Everybody know that Wordpress is a great blog platform. Beside having its own extend pages to add more plugins to your blog, It also have its own free theme directory.

Because it’s so easy, you tend to switch plugin and theme regularly. Well, it’s nothing wrong anyway in changing plugin. But it’s a critical problem if you switch your theme too often.

I recently stumbled on a post about reasons that make your search engine ranking dropped.

The first reason is about the changes of your blog (theme and permalinks) could effect on your search engine position.

It said that on every time you change your blog theme, search engines will re-calculate your placement on their SERP. Which mean, your current position on the keyword that you usually get inside the top 10 search results will drop, or even disappear from the result.

I’ve seen a lot of my blogger friends switching their theme often. Some even switch theme for more than 3 times in the first 3 months.

I don’t know how is the effect for them, but I felt it myself that my search engine ranking is dropping since I switch to this new theme.

But it’s not for long. Around 1-2 weeks, I started to see some better search term and result since the PR update a week ago. For example:

• I was in the 2nd and 3rd of “Transformation theme” keyword from 2.000.000 sites.
• I was in the top of “wordpress different sidebar” keyword from 1.000.000 sites. Disappear!
• No.12 out of 13.400.000 sites with the keyword - 10 questions 1 million dollars

Yup, it’s amazing stats for me!

But some keyword seems not related to my post at all. It’s a funny how Google decide the relevancy of its search result.

I’m not sure how the Search Engine look at my blog, may be it’s the inbound links that I received that decide everything.

Well, that’s not the focus that you should seek. Instead, I think we must focus on using a permanent theme for more a long term (like 6 month or more) to avoid re-calculation of your blog.

If you have download my latest Wordpress theme, you may notice that there is a little different from the orginal. There are some features that I eliminated to decrease file size.

One of the feature that is not available on the theme is my invention of “Advance Reading Options” section.

It’s my new method to increase my blog pageview and conversion rate for my older posts. Inside of ARO, you would get the following list of Posts:

• Related Posts
• Top Posts
• Recent Posts
• Random Posts

It’s pretty useful when peoples arrive at my blog via search engine. When the finish reading the current posts, they will be offered automatically a lists of related posts to read more.

Actually, the arrangement of ARO (where Related posts at the front and Random posts at the end) is using the psychologic call to make reader taking their actions.

ARO is using a AJAX animation called Script.aculo.us. Visit the link to get some point about what it is.

To setup ARO for your blog, no matter what your theme is, you can use the following 1-2-3 steps to apply ARO:

1. First of all, visit Script.aculo.us and download the latest version of the Js script.
2. Extract it the follow files into one folder labeled ‘js’ (or ‘javascripts’):
   1. prototype.js
   2. scriptaculous.js
   3. builder.js
   4. effects.js
   5. dragdrop.js
   6. slider.js
   7. controls.js
3. Upload the folder ‘js’ to your current theme folder in your web server (if you are using Transformation, upload inside the transformation folder)
4. Add the following code to your header.php file:

   1 2	<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/js/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/js/scriptaculous.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

5. Update the file.

Now, you’ve activated the script function to allow AJAX animation. You will not see any change, yet. The next step is to create the following element for your page:

• Set a section of your page that you want to animate
• 2 button - Hide and Show button

There are a lot of transition effect and animation available for you to use via Script.aculo.us. Primarily, I use these following effects only:

• BlindUp - Effect to hide the chosen section
• BlindDown - Effect to drop down a section of animation

Use this following code as your template and change the content to suit your blog CSS:

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<h2><strong>Advance Reading Option</strong></h2>
<h3><a onclick="Effect.BlindDown('advance')" style="cursor: pointer"><strong>[show]</strong></a></h3>
<!-- begin - animation section --> 
    <div id="advance" style="display:none"> 
       <h2>Related Posts</h2> 
            <ul> 
                <!--Related post script goes here--> 
            </ul> 
        <h2>Top Posts</h2> 
            <ul> 
                <!--Top Posts script goes here--> 
            </ul> 
        <h2>Random Posts</h2> 
            <ul> 
                <!--Random posts script goes here--> 
            </ul> 
    </div>
 
<!-- end - animation section -->
 
<h3><a onclick="Effect.BlindUp('advance')" style="cursor: pointer"><strong>[hide]</strong></a></h3>

Update your page and try it with your favorite browser. It should be compatible with most of the nowadays browser.

The animation comes hidden by default. There are an arguments around the web about the laziness of reader will result in no clickthrough if I hide the list at first and ask them to click to open.

