Your business card as an e-commerce entrepreneur is the order management system you use. If customers are enticed with your products’ showcase but get turned off by a tangled order system they are most likely to leave empty-handed. The two main options for managing orders are order forms and shopping carts. Which one suits you best? Let’s analyze this in a few simple steps.

Forms are traditional means of collecting order information used since the pre-web era. An online order form placed on your page would bring to view the purchase options and direct customers to the payment gateway. Shopping carts are terminals with complex capabilities, which require more resources. Both solutions give a good range of features:
- real time price calculation
- transactions processing or integration with online payment gateways
- opt-in for product features
- product image attaching
- anti-spam facilities (CAPTCHA)
- data encryption.
Before deciding for one or the other ordering system, it’s a good idea to ask yourself the following questions:
Are you an occasional seller or you run a well-established e-commerce business?
Consider using a shopping cart if your sales activity is among the main objectives of your site or blog. An order form is a good option if you don’t have a massive flow of products to sell, otherwise you will need to update the form each time a new product appears. Forms are light tools to embed on any page, while a shopping cart is like an axis the website revolves around.
If your aim is just to keep readers engaged by offering small treats every now and then such as vintage music tapes you found in the garage, then you would certainly use an order form placed inside a post. Or say you regularly insert “offer of the week”-like posts with bargains. The best scenario is again to have a small form on each page, featuring the products that are showcased there. On the other hand, for regularly updating catalogues of products, shopping carts are the best choice.
How many products / service plans will you be selling?
Whether you are a freelancer selling photo shooting packages or the owner of a handcrafted decorations business, you should estimate the range of your offers in order to choose the best ordering system. If your catalogue includes more than maybe four or five items then you should opt for a shopping cart. Order forms tend to become too cluttered at that level, which diminishes visual impact.
Will you use fidelity coupons or discount codes?
If affirmative, it’s recommended to use a shopping cart for full automatizing the process. With forms, this feature falls in the category of workarounds for the moment (yet accomplishable).
Do you wish the visitors to be able to navigate on various pages while their order is saved?
In this case you have two options. Either go for the form and display it within a link that will open in another tab or put up a shopping cart. Order forms can limit customer’s interactivity with the products if there’s a wide range of items to display. Shopping carts, on the other hand, require a multi-step buying process, implying that the customer returns to finalize the order.
What payment options do you give at checkout?
Most order forms and shopping carts integrate with the major payment processors. The challenge is to choose a system that offers all the payment options you are considering. Of course, it’s best to integrate your online shop with all the leading gateways in order to fulfill the needs of customers all over the world.
Order forms are a time-effective solution that suits bloggers who want to build an online store without a hitch, while shopping carts are a better fit for industrial retailers. The order management system is a key usability element that will set your business working.

Laura writes on behalf of 123ContactForm, web form builder that helps users create effective forms and surveys for every web platform. From order forms to contact pages, users can create and customize fully-featured forms for any business.

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After releasing 5 consecutive free WordPress themes we have decided to treat you all to an awesome new magazine-style WordPress theme. Fans of our previous themes FMYS Corporate, FMYS Mini CMS, Bluemoon, Rainyblack, SushumanBiz will find the same great widget-powered functionality. We present to you Hucuba – a Magazine/News WordPress theme.

Hucuba is a Premium WordPress Theme from us, Hucuba theme is specifically designed for community driven magazine website, personal blog or news websites. The Hucuba WordPress Theme comes with features like image slider on homepage, dynamic widgetized sidebars, post image thumbnail, custom theme option panel and many more.

