Understand The Pros And Cons Of Free WordPress Themes

Guest Post - Our host is Paulius Rasytinis, in this post he looks at the advantages and limitations of using free Wordpress themes on your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Blogging Section.

There are lots of discussion about free WordPress themes and whether they are a good solution for your website. Opinions differ, but the truth is that it all depends on your website and what you wish to achieve. Small personal blogs or starter websites may benefit from a free WP theme because it is a quick and inexpensive way to setup your website. Complex corporate websites will often do better with a premium theme.

What is very important for free WordPress themes is to understand their limitations and to accept them. Chances are that a free theme won't offer many premium features, but perhaps that's not what you need at the moment. Another important thing to keep in mind is security. It's important to download free WP themes from reliable sources, such as WordPress.org free theme directory (http://wordpress.org/themes/).

Best Things About Free WordPress Themes

There are certain benefits to using free WordPress themes, especially when it comes to personal blogs and websites. Even small businesses can benefit from such a theme, especially if they're only starting out. Here are some of the best things about free WordPress themes:

• Price. The main benefit of free WP themes is their price. They are free of cost so you can easily download them. If you are ready to accept that free themes won't be able to offer all the powerful features paid themes can offer, you can do well with a free WP theme. Especially if you know that your website doesn't need premium features. In this situation, choosing a free theme is a reasonable option.
• Light admin panel & options. Free themes are often light with features and therefore easier to install, configure and use. This can be very useful for those who don't know much about coding and simply want to build and organize their website without much hassle.
• Easy customization. This is another advantage you get with less features and options. You will be able to customize your website quickly and easily. You may get only a few color schemes and two layout options. It may seem a bit limiting, but it's much easier to customize your website and test all the possibilities before you decide which one works the best.
• Experimentation. Since free themes are available free of charge, you can try many different themes without compromising your budget. All themes, especially premium ones, come with a demo, but sometimes it's good to know that you're not wasting your money if a theme fails to meet your expectations.
• Your content is in the focus. Free themes usually offer less features and options, thus bringing your content into focus. Not all free themes are minimalist and not all premium themes have complex designs, but chances are that a free theme will also be free of unnecessary features so your content will be in the focus.

You Get What You Pay for

At the same time, you get what you pay for. Free themes are often not the best solution, especially when it comes to complex corporate websites. There are some features that are worth paying for and free themes simply can't compete. Here are some of the main disadvantages of free WordPress themes:

• No support. With free themes, you are usually on your own. There is no customer or developer support, so you need to understand how to install, setup ad use a theme on your own (unless you can find someone to help you with this). When you have a website to run and organize, worrying about your theme and how it works is the last thing you need. The lack of support may pose a serious problem.
• No regular updates/bug fixes. Similar to the previous one. You can download a nice free theme today, but it may become useless if there is a bug. Also, chances are that there won't be regular updates so your free theme can get outdated pretty quickly.
• The theme is overused. Free themes, especially elegant ones with many handy features, get downloaded a lot. It means that many websites will use the same WP theme as you, which can make your website/blog less unique when it comes to design and functionality. This is why it's important to customize the theme according to your needs. That way, your website will be unique even if you choose to use a popular free theme.
• Potential malicious code. Hidden malicious code in free WP themes is one of the dangers you might face if you opt to use free themes. However, malicious code is not a defining characteristic of free themes – in fact, there are so many quality free themes out there. Rather than being a problem with free themes, it is a problem of unsafe websites offering those themes. This is why it's important to download free themes from reliable sources like the ones mentioned above.

Your comments are welcome below.

Paulius Rasytinis

About the Guest Author:
Paulius is an experienced blogger who likes to share his knowledge about WordPress and WordPress Themes. He is also a co-founder of a highly powerful WordPress theme search engine that helps users to find the right theme faster than ever before.

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How to Prepare Your Website for Increased Visitor Numbers

Our Host karl is Going to share some views on Increasing Visitors number on your website. See How can you become a Guest Author On Blogging Section.

While some websites are caught unawares and unprepared by sudden surges in web traffic, the most successful are often aware of the trends that indicate their visitor numbers could be about to explode.

Whether it is due to an analytics program that shows constantly growing numbers of visitors, or an investment into an SEO campaign that will bring more visitors over the coming months, for example, there could be many reasons behind a site needing to be ready to handle a higher volume of traffic.

We looked at the steps you can take that will ensure that your business moves forward and your site continues to operate with no noticeable differences on any level.

