Recent Projects: OpinionHead.com

Now that I am working with the Revolution Themes, both Revolution one and two, I am switching as many of the sites I manage, to these themes. To put it in simple terms as to the reason, it is because Revolution is exactly what the name implies, a Revolution! I have modified, or attempted to modify many different themes, but the problem s that so many have bad or sloppy code, all of the Revolution themes have clean, clearly marked code, and, the themes are being upgraded to allow the use of all of the new WordPress 2.7 release, this involves the threaded comments, photo captions and more!

This site, OpinionHead.com, has had several themes, the last one, also done by Brian Gardner,  but it was an older theme, and this site needed a new look, again! Since OpinionHead is an All-American site, it is done in Red White and Blue, to represent this All-American spirit!

What do I recommend? Must have Plugins!

My Favorite Plugins

All of these plugins included in every installation package, at no extra cost. I feel that these are the most important, but are optional, if you don’t want them, I won’t install them. For you “Do It Yourselfers” just follow the link and download it, there are instructions there as well.

Akismet
This plugin is a definate must have, so much so, that it is included automatically with the WordPress download, I don’t even have to install it, just activate it and put in the API, which comes from WordPress.com.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Plugin Central
Believe me, when you have a lot of plugins, you will love this one! Follow the link to see what it does.

All in One SEO Pack
This Plugin Optimizes your WordPress site for the Search Engines.

SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which
automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes.
If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly
Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this
makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your
WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as
well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap
is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap
protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified
about the update.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade
This is one of my favorites and saves me tons of time!

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the
wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org
using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

WordPress.com Stats
This one also requires an API key from WordPress.com, no, not the same one from Akismet. I happen to be a Stats freak, the more the merrier!

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics
about your visitors. However I found that even though something like
Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be
overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me
as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to
focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and
provide them in a clear and concise interface.

StatPress
I love this plugin, although I don’t think anyone is maintaining it anymore, that is too bad, as fast as WordPress gets upgraded, eventually it may no longer work, and I have heard that there are some conflicts with other plugins, but until it is no good, I include it!

The real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about
blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search
keywords, feeds, browsers etc.

WP Super Cache
This plugin is will help your site run a little bit faster, but can be a pain in the butt when doing and modifications or changes to yur content, when I have changes to make, I deactivate this one!

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress
blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that
file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive
WordPress PHP scripts.

cformsII – Contact Form
I include this one because of all of the contact form plugins, this is the most customizable and works great, it is the one used on this site.

cforms is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder
plugin, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments
to multi form management, you can even have multiple forms on the same
page!

WP – UserOnline
I like this one too, more statistics! I have had a conflict or two using the sidebar widget with this one, but I still include it.

Detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).

TinyMCE Advanced
If you should ever need to put a table in a post or page, you will be glad I installed this one! The table on the Services and Fees page was created using this.

This plugin adds 15 plugins to TinyMCE:
Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions
(Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search
and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras.

NextGEN Gallery
This is a wonderful plugin for those that use a lot of images, and some other plugins require it, so, I include it just in case.

My Page Order
This is another of my favorites, it has come in handy many times, it is used on this site as well.

My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method
of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.

Reveal IDs for WP Admin
This is also a very useful, and in some cases neccesary, plugin, when using the Revolution themes, it is a must!

With WordPress 2.5 being released, the IDs on all admin pages have been
removed as it is. Propably due to the fact that the common user dont
need them. However, for advanced WordPress Users/ developers those IDs
were quite interesting for some plugins or template tags.

Insights
Another useful plugin, if you like tools, this is like an extra screwdriver!

Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time quality of your posts.

TagThePress
This plugin makes tagging easy!

With this plugin, you will be able to use the the Web service tagthe.net for your posts. Just click on Fetch tags and the title, content and optional excerpt of your post will be analyzed by tagthe.net in order to find words that could be useful as tags.

Different Posts Per Page
Depending on the theme you use and how you set it up, and how long your posts are, this is one of the best plugins I use, it keeps you from having  mile long pages!

“Different Posts Per Page” plugin will allow you to modify the number
of posts shown in home, category, archive or search page. You can even
set the order of posts by ascending or descending order.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
This is probably my favorite plugin of all, it make navigating the Admin area of WordPress incredibly fast and easy, I just hope it sticks around after WordPress goes to 2.7. I have installed 2.7 on a test site, and sorry, I don’t like the sidebar in the Admin area! Anyway, this is a great plugin!