So, if you choose to show everything at first, remove the style="display:none;" inside the div tag.

You may also want to switch the location of Hide and Show button, too. It’s weird to place the show button up front when all content is shown at first!

You could change the content to almost any kind of online content that you could imagine.

It’s depend on you now.

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Understanding CSS is important if you plan to modified your blog. Especially if your blog is a Wordpress platform, there will be a Stylesheet file attached on each Wordpress theme.

Modifying CSS could be a daunting task if you don’t know the basic of the CSS rules. Below is another collection of mine beside my Photoshop sources.

Hope this reference would be helpful for you:

CSS Basic

It’s important to lay a strong basic before anything. My ultimate Beginner Basic to swim in the CSS pool is on this book(pdf). If you choose to not downloading any ebook, try to visit the site instead at CSSBasics.com.

This book cover all basic rules of CSS in 18 Chapter spreading from Syntax, Classes, IDs, Div, Text, Font, Border, and many more.

CSS Basic Example

After learning the Basic, you will need to practice from what you have learned. I get myself a help from an example of the CSS coding. Learning from an example is the fastest way to master CSS basic.

• This CSS Examples My help you a lot!

CSS Property

During the learning in CSS, you may notice about the property of each CSS code. You will need to know what is the function of each property.

• Use this CSS 2.1 Reference to learn more about each property (with example)

Another good source of reference:

• W3Schools
• HTMLDog

Styling with CSS

After understanding the true nature of CSS, it’s time for you to make your own. But, wait! Learning basic skills is important, but it can only produce a amateurish-design. You will need to learn more about how to make things better and looks professional.

First, let’s heading to the very first CSS element in your blog, the navigation and Menu.

• Use this 13 Styles CSS Menu to make a professional Looking of your navigation bar and sidebar.

Second, Choose your Layout Style. Whether it’s 3 column horizontally or vertically, or fluid or fixed, side fixed or fluid.

• Layout Gala give you the idea within the example. Up to 40 layout examples available for you to choose.
• Page Layout Sample at Maxdesign.com.au

Third, Learn the advance tutorial to build a good looking CSS page.

• 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
• 70 Expert Ideas for Better CSS Coding
• CSS Technique Round Up - 20 CSS Tips and Tricks
• HTMLDog’s Advance CSS Tutorials

CSS Search Engine

Looking for more Source for learning CSS to tweak your blog appearances? Try the CSS Search Engine at SKUER.com.

It’s a dedicated, google-powered search engine to find CSS materials.

Tools Of CSS

Not everything need to code by yourself from scratch. Some tools around the web have done the job for you. For example, below is some of the useful tools to create CSS style for you page/blog:

• CSS Creator
  • CSS Creator will help you automatically generate a layout, Multi Level Menu, Float container, etc
• CSS List-O-Matic
  • Create a nice looking Sidebar list or top navigation bar without touching the CSS code.
• CSS Font and Text Style Wizard
  • Enable you to live-preview the effect of each property implementation.
• Software: CSS Tab Designer
  • Design your List and top/footer navigation easily and xhtml compliant.

It’s important for you to choose a ’suitable’ wordpress themes from the thousands of choices in wordpress.net theme library. Another good resources for choosing more unique theme is using wpthemefree.com.

Beside you can sort the list base on the popularity, you also can view the count of total download, total view and total Tested until today. I can find many unique theme using wpthemefree.com than the default theme library in wordpress.net.

I will share you my top choices themes that I haven’t have chance to apply it to my blogs. I have a planning to apply one of them to my personal blog which I will reveal after I’ve successfully achieve my first and second goals in blogging!

Below is my personal review of top 5 choices of wp-themes around the blogosphere:

1. Illacrimo 1.01

This one is my top 1 favorite! The design is really clean and the wicked logo design is really blowing me away~!

I like the idea to create a gasp for fit in the date. It’s seems just like a calender!

Download Illarimo 1.01 from wpthemefree.com

Next!

2. Nobus

What I love in this theme is the ready to use social bookmarking button, the Author special column and the balloon like category.

It’s so crowded, but everything is arrange neatly in a 3 column style.

Download Nobus from wpthemefree.com

Next!

3. iPhone

iPhone goes to Wordpress? Why not!

I really like their creativity to make this theme. I believe iphone lover will choose to use this theme for their blog. It’s oke anyway… but remember the white text on a black background is really hurting your reader eyes!

Download it from wpthemefree.com

Next!

