I don’t read a ton of books these days, I’ve just got too much to do.

But as an entrepreneur and blogger, I’ve got to keep my education growing.

Although blogs are great sources to learn from, nothing beats a well written book by an author who really knows the subject matter.

Since my time is limited, I try to choose what books I purchase carefully.

I check out a number of different books written on a subject, read at least 4 or 5 reviews and skim through many of the other ones before making my purchase.

As many of you know, I do video screen casts for WordPress bloggers and our hosting customers. But I’m wanting to push ahead and venture beyond simply creating screen capture videos.

To do that, I need to expand my knowledge in the “how to create online videos” arena, so I did what many people do, I bought a book.

Since I don’t read a ton of books, I don’t do many book reviews… I know, big discovery!

But when I purchased Get Seen: Online Video Secrets To Building Your Business and began reading it, I knew right away that I had to write a post about the book.

What Videos Can Do For Your Blog

Author Steve Garfield begins the book by talking about how popular videos on the Web are and why you might want to put your own videos on the Web.

Video allows you to tell a much richer story than you ever could with just words and pictures alone. Video enables you to engage the viewer emotionally.

Wait! Did he say emotionally?

Isn’t that what all those guru bloggers tell us we need to do? Engage our readers and spark some kind of emotional response?

If video does that, then I want some more of it! That’s what we all hope to accomplish on some level with our blogs, right?

And if we can tell a good story, invoke an emotional response, and put a real person in front of our readers, then we increase our ultimate goal of, wait for it….

A connection.

What more could you ask for, except maybe a house in Hawaii.

Topics Steve Covers In The Book

If you’re going to create video on the Web, realize that there’s a learning curve. It’s not as simple as hit record on your camera and record yourself talking.

Here’s something to think about which many newbies to video blogging get wrong.

Which of these three do you think is the most important in terms of priority?

• What video camera you use?
• What audio source you use?
• Lighting

The answer might surprise you.

It’s lighting.

These are the kinds of secrets you’ll learn today so that you can skip ahead much quicker than the person just “learning as they go”.

The book is filled with everything you need to know about creating, editing, and publishing videos online.

You’ll learn about:

• Different cameras and which might be the best for you
• Lighting and recording sound options
• Creating screencasts
• How to record and shoot your videos
• Editing your work
• Sharing your videos in social networks
• How to broadcast live online

Even better? Steve interviews a number of online video publishers to see what they’ve learned over the years and how we might skip ahead in our own learning curve.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to start creating your own videos online, Get Seen in my opinion is a must have for your bookshelf.

You’ll learn what equipment fits the bill for your needs, how to record your shots, how to edit your work, and get your videos seen online, all for under $20. Now that’s a steal in my opinion.

If you have a story you want to tell, this book will help you tell it.

Please note the links to this book contained in this article are my amazon.com affiliate links. This in no way has swayed my appreciation of this book.

So, are you wanting to create videos one day?

Related posts:

1. My 3-Year Old Son’s First Video Blog Article!
2. Blogging Bloopers, Outtakes, & Deleted Scenes 2
3. How To Upgrade WordPress Manually Video

Procrastination is the killer of all that is good, if you ask me. Let’s take blog security.

I don’t think there’s a person out there that after learning just how much of a problem WordPress hacking is that it’s a good idea to enhance the security of their blogs. However, something I’ve noticed over the years is that when it comes to securing their blogs, bloggers seem to be stuck in this *reactive* state.

They don’t do anything until something has been done to them… until something bad has been done to them.

I live in Las Vegas. Las Vegas seems to be on the “bad” list for just about everything, crime included. It’s sad that I don’t feel real safe at night, but at least I have a house alarm which makes me feel a little more comfortable. Yes it is a reactive security feature I’ve set up, but it’s a proactive step. Many people don’t install house alarms until guess what? …they get robbed.

Why is that?

Because they get scared. It seems being scared is a big motivator. I scared one person when I emailed them to let them know I found a huge security hole in their website. Take a look at what I found:

If you click on the image above you’ll see that those are all database backups someone did for their blog. I found this (as well as many others) online and ready for download. If I were a bad, bad person, I could have done a lot of damage here, but instead I emailed the website owner their security problem. Hopefully they fixed the problem.

