Useful WordPress Plugins

Collection of useful WordPress plugins I use. Includes plugins for stats, SEO, mobile display, page speed, spam control and contact form.

Scribe SEO WordPress plugin

1. ScribeSEO – Premium plugin that gives search engine optimised copywriting advice.

2. Yoast SEO plugin – Best and exhaustive WordPress SEO plugin. Better than All in one SEO plugin.

So Simple : Minimal WordPress

So Simple is a minimal WordPress theme from Jason Schuller, the creator of Press75 WordPress themes. From the theme’s page:

In a flooded marketplace of overly complex WordPress themes, the So Simple theme has been created for those looking for something different. By eliminating all of the unnecessary elements found in typical WordPress themes, So Simple allows you to focus on beautiful words and nothing more. So Simple is minimalism at its best, providing a distraction-free writing and reading experience for less than a cup of coffee.

The WPCandy Quaterly

The WPCandy Quaterly is the first and only print magazine exclusively covering the WordPress world. It comes from Ryan Imel who made the popular WordPress blog WPCandy.

What I liked best about the magazine is that it shows the human side of WordPress world. Justin Tadlock shares how he learnt WordPress. Gautam Gupta shares his experience on visiting the Googleplex at the age of 15. There are tens of full page colorful pictures from Word Camps. Noel Tock and Brian Richards explain how they built their WordPress based businesses happytables and Startbox from ground up. These are certainly inspiring.

The magazine design and print is of very high quality. I felt proud and happy while holding it. The second issue is well underway. Go grab it now.

P.S: There is an iPad only WordPress Design magazine coming soon at http://wpdm.co/

Test drive premium WordPress themes and plugins

Did you know that you can test drive some premium WordPress themes and plugins ? Here you go:

Test drive WordPress themes

* WooThemes

* Headway Themes

Test drive WordPress plugins

* Carrington Build

* Gravity Forms

Please let me know if you know any other WordPress shop offering such demos. Thanks.

Drag and drop WordPress Plugins and Themes

Are you new to WordPress or web design
? Do you need help designing your own theme with unique page layouts? Here are some helpful drag and drop plugins and theme:

Drag and Drop WordPress themes

* Builder from iThemes – The power of Builder starts in the layout editor. Choose from the building blocks of a great web site by inserting modules: header, images, navigation, content area (with or without sidebars), widget bars, HTML areas, and a footer. Complete flexibility without code.

Best WordPress Permalink structure

The best WordPress permalink structure depends on your needs. This post analyses different permalink structures, their pros and cons and recommends best WordPress permalink structure for blogs, news portals and websites for better SEO and performance.

When you install WordPress, the default permalink structure you have is http://example.com/?p=123 . You can retain this structure if having the shortest URL possible is your priority. Else, you need to change this for better SEO.

WordPress automatic Thumbnail issue with Hostgator

Are you in Hostgator and having problem with WordPress automatic thumbnail generation? Contact their Live Chat support to get it fixed.

If you are hosted with, you may have a problem with theautomatic thumbnail generation feature that many WordPress provide.

Free WordPress site review for Non Profit Organizations

Are you a NPO running a WordPress site and looking for some help to improve it?

I would be glad to offer free site reviews and resources for FIVE organizations this year. I can help you with better
SEO, page load time, design and WordPress usage.

Interview with Jonathan Tittle of Nodeki Hosting

We host most of our network blogs with and we find their service excellent. I like Nodeki for its fanatical customer support, fast loading times, cost effectiveness, simple design and offering lifetime package. So, I got Jonathan Tittle, the founder of Nodeki to answer some of our questions.

WordPress Video Tutorials

Sites offering WordPress Video tutorials

* WP101 – This is the most popular WordPress video tutorial site. Has a members forum too. The videos are of top quality but I find the collection very limited and strictly only for beginners. They also provide white label versions to showcase in your site and a WordPress dashboard plugin. Because of this, you may find the same videos in various sites

* wpLifeGuard– Pretty similar to WP101. Has written manuals for assistance. Also offers the tutorials through a plugin.