Demo Hucuba

Download Hucuba Free Version

Theme features :

• Featured Image Slideshow On The Homepage
• Fully Widgetized Sidebars
• Theme Control Panel
• Advertisement Management
• Analytics Management
• 11 Custom Widgets
  • Flickr Widget
  • About Me Widget
  • Banner Widget
  • Comments Widget
  • Contact Form Widget
  • News Letter Widget
  • Search Widget
  • Social share Widget
  • Tweets Widget
  • Posts Widget
  • Tabs Widget
• 2 Columns
• Readme included
• Gravatar ready
• WordPress 3.0 menu system supported + backwarkd compatability
• Cross browser compatibility IE7, IE8, IE9, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera

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The need for a human to constantly change – to expand and grow, holds true for open source content management systems as well; or at least for WordPress CMS. What started off as a humble platform for publishing blogs, has now undergone a complete transformation. The release of the new version of WordPress was perhaps one of the most awaited event and the features provided by the new version is worth all this waiting. It is laced with amazing features, which are developed keeping in mind the present day needs.

Some of these highly developed and up-to-date features of WordPress 3.3 are discussed below:

1. Redesigned Admin Bar
   The fervent WordPress users will rejoice after going through the latest design of the admin bar. It looks more user-friendly and in a sheer prominent way, quite chic as well. The new version exhibits a shade darker and bolder admin bar along with a few strategic additions. The bar is not flooded with the links or the elements and the ones which remain are now carefully placed to solve certain specific purpose. The old users may miss the search and appearance menu, and also the user menu has been moved to the right side, giving it a feel of the Google’s user bar.
   
2. New WordPress Menu Displayed on the Left
   From their previous location in the folder, where they were hardly visible, the new WordPress presents the menu via new “W” icon and contains various handy links to the “About WordPress” screen along with license information, credits, documentation and support forums etc.
   
3. The new WordPress is more “Help”-full.
   Quite literally the help section in the new WordPress is presented right next to the center of the admin bar, instead of being put in one distant corner.The help section of the remodeled WordPress provides the users with revised help section, accompanied with tabbed navigation and convenient readability. Besides WordPress developers can share their own support documents in the admin bar itself which will provide their clients a brief and personalized help.
4. Tooltip pop-ups
   Perhaps this may be an unsolicited feature for the more accustomed and seasoned WordPress developers, but the new WordPress offers great helps to the new or the not so regular users in the form of Tooltip pop-ups which guide them through all the new features of WordPress. The moment you upgrade the new WordPress, you will be greeted by Tooltip pop-ups. It is of particular interest to those WordPress developers concentrating on developing Plugins and themes and wish to acclimatize their clients to the new features.
   
5. Use New Tooltips to Yoast!
   The best development tool for developing Plugins, Yoast has included these tooltips in its updated version of WordPress SEO plugin.
   
6. Revised Media Up-loader with Advanced functionalities
   Uploading media files just cannot get more easy and convenient. Thanks to the latest version of WordPress you can just drag and drop the media files including Images or PDF’s straight away from your desktop to your WordPress. The uploader doesn’t need the support of Flash any more now and employs HTML5 elements and Silverlight technology to facilitate uploading files.
7. Save all your clicks with the new Flyout Menus.
   The brand new Flyout Menus is your true savior against the menu screen becoming messy and crowded with all the opened menus. The latest Flyout menus gives you a show-down the moment the cursor is hovered on them and saves you hell lot of clicks.Though it may appear a “not so important features”, but if you have to work on WordPress Development and Designing for hours altogether, this particular feature will prove to be the ultimate time saver!

And there is more to the profitable part. Though the above mentioned features were aimed at people in general and of course for WordPress developers, the following Four Features are specifically being designed to give WordPress developers extra scope and options for adding functionalities and optimizing the results. These features are:

1.  A very responsive layout: this is the foundation version, and better revisions are expected in the next version, but presently, the left side menu is very responsive and adjusts itself by collapsing in small screens.
2. Improved Postname Permalinks: in the previous edition, developers were required to set the /%postname%/ for permalink settings but now they have a choice. And after fixing up the performance issues, the settings for permalinks can be easily used for extensive websites having enormous number of posts and pages.
3. Activated options for jQuery 1.7 and iQuery UI 1.8.16: these advanced feature are now ready and fully functional and can be included in your WordPress design.
4. New WordPress Editor API: with this plugin, WordPress developers can personalize the post editor, even the TinyMCE buttons and include other editors.