Let Me Show You Why You Need to be Careful

Since scare tactics seem to be what drives some people to take action (or at the very least start thinking about the problem), let me shoot a few scare tactics your way.

Let’s pretend I’m Joe the Butt Hole Hacker. I have nothing better and more productive to do with my life than hack into people’s sites and blogs and make their lives miserable. I don’t care about all the hard work and time you’ve put into your blog, I just want to break it.

Here’s some things I might consider doing.

1. Hang out at a local coffee shop or some other public area where there is free Wi-Fi.

After spending a few days and hitting a few spots around town, I finally find a cafe which offers free, unsecured Wi-Fi and to my pleasure, there are a ton of people sitting around each day connecting their laptops to the “free” Internet service. I sit down and use my handy dandy Wi-Fi cracker tool and log myself into people’s computers… remember, they’re all on a shared network.

From there it’s easy, all I need to do is upload a virus or key logger program so I can track your keyboard movements. “Hey look at that, that girl over there is logging into her blog. Here, let me see what she’s typing in her username and password for something.”

Lesson: Don’t trust free Internet connections. At least make sure the place uses a secured Wi-Fi connection if you’re going to use it.

2. Create fake online profiles

Since I (our fictitious hacker Joe) has nothing better to do with my time, I’ll go ahead and set up some fake social media profiles. Here, let me go to your blog and check out who your friends are and who you trust.

Got ‘em.

Now let me head over to one of your friend’s sites and take a couple screen shots of their blog, personal photos, and note a few names.

Got it!

Now it’s time to sign up for a new Facebook account and use this person’s name and identity to pose as your friend. Once I get it all set up, I’ll be emailing you posing as your friend and asking you to be friends with me on Facebook (or Twitter, or whichever social site).

Cool, now we’re friends. “Hey buddy, I’ve started doing blog upgrades. Tell you what, if you’ll do a review of my Facebook page and give me a little feedback, I’ll upgrade your blog for you – no charge. I’ll just need your username and password.”

Or perhaps it’s your computer I want. Instead, maybe I’ll just befriend you on Facebook and send a link your way telling you, “You gotta see this video! Click this link here.”

Oops, did I forget to tell you that link is not really a video? It’s a virus I created just for you!

Lesson: Don’t trust anyone online at all times. Yes you might make friends and over time you might even trust them, unfortunately, someone can use that trust against you.

Case in point: the other day my wife was watching Dr. Phil in the other room and when I heard him say something, I got up, walked out of my office and asked her to rewind it (oh how I love TiVo).

Dr. Phil said that someone was posing as him online and asking people to do something, like download a file or something… sorry, I forget now what that was. He said it was a fake site and he has never asked someone to download anything of the sort.

3. Password Guessing

As I (our fictitious Joe the Butt Hole Hacker) knows, people have way too many usernames and passwords to remember. You’ve got Twitter, Facebook, your online banking, LinkedIn, two blog logins, FTP, web hosting, etc. accounts which all come with logins and passwords you need to remember.

If you’re one of the proactive ones, I might find it a little harder to crack your password. But if you’re one of the reactive ones, I might just get you.

According to an article in the NY Times, one of the most popular passwords going around these days is 123456.

Lesson: Do I really need to say it?

I understand that since the birth of the Internet as we know it, things have gotten a lot harder to control and secure. People in 2010 assimilate 10 times the amount of information each day than people did in 1980 (that’s not a scientific study I did, just logic). I understand it’s hard to have a different username and password for all your online profiles, unless you use a program like Roboform (PC and affiliate link) or 1Password (Mac), which I HIGHLY suggest.

But realize that online security is something you really need to start thinking about. Don’t just be the reactive type, take steps to start protecting yourself today. Don’t let Joe the Butt Hole Hacker make your life miserable and turn all that you’ve worked so hard in creating come crashing down in a matter of seconds.

The point of this article is to hopefully get those of you who don’t think much about online security to start thinking.

So, did I put a little scare into you? Or is this just information you accept and figure if it happens, it happens?