WordPress web hosting survey

We resell Hostgator shared hosting at MilkHost. Though people love it for its pricing, support and features, shared hosting does have its limitations. Once your WordPress site starts attracting huge traffic, Hostgator shuts down the site. Outages, database connection errors and occasional sluggishness can hurt a business dependent on it. At the same time, the pricing and WordPressinstall limitations offered by most of the managed WordPress hosts is simply beyond the reach of many.

Managed WordPress Maintenance and Support

If you are a busy / technically naive blogger or a business using WordPress, you may require professional help to maintain your WordPress site.

Maintaining your WordPress installation includes:

* Regular upgrades for WordPress, themes and plugins.

* Having scheduled backups for database and media.

* Monitoring the site for security breaches.

* Monitoring and optimizing the site for performance, page load time.

WordPress and business opportunities

I gave a talk on WordPress and business opportunities at the Open Weekends event at Chennai on May 25th, 2013. I explained the WordPress ecosystem comprising of premium themes and plugins, managed and hosted services and freelancing opportunities with WordPress. I followed it with a demo of using WordPress insisting on the use case that WordPress is just not a blog but a CMS that can be extended with custom post types. I was quite surprised that only a handful of the quite knowledgeable crowd were aware of WordPress software. Awareness about WordPress.com was better.Following were some of the questions that followed:

Premium Real Estate WordPress Themes

Collection of premium real estate WordPress themes to compare features, price and demos.

1. AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme

The AgentPress theme is an ideal solution for real estate agents looking to market themselves and rise above competition.

Business models for premium WordPress plugins

Are you considering to sell premium WordPress plugins? Here are some existing business models.

Sell support

Easy Digital Downloads provides basic support for free and offers priority support for monthly and yearly price.

Premium WordPress themes and plugins in my collection

When we started using WordPress in early 2007, we never imagined we will buy a WordPresstheme or plugin. But when we started freelancing in 2009, we needed to distinguish myself from the competition and started offering premium theme designs as part of the packages we provided. This turned out to be very attractive for my prospective clients. Since then, we started collecting themes from various theme clubs.

WordPress 3.5 features

WordPress 3.5 has been released.
Here is a feature roundup as highlighted in the official About page you will see in the Dashboard.

New Media Manager

Beautiful Interface

Adding media has been streamlined with an all-new experience, making it a breeze to upload files and place them into your posts.

WordCamps in India

Forthcoming WordCamps in India

None announced yet. Track the WordCamp Central schedule for more WordCamps in future.

List of past WordCamps in India

2013 January – Baroda WordCamp
2013 February – Pune WordCamp
2012 October – Mumbai WordCamp
2012 March – Cuttack WordCamp
2011 October – Jabalpur WordCamp

2009 February – Delhi WordCamp

WordPress Theme Frameworks and Starter Themes

_s or underscores

Underscores is a starter theme for WordPress made by Automattic claiming to provide a 1000 hours head start. It is a theme meant for hacking and best not used as a parent theme.
Here’s what’s currently in _s:

• A just right amount of lean, well-commented, modern, HTML5 templates.
• A helpful 404 template.
• A sample custom header implementation in inc/custom-header.php that can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php and adding the code snippet found in the comments of inc/custom-header.php to your header.php template.

Tips for Better Freelancing

Some tips for better freelancing from my experience

1. Focus

Focus on working in a niche and developing your skill sets, client base in that field. Don’t jump at every new technology or quote beyond your specialization.

Sometimes, it can be too tempting to over specialize too. Resist that. Always try to keep various doors open with a particular area of focus.

2. Invest

Invest on the right tools, learning and training resources. This can give an edge over others who hesitate to do that. At the same time, don’t go overboard shopping for these things. Especially, when you have all those Black friday deals

Selling WordPress businesses

The WordPress economy is maturing now and we are starting to see more acuisitions, mergers and sale of whole line of products and brands.

DevPress and Themelab got sold out recently.

