Wednesday 22 August 2012

How to Install WordPress Theme

So you have installed Wordpress successfully and now you want to switch away from WordPress default theme. Installing a WordPress theme is no really complicated as you think it is. You can always  find some interesting theme to suit your need and I recommend ThemeForest.

There are two different methods you can use when trying to figure out how to install WordPress theme which are manually and automatically. I'll only focus on manually installation.

Manually install WordPress theme
With this method, you should familiar with file transfer protocol (FTP) as the theme need to be download from theme provider and you have to upload the theme to the WordPress theme folder in the hosting server.
  1. Download free theme or buy premium theme , which I am assuming you have done by now.
  2. Unzip the theme and now you will need to open your FTP program to transfer the theme in the hosting server. I preffer FileZilla as the ftp software.
  3. At this point,  navigate to the themes folder by going to the 'wp-content' folder and then the 'themes' folder.

4. At this point also, navigate to the theme you unzipped on your hard drive. 

5. Select the theme, right click and select upload to start uploading the theme on your hard drive (folder and all) to the themes folder on your web site.

6. After all of the theme folder and files transfer completed, go back to your browser and log into your WordPress admin page on your site.

7.You will then go to the 'Appearance' option on the left side menu and select the 'Themes' option.




At this point you should be able to see your theme listed as an option. You should now be able to preview and then activate your theme by selecting the appropriate options listed under your theme.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

3 Tips to Optimize Your Facebook Timeline



Facebook's recent shift from Fan Pages to Timelines, are really big news for small business owners. Facebook Timeline is a new way of presenting yourself on Facebook. It's a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story.

For business owner, finding the time to utilize this new format is quite difficult. How do you keep up with social media trends or take advantage of new services and still have time to finish your to long "to do" list?

Spending time to focus on Facebook marketing, lets say an hour each week, you can take advantage of the new format and put your Facebook Business Timeline to work for you. Optimizing the fan page should be your first priority and We have a few tips for doing that. Feel free to use this information to slowly transform your current Business Timeline that can help transform your social media marketing efforts.

Facebook Timeline Optimization Tips
Two simple and significant ways to maximize YOUR Timelines center around the images you select to use for your cover and profile. A Timeline cover image is your chance to tell the world what your business is all about. If chosen correctly, can help you capture the attention of potential clients.


Tip #1: Few important things to consider When choosing a Cover photo:

1. The Timeline cover image is 851 X 351 pixels and there are some very specific rules about what you can put on it, or more specifically, what you cannot put on it.

2.Your cover photo must capture what your business is. If you are selling weight management product, simply put appropriate photo of slimming model photo.The goal is to visually capture a snapshot of who you are and what you do.

3. It needs to emotionally express the feeling of the product benefit  and tell your story. Think about some of the cover pictures you have seen.

4. Follow Facebook cover guidelines. The cover photo is affectionately known as "the land of no". Facebook has a whole list of things that you may not include on your cover photo so be sure to follow their rules to avoid having your Timeline shut down.



Tip #2: Make your profile picture work for you:

1. It's the best tactics to make your profile picture is action oriented. This the icon where Facebook community sees every time you post. Use an image that encourages your friends, followers and potential customer to click on it.

2. Add a call to action. Most of Facebook owner are really clicking on profile photos and also add comments. If you put an engaging profile photos and your potential client will saw instructions on how to get more information after the click on it. They will connect to your web site/sales page, or learn more about you or your services and convertion rate will be increase.

By making these 2 simple changes to your profile you are already on your way to getting more from your social media efforts.

Tip #3: Engage your visitors:
1. Talk to your visitors. Facebook is social media platform and turning people into fans means engaging with them. Every post or your latest blog entry should be followed by respond to their comment and be sure to include their name in the response. Talk to them and make it personal.

2. Create a community. According to the research firm Razorfish, the #1 reason fans like a page on Facebook is to gain access to exclusive content, promotions and deals. So give them a reason to 'like' you! Use those tabs at the top of the page to 'friend-gate' information. This way only the people who've liked your page can access it. It's a great place to post special deals, 'fan only' info, and other things that let your fans know you appreciate them and they're considered insiders.

I hope with this new Facebook Timeline design and few tips above, small business owner have more room to higlight their products, interact with and support their customer, and market to target audiences much more efficiently and effectively.

Monday 20 August 2012

Must Have WordPress Plugins You Need to Be Using

Wordpress Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. One of the reason that i'm in love with Woldpress plugins are it's functionality and there are literally thousands of plugins available these days to enhance the functionality and look of your website or blog. Most of them are automated making them super easy and very convenient for authors, bloggers and webmasters.