4. StarDust 1.0

This theme is alike with the copyblogger theme created by Brian. But the author have made some creativity by add good images to the theme.

I really like the hanging leaves and the burgandy plants at the footer. Although there is nothing special like the ready to use social bookmarking button, this theme is suitable for artistic business people.

Download it from wpthemefree.com

Last!

5. Feel the Freedom

Feel the freedom, huh? Nice name with a nice design. It’s a paradise design style. Again, it’s dominated by blue color and really great combination of the header image and the background color.

I like this theme it have a special room for the recent comments, recent post and ads in its footer. And the provided social bookmark button is really cool!

This is the theme that I “may be” will apply to my personal page. Although I don’t like the blue patterned content inside the post. I still like the overall idea of freedom. (and the personal Island! )

Download it from wpthemefree.com

—-

WpThemeFree.com is a site that provide you a massive collection of theme for you to tweak your wordpress. It is another useful resource for theme searching other than wordpress.net theme library.

Beside that, I found WpThemeFree.com has more unique theme to choose!

Choose your theme carefully…

Because theme is your design,

and…

Design reflected your immediate personality for your reader!

Thanks for visiting and Have a nice day!

Do you every notice the “Update Services” under your Option -> Writing Tab? For people who just begin their blogging quest, I believe 90% of them seldom aware of this useful services.

Update Services is a great tool for your blog to announce or Ping to the public that you have a new post and ask the spider to crawl your blog faster

If you are leaving it blank or just using the default one, you have miss the first part of post marketing and you have miss some traffic from several sources. See this picture!

Don’t let it blank! Fill it with this below URLs to make things better!

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080

All link guarantee to work. Actually, I’m using myself for quite some time now!

There is more than 80+ update service out there. The one I’ve listed above is the most popular one. Another service that can ping to all available services is using the autopinger.

Hope this useful and have a nice day!

Because I’m still learning to create a plugin for this buttons, I will let you know how to do it manual first. If you have a decent skill on creating plugin and willing to help me, please let me know!

Ok, to apply my “Social bookmarking Button” into your single post blog, please follow these easy steps:

• Download the Social Bookmark Button files here
• There are 2 files inside the zip folder. first one is a folder named “socialbookmarkbutton” and the other is a text file named “code”
• Extract it and upload the “socialbookmarkbutton” folder to your template’s image folder in your web server. The location is: wp-contents => themes => [your template folder] => images
• Open your Wordpress admin panel and go to your Theme Editor under Presentation Tab.

• Click on the file “single post” or “single.php” to edit your single post page
• Copy the entire code from the text files which you extract just now.
• For a normal template, Paste the code you in just below the line: <?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?> (Every template will have a different code, but the <?php the_content Will stay the same).
• Click Update File » to save your changes. View any blog item’s individual archive page (the permalink page) to see the result.
• Done!

I know it’s hard for you to edit it manually. I’m trying to do some research for creating plugin. And I will let you know when I’ve successfully create the plugin!

I hope you will like it. Want to reward my Hard work? Oh, That’s so nice of you! Just put a link back to this post. That’s more that enough for me! No need to donate through paypal or something. I create this “will-be-a-plugin plugin” for fun and free of charge!

If you are generous enough, please spread this plugin by digg or stumbleupon (will-be-a-plugin). I will reward everybody who have help me with a linkback to your blog when this script successfully transform into a plugin!

If there is any thing wrong with my code, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

See you around again.

Do you know about Free-hosted blog and self-hosted blog? If you are an amateur blogger, I think you should know well what it is. But, If you are a beginner, you should spend a little time of yours to read this post carefully!

I’m going to share you this important things that you should have taken before begin your blogging journey.

This is the part, that most of the people ignore and become regret when they realize the fact that lies within it.

Let’s first begin with the simple definition for each of them.

Free-Hosted Blog

Do you know blogger.com? Or, do you know wordpress.com? How about Livejournal.com?

They are the biggest free-hosted blog providers! The have hosted million of blog out there in the blogosphere for free.

FREE is their top marketing tool to draw lots of attention from the web.

Self-Hosted Blog

Mysites Advisor is a self-Hosted Blog. Although I host this blog on a subdomain, the mysites-advisor.com domain name is mine. You will get this kind of blog with some price to pay. But it’s worth it. Why? Let’s look at the Duel below…

Free Blog VS Paid Blog

Let make some real points without wasting time:

Free Blog Advantages:

• Free of charges

Paid Blog Advantages:

• Credibility
• Branding
• Fame
• So much more

Free Blog Disadvantages:

• Hosted on other’s domain
• No Credibility
• No Branding

Paid Blog Disadvantages:

• You must pay

Some of my thoughts:

Hosting your blog at a free blog host provider is a good choice for beginner. But only that. Free blog platform like wordpress.com is a place for us to try their blog CMS engine before we actually host it on our own domain. Not for serious blogger who want to get the most of blogging!