Press75 tried selling unsuccessfully through Flippa

https://flippa.com/3056892-pr-6-site-with-13-621-uniques-mo-making-5-268-mo-selling-wordpress-themes

How to install WordPress?

WordPress can be installed easily using one click tools or manual methods. This article describes best practices for WordPress setup.

How to install WordPress?

Many of my friends have started moving to self-hosted WordPresswebsites. Most of them think that they need to install it manually. No need. Follow the steps below.

Installation

There are few automatic tools to enable one click easy installation of WP and many other popular software.

Blogger to WordPress converts – Beginner Questions

WordPress is better and different than Blogger. This article answers common questions asked by people who moved from Blogger to WordPress.

WordPress is better and different compared to Blogger. This article answers common questions asked by people who moved from Blogger to WordPress.

Where is my Dashboard?

See Site admin under Meta section in the right side bar of your blog.

Can I edit my theme?

If you have installed WordPress software in your own site, yes. If you are using WordPress.com then you need to pay 15 USD to edit your theme. Alternatively, you can choose from different themes given at Site Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes

Do I have facility like edit layout->page elements in Blogger?

Yes. Check Site Appearance–> Widgets. You can re arrange the order of widgets in your side bar.

How to import my blog posts, comments from Blogger?

Tools–> import–> blogger and follow the directions. It is easy, quick and automatic.

What is the difference between page and post?

Pages are more important and permanent posts that you would like to show to all your readers. For example, you can write about you, provide contact form, list archive of posts. These pages will always visible in navigation menu.

How can I change the long post URL-s?

WordPress.com automatically keeps your post heading as part of the URL. So, go to write post or edit post. Below the post title field, you have an option to change the URL. For who have installed WP in their own sites, go to Settings–>permalinks for changing settings for all posts.

Tamil in WordPress?

See relevant links for Tamil in WordPress.

How to Troubleshoot WordPress?

 If you have a problem with WordPress, these simple steps and resources will help you troubleshoot.

Whenever you have a problem with your WordPress website,

0. Don’t Panic. So far as your WordPress database and wp-contents folder is fine, you are fine.

1. Switch to the default WordPress template and deactivate all plugins. If you are fine now, switch to another trouble free template or activate the plugins one by one to find out the culprit.

If you still have problem, it is possibly a WordPress problem. Then, there are few places to ask for WordPress help:

* WP support forum for How-To and Troubleshooting. Check other WP help forums too.

* Frequently asked questions for WP troubleshooting

* WP documentation for troubleshooting.

* Tweet your question with the hashtags #WordPress and #help

2. Ask your friends using WordPress for help.

3. Create a test installation of WP in another server and make sure it isn’t a hosting problem.

4. Try all new WP upgrades at the above test installation before you try with your regular blogs.

5. If nothing works, time to hire a WordPress consultant

WordPress Tips

Collection of useful links for WordPress Tips and Tricks. Includes tips for WordPress page speed and bulk deleting spam comments.

WordPress tips which I personally found useful:

* Bulk delete spam comments

* How to fix if your stats plugin keeps showing zero visits?

* WordPress page specific header images

* To speed up WordPress, add the following to your wp-config.php:

// Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);

WordPress.com Vs WordPress.org

WordPress.com is good for having reliable hosting, site security, community and best suited for tech novices. WordPress.org gives you complete freedom, branding, value for domain name, more than blogging for an affordable cost.

Which is good? WordPress.com or WordPress.org? Both have their pros and cons.

WordPress.com advantages
Reliable hosting:

A WordPress.com blog gets world class free hosting. So your blog is always fast. A WordPress.org blog in own domain, if not maintained well, may become slow. Also, some hosts have problems with some of the WordPress.org features. So, you need to choose your host carefully.

Technical Expertise:

In WordPress.com you need not worry about anything except writing. But, in WordPress.org you need to have mimimum technical skills atleast. Or, you need to find someone who can maintain it for free or cost.

WordPress Security Tips

Easy and common sense tips for better WordPress security. Keep WordPress themes and plugins update. Use a strong and unique password.