This list will provide you with must install  WordPress plugins that I often use every time I setup new blog with with Wordpress platform.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin's job is to generate XML sitemaps for search engines to easily find your blog. The search engine then records your sitemap in their databases. The result is faster search results for your blog and articles.
Facebook LikeWith this plugin, readers can just click on the Facebook like button on your post and share that action on Facebook. You can add this on top of your post or after the post. And since this is hosted by Facebook itself, people visiting your blog need not log into their Facebook account.
All in 1 SEO PackThis one is search-engine friendly. It allows you to optimise your site so search engines can easily find your blog or website. To use this to your advantage, you need to provide a Meta Title and Meta Description for your posts and pages. You may also use its advanced settings if you wish.
This is the plugin that will allow you to post social icons on each of your blog posts. Being a floating style, it lets your readers easily share your post with social media sites such as Twitter without having to scroll up back to the top of your write up.

Dagon Design Form Mailer
This plugin was designed to be easy to use, while still being extremely flexible. If you just want a simple contact form, you can set one up with just a few clicks.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

Feedburner Form is a simple plugin that allows you insert Google Feedburner subscription forms in widgetized areas of you site. By using this form, you allow visitors to subscribe to your feed and receive e-mails sent by Google Feedburner everytime you publish content.


The simple plugin to enable you to track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews. 

WP Security Scan
WP Security Scan plugin is a free WordPress security plugin that helps secure your WordPress blog by adding key security functions. More than half a million people already use the WP Security Scan plugin with great success to protect their precious blog content and visitors.

Yahoo Messenger Online Status
This plugin will allows blog owners to show their Yahoo Messenger online status using their own status button.

WordPress Related Posts
WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed.
Each of Wordpress plugins above I consider are the best WordPress plugins that word perfectly on my blog  /website. You can try and use on your site too and let me know how many plugins do you use at your site!

Friday 17 August 2012

Facebook Marketing - Integrating Facebook With Your WordPress Blog



If you already have a Facebook account, it's time to get started with Facebook marketing. As announced on Wednesday, June 13, 2012  by Facebook Developer Blog, WordPress publishers can easily integrate Facebook features, such as social publishing and mentions, through the new Facebook for WordPress plugin. Then it is a good idea to integrate that account with your blog if your blog or web site is powered by Wordpress platform. Here are five tools you can use to integrate Facebook with your WordPress blog.

Facebook Fan Box Plugin - If you created a fan page on Facebook as a part of your Facebook marketing strategy, then you can integrate it into your WordPress blog. The Facebook Fan Box plugin will display a box on your blog showing the recent updates made on your pages as well as the fans that joined your page. This is great for encouraging visitors to become fans on Facebook.

WordPress Facebook Connect - This WordPress plugin adds Facebook functionality to your WordPress blog. Visitors can sign in to comment on your blog with their Facebook account. The comments they leave will show up in the newsfeed and their Facebook profile pics will be used as their avatars. This is a great Facebook marketing plugin because it encourages the growth of a community around your blog.

Facebook Posted Items - This WordPress plugin will display a list of items you have posted to Facebook. If you are surfing the net and you find a website of interest, you can a post a link to it onto your Facebook profile. That same link will show up on a list on your blog so visitors can see what you've been up to online.

Facebook Live Stream - This is a Facebook Plugin that is best used when you have a live event happening online. This plugin lets users share comments and their activity on Facebook in real time. It's a virtual equivalent of meeting everyone at the coffee shop to watch a favorite television show and commenting on what's happening.


Why Should I Buy a Premium WordPress Theme?


This is a question I am often asked. After all there are any number of free WordPress themes available. Why not just use one of them?
I've got no problem with using a free WordPress theme and in many cases it will do the job just fine. But free WordPress themes do have a downside. Some of the most troubling issues are the links invariably found in the theme footer. Often they point to websites that are questionable or totally unrelated to your own WordPress content. Another question mark is that sometimes the theme php coding may be cumbersome or even contain hidden code that is disadvantageous to your own site.
However there are many free themes available that do a decent and sometimes even great job. But if you are wanting to turn your WordPress site into a professional presence and generate money from it then a premium WordPress theme may be the best choice.
In spite of what many will say is a five minute setup - a proper WordPress blog can take a few hours to configure properly. And if you are setting up more than one website and having to familiarize yourself with a new theme each time you will easily waste several hours on each setup - sometimes only to find out that the theme you chose doesn't do the job. And you have to start again.
If you invest in professional premium theme than it will have the versatility to handle most anything. That means that you will only have to learn how to set up the variables on one theme and use it over and over. You'll also get rid of the pesky links in the footer that distract visitors from your own site and you will create a more professional personality of prospective customers.
In addition to that you will have a theme that integrates with all the premium plug-ins that you will end up using as well as a theme that performs reliably and save an enormous amount of setup and maintenance time along the road.
Investing in a premium wordpress theme is money well spent and you can read more on how to chose the right premium theme for your application at http://wpthemereviews.c8u.org/


