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WordPress blogging has become a simple affair. Adding to the popularity of WordPress blogging is its simplification with the use of innovative plugins that do not cost a penny. Most of these plugins are available to be used online. Some plugins offer lots of functionality to do online editing at WordPress. While searching for off-line editing tools to make WordPress blogging simpler than before, I came across a few user-friendly off-line WordPress editing tools.

Wbloggar.com

The very first thing to mention about this WordPress editor is you do not need to pay for using it. Downloading and installing the plugin is the only do to put it into application for the better look of your WordPress blog. It speeds up the pace of making posts and thus, saves a chunk of time to help you increase your blogging activity. Make a post in Wbloggar and upload the post to your WordPress blog with just a few clicks. Using this offline editor, you can upload a post to other blogging platforms like Bloggar than WordPress. Wbloggar lets you edit the published posts from a single dashboard. You can edit templates without importing text files, reworking code strings and formatting text alignment. Inserting pictures, graphs and charts in posts with the help of Wbloggar is no longer a matter.

Live Writer

The interface of Live Writer offers an easy application to provide an instant preview of work in progress. It helps make necessary changes immediately. Live Writer comes with a complete range of fonts exceeding the limited number at WordPress itself. Plus, you can easily define spacing, image placement, alignment and text wrapping. A couple of clicks work to let you embed videos and add photos. Live Writer is a more functional and flexible off-line editing tool with a host of plugins, many of which help innovate the display of your blog posts. ‘Simple’, ‘flexible’ and ‘adaptable’ are better to describe what you expect from Live Writer.

Post2Blog

Post2Blog is all the rage with the core bloggers. It should be your pick, if blogging is your world. It is a complete off-line editor with hotkeys. It offers automated pinging to the selected services. It comes with an automatic tagging application for Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati and many other social bookmarking sites as well as blog search engines. Using this off-line editor, you can post content in any virtual format of image, text and video. Automatic image upload to your blog from various sources is possible with Post2Blog. No more details. It will kill your curiosity about this editing tool . Post2Blog is sure to get you in the spirit of blogging.

Quamana

Quamana helps make a simple and easy approach to blogging, when flexible usability is a concern with the round-the-clock bloggers. With the cross platform functionality of Quamana, you are not required to worry about flitting between PC and the Mac anymore. Installing this editing tool is just the only do to use it. It is a simple HTML interface. Text alignment, image alignment, cross posting options, many window editing options, complete pinging and trackbacks are simple but notable features of Quamana. A good take for daily blog maintenance and promotion, it simplifies the process of making posts on blogging platforms.

ScribeFire Blog Editor 3.4.6

This off-line editor is a good use for those bloggers who can’t think of other browsers than Firefox. It is basically an add-on. Though rich in features, it is simple in use. Being integrated to the Firefox browser, it makes posting a super-fast experience. To beef up things, ScribeFire hosts some nice features like an image gallery, an open page suiting your needs for artistic display and an integrated sharing option which make a new post go viral as soon as it is published.

Let me know which of the above-mentioned off-line blogging editors has clicked with you or if you have any suggestion.

Not far is the day when people will surf the Internet for information less and use social media for engagement more. Internet surfing is likely to be cornered by social networking. With the growing popularity of social media, marketing, communication and information have got a new definition. A high-tech platform for online communication, social media has bridged the gap between buddies and businesses. Engagement among the like-minded people and the people with similar business interests is the buzzword in the whirligig social media world.

Social media is a colossal online market to dig out resources for businesses. Any business can make inroads to this zone of the Web World by creating a profile. The profile is a mere entry pass to the platform. What makes it worthy of representing the business is engagement between the business owner and the visitors to the profile. With adherence to the rules of engagement, the social media profile itself becomes a benchmark for the brand image and value of the business.

The application of social media tools is one of the rules of engagement for all including business owners and marketers. As social media keeps on evolving, so the rules of engagement keep changing just like the rules of game. It is the rules of social media engagement that encourages interaction between two brands, two businesses, two customers, two peers, two websites and two friends. The end results are relationships that translate into business conversions, if the making business online is one’s ultimate purpose of using social media.

