Useful Wordpress blog resources
How to create a blog
Whether you are blogging for profit or for fun there are many ways to build your Wordpress blog. Throughout my research I've found many great features for a Wordpress blog that have helped me over time. I'd like to share with you some great resources to build a successful Wordpress blog.
Blog hosting
Always create your own Wordpress blog on your own hosting. Avoid using wordpress.com if you are serious about creating a blog you need to go self hosted.
Domains
Godaddy - The most popular resource for your domains
1&1 - A global leader in domain names
You can use your hosting company for domains. However, if you buy a hosting plan with a free domain, it may cause problems later if you wish to change your hosting. I prefer to buy my domains separately from my web hosting.
Blog hosting
Blog hosting can be a minefield so do some research on good web hosting companies. Please read more on choosing a good web host. I am only going to suggest the hosting company that I am with, because I am a firm believer of suggesting products I believe in.
Blogging software
Wordpress is what I use and millions of other bloggers use it to. Creating a Wordpress blog has never been easier. Download the latest version of Wordpress on to your hosting sever it is quick and easy. Plus millions of people are able to help you out if you ever get any problems.
Wordpress Themes
There are many Wordpress themes online to choose if you are a web designer or want to create your own template again there are many resources to help you.
- Wordpress themes - See what the Wordpress community has to offer with over 700 themes to choose from this is a good place to start. These are all free themes as long as you comply with the rules.
- WordPress Themes - The Best Of The Best! Some amazing themes here for inspiration.
- Woothemes - Premium Wordpress blog themes. Some of the best themes online.
- Smashing magazine - Smashing magazine one of the largest Web 2.0 blogs. The site has tonnes of information of Wordpress blogging and some great Wordpress themes from around the blogosphere.
- Aweber - The number one choice for e-mail marketing.
- Interspire e-mail marketer - This is the package that I use. However, it is a one-off fee, but worth every penny.
- CSSMania - One of the most popular CSS galleries
- CSSBeauty - Has some great CSS galleries plus some good tutorials
- CSS elite - Speaks for itself
- Dreamweaver - Industry standard for web design, where you can modify CSS, HTML and PHP. This is the ideal tool for creating your own Wordpress templates.
- Photoshop - The World leader in Photo multipation. A great program to create web graphics.
- Illustrator - Adobe Illustrator for vector illustrations. If you are creative with illustrator you can create some wonderful web graphics.
- Sxc.hu - One of the most popular free stock photo sites where thousands of images are ready for you to use.
- Everystockphoto - This is an image search engine for all the free stock photo sites.
- istockphoto.com - Premium stock photo site and a reasonable price.
- Vecteezy - Free stock vector graphics to be accessed in Illustrator.
- Contact Form 7 - A great contact form plugin
- Wordpress Database Backup - This is a must. Make sure you backup your database often.
- Akismet - Removes spam comments. A must have.
- All in One SEO Pack - Optimise your blog posts for higher search rankings.
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - A useful sitemap
- Maintenance Mode - Update your blog and provide a maintenace page if making any changes to coding.
- Sociable - Allow users to send your blog posts to social media sites.
- TwitterCounter - Showcase your twitter followers
- Top Commentators Widget - Show your community who is the top commentator
- Rich Dad Poor Dad - Written by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Discover the road to finical freedom.
- Improve your writing skills - Collins. A great resource to improve your spelling and grammar.
- Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income
- Getting Noticed on Google - A beginners guide for interesting search engine optimisation.
- 4 Hour Work Week - The best seller explains on ways to automate your income.
- Don't make me think - A great book on usability. This is ideal for any webmaster or blogger.
- Problogger - Darren Rowse has plenty of great tips for bloggers
- Entrepreneur's Journey - A great blog on helping people making money online
- Daily Blog Tips - A useful blog with tips on traffic generation, blogging and SEO
- Copyblogger - Improve your writing skills and learn some great tips.
- Seomoz - One of the best SEO sites for improving search engine optimisation techniques
- Thoushallblog - A blog for new bloggers mostly targeted at wordpress
- Sitepoint forums - The Sitepoint forums are great for: web design, SEO, marketing, coding and more.
- SEO chat forums - This is where I starting learning SEO a great place to ask questions and improve your skills.
- Google Keyword Tool - A great keyword tool from Google plus it is free.
- Google Analytics - One of the best web stats programs available again it is free.
- SEOMoz Tools - Use the free tools from SEOmoz. However, there are some premium tools, but the free ones are good too.
- Twitter - The world of Micro blogging is getting bigger. If you are serious about blogging you should use Twitter.
- Facebook - This site has applications and groups. Ideal for promoting to a target niche.
- Digg - One of the most popular social book marking sites.