Change Up Your Hosting

This is a definite must do if you are currently using a shared server or a VPS hosting solution. Even if you are using a dedicated server, you might want to increase the bandwidth or capabilities so that your site can continue to operate when the visitor numbers explode.
The easiest way to imagine this is to compare it to a shop that opens a second branch in town, and instead of having new staff, it just splits the existing team between both. It is never going to work, and expecting to grow your revenues and cope with increased numbers on a limited server is not going to, either.

Look at Your Social Sharing Options

The great thing about increased traffic is that it leads to more traffic, snowballing so that your website becomes hugely popular and your business potentially hits constant growth.
Therefore, this could be a great time to re-launch your social media offerings so that you can score highly in the user generated content stakes. Ensure that anyone coming to your site, whether they are browsing pages or buying product, can easily spread the word through their own social streams, as well as engaging with your business with your own.

Consider Outsourcing Content Creation

When you have more visitors, it becomes more important to keep your blog or news pages up to date so that people headed to your site have an impression of a relevant, “finger on the pulse” type of business.
More people most likely means an increase in your workload, however if you have been managing your site yourself you can simply outsource things such as blog and article writing to freelancers or a content creation company. Ideally, you will be able to give them access to your website’s content management system, so that they can upload the content and keep your site fresh independent of yourself.
While increased website visitors can serve to create a feeling of excitement, it is just another opportunity for you to take your brand to the next level. Ensure you position yourself to continue the growth of your business and make the most of all increases in web traffic.

Karl

About the Guest Author:
Karl is an online content writer across a number of industries, with a specific interest in the role managed VPS hosting and other host solutions can play in the growth of online businesses.

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Best Free Tools To Compress And Optimize Images On Your Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Salman Farooqui, who takes a look at image compression and the best tools to help.See How To Become a guest author on Blogging Section.

Image files today are the most used media type to share. However, they are often too large in size to easily share or store. This is where image compression comes to play. Image compression is technique which reduces the image size without significant reduction in image quality. Many people fear image compression because they have a misunderstanding that it is a threat to image quality. Actually, image compression is of two type - Lossless and Lossy.

Lossless image compression

 Lossless image compression involves removal of some of the image data to reduce the size but the image quality remains the same and all the image details are preserved. You won't notice any change in image but the images through this method can only be compressed to around half in size.

Lossy image compression

Lossy image compression can reduce the image size to more than one tenth of it's size but the quality, though not very significant, is reduced. Lossy method will reduce some shades of color that are very similar thus reducing the overall size of the image.

So what are the benefits of image compression in blogging? Well, image compression technique is best suited for blogging. Compressed images not only reduces page's loading time it also takes less space on your hosting space and bandwidth. This is one of the best and most promising method to reduce page response time by optimizing images of your blog. It proves a boon for users who have slow Internet connectivity. They don't have to wait for long for viewing your blog.

Importance Of Page Load Time

Your blog loading time is now part of google algorithm which how decides how to rank a site in google search results. You don't want your blog to be devoid of many benefit,  Do you?

Faster page loading impacts your blog's visitor bounce rate. No one wants to wait for site to load up. If it takes a lot of time people will close your site and probably won't come back. This happens with many new bloggers, they add high quality large size images as their background and on their blog. If you can easily reduce the size of the image then why load those big ones.

Optimizing your images is a must thing to do for better site speed so that users have a better experience on your site. There are many free and useful tools for optimizing images without losing any visible image quality. We will go through some of the best tools to optimize and compress your images before adding it your blog.


Original Image :

 

Compressed Image :

First image is 70kb and second is an optimized image with size of just 9kb. However, different image formats have different potential for reduction in size.

Offline Tools

  
 Photoshop

Photoshop is the first name that comes to our mind when we want some image editing or optimization. When you save an image, use 'save for web' option rather than 'save as' option in photoshop. You will see a significant change in image size without compromising with your image quality. There is another cool photoshop plugin called SuperPNG. It's a free Photoshop plugin for optimizing small PNG images.

Irfan View

 Irfan View is another very popular image viewing and editing tool. Apart from a lot of great inbuilt features, you can use plugins to enhance the features. One such plugin is RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool). This plugin creates a save for web option in irfan view menu. You can simply scroll the slider for optimized image size and you will preview the image quality for that size. It is a great tool if you want your image corresponding to a fixed image size.

PNGOUT :

It is useful to optimize pictures created by other tools. The new image is lossless meaning that the new image will be of same quality but with lower image size. It can operate from Windows run dialog box and also command prompt.

OPTIPNG :

It can convert different image to png and can easily optimize png images losslessly. An open source advanced png optimization tool recompresses optimized images further to even more smaller size without any loss in image quality.

