, one which almost all Blog Writers especially the more seasoned ones are used to; WordPress.

WordPress offers Blog Writers use of its open source project as a method to blog without spending a cent on blog hosting. All you need to do is simply go through the registration procedure which is the usual username and email whatnot. In a few seconds, you can get your blog up and running and doing this requires hardly any technical understandings at all as WordPress makes it as simple as it can be. Only your own creativity is the limit of blog creation and with such convenient blog creation methods these days, everyone should at least give it a go.

From its humble beginnings as a single bit of code self-hosted blogging tool back in 2003, WordPress has become the leading one today. Before reaching the top, it had the likes of two big guns in blogging, Greymatter and Movable Type to compete with. However, as WordPress started offering features unavailable in other web hosts, the bloggers slowly converted and new ones were pulled in making it the biggest player in the massive blogging market. Being that, it is unsurprising that WordPress blogs are being viewed by the millions each day as it has become the web host used most widely.

Among the interesting features which helped WP turn into the success story it has turn into are: ? Quick start-up, easy customization and the fact that its services are free with the option of payable upgrades. ? A plethora of great themes to choose from which is always updated according to bloggers’ feedback. ? Posting is made easier with spell-check, auto-save, previews and photo features as well as the ability to stream videos. Statistics regarding visitors and their response towards certain posts are available in the advanced subscription. ? WP assures you zero worry for spam. ? Bloggers have the choice of either allowing anybody to view their blog or make that exclusive to members only. This is a nifty privacy feature especially to those who treat their blogs as online diaries. ? WP offers an easy to use ‘Import/Export’ function mainly for bloggers with blogs at other web hosts who wish to transfer their posts to WP. ? Any blogging problems can be solved with the help of their 24-hour support team. ? Page Management allows users to treat the blog as a website depending of how they choose to manage it, a flexible option made possible by WP.

By providing features like these, it is no wonder so many bloggers worldwide are embracing WordPress. It is truly one for the bloggers. So, when are you going to be part of the blogosphere?