Here is an agenda of best dos to set and maintain the rules of engagement for social media users:

• Discover some social media communities and groups relevant to your niche
• Observe the needs, choices and challenges of people in those communities or groups
• Relate your product to their choices, offer solutions to their needs, help them meet challenges
• Participate on other online platforms outside the boundary of Facebook and Twitter
• Determine the personality and identity of your brand or business and relate it to your social media contacts
• Respond to the reviews on your brand or business from the contacts to make them feel engaged to your venture
• Associate yourself with the things that help you enhance the brand perception among your contacts
• Engage yourself with the social media users by replying to their queries about your business
• Observe the online behavior of the users in each of social networks and approach them accordingly
• Be passionate in your approach to them. It should not make them feel that your purpose is marketing or sale
• Tone down the professional feel of messages to your contacts. Keep them a bit informal and friendly
• Be patient to listen to your contacts. It helps you make them listen to you
• Offer glimpses of your brand or business to your contacts through direct messages to them or social media updates
• Be open to the ideas and suggestions of your loyal contacts to improve the brand or business

A CMS based website is a great platform for Internet shopping or ecommerce. Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and eBay are a few popular business platforms driven by high-end software applications. They have sprawled over a larger space in the Internet world for online business and marketing through highly functional application programming interfaces. WordPress, a Content Management System, keeps upgrading its functional features, to say plugins in particular, for its users who are engaged in some ecommerce activity. With the innovative and powerful ecommerce plugins of WordPress, you can set up an ecommerce site where it is fun shopping for a product. The most useful of them are –

WordPress eShop Plugin

The eShop plugin packs in punch for WordPress users. An accessible WordPress shopping cart plugin, it integrates with Google Base, Paypal, iDEAL, Webtopay, eProcessingNetwork and Payson as well. It helps utilize WordPress pages and create product lists. The plugin is a great use for multiple functions like downloading sales data, uploading downloadable products and calculating shipping charges.

WordPress PayPal Plugin

It is a feature-packed plugin for monetizing WordPress blog content. It integrates PayPal to facilitate monetization. The most useful feature of the plugin is to hide the content of a WordPress page of a blog post. It lets registered users view the WordPress content and renders the content invisible for unregistered users. Any hidden content is searchable as Google bot indexes it. The users would find it in search results but cannot see it. All the features and functions of this specific plugin are customizable.

WordPress Auction Plugin

This plugin for WordPress is a breakthrough. It helps the users create and host auctions as many as possible on their ecommerce sites. The WordPress based site owners can utilize this plugin for free. So, there is no reason to worry about gallery fees, listing fees, seller fees or final value fees. Once you register for the plugin with WordPress Auctions Live Page, it will generate traffic for your site. Uploading several images for an auction using the plugin is fun. It helps display third party ads on your site when no auction is on the go.

WordPress PHPurchase Plugin

This plugin helps track the shipping of products. It comes with an option to let you select a product that you want to sell and ship and track. It also helps prevent the overselling of a product. The PHPurchase plugin is a tool to collect the shipping address, billing address, phone number and email so as to provide your customers with the facility of online payment.

WordPress YAK Shopping Cart Plugin

This plugin for products with weblog entries is simple in configuration, customization and use. This shopping cart specific plugin comes with an option screen to configure the setting. In the WordPress Management Screens, there is YAK with three pages. The first is to show as well as fulfill orders online. The second is for online product management and the third for preparing online sales reports.

WordPress Shopp Plugin

This shopp plugin for WordPress users is easy to install and use. It has been designed with an aim at managing an online ecommerce store. The users can customize and share their shopping experience online, with the use of this plugin. It also helps classify products under its inbuilt categories like best selling products, on sale products, featured products and random products.

Give a zing to your online commercial activity by adding these WordPress plugins to your ecommerce sites.

Do you have online name and fame? If yes, then you are a blogger. Blogging is an online activity that is escalating higher and higher day by day both for personal and professional purposes. WordPress is a most professional as well as customizable platform for blogging. Installing WordPress is an elemental step for blogging. Fresh bloggers may not be in the know of how to install it. The following is the step-by-step- process of installing WordPress –

Downloading a WordPress copy is the very first do in the process of how to install WordPress blog. Log on to wordpress.org/download and find out the link for “Download ZIP” on right front of the page with dark blue as its background. Click on the link and then, save the file on desktop.

Once you are done with downloading the program, you need to unzip the folder and extract the files in the folder on desktop. Some desktops come with a built-in unzip and zip application while some other desktops have this application installed on them. Click the right mouse button on the downloaded file and the menu features the option, “Extract All”. Select the option to get the files out of the zipped folder.