The lazy and the productive will love it : all admin links available in
a neat CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then
“Pages” to edit pages, go to any admin page from any admin page.

CommentLuv
This is another plugin that you may or may not want. It works well with the NoFollow Free plugin, so I include them both. Some say that these plugins are bad for SEO, because when someone posts a comment on your site, it could link back to a site with a lower Google PageRank (PR), sorry, I don’t buy it, I look to give people an extra reason to get involved and post on my sites, if I get SPAM, I delete it! Both may not work on WP 2.7 due to the way that comments are handled.

Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to
their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the
comment author by visiting their site and looking for their feed while
they type their comment and appends it once they submit.

NoFollow Free
This Wordpress plugin remove the “nofollow” attribute from your
wordpress blog’s comments (precisely from the author’s links) and/or
from the comments text links and it inserts (if you want) an image band
at the top of your pages with the phrase: “NOFOLLOW FRE” to encourage
your users to submit comments.
The last release includes new options to replace the nofollow only when
the author posted X comments before and put back the nofollow when some
blacklisted words are matched. The replacement of the nofollow is also
based on the users type (registered and visitor users). Every option
cna be customized by the options page “NOFF”.

(May not work on WP 2.7 due to the way that comments are handled.)

There could be other options available, if you find something else you want or that you believe works better, let me know, post a comment below and tell me what your favorite plugins are!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!

What do I recommend? Anti Virus Protection, a must!

Hopefully if you are reading this, you already have some sort of Virus Protection, if you don’t, I recommend that you get protected quick! Trust me, not having a good anti-virus software, is like walking around in a bad neighborhood with cash hanging out of your pockets and a sign on your back saying “Rob Me!”

I know, you get bombarded with all sorts of ads wanting to sell you the “Best” virus protection on the market! I do too, but, what is the best? That is easy, one that works!

I know, every new computer comes with some sort of FREE antivirus program installed or available on a disk, but is it any good? What is the difference, both Norton and McCaffee, and the others, cost about the same, which is better? Well, either one is better than nothing, but there are better ones out there. I have heard so many of my “Computer Geek” buddies profess that the best is from CA or Computer Associates, however, after purchasing it, there were some sort of conflicts with my firewall, which I also recommend, and other AdWare/MalWare protection that I use, none of which would I want to do without, so, I didn’t use it!

I live in the sticks, so my choices of ISP’s, Internet Service Providers, is limited to either Dial-Up or Sattellite, so I have both! Along with my Internet Service, WildBlue gave me a FREE year of F-Secure, ok, I had a few months left on my Norton, so I waited until that ran out and then installed the F-Secure. Had I known then, what I know now, I would have done it immediately! Trust me, I got three viruses in 6 months!

After installing the F-Secure, I now know why! Just surfing the web, my f-Secure has protected me dozens of times, from real threats, not those fake ones you see!

Since I build and also host websites, I get a lot of eMail, mostly junk, and about 100 times a week, full of Viruses or Worms or some other bad thing, and F-Secure cleans it all up, before it gets to my computer! Just make sure you turn on all the features, like web scanning, it will blow your mind at what kind of stuff tries to attack you! Granted, I am online pretty much 24/7 and working a big portion of that, I love building websites so its ok.

I am sure that you have picked up on the Anti Virus Protection I believe in, F-Secure, not only does it work, it is updated every few minutes! Yeah, every few minutes it checks for updates, if available it installs them, all automatically, I am busy enough so I really like that! Yes, it costs a few bucks more, but it IS worth it! How many computers do you have? You can install F-Secure on up to three computers, that will save you some cash there! So, if you have a subscription that is about to expire, give F-Secure a shot, you will not be disappointed, I know I haven’t been!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!

Monetizing your Website: How do I choose an Affiliate Program?

Monetizing your site is a matter of preference in my opinion. There are so many different “offers” out there, choosing what works for you is a personal matter. Myself, I hate ads on a website and nothing is uglier than having Google ads splattered all over the place! If you use Google AdSense, they pretty much own that space on your website and they even dictate how you can promote your site, and how many page views is too many and so on. Here is my philosophy on this.

