In November 2007 I made a decision to move my blog from blogger onto a self-hosted platform and migrated all my blog posts onto WordPress. I made this decision after much deliberation. My objective was to grow my blog and provide better quality blogging experience for my readers. The first thing I had to do was to find a reliable web hosting plan and register a domain name.

It is not easy to decide on a hosting plan because there are so many to choose from. Web hosting is a very competitive business and you can easily find a plan that cost less than what you would spend for your lunch or your favourite CD. But would you choose a hosting plan simply because it is the cheapest? There are other elements of a hosting plan that you should consider.

1. Price
2. Bandwidth
3. Space
4. Free setup
5. No. of email accounts
6. Database install e.g. MySQL and how many can you install
7. Admin tools e.g. CPanel, Domain Manager, etc.
8. Ease or software installation e.g. Fantastico Deluxe
9. 24/7 Support
10. Reliability
11. Free domain name
12. Affiliate program
13. Web stats monitoring tool like Weblizer or AWStats
14. Other freebies like AdWord vouchers, Yahoo Search Services, etc.

The reason why I went with Bluehost is because of its popularity with WordPress hosting. I googled and found that many WordPress bloggers recommended or use Bluehost’s web hosting to host their blog. I also liked the ability to set up multiple domains, sub-domains and install as many instances of WordPress that I like. Also setting up WordPress is easy. Fantastico Deluxe does it for you from creating the folder for the php scripts and creating the database and setting up the login.

If you are considering changing your hosting plan or if you are currently using Blogger and would like to use WordPress instead (there are many benefits for using WordPress over Blogger which I will tell you more in another post), then I have a proposal for you.

I will be honest with you. I am encouraging you to consider signing up for a hosting plan with Bluehost because I am an affiliate partner but I am not only encouraging you to buy a hosting plan with Bluehost because I want your money. Instead I am making you an attractive proposal. If you sign up for a hosting plan with Bluehost.com, I will share my affiliate earnings with you. I will be paid $65 for every affiliate sign up. I will share $30 with you if you sign up for a hosting plan with Bluehost.com through me. I will not make this proposal if I don’t think Bluehost.com is a reliable web hosting company. I signed up for a hosting plan with Bluehost.com since October 2007 and I have been a happy Bluehost customer.

What will you get if you sign up for a Bluehost hosting plan through me.

1) A reliable web hosting platform
2) Easy Install and setup of WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or forums using Fantastico Deluxe.
3) It will cost you only $6.95 per month and you get a free domain name of your choice
4) And you get $30 cashback because I am sharing my affiliate/referral earnings with you.
5) You can sign up for the affiliate program and earn $65 for every referral.

Remember, if you are interested in my proposal, use only the link below to sign up so that I will receive the referral earnings from Bluehost and share $30 with you. Cashback will be paid by PayPal. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can create one here.

SIGN UP USING ONLY THE LINK BELOW. IF YOU SIGN UP USING ANOTHER LINK TO BLUEHOST, I WON’T GET THE REFERRAL AND YOU WON’T GET $30.

If you wish to contact me, click here and include “Bluehost” in the subject.

I must admit that I have not put in a lot of effort updating my blog in the last couple of months. What’s my excuse? Mainly work. We just rolled out a new CRM system and I have been swamped with support issues and I am also working on a new corporate website. I’ll tell you more about that later. At the same time I am in the process of buying a house and I’ve just had a procedure carried out on me earlier this week at Kingston hospital and I am now recuperating at home. My stress level has gone up because I have been trying to juggle all the activities at the same time. That’s when I decided that I will blog less until I get everything sorted out.

I finally have some free time on hand since I am at home recuperating and I decided to go through my inbox of more than 1,000 unread emails. I found an interesting email from Jonathan Leger. It is regarding a new service he launched recently called ShareAPost.com. ShareAPost.com is a free service that lets you put other people’s blog posts on your own blog(s).

Why would you want to do that?

It is not always easy to come up with good quality content for your blog all the time. Using syndicated content from time to time will give your visitors good quality material to read for which you can show advertisements or affilate links. If you think about it, newspapers have been using syndicated content for the very same reason for years.

Is it complicated to syndicate content to my blog?

1. Not if you have a WordPress blog.
2. All you have to do is setup an account with ShareAPost.com.
3. Create a user account in WordPress that you will use to syndicate
4. And add a rpc ping to your WordPress blog. This will automatically ping ShareAPost.com when you publish a new post on your blog.
5. When this happens, your posts will appear on ShareAPost.com. Others can add a summary or full text of your post on their blog and vice versa. The post will have a link back to your blog. If you are adding someone else’s post then there will be a link back to the author’s blog.
6. Note that you have the option not to allow syndication if you do not wish to do so.

At the time of reading the email from Jonathan Leger, there are close to 5,000 blog posts in the content directory.

Wouldn’t ShareAPost.com encourage duplicate posts in the blogosphere?
Some of you may have this concern because Google do not rank duplicate content and this may impact your Google ranking. Well, Jonathan Leger is the expert in SEO and you should read his argument why submitting duplicate posts to the blogosphere will do more good than harm to blogging.