Although Free Blog Host Provider will host our desired name like “Kenxublog.wordpress.com”, the blog features in the admin panel is less expandable!

Beside getting limitation to your blog, “Credibility” and “Branding” is Zero in this type of blog.

Although some people actually become FAMOUS using the free hosted blog like Paula Did, she is just that type of people that could actually become famous writing in any kind of platform!

For a mere human like us, we need to follow some rules that the experts have taught us to do. Like buy a domain, rent a hosting space, and host your own blog engine!

But! This doesn’t guarantee you to be famous and successful. It will only giving you a “credibility” score in your reader’s eyes or to prove that you are serious on what you have done to your blog.

To make a sarcastic illustration, Host you blog on a paid and free provider is just like the filthy rich guy who live in the bungalow and the beggar who live under the bridge.

Both of them have their name. One is filthy rich guy and the other is bridge beggar. They have their own unique name to introduce for. But the only differences is where they live.

One is in the bungalow and the other is under the bridge. From this simple illustration, I wonder which one you will choose now?

Yup, you’re right! from this post, you will know that I’m pushing you to choose the paid blog than the free one. The reason is simple.

100% Worth it!

Kuanhoong, Kumiko, Nirmal and Shankar Ganesh are some the live example of blogger who decide to switch to their self-hosted blog. You should ask them why they take this action while the old free hosted blog is still running well!

Hope this post useful. But if you want to read more on this topic, the following link will please you:

• Want to create a Free Website?
• Pro and Cons of Use-Hosted Blogging Software
• Choosing Blogging Platform
• Blogger vs Wordpress

NoFollow is a tag that permitted by Google to apply to our site/blog. A link that we add “NoFollow” Tag will not receiving any SEO advantages from our blog/site. For example, if you link to your friend, Andy. He will not get any SEO benefits (PR, Link Anchor, etc) from your blog if you add the “nofollow” tag to the link.

NoFollow tag will tell the search engine spider/robots (especially Google) to ignore the link or pretend that the link is a Death link.

In your blog, noFollow tags are implemented in you comment page by default. This tag will share no SEO benefits of you site/blog to your commentators. The reason for implementing noFollow tag is to give no change for the spammer to get a share of you site ranking benefits.

But lately, Along with the improvement of Spam Filter System for your blog comments, I’ve found some group of bloggers making campaigns to eliminate this noFollow tag by applying the “U Comment I follow” Plugin for their blog.

The purpose is very clear here. They want to share their site benefit to their reader. There is no point to keep your linking benefit for yourself and won’t share it with your loyal commentators. Since we have a great spam filter like Akismet or Geek’s Spam Filter. It’s safe to remove this tag.

And this also become my top motivation to bring up this discussion. I hope bloggers will soon remove their nofollow tags and join in this campaign.

Comment + NoFollow = No Trust to Your Reader

Below are the bloggers who have implement this plugin and join the parade to free from nofollow tag. We should thank them because they are willing to share their SEO wealth to us!

• Me at Mysites-Advisor dot Com
• Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home
• David Airey of Creative Design
• Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
• Dawud Miracle at dmiracle.com
• Chris Cree of SuccessCREEations
• Char of Essential Keystroke
• Chris Garrett of chrisg.com
• Andy Beard of AndyBeard.eu
• David Paul Robinson of davidpaulrobinson.com
• Lars-Christian of Lars-Christian.com
• Char also of Casual Keystrokes
• Michelle of Scribbit
• Ponn Sabra of Empower Women Now
• Jason of Webomatica
• Robert Hruzek of Middle Zone Musings
• Mario of mariosalexandrou.com
• Lisa Mills of Work at Home Revolution
• Aaron Potts of Today is That Day
• Heather of Home Ec 101
• Laura Spencer of Writing Thoughts
• Kirk of JustThinkin
• Gayla of MomGadget
• Alister Cameron- Blogologist
• Karen of The Pond
• Jonathan Phillips of SmartWealthyRich
• Susan of Life Is Risky
• Vin of Dummies Guide to Blogger
• René of ProBlogger World
• Elaine’s Place
• Aaron at Foobr
• Julie Bonner
• Ryan at BloggingForBills
• BobMeetsWorld
• The Fibromyalgia Experiment
• B.J. at 2Perfect
• Niki at The A Team
• Gilda at Holiday in the Sun
• Johnny Fuery
• Jo’s Web
• ConnectedInternet
• Listikal dot com

I will update more blogger’s site every time I stumbled on them. If you have put “You comment I follow” plugin and activated it properly, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

I will provide 100 40 links for register and I will show 20 of them up on every Wednesday until the list’s out numbered. It just a part of my volunteer work to join the campaign in eliminating nofollow tag. Have no hidden intention at all.

