BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading WordPress Secret Key Salt Generator Now in Indonesian?!. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

Content Plugins

Ultimate TinyMCE - If HTML and CSS has you quaking in your boots, this plugin is for you. Adding a number of features to the posts visual editor, Ultimate TinyMCE allows you to include complex post functions with just the click of a button. It allows you to manipulate fonts, styles and CSS via an easy-to-use user interface and even add more advanced elements to your posts (such as posting a delivery timetable for your site’s merchandise or including a YouTube video).

Gravity Forms – This is an extremely handy plugin that allows you to create advanced forms using a visual editor. While this is a premium plugin (meaning you have to pay for it), it’s simply the absolute best plugin for creating contact forms, order forms, registration forms and any other kind of form you could ever need. On top of this, Gravity Forms allows advanced functionality that can automate many of your form-related tasks (such as integrating MailChimp, collecting PayPal payments, etc.)

Media Plugins

NextGen Gallery – This is a fully integrated gallery and slideshow plugin which makes displaying your images a total breeze. Add images, sort them into albums and display them however you like – this plugin handles everything from displaying your images to handling the backend administration.

TubePress – Another premium plugin, TubePress allows easy, hassle-free integration of YouTube channels into your WordPress site. This works in a similar way to NextGen gallery, but using videos instead of images – Create a YouTube or Vimeo gallery from your channels, or display playlists in your sidebar. If you want to add video functionality to your website, TubePress is the way to go.

Site Backup Plugins

WP-DB-Backup – If you’ve ever lost important files on your home PC, you’ll understand that you can never have too many backups. WP-DB-Backup makes a copy of your WordPress database and sends it to you via e-mail or stores it on your server. This is incredibly useful for restoring lost posts but do remember – this plugin will only backup your database. Uploaded files, plugins and themes are not included.

BackupBuddy – An all-in-one backup solution, this plugin does everything WP-DB-Backup does and more. Automated backups on your schedule, full install backups (which include all your custom files, templates, etc), it really does the lot. While this is a premium plugin, it really is worth the investment, especially as your site grows. Note: This plugin can also be used to migrate your WordPress install to another server – it’s as easy as saving a backup and uploading it elsewhere.

Anti-Spam Plugins

Akismet – This plugin comes pre-installed with WordPress but it’s surprising how many people forget it’s there. This plugin checks your comments against the Akismet web service to determine whether or not they are spam comments. It requires an Akismet API key (which is freely available) so you will have to register.

Social Networking Plugins

Sociable – Want to link to your social networking sites on your website? Simply install this plugin and point it towards your accounts. Once setup, you can add social network bookmarks to all of your posts and pages – linking to your twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts as well as many others.

While these plugins are all absolutely fantastic, they represent only a tiny portion of what is available to you. If there’s a function you need that isn’t covered by these, try searching the official WordPress Plugin Directory – you never know what you might find. But do remember that just like WordPress, plugins are always changing. That means that what works right now, might not be so useful a few months down the road. So before you use any plugin, research its current state. Check the official forums for updates and make sure you take notice of each plugin’s compatibility information (made available on their corresponding pages in the official directory). If you have plugins installed already, remember to keep up to date, using the latest version that’s currently available.

And most of all… enjoy your new plugins!

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? Lisa-Ann Wilson thanks you for reading WordPress Plugins: The Best of the Best. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

Right?

More than just a totally groovy content management system (CMS), self-hosted WordPress installations provide amazing opportunities for business of all types and folks of all flavors to create and publish nifty content. Add in the gazillion themes and plugins available for the platform and the extensible nature of it approaches infinity.

And that’s all darned well and good. But hear me when I tell you how easy getting lost in developing one’s WordPress website can be. Spending hours looking at WordPress themes. Or for the more affluent among us who want a lovely, professional quality theme, spending hours poring over premium WP themes happens as well. (Not to take anything away from some of the free WordPress themes available in the repository. Many of them are either “lite” versions of beautiful premium themes, or very lovingly created by extremely talented theme developers.)

The same goes for choosing which plugins to add extra functionality to one’s installation. Most website owners have a specific set of actions which they need their online presence to accomplish. Others, like myself, simply enjoy finding new and interesting ways to extend a WordPress site. The time spent on these endeavors–choosing themes, testing plugins–all takes away from one of the main reasons for having a website.