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4069589

Best 10 Free WordPress Themes


Let's say you have started your blog or website, you know what information you want to publish, you've written a few articles before, but you encounter one issue that makes you rethink your choice. You have a domain, you installed WordPress on it, but now you want to make your site represent you. In plain English, you're searching for a wordpress theme which suits you best.
There are a lot of free WordPress themes out there from various designers but if you're looking for a really attractive and highly customizable theme you might think of the so-called "premium themes". These are high-quality WordPress themes designed by WordPress artists or various companies, they come with a solid documentation and some of them also include their own plug-ins.
"So what's the problem", you might ask? Well, most of them cost money and especially if you're a new blogger you might not afford to buy a theme that you might find it's not exactly what you were looking for.
As a solution to this situation, here's a list of 10 FREE WordPress themes which are very attractive and you don't have to pay to try them out.
1. Balita
This is an e-Commerce design featuring a custom shopping cart, social media integration, and an ads banner you can use to promote whatever you wish.
The theme is optimized for HTML 5 and CSS3 and it also provides a blog integration tool and multiple widget areas.
2. Shuttershot
This theme is perfect for photographers or photography studios to showcase their work. The design is basically a fullscreen slideshow template and you can set a custom page template for the blog if you are using a slideshow on the home page.
3. MyCorp
A theme designed to be used either as a portfolio or as a business website. MyCorp is highly customizable offering you custom post types, a unique homepage layout, a blog page and jQuery drop-down menus. It loads fast thanks to the optimized images and the code is also clean and easy to edit and maintain.
4. Linedy
A very popular fixed-width WordPress theme which is optimized in terms of SEO and works perfect for a blog or website running the newest version of WordPress. The theme is compatible with most browsers and also offers space for advertising with 125x125 banners.
5. Nico
This 2 column theme features a very easy to use options page and it was designed with the picture of an entertainment website in mind. It supports post thumbnails and just like Linedy, it's SEO optimized and it is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
6. iFeature
This Apple-ish design was made by CyberChimps.com. It features HTML5 and CSS3 support, an iFeature image slider for you home page, custom post formats, typography options and you can use your custom logo on it.
7. Fotofolio Landscape
This theme is free for personal use and it would make a fine addition to a photography portfolio or media designer website. It comes in 3 color themes and it features a theme widget, automatic image resizer and a special section which you can use for a blog, testimonials or slideshows.
8. Kreativ theme
This is a very premium-like free WordPress theme featuring a clean business design for your company coming in a silver/white/blue color scheme. It features a big image on the featured posts, you can easily input Google AdSense into it and it also shows posts thumbnails automatically.
9. gazpoMag
This free theme is a feature-rich WordPress theme styled as an online magazine. It features a widget-ready sidebar and footer, configurable menus, threaded comments, a custom slider and a customized theme options panel for your Dashboard. It also featured widgets for social media integration, ads and recent posts, popular posts as well as recent comments.
10. Thalliumity
This theme showcases your featured posts using a jQuery image slider, it features a front page widget for your services and it suits very well promotional blogs or company portfolios.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6826193

How to Change a WordPress Theme


One of the first things people want to learn when it comes to WordPress is how to change WordPress theme. The main reason being that people love to tinker around with the design aspects of their blogs and websites.
The good news is that WordPress has a built in theme system that makes changing your design a really easy process. Believe it or not, you can install and activate a theme in a matter of minutes. It sure beats trying to design a website from scratch!
The first step in learning how to change WordPress theme is to understand how to add new themes. By default, WordPress only comes with a couple built in themes.
To add a new theme to WordPress, you can either download a theme you find on the internet or use the built in search function in WordPress. The next step is to click on the add new theme link which is found under appearance in WordPress.
If you downloaded the theme yourself, WordPress will ask you where it is located on your computer. Once you select the file you downloaded, it will automatically upload the theme to the proper directory on your computer.
If you prefer using the theme search function, all you have to do is click the install link by whatever theme you wish to use.
Last but not least, you need to learn how to change WordPress theme that your blog is using. In other words, you have to activate the theme you wish to use. To do this, just click on the themes tab in the WordPress navigation menu. Next, simply hit the activate link found by the theme you wish to use. WordPress will automatically activate the theme and make it live on your website. That is it!
Want more tips on WordPress? If so, you can learn WordPress in two hours with this video training series.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3692620

Free Vs Premium WordPress Themes

FREE default WordPress theme template is nice and looks fresh, but may not be the theme to use if your blog is for business purposes or if you want to make your blog more customizable and more impact on your readers.

For basic blog or website, there are a lot of choices out there for someone wanting to choose a free WordPress theme for their blog  Free WordPress themes are usually simple in design and typically follow the same structure of the default theme. If you just want to release content, then a free theme is suitable for your needs.  However, with free themes, there are limited options / settings built-in to make modifications easier. Additionally, most free themes do not come with color schemes / styles to change the look of your site.

If your willing to pay for the WordPress theme and would like to have more impact on your blog/website, then  you should consider a Premium WordPress themes. It's more advanced and almost always come with options panels / theme settings which can be configured quite easily. Additionally, it is common that a premium theme come pre-packaged with several styles so that you can alter the look of your site. the advanced style of themes that are more unique, stylish and in high quality. Though, these additional features come at a cost.