FTP is an abbreviated term for File Transfer Protocol. It is a program that will let you copy files from desktop to the web hosting account. Available are there several FTP programs. FileZilla is a free-to-use popular program.

Get this information entered into the FTP program of your choice to access as well as upload files to access as well as upload the files from desktop to the web host. Then, put the details like domain name and username and password in your FTP account. Your web host can provide you with this information.

You can easily see a link in the web hosting control panel in order to install MySQL database. After setting up the database, you will require database name, database hostname, database username and database username. Make sure to check the hostname with your web hosting service provider.

Open the downloaded and unzipped folder only to locate the other folder, named “WordPress”. There was a file called wp-config-sample in the folder. Use any text editor like Wordpad or Notepad, to open the file. Opening of the file will reveal some text which mostly seems to be gibberish.

The process of installing a WordPress blog is almost towards the end. The next most important thing to do is uploading the WordPress program from the computer to the host server. Connect FTP program to the host’ server. Track down the FTP information. If the information has not been entered into the FTP program, do it now.

Now, you need to decide regarding where to keep your WordPress program. It can be put in either a sub directory or the root directory of the host server. It is better to keep the WordPress program in a subdirectory, if several websites are running on the same server. After the decision is taken, go ahead to upload the files as well as directories from the WordPress folder.

If you have decided upon the directory of the host server to install the WordPress there, open the web browser on your desktop and make sure to type the following – “http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/install.php”. Use the domain name of your own instead of “mydomain.com”.

If a subdirectory is your choice to install the WordPress, type in your web browser the following – “http: //www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/wp-admin/install.php.” use the domain name of your own and the subdirectory that you have created instead of “mydomain.com” and “subdirectory” respectively. a move to the WordPress page will show you the way to go further following the onscreen directions.

The internet teems with comment spam just as a warehouse stuffed with goods crawls with rats. The most widespread across the World Wide Web affecting is blog comment spam affecting WordPress based sites and their search engine rankings. It has been the bane of WordPress bloggers. WordPress is fast-growing blog publishing software. To prevent link juice from passing to the spammy inbound links, Google had introduced the ‘rel=no follow’ option for hyperlink in 2005. Sadly and surprisingly enough, blog comment spam is still in action. The failure of your efforts to get rid of comment spam is not the end of the world. Take heart and go through my blog on how to protect your WordPress blog against comment spam using the available resources.

Detrimental Effects of Spam Comments on the SEO of Your Site

The intensity of a detrimental effect determines the necessity of an action. Know the possible harmful effects of blog comment spam, if it remains uncontrolled. It stains your blog posts airing quality and valuable content, and thereby decreasing the popularity of your blog site. Low quality comments by spammers filling in your blog site’s comment field will get normal visitors distracted. The visitors will shorten the duration of their stay on your site and label the site as spammy. Apprehending the links that spammy comments contain to be malware, they will say no to visit your site in future.

Blog comment spammers use automated bots to create automatic comments. If you turn blind to this issue, the spammers will affect much of your MySQL database. Worse will be the consequence when you will find the site down to your utter amazement. You will experience the worst of it, when it will take a toll on the search engine ranking and visibility of your site. Your site’s tryst with the search engines will come upon a rock, if the search engine bots find the site infested with oodles of spammy comments.

Comment Moderation – an Anti-spam Application of WordPress

Comment moderation is a useful application for the use of WordPress bloggers to keep blog comment spam in check. Enabling it will curb the immediate display of spam comments on your website. Comment moderation is available with the latest version of WordPress that is 2.9.2. By means of this WordPress resource, you can restrain the spamming activity of spammers and hold their spam comments for moderation. It will seek your approval for the display of any comment on the site. The following are the steps to enable the application –

• Log in to the admin panel of your WordPress blog site
• Make your way to ‘settings’ under Dashboard
• Make a click on ‘Discussion’
• Use ‘check only’ option on a few specific items

WP-Spamfree Plug-in to Restrict the Spamming Activity of Spammers

Rolling with the punches, spam bots have become smarter to defy the restrictions of comment moderation applications. Deleting a bulky volume of spam comments on a regular basis is really annoying. If Akismet does not work because of hosting restrictions, you had better take turn to using WP-Spamfree plugin. It works in a limited hosting environment where Akismet fails to operate. The procedure to install the plugin is as follows –

• Log on to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
• Download and save the folder on your desktop, and unzip it
• Upload it to the WP-plugins directory in the WordPress server
• Log in to the admin panel of your WordPress blog site
• Move to the plugins section and activate the downloaded plug-in

The upside of using this plug-in is that you are not required to input a captcha and it traps almost 99.99% of the total spam comments. You can trace the WP-spamfree statistics in the WordPress dashboard. Let the plug-in be configured by default. It will let you implement the rel=nofollow tag in your blog’s comment field. Discourage the spammers by letting them use no keywords or site URLs in their comments. Maintain a comment policy in the comment field and let them agree to it. This way, your WordPress blog site is safe from spammers.