Whether one uses their site to just publish and share personal thoughts and ideas or aims to generate tons of traffic and sell millions of gizmos, one thing remains the same–Content makes everything happen. Being able to develop quality articles or blog posts (or any number of other custom post types one might set up with WordPress) has to happen before the first gizmo sells or reader enjoys a memoir.

The following list endeavors to layout exactly how I generate ideas for content, research various resources, write the article, publish it, and then use social media marketing and search engine optimization to aid the inbound traffic to my site. Enjoy!

Generating Content and Traffic with WordPress

Some websites lend themselves to idea after idea for posts and articles. Others? Not so much. From my experiences the broader a site’s focus might be, the more challenging generating interesting and unique ideas becomes. Take this website, BoldlyGoing.com for instance. My content goals are to help you learn, understand and know WordPress websites.

Tall order, eh?

So, one of the first things I needed to do was break that down into bite sized chunks (otherwise known as categories!) I decided to go with the following:

1. Website Worries
2. Winning Websites
3. Plugin Power
4. Dream Themes
5. Spotlight Articles (Like this one!)

Now that the site is broken into categories, focusing on generating ideas becomes a bit more fine tuned. The following idea generation tips easily get applied to these five areas my site will generate content for. If you find it challenging to come up with your next post idea at times, try focusing on your categories. They can give you a much needed head start!

With this narrowed focus in mind, consider using the great advice of Unbounce.com guest author, Angela Stringfellow in her recent article 5 Tips to Use News Events to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Page.

While Ms. Stringfellow focuses her article on using “news events” to drive targeted traffic to specific landing pages you create, one can find much, much more in the post. For example:

• Using various freely available news resources like Google’s Alerts, Trends and News services can be the treasure trove for currently trending topics that spark ideas which fit into your site’s category game plan
• Services like Alltop and the advanced search functions available at most social networking communities, such as Facebook and Twitter, clue you in to what your peers and thought leaders are currently talking about with respect to your site’s focus
• Creating rich conversations between yourself and the audience you hope to entertain or inform benefits everyone involved with quality content that lasts and outperforms those 300 word quick posts you used to create

Have Idea Will Create Epic Content

Or as my friend Corbett Barr of ThinkTraffic.net oh, so eloquently put it, just “Write Epic Shit” (OMG, yes, occasionally “bad” words might get slung around the BoldlyGoing.com website! I’ll understand should you bounce away. It’s all groovy.) Definitely head over there and add that article to your reading list, if you’ve not read it already.

I’ll give you Corbett’s synopsis with this single quote from the article:

Building a raving audience online all starts with writing epic shit. Period. Hands down. End of story.

Preceding that nugget of wisdom, another jeweled take away included the harsh facts that “…promotional tactics only make up 20%…” of the success of a website and the other 80% is about the aforementioned creation processes.

Create content you care about. Create content others care about. Otherwise, it’s all just a waste of time, isn’t it?

You’ve Created Stellar Stuff, Now What?

Well, now you probably should do some promoting of that content. But do it in epic fashion–yes? Understand that I really take to heart the teachings of young Mr. Derek Halpern, owner/operator over at SocialTriggers.com (& you should get over there and get some of his juice as soon as you can, too!) One of the first things I heard Derek teach on was using social media to bring traffic to my site, not using my site to send traffic to the various social communities. To simplify that lesson, basically remove all the icons and links from your site that take your valued and valuable visitors away from your direct influence. But, still use those channels to your advantage.

Let’s review some of the standard options for getting out the word on our blog posts and articles:

• Twitter–Suffice it to say if you don’t have a Twitter account for your site, or yourself, get one. Got one? Good. If you are using WordPress, know there are well over 1,000 variations in the Official Plugin Repository. Some of these provide for automation of publishing one’s new blog posts instantly to a Twitter account.

  In the past, I admit I used these types of automated opportunities. Not so much because I was lazy–well, maybe because I was lazy. Don’t get me wrong, they definitely have their place. But today, I actually hand-craft all of my tweets. I do, however, automate when those tweets get sent out. For this you can use any of a number of services like CrowdBooster, Buffer, even HootSuite.