To solve this dilemma, you can either choose to download free themes or pay up to enjoy some premium WordPress themes. It is better to compare free theme and premium theme before you make any decision for your blog / website.
Theme Design and Functional Quality
If a designer is asking money for a WordPress theme, you can already conclude that it offers something more or different than the standard WordPress theme being offered for free. It usually means that the designer spent a significant amount of time perfecting the visuals and layouts of the theme or made sure that the theme allows more functionality than the ones derived from the default theme.
If you take a look at the online stores that sell premium WordPress themes, you may get the idea on why this particular theme could be worth the money. Many premium WordPress themes target people that manage business blogs since they know that these webmasters need a professional design to make profits.


Theme Options
The Options Panel / Theme Settings is a major difference between free vs. paid themes. Most free themes do not come with an easy method to update the theme. However, with almost all premium themes, you can count on the fact that there will be a panel to configure your theme settings. The options panel will provide areas to configure categories for different content areas, adding Google Analytics code, and/or social media settings. There are hundreds of possible settings, and each theme varies. The Theme Options panel does make life much easier for non-techies, as well as folks who wish to just get their sites online quickly.
Support Quality
Good theme designers make sure that the theme fully works in all of the latest browsers before releasing it to the public. There are instances where users can run into problems especially if their blogs have numerous extensions and add-ons. Those that design WordPress themes for free may not have the time or resources to tend to those situations although there could be some exceptions. However, premium theme designers are more likely to be more accommodating to these issues so that they can send a subtle message to the customers that paying for the theme includes free dedicated support as well.


Security Considerations
When using a free theme, it is a good idea to pay attention to the theme author’s updates. In most cases, free themes are not frequently updated to stay in sync with WordPress releases. This may lead to security vulnerabilities. Additionally, some free themes are released with good intentions, but the authors may not be as well-versed in coding standards as some premium theme authors. Hence, the potential for security issues is greater with free themes. At least with premium themes, one can rely (hopefully) on the theme support forums for updates or to ask questions related to such topics.
Abundance
Free WordPress themes are a lot more abundant than the premium ones. In fact, the WordPress website features dozens of themes available for those that cannot host their own WordPress site. This makes searching for free themes quite useful as there may be a chance where you can encounter a nice theme with a free download attached to it.
Overall Value
Your decision in picking a free or premium WordPress theme depends on your comparison between quality and quantity. Fortunately, just about all designers offering free or premium WordPress themes have a screenshot of the theme so they can visualize how their website will be if the theme is applied.
Premium themes are priced differently as well so you really need to take some time in choosing a commercial WordPress theme. Your choice won't be disappointing at all if you look at the premium theme at all angles. It is unlikely for a free alternative to surface since premium themes usually take longer to make and require a lot of skill.

A Brief Explanation of WordPress Themes


WordPress is an excellent tool that many small businesses and individuals are using to reach their target audiences. So, what exactly is WordPress and what can you do with it? WordPress is a blogging platform which allows users to either create their own theme or use one of the many free themes available. Let's take a look.
Dashboard
Once you sign up for WordPress you will be able to log into what is called your dashboard. This is where all the magic happens. The first time you sign into your dashboard you might feel a little overwhelmed. Don't fret. The dashboard is the grand central station of your blog. From here you will have access to your blog posts, the different pages of your blog, links to and from your blog, different media you are using, comments to your blog, and of course your WordPress design. WordPress design falls under the "Appearance" section on your dashboard and there is much you can do with it.
Free WordPress Themes
To begin with WordPress you need a theme. This is what people see when they look at your blog, but it's also so much more. It determines the control you have over your blog in terms of look and feel. There are many free WordPress themes that you can choose to use. To gain access to these simply click on "Appearance" on the sidebar of your dashboard and then select "Themes". This will take you to a section of WordPress where all the free themes are available. Each theme will have a brief description, and allow you to be able to preview it via the "Preview" button. If you find one you like you can click the "Activate" button to have the theme active on your blog. The good news about free WordPress themes is that you can switch them anytime you like. On the downside, you are not likely to find a theme with every design element you want on it and while you can add your own design elements like your company logo, in the free WordPress themes, this ability is somewhat limited.
Custom WordPress Themes
To get a custom WordPress theme you can go about it in two different ways. In the first option you can choose a free one and tweak it to your liking. One way to tweak it is to utilize the various widgets that are available with that particular theme. To do this, select the "Widget" selection on the sidebar of your dashboard under appearance. On free WordPress themes you can also edit the stylesheet. This is the code behind the design of your chosen theme. To do this, select the "Edit" option on the sidebar of your dashboard under appearance. It is important to note that stylesheets are set up in CSS which means that in order to edit the theme you will need to possess knowledge of at least basic CSS code.
Your other option is to create your own WordPress theme. This is also done using CSS. WordPress itself gives an excellent tutorial called Theme Development ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development ) that is very helpful if you want to develop your own theme. It is important to note that if you want to get a clean looking, professional, custom WordPress theme that no one else will have you are going to need to know coding and have access to a design program. If you have neither of these, a simple solution is to work with a design service that will be able to create a custom WordPress theme for you.
Jane Stone is an online marketing expert and has consulted multiple small businesses on building effective internet campaigns. She is currently VP or marketing at http://www.designpax.com.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5679931

Facebook Integration With WordPress - Is It Worth It?