- Technorati - A blog search engine
- Linked In - This is ideal for business owners and bloggers where you can build an online network of leads.
- Youtube - The largest video sharing site online.
- Google Video - Another great video sharing site.
- Blog catalog - An online community for bloggers.
That’s an awesome list of resources for bloggers. I liked it so much that I already linked to it on a post. Great job, James.
Hi Ashwin,
Thank you for stopping by. I am pleased that you enjoyed the list. I use a lot of sites and blogs for design and reasearch. It is good to share those.
All the best, please keep in touch.
Great list James, and I’m glad that I’m already using most of the resources you are referring to here!
How’s the Interspire email marketer, which version do you have? I’ve been their shopping cart for one of my e-commerce company (ultimate version) and it was worth every penny spent there! The best shopping cart I came across.
I already had solutions for my email so didn’t got the email marketer.
Hi Nicolas,
The Interspire email marketer is excellent. I love it. The competitor Aweber is paid on a monthly basis, although at $250 the Interspire version is cheaper long term it has many great features.
The demo is very good, you 12 months free support as well and they are very fast.
Shopping cart wise, I haven’t done an e-commerce site yet. Somebody wanted one a couple of days ago. I think they were surprised at the cost. The SEO is going to cost a lot of time and work more than anything. A client from where I worked spent thousands on a e-commerce website and it is no traffic at all. Reason being because there was no SEO. So if you are going to make e-commerce sites, it is important to invest heavily in your marketing and SEO for it to be a return on Investment.
I am pleased that you like the article.
Ok James, so the small version at $250 is enough…
For the shopping Cart, I paid almost $2,000 but it’s worth every penny! The cost have been recovered within a week for me and the way it helped boost the sales afterward is amazing.
It’s not an expense, but truly an investment.
Hi Nicolas,
The e-commerce site quote I given was £6k, they wanted to create an e-commerce site to sell mountain bikes. You and I know that ranking high of Google for multiple keywords on long tail takes time.
The e-commerce sites require lots of SEO in order to gain customers. The problem with me ranking on the first page of Google for Web Design Lincolnshire, is that potential customers in Lincolnshire want a pro-site for nothing, and are not prepared to spend money.
Yeah I know what you mean… too many people fail to see the value of a good design and good SEO… they just think that they can get a free script through some products and that’s it they are going to be rich!
Awesome list of resources. How long did it take you to put this list together?
Hi Kushmoney,
The list taken about a year to place together, if you take into consideration all the programs I’ve used.
All the services on that list, I’ve had some experience with.
That’s a great list. A couple of plugins that you didn’t mention are commentluv and the subscribe to comments plugin. I notice that you are using the latter but not the former. ;)
I’m not into playing with CSS and such which is why I bought myself the most flexible theme ever that allows me almost total control from it’s control pane. I can change everything from the color of the links to the size of the blog post and sidebars.
Hello Sire,
Thank you for the mentioning commentluv and subscribe to comments. These are great plug ins too. I don’t know how i’ve missed subscribe to comments.
I am sure there will be more great plug ins. Over time this list will grow and be updated.
CSS I don’t blame you for using a flexible template. There are always options and the best thing that a blogger can do is supply great content.
Keep in touch
Yes, content is important and as long as your content is usually of a high quality then the chance of people returning to check out what is new is also increased.
Long time, all I can say is thank you. Their are some that I can use.
My favorite the auto tagger and adsense plugin.
Hi Ian,
I haven’t looked at adsense, something to do at some point.
Has anyone got anything to add to the list?
This is an ongoing list.
wordpress plugin link demon by Paul B at http://www.themakemoneyonline.net/
Thanks for good post
Hi Jessica,
I am pleased you enjoyed the post.
Hi James those are great resources to create new blogs, what about to upgrade WP in an already populated blog, something like step by step guide.
I think after my problem I would love to have a guideline to do this and mayb too how to avoid been hacked so easy, lol.
Luis
beautiiful blog merciiiiii
Thanks for your comment.
Hi, good post. I have been woondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comments,
And that is a great compilation of useful stuff. Almost like real encyclopaedia, a lot of links. Very good and useful post in my opinion.
James,
The links alone in this post are worth the read! You weren’t kidding when you said that you had tons of free content that could help someone.
Thanks for sharing.
John
Hi John,
I agree this is a great resource in months to come, I’ll create another list.
I really enjoyed reading this article and checking those links in the article, I am 100% sure this article is a good reference of how to create a blog. Thanks for taking time to write this very informative article. keep up the great work.
Hi Blog design,
I am pleased that you enjoyed this post.
Your blog is so informative … ..I just bookmarked you….keep up the good work!!!!
I’m Out! :)
Thanks for your comment,
Motivation like that makes it worth while.