Related posts:

1. WordPress Defender: 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog from Attack Anyone Can Do

• Keywords for search engine optimization
• Running ads on your site to generate some income
• Analyzing your blog’s statistics
• Submitting your blog to the Google Search Engine
• Getting a snapshot of how Google is sees and crawls your blog
• If your site gets hacked and removed from Google’s Search, a place to go to tell Google you’ve fixed things

Blogs don’t maintain themselves. At times they need a screw tightened here, ad posted there, and a little investigative work done to see why that thing that’s suppose to be working is not working.

I like to think my blogging tools and bookmarks are like a construction worker’s tool belt. Have you ever met a construction worker who did not have a tape measure strapped to their side?

If you’re a blogger, your tool box is your favorite search engine (and maybe some contacts you have made) and your bookmarks are the tool belts you keep.

I’ve listed what bookmarks and tools I have here and here, but in this article, I’d like to introduce you to the swiss army knife you might like to have in your tool belt.

The Google Keyword Tool Box:

When you have time, it might be good to dig through the Google Keyword Tool Box and discover what all it can do for your blog. As a blogger myself, I know your time is very limited, but realize that blogging is much more than simply writing articles and visiting other blogs.

You need to invest a little time each week in your most important asset: you.

Do you have a blogging resource you’d like to share?

On a side note, I’m heading out on a business trip for a few days and may be slow to responding to emails and comments.

Related posts:

1. 30.1 Web Tools For Online Success And To Make Your Life Easier At The Same Time
2. Is A Google XML Sitemap Necessary?
3. The 1st SEO Decision You Should Make To Rank Well In Google

Since it’s been awhile, I figured it was time to update my list with a few other resources I’ve been using.

Got your bookmarks fired up? Ok, let’s go.

Megaproxy

If you’re into toying around with your blog’s design or decide to slap up a maintenance page in which everyone but you are redirected to that page, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to navigate to your site as if your computer was located on a different IP address?

Ok, in another words, to check and see what your site looks like from another computer.

Megaproxy lets you do that.

You can try it free straight from their website. This tool has an additional use; it also provides for safer browsing while online because other websites which collect your computer’s IP address (sometimes gets you spam) will be recording the proxy’s IP address, not yours.

Shrink O’Matic

Shrink O’Matic lets you batch convert images to a specific file size (meaning you can convert a bunch of image files all at once to be the same size). This is nice if you have a bunch of images you need to upload to your blog or personal family website but all the images are of different sizes.

Saves lot’s of time doing them one-by-one.

TredoSoft

TredoSoft is a neat little website for those of you who design websites yourself and want to know what your site design looks like in different versions of Internet Explorer.

I’m a Firefox user myself, but I also have IE8 and Safari installed so I can see what my sites look like in other browsers. One day, however, I did notice in my statistics that a number of my site visitors were using older versions of Internet Explorer, like IE6.

Thanks to TredoSoft, I can see what my site looks like in older versions of Internet Explorer.

Hetemeel.com

Hetemeel.com let’s you add text to popular images. The one I linked to here leads to Einstein writing on a chalkboard. You can replace his writing with your own.

Pretty cool.

Cool Text

Cool Text is an online graphic generator. If you’re not good with Fireworks or Photoshop but need to add professional looking text (in image format) to your site, you gotta check this one out.

BigDump

Ok I know that just doesn’t sound right, but the program can be a life saver for some of you.

BigDump is a nifty little program which solves a huge problem for many WordPress bloggers in need of restoring their large database.

Basically, restoring your WordPress (or any) database requires you to first delete all the data in your online database and then uploading your backup. Sounds easy, right?

Well if your database is over about 15 to 20MB, you might find that you’re having a hard time uploading it. That’s because your web browser will only wait so long before it times out; meaning, if you hit the upload button and your web browser has to wait too long for the upload to complete, you’ll get a timeout error.

BigDump fixes this by staggering the upload into chunks.

If you ever need to use BigDump, check out our video channel and look for How to Restore Your WordPress Database Using Bigdump – For Larger Databases.

Now your turn.

What web tools can you add to the list?