In June 2012 Facebook announced its tighter integration with WordPress (self-hosted) Content Management system by releasing its free plugin "Facebook" available through the WordPress plugins directory.
The plugin allows users of both platforms to automatically post their WordPress posts to their personal profiles and pages they manage, as well as to "tag" (add the names of) pages or friends in the posts.
What Facebook Plugin actually does
The Facebook for WordPress plugin also creates these Widgets can you can add to your sidebars:
  • Activity Feed - displays friends' activity, including likes and comments;
  • Recommendations - offers readers personalised suggestions for pages.
  • Like, subscribe, and send boxes - customisable with fonts, sizes, options to show Faces.
  • Via Plugin settings you can configure the following options:
    • Customisable Like, Subscribe, Send - can be added to the top, bottom of the post or both.
    • Comments box - allows readers to leave comments that will be published on their Timeline, also includes moderation tools for blog administrators.
    • Recommendations Bar - adds a pop up in a corner at the bottom, showing personalised recommendations for other posts that might interest your readers. Reader can "like" posts and add them to their Timeline.
    • Social Publisher - the key functionality that helps you publish your new posts as updates to your profile or to your Pages. You can also include mentions of other people or pages and you can configure where these mentions will be displayed.
On paper (or rather on screen) it all sounds pretty exciting. So we couldn't wait to get it all tested on our sites and see how it really works!
Plugin Installation
The installation process is quite straight-forward. Just download the plugin from WordPress directory or install directly via WordPress. You do need to make sure you are running WordPress v.3+ though.
You will then need to go into plugin settings to set it up. It's got helpful screenshots to show you how to get it done. You will need to create your own Facebook App (probably a first one for many Facebook users!) in order to get App keys that the plugin will use. And in order to create an App you will need to verify your Facebook account by either adding a mobile number or your credit card (if you've not done so already).
You will also need to authorise the plugin with your Facebook account login in order to enable post publishing to your profile/pages.
I'm not going to re-write the steps here as I think the plugin itself and Facebook Developers Help contain enough information to create a basic App for the plugin to work.
Plugin Settings
"Main Settings" information will be obtained from completing your Setup stages and instructions provided by the plugin.
Next you would want to configure your Post and Page settings.
Personally I would prefer to be able to choose by Post, by Page or both. However in this first option you will either use social sharing options on both or none. I've shown you some of the options below of what the plugin does and how these can be customised to suit your website.
Benefits of using the plugin
  1. It easily adds social sharing buttons (like, send, share, subscribe) to your posts and pages. You can also add these options to the sidebar. HOWEVER: you could set up these options previously using various other sharing plugins like AddThis, ShareThis or DiggDigg. These plugins also give you more flexibility on where to place social sharing buttons and customisation of styles.

  2. You can offer customised recommendations to visitors of your blog based on activity of other visitors.This is a very useful option for a blog as it could keep your visitors there longer, getting them to read one post after another. Recommendations bar at the bottom also makes sharing posts easier via Facebook so potentially you could get a greater visibility of your content via readers and visitors. You could get round not using the Plugin and offer similar functionality using Most Popular posts, Most Commented posts, other social sharing plugin and so on but I would say it's not quite the same and as interactive.

  3. You can integrate Facebook Comments into your posts, these posts will then be visible on readers' profile, therefore promoting your content to their friends. HOWEVER: if you previously used WordPress default comments option (and you had comments on your blog), enabling this option will override WordPress comments template. So your old comments, made without Facebook option, will no longer be visible!If you used another plugin to manage your discussions (like DISQUS), then you will now have 2 comments options: via DISQUS and via Facebook Plugin. Personally I think it's confusing for your readers. Besides, DISQUS already offers Facebook login/integration as well as many other options for those who don't want to use their Facebook account when commenting.

  4. You can automatically publish posts and pages to your profiles and pages you manage. You can also mention other people and pages in your posts, which will increase your visibility on Facebook - as these updates will get published to profiles and pages that you mention. HOWEVER: I've tested this functionality with 2 different Facebook profiles on 2 different websites. Obviously I followed the instructions several times, but it just wouldn't publish posts on my profile! Page publishing worked well (twice in my case as I use Networked Blogs to syndicate my blogs). But the only way I could get my profile linked was by mentioning myself in the post. So at the moment it looks like this feature isn't quite right.

  5. If you have Networked Blogs or a similar app already publishing your posts to your profile and Page, you would need to decide which option you prefer to use: Facebook Plugin or a Facebook 3rd party App. The benefit of the Plugin would be that you can mention other people and pages, not just yourself and your page. And you can add a custom message when publishing a post for both mentioning of pages and mentioning of people. A bit like doing an update message with a link attached, but through WordPress and this can be scheduled!
The negative aspects of using Facebook Plugin for WordPress
  1. It slows down your website - Like any other extra plugin that has to query another website before yours is fully loaded this plugin will affect your loading speed. In our test the same blog post fell down from 85 to 81 by just activating Facebook Plugin.