Tips to use this list:

Because they have implemented do follow system, every link that point out from their blog is count as an outbound link. So, Do comment a lot at their blog and you will get a lot of linkback from them!

This is the finale part of the last post. I’m going show you how I’m going to tweak the bloggingpro theme. I think this theme is very good! That’s why I recommend it to my friend, Pearl!

If you like this type of theme, you can always refer to the footer of the blog that use this theme to find the author and theme download link.

Hmm… Let begin from how to install on you server and activating theme:

1. Use this link to download bloggingpro widget-ready theme to your local computer
2. Extract the theme if it’s compressed.
3. Use your FTP Client Software (CuteFTP is the best) to connect to your web host server.
4. Copy the extracted folder (blogginpro_wr) to your server directory at: /wp-content/themes/
5. Enter to your Wordpress admin panel and go to the presentation tab
6. Click on the “blogging pro Theme - Widget Ready 1.2″ or the image below the link to activate it.
7. Done!

In this post, I will show you my usual ways to tweak my themes on:

1. Adding custom images to the header
2. add google analytics code
3. changing color of link

Warning!
Before begin tweaking, make sure to backup all your theme data inside bloggingpro_wr folder properly. I’m not responsible for any data loss for this tweaking guide. Tweak at your own risk!

Changing Title Header to Image Header

Let’s begin with changing the header image of Bloggingpro. From the default setting, Bloggingpro will have no Header image for you to add. Bloggingpro only showing your Weblog Title on the upper site of your blog in a text format. See this picture:

Here is the steps to change the text header to a custom image that I made for my blog. I’m going to use CSS style to make the title switching to a image:

• Upload your custom image (I titled it: bloggingpro-header.jpg) to the directory: wp-contents/themes/bloggingpro_wr/images/
• Open up your presentation tab, click on the “theme editor”
• Point to “stylesheet” file on the right of your screen.
• Delete this line of codes:

• Add this line of code to switch the text header to an custom image header:

Update the code by pressing the “Update File >>” button on your lower right corner. Below picture is the result of adding my custom header image:

Taa Daaaa! Finish!

Oke, Next is to add google analytics code to your blog so Google can start analyzing your blog statistic.

Adding Goo-Analytics Code

The simplest way is using “Theme Editor” again! Here is the steps:

• Open your wordpress panel again, and point to the presentation tab.
• Click on the theme editor and find the “Footer” file to your right (there is a list of files there)
• Refer to the end of the line that have a code “</body></html>“
• Do you see a blank space between </div> and </body> ? Place your cursor there and press “enter” button several time to make some space.
• Done? Now, go to your Google Analytics Account. Copy the tracking code that google gave you then Paste it into the empty space between </div> and </body>
• Click on the “Update file >>” Button
• Done!

This steps apply to Kontera, Auction ads and other service that need you to add tracking code to your blog. They’ll usually asking you to add their code before the </body>.

Next!

Changing Link Color

Again, and Again! Open up your “Theme Editor” Window! This is the easiest method, anyway…!

This time, We will going to change the stylesheet again. So The steps are:

• Click on the “Stylesheet” File
• Refer to this part of code:

• The highlighted code is the color code of the the bloggingpro H1 or Headline title. Do you see the “h1 a { color: ” before the color code? That’s the tag that form up h1 link color. To change it, you we Gimp or Photoshop to get the Hex code of color.

• For example, my favorite color is green. So, my color code will be #018811. replace the highlighted code with #018811, and press the “update file >>” button.

• Below is the result:

• Ta daaa! Finish!

Tweaking can be fun and can be stressful. The only way to feeling fun on tweaking is when you know several language like PHP, CSS and HTML. These language is crucial for you to support your tweaking needs. If you can’t understand them, make sure there is a techie people beside you when you want to do your tweaking. At least, he/she can fix your mistake and restore your error!

