There are lots of services available for blogging but WordPress, by Automattic, has evolved as the most liked and friendly CMS. At WordCamp conference held in 2008, Founder Matt Mullenweg announced impressive growth figures of WordPress. He reaffirmed that 2009 will be a bug free year for WordPress. Mullenweg’s yearly keynote, was “Strong,” and growth from both WordPress.com and WordPress.org (their hosted and self-hosted platforms, respectively) show it all. TechCrunch had indicated all the stats of WordPress over the last year. The growth of wordpress is sky rocketing. This is quite apparent from google trends’ graph too:

These stats show that WordPress is outgoing its main competitor TypePad, which in contrast to WordPress is a paid blogging platform.

WordPress offers lots of functionality which makes it to stand out of the other blogging platforms. There are lots of plugins and themes available and a good support from WordPress team itself as well as other programmers who create fabulous plugins. The focus for 2009 for the team at WordPress is to provide facility for easier upgrades and more security. And last but not the least, the most exciting of all is the much anticipated BuddyPress, a social networking platform.

If you like my content, bookmark it on social networks and subscribe to RSS feed. Share with your friends by sending them an email or IM right away from the below widget. Post me a comment to clarify your queries.

Bookmark and Share

More »

SocialTwist allows you to send your favorite post to your friends without moving away from the site. It provides ‘Tell-A-Friend’ script which can be used across various services like email, social networking/bookmarking sites, IM and other CMS/ blogs. Also, you don’t have to remember the email addresses as the widget shows your contact list from the respective email or social network.

It can be used with various CMS and blogging platforms including wordpress, blogger, drupal, joomla, TypePad and lots more.

Site owners can customize the widget and check usage statics for FREE by signing up at http://secure.socialtwist.com/web/signup.

The best thing is that you can use it on your website too. So just like blogs, your site too can benefit the social networking. Moreover, you don’t need to be a tech guy to use it.

Features:

• Customize the widget UI, content, behavior
• See usage statistics
• Privacy assured – no storing of username or password
• Rich text messages
• Automatically picks appropriate content to announce from the page
• Small footprint, loads fast
• Attractive button and easy to use widget UI
• Users can reach out to friends across social networks
• Simpler and faster means to spread the word
• Wide range of buttons and widget themes
• No need to copy-paste widget for every change of widget configuration

Nothing is better than viral marketing or word of mouth recommendation. Just try it out by yourself now.

If you like my content, bookmark it on social networks and subscribe to RSS feed. Share with your friends by sending them an email or IM right away from the below widget. Post me a comment to clarify your queries.

Bookmark and Share

More »

I have seen the fact that some people complain about the less amount of comments they receive. I believe that if you put much thought and effort towards making your comment section attractive and easy to use like rest of the blog, you will be surprised at the amount of traffic you receive.

You can get some tips and examples for improving your comments section here:
Creating a better wordpress comment section

Isn’t it exciting? Now, let’s see how you can use those styles on your own blog.

If you are using default wordpress theme:

Modify the following comment loop in comments.php:

<li class=”<?php echo $oddcomment; ?>” id=”comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>”>

like this:

<li class=”<?php if ($comment->comment_author_email == “author@youremail.com”) echo ‘author’; else echo $oddcomment; ?> item” id=”comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>”>

This tells wordpress to check a comment. If the author email matches author@youremail.com, echo .author. If the comment email does not match author@youremail.com, do what you normally do and display the comment using standard styling. Now that WordPress understands that it is supposed to assign .author to your own author comments, you can style li.author accordingly to quickly differentiate yourself in discussions. Create a class in style.css file as described below.

If you have multiple authors for your blog:

Modify the code as:

<li class=”<?php if ($comment->comment_author_email == “author@domain.com”) echo ‘author’; else if ($comment->comment_author_email == “guest1@domain.com”) echo ‘guest1′; else if ($comment->comment_author_email == “guest2@domain.com”) echo ‘guest2′; else echo $oddcomment; ?> item” id=”comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>”>

If you are using Brian’ threaded comments plugin:

In your template folder, open comments.php.
Locate the following code at line 52:

<div id=”div-comment-<?php echo $c->comment_ID ?>” class=’comment<?php echo $odd ?>’>

Replace this code with:

<div id=”div-comment-<?php echo $c->comment_ID ?>” class=’comment<?php echo $odd ?><?php if ($c->comment_author_email == “author@youremail.com”) { ?> mycomment<?php } ?>’>

(Here change author@youremail.com with your email id)

Open your style.css and add:

div.mycomment {
background-color: #fbfbfb;
border: solid 1px #457AA5;
}

If you have more than one author for your blog, try using this:

<div id=”div-comment-<?php echo $c->comment_ID ?>” class=’comment<?php echo $odd?><?php if ($c->comment_author_email == “author@youremail.com” || $c->comment_author_email == “author2@yourmail.com”) { ?> mycomment<?php } ?>’>

To add more authors just add || $c->comment_author_email == “theirassignedemail@email.com” Be sure to leave a space in between each one!

If anyone else tries to fake your email id, WordPress has already provided a protection against it. So, don’t worry about it. That comment will be sent to moderation queue.

Feel free to change CSS according to your requirements.

Download Brian’s threaded plugin.

Note: If you are using Brian’s threaded comments plugin, you doesn’t need to number the comments because this plugin allows users to reply to the comment directly which they want to refer.

If you like my content, subscribe to RSS feed. Post me a comment to clarify your queries.

Bookmark and Share

More »

You must be wondering how AskPreeti.com is going to be a useful resource for you? Let me tell you why I have created AskPreeti.com and why you should subscribe and visit it regularly? All my friends, colleagues and teachers say that I ask lots of questions. But I have learnt a lot too through this habit of mine and now I want to share my knowledge with you. Here, I will be posting articles particularly related to search engine optimization, blogging, and search engine marketing. Areas like web development, programming and web designing will also be covered to some extent because these areas also play an important part in website optimization. I keep on experimenting and learning various things related to development and designing, so I will share it with you and will tell you, in the simplest way, the easiest manner to do things. This site is basically for those who are just stepping into this field and want to learn more and more. Many people approach me and ask questions related to my profession (i.e., SEO) and even come with their personal problems. Keeping this in mind I thought of creating this website, AskPreeti.com, to help them in every possible manner I can. This is a one spot where all your queries will get answered.

I will be presenting much of the information in question-answer format which will be very easy to scan through. You can contact me and send me any of your queries and suggestions at contactme@askpreeti.com. If I find the question asked by you as interesting and helpful for others too, then I will post the question along with the answer here. You can opt to disclose your name or keep yourself anonymous. Any queries related to personal problems are also welcome.

I am dedicating one section of this site to my dad, Dr. Nirmal Prakash, who is a medical physician by profession. He will be giving you health tips bimonthly.

I hope this site will help you in every possible manner. Your suggestions are very valuable for me. Don’t forget to post comments.

Subscribe now to keep yourself updated!

Happy Learning!

Bookmark and Share

More »