Website Managers

Archive for August, 2009

Learn how and why to use the accessibility mode in WordPress Widgets.

When you first install WordPress, a default set of sidebar items are set up for you. These will not help you build or promote your site. One of them, the Blogroll, is set up to promote WordPress and their various offerings. While this is a good thing for them, you should really change the sidebar to reflect what you are offering.

Changing the sidebar can be a tedious task if you are manually editing the files. There is another option though: widgets. With drag and drop capability, you can build your sidebar however you want.

What if however, you are using a PDA, iPhone, BlackBerry or other phone that limits drag and drop? What you do there is enable Accessibility Mode to make your tasks much easier. Watch the video to see the what, where, when, how and why of using Accessibility Mode for your WordPress widgets.

If you are trying to monetize your blog using Google AdSense, or some other program that uses JavaScript for their links, keep in mind that some WordPress themes do not allow JavaScript in their sidebars. The Website Managers blog is one of those sites. I went looking for a plugin to handle that for me. What I did not realize was that one was already installed, waiting for me to use it.

The plugin I use for the banner ads is Max Banner Ads by MaxBlogPress. Looking around in there, I saw a rasio button that previously evaded me. By clicking that radio button, a JavaScript box opened up to add the Google AdSense. You can add not only that, but any JavaScript and many other codes too.

For instance, if you use the ClickBank ad manager, CBClicks, you can add that code too. Now I know there are other WordPress plugins that handle things such as rotating ads from various vendors. Those can be found by searching the WordPress plugin repository for things like, "sidebar widget" or "rotate ads".

For monetizing the site with Google AdSense or CBClicks though, Max Banner Ads by MaxBlogPress works just fine. You can add banner links, JavaScript, Flash and other custom code, right in the box. You can install it free. To activate, you need to register with your email address. When your ads show up, you will see a message from MaxBlogPress.

To remove that message, you need to purchase Max Banner Ads Pro. If you leave the message there, which does not look good on all sites, look inside the settings page, down towards the bottom where you will see a place to put a ClickBank affiliate code. When one is entered, the promotional message will be linked to that ClickBank ID. It is a good way to give away free software and get paid for upgrades.

Also check out My Favorite WordPress Plugins

 When you want to sell items online, you should look first to the WP e-Commerce shopping cart WordPress plugin. I have seen this plugin in action and believe me, it does what it says. The plugin even creates a "Products" page for you when it is activated.

Shopping Cart Upgrades

• DropShop 2.0: An AJAX driven drag and drop shopping cart solution.
• New MP3 Audio Player: This plugin allows you to upload an MP3 preview file that is streamed the user
• Product Slider: Allow your shoppers to browse through products without leaving the page. Simply add the slider module to your WP e-commerce powered site and add the slider to any page.
• Members Only module: Create pay to view subscription sites. Perfect for private: – Wordpress posts and pages – Podcast websites – Image galleries – Movie galleries – Forums
• NextGen Gallery Buy Now Buttons: This plugin adds either a google checkout or a PayPal "buy now" button next to your images in your nextGen gallery image.

Installation Options

1. Download WP e-Commerce shopping cart from Instinct
2. Go into your WordPress Dashboard, expand the Plugins tab and click Add New. In there you can search for WP e-Commerce shopping cart. The system will install it for you.

Conclusion

Searching Google for "free WordPress themes" returns 47,700,000 results. That is 47.7 million – far too many to look through to find one that suits you. When you are just getting started with your blog, you are tempted to look for a theme that will fit the content of your site.

How much time do you spend searching, installing, testing and playing with a theme until you grow tired of it and start the process all over? Maybe you found a list of sites to choose themes and keep going back there to try more of them, with most of the themes being free.

Eventually you will want to set yourself apart from the other blogs. When that happens, you will either:

• Buy a theme, which countless others have too
• Hire someone to customize a theme for you, but at what expense?
• Learn to customize themes yourself, but which theme to start with and how much time do you have to put into it while the content suffers?

I have used plenty of free themes and learned to customize them, to a point. Some themes are tougher to work with than others, especially those that have everything defined in one or two files to display the articles and pages.

Looking at this blog, I have been told to change it and make it look more like the other high-traffic blogs. But why would I want to do that, when the whole idea is to stand out and be unique? Yes it took me several days to get it this far and there are some things I want to do with it yet when time permits. However, I will not fall for the idea that it should look like the other sites.

Instead, I prefer to be unique, both in design and delivery. Since this blog is hosted on a sub-domain, it does not rate high in the search engines. That lets me know that the visitors who come here are truly looking for the information I offer, rather than high visitor counts, mostly coming from the search engines, who just land on one page and leave.

The design is different than any other, because I personally compiled the graphics and layout. Of course it would have been much easy using a program such as Artisteer than doing it by hand, but I did not know about Artisteer when designing this site. Since learning about Artisteer, I used it to design StockMarketMasters.com and am very happy with the results.

So you choose how you want your WordPress blog to look. Do it without taking too much time away from building content, because it is the content that will bring visitors, not necessarily the design. The only exception is if your design is so unique that people will tell others just to look at it.

When they do, they will not be referring to your content and the visitors will most likely not be reading it. That is fine if you are selling designs, but not if you are selling or providing anything else.

Since Artisteer works for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and stand-alone (non-blogging) sites, at least download a free trial and see for yourself how creative you can be with it. Above all, stand out from the crowd!