WordPress security tips:

* Keep your WordPress installation and plugins up-to-date always and immediately. Many attackers try to take advantage of loopholes in outdated software. So, do not hesitate to upgrade WordPress fearing it would break custom made themes and plugins. Security should be the top priority. Use only trusted sources for WordPress themes and plugins. Please be aware that most of the pretty looking free WordPress themes may be having malware.

* Use a strong, unique and different password each for WordPress admin user name, WordPress MySQL database, FTP user account and the web hosting control panel user name.

These two steps are the most important WordPress security measures as recommended by Matt, the WordPress founder.

Slow WordPress?

Is your WordPress site slow? Try these simple steps to increase  your page loading speed:

1. Upgrade WordPress software, current theme and plugins to their latest versions.

2. Use W3 Total Cache plugin. This will increase page speed for repeat visitors and non-bouncing visitors.

3. Deactivate and delete as many unnecessary plugins you can. Check the remaining plugins using P3 (Plugin performance profiling plugin). If you can implement a function by directly modifying the theme without using the plugin, then do it.

GPL Premium WordPress themes reselling

Premium WordPress theme designing is a small and growing community. The more we support it the more we can get from it. The success of the current GPL theme providers is very important to encourage more designers to release their themes under GPL.

I saw a site reselling Premium WordPress themes released under GPL. This is legal but I am not convinced it is ethical. I strongly discourage anyone buying from such resellers or venturing into such business model.

I recommend StudioPress.com

Why should you buy from the original theme designers?

I have bought developer / membership licenses from iThemes,WooThemes, Thesis Theme,StudioPress and Elegant Themes.

Buying from the original theme designers gives you not just the theme but access to support forums, knowledgebase, tutorials and theme documentation. I have found these resources invaluable and saves you loads of time spent in understanding and customizing the theme. I am also guaranteed to get the latest version of all themes and instant access to new theme releases in future.

Premium WordPress theme designing is a small and growing community. The more we support it the more we can get from it. The success of the current GPL theme providers is very important to encourage more designers to release their themes under GPL.

Why you should not buy from resellers?

Theme resellers don’t respect the spirit of GPL but take unfair use of it. This is equivalent to leeching. They neither add any value to the theme nor do any work to deserve the money they charge. I am not naming the site here so as not to give it free advertising. Also, this may be just the first of many sites to come. The site I saw don’t even have a name / face. What is the guarantee that they will stay for long?

Not safe

Cheap resellers / free download sites may host malware that can hurt your website and PC very badly

WordPress Freelancers

Sometimes, when I am unable to accept a project, my clients ask me to recommend someWordPress freelancers. So, here is a list:

1. Bage – Bage does WP installation, theme design and customization.

2. Srinath – Srinath does WP installs, theme customization and image editing work. He also manages Twitter, Social media marketing.

Both of them are leading service providers in Elance and have excellent performance.

3. Srini – Srini is a well known WordPress developer of popular themes like Plainscape. He can make custom plugins, customize themes and plugins.

4. Ganesh – Ganesh manages blogs for some of the popular Tamil writers. He has been in business for years and offers range of services covering design, SEO and hosting.

5. Sudar – Sudar takes WP freelancing work occasionally. His specialization is plugin development.

6. Mayu – Mayu is an active blogger and a good friend of mine. He provides WordPress installation and maintenance, HTML -> WordPress theme conversion services. You can check hisWordPress freelancing profile

Must read blogs on WordPress

List of blogs on WordPress that every WordPress follower should read.

Must read blogs on WordPress:

1. Yoast – Yoast is a well known WordPress expert and maker of many popular WordPress plugins. His site is very friendly with unique content. I read his newsletter without fail and always learn some new thing.

2. WP Realm – WP Realm is a blog concerning all things WordPress. This is a non-commercial community blog, focusing on the WordPress community worldwide, and redressing a current imbalance in WordPress blogs that are too often US-centric. That means reporting on WordPress news and events across the world, from France to Serbia to China to India to South Africa to the USA and everywhere in between! They focus on WordPress businesses, blogs, events, people and services.