Related posts:

1. 30.1 Web Tools For Online Success And To Make Your Life Easier At The Same Time
2. Fatten Up Your Wallet by Using Online Videos
3. Adding The "Cool Factor" To Your Website

One of the topics I see all around the web is how WordPress can be installed easily with Fantastico. And yes, in fact it can. However, just to set the record straight, if you’re looking to start a WordPress blog and someone tells you that you need to look for a web host that has cPanel and Fantastico, there’s no reason to listen to them.

Trust me, as a guy whose been online for a long time and knows a thing or two about web hosting, there is no reason to limit your options to web hosts which only match this criteria. There’s a lot more you need to consider and understand.

What is Fantastico?

Fantastico is bundled set of software which can be used to install several different applications to your web hosting account. One such program is WordPress.

Are There Issues with Fantastico and WordPress?

If you visit the WordPress Forums and do a search for problems with Fantastico, you’ll most definitely find a lot of people have problems using it to install and upgrade WordPress; however, I think using it to install WordPress isn’t too bad (you can do better), but using it to upgrade WordPress wouldn’t be something I’d do. For that, use the WordPress built-in auto upgrade feature.

Why You Might Not Want To Use Fantastico

Security

If you’ve read my blog for awhile now or you look up to our main menu, you’ll see one of the topics I’m constantly talking about is WordPress Security. One of the major problems with WordPress when it comes to security is that every default install looks exactly the same.

The primary folders start with wp-, your login page is located in the same place (directory-wise) as the next guy’s, your database table prefix is 9xek3pd_, etc. In other words, the default installation of WordPress is very “cookie-cutter”.

And how does Fantastico install WordPress? The cookie-cutter way.

You miss out on the learning experience

Another reason why you might not want to use Fantastico to install WordPress on your account is the learning experience you’ll miss out on. By installing WordPress yourself (it’s not difficult and I’m always here to help), you’ll learn a thing or two about the program you’ll be working with for many years to come.

It’s like my days back in college and the time when I took Calculus. We learned a very long and difficult way to do derivatives. I remember doing the homework and hating every second of the long drawn out process of figuring out the answer. Then the next day our instructor showed us a very simple and quick way to find the answer (instead of the long drawn out process). At first I hated the fact that he made us go through such a difficult process to find the answer when in fact there was a much easier way to do it.

But you know what? I learned something. I learned how and why the shortcut worked, which made me understand.

Now I’m not saying you should never use an easy installer to install WordPress. If you do, fine. But if you first experiment and try installing it on your own, you might find you are learning something.

Alternatives To Fantastico For Easy Installations

WP Blog Host’s Alternative

WpBlogHost does not use the script library Fantastico; instead, we use a bundle set of applications included free with all hosting accounts which allows you to easily install a number of programs (nearly identical to Fantastico). Of course, one of the programs you can easily install is WordPress.

The thing I like about our installer over Fantastico is the fact that your installation, although not 100% secure, installs a WordPress blog a little less cookie-cutter than Fantastico.

Elefante Installer

Some hosting companies use a program similar to Fantastico, called Elefante Scripts. It basically works the same.

EasyWP Install Script

Through my Google Alerts set up to notify me about things around the web on WordPress, I found a blog article called EasyWP – Install WordPress in Seconds! by a young web designer named, Joel Drapper. Thanks to Joel, I’ve learned there’s a program out there called EasyWP WordPress Installer.

The installer, though not as easy as Fantastico or our installer, can simplify the WordPress installation some. The one downside is you still have to create your own database, which in my experience is probably the most difficult part of installing WordPress people have. It’s actually not difficult, but since working with a database is foreign to most every day web users, this seems to be the part they hate dealing with.

My Take On Fantastico

If your web host has Fantastico, by all means use it to install WordPress if you don’t want to go through the learning experience of installing it yourself. But whatever you do, don’t let the fact if your web host uses Fantastico or not sway you from your decision on which web host to host your blog with.

Some companies, like ours, offer easy alternatives.

If you’re looking to start a WordPress blog and are trying to figure out which web host you should go with, check out my article on How To Choose The Best WordPress Blog Hosting Company.

Related posts:

1. How To Install WordPress Manually and Why Beginners Should Do It
2. 6 Things I Tell People Who Are Looking To Start A Blog
3. Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger?

Today I want to show you how to fully backup your WordPress blog using two easy-to-use programs.