Read it here: http://jonathanleger.com/why-post-duplicate-content-to-your-blogs/

After signing up for an account on ShareAPost.com, I tried out ShareAPost and added a post to my blog. Here is the link.

I leave it up to you to make your decision if you think ShareAPost.com will help you in your blogging endeavours. Let me know what your thoughts on this.

I have been running into an issue with WordPress that I’d like some help with. As you know if you use WordPress, there is a WordPress plugin that allows you to track your blog stats. However, I have run across SEVERAL themes that, if I use them as my blog’s theme, seem to BLOCK visitors from being tracked on this stats page. In other words…people are visiting my blog, but with some themes active, the traffic won’t register on WordPress Stats. With other themes active, they DO register. Any idea what might be in some themes that blocks the stats, and how to fix it?

I came across this question being asked by Craig from HistoryHype on a message board I frequent and thought I’d echo my answer here, as I’m sure this problem has been experienced by many a WordPress user. Here’s the bottom line:

The problem is caused by missing bits in the WordPress theme. As a plugin author I find it very frustrating when people complain that plugins aren’t working correctly, I investigate, and find that theme authors have omitted certain sections that should be there!

In this case, the stats tracking code is embedded in the footer of the website, which means that the plugin assumes you have a line reading:
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
in the footer file of your template.

If you’re missing this tag, any plugin that needs it won’t work and this includes the WordPress stats plugin. The solution is to add the line to the footer file of your template, and contact the template author to let him know he’s been a “very naughty boy“.

Unfortunately this problem is more common than you may think and it may cause people to abandon plugins or themes that don’t work well together. Resolving the issue is not hard, if you know what hooks the plugin is using and what tags are needed in the WordPress theme. Wading through code can be a daunting prospect for the uninitiated though. (someone once compared it to trying to use one of these adjustable beds without a manual) so if you have a specific issue, just Ask a Question and I’ll help you out!

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Faskowen.info%2Findex.php%2F2008%2F05%2Fwordpress-plugins-not-work-with-some-themes%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Why+do+some+Wordpress+plugins+not+work+with+some+themes%3F’;
addthis_pub = ‘owencutajar’;

Related Questions

• How do I add a contact form to my WordPress blog? (1)
• How can I make my WordPress blog more readable on a PDA? (1)
• Where have all my tags gone? (3)
• How do I display RSS headlines from another blog? (1)
• How do I list my Entrecard droppers? (16)

Source: Why do some WordPress plugins not work with some themes?

Here are some of my favourite WordPress video tutorials. It is great that there are so much resource available online on how to use WordPress and there are hundreds of hints and tips out there. I selected the following WordPress tutorials because they allow you to look under the WordPress hood and learn about page templating, css and some php scripting. I hope you find them useful.

How to Create a Custom WordPress Page Template

WordPress How to hide header when using a custom blog header

The Best WordPress Plug-ins

Make Your WordPress Blog Search Engine Friendly

If you are looking for a WordPress theme and love Facebook, why not use a Facebook WordPress theme with your blog. The Facebook WordPress theme incorporates all the best design elements of Facebook’s layout. The theme that I stumbled upon is free and is ready for download from http://foxinni.com/my-themes/facebook-layouts-wordpress-theme/

What are the features available in the Facebook WordPress theme?

Demo of the Facebook WordPress Theme

http://demos.foxinni.com/

In my last article I wrote about Website design guidelines. Here are more pointers that I found useful and you may want to consider when designing your website.

Website optimization

a) Reduce the number of images on your website.

Images make your website load very slowly and the more images you have, the longer it takes to download your web page.

Include only images that are essential on your website. Make sure the images are optimized for web using your image editing tool so that they have a minimum file size.

b) Keep text paragraphs at a reasonable length.

How you structure your content on your website is important.

Example:

How many articles should you display on your main page?

Do you show the entire article on your home page or just teasers and a click here to read the full article on a different page?

I limit my WordPress home page to display five most recent articles. Others may decide to display more articles or less articles. That is a personal preference but remember the more text paragraphs there are to download, the longer it takes. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

c) Cross browser compatibility

It is important to make sure that your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

d) Scripting language

Most browsers these days support JavaScript but avoid using scripting language unless it is absolutely necessary. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

f) Style sheets

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Once again it is plugin Friday and today I want to share with you a WordPress plugin that I discovered recently. It is called Psychic Search and it is available for download from www.maxblogpress.com. It is an interesting plugin because it will secretly discover what your visitors want to read on your blog. I know what you are asking, is that possible?

How is that possible?
Psychic Search is a plugin that will track and keep a log of what your visitors type in your WordPress search box. Over time you build a list of keywords and keyphrases and you can use the keyword log to help you plan what to write.

If you see a consistent count of certain keywords, e.g. WordPress plugin, then it gives you an indication that visitors to your blog are interested in WordPress plugin and you can use the data collected to your advantage and write articles on WordPress plugin to encourage more visitors to your site.

Psychic Search plugin helps you in making decisions on the type of articles to write that will interest your readers.

Is the plugin free?
According to Maxblogpress.com website, the Psychic Search plugin is free for a limited time only.