Of course, this guide only cover very small part of theme tweaking capability. You can actually tweak your sidebar, add up new button, create custom adsense at the header, etc. etc. which I can’t cover it up in this post. Well, depend on request, I’ll may be make more guide on this tweaking later.

I hope this guide will be helpful for you, Pearl! And will be useful for you too, my reader!

Have nice tweaking moment and see you again in the next post!

This post is dedicated for my friend, Pearl, to solved her general problems on Wordpress. You will not found any beginner guide like how to install, how to make a post, how to change themes, or etc.

My goals in this post is to answer these following questions:

1. What Setting on Wordpress that you should have set?
2. What kind of Plugins that you *really* need to have?
3. How to Tweak your theme without making any word attempt on the template?

No time wasting, let’s get started and answer the first question:

Wordpress Setting:

Let’s open up your wp-admin/ Wordpress panel now. What you should look at now is the “option” tab. Select it, and wordpress will, give you more sub category to choose. Let’s see this picture:

Below is the setting that you should have done to your Wordpress along with the reason.

General Tab:

• Make sure to uncheck the “User must be registered & logged in to comment”
• Reason: Your reader will be annoyed by its registration process and change their mind to comment at your post

Reading Tab:

• Change your “show at most 10 posts” to around 5-8 posts maximum only.
• Reason: 1. Faster your blog main homepage download time; 2. Avoiding user being overload by the first page; 3. Make your index page looks good; 4. If your theme is using 3 column style that have the sidebar over the right, The menu will show up faster.
• Check the Full Text at your Syndication Feeds Option
• Reason: 9 out of 10 reader will unsubscribe from your feed if you don’t provide them your full feed. This happen the you when you use the <–more–> tag on your post.

• I would recommend you to check the “administrator must always approve comment”.
• Reason: You’ll be able to filter out any new spammer method that prove to be able to break though akismet and sometimes, user also spamming too! Checking this option allow you to moderate every comment that come and allow you to know where user are commenting.

Permalinks:

• Choose the radio button “Date and name based” and leave the rest on default.
• Reason: This is what SEOer called it “beautiful permalink” that ease google to index your blog. Avoid using the first one (?p=123), this type of link will confuse google’s robot and confuse your reader!

To let you know, Option tab will add more sub category on every time you activate plugins that put their costumizing panel in option tab. Like mine, I use more than 30 wordpress plugins together now. My option tab become as crowded as below picture:

Not all of them are nested on option tab, though. Some of them will nested below “Manage tab” or create a new tab like what “Contact Form” have done.

I think this should answer the first question. Next!

Wordpress Plugin:

Generally, Plugins can do 2 global things for you:

• First, they can add up your wordpress function to entertain and serve your reader.
• Second, they’ll make your reader run away or dislike some of your post

So, let’s conclude it as “good” and “bad” plugin overall. “Bad” doesn’t mean the author of the plugin is devilish! no! It’s because of some Psychology effects on your blog after applying “bad” plugin that will make your blog post unpopular.

Let’s begin with the “bad” plugin first:

I’m not going to tell the exact name, but will let you know you how these plugins are going to influence your readers mindset

Popularity contest-like plugins

This kind of plugin will make some of your unpopular post become more unpopular! You know… I’m not meany here. I can tell, readers are just like a bunch of sheep. if the found out your post have a low rate of reading (percentage, stars, or else), they’ll avoid it unconsciously!

I think you would want you reader to read every post without disturbed by the reading percentage, wouldn’t you?

Cloudy-like Plugins

These kind of plugins are interesting. It give you another kind of view toward your category, blogroll, links, etc. But, have you ever realize that you tend to click on the largest text instead of the smallest?

This kind of plugin would make your smallest text posts less valuable and less click from the user. So, please consider well before using…

Oke, how about the “good” plugin?

I have a collection of 30 plugins that I’m using them right now. I think they worth to try, but the main 10 plugins that you should have are as below:

1. Akismet
2. Wordpress Database backup
3. Subscribe to Comment
4. Show Top Commentators
5. PHP Exec
6. Recent Comments
7. Related Posts
8. Wordpress Sitemap Generator
9. Feedburner Feed Replacement
10. Optimal Title

Ok, I hope this mini guide should answer small part of the second question.

Next question is: “How to Tweak your theme without making any word attempt to the template?”

This question is rather hard to answer because tweaking will always have a high error rate. Let’s save it for the next post of exclusive discussion. I’ll choose one theme and tell you the shortcut to tweak it.

See you at the next post!