I will only advertise products that I use, and/or that I believe in. There are many different Affiliate Programs out there, and yes, you can sign up with all of them if you want, and to find the products that you use or want to promote, you may have to join multiple programs. One thing to remember is that many people, including me, use ad blocking software, so make sure that you use both text and image links, the text links won’t get blocked.

How do you find them? Well, I could list a few here, but I won’t, why? Because I believe that just signing up with these programs does you no good if you don’t know where to find the product you wish to promote, so, go to the website of that product or company and look for a link that says “Affiliate” or something close, click that link and it will set you up, but be forewarned, many advertisers are picky and may not approve you! I am still waiting on approval from a couple of them now, wish me luck!

Also, remember, when promoting these ads, if you use a traffic exchange, do not put pages that contain ads in your surf rotation, these could be considered a bad thing and get you kicked out, I know Google will drop you in a hurry! So, always be careful!

Now, I am going to list the products that I am affiliated with, yes, if you click the link and purchase something, I will get paid a buck or two, thanks in advance! As I stated before, these are products that I believe in and/or use myself, so I know they are good companies.

The first one, is by far the most important of them all, if you have a computer, and surf the Internet, you need a good anti-virus program! I have used several, and believe me, they are not all the same!
Enjoy $10 Off F-Secure Internet Security: Now only: $49.99

If your current anti-virus software is about to renew, give F-Secure a shot, here is a bonus, unlike the others, you can install F-Secure on up to three computers with just the one license!

Second,if you don’t have a Web Host yet, I use Hostmonster, I have been with them almost a year now, and switched from Yahoo. Yahoo is great for a starter, but it is not good for using Wordpress, there are way to many restrictions on file types that you can upload, so, you are limited on what you can do with your site. Yes, this is an affiliate link, and yes, if you signup with Hostmonster I will get paid a few bucks, here is the deal, I will deduct what Hostmonster pays me, if you register your domain with them and hire me to build your site! Is that fair or what?

Maybe you never heard of Hostmonster, they are the same folks as Bluehost , if you prefer, check them out, as far as I know, the only difference is the name.

Take a look at Hostmonster You can even Demo the control panel and see how it works, I have never been so happy as with Hostmonster If I need support, I get a human on the phone quick, and they speak english, I love it!

Just in case you have never heard of TigerDirect.com, below is a banner that will take you there. TigerDirect.com is where I buy everything I may need for my computer, like hard to find stuff for older machines, and they have saved me a lot of money over the years. I have hunted all over the Internet for better prices, but there are none and the service is fantastic, my orders have been shipped and delivered as fast or faster than anything I have ever ordered online, this is definitely a company that I use and trust!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!

I hope that this information is helpful, if you need any of these products, check them out, I know you won’t be disappointed and maybe I’ll make a buck or two!

Recent Projects: The Fellwock Real Estate Group

This is a site that I did about a year and a half ago, it is a static Html site, that I also maintain and update the listings. After building this site, Wordpress became a viable CMS Platform, so now, I am working on building a theme that will match this as closely as possible, as these are the colors and the layout that this company wants, that theme is a work in progress, but it is getting there. I hope to have that done in the next weeks, it wont be exact, but it will be close, and you will be able to see the flexibility of Wordpress. Take a look at the site here, FellwockRealEstate.com. Post a comment and tell me what you think.

OpinionHead has gotten a facelift!

After using several different themes for OpinionHead.com, I have finally found one that I like, the Blue Zinfandel theme by Brian Gardner, at this point it has only been modified through plugins, but there will be others yet to come. Thanks Brian, great job on this theme! Here is a snapshot of OpinionHead.com, if you have an Opinion this is the place for it!

WildWebDesigner now has a simple Link Exchange process using WP Reciprocal Links Plugin!

If you have a WordPress Blog, and you want a simple way of Exchanging Links with others, this Plugin does it! You can Download it here and for any questions, go to to the authors site here. As usual, there were a couple of little bugs, but all the kinks have been worked out now!

If you would like to exchange Links with this site simply find the button above that says “Link Exchange” and fill out the simple little form. Here is one tip, get the code for your site first and then come back and fill out the form. If you have a blog it is simple, just add a link to TrafficComplex.com in your Blogroll, then fill out the form and you are done, I will take a look, make sure it isn’t SPAM or something and approve it.

