A great tool that works as stand-alone or as a WordPress plugin to help you build your opt-in email list.

I had this installed in minutes

Opt-In Link Builder

Listed here is a great collection of free and paid thumbnail generator services you can use in your website or WordPress blog

The best free Screenshot Services

It’s always nice to give users a preview of the website they are about to visit. Very popular on custom directories and more!

Here is a quick examples of a website thumbnail

Plugins used above: PicDonkey

During Installation & setup

• create and make .htaccess file
• do the same for a robots.txt file
• enable permalinks in settings

Recommended WordPress Plugins

1. Askimet for spam
2. Google XML Sitemap Plugin
3. WP Database Backup Plugin - Back up your site nice and easy … do it often.
4. Platinum SEO Pack if you do not own the thesis WordPress theme
5. FD FeedBurner Plugin
6. Subscribe to Comments Plugin allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments
7. Sociable plugin

If you are really crazy about WordPress plugins, have a look at these great posts:

• http://www.thenetfool.com/top-wordpress-plugins-for-every-blog/
• WordPress Plugins Directory

Post-Installation Task Checklist

In no particular order

1. Create Feedburner account and submitt blog RSS to FeedBurner
2. Google Analytics
3. Add site to Google Webmaster Tools

Set-Up Social Profiles

• Twitter
• MyBlogLog
• BlogCatalog
• StumbleUpon

Want to spend more time researching out this, read the following

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/01/15/wordpress-the-complete-post-install-checklist/

http://www.everydaytutor.com/new-wordpress-blog-checklist/

http://lifelearningtoday.com/2009/03/21/complete-guide-to-set-up-a-wordpress-blog-and-make-money/

How about WordPress and affiliate links?

There are a couple of cool solutions, but this is the current combo I am using to:

1. Organize all affiliate links
2. Mask the affiliate links
3. Have all links ‘no-follow’ (good for SEO you know!)
4. Manage the links within WordPress
5. View stats
6. Export when required, import in to new sites.
7. Re-write existing page or posts that contain keyword I wish to link out to affiliate offers

Does not really sound like much does it?

How do I clock my affiliate links?

Start off by reviewing Pretty Link by Blair Williams. (He also uses the thesis theme as well - nice!) You’ll be sold on the screenshots - say no more!

After you’ve set up this plugin, add a few links (easy huh?)

That takes care of cloaking affiliate links in WordPress doesn’t it.

How do I replace text in my pages/posts with affiliate links?

Next plugin to look at is the keyword link plugin. The icing on the cake with this one is the ability to export all the links you have created with one click.

Why use these plugins?

Your reasons may vary, but in most cases it is to manage all you money making affiliate links in WordPress in a nice and easy fashion. Say you had a cool WordPress/eBay money making application like phpBay, the keyword ‘phpBay’ would be replaced with the cloaked affiliate link. To satisfy all you self-professed SEO professionals, you also have the ‘no-follow’ attribute attached to the link as well. You’re making money and keeping your website optimized.

Now if you could only simply your design to a thesis theme!

A couple of options:

MySQL Option

You could go the MySQL insert method, but this may only be good for advanced users and you would need to generate incremented ids as indicated here: WordPress › Support » Creating pages “in bulk”….. is it possible?.

Here is the sample code from ‘upgrade.php’

$wpdb->query("INSERT INTO $wpdb->posts (post_author, post_date, post_date_gmt, post_content, post_excerpt, post_title, post_category, post_name, post_modified, post_modified_gmt, guid, post_status, post_type, to_ping, pinged, post_content_filtered) VALUES ($user_id, '$now', '$now_gmt', '".$wpdb->escape(__('This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.'))."', '', '".$wpdb->escape(__('About'))."', '0', '".$wpdb->escape(_c('about|Default page slug'))."', '$now', '$now_gmt','$first_post_guid', 'publish', 'page', '', '', '')");
}

XML Method

Or you can go via the XML method. Simply export to XML, review format, add content, import back in to WordPress.

Plugin

Have not tested this one yet, but the plugin info is here

http://www.wesg.ca/2008/06/wordpress-plugin-mass-page-maker/

eBay Category List

Make sure you select the ‘Show category number’ radio button.

Here is why experience counts for search engine optimization

Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight.

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/25-unique-uses-of-wordpress-as-cms.html

Occasionally I’ll come upon a post where “WordPress is not a CMS” or “WordPress is cannot be used so and so”

It is not a CMS, but can be ‘massaged’ in to one with the right plugins and tweaks.

Here’s a nifty guide to setting up WordPress as a CMS

Everything from static main page, breadcrumbs, using widgets, custom page and post templates and more.

WordPress.org dispels pages vs post in their write up for WordPress as CMS

Why WordPress as CMS?

• Simple and easy to use back-end for content management
• Tons of plugins, tweaks and customization possiblities
• SEO friendly
• Tons of support online

Here for the first time is a simple example of PHP code

// Check for the injected headers from the spammer attempt
// This will replace the injection attempt text with the string you have set in the above config section
$find = array("/bcc\:/i","/Content\-Type\:/i","/cc\:/i","/to\:/i");
$email = preg_replace($find, "$SpamReplaceText", $email);

I’m at work and really do not need access to my 1001+ bookmarks within Firefox.

Wish I could simply create a new profile (i.e., work profile) and have bookmarks related to work in FireFox.

Just like in Thunderbird, you can set up multiple profiles in FireFox as well.

This is not only great for bookmark, but for add-ons as well … you may not want to have all your add-ons loaded when at work …

Manage Your FireFox profiles