In my previous blog titled “An Illuminating Focus on the Nitty-gritty of Updating WordPress”, I have discussed on the difference between WordPress core files and theme files, how the difference is related to updating WordPress and how to update WordPress without editing core files. I have also mentioned two fundamental ways of updating WordPress – “manual updating” and “automatic upgrade”. The following is the step-by-step process of manual updating –

• Take a back up of your WordPress files and WordPress database. Using FTP, download the important files including the theme files, core files and plug-ins in your WordPress website. It is very important to back up the files for if serious problems are caused by updating, you can address the problems by reverting to the backup files. Include robots.txt and .htaccess in the backup files.
• Using XAMPP, you can make your WordPress website run in the local host with WordPress and the data files that you have just taken a back up of. It is to verify whether the backup files are working.
• Make sure downloading the latest version of WordPress after all plugins are deactivated.
• Delete the old WordPress files save wp-content folder, wp-config.php, wp-images, wp-languages, robots.txt and .htaccess. Get the details at http://codex.WordPress.org/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended.
• Uploading the new WordPress files to the FTP server, enter the URL, http://www.thisisyourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php in your browser.
• Replace “thisisyourdomain” with the domain name of your own in the URL. Then follow the instructions popping up on the screen.
• Update the old permalinks in the admin panel and reactivate the plug-ins that were deactivated.
• Review everything about your WordPress website to make sure that the website runs normally after WordPress is updated.

The step-by-step WordPress automatic upgrading procedure is given below. Go to Dashboard-> Tools -> Upgrade to check if an “upgrade” is there in your present WordPress installation. Using the feature, you can automatically upgrade your WordPress website.

• Back up your WordPress files and database in the same way as in case of “manual updating”.
• Using XAMPP, test the working status of the files that you have just backed up.
• Make sure to deactivate the plug-ins
• Make your way to the WordPress admin panel backup path to access Dashboard -> Tools -> Upgrade. Look for the new version of WordPress for upgrade. If no new version is available, upgrading WordPress is not needed.
• Make a click on the “upgrade automatically” button, if the latest version is available for upgrade.
• Enter the log-in details of your FTP server and proceed. If the message “Could not open handle for fopen()” pops up, it is an error indicating the hosting limitations of your free hosting account. In this case, automatic upgrade is not possible.
• If no such problem occurs, it is possible to upgrade automatically. Once you receive the message “WordPress upgraded successfully”, the upgrade is complete. Then, reactivate the plug-ins.
• Review the upgrade to make sure that your site is functioning normally as it did before. If you edit the core files, the changes in the site will be lost. You will have to make them again.

WordPress is an open source content management system and blogging platform. It has made its mark in the world of active bloggers. WordPress carries off the bell with a number of highly useful applications and plugins for the use of bloggers. The only downside of this blogging-oriented CMS is that it is vulnerable to be hacked. Keeping your WordPress site updated is a way to prevent hackers from hacking the site. It is recommended by the creators of WordPress to keep updating the installed WordPress in a website. Some serious mistakes that webmasters usually make prevent them from updating the WordPress sites. I have essayed this article to provide some tips on how to update WordPress for your benefit.

Difference between WordPress Core Files and Theme Files

The tips and techniques of updating WordPress are within the grip of few bloggers. Even experts don’t dare to undertake the task as they labor under the thought that the existing design and functionality of websites installed on WordPress may be affected. In fact, the lack of grasp over the manipulation of the WordPress core and theme files is the root cause of their reluctance. The files that WordPress requires to operate a website normally are the core files. You can download the core files from http://wordPress.org/download. The files that determine the look and feel of a website are theme files. Theme files come with widgets and plugins that help customize the look of websites. The package of WordPress download core files does not include WordPress theme files.