Tools for shopping cart integration

And if the above stated features, were not enough, the newly revised WordPress CMS offers some amazing tools for shopping cart integration. Gone are the days where WordPress would be limited for developing simple websites and publishing Blogs, with the advent of latest features, WordPress is all powered to take up on fellow CMS like Drupal etc. The latest WordPress features fully supports the requirement of a website to be feature rich and large scale and with shopping cart integration, WordPress Development would be the one stop solution for all your high end needs for website design and development. Some of the amazing tools offered by WordPress for eCommerce are stated below:

1. WooCommerce
   
   This is perhaps one of the best eCommerce solution you can ever come across for your website. This tool is seen as and advancement to the renowned Jigoshop plugin and offers its users some of the impeccable and highly resourceful features like easy inventory management, simplified shipping and tax options, effective promotion and marketing tools, multiple product types – simple, configurable, downloadable etc.Though packed with such amazing features, it is really easy to use.
2. Cart66
   
   This WordPress plugin offers you all the features which you can possibly expect in an effective eCommerce solution like configurations for products, options for taxing and shipping, keeping a track of the inventory etc.Its distinguishing feature is that it concentrates on premium membership features and can be used for both physical and digital products. Perhaps the best option if you are trading your content or mailing magazine subscriptions.
3. Shopp
   
   Shopp comes with an experience, so to say. This has been stayed around for a comparatively long time and thus you can be rest assured that it has been tried and tested and improved over the period of time. What makes Shopp a good eCommerce solution, is its hassle free ease of use. By spending just a little, you get high end services like Payment Gateways, shipping services and etc.Another interesting feature of Shopp is that it supports priority calls. These paid add-ons provides the store owners swift response time, whenever they are in desperate need.
4. WP E-Commerce
   
   This has been one of the longest running eCommerce solutions for WordPress and is popularly known as GetShopped.org. It has a superior in built SEO advantage and provides you with almost all of the common eCommerce functionalities, in addition to its quality of easily working with multiple WordPress sites.All of these WordPress eCommerce plugins are available for free, besides their scope and functionalities can be increased after buying the premium versions. With all the latest features and functionalities, WordPress, which was previously a plain Jane solution for developing websites, has now metamorphosed to become The One and Only Solution for your need of high profile, feature rich and exclusive website development.

Jennifer Hill is a highly ambitious and self motivated professional, working as a senior marketing executive with WPCanvas, a specialized WordPress development and WordPress customization firm.

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Smilies (also known as emoticons) have been around for quite a long time. I’m sure when you think about the word “smiley,” the first thing that comes to mind is instant messaging, chat rooms or maybe even forums, but smilies can also be used on blogs.

WordPress comes with a small set of built in smilies that you can use within your posts and pages, but what if you’re looking for a bigger variety. Even more importantly, what if you’re looking to add smilies to your comments section so that your visitors can have a little fun and express their emotions visually? Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer this type of functionality right of the box, but it can be added with the use of a plugin or two.

Let’s take a look at the top 6 WordPress smilies plugins to help add a little personality and fun to your blog posts, pages and comments.

Speedy Smilies

The title of this plugin says it all. The main goal of Speedy Smilies is to make your smilies load fast on your pages. It also aims to make inserting smilies into your posts and pages quick and easy. It does this by adding a Speedy Smilies section to your editor so that you can easy add them in a single click.

Custom Smilies

This plugin does 3 things: lets you add smilies to your posts; lets visitors add smilies to the comments that they leave on your posts; and lets you manage your smilies by defining the shortcut needed to activate it.

Just like Speedy Smilies (above), Custom Smilies adds a section to your editor so that you can quickly insert smilies. It then goes a step further and adds smilies to your comment section so that visitors can click to add them to their comments. Lastly, you can create your own smiley shortcuts. Meaning, you get to choose what to type in order for the smiley to show in your posts.