  2. It overrides WordPress comments - If you previously used WordPress comments, rather than 3rd party plugin, your old comments list and form will disappear if you activate Facebook Comments option (not if you just use other parts of the Plugin). We tested it with Genesis and Themeforest themes, it might be that other premium themes will behave differently.

  3. The options are somewhat conflicting with each other - If you activate Like, then tick Send, you don't need to activate Send as the feature will be replicated.

  4. Open Graph activation didn't work in the test - It didn't allow publishing of posts on my personal profile. If you managed to get this fixed, or know why it happened - please share your comments! However Page's publishing worked. Also I'm left in the dark now as to what will happen to my Apps have I been able to "submit" my publishing action as instructed! I'll keep trying and will update this post if I have any more information...
In summary
I will use the Facebook Plugin for WordPress on TJConsulting blog. I won't be publishing posts to my Page or Profile with it yet until I figure out the App integration part. Networked Blogs publishes all my posts reliably on my profile and pages and also creates a Tab with a feed of recent posts. On the occasion I need to share a post with another Facebook user - I'll do it manually using the usual Facebook's share button under each update. I'll stay with my current comments' arrangements that also allow integration with MailChimp for my newsletter subscription.
However you can see new boxes added to Blog sidebar: personalised recommendations, Share this on Facebook. Also below posts and pages you'll find Like, Send and Subscribe options.
Now it's over to you. Have you tried the new Facebook plugin? Do you like it? How will you use it? Have you managed to integrate it with your App? Look forward to your thoughts!
My name is Tamara Baranova. I run TJConsulting Online Marketing and I help small business owners grow their business by delivering effective online marketing mentoring, support and training.
It allows my clients to stop wasting valuable time and start seeing real results. Business owners I work with are serious about raising their business profile and attracting more opportunities. They want their business to succeed, to grow fast, and to generate healthy profits through online marketing strategy that works.
Want to know more? Go to my website http://www.tjconsulting.co.uk to grab my free eCourse 7 Steps to Online Marketing Mastery and learn how to plan your unique social media strategy. Use our step-by-step jargon-free guides to master all popular online marketing tools: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, blogging, and more! Sign up today to get immediate access!


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7135521

How Facebook Timeline Affects Business

Timeline, is a visual representation of facebook user life. With the new Facebook Timeline, you will be able to digitally put in to pictures the story of who you are, highlighting the important photos, significant events, maps of where you've been, and much more, simply by clicking a 'Star' next to any event.

Timeline is divided into two parts with the top portion of the timeline being referred to as the Cover and the remainder being referred to as the Heart. The Cover has personal information on the left along with your friends, photos, and Likes. The Cover of your timeline has the feel of the cover of a book; there's a space at the top for a large, lead photo.

The Heart of the Timeline is similar to a line graph with date markers that serves as a loading dock for all of the significant events in your Facebook life. As long as you've been on Facebook, you can go back and click on newsfeeds, photos, videos, maps, etc... to show what you were doing at specific times in your Facebook life. If you were on Facebook and updating your status, photos, or maps while you were traveling, getting married, pregnant, training for a marathon or at a concert or sporting event, these items will show up in your Timeline. Do you see how this new tool could be very addictive to the user?

This presents a tremendous opportunity for businesses.

Historically, businesses could create a Fan Page in order to generate 'Likes'. Then once Liked, Fan Page owners could send messages or put out posts, videos, or photos related to their product or service in order to communicate with their customers. However, the numbers of photos on Fan Pages were limited, allowing only the profile picture and five thumbnails to be customized, and hiding photo albums and tagged photos beneath the Wall. Therefore, the visual benefits of Facebook were never fully optimized.

Also, marketers misused the Facebook Fan Pages, thus ruining the platform for users. For example, marketers used these Fan Pages as opportunities to spam or broadcast their messages. With some of the recent f8 changes, Fan Pages will no longer be able to message people any longer. Users now have more control over what shows up on their feeds. Businesses who fail to produce useful content will be left out in the cold. But how does this apply to Timeline?

Timeline is a visual platform and, as humans, we increasingly consume more information through photos, from browsing friends' Facebook albums to mobile Twitpics, than we would consume or remember reading blogs or text newsfeeds. Accordingly, Facebook Timeline is composed mainly from photos and videos. Therefore, the strategy of posting quotes, texts, or blog links that could be spammy will be replaced by more visual media.

Timeline now unlocks new possibilities and rewards for businesses, their branding, and their ability to be creative. For example, the Cover page of the Timeline is an 849 by 312 pixel image spanning the top of the users' profile. Consider the value of that real estate for a business that makes an impact in the life of that consumer.