PNGCRUSH :

Another great tool for lossless png compression. It tries different methods of compression according to your image attributes and gives you best result. Changes color type, like truecolor to indexed color if the colors are very few which reduces the image size but not the quality.

JPEGTRAN :

A nice tool for optimizing jpeg files. It supports lossless compression between different jpeg files. Another great feature of this tool is that it supports lossless rotation and cropping of images.

GIFSICLE :

Program for optimizing and manipulation, editing and deconstruction gif animation image files. Creating gif animations with GIFSICLE is very easy. It runs on command-line to create and edit gif images.

Online Tools

SmushIT :

One of the most reliable and popular online tool by Yahoo Network for lossless compression of images. It shows you the new optimized image size before compressing.

JPEG Optimizer :

Useful for optimizing digital pictures. Select a compression value from 0 to 99 and click optimize photo to get your result. You can also resize your picture by selecting the appropriate size.
  

Image Optimizer :

Another great tool for image optimizaion. Just visit the site, browse your file, set the quality and get the new optimized image file. A piece of cake.

Picresize :

This is basically a picture resizer tool but you can use it's picture size reduction option. Enter the desired size of the image and press OK.Let's say you have an image of 200KB and you want to change it to 50KB, picresize will do it for you in just a click of button.

TinyPNG :

Lossless png image optimization with full support for transparency. You can drag and drop up to 20 images on tinypng site to get your compressed images. 

Drop your comments and questions below.

Salman Farooqui

About the Guest Author:
Salman Farooqui designs blogger templates and writes articles related to blogger, design hacks and SEO. His blog Kick Blogger publishes free blogger templates.

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Discover New And Exciting Techniques Of Creating Blog Content

Guest Post - Our host is Anna Robeson, Anna is looking at some different types of content bloggers can use and readers will love.See How To Become a guest author on Blogging Section. 

The days of simply writing content and posting it online are long gone. I've heard the phrase „content is king” time and time again, and while I do not disagree with it, hell, I've actually written an article on the subject myself, I have to say that content is not only written. Images, videos info-graphics are also content, visual content, but still, content. The problem with today's internet is the fact that it is over-saturated with information.

Let's be honest, how many of you read articles from start to finish?  I don't. Even if I find something that interests me, I usually skim through the text, and bookmark it for later. Many writers are faced with a major problem: people do not read their blog. Moreover, in most cases, it is the first few seconds that attract a user. You can be sure that a block of text isn't as attractive as a post rich in images or videos. Written content is without a doubt the most popular content creation technique, and it is also one of the most poorly done. Any respected agency will tell you that high-quality content is one of the most powerful business promoters. That being said, let us discover alternative content techniques.

1. IMAGES

 

What most people do not know, is that written content is not the only one that can be optimized and used in order to promote a website. Everybody knows the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words", but in the world of SEO, a picture can be worth a thousand visitors or links. I've seen a lot of web owners who get a decent percent of overall website traffic from images. There are plenty of visual search engines out there which focus their queries around photos and videos. In other words, if you find some eye-candy, you can read the source article, or better yet, you can create truly unique posts which you later pin on a Pinterest board. Never underestimate the power of a high-quality image, because most of the times people want to see what it is that they are interested in, before they read about it. 

2. VIDEOS

 When it comes to videos, things are a little complicated. With images it is possible to takes someone else's work, as long as you give credit to the owner. The days of simply shooting, editing and uploading a film are long gone. Nowadays, in order to get a video noticed you have to take certain steps:

• Did you know that Youtube is the largest search engine except Google? What better way to gain more exposure than by creating an awesome video which you can share on Youtube later?

• Once you've uploaded the video, make sure that you are sociable about it. Believe me, your readership will appreciate the effort that you made in order create it. You can even create your very own, branded YouTube channel, if it is exposure that you are looking for. It is more convenient for users to listen to something while they go about their business.

• Tweak your video for search engines. Basically, in order to apply search engine practices on videos, one has to edit the „Meta-data” of the post. This means that descriptions, titles and data will be branded on YouTube’s and Google's channels.

 

3. INFOGRAPHICS and CONTENT VISUALIZATIONS

 

 I may be treating them at the same time, but Infographics and content visualizations have little to noting in common – except the fact that they are both visualization tools. Infographics represent a great alternative to written content, and a more attractive one if I might add. They are commonly used to present interesting facts in a more visually appealing way.