Smilies Themer Toolbar

This plugin adds a smilies toolbar to your comments section and also to your blog editor. What’s so advanced about it is that you can actually choose which smilies show up on your toolbar. The smilies can also be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping them into the order of your choice.

If you don’t like where the toolbar appears in your comments section, you can move it using a php function provided in the plugin’s FAQ section. The plugin is currently also available in Japanese, Italian and Georgian; you can also easily translate it yourself using Launchpad.

Yahoo! Emoticons for Custom Smilies

If you really love the Yahoo! emoticons (who doesn’t), then you can use them on your blog with this plugin. Yahoo! Emoticons is a tweak for Custom Smilies (mentioned above), so you’ll need to have both plugins installed.

This plugin basically adds the Yahoo! emoticons as an additional pack to the Custom Smilies plugin. You’ll then be able to use them in your posts, comments and manage them along with the other smilies that come with the Custom Smilies plugin.

Cricket Moods

This plugin is a little different in that instead of allowing you to add smilies to your actual content or comments, it lets you add moods to your posts in the form of a smiley. You can add one or more moods to your posts and the smiley will be displayed along with the actual word describing it.

There is also a manager that lets you rename your moods and even change the graphics associated with those moods. There is no limit to the number of moods that you can have; so there is really a lot of flexibility and possibilities for the plugin.

wp-Monalisa

“wp-Monalisa is the plugin that smiles at you like monalisa does; place the smilies of your choice in posts, pages or comments.” This plugin can be a replacement for the WordPress default smilies, or be used in addition to them. While it does work out of the box, there are many features and customization options that you may need help with (ie. replace smilies with img tags); for this you’ll find video tutorials for assistance.

Just like Custom Smilies (above), it has a manager that lets you define custom shortcuts and hide certain smilies from posts and/or comments.

Do you use smilies on your blog? If so, do you use the default (built-in) smilies or a plugin and which plugin do you prefer? Let us know in the comments below.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing strategist for the political science Israel program at the Tel Aviv University, and who also works for an international company that offers Targeted Cancer Therapies.

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Having a strong presence in the blogosphere is more important now than it ever has been before. But the problem is that most people think all that requires is putting together a blog, adding a handful of posts and that’s their work done. Then they sit there waiting for the flood of visitors, signups and orders….except all they get to see is virtual tumbleweed instead.

There are some key reasons why most blogs fail to attract initial and repeat visitors and we’ve listed the top 6 here for your viewing pleasure and enlightenment:

Using A Free Blog

If you’re running a business and you can’t afford the $40 – $50 a year for web hosting that includes a Fantastico one-click install of WordPress then you need to reevaluate your business plan. Using a free WordPress or Blogger blog can work if you’re running a charity or community blog but if you’re running a business nobody is going to take you seriously if you’re using a free service. Especially if they blog is all about how successful you are as a blogger or making money online.

Using Stock Themes

This is a bit of a sticky one. You see even the hosted versions of WordPress use a wide array of free themes and that’s what most people use. But the problem is that if your blog looks like 110,000 other blogs using exactly the same theme you’re not creating your own individual presence right? You can always take a stock theme and hire a coder to customize it for you and for a lot less than you might imagine – usually for well under $100.

Screen Clutter

This is usually the biggest newbie mistake we see. A fresh blog is like giving a kid some paper and crayons – they just go wild and draw all over the place. Most blog owners are the same and start including as many elements as they can on their pages and posts. If nothing else avoid wasting onscreen real estate by using a massive header for your blog.

I’ve seen some blog headers that are 400 and 500 pixels tall – that’s a total waste of space where real content belongs. Your blog header should be no more than 200 pixels in height – it’s just your blog logo and doesn’t really serve any other purpose.

