Tag: WordPress Blog

Best Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

On August 19, 2013

You are a step away to launch your new WordPress blog. You set up the theme, done with CSS work but what you still feeling not yet added are the plugins – the mini software – which helps you run your blog or site smoothly, efficiently and full of different features. The WordPress plugins repository says that there are total of 26,408 plugins available which have been downloaded 500,362,573 times and still counting. Well, to make your job simple and find the right and best plugins for your WordPress blog, we have collected a list of 16 best and “must” WordPress plugins.

Ad Squares Widget

Although the plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years but it works the same way today as it was doing earlier. The plugin supports AdSense, Javascript, XHTML and PHP code. This widget makes it possible for you to display 125×125 ad squares (or some other configurable size) into a widget-ready bar for WordPress.

More Info | Download

Akismet

The best plugin to check your blog comments for spams. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

More Info | Download

Archivist – Custom Archive Templates

It is a shortcode Plugin to display an archive by category, tag or custom query and can be customizable via HTML templates.

More Info | Download

Clicky Analytics

While the whole world is running for Google Analytics as their preferred service for getting stats of their websites, I will highly recommend everyone to opt for Clicky Analytics. Using the plugin will display Clicky Web Analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Blog.

More Info | Download

Contact Form 7

The plugin manages multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

More Info | Download

Custom Link Widget

The plugin automatically converts inserted URLs and URL names to hyperlinks.

More Info | Download

Disqus Comment System

Disqus is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenter across a thriving discussion community.

More Info | Download

Fancier Author Box by ThematoSoup

The plugin will give identity to your single or multi-author WordPress website.

More Info | Download

Google XML Sitemaps

The plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.

More Info | Download

Po.st: The Social Sharing Platform

Po.st offers publishers the ability to monetize the social activity on their site. It will boosts social sharing, provides detailed analytics and monetizes the sharing that is already happening on your site.

More Info | Download

Really Simple CAPTCHA

The plugin does not work alone and is intended to work with other plugins. It is originally created for Contact Form 7 however; you can use it with your own plugin.

More Info | Download

Social Media Widget

The plugin is a simple sidebar widget that allows users to input their social media website profile URLs and other subscription options to show an icon on the sidebar to that social media site and more that open up in a separate browser window.

More Info | Download

VaultPress

VaultPress is a subscription service offering realtime backup, automated security scanning, and support from WordPress experts.

More Info | Download

W3 Total Cache

It’s a WordPress Performance Optimization (WPO) framework; designed to improve user experience and page speed using caching browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

More Info | Download

WordPress Notification Bar

A quick and easy notification bar and call to action for your site.

More Info | Download

WP User Avatar

The plugin enables you to use any photo uploaded into your Media Library as an avatar. This means you use the same uploader and library as your posts. No extra folders or image editing functions are necessary.

More Info | Download

Photo Credit: Flickr/David Horowitz

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Things To Consider When Designing Logo For Your WordPress Blog

By Caroline Luna

On August 1, 2013

In Tutorials

Whether you are into logo production for commercial purposes or you are a business that requires a logo to market your brand, it is important that you know these principles that differentiates a good logo from a poor one. The advantages of a good quality logo are there for all to see whiles a poor logo will go unnoticed. Logos that instantly catch attention and then draw the customer’s interest to the brand is what every business should strive to obtain. For a logo design company, the quality of the finished products is very important. This is because every logo designed by the company serves as a marketing tool for the custom logo design company. If the logo is inefficient due to its low standards, customers will not be willing to come back for more business neither will they recommend the design company to other business owners. A logo design company must ensure that it has creative designers who have learnt the trade of logo design very well. The individual or group in need of a logo must also use the previous logos created by the company as a scheme for judging the efficiency of the company.