3. Matt – Founder of WordPress. Period. He doesn’t write much technical stuff but his occasional posts about the philosophy behind WordPress is a must read.

4. Lorelle – I feel her like an official WP spokesperson. You will find anything related to WP documented well here.

5. WPBeginner – A tutorial website to learn all things WP. The site’s content is not just for newbies as it writes on advanced topics every now and then.

WordPress Syndrome

Are you too involved in WordPress? Do you have these symptoms?

* To login to any site, you type /wp-admin/ . Example: gmail.com/wp-admin/
* The first thing you think about any website is if it is done in WordPress.
* Fight with Blogger, Joomla fans how WordPress is better.

Then you may be suffering from WordPress Syndrome

Are you too involved in WordPress? Do you have these symptoms?

* To login to any site, you type /wp-admin/ . Example: gmail.com/wp-admin/
* The first thing you think about any website is if it is done in WordPress.
* Fight with Blogger, Joomla fans how WordPress is better.

Then you may be suffering from WordPress Syndrome

Contributing to WordPress community

Free software projects like WordPress can grow only if community gives back. Here are few simple ways for you to contribute even without writing code.

Sometime ago, I read a disturbing post called Is WordPress a Thankless Community?. The point is that we benefit a lot from free software but don’t contribute back in any way. This is unfortunately true.

So, how can we contribute back to WordPress community?

1. Say Thanks to WordPress contributors

Do remember to say THANKS Whenever some one makes a nice WP theme, plugin, tutorial blog post or helps in support forum. You can comment in their blog, respond in the forum, rate their themes and plugins well. Every human will be happy for this.

2. Link to WordPress experts

Link to useful WP resources. This will help spread the word and establish authority for the resources. Being recognised as an expert can help the developers in many ways. For example, some one can hire them for a special WordPress project.

GlotPress

GlotPress is a new free software from WordPress team. This allows software translation by collaborating online. GlotPress

* Is more user friendly than the previous web interface for WordPress translation.
* Makes it easy to generate .po files without bugs.
* Allows to sort, filter strings based on many useful ways.
* Is available for any project.

GlotPress is a new free software from WP team. This allows software translation by collaborating online. You can see it in action at WordPress translations.

GlotPress

Premium Real Estate WordPress Themes

Collection of premium real estate WordPress themes to compare features, price and demos.
Collection of premium real estate WordPress themes to compare features, price and demos.
1. AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme

The AgentPress theme is an ideal solution for real estate agents looking to market themselves and rise above competition
AgentPress includes multiple page templates that can be used to create a complete real estate website. From single property templates to a custom homepage, AgentPress is right for you.
Theme design by Studiopress
Price: $159.90
AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme demo
AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme details

Premium Video WordPress Themes

Collection of high quality premium video WordPress themes

Collection of Premium Video WordPress Themes to compare features, pricing and demos.

1. Groovy Video

Unique Features:

• Super-easy functionality  to create video posts;
• Videos are resized automatically and Groovy even publishes the embed code for your readers;
• Integration of the WP-PostRatings plugin for some added fun & interactiveness.

Theme design by Woo Themes
Price: $70
Groovy video Premium wordpress theme Demo
Groovy Video premium wordpress theme details

FTP publishing on Blogger to WordPress: Migration guide

FTP publlishing on Blogger to WordPress migration – Simple and step by step guide

Blogger is closing its FTP publishing soon. Those who want to stay with Blogger custom domain or Blogspot can wait for their Migration tool. I recently migrated a client’s site from Blogger FTP publishing to WordPress and it was a learning experience. Here is a brief migration guide:

1. Create a beta site in WordPress. ( http://example.com/beta/ )

2. WordPress import will not work with FTP publishing on Blogger. So, switch FTP publishing to some Blogspot domain name for a moment. Don’t worry. Your blog will be safe as all the FTP files still remain on your server and your site will be accessible.

3. Import your Blogger comments and posts from the Blogspot domain to beta WordPress site.

Premium WordPress Plugins

The future will see organised premium WordPress plugins market. Six emerging trends regarding Premium WordPress plugins are discussed here. Includes paid support, PRO versions, CMS plugins and plugin markets.

