So what’s the easiest way to work on the search engine optimisation of your blog? Well, if you’re using WordPress (and that’s most likely true if you’re reading this blog right now) than you have a good start right out of the gate. WordPress is built with an underlying framework that makes it easy for themes to be search engine efficient. The coding and order of the site’s elements are typically fashioned in such a manner to make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site.

Aside from your blogging software, much of the onus is on you as a writer to help get your blog high in the search results. Write with your keywords in mind and use them throughout your posts. If you’re interested in ranking in Google for the term “paper airplanes” than make sure that phrase appears in your blog frequently. Another tip is to try and get links back to your blog from other sites related to paper airplanes. A combination of high quality back links and well written content will help raise your blog in the search engines.

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Search Engine Optimisation

This theme comes in a variety of pre-selected color patterns that make it good to go right after installation. In addition, it’s one of the most flexible and easy to modify free WordPress themes I’ve ever come across. I’m using it for a World of Warcraft site I run called Alterac Volley and, as you can tell if you visit the site, I’ve heavily modified the original Typebased theme and I did it with ease and very little trouble.

If you’re looking for a clean and simple WordPress theme that gives you a lot of flexibility than I recommend you give Typebased a try.

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Theme Spotlight: Typebased

Here’s a breakdown of the WordPress.com premium features:

Your Own Domain - You can have your WordPress.com blog run by their service but using your own domain for $10/year. That’s the same fee for that same price by yourself or you can use WordPress.com’s domain register for an extra $15/year.

Extra Storage - All WordPress.com accounts come with 3GB of storage but you can expand that storage in blocks of 5GB. So for an extra 5G you’d pay $20/year, 15GB for $50/year and 25GB for $90/year. Any web host worth their weight can offer you similar space options for equal or lower prices.

Custom CSS - You can gain the ability to customize your own CSS on your blog for $15/year. With WordPress.org this is obviously free.

Go Ad-Free - For $30/year, WordPress.com will stop running their ads on your blog. Let’s think about this for a second. A small blog probably doesn’t even generate $30/year in revenue for WordPress.com when the ads run normally. This is a huge win for WordPress.com in most cases.

Final Verdict

If you host a blog on WordPress.com and are considering upgrading to any of these premium features I strongly, strongly suggest you think twice. For much less money you can find quality web hosting that will give you even more benefits than what WordPress.com can offer you.

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Are WordPress.com Premium Features Worth It?

This is without a doubt the greatest new feature in the 2.7 version of the WordPress software. Previous versions has the ability to automatically upgrade plugins from within the admin but the ability to upgrade the core software was missing. This meant each time there was a new release people with multiple WordPress blogs had to FTP up the new files to each of their sites.

Automatic updating of the WordPress core has saved bloggers a ton of time in keeping their software current. This ease of upgrading also does great things for WordPress security because any means to make patching holes in the code easier helps prevent the spread of security leaks and problems.

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WordPress 2.7.1 Released

Overall I really, really like 2.7. I was a huge fan of the previous update to the admin but the newer version in 2.7 even blows that one away. Things were stepping in the right direction before but now the admin for WordPress makes it all feel like real, professional software and not some user interface monstrosity that is so common in the Open Source scene.

The other big improvement, and one I haven’t even had a chance to try yet, is the ability to update the WordPress install without using FTP. This has been available for updating plugins for quite some time but updating the core software was never an option. This will be a huge feature for people like myself who have multiple blogs and found it to be a pain to update their WordPress install after each major release.

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WordPress 2.7 Impressions

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WordPress 2.7 Released

Since this is a blog about design and development I thought I’d take a look at their web application services a little more closely. 9th sphere offers a multitude of web application types for their clients. They have a strong focus on ecommerce (a topic near and dear to our hearts here) and offer shopping cart and catalog web apps. The shopping carts and catalogs run on custom-built content management systems and, in the case of the cart, come with standard security layers and credit card processing integration.

Canadian businesses looking to build a new website utilizing best practices or expand upon their current one should consider contacting 9th sphere and seeing what they can do to help. From simple website design to more elaborate web applications and Internet Marketing, 9th sphere has the tools and abilities necessary to make your project a reality.

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The Best In Toronto Web Design

Many people who are experts in website development are prone to relying on themselves for everything. When this includes your site’s design there’s a good chance you might end up with an unattractive product. No matter how good it is behind-the-scenes, people won’t use or visit your site if it doesn’t look good.

With Open Source web design, there are thousands of pre-made layouts and templates available for free online that you can use in your projects. This way you can ensure your site or application looks good even if you aren’t a designer yourself. Most Open Source designers ask that you leave a simple link in the footer of the template giving attribution and credit to the author. That’s the only price you’d have to pay to instantly have a site design up and running that is of high quality.

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Open Source Web Design Templates

What impact will this move have on the theme community at large? My guess is not too much, at least in the early goings. With the global economy in a bit of a meltdown right now, my hunch is that lots of Premium Theme developers are going to be very gun shy about changing the way they are currently doing business. Especially since many Premium Theme developers appear to be doing quite well selling theme licenses for their works. A switch to Open Source and making 100% of your income on tech support and modifications might seem to risky for the other established theme developers out there.

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Revolution Theme Designer Going Open Source

The Templates for Sale portion of SitePoint is frequently full of WordPress themes being sold by designers. 90% of these themes are being sold with exclusive rights so the winner of the auction will become to sole owner of the theme and it will never be sold again.

The pricing on these exclusive rights themes can vary wildly but if you have a few hundred dollars to spend on your blog you can find yourself with a very nice looking theme at a price that some of the more expensive freelance designers probably can’t compete with.

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A Place To Buy A New WordPress Theme