Creating a full backup of your blog is a two part process:

1. Backup your WordPress hosted files and directories
2. Backup your database

There are many ways to do this and I’ll betcha most of you who have been blogging for awhile already do database backups, but I also bet most of you don’t backup your WordPress files nearly as much.

Why? I bet it has to do with simplicity. Using a database plugin for WordPress makes backing up your database cake. In fact, you can even set it on autopilot and email you copies regularly without even lifting a finger.

But those files and directories sitting there in your hosting account are important as well, especially the wp-content folder. Here’s what the two backups actually backup:

1. Backing up your WordPress files and folders will ensure your theme, images, .htaccess files, plugins, misc. uploads, CSS settings, and more are all backed up and saved in case your blog ever crashes and you need to do a restore.
2. Backing up your database will ensure all your posts, comments, login information, etc. are all saved.

Since doing a full backup is *critically important* for your blog, and since we are all lazy and need this entire process to be as simple as possible for us, here are two ways fully backup your WordPress blog which should make the entire process real easy for you.

Note, too, that this my preferred method – I wouldn’t suggest the two following programs if I didn’t use them myself.

How To Easily Backup Your WordPress Files and Folders

There is a really neat program out there which is called SyncBackSE which once installed on your computer can be a very powerful tool in keeping a full backup copy of your hosted WordPress files. You can download a free trial version of the software right here.

After the free trial period the program costs $30. Trust me, that’s a small price to pay when it comes to blogging and feeling confident your blog is fully backed up and everything is safe. Nothing will crush you more than to one day find out something’s wrong with your blog and you don’t know what to do.

This is a huge step many people miss. I frequent the WordPress Support Forums and I see practically on a daily basis someone has a problem with their blog which “has just popped up out of no where”. They always seem to have a database backup, but rarely do they have their hosted files backed up. Many times the problem is their site got hacked and they only noticed it when either Google has stopped sending traffic their way (their site has turned into a spam site in Google’s eyes) or their site spontaneously starts acting up.

Here’s why I like SyncBackSE

• It comes spyware, AdWare, and virus free.
• Once installed all it takes is a click to backup your blog’s files and directories.
• The process can all be automated and set to run at specific times (a perfect compliment to the database backup plugin).
• Restoring your files is just as easy as backing them up.
• Can even keep a live current backup of your blog on your hard drive.

That last point about keeping a live current backup of your site on your hard drive I think is really cool. That means SyncBackSE will “watch” your site’s hosting files for any changes. When you make a change, it will automatically keep the mirror files on your hard drive current with what’s on your hosting account.

That’s pretty cool in my book.

Download the free trial and let me know if you have any questions. I know the program costs $30 but tell me – is your blog worth $30? Problems happen and don’t think they’ll never happen to you, because they will.

How To Easily Backup Your WordPress Database

Your database represents all your blood, sweat, and tears when it comes to writing articles for your blog. All those long hours and hard work put into those articles reside in your database. Since it also houses all your community responses (comments), it’s also the home base of your blog’s community.

Consider that all important? I’m sure you do.

Il Filosofo has probably one of the most popular WordPress database backup plugins out there. Here’s a snapshot of the settings area.

From the Tools menu in your WordPress Dashboard, click Backup and you can see that some of the options for your database backup include emailing it to yourself, saving the file now, and/or setting up scheduled backups so your database backup will be emailed to you whenever you want.

There are of course many other WordPress database backup plugins out there, but I know this one works very well.

One thing I’d suggest you not to do is to save the database backup file to your server (see the image above). There is no reason to keep a backup copy of your database on the server where someone potentially could find it online, download it, and discover your login information.

Summary

To create a very simple way to fully backup your WordPress blog, you need to do two things: backup your hosting files/folders and backup your database.

By using 2 programs, SyncBackSE (download trial version here) and a WordPress database backup plugin, we can simplify and even automate this process for us.

Have you created a full backup of your blog lately? Do you think $30 for SyncBackSE is out of line since there are ways to backup your blog’s files for free? Or do you think that’s a small price to pay for the simplicity and reassurance it’ll get done regularly?