Concept visualizations, on the other hand, are a great content technique which every specialist should have in his marketing tool belt. They are extremely efficient because they can help explain complex or abstract ideas that are difficult to put into words. Simplicity, and clarity are the two, key qualities that a content visualization should have. I especially recommend it for bloggers who are trying to prove a point, or make a statement, and for business owners who want to make things easier to understand for clients.

4. GIFs and MEMEs

 

Animated GIFs have long been used on forums and chat-rooms, but it was only recently that Tumblr managed to make them go viral. They are a fascinating tool for promoting written content, presenting new concepts and marketing ideas. They are capable of adding that interesting visual appeal that any website needs, and to stimulate and engage with the public.

Are you familiar with MEMEs? If you are not then maybe it is time to do some research. It all began with 9gag, and now there are so many funny Memes circulating that it's hard to keep track. They are catchy, hilarious and impossible to forget. If you want to establish a personal brand, memes are the best thing you could ever do. They may not be useful for content creation, but they are the best way to interact with your readers.

 

5. PODCASTS

A podcast is a multimedia digital file which can be uploaded to a portable player. Many people think that podcasts are a thing of the past, but I assure you that they are very useful. Podcasts, both video and audio are an excellent solution for people who like to jog, who travel a lot or who have to commute. They can easily be uploaded to iTunes or any podcasting platform of your choosing. They give you the opportunity to be original, because they give you the chance to create irresistible and original call-to-actions.

Now that you've learned about five alternative content creation techniques, you will be able to make your web-page more dynamic and flexible. But you don't have to stop here. Music videos, SlideShare presentations, Embedded Tweets and many other strategies await your discovery.

 

Anna Robeson

About the Guest Author:
Anna Robeson is a passionate writer who usually consults with a digital net agency . She is interested in all things tech, and she is constantly scouring the internet for interesting new things to share with her readership.

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7 Reasons Why Acting Goofy On Your Blog Helps Business

Guest Post - Our host is Brianne Walter, here Brianne explains why you don't have to be serious on your blog at all times.See How To Become a guest author on Blogging Section. 

Bloggers, like any other business owner in the world, take their blogs very seriously. Every bit of information they put on there and every post is somber and serious and high on information. Not many would ever want to tamper with the serious image that they have created in front of their audiences. However, as many successful bloggers know, acting goofy on your blog could be a great alternative to always being super serious. Here are a few reasons why you should consider bringing out your goofy side every once in a while on your blog.

1. It helps you and your content team relax

Goofing around is the easiest way to relax- for you, your content team and even your audiences. While always posting thought provoking, well researched pieces helps you build up your credibility but you have to remember that people love bloopers just as much as the serious stuff. Think of it as something like the signature charming sign off that your favorite news anchor used before ending a news bulletin and you would realize that throwing in a goof or two can actually help your content team feel refreshed by much.

2. It would never be as bad as you imagine

Being goofy on your blog really has no down side. Unless you have no talent whatsoever for comedy, goofing off would never had a bad repercussion on the image of your blog. In fact, posting a goofy pic or video or post on your blog will actually help people get a better sense of your confidence which would automatically get them to see your blogs in a new light as well.

3. It gives your audience variety

Building up a dedicated audience for your blog is hard work. Sustaining this audience could be the real tricky part however. But if you have the talent for providing your audience with variety, you’d have a better chance of retaining eyeballs over a longer period of time. When your audience sees that you can provide them with a bit of variety as well as what your content specializes in, they might be tempted to spend more time on your page.

4. It promotes bonding

A very well known universal fact is that people like the company of folks that can make them laugh. This also applies to the virtual world and the millions of cat videos with felines doing dumb stuff proves that. So, you have to ask yourself, if a cat doing silly things can get millions of page views, a real person doing something similar might be enough to make even your regular audience tune into your page more often. Plus, blogs are more about personal expression for both the content developer as well as the reader and little goof offs every now and then would bring your readers ever closer to you too.

5. It’s entertaining

Yes, goofs are rather entertaining and blog owners and developers should not be ashamed of sharing their own goofs with their followers. Of course you don’t have to make a regular habit of it but posting a picture of a video of behind the scene bloopers etc. keeps audiences entertained while allowing them to see your human side too.

6. You’re cool if you can laugh at yourself

The ability to laugh at oneself is not something that everyone is blessed with though the people that can pull it off without sounding sarcastic or whiny generally are considered the most self confident of all folks. The self assurance this ability gives off is also quite attractive to others which makes making friends and winning admirers a breeze too. If you can admit to and even show off having a goofy side, people will find you cool for sure.