The first important point to consider when creating a logo is to remember that a logo seeks to serve as the identity of a company or group. When properly created and marketed, a company or organization can easily be represented by its logo anywhere without any need of mentioning the name of the company. The logo is the iconic feature of the company or organization. For this reason, the design pattern of the logo should be unique and should not bear any resemblance to any other company or organization. This will prevent confusion and misrepresentation of identities. Note that, this can negatively affect your company if the other brand is well known for poor services or substandard products.

Many experts in logo designers believe that a quality logo is one that is usually very simple and practical. No need to outdo yourself with complex colors and complicated designs that may end up putting people off instead of arousing their interest. The logo should also have an underlining meaning that will appeal to consumers. When we look round, we will see that the logos of a lot of the well established companies is usually very simple but carry a lot of weight.

Whiles some people may prefer fancy colorings, the designer and the company for which the logo is to be created for should find a concept that is not based on color. In this case, the logo can be printed in black and white and it will still be easy for viewers to understand what the logo is trying to put forward. The best logo should also be printable in smaller size without making it difficult to identify certain important aspects of the logo design.

As a company that specializes in the design of logos, you will have to interact with the client in order to find out what the client wants in the logo. Without considering the points of the client, you will come out with a logo that may not suit the taste of the client. After the interaction with the client, the next step will be to conduct research into the market and the company. This will help you gain an insight into the goals and values of the company and provide you with an idea of some of the iconic brands on the market and the nature of their logos.

With the information gathered, the design company must put its creative staff at work. In most cases, creating more than one logo from which the client can choose from is the most ideal practice. Bear in mind that you want to create a logo that will stand the test of time for all your clients.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Ahmed Bin-Baz

Creating A Favicon For Your WordPress Blog

By The Editorial Team

On July 30, 2013

In Tutorials

You often noticed a small image – actually an icon in the URL bar or at tabs. What is it? Any idea – it’s a favicon (an icon) which is associated with a website and can be used when you bookmark the web page. A clearer picture is that a favicon is typically a graphic 16 X 16 pixels square which will be saved as favicon.ico (format: .ico) in your server’s root directory.

How You Can Create A Favicon?

First of all, I will say don’t worry as this is the simplest process which you ever noticed while doing or working in your WordPress site. A favicon can be easily created using any graphical software available which allows you to save .ico graphic files although you can create a favicon for free online also. Make sure the image you create or use should be clear and is designed in capacity to match your blog image and/or content as it will give huge glimpse to your site’s visitors.

Creating Manually

Make the image square by cropping or adding space around the image.
Resize the image to 16 x 16 pixels.
Save the file as favicon.ico.

Creating Online

Use the service like Faviconer.com, which will create 24bit favicon.ico with a transparent background or favicon.co.uk or Dynamic Drive.
Follow the instructions provided by the sites’.
Once created, download the image of the favicon.ico to your computer.

Creating Favicon With A Transparent Background

Make sure your source image already having a transparent background i.e. GIF or PNG.
The difference here is the favicon file being saved with an extension .png or .gif instead of .ico.
But in order to have favicon with a transparent background, you need to overwrite and to add the following code below the <head> HTML tag, once you find the line of code which begins with <link rel=”shortcut icon” and ends with /favicon.ico” />.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo get_stylesheet_directory_uri(); ?>/favicon.png" />

1	<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo get_stylesheet_directory_uri(); ?>/favicon.png" />

Installing A Favicon In WordPress

New Browser

To start the installation process of a favicon, you need to first delete your old favicon.ico file in your current theme’s main folder using FTP Client.
Similarly with the same FTP Client, upload the new favicon.ico into your current theme’s main folder.
Now, upload another copy of your favicon.ico file to your site’s main directory, which will in turn display the favicon in your subscribers’ feedreaders.

Old Browser

Once done, now you have to edit your page header.
Go to your WordPress Administration Panel and click on Design (Presentation in WordPress 2.3.x and below and Appearance in WordPress 2.7+).
Click on Theme Editor and select the file called Header or header.php to edit the file.
Search for the line of code that begins with <link rel=”shortcut icon” and ends with /favicon.ico” />. Overwrite it, if it exists, or add the following code below the <head> HTML tag.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo get_stylesheet_directory_uri(); ?>/favicon.ico" />

1	<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo get_stylesheet_directory_uri(); ?>/favicon.ico" />

Save the changes and you are done.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Rafa Otero

How To Monetize Your WordPress Blog?