Not Customizing Your Permalinks

If somebody bookmarks your content (which you want them to do) and it only shows up as Yourblog.com/P?=599 then it doesn’t really work to remind them why they bookmarked your fantastic content in the first place does it? It takes about 2 or 3 minutes to customize your permalinks to make them far more visitor and SEO friendly. Or just pay somebody on Fiverr the $5 to do it for you. Either way get it done.

Over Monetization

If your content gets lost amongst all the ads you’re using then you’re probably not going to make very much money. Remember that Google is looking at how long a visitor stays on your site to gauge how much TrustRank to give your blog and there’s no quicker way to chase visitors away than to have them arrive on a blog that’s nothing but advertising block after advertising block. Sure they might click on one of your ads….but they’ll one ever do it once.

Cheeky Curation

You need original content as well as featuring content from other sites. Curation is fine but far too many bloggers are using it as an excuse for being lazy and just not bothering to create any content themselves. Providing a digest of news once a week for your readers is a nice idea and is providing a valuable resource. Just copying and pasting snippets of content from other sites and using a No Follow link back to them is lazy, rude and gets your zero TrustRank points from Google.

When you’re looking at your blog forget that you own it and imagine that this is your first time visiting it. What’s your first impression when you see it? Creating a great blog that’s use-friendly is as much about common sense as anything else.

This was a post by a guy named Lior Levin who works for a website that showcases the best web hosting companies and also advises on a regular basis to a psd to html service for web designers and developers.

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There are  many different ways that your blog, or CMS (Content Management System) based website can be hacked. A  variety of techniques are used, from simply guessing a password to an administrative part of website or shoulder surfing to more technologically advanced method such as SQL injection, rainbow tables and more. Although there is a variety of techniques available to hackers if the hacker is experienced and really wants access to your site, they’ll most likely gain it sooner or later, most people make it easy for beginner hackers, or “password guessers” to get access to your blog or website. Here is the list of most common mistakes people make that makes their site susceptible to hackers:

1. Most people use default backend access page.Most people don’t even think about it as a security bridge and simply choose default administrative login page such as wp-admin for wordpress and admin for most other CMS systems. By leaving the default page, you make it easy for hackers since now they don’t even have to guess where to begin hacking. The admin login page is one of the best places to try to gain access to entire site.Solution: This is a very easy fix. Most content management systems have this covered for you in installation process. You can simply choose different login page. It will give you much greater security by choosing something other than admin. For ultimate security it is recommended to choose random string of numbers, letters and dashes.
2. Don’t use Admin as your admin name.About 60% of people use admin as their admin login name. It is also offered by default in majority of content management system, therefore many people just choose it. By leaving your backend access and admin as your admin name you almost complete the hacking job yourself! All thats left for hackers to do is to guess or hack your password.Solution: It is also as simple as choosing different admin(user) name for you login during installation, and if your blog or CMS already installed it, it’s as simple as logging in  and requesting a different login name. It is recommended to choose something other than Admin, your personal name and your known nicknames (such as twitter handle or other social network nickname). For ultimate security, choose a random string of characters, numbers and letters. Also, if your CMS is case sensitive, mix some upper scale letters in.
3. Choose a strong password.On top of the first two security issues mentioned, most people choose very simple passwords, such as a sequence of numbers from one to six or all letters from bottom of keyboard. This makes a “guess job” very easy a easy for hacker, but even more complex phrases can be hacked. There are large databases of the most common passwords readily available for hackers. They can copy it and try them out on your backend.Solution: Choose complex password with minimum of 10 characters which contain numbers, letter (upper and lower scale) as well as numbers. Be sure not to use passwords that could be associated with your name, nick name or famous characters or people.

With these few simple tricks you can drastically increase the security of your blog or content management system. Many people ask “How would we memorize all those long strings of characters that don’t make any sense?” Well, the solution for that is pretty simple – use a password manager tool. They vary from some simple and free solutions to more complex USB based solutions .These will give you the ultimate protection of your passwords and logins.