7. It helps you stand apart from rival blogs

No matter what topics your blog espouses, you know that there are at least a handful of other blogs that are writing about the same thing. While this kind of rivalry is amazing for development of content, its quality and putting the reader first, it also makes it hard for both established blogs as well as new entrants to the game to stand out from the crowd. This is where posting about the occasional goof could set you apart and help you create a wider fan base in the long run.

Brianne Walter

About the Guest Author:
Brianne is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, travelling and reading books. She contributes to Hydroxycut.

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The Best Type of SEO Blog Post There Is (And Why You’re Not Using It)

As bloggers, we tend to overestimate our core audience. It’s nice to think that all of our readers will dive into our content with some basic idea of what they’re doing. The idea is that there’s no reason to define well-known terms or concepts because you assume your audience already knows about them. And if they didn’t, you’re assuming they’ll open up Google and take a look for themselves.

The harsh reality is that by taking this approach, you could be losing out on hundreds of first time readers. It’s important to realize that a section of your audience is aspiring to join your niche, and just needs to know how.

Imagine that John is a business owner looking to start a business in professional organizing. John heads over to Google and types in “what is a professional organizer?” He arrives at a blog post that explains the concept, and then searches the blog for more information. John just became an avid reader of the first organizer blog he’s ever visited, and the blogger just received a new reader and prospective client or customer.

DEFINITION POST: GOOD FOR SEO, GREAT FOR NEW READERS

There are two reasons why definition posts rock for building up the authority of a blog…

• There are thousands of people just like John who are looking for someone to explain their niche and its vocabulary in easy to understand words.
• People often search “what is..?” phrases on Google.

The thing about definition posts is that right now, most definition posts are found on adsense or free article websites. If you’ve ever had to do research for a bit of writing, or if you were looking to get started in a field, you know that information on these websites is generic and often largely unhelpful beyond getting the basics down.

As a blogger, you can offer a first-time reader more than “just” a basic definition. Definition posts are a portal into your blog’s deeper content. When writing definition posts, you have the chance to introduce readers to a new concept and help them get started with other, in-depth information. A few well-placed links in the posts and a “how to get started” section and you’ve just converted a possible reader into a dedicated one.

HOW TO WRITE A INSANELY HELPFUL DEFINITION POST

Here are a few key highlights to get you started:

• Break General Topics Down into Small, Informative Posts
• Use Easy to Understand Titles (e.g.Free Blog Vs. Paid Blog)
• Link to More Informative Posts on Your Blog
• Don’t Link to External Sites
• Provide an Example of the Concept

What are you waiting for? Head out and write a definition post for your blog today and share the link in the comments below. Show us how you’re introducing readers to your niche.

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Top 7 Social Media Tips For Bloggers In 2013 And Beyond

There are several paths that bloggers and marketers take in order to increase links and web traffic. Social media is one of them. Five popular social media sites are taking the web by storm: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. This article will explain how social sharing enhances SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through link building and strong social signals. There are actionable tips provided in this article that explain how readers can use social media to drive traffic to blogs and websites.

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How You Can Create A Blogging Community

When we blog, we must try to create a thriving blogging community. In other words, it's important that we can access a network of like-minded bloggers who can help us if we need help and vice versa. In this case, blogging then becomes more than simply writing and publishing on our own blogs; instead, it becomes an activity that allows you and other bloggers to join together into a community of voices. Once this happens, you can really see how powerful blogging truly is.

But how do you create this thriving community? Follow these tips to see if you get any ideas. 

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Run The Reddit Engine:How To Maximize Traffic To Your Blog From Reddit

What is Reddit?

If you’ve seen the front page filled with hysterical gifs and shared life-exposed memes to your friends, then you’ve Reddit. Not only have you read it, but also maybe used it to generate buzz for your brand or product or even as simple as having the quote of the day at your office.

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5 Ways To Attract Guest Bloggers

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Three Tips for Your Guest Blogging Campaign

 Guest blogging isn't just about submitting guest posts to as many blogs as you can. If you want a successful campaign that will get you valuable backlinks, some planning and strategy is called for.

Keep a list of guest blogging sites

At first, it's easy to remember every single blog you submit articles to. But that changes when you have been going at it for months and written possibly dozens or even hundreds of posts. Don't rely too much on your memory. It'll get fuzzy. Instead, keep a list of these guest blogging sites. Make a note of those blogs that have accepted articles from you, those that rejected them, those that never responded, and so on. This will help remind you where you've been and where you have yet to look. It will also save you time choosing which sites to submit additional posts to and which you don't want to bother with.

Save all your articles

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