  Remember, effectively use those 140 characters to your advantage for the crowd that follows you. Give them something interesting–more than the Title of the post and the link.

• Facebook–There are a couple of ways to use the Facebook. Again, I discourage using the automated posting plugins or even setting up Facebook to pull your posts directly into your Wall. (I think they may have stopped allowing that. Not sure.) You can always create an entry into your personal wall, or the wall of the page for the website (you have one of those, yes?).

  Or you can use Facebook Notes on the Wall for your website and get a bunch of birds for the effort. As commented on above, the use of the Notes feature provides you the ability to not only grab the attention of your friends on Facebook (and fans of your site’s page), but with judicious use of “tagging” within the note, you get the content (and links to your site!) onto the walls of others and access to their followers. BONUS BINGO BABY! These are good links and should greatly aid in your inbound marketing efforts.

• Pinterest–Yup, if you’re not taking advantage of this community for the links and potential traffic, well, you’re missing out on opportunities. How do I know? Am I seeing tons of traffic to my sites as a result of pinning the images onto my boards at Pinterest? No. Not yet. But only because I’ve just accepted that the community will be here for a while. I know that it works, however, because of the massive amount of spammy activities that are going on there.

  Of course, in no way should you adopt some of those “techniques”, but the fact that some of those folks see great value from the traffic generation clearly indicates that traffic is there to be had. Take advantage of Pinterest by using nice images in your articles and posts. Then, after you’ve created your epic stuff, and are on to the promotion portion pin those images to your boards, again, write up nice excerpts that will attract other Pinterest users to your site. Be sure to add the post’s URL to the pin. You may have to do this after you’ve pinned the image, depending upon the way you go about pinning.

• Blog Comments–Even though many blog owners turn off the “dofollow” option on links generated in the comments section, don’t dismiss a quality site from your follow up promotional efforts as a result. You will still get traffic from those sites which do allow your links to be displayed. Want to know the super secret trick to using this technique to generate successful traffic into your site?

  There is no super secret trick!

  Just take the time to participate in the conversations on those sites. Actually read the damn post! And then read the comments that appear before you. Those folks took the time to read and leave intelligent comments of their own (well, we hope they did!) By interacting with both the author of the post as well as the regular followers of that site, you indicate your willingness to join them, offering a quality comment of your own. Folks will click on your link and check out your site when you take the time to do this technique the right way.

Are You Asking ‘Where’s the Happiness?’

The happiness surrounds you, provided you work this stuff well. Since you asked so nicely, following are some of my personal tips for squeezing out every drop of goodness doing this type of work:

1. Just Love It: You know the saying, “Do what you love, the money will follow.” Figuring out the “what you love” part can be difficult, admittedly. For those of you fortunate enough to have that activity in the bag, keep on loving it and it will love you back many times over.
2. Pay Attention to the Journey: Someone shared with me, a long time ago, success was in the journey, not the destination. Not sure I got the meaning then, but now I get it. Completely. If you are not finding the amazing things with all steps of the process you use to generate content and traffic for your website, I can almost assuredly assume the destination will hold much less for you than you hope.
3. Do “It” for the Right Reasons: Also known as “Do Good Not Evil”, “Use the Force (for good)”, and “What Goes Around, Comes Around”. Techniques like spamming, phishing, email bombs, and other nefarious actions may get you to a destination faster, but not necessarily in better fashion. You want to build a strong, solid, long-term business–yes? If so, be good by doing good. We good? Good!

On a final note, I understand that “happiness” likely changes for each of us. That’s cool. And that’s the way it should be for sure. If you have decided to take up some sort of online entity and are hoping to feel some Internet love and possibly even make a living to support yourself and/or your family, take the time to get the education you need. Hopefully some of what you need can be found right here at BoldlyGoing.com. My goal is to share what I’ve learned since coming online in 1996. (Yeah, the browser I used back then was the NCSA Mosaic!)

Mostly this site will focus on WordPress as a content management system (CMS) but there will certainly be general website information which can be applied to any platform. Remain diligent, and focused. You can get to where you desire and might even be surprised when you arrive somewhere you never dreamed possible because you took the time to do things right–the Boldly Going Way!