By The Editorial Team

On July 25, 2013

In Plugins, Tutorials

You often wondered that how the big blogs make money. The answer for that is because of huge Affiliate links they place on their sites. If you are running one such blog and getting a decent amount of traffic, then why not add extra hands to earn money. Although it’s still pointed that people avoid it at par even these days but it’s good to have some affiliate links as it’s hardly require any extra work for you. All you have to do is to place a link on board in between the content, while you can also place the affiliates’ banners in your blog ads area. With this article, I will talk about how you can monetize your WordPress blog and make money just like others.

Which Affiliate Network To Join?

The first question which does create confusion for you as the list is huge from which you can choose upon totally depends as per your requirements. There are hundreds of affiliate products which have been offering hundreds of thousands of products which are running their own affiliate program, giving you huge options to choose from. Placing such products on your blog, you will earn a commission from that. The more the sale you did via the link you have on your blog, the more money you make. Start by selecting and then signing up to some of these affiliate networks and start browsing the products which you think will make a perfect fit for your blog.

What Next?

Now, you done with selecting the affiliate network which you like to have for your blog. The next step is choosing on the plugin which let you manage affiliate links with ease. There are number of plugins available – both free and premium – which helps you with the task. Both free and premium plugins come with their own pros and cons, giving you different level of freedom to manage your affiliate links. Say, for example, using one plugin will allow you to update your affiliate links which you used in different posts in your blog in the one go, instead of going and doing the same manually for all those posts.

Free Affiliate Plugins

Affiliates

The plugin will offer you the right tools to maintain an Affiliate Marketing Program with offering a solid framework for developers, who are interested in building their own customized solutions based on a sound data model.

More Info | Download

Easy Affiliate

The plugin is an Auto-Affiliate Plug-In. It turns any link into an affiliate link from over 3000 affiliate partners, that when clicked, earns you money.

More Info | Download

WP Auto Affiliate Links

The plugin provides you an interface to add your affiliate links and associate them with keywords. The affiliate links will be added to all the terms specified found in your content.

More Info | Download

Premium Affiliate Plugins

Affiliate Machine

The plugin allows you to add affiliate hyperlinks to any keywords or phrases throughout whole website or particular posts or pages. You only have to create list of relevant keywords and set your affiliate link for them. Once set, the plugin will highlight and hyperlink these keywords with your affiliate link throughout whole website or particular posts or pages automatically.

More Info | Demo | Price: $12

eBay eStore Affiliates Plugin

The Plugin allows you to create a store featuring eBay products in no time. Once you setup, you can import your products directly from eBay in just a flash.

More Info | Demo | Price: $25

Amazon eStore Affiliates Plugin

The plugin allows you to create a store featuring Amazon products. Once you done with setup, you can import products directly from Amazon.

More Info | Demo | Price: $25

Photo Credit: Flickr/Philip Taylor

Free Photos For Your WordPress Blog – From Where To Find The One?

By The Editorial Team

On June 28, 2013

In Tutorials

Writing up for your WordPress blog is one thing, requiring a lot of hard work, pressure and pain, but blogging is not only about writing on amazing topics but adding catchy photos on these blogs gives a lot of real weight to it. Moreover, a blog post without Photos is just like writing a blog without any interestingness.

There are number of tools available online which helps bloggers find the right photos for their blog and makes adding them to their blog both fast and easy. All required is giving worth a shot, go on the tool (mentioned below), search for photos by using the search box by putting right keywords, preview the photo and click “get photo” to download it but remember to give the proper attribution link.