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404 pages are inevitable – visitors may type in an address incorrectly, your site may be linked to with a typo or you may simply forget to redirect every page on your domain if you launch a new site. These things happen.

But when it does happen, it doesn’t have to be a miserable experience for the visitor. You can help them get to where they want to be with links to your content, and with a search box, but you can also cheer them up by doing something a bit different, and by having an error page that isn’t overly formal.

We’ve selected a showcase of sites that do just that – these sites have livened up their 404 pages so that even when you’re lost, you’re still in a good mood.

Mozilla

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/404

GitHub

Source: https://github.com/404

Lockerz

Source: http://lockerz.com/s/404

Skitch

Source: http://skitch.com/404

Google Wave

Source: http://wave.google.com/maintenance/index.html

Blippy

Source: http://blippy.com/404

Nosh.me

Source: http://www.nosh.me/404

Dilbert

Source: http://dilbert.com/404

MailChimp

Source: http://mailchimp.com/404/

Grooveshark

Source: http://down.grooveshark.com/

VisitSteve.com

Source: http://visitsteve.com/404.html

Blue Daniel

Source: http://www.bluedaniel.com/404

Angaar

Source: http://angaar.ee/404/

EightBit.me

Source: http://eightbit.me/404

Dribbble

Source: http://dribbble.com/404

Alex writes for UK printing company Print Express, who specialise in custom postcard printing, flyers & business cards. In his spare time he plays with Photoshop and learns to code.

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While WordPress started out as an easy to use blogging platform, it’s developed into one of the most popular content management systems in the world. It’s popularity is partially due to it’s ease of use – people with little or no HTML or coding knowledge can use WordPress to create a nice website. Of course, power users like WordPress because it’s very capable, because there is a huge development community adding features every day, and because it’s free to use as a development platform.

So, lets pretend for a second that WordPress was a car. What kind of car would it be?

Frankly, no single car comes to mind. The Hyundai line-up is very similar to what WordPress offers in the sense that Hyundai’s are, for a lack of a better word, cheap. Yet Hyundai also sells a full range of vehicles – everything from a little econobox to a $70k+ Genesis sport sedan. So, in a way, WordPress is capable of simple or complex tasks, but it’s always cheap.

Likewise, the Hyundai brand is just now starting to be appreciated by the general public, just as WordPress is just now being seen by the masses as a powerful content management system.

Because WordPress is very easy to tweak and customize, it reminds us of a Scion vehicle. Scion offers dozens of add-ons, all of which are quality Toyota parts and accessories (Scion is owned by Toyota). You can get lowering springs and body kits and custom stereos for your car straight from Scion, just like WordPress users can get numerous templates and plugins to customize their site straight from WordPress.org.

The popularity of WordPress should remind the world of the Volkswagen Beetle (also known as the “Bug”). The Beetle enjoys the honor of being the most produced car in the world, with more than 21 million Bugs sold between 1938 and 2003, all of which used essentially the same design. Not bad, especially considering that the most popular car in North America, the Toyota Camry, sold just a touch over 325k units in 2010. By all accounts, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world.

The utility of WordPress is pretty dramatic, with everything from mom-and-pop e-commerce sites to large forums to major companies like NBC, Sony, and even the US Army using WordPress to power popular sites like ProFootballTalk, the Playstation blog, and the official US Army blog. Considering all the different ways you can use WordPress, it might appropriate to compare it to the old World War II Willy’s Jeep. The Willy’s did everything from shuttle battlefield commanders around to directing artillery to acting as a light assault vehicle, and both the Willy’s and WordPress answer the call when asked to perform a wide variety of tasks.

Finally, while you might not think it’s smart or interesting to compare WordPress to a car, consider this: legend has it that Microsoft founder Bill Gates once compared his company to General Motors, saying something along the lines of “if GM had advanced their technology as quickly as we [Microsoft] have, we would all be driving cars that got 1,000 mpg and cost $25.” Supposedly, GM replied “if Microsoft built cars, they would all crash three times a day and no one would think anything of it.”

