Jay

Blogger, Facebook Advertiser, Twitter Addict

Display WordPress Blogroll Categories In Widgets Using BetterBlogRoll

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Apr 082010
 

wordpress-blogrollManage your blogroll display easily with BetterBlogRoll.

I’m using it because I wanted to separate blogroll categories displayed in various widgets inside my wordpress theme. I’ve used this plugin for several years and have never had a problem with it. I hope it works well for you.

This works perfect if you’d like to group together links and display them in different areas. Sometimes I’ll include 5 forum links, 5 online store links, etc all related to whatever the site is about. You may also want to use this to group together different sets of affiliate links and put them in key widget enabled areas.

Your theme will determine how useful this plugin is. If you only have a couple widget areas, or only a sidebar widget, it may not be as useful (however I still use it on my 2 column single widgetable area sites)

 Posted by Jay at 1:27 am  Tagged with:

Jarrah – A Sleek Free WordPress Theme

 Wordpress Themes  No Responses »
Apr 042010
 

jarrah-wordpressJarrah great free wordpress theme I stumbled across when looking for a placeholder design for a new site I was building.

With 2 columns and 4 widget areas you can create a full looking site without having 50 posts and tons of pages/comments. It’s easy to modify and it looks great out of the box (no images to edit, etc).

This is definitely one of my new favorite free themes. I’d recommend checking it out if you’ve been thinking about putting together a new website and want to focus on content development instead of design.

 Posted by Jay at 4:22 pm

URL Rotator for WordPress

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Apr 032010
 

URL Rotation Plugin is the best URL Rotator I’ve found for WordPress. It allows you to setup specific jump URLs such as yourdomain.com/magneticbracelets, then specify a group of URLs to rotate for that link and evenly distribute clicks between them. If you wanted to test out 5 different landing pages for magnetic bracelets to see which one made you the most money per 100 clicks this would be a great way to do it.

Why use a URL Rotator? – To Test Landing Pages! You can buy the worst traffic on earth to test landing pages using URL Rotators. You can start shelling out for top dollar clicks on Google once you know which product pages generally convert best. Sure there are a lot of variables and traffic from different places converts differently but if you test 5 URLs and the worst one gives you 1 sale per 100 clicks and the best one gives you 5 , you’re going to probably always see much better conversions on the latter page.

 Posted by Jay at 3:47 am  Tagged with:

Block WordPress Comment Spam

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Apr 022010
 

Need a free WordPress comment spam blocking plugin but not sure which one to install? The WP-SpamFree Anti Spam WordPress Plugin will block spam and likely deter spammers from coming back.

Several friends installed this early on and reported that it caused some problems with various themes. There have been several new versions released in 2010 that should correct any problems people where having.

I’ve used this free plugin on several sites over the past 7 months and it has really been a huge time saver. It works flawlessly for me.

There are several options you can set to determine the level of security on your blog. The recommended settings should do the trick. It works right out of the box.

 Posted by Jay at 6:25 am  Tagged with:

Best Polls WordPress Plugin

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Apr 022010
 

Want to run some polls on your wordpress blog? Let me introduce you to my little friend WP Polls. This poll was written by the legendary plugin author Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. I don’t want to get too off topic here but I recently heard Lester has taken a job at some company. I can’t believe we haven’t all donated 100′s of dollars for lester’s plugins. I’m really let down with myself and I think this is a huge loss to wordpress. I am going to paypal him soon, really.

Why run polls on your website? If you run the right polls, you’re customers will tell you exactly what they are looking for, and exactly what they aren’t looking for. Let them determine how you build your site and which products you showcase. It will keep them coming back and drive up your conversions. Matching products to your customers is a science aided by polling.

I hope this doesn’t get too outdated anytime soon. A simple poll is a great way to fill up some space on a new website that’s starving for content.

 Posted by Jay at 5:42 am  Tagged with: ,

Free WordPress Themes Reviewed

 Wordpress Themes  No Responses »
Apr 012010
 

Free WordPress Themes I used for the first time last month:

Intrepidity – very advanced search optimized theme. This thing is cutting edge. It’s perfect for tech blogs or about any other type of site. It’s professional enough to use anywhere. Choose from 4 colors plus tons of other options in the Theme’s configuration menu. This is the best free WordPress theme I’ve seen since Suffusion.

Andrea – this is a great simple 2 column theme that includes a header navigation menu. I like it because it’s super simple and smooth. It’s perfect for wire-framing new sites before the final design is finished. This theme doesn’t have a configuration menu. You must manually edit template files but they are very simple.

NotesIL – if you’re looking for an extra basic 2 column theme this could be the one for you. It worked perfectly to create a few simple landing pages I needed. Perhaps not great for blogs, this template is easy to modify and use for pages.

 Posted by Jay at 4:29 am  Tagged with: , , ,

iStudio Mac Inspired Free WordPress Theme

 Wordpress Themes  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

The iStudio WordPress theme is a very clean and attractive template that will come in handy for any quick wire framing jobs or basic site demonstrations. In other words, this theme is a great temporary placeholder until you develop your own design.

Unfortunately it lacks the ability to exclude specific pages from the header navigation menu and a few other basic things needed to make it super easy to deal with. If you know a bit of wordpress codex you will have no problem customizing this theme.

 Posted by Jay at 4:37 am  Tagged with: ,

Recent Comments Widget Plugin For WordPress

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Feb 172010
 

The Get Recent Comments wordpress plugin written by Krischan Jodies allows you to format and control all aspects of your Recent Comments display in your sidebar widget.

With support for gravatars, options to exclude specific categories, order comments by date or postings and handling trackbacks in separate lists, this plugin basically is the answer to your prayers if you want to show off the latest 4 or 5 recent comments in your sidebar.

I’ve been using the Recent Comments plugin for several months through various wordpress core file updates and it hasn’t let me down yet.

 Posted by Jay at 2:52 am  Tagged with: ,

WordPress Plugin: Rotate Links In Sidebar Widget

 Wordpress Plugins  No Responses »
Feb 162010
 

Want to have your blogroll or links list displayed in your sidebar but don’t want to have a huge list of 30 links distracting people from your content and making your site look like a link farm? I ran into this problem earlier in the week so I went searching for plugins and tested a few out, let me share the best one with you.

Better Blogroll is a wordpress plugin that allows you to specify the number of links that should be displayed, then rotates your blogroll links in your sidebar. It very simple and highly configurable. You can also control “follow” or “nofollow” attributes to control page rank leakages.

 Posted by Jay at 2:37 am  Tagged with: ,
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