Code, Gadget, Geek!

The Internet has changed how businesses advertise and to whom. 10 years ago, businesses may have invested some money or resources into the world wide web but now businesses have to invest. So many millions of people visit the Internet every hour of every day that the Internet has become the biggest place to advertise. Schools, places of worship, businesses, and charities all need to get their information out onto the web. The problem is that many places do not have the money or resources to pay a lot for a web site design. Many companies, or non for profit organizations, do not have the resources to compete with Fortune 500 companies. One of the best places to turn for an affordable web site design is WordPress.

Affordable Web Site Design with wordpress
Wordpress is a free blogging tool with many twists and turns for many different varieties of businesses. It is part of a type of software called Content Management System, or CMS for short. WordPress is the most popular and most downloaded of all the CMS’ in existence. What makes WordPress so neat and usable is its dashboard. A dashboard is a control center for your web site. This dashboard is one of the easiest to use and does not change the content even when you change the design of your web site. Another great feature of WordPress is that is has over 17,000 plugins. A plugin is an addition to your web site, or page, such as: video players, virus scanners, graphic software, and Microsoft office. These plugins can be added to your web site and make the experience for the people who are browsing a lot more enjoyable. Another great feature of WordPress is that it is also supported as an application for smart phones. IPhones and Droid users can download their WordPress ap and have unlimited access to your WordPress web site.

Keeping statistics on your website allows you to detect how many visitors arrive at your site and how they go there, among other things. WordPress, one of the most popular and widely used blogging platforms, has various plugins that you can use to keep statistics about your visitors. One of the best plugins is Slimstat 2. A basic plugin, it requires you to have WordPress 2.9 or higher and only 5 MB of web space and DB space. You must also have MySQL 5.x or higher and PHP 5.1 or higher in order to properly install and run it. The information stores directly on your server and is completely private, so only you have access to the information.

It keeps track of user sessions for up to 30 minutes and tacks both outbound downloads and links, along with internal searches to allow you to manage and view how visitors are navigating around your site. So you can tailor your site to the majority of visitors, it also keeps track of the browser that your site was accessed on and the screen resolution. Your site should be designed to accommodate a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. Information about each visitor is recorded including their IP address, users, permalinks and how they arrived at your site. This enables you to track which links are generating traffic to your site. You can also specify the settings to exclude pageviews based on a specific browser, IP address, referrer or permalinks if you need to get them without factoring this specific set of viewers. The world map that comes with the plugin also enables you to see just where your visitors are coming from, literally.

If visualization is your preferred method of viewing information, the real-time charts allow you to view trends with visitors as they happen. The plugin doesn’t require you to do complex customization and can be enabled or disabled with a simple click. Thousands of users have currently downloaded and use the plugin to track their sites so they can be more responsive to their viewer’s needs. You can also get Slimstat as an wp-plugin on wordpress.org

WordPress Tips: Finding the Right Plugin: With the wealth of plugins available on the WordPress platform, it can be a difficult task to determine which ones are right for your site. There are many basic tips and tricks that can help you with this, but ultimately, only you (and your readers, perhaps) know for certain which plugins will be the most useful for your site. In many cases, choosing the best WordPress plugins for your site depends largely on the type of content you produce. For example, a news blog may rely heavily on high volume readership, so you would want to install a plugin that easily allows users to share the content on your site with their friends. This can be in the form of email, but willy most likely be on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Virtually any social media plugin should accomplish this task with relative ease.

Meanwhile, an e-commerce site may choose to install a shopping cart plugin that allows users to make purchases directly from the WordPress platform. This is a useful (and free) alternative to using third party services that can sometimes frustrate visitors. There are some plugins that most, if not all blogs should find useful. These include items like SEO packs, contact forms, anti-spam comment filters, and advanced search options for your site. Email subscription tools are also popular because they allow visitors to see the latest happenings of your site without having to leave their inbox.

Depending on your blogs’ content, you may also be tempted to monetize your blog. Rest assured, there are plenty of plugins available for this purpose. However, remember to place ads in such a way as to not frustrate and alienate your visitors. People don’t like being interrupted from reading by pop-ups or ads that appear over content. Placing relevant ads tastefully can be difficult, but it is the best way to ensure that you will gain maximum results without losing traffic. As engineer of your blog, you are tasked with finding which specific plugins meet the needs of both you and your visitors.

If you want to find a great WordPress theme for celebrity blog, you must first know what you are looking for. Celebrity blogs are among the most popular types of blogs online, and so if you expect to get any kind of traffic, you will definitely have to have a blog that stands out from the millions of blogs that are already established on the Internet. The first thing that you must realize is that no matter what WordPress theme that you choose for your celebrity blog, you must absolutely be able to customize that theme to become a unique expression of your love (or hate) for that particular celebrity or industry or group of celebrities.

Celebrity Blogs: People love them. Here: Paris Hilton!

[Foto-Credits: Wikipedia]

You can very easily begin with the template, but because most celebrity blogs are put online by people who do not necessarily understand how to create a website, you must realize that most celebrity blogs are formulated from templates. This means that you will have to customize your blog a great deal in order to differentiate it from the many other celebrity blogs that are already online.

However, once you have chosen your WordPress theme for your celebrity blog, is very easy to customize it and make it look unique. However, perhaps the number one concern that should differentiate your blog from other blogs is the content that you put on top of the WordPress theme. You must do your best to have unique content in order to drive unique traffic to your celebrity blog.

When choosing your WordPress theme, you also want to make sure that you choose a theme that is relevant to the audience of your celebrity. For instance, if your celebrity is on a purple cape lately, then your blog should reflect that color so that the fans of that celebrity will make an immediate correlation between your blog and the style of dress or color scheme promoted by the celebrity him or herself. You can also do this with the fonts that are used on your blog by matching them with the fonts that your celebrity uses on marketing materials.

I would say, “Red Carpet” from deluxethemes is the best free wp-theme for celebrity blogs, check it out:

[View Demo] – [Download]

Personal Blogs: Using Simple Design Effectively. Personal blogs are all about delivering information quickly, efficiently, and without bombarding the visitor with too much or cluttered information. Often people are turned off by blogs because the design is either inappropriate for the page’s content, or the page is simply “too busy” to be pleasing to the eye.

In most cases, a simple, one-column WordPress theme will do the job just fine. This is more in line with what is considered the traditional blog format, with the newest posts appearing at the top of the page and going down in list format according to when they were posted. If you intend to use a lot of pictures or even use the site as your own personal portfolio for your work, you may consider going a different route altogether. Many gadgets on WordPress allow you to create virtual slide shows of images that allow you to showcase them without cluttering up a page.

If you want to spice up your blog beyond this, it is better to use widgets and small add-ons as opposed to using a more complex, picture-based template with lots of images and moving parts which are better suited for news blogs. There are many widgets on the market that allow you to fully customize the margins of your blog with personal images or custom text that adds a personal feel without interfering with the actual content of your blog. You should also choose a text format and color scheme that is easy on the eyes and stay away from non-traditional font colors.

When in doubt, keep it simple and add a little spice here and there to give your personal blog the attention it deserves without distracting from its intended purpose. Blogs are intended to be a personal expression and an avenue for your readers to gain insight of some kind, whether it’s your own personal thoughts or simply updates in what’s new with your life. You want your readers to keep coming back for more, and next to the actual content, design is one of the most important elements for any blog.

Here are some fresh wordpress themes i recommend for personal blog use: BlueBubble
[View Demo] – [Download Theme]

[View Demo] – [Download Theme]

[View Demo] – [Download Theme]