 009 was the year of premium WordPress themes. 2010 will see the emergence of organized premium WordPress plugins market.

Six emerging trends regarding Premium WordPress plugins:

1. Premium WordPress plugin markets

Like ThemeForest does for premium WordPress themes, these allow people to sell and buy premium WordPress plugins

WP Plugins: The WordPress App store from Incsub

Code Canyon: The WP plugin market from Themeforest.

Ecommerce WordPress themes

 Collection of Premium Ecommerce WordPress Themes. Compare features, pricing and demos.

1. e Shop Ecommerce WordPress Theme

• Different modes of Shopping Cart

  You may sell anything – tangible or intangible using our themes. You have an option to create your website in any mode.
  

Best WordPress Permalink structure

The best WordPress permalink structure depends on your needs. This post analyses different permalink structures, their pros and cons and recommends best WordPress permalink structure for blogs, news portals and websites for better SEO and performance.

When you install WordPress, the default permalink structure you have is http://example.com/?p=123 . You can retain this structure if having the shortest URL possible is your priority. Else, you need to change this for better SEO.

The most used custom WordPress permalink structure is http://example.com/postname/ .

The permalink structure I use is http://example.com/year/month/postname/ . This is good for performance. Also, gives an idea to the user when the post was written. They can also trim the URL like http://example.com/year/month/ or http://example.com/year/ and see archives for that period.

If you write posts daily or write many posts a day like in news websites, then http://example.com/year/month/day/postname is a good structure.

If you want your posts to be timeless, do not include date information and just include the unique post id.

How to find if a site is powered by WordPress?

How to find if a site is powered by WordPress? Search for wp-content in page source. Any site not having these words in the source is not powered by WordPress.

Get StudioPress.com WordPress Themes

Many clients approach me thinking a site is done in WordPress while it is not. So, how to find if a site is powered by WordPress?

0. Use IsitWP.com. It detects a WordPress site with almost 100% accuracy.

1. Right click on any page in the site and select “View page source“. You can also select “Page Source” in the view menu in the browser.

Premium WordPress theme markets

Free WordPress themes became a thing of stone age after Premium WordPress themes trend started booming in late 2008. Though there are lot of Premium WordPress themes making companies around, only a few like StudioPress, WooThemes, Thesis are making a mark. Not all designers can and want to build a proper business and community around their themes. So, we wondering if theme markets will be the next trend. This can very well become like the mobile apps market.

Premium WordPress theme markets are where one can sell and buy WordPress themes from various designers. Themeforest is a well known marketplace. MojoThemes is a new entry.

WordPress Podcasts

Collection of useful podcasts on WordPress. I spend a lot of time travelling and found listening to these podcasts on WordPress useful.

Recently I spend a lot of time travelling and found listening to the following podcasts on WordPress useful:

1. WP Water Cooler – Roundtable discussion sometimes involving WordPress. Recorded Mondays at 11:00am PST.

2. Hello Dolly – Newest podcast in the arena. Available in iTunes.

3. WP Candy Podcasts

WordPress freelancing

Are you convinced to consider a freelancing career with WordPress ?

Well, here are some of the usual job profiles for WordPress

Time and again, my friends ask why we focus only on WordPress. They are not sure if there is enough market for WordPress or worried what to do if something bad happens for WordPress  we sure there are bigger guys to worry and keep WordPress in health 

According to oDesk, WordPress is the 4th needed skill in demand after PHP, HTML and English. According to Elance, WordPress is the 2nd needed skill in demand !! And, it is widely speculated that WordPress may be powering 12% of websites online.

So, are you convinced to consider a freelancing career with WordPress ?

WordPress web hosting

Hostgator – A fair price WordPress host I recommend

Guides

* How to choose a web host for WordPress?

* WordPress recommended web hosts

WordPress specific hosts

WordPress.com – If you have a low budget and don’t need to modify WordPress much, then WordPress.com may be the best choice for you. You can get your own domain while getting hosted there.