Installation and management
Installation – download the plugin, copy to your WordPress plugin folder and activate the plugin from your WordPress plugin administration page.

Management – minimal management required after plugin activation.

Stats – you can see the stats by going to Dashboard > Psychic Search from your WordPress administration page.

Here is the link for more detailed information on how to use Psychic Search

My thoughts on Psychic Search plugin

Do you know when your readers use your search box and what they search for? I for one do not have a clue and if Psychic Search plugin can give me an insight into what my readers are searching for when they visit my blog, I would want to know. Because having the data will give me a better knowledge of my readers and I can write relevant articles that encourage readers to return to my blog.

If you have any thoughts or experience using the Psychic Search plugin, do drop me a comment.

If you are looking for the quickest way to create a WordPress theme, look no further. The online WordPress Theme Generator does exactly that – it creates WordPress themes that you can instantly deploy. Like all generators, there are limitations but let’s take a look at what the WordPress Theme Generator can do first.

The WordPress online generator is created by Yvo Schaap and it lets you create your own custom WordPress theme. You don’t need to have any knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, PHP or CSS. You can customize the variables and see the changes immediately in a fully formed WordPress theme preview.

What can you customize?

Site name
Body size
Sidebar location
Third column
Menu layout
Overall scheme
Background
Text scheme
Tag cloud
Archives and search
Distribution

Save changes and deploy WordPress theme

Once you are happy with the customization, all you have to do is save the theme and a zip file is created and made available for download. The zip file contains the files that makes up the WordPress theme.

What version of WordPress is the generated theme based on?

The WordPress theme generated using the generator is based on WordPress 2.1 to 2.3 with Yahoo! UI (grids, tabs & fonts) to support all A-Grade browsers and valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The theme also supports widgets and tags.

How can I access the online WordPress Theme Generator?

http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/

My thoughts

It is very powerful for bloggers who are not programmers or designers because you can instantly create a WordPress theme without having to learn PHP coding, HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

It can only generate standard themes but if you have knowledge on how to code, you can take the generated files and make changes to them and produce WordPress theme fast.

Not able to generate magazine style themes which are becoming popular these days.

Personally I would use the generator as a tool to guide me to learn how to create WordPress theme. I don’t know about you but I learn faster by example.

If you decide to try out the WordPress theme generator, let me know your experience and thoughts.

Since I started using WordPress, I have been using plugins to extend the capability of my blogging platform. I use at least a dozen plugins but I have not written much about how I use them with my blog. I have decided that once a week I will dedicate my time to write one post about WordPress plugins. I will call this project “Plugin Friday”.

The most recent WordPress plugin that I have discovered is called CommentLuv by Andy Bailey. The CommentLuv plugin will display the link of the commenter’s latest post from their blog when he/she leaves a comment on your blog. I personally think this will encourage people to leave comments because you are also giving them some free advertising by displaying their latest post on your blog.

How does CommentLuv plugin get the commenter’s latest post and display it on your blog?

The program will visit the commenter’s feed and attempt to scrape the last post they posted and display it under their comment on your blog. According to what is written about the technical aspect of this plugin, I am quoting what is written on the website www.fiddyp.co.uk.

The plugin retrieves your last post at the time of the comment being posted and appends the extra text just before the comment gets saved to the database, this way it doesn’t put any extra load on the database or server other than the effort required add another 60 or so characters to the comment content.

The plugin will only start adding commenters last post after you have installed and activated the plugin. Any comments before the plugin was activated will not show a link of the commenter’s last post.

How do you install CommentLuv?

You install CommentLuv like how you install other plugins in WordPress.

1. Download the plugin and unzip.
2. Upload the php file to plugins directory
3. Go the the plugin list in WordPress management section and activate the plugin.

Where do I download CommentLuv plugin?

Visit www.fiddyp.co.uk to download the plugin.

Start using CommentLuv

I have activated CommentLuv and I encourage you to leave a comment to try out the plugin.

I completed uploading my new banner just a while ago. Designing it has been a challenge especially in such a short time frame. In this post I would like to share my experience designing my site’s top banner. I am an application developer and not a designer but I do enjoy doing some design work. All I can say is not only must you have an eye for design and colours, most importantly I think you need lots of patience because there is a lot of fiddling involved using Photoshop.

So here’s what I learned from designing my banner:

1. Design is not as easy as it looks.
2. It is time consuming. You can spend hours designing.
3. It takes time and effort to look for good images and not all are free or can be used freely.
4. It is vital to choose the right colours for your banner to match your WordPress theme.
5. It is important to understand image formats, e.g. jpg, gif, png and which to use.
6. Learning to use all the tools in Photoshop requires more patience than I thought I had.

Here are some resource that I stumbled upon while learning to design my banner for WordPress

1. Designing Headers.
2. Gallery of free headers for WordPress that you can use. Limited but worth taking a look.
3. Quick reference colour chart.
4. Article on what makes a great blog header.

What are the options available when it come to designing your website?

1. You can do it the easy and expensive way by hiring a professional designer.
2. The cheaper way is to buy customizable set of pre-made graphics online.
3. Be like me and do it the free and hard way – designing it yourself and learn to improve your design skill as you go along.