PhotoPin

PhotoPin uses the Flickr API to find the best suitable image for you. The site searches creative commons photos which you can use for your blog although to note that the site is directly not associated with Flickr in anyway, other than it just powered its search results using their API.

Creative Commons Search

Creative Commons Search allow you to search and fine photos from thirteen other websites, including Europeana, Flickr, Fotopedia, Google, Google Images, Jamendo, Open Clip Art Library, SpinXpress, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, Pixabay, ccMixter and SoundCloud. Moreover, the site also let you tell that whether the photo you like can be use for commercial purposes or not.

WikiMedia Commons

Searching for photos on WikiMedia Commons will take you to the photo’s information page, with share includes the copyright status, licensing conditions. Photos come under free license, including as CC, GNU Free Documentation License, Open Data Commons and Free Art License. If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images or Valued images.

Google Image Search

Google is well known for providing huge collection of photos which it crawl and index from hundreds of thousands of websites across the web. But, it is always near to impossible to learn at first stage that the photo you are going to use belongs to whom, even in some cases, you don’t know exactly that are you using the copyrighted material or what?

In order to help you with that and find the perfect general use photo, on the Google Image site, click on Advanced Image Search and under “usage rights” select the most appropriate option. With this way, you can use those photos which aren’t restricted by copyright.

Flickr

Flickr is one of the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. You can find billions of photos on Flickr which comes as either copyrighted or available under a CC license. To check on licensing, you have to go to the photo, and check on the right bottom and see on licensing.

Stock.xchng

As a user you can gain access to thousands of free high-quality, hand-picked photos and graphics although you strongly need to stick to the rules totally as per site’s photo licensing agreement and in some cases you have to take permission from the photo owner before using it.

Understanding Copyright and Photo Licensing

It’s very much important to understand the licensing before using any of photos – mainly someone else’s work. If any photo having a copyrighted as its license status, then it means you can’t use the work directly rather you have to seek permission first.

But, the condition is not same for using all photos. There are hundreds of thousands of photos also out there which are available under different types of licensing and the one which you see commonly across is Creative Commons. There are six types of Creative Commons licenses:

Attribution License: This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.
Attribution Share Alike License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution No Derivatives License: This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit given to you.
Attribution Non-Commercial License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives License: This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license

Photo Credit: Flickr/Christopher Ross, Flickr/Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

How To Secure Your WordPress Blog In 6 Ways

By The Editorial Team

On May 25, 2013

In Tutorials

Started back in 2003 as a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing, WordPress now becomes the most popular and powerful Content Management System in the world. The web software used by millions of users globally, and in which the hosting of more than half of the blog itself. Not only this, but the popular brands are using the CMS too, including TechCrunch, Mashable, I2Mag, NBC and lots more.

This is huge and even getting bigger every instances passed by. Interesting and the best part while using the WordPress is that it takes mere two easy steps to install WordPress, yes the only two steps process. In order to keep the CMS work for you, today I will talk about what ways (by sharing tips and tricks) by which you can protect your WordPress blog. These tips and tricks will not only help you keeping your blog safe from hackers but also help in maintaining the much faster pace.

Do Not Use “Admin” As User

Starting with, once you have your WordPress blog in place, you do come up with “admin” as the login username. Thing to note here, avoid using “admin” at any cost as this is a common mistake which give a clear way for hackers to hack your website. What you have to do is as soon as you install WordPress, you need to create a new account and do use that one as default. Even, better as soon as you create a new account as an administrator; better delete the user “admin” as all the robots always looking out for it.

Increasing The Strength Of Your Password

Gone are those days when you can use the passwords like abc12345, xyz12345 and so on, reason with the way technology grows, breaching the authentication becomes much easier. It’s always been recommended to use strong passwords, including both small and capital letters, with numbers and different symbols which make your password much stronger. Even, in case if you don’t think of stronger password yourself, you can use the password generator software which helps you selecting the right one.