Remember, Reciprocal Links, or link backs, whatever you want to call it are one of the most important things you can do to improve your sites status (PageRank) on the search engines, so, get busy!

When you look at a Website, what do you see? Value, Budget, Functionality?

Often there is a habit, myself included, that the first impression of a website, is determined by a pretty picture or flashy display of some sort, but that is not what counts!

What counts is the functionality, ease of navigation, and of course, the quality of the product being sold.

If I am looking for toothpaste, I want to find toothpaste, but, if I am looking for advice on using toothpaste, well, you get the point.

Every website is as different as the website owner, or it should be. When you hire someone to build a website, there are many things to consider, besides cost. Even a FREE website is worthless if both the designer and the owner do not communicate properly, and that is the biggest problem for both parties. Why?

The designer wants to build the best site they can, but, they are often hindered by what the website or domain owner wants  to spend. Hey, enough money can get you the Mona Lisa, but who can afford that?

So, look at the value, what can the designer offer? What is the potential return? What is your budget? Will the site work? Once you put all of these things together, you are just getting started!

What are you plans for the website, now, and later? Can it grow with your business? Does the designer charge for each new page? What will your involvement be? Will you work to make the website better? Will you post new information about your products and company yourself? There are so many questions that you need to ask.

At this point in time, Wordpress, no longer just a personnal blog, but a complete Content Management Solution, Wordpress has so many plugins and such available, that it can be customized to do so many things! If you are a small business owner, that will tell people about your products, and get involved with your website, I can help you! If you know yur way around the web, you can do it your self, but, this is what I do, I can help you, and guess what, I work cheap! In some cases FREE, since this is my hobby.

If you would like more information, use the contact form, just tell me what you need, maybe I can help? If you are just starting out, and have an idea, bounce it off me, I have seen just about all of the stuff that works and doesn’t, just avoid the scams, drop me a note, I am here to help!

Recent Projects: TrafficComplex.com, if you need traffic to your website, this is the place!

Are you a webmaster in need of traffic to your website?

There are many things that you need to do to get your rankings up, and one is increase traffic, this shows your site is more important than a site that gets no traffic, it is that simple

Google and the other search engines rank your pages according to relevance to the keywords on your site, one way that it becomes apparent is of course what people are actually searching for, once your pages get indexed, and the spiders crawl your site a few gazillion times, they then rate it, if you have more traffic, the better your site looks!

If you want to learn more about how a traffic exchange works just do a little research, and you can start here at TrafficComplex.com, just know this, if you have a Google Adsense account, DO NOT join a traffic exchange, they will drop you, and I mean fast!

High Fuel Prices: Do bad things ever cause good things?

First off, I want to tell you that the high cost of fuel, primarily gasoline, but also propane, and the natural gas used to make electricity, are putting a hurt on me!

I have a pickup that I now drive only twice a week, just to haul off the trash, and to visit a buddy down the street! Why? well, I also have a car, a little one that is good on gas! Here is the biggie, I am now spending about 75 bucks on gasoline a month, just on that truck, the car, which takes me everywhere else, I am spending about $160 a month! I have another buddy spending like $350, so yes, we all feel that, but….

Something that I have had to do a lot of in the past, just because I live in the sticks, is order what I need online! Yes, shipping has gone up, but it beats driving across the country!

If there is anything at all positive in this, it is that business owners with websites, have an advantage over those that don’t. This world wide web can offer opportunities to those that use it, and use it wisely. I’m not saying that every Mom and Pop should go crazy getting a website, but, for those that need an advantage in competitive markets, the Internet can be a major tool.

As you have seen, my nickname is CarpetGuy, why? I am a flooring consultant. As we speak, I have a couple of flooring sites that are about to be completely overhauled! These two sites are in the very first group of sites that I built, so it is just time anyway, but, I have already noticed more traffic, and contacts from the websites. This tells me that instead of driving around looking for flooring, people are shopping on the Internet! Now is the time to make these sites stand out so that when the people finish looking on the web, and get in their car to go get a closer look, I will have a better chance of getting that customer!

Now is a good time to get a Web Presence, even if it is just a basic site with your business info and phone number, if it is set up right, it can help you, especially if you are in an industry that has avoided getting a website in the past. If you need a tip or two, just keep checking out this site, or use the contact us form and drop me a note, maybe I can help?