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Generating Content, Traffic & Happiness!. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

Thankfully, that early trend seems to have passed and we’re now seeing a variety of ‘coming soon’ pages with a lot more functionality than we’d come to expect. With the rise of blogging, the development of Content Management Systems (CMS), platforms like WordPress and the great number of WordPress themes, the ease of implementing temporary pages becomes a snap.

• But what exactly makes a good Coming Soon theme?
• And how can you get the most out of it?

Ease of Use

The coming soon page will be instantly seen as a preview of things to come, so don’t make it needlessly complex or cluttered. Throwing everything you have at your visitors may seem like a good idea at the time, but you want to inform and impress–a confusing layout with too much going on does neither.

On the other hand, an optimized theme with a simple, yet stylish layout will give your coming soon page a touch of professionalism. Remember: Bigger is not always better.

Customization

When looking for a theme for your website, you will no doubt want something which isn’t just capable of being customized, but which is easy to customize. Of course, if you have an understanding of HTML and CSS, you can customize almost any theme, but otherwise this can be a bit daunting.

Thankfully, many themes come with the ability to customize certain aspects through the themes options–a feature which makes customizing your coming soon page a whole lot easier, even for the seasoned pro.

Links

So your beautiful new website isn’t quite ready yet, but you don’t want your visitors to just sit there waiting for something to happen. This is the perfect opportunity to link them to some other useful websites. For instance, a travel blog might want to include links to the cheapest holiday deals or even the best place to get hold of travel money.

Obviously you wouldn’t want to link them to your main competitors but some well thought out connections could help your visitors find what they are looking for–and this could make them want to come back to your site when it eventually goes live.

Features

Gone are the days when a coming soon page was a mere statement of your websites intent. Instead, you will want to implement a range of features that will help and inform your visitors, and may even increase demand for your site when it goes live.

1. Sign-up and Subscription Forms: A little text box at the bottom of your coming soon page can mean a big difference to the number of visitors when your site launches. By encouraging visitors to subscribe before you launch, you can keep them informed so they know EXACTLY when to expect your site.
2. Social Media Links & Buttons: With the rise of Facebook and Twitter, good use of social media is becoming increasingly important. By setting up a Facebook or Twitter account and linking it in to you coming soon page, you have a much greater control of what information your potential new visitors have access to–whether sneak previews of what your site has to offer or special promotions to use once the site has launched.
3. Recent Comments & Tweets: Do not overlook the importance of hooking folks into the site. Providing a list of recent comments and tweets will allow you to create hype for your website before it’s even started. A great way to get people to your website is to get them talking.
4. Development News: While you don’t want to overload people with technical information about servers, software and geeky mumbo jumbo, you will want to keep them updated on the progress of your website. Adding development news to your coming soon page will keep people up to speed and may add a certain amount of hype in itself. Of course, if one’s site is focused on technical things, it may be perfectly reasonable to express such information.

Design

Of course, the design of one’s coming soon page should not be overlooked. You want something stylish yet unique and choosing the right website theme can give you access to an incredible design framework to build your page upon. But remember, your coming soon page shouldn’t look exactly like the theme you’re creating it from. Find something you like, a design that impresses you. Then use that to create something unique, a coming soon page which reflects and represents your brand.

Recommended Themes

In case you need some help deciding which coming soon theme would be best for you, here are a few popular choices:

1. Placeholder: This clean and unobtrusive theme has social media links, subscription options and even a real-time counter which counts down to your site’s launch. Simple set up includes styling options within the themes menu.
2. Ice Breaker: Again, this theme is functional and well-designed, but lacks the extra bells and whistles for a much sleeker finish. While you can change the background colours and some basic style options, more intensive edits require the use of Photoshop. The original PSD file is supplied, but this is aimed more towards design professionals.
3. Ready2Launch: A highly customizable and altogether fun theme. This is actually a bundle of 10 themes based around the same design concept, allowing you to pick and choose from a number of base styles before customizing the theme further. This would be perfect for use by web designers who manage sites for a number of clients, or multi-site admins.

Share some of your custom Coming Soon themes and stories. Or feel free to ask questions and get more informed. We are here to help you get the most out of your online presence!