Comparing cars and computer software has a long and proud history – go ahead and submit your own comparison below.

Jason Lancaster is a WordPress developer and Internet marketing consultant who writes for Olathe Toyota, which sells Toyota accessories online.

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Blogging is dead. I know that’s true because I read it on a blog. The truth is that while social networking and microblogging sites have grown drastically in the past year, blogs remain a central part of the global cyberspace landscape. Blogs remain popular and important, especially when it comes to dedicated niche communities gathered around a specific topic of interest. But blogs do not have to be stuck in 2007. Bring your blog into the new decade with a few of these crucial 2011 blogging trends.

1. Single user access to multiple sites is growing in popularity all over the web, and that applies to your blog too. That means that users can comment and interact with your blog using their log-in information from other popular sites like Facebook and Gmail. Facebook Connect is widely used across the Internet as a way to make commenting and promoting content easier and quicker for all users, while Blogger software makes it easy for commenters to use their Gmail identities.

2. With the recent rise of smartphones and now tablet computers, it is more important than ever that your blog be optimized for mobile viewing. Treat your mobile audience as equal, if not primary, to your desktop audience, and make sure that every element of your design functions and looks good when viewed on a tiny screen. If you have a stunning picture of gold engagement rings on your wedding planning blog, don’t force your busy mobile audience to wait five minutes for it to load over a slow wireless connection, offer a smaller version of the photo for ease of use.

3. The once-popular RSS feed is slowly being phased out by many blogging hosts, so make sure you have a plan in place for how to reach your audience with new content. Besides for acquiring subscriptions, followers, and a healthy mutual blogroll, you can spread the news about a hot new post through Facebook, Twitter, and even email.

4. Building off the success of crowdsourced consumer review sites, new question and answer sites are turning to the wisdom of the masses as well. You can promote your blog through popular Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Tag your answers with your website to build viewership as you establish credibility.

5. Every year brings new social networking tools that the well-connected blogger must utilize to stay in touch with his readers. It can get overwhelming. Luckily, new meta tools are available to help you publish on multiple platforms at once. You can broaden your reach and maintain your original blog, plus a Twitter account, Facebook page, and a Google+ identity.

6. Just because you continue to use a traditional blog does not mean you should not explore some of the many new microblogging tools available to you. Besides for Twitter and its famous 140-character limit, you also have Tumblr, Posterous, and several other brand-new sites that can help you express your viewpoint and connect with readers in short bursts instead of long-winded posts. You can still promote the same kind of content that you would in a traditional blog. For example, you can still blog about the Four C’s that are used to choose ideal loose diamonds, you would just do it one C at a time!

7. You no longer have to go it alone. Multiple author blogs, in which two or more people share blogging duties, are increasing in popularity in recent years. By opening the blog to a variety of people with different perspectives and levels of expertise, you make your blog more interesting and also make it easier to post often.

8. Blogging is no longer just about the young cool crowd. Older folks, especially those over 40, are heading to the blogosphere en masse, as popular columnists from newspapers and magazines start their own blogs. In addition, as younger Internet users migrate towards sites geared more towards their attention-span-deprived mindset. Blogging should now appeal to older readers with easy-to-navigate designs and jargon-free language.

9. Don’t get stuck on the same design and layout that worked for your blog in 2007. Two of the biggest blogs in the world, Vulture and Gawker, both redesigned their sites in 2011. With fresh graphics, navigation, and features, your blog can continue to attract new readers and even get your recurring readers newly excited about your site.

10. One of the most important features of a good blog has not changed in 2011: hard work. No matter what, getting your blog noticed and read will take constant effort and hard work. Keep blogging about what you love, and keep promoting those posts, and your blog will reach new levels of success in 2011.

Guest article written by Whiteflash.com – best provider of diamond jewelry.