Update Regularly

Photo Credit: dullhunk via photopin cc

Updating your WordPress website from time-to-time is very much important, as it keep your blog safe for a long run. Developers keep on working on to solve security issues, and in order to have your WordPress websites updated, new security release comes regularly. It takes hardly few seconds time to update your blog, resulting in helping your blog run better and be more compatible with different plug-ins. As soon as update will be available, you will get notified through your WordPress dashboard itself or you do also update it manually, but remember don’t download the update from any other website except WordPress.org.

Using .htaccess

By default .htaccess is available in your hosting folder. The .htaccess lets you blog different IPs which you believe would be security concerns for you. Even further, .htaccess will allow you to people from browsing your WordPress folder structure as well as let you hide XML sitemaps from search engine.

Protecting wp-config.php File

The time when you are installing the WordPress on server, you need to either create or edit the wp-config.php file. The fill will let you create and manage the database files of your blog. Just like .htaccess, the wp-config.php is one of the most important files you have with you, therefore it is also very much important to take measures to protect it out. Even, suggestive is to make it hide from the public, by adding this simple line of code:

<Files wp-config.php>

order allow, deny

deny from all

</Files>

The addition of this will prevents the file being seen by users as well as difficult to spot by hackers and robots.

Backup Your Whole Blog

Photo Credit: Jaymis via photopin cc

Keeping a back up is a key stone to maintain a huge pace. You can back up your whole of blog either daily, once a week or a month, although it’s suggestive to do it at least once a day. You never know what things may come up your way and ruin your whole hard work in a one single go, so it is a good idea to have a back up regularly.

Introducing JustWP.org, A Blog Dedicated To WordPress

By The Editorial Team

On May 21, 2013

In Plugins, Showcase, Themes, Tutorials

Photo Credit: odysseygate via photopin cc

It would be a huge share of joy that, we, the G2One Network today introducing our new brand – a whole new blog for WordPress crazy people, just likes us – dubbed as “JUSTWP.ORG.” Before giving more insights over JUSTWP.ORG, we would like to share that G2One Network is an Indian-based Internet Marketing and Advertising firm, also known pretty well as a parent company of I2Mag: Internet & Design Inspiration Magazine (which covers all about tech).

Now, back to our today’s launch, JUSTWP.ORG offer its readers WordPress news, tips, tutorials, reviews, different showcases and lots more, which in turn helps bloggers, designers, developers, or in short a WordPress crazy person (just like us) to make their life simpler. There are now hundreds of thousands of developers, designers out there who being working round the clock on the content management system leaving no stone unturned to keep the community a real strong, this is what exactly encourage us to take a step further and to come up with JUSTWP.org.

Well, before giving deeper insight, the third part of this introduction, would like to or actually delighted to share that the reason on choosing the name JUSTWP was because that the blog meant only for JUST WORDPRESS or one can consider it calling as JUST ANOTHER WORDPRESS BLOG (but actually it’s not only JUST ANOTHER, in real it is more than that).

What You Can Found On JustWP.ORG?

Themes: Information and reviews about Themes from the best developers around the globe.
Plugins: Running a successful WordPress website, you do require collectibles of plugins. Here we talk about that.
Tutorials: In order to help you run your WordPress website as a PRO, here we shared tips & tutorials.
Showcase: With this section, we tried to showcase different themes and plugins.
Clubs: Discovering and sharing knowledge about what different WordPress Clubs are offering.
Hosting: Helping you to find the best hosting provider for your website.
Deals: Without deals, how can you have a perfect website on the move? With this, we are taking care of that part.
Blueprint: This is the area where we showcase what actually it takes us to build the JustWP.org.
Services: The services we offer to help you build and run a successful WordPress website.

Even, if you too consider a WordPress expert yourself and think you would be interested in sharing your knowledge with our readers, then it’s the right place for you. All you have to do is just drop us a line by contacting us with your idea. Also, if you are offering a product or service relevant to WordPress.org, then we also offer to review it and make it publish on the website, the details of which you can check here.

Happy Reading!!!

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