Creative marketing opportunities will be now rewarded with staying power. Unlike newsfeeds that disappear within a day or two, the infinite scroll of these Timeline photos will stay present for a much longer period of time. Therefore, instead of having to come up with 250 conversational posts per year, businesses will be rewarded with fewer posts that are of higher quality.

Businesses will be able to share quality content and build an emotional connection with their fans through behind-the-scenes photos, videos, real-time mobile pictures, and exclusive news. In addition to expressing the brand in the present, a brand can also utilize the Timeline to speak to its past to reignite the nostalgia and sentiment that may be associated with it.

The days of marketers spamming users on Facebook are over and the opportunity that Timeline presents to businesses willing to be creative and interactive with their users is exponentially exciting.

Tom Bukacek is an author, a real estate investor, and social media consultant. Tom is also CEO of Black Box Social Media LLC, a 'managed for' social media marketing consulting company that focuses on higher end clients. Black Box Social Media has also developed an online web 2.0 educational platform called 'Social Media in 7 Minutes'. The purpose of SMI7M is to show small businesses how they can create and implement a social media marketing plan quickly and inexpensively. SMI7M consists of 30+ how to videos detailing how to set up and use web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn, and online directories to allow you to connect and interact with both your current and potential customers. SMI7M also has it's own unique software, '7 Minute Dashboard' that allows the user to engage, manage, and schedule all social media posts from all accounts in just one place. This software allows the business owner to implement their plan in less than just 7 minutes a day. For more information on Social Media In 7 Minutes, please visit http://socialmediain7minutes.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Bukacek

Facebook 'Like' Button on Your WordPress Blog.



The Like button lets a user share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a link back to your website.

This is not a new concept to share a content through social network and it's very easy to enable it with Facebook Like Button plugin.

This Tutorial will help you in adding a Facebook Like Button in every posts and pages on your blog powered with Wordpress.

1. Unzip the file
2. Upload it to wp-content/plugins
3. Activate it from the plugins section






Thursday 16 August 2012

What You Should Do After Installing WordPress?

Wordpress installation is a very simple process and it's known as The Famous 5 Minute Installation.

Next process or check list you need to take in order once you install Wordpress as listed below.

Update Your User Profile:
Change the admin password first to something you can remember instead of remembering that crazy ramdonly generated password.
Manage your user settings via the Users panel, and you can add any additional blog authors here.

Change Your Blog Tagline:
By default, WordPress inserts *Just another WordPress Blog* as the tagline. A tagline is a short and memorable branding message that can be expressed as a subtitle.  It can help define who the blog is for, and what’s in it for them if they stay and read the content.

So go change it and should be stating you blog purpose, provoking thought, asking a question - anything but *Just another WordPress Blog*.
Be creative, this is one of the first things your visitors see.

Permalink Structure:
By default WordPress will display a link structure something like this for your posts: YourDomain.com/?p=101 which means absolutely nothing to you, your visitors or Google.


Your site’s permalinks are like the street address for your site’s web pages. They help both people and robots understand your site’s structure and navigate its contents.\

Navigate to Settings > Permalinks and you will see several options for configuring your permalinks:



I use a custom structure that let's me benefit from the category name (as a part of the URL) and the Post Name. It looks like this: /%category%/%postname%/

Discussion Settings
This is where you decide if you want to let other bloggers know that you’ve linked to them in your post. A default setting simply means that it’s what you want to happen every time. In the first checked box below, keep in mind that it says, “Attempt”…(You won’t always be notified, but they don’t do too bad a job.) Also, remember, as it says below, that these can be changed by the page or post. Just make sure that whatever you set your default at, it’s what you want to do most of the time.


Comment author must fill out name and e-mail - Check this box as a way to force spammers to do a bit of extra work. In reality, the name and e-mail address are not verified in any way prior to the comment being submitted. Most legitimate commenters are more than willing to fill out a name and e-mail address.


The Comment Blacklist box is where I spend my time. I include a list of words that I really don't want on my site such as viagra, penis, enlarge, and the names of several popular drugs. I have nothing against the 60-something year old man who wants to improve performance, my site is just not the place to promote that. I also include words of a sexual nature, including rape, porn, xxx, sex, virgin, lesbian, gay, etc. Trust me, this helps.

Activate (Turn On) Akismet
To prevent or determine whether contents of the comments in your Wordpress blog is spam or not, the Akismet plugin can be use to filter any comment an stop the such spam contents to be displayed on the blog.
Akismet is one of the very best *anti-spam* plugins and comes preinstalled with WordPress.



WordPress requires an API key, something you can only get by registering on the WordPress.com site (profile only, no blogs required). Once you register, they will send an email with your API key. Insert that in the appropriate place in your Dashboard. (Once you activate Akismet, it will be at the top of every Dashboard page until you activate it).

Setup Categories
To quickly tell readers what a blog post is about, you must have at least setup one categories.
It is helpful to have at least an idea of the categories you will use most often. Once you have created your most often used category, change the default category to this.




