KeyRoyal Training & Development and I worked together to build a clean site that fit their brand style, and improved the overall user experience. The site is custom built on the Genesis Framework for WordPress.
I had a lot of fun working with the team at KeyRoyal on their new site.
One of the greatest things about WordPress is the flexibility you get from the incredible number of plugins that are available. There are plugins for just about anything you can imagine, some of them functional and some for fun. Here is my list of five WordPress plugins that I think everyone should be using, whether you’re a casual blogger or a full-scale media company.
Comment spam is rampant and Akismet is easily the greatest combatant you can find. It will save you hours upon hours of moderating comments, so you can focus on writing more content. Akismet gives you statistics, within your dashboard, of how many comments it has blocked, so you can watch it work.
This is an extremely handy plugin that improves the overall load speed of your site. Slow loading websites are extremely frustrating for your visitors and could cause some of them not to return. Improving the load speed of your website even helps with your rank on Google.
I’ve tried a lot of share button plugins and this is by far my favorite. The settings menu is very easy to navigate and has a ton of great options. The plugin does exactly what you ask it to do, so you never have to worry about it.
Having links to related posts on your site is great for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s great for search engine optimization. It also helps keep visitors on your site; which is what we’re all aiming for, right? Related Posts via Categories adds a list of a specified number of posts at the bottom of each individual post page.
Login LockDown helps to keep your WordPress site secure from brute force password discovery. The plugin records the IP address of each failed login attempt and if more than three failed attempts are recorded within five minutes, it locks that IP out.
Are there any plugins that you love that I haven’t listed? Let me know in the comments!
[Image courtesy: Kk+]
WordPress powers millions upon millions of blogs throughout the interwebs. It’s the most user friendly, flexible and intuitive blogging platform around. The problem is that there are a lot of really talented bloggers that completely miss the design boat and actually lose readership because of it.
Think for a second- how many times have you clicked on a link to an article; only to be taken to a website where the font’s too small, there’s a million ads, the colors hurt your eyes, etc. etc. You get the point.
I want to clear up something right up front. Great designs don’t cost a lot of money. You can build a great looking website on even the smallest of budgets.
You just need to know what to look for.
In subsequent articles, I’ll get more in depth looking at specific examples of tweaking your WordPress theme… But we need to pick a theme to tweak.
There are tens of thousands of places, if not more, to find WordPress themes on the internet. Feel free to use whichever you prefer, but I’ll recommend my two favorite:
WordPress.org - At this writing, there are 1,465 free themes available. If you’re just getting started out on blogging and you don’t want to spend money yet, this is the perfect place to start.
Themeforest.net (Affiliate Link) – This is going to sound like a sales pitch, but it’s really not. Themeforest has a great selection of professional-quality WordPress themes. I personally used them for the design that I use for this blog (with some changes, of course). Prices are extremely reasonable.
Adobe Photoshop or GIMP - If you don’t already have Photoshop, or have the means to get a copy, GIMP is a free and reasonable alternative.
FileZilla - This one isn’t required but if you prefer to do your work outside of the WordPress dashboard you’ll need an FTP client.
Notepad++ (Win) or TextWrangler (Mac) - Again, if you prefer to do your work outside of the WordPress dashboard
these are both great programs to write and edit code with.
Look through WordPress themes and see if there are any that you’re fond of. As you look, try and look at the layout of the theme. Don’t be concerned with colors, minor layout changes, widgets or fonts. Instead, look at the layout elements and decide what you like best:
Full Disclosure: If you use my affiliate link to Themeforest.net, I get 30% of your initial deposit (so make it a good one, :)).