Related posts:

1. How To Automate Your Blog’s Entire Backup Process
2. WordPress 3.0: Security Upgrades Overview & How To Install It
3. Blog Hacking Alert and What You Need to Do Today!

Problem is, it’s so damn difficult to try and figure out when you’re just starting out because there’s SO much you can do with it. One of my first frustrations with it was the fact that I couldn’t determine which clicks and visits were my own?

Obviously, you’re more interested in who is visiting your site, where they came from, and what they did to find you. You’re not interested in how you found your own website.

So here’s a little video I put together which hopefully you’ll find useful. It will show you how to set up a filter on Google Analytics so you don’t track your own movements and visits to your own website.

If you haven’t already set up Google Analytics to run on your blog, here’s how: How To Install Google Analytics On A WordPress Blog Without Using A Plugin

How To Set Up A Google Analytics Filter

Related posts:

1. How To Install Google Analytics On A WordPress Blog Without Using A Plugin
2. Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use
3. Videos To Help Craft A Better Website & Attract Attention

Are you: authoring a blog; designing a website; building a newsletter; trying to make money online; wanting to learn how people find your website; dying to find an answer to a business question you have; and/or figure out where people click on your website?

Most online entrepreneurs will relate to most, if not all, those things I listed above. There are many resources online that can help you in your online endeavors.

Today I want to share with you a list of my bookmarks which link to online tools that can help you succeed online or make your life a lot easier.

Can you add to the list? If so, feel free to link to tools and/or software online that you may have used which helped you grow your business online. Keep in mind if you leave a few links your comment may go to moderation.

Note: All links in this article will open in a new tab.

Links above are clickable

Tools For Your Website

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool

   Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas for your website.

2. Google Webmaster Central

   Lot’s of tools provided by Google to help get your website seen online. Is your site currently indexed? Submition tool, optimize your content, add a site search to your website, etc.

3. Google Analytics

   Learn how visitors come to your site, what keywords they used, where they clicked, how long they were on your site, and more.

4. Site Meter

   Analyize how much traffic comes to your site, referring websites, what keywords people used to find your site, and more.

5. Woopra

   An advanced real-time Web tracking and analysis application for your website.

6. SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

   Another keyword suggestion tool.

7. Wordtracker

   One of the more popular keyword suggestion tools.

8. Yahoo! Site Explorer

   Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.

9. Free Google Sitemap Generator

   A free online program that will generate a Google xml sitemap for you. Do you need one?

10. CSS Formatter and Optimiser

    A compression tool that will optimize your css code for quicker load time.

11. Whois.Net

    Find out information about domain names (including yours). Good to know what information people can easily find out about you.

12. W3C Markup Validation Service

    Is your website’s code written properly or does it have errors?

13. ClickHeat | Clicks heatmap

    ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones.

    

14. Crazy Egg Analytics

    View overlays, lists, and heat maps of traffic on your website.

    

15. FavIcon from Pics

    Create your own icon on the browser address bar when visitors view or bookmark your web page (see our Yin and Yang image in our address bar).

16. Domain Tools

    A few tools for domains, such as whois search and DNS tools.

17. Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test

    Use this online tool to see how your website looks displayed in different web browsers.

    

    Blogging Tools

18. WordPress Web Hosting

    Of course if you’re reading this blog, you’re at the right place for hosting a WordPress blog.

19. FeedBurner

    Allow people to subscribe to your blog via RSS and email. FeedBurner also provides limited analytics tools.

20. FeedBlitz

    Allow your blog readers to subscribe to your blog via email. Also provides some advertising tools.

21. Smashing Magazine

    Lots of free graphics, WordPress Theme links, and How-To’s.

22. definr

    My favorite online dictionary. It’s fast, too.

    

23. Dr. Grammar

    Check your grammar.

24. AWeber

    Create visually stunning, engaging email newsletters. Choose from over 75 HTML templates, paste in your own HTML or use the built-in message editor.

25. 50+ WordPress Plugins & Hacks Candy Store

    A list article like this one I wrote listing out 50+ WordPress Plugins you might find useful.

26. Flickr Image Search

    Find images on Flickr you can use on your blog. Hint: make sure you check the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content box for images you can use on your blog.