Setup Ping Services
By default, WordPress added one ping server, list of sites to “ping” when you make a new post.  It’s kind of like telling someone on the shoulder and saying “Hey, I have something new for you to check it out.”

To find out what/who you are pinging now, just go into your admin area and, under “Settings” find “Writing Settings.”  At the bottom of that page you will see “Update Services” and a short list of default places you are pinging when you post to your blog.

You may copy the ping servers list here.

Add Your RSS Feed To Feedburner
To allow other people to monitor  your blog or get updated, Feedburner is such an excellent feed content delivery and tracking system you may don't want want to miss out.


Burn your feed with Feedburner, and then either install a Feed plugin that will force all your feeds to your Feedburner account URL, or update the theme header.php file to add the following line:

My recommendation guide to install Feedburner are here.

There are many more plugin or setting guide you should consider after installing your Wordpress blog. This is only the very basic things I do to every Wordpress blog I create.



Why I Love Facebook?




There are a few reasons why I really like Facebook. A lot of these reasons are simply never covered by other people.









Reason #1 : Growing + Huge Number of Users
The first and biggest reason is because Facebook is growing at a steady rate and it's appears as though it won't be stopping anytime soon.


As you can see Facebook is getting up to nearly 600 million active users. That's almost double the population of United States of America.

That's pretty crazy. And what's even crazier is that these are ACTIVE users meaning they don't just have accounts, they have accounts they go on at least a few times a week.

Reason #2: International Traffic
The second great thing I like about Facebook is kind of implied by the graph above. If there are 600 MILLION active users there must be a lot of people outside the United States that are on Facebook (since the US alone has just 330 million people).


This is really important as you’ll come to understand as we go through this article together.

The reality is your bid pricing will ALWAYS be higher in the United States. Almost always your Adwords costs will be double if you’re targeting the United States as opposed to say Canada or the UK. And the same is true with Facebook.

But most Adwords advertisers are forced into targeting the US because their simply isn’t enough traffic outside the US. But with Facebook that isn’t the case at all.

There are literally millions of people you can target for dirt cheap that will buy your stuff like crazy (outside the US). And we’ll, of course, go over who to target, where to target, and all that good stuff.

But for now remember a BIG reason we love Facebook is that there is traffic from all over the world.

Reason #3: Facebook has 10x fewer Advertisers than Google
Third reason we love Facebook is the competition. Although more people are
coming to Facebook most people simply DON’T know how to use it properly.

Most people struggle with the concepts we’ll be going over in this very chapter about what makes Facebook different than other advertising platforms.

But even with the odd influx of new advertisers Facebook still has at least ten times fewer advertisers than Adwords. And the reality is Facebook has MORE traffic than Google.

Reason #4: Insane Targeting Abilities
Fourth reason we love Facebook is because of its targeting capabilities. Never before in internet marketing have we been to so easily target a certain type of people who like certain things.

Being able to target on an age, keyword, and occupation level (just to name a few) is a huge advantage and those that use these parameters are going to do really well.

And targeting is something we will be going over A LOT in this course – because if you don’t get it right chances are you’ll be leaving money on the table.

There is one “negative” with Facebook though...
It can’t all be great news, right? ;-)

The negative with Facebook is that ads can be tough to get approved if you don’t follow the guidelines. Now don’t worry – we’ll show you exactly how to get around these guidelines and get your ads though.

But know that their “ad approval team”, which is nothing more than a bunch of college kids pressing the green (approved) or red (disapproved) button, have total control over your ads.

And those are the main reasons - and the one reason I don’t - love Facebook advertising and why NOW is the time for you to get started.

What is WordPress?




WordPress is an Open Source blogging application which required self web hosting platform/server  that allows you to build beautiful websites or blog site. It is free to use and most web hosting provider with popular control panel such as cPanel or Plesk support Wordpress with a one-click installation.

WordPress become popular as its functions not only just for a bloggging platform, it has a powerful built  feature as an easy way to add content, images, videos, audio, etc. to your site and acts as a full CMS (content management system). This makes it possible to build an entire website using this software.

It is easy to use and also has thousands of plugins that can be installed to perform just about any function you could ever need to add to your site. These range from shopping carts, article directories and membership scripts to powerful SEO features, contact forms and automated social bookmarking.

One very popular feature of WordPress is Wordpress plugins. There are thousands of plugins available.
Plugins installatiion is quite easy as all plugins can be installed with the click of a button because the installer is built into the dashboard in the admin area.

Another advantage of using WordPress is that it is completely customizable. Thank you for the Wordpress Theme. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the informational content. Themes may be installed by using the WordPress "Dashboard" administration tool, or by uploading theme folders via FTP. With one mouse click, you can change the look of your site or you can hire someone to design a custom theme for your site.

Most of top ranked websites are powered by WordPress. It has the ability of creating “pretty” URLs for each page on your website. With Wordpress, you will have a readable URL matching the title of the post or page.This is Why Search Engines Love WordPress. This will help to dramatically improve your website’s ranking, and your chances of being found by people searching for the products and/or services you offer.