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20% of all new active websites are now using WordPress as their content management system, and along with this huge increase in WordPress users is a greater increase in websites being hacked.  In fact, because this CMS is so popular, more hackers are targeting it and looking for vulnerabilities within the software.

Here are some tips for keeping your WordPress blog safe and secure.  Follow these tips so you can keep your focus on blogging and not have to worry about being hacked.  After all, you did not start a blog so that you would have to spend every waking minute keeping yourself protected from hackers.

Tip #1:  Keep your WordPress installation current

The good people who created WordPress and keep it running smoothly don’t just update the software to keep annoying you.  In almost every update there is a security update as well.  The most vulnerable blogs are the ones with oldest versions of WordPress.  It might be annoying to keep up with all these updates if you own multiple blogs, but it’s even more annoying to try to get your site back after it’s been hacked.  So why don’t they just take care of all the security threats with one update?  Well, unfortunately hackers are very good at finding vulnerabilities and flaws in any CMS, and since WordPress is the most popular CMS of all, they spend most of their time looking for these blogs that have old versions of the software.  Keeping your site up to date is the single most important thing you can do to keep everything hacker free.

Tip #2:  Make sure your login is encrypted

Even if you have the most complicated password in the world a hacker can sniff it out with simple browser plugin or extension if you are logging in using public Wi-Fi.  Anytime you are accessing your WordPress blog in a public place, whether it’s a hotel, airport, or local coffee shop, make sure your login is encrypted.   By default, the CMS does not use encrypted logins, but fortunately in the vast array of plugins there is one that can help solve this problem.  The Chap Secure Login plugin is a simple tool which does not encrypt your username, but it does hide your password behind random numbers and will be enough to keep any hacker from seeing your login information.  Don’t leave home without this one.

Tip #3: Get rid of any WordPress footprints

Since hackers are targeting WordPress blogs specifically, you will want your blog to hide under the radar.  There are certain footprints that make these blogs easy to find, so by getting rid of these clues you can blend in with the rest of the internet and avoid detection by would-be-hackers.    The most obvious footprint to get rid of is the “Powered by WordPress” tag in the footer.  There are other footprints you can get rid of with a simple security plugin, but most hackers are lazy and will use the most obvious ways of finding these blogs first.  Some people suggest hiding common footprints like the “wp-login” extensions and “wp-content” as well, but most of these issues can be solved by using the Bullet Proof Security plugin.

Tip #4: Avoid plugins that are not in the official WordPress directory

This does not mean that any plugin outside the WordPress directory have viruses or bugs, but at least you know that all of the plugins in the official directory have been scanned for viruses and have been found clean.  Once in a while a bad plugin is found, but it’s usually rooted out pretty quickly by the community.  If you don’t understand and can’t read PHP then you should definitely stay away from independent plugins, since you will not be able to see for yourself if it will cause harm to your blog.

Tip #5: Don’t Allow Brute Force Attacks

A brute force attack is when a hacker utilizes a program to try every possible password combination to hack into your blog.   Not only is this a huge intrusion but it also eats up a lot of bandwidth too.  You can put a stop to these kind of attacks with a plugin called Login Lockdown.  It will record the IP address of anyone who types in the wrong password, and after so many attempts will lock them out so they cannot even attempt another password combination.  This is the kind of plugin you hope you will never have to use, but it’s nice to have around.

Tip #6: Backup, backup, backup…

This one should really not be last but maybe it will stick in your head better if it is.  By backing up your WordPress site you are ensuring that even if you do somehow get hacked, at least you can get your entire blog back with no problems.  There are several plugins that can do this for you if you don’t want to do it manually, including one of the most popular, Backup Buddy.  And not only will backing up your WordPress site help protect you from hackers, it will also help you in case something else happens to your blog and everything crashes without notice.  A constant regiment of backups will help you sleep better at night.

John Phillips writes about ID theft protection services and helps consumers find the right service to guard their identities, including Lifelock reviews and other companies.

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