    

    General Internet Tools

27. RoboForm

    RoboForm is my new buddy. He remembers all my passwords in an encrypted format for easy one click logins and form fillers.

    

28. UbiDog Productions

    Provides programs you can use for automating online contests, surveys, polls, quizzes, and more.

29. Twitter Search

    Search for conversations people are having about a product or service to gain some insight and potential customer feedback.

30. Microsoft adCenter Videos

    Great video tutorials on PPC campaigns and developing ads people will click on. Lots of useful info here to learn from.

    

    Bonus

31. S.C.O.R.E.

    Got a business question no one knows the answer to? Want to know how to start a successful business (online or off)? Get advice direct from successful business advisors.

Related posts:

1. More Web Tools To Make Your Life Easier & More Profitable Online
2. Google Keyword Tool + Top 50 Google Tools Bloggers Can Use
3. Building A Business Through Social Media Vs. The Old-Timer's Way To Business Success

Image by ShadowKris

WordPress is my chosen blogging platform. Since I’ve begun my blogging journey I’ve come across many great plugins and customizations that other WordPress users have created.

All our web hosting plans come with easy to install scripts, one of them being WordPress.

There are plenty of similar plugin and hacks list out there like this one, however, I’ve been asked by a few of our customers which plugins I use and where they can find some more great mods. Therefore, I created the following list.

1. Create A Custom Landing Page
Instead of displaying your most recent posts as your blog’s home page, create a landing page that shows whatever you want.

2. Formatting Images For Your Feed Reader
Show images correctly in feeds.

3. Embed Google Ad in First WordPress Post
Place an ad after the first post in your WordPress blog main page.

4. Display Your Most Popular Posts Plugin
A plugin that will show your most popular posts in your sidebar.

5. Word Count Plugin for WordPress
Counts and displays the number of words and images.

6. Display A Stripe Ad At The Top Of Your Blog

7. How to Put Your Best Content Forward
Two ways to put your best content in front of other posts.

8. Ban Users From Your Blog Plugin
Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog.

9. Creating a Print Stylesheet in WordPress
Shows how you can create a clean print of your blog articles for your readers.

10. WordPress Blog Post Print Plugin
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

11. Display Twitter Messages In WordPress
Customize the Twitter message displayed on your blog.

12. Separate WordPress comments from pings and trackbacks
Very useful for keeping your comment section human chat flowing. See an example in my blog post here.

13. Create a poll plugin
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog.

14. Moving a Static HTML Site to WordPress
How to move your .html pages over to WordPress and keep the same web address.

15. Create a custom login page

16. Create a WordPress Sticky Plugin
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog.

17. Add Related Posts To Your Feed

18. Random Posts Plugin
This plugin displays a list of posts chosen randomly from your blog.

19. All in One SEO Pack Plugin
Probably the most popular plugin of all time. However, if you’re looking for a program like this, I suggest taking a look at #35 down below. I prefer that plugin over this one as it automates a lot of the seo functions for you.

20. Secure Contact Form Plugin
Has an easy reCapatcha image verification to ward off spam.

21. Highlight author comments in WordPress
When commenting in your comment section, here’s how you can highlight your comments.

22. Customize Your 404 Page
The Google 404 widget is a quick and easy way to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with useful information designed to help them find the information they need.

23. Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress
Generate a site map for your WordPress blog. See our blog’s site map as an example. We have it set to only display posts, not pages.

24. Collapsible Archive Widget
Again, see our blog’s sidebar for an example.

25. Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin – remove the “nofollow”
We all know incoming links to your site is good. This plugin will remove the “nofollow” tag after commentator’s links in their name after they comment however many times you set for.

26. CommentLuv Plugin
Adds a little note at the bottom of a commentator’s comment in your blog that tells everyone what that person’s last blog article was. See our blog’s comment section as an example.

27. Post Teaser
Post Teaser generates a preview or “teaser” of a post for the main, archive and category pages, with a link underneath to go to the full post page. This is also good because it’s what Googlebot likes.

28. Recent Comments Plugin
Display recent comments in your sidebar.

29. Similar Posts Plugin
Display a short list of similar posts at the end of an article. Great for promoting other articles you have written but are buried in your archives.

