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.

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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!

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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

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.