How the Difference is Related to Updating WordPress

Now the question is how the difference between the WordPress theme files and core files is related to updating WordPress. What you need to edit to keep your WordPress site updated are only theme files, widget and plugin files. It is an easy and widely practiced WordPress updating technique. Make sure not editing the core files while developing the WordPress site. Hence, you should know where your theme and core files are stored or located. If the core files are edited and WordPress is updated, you will lose all of the changes. Updating WordPress sounds very impractical if the core files are edited. That is why many webmasters do not take it to task because of their fear of website malfunction.

Updating WordPress without Editing the Core Files

How to update WordPress in order to add certain functionality to a website without editing the core files is a vital question. Installing a particular plug-in to serve the purpose is the answer. Using specific plugins, you can update WordPress to make your website functionally advanced even without editing the core files. What will you do when no plugins offer the functionality that you need? You can log on to http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/ for help. Editing the theme files and specific functional plugins when your website is at the development stage is better than dealing with functionality problems at the time of updating WordPress.

“Manual updating” and “automatic updating” are the two fundamental ways to update WordPress. The former is time-consuming while the later is efficient when time is a considerable matter. The automatic upgrade entails making changes in the WordPress dashboard. Keep your eyes to my next blog focusing on the step-by-step process of “manual updating” and “automatic upgrade”.

In the present era of social networking, one’s social media profiles bears evidence to one’s online identity. Product promotion, brand visibility, business publicity, blogging, networking, fun and gaming are the bread and butter applications of social media. That is why; promoting social media profiles is an unavoidable issue. The use of WordPress plugins makes it easier to perform the task by integrating your social media profiles with your WordPress blog. WordPress is two in one – a blogging platform and a content management system. Promoting your social media profiles using WordPress plugins is as important as promoting your WordPress blogs using social media applications. I have assorted a few highly innovative WordPress plugins for your benefit.

DandyID Services – with a support for nearly 330 social networks, the DandyID Services is the most useful WordPress extension. You can integrate any of your social media profiles with your WordPress blog using this plugin. It requires the user to create a free account with DandyID. The plugin is customizable.

Social Media Page – This WordPress plugin comes handy for social butterflies. It is supportive for near about 140 social networks. It lets you integrate your social media profiles with any page or post. Using the plugin, you can link to your social networking profiles instead of cramming the sidebar with multiple icons.

Social Profilr – Though not all inclusive, this plugin is useful for WordPress bloggers with 14 important social media profiles. The Social Profilr works with a simple line of code (HTML or non HTML). It integrates the social media profiles with the WordPress About page.

FriendFeed Activity Widget – It is a popular lifestreaming plugin, convenient to use. What you need to use the plugin is a FriendFeed account. You can set it up simply by logging in to your account. It allows you to keep Twitter @replies hid on your WordPress blog pages. It is easy to use because of its minimalistic design.

Lifestream – This plugin offers an independent use. It does not entail a third party account to keep your social media profiles in tune with your WordPress blog. You can utilize it either as a sidebar widget or an icon on a WordPress page or blog post. Lifestream too comes with the option to hide Twitter @replies from the stream of your social media activities.

Lifestream.fm – This plugin offers support for the largest number of social networks to let your stream your social media activity onto your WordPress blog. You need to have an account with the Lifestream.fm. Setting it up as a sidebar widget is simple. The only downside of this plugin is the display of all your tweets including @replies.

Retaggr – Supportive for over 180 social networks, Retaggr lets you not only promote your social media profiles but also the profile information of your commenters from the tiny icon next to the comments. The social media profile information of the commenters pops up at the rolling of the mouse over the icon.

Social Profiles – This plugin is tailor-made for multi-authored blogs and sites with registered users. It lets your visitors register for your WordPress blogs to promote their own social media profiles through effective comments on your blog posts. The Social Profiles plugin provides fields for the visitors to put their usernames for ten social networks.

WP Twitip ID – It is a Twitter oriented plugin. It integrates your social media profiles with the comment form of your WordPress blog. It requires your commenters to have Twitter account. Inserting an extra line of code in the comment template file of your WordPress blog, this plugin provides a field for the commenters to put their Twitter usernames.

Tweetmeme – Tweetmeme is among the plugins to promote both blog posts and social media profiles simultaneously. Akin to the Digg style vote button, this plugin lets your readers retweet your posts easily. By default, it retweets a post as ‘RT @tweetmeme” along with the post title and URL. It is customizable in size. It comes with an option to let you select its position. It can be displayed on your RSS feed.

Hurry up to use these WordPress plugins for promoting your social media profiles and get the best of social networks. Make sure to let me know your feedback.