30. WP-Cache
Speed up your blog by caching your posts.

31. WordPress Automatic Upgrade
The easy way to upgrade your WordPress blog to the newest version.

32. Disguise email addresses from spambots
Feel free to display your email address with this plugin which stops spambots from recording your email address.

33. Automatic WordPress database backup plugin
Get regular backups of your blog sent to you via email with this plugin.

34. Top Commentators Plugin
Display your top commentators names in your sidebar.

35. Platinum SEO Pack
In my opinion this plugin is better than the All-In-One SEO plugin. This one will automatically generate META tags for you based on what you write as well as automating other things.

36. PHP ImageManager + Editor
The ImageManager provides an interface for browsing and uploading image files on/to your server. The Editor allows for some basic image manipulations such as, cropping, rotation, flip, and scaling.

37. Sexy Comments Plugin
Make your WordPress comment section resemble a forum style discussion.

38. Quicktags Plugin
Quick and easy buttons for commentators on your blog.

39. Post Footer WordPress Plugin
Automatically add any custom paragraph, html code, ad code, technorati tags and/or related links list to the end of every posts.

40. Bad Behavior Plugin To Fight Spam
Bad Behavior acts as a first line of defense for fighting spam. It works even before Askiment sees the spam. In my experience, it has greatly reduced the amount of spam that reaches my Askiment filter.

41. Akisment Plugin To Fight Spam
Akismet is a must for fighting spam if you have a WordPress blog. If you don’t have it, get it!

42. Adsense Deluxe Plugin
The easy way to insertion Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network ads to your posts.

43. Adsense Inline Plugin
Easily insert Google’s AdSense ads inside the content of your blog post.

44. AdSense Widget for WordPress Sidebar
Insert Google AdSense in your sidebar.

45. AdSense Earnings Plugin
Display your AdSense earnings within your WordPress admin panel.

46. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress
This program will generate a sitemap for Google to crawl and index your blog better.

47. One Click Installs Plugin
Makes installing and uploading of plugins easy.

48. PlugInstaller WP Plugin
Another program that makes installing plugins easy. With this plugin you can install a new plugin directly from te plugin site.

49. Maintenance Mode Plugin
When upgrading your blog or doing any sort of maintenance that will cause your blog to go down for a bit, this plugin lets you customize a landing page for visitors during this period.

50. Sociable Social Bookmarking Plugin
Add social bookmarks to the end of your posts.

51. I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin
A simple drop down menu of social bookmarks for a cleaner look.

52. Share This Plugin
A drop down social bookmark plugin that also allows you to email and post.

53. Social Bookmarks 3.2
Allows for drop down or display of your social bookmarks.

54. Hack Up Your WordPress Theme
An article which shows a bunch of code snippets you can use to customize your theme to do what you want.

55. iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme
automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

56. WordPress Security Tips and Hacks
Some great tips on protecting your blog from hackers and unwanted visitors.

57. Filosofo’s WordPress Gravatar Plugin
The plugin fixed my issue of not being able to get gravatars to work with my blog. If you’re looking to put gravatars on your site in the comment section, Filosofo’s code is well written.

Related posts:

1. Allowing Readers To Subscribe To Your WordPress Post Without Commenting
2. 2 Killer WordPress Security Plugins You Probably Don’t Know About
3. 2 Easy Ways To Set Up A WordPress Firewall

It’s still in the development stage but thus far I’ve had no problems with it whatsoever.

For those of you who read a lot of RSS feeds at once, this is a great option that can reduce the amount of time skimming through your feeds and clicking on headlines that catch your eye. It’s as easy as reading your emails.

Google Reader and ReadAir Are In Sync

One nice feature about Google ReadAir is that it’s connected to your Google Reader.

So if you still like using your Google Reader and add or delete a subscription here or there, that’s fine, ReadAir and Reader stay in sync (in reality they are the same account).

Installation

To install, you first have to download and install Adobe Air. Once that’s installed, you can download and install ReadAir.

That’s about it. It’s been easy to use and in my opinion, the user interface is much nicer than Google Reader.

Related posts:

1. Create Yourself A Shortcut – How To E-Mail, Blog, and Text On The Go!