Guest post courtesy of Lisa-Ann Wilson

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? Lisa-Ann Wilson thanks you for reading Is “Under Construction” Good Enough For Your Website?. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

Okay, so in a nutshell I think something is marvelous, filled to overflowing with beauty. You think it was freshly picked out of the local dump. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? I am right, of course, since I’m writing this

When it comes to website beauty there can be just as many widely divergent opinions as well. In reality, we have all seen “those” sites that leave something to be desired. In many case, leave a LOT to be desired! While not all of us are the visually artistic type, when something is not pleasing to the eye, few will find themselves beholden to the object.

What do you do with your WordPress website if you, like myself (can you tell )are artistically challenged?

• Well, you can do what you can and hope you don’t mess things up too much
• You can pay a real graphic artist (upwards to HUGE BUCKS!) to create a custom site design
• Or you can go the route of high quality free or very reasonably priced Premium WordPress themes

BoldlyGoing.com’s Dream Themes Department is all about the best built, most wonderful themes one can install and activate on their WordPress self-hosted website. I’ll be sharing my discoveries and hope to make connections with some of the leading WP Theme developers out there.

Or, even better, why not subscribe to the BoldlyGoing.com Dream Themes Feed? If you act now, this amazing offer can be yours for the low, low price

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Website Beauty Is Beholden To Whom?. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

19,075 PLUGINS, 286,652,714 DOWNLOADS, AND COUNTING

That is more than a few! To be sure, some of those nearly 20K plugins are really, really good. Some, well, perhaps this side of the good line. Can you tell which side of the good/bad line a plugin belongs? Yeah, me neither But here’s the thing. With a little work, research and effort we can discover what it takes for a plugin to be considered well-formed, adhering to best WordPress developer practices, and loved more than Elvis.

Okay, maybe plugins and Elvis don’t necessarily go on the same page, but you know what I’m saying. The volume of plugins grows steadily, and when you need to add some functionality, the directory usually is the first stop.

So, be sure to check back with BoldlyGoing.com’s Plugin Power Department whenever you need to turn on your understanding of how to take advantage of the amazing extensible framework of WordPress and Plugins.

Or, even better, why not subscribe to the BoldlyGoing.com Plugin Power Feed? If you act now, this amazing offer can be yours for the low, low price

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Plugin Power: ACTIVATE!. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

I’d like to share some of the experiences I’ve amassed over nearly the past decade working with WordPress. In fact, there probably isn’t too many CMS applications I haven’t at least dipped my toes into at some point and time since I started messing about in this wild and crazy world of online website development back in 1996.

Yup, it’s been that long. Yikes, I may be old

Anyway, Winning Websites aims to point out the interesting, bizarre, truly beautiful and functionally excellent WordPress (maybe even a Drupal site or two :O ) which cross my path.

Or, even better, why not subscribe to the BoldlyGoing.com Winning Websites Feed? If you act now, this amazing offer can be yours for the low, low price…

You’re really going to enjoy!

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading How To Have A Winning Website. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

The good news? BoldlyGoing.com will help you keep the worries to an absolute minimum. My goals are to publish one quality post each week which helps identify anything on the horizon which might sneak up and bite you on the bum, usually when you’re looking the other way.

Given the amazing number of hard working WordPress professionals in the community, I’m also hoping to feature some of their genius under this category with guest posts in the very near future.

Stay tuned to Website Worries!

Or, even better, why not subscribe to the BoldlyGoing.com Website Worries Feed? If you act now, this amazing offer can be yours for the low, low price…

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Worried About Your Website?. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

Stop SOPA & PIPA

To show my support of stopping SOPA and PIPA bills along with Google, Wikipedia and others I have blacked out my profile picture today. Would you like to use the same image I did as your profile pic? Follow this link, then right click on the image and select “save as” then save to your computer and upload it as your Facebook profile pic. http://www.roi4my.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/stop_sopa_pipa.jpg PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE!

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Show Your Support In Stopping SOPA and PIPA. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com

BoldlyGoing.com - Where Are You Boldly Going? James Kirk thanks you for reading Do Your Part To Share the Love–Stop SOPA/PIPA. Check out the real site again, soon: BoldlyGoing.com