How-To-Wordpress.Net

Website development trends 2011

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:48:07 +0000

There’s no way the people are going to visit your internet page unless the design is suitable and functional at the same time. The nice looking page draws a lot of attention and is remembered for considerable time by the guests.
The first impression of the site is important for the corporate pages, as they are what brings the clients to the company, thus the creators shall follow the modern website development trends in order to keep the visitors interested.
There are a lot of tiny aspects you shall not forget when creating the site; these are buttons, colors, company logos and their placement as well as text and the basic layout. Each of the offered featured demands the great amount of attention in order to create the brilliant site.
Let’s look through the most popular website design trends and define the most interesting ones.
Do not forget about the headers, as this trend is one of the most valuable nowadays. No more little headers with the list of options available by a click! Give the way to the large headers; let them take over the half of your page, so they will be the part of the initial webpage design. Some visitors can get you site burned in their minds just due to the great header offered there. The guest will have to do some scrolling to get gown the page, so he will get to the data without clicking.
The other feature is the fonts. The times of the boring Arial and Verdana have passed long ago, after the browsers got the ability to comprehend the wide range of fonts, the text appeared to be the perfect detail of the site design. The creative font can attract the visitors to your site; still make sure it’s easily readable.
The newest kind of the website development trends is the minimalistic design of the page. Get rid of the details, strip the site off everything unimportant and offer the visitor the bare truth of what he wants to see. The minimalistic sites however need even more work then the regular ones, as the designer shall work through the small amount of objects to make the page recognizable and easily remembered.

What is wordpress

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:55:16 +0000

WordPress is an open source blog building engine.

What do you need to know about wordpress?

WordPress is an open source project. It can be used free of charge and everyone can take part at the development process.
WordPress can be downloaded for free from WordPress.org.
Follow my video tutorial on how to install WordPress.
Different design themes can be applayed on any wordpress blog.
Endless amount of various themes are available, some of them are free and some of them are payed.

WordPress.org themes search
The original formation of wordpress is including basic options. But the functionality can be easily expended using some of the many plugins available.

WordPress.org plugins search
WordPress is Search engines(SEO) friendly. However, some adjustments are required.

How to use WordPress plugins

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:47:32 +0000

Are you interested in adding some functionality to your WordPress blog?
Lets learn how to do it, follow those steps:

Go to the Plugins -> Add new menu.

New plugin menu
Search for your plugin (in this case we will search for contact form plugin called “contact form 7″)

New plugin search
Hit the install link.
Make sure to take a look at the installation tab for any special instructions:

Install plugin
Hit the Install now button.
This will activate the WordPress one click installation system.
What will happen behind the scene:
- The plugin’s zip file will be downloaded.
- The files will be unzipped into you /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
- The plugin will be added to your plugins list.
If you have donloaded the plugin’s zip file from its website and need to unzip it manually make sure you do it into the /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
Activate the plugin by clicking the “Activate plugin” link.

Activate plugin
Now we need to configure the plugin – go to plugins menu.
Some of the plugins will have a settings link below their name
Others will be added to the main menu on the left.

Configure plugin menu
Adjust the configuration of the plugin to fit your needs

How to apply new wordpress theme on your blog

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:45:26 +0000

So you found a new theme and you want to apply it in order to replace the default WordPress theme or your current.

That is very easy task, follow those steps:

Make sure you unzip the files into your: wp-content\themes folder.

Themes menu
If you extracted the files correctly the new theme should appear on that page:

Available themes
Click on the activate link. That’s it the new theme should be active on your blog.

The big challenge is to fully customize the design for your specific needs.
This process can take some time and even be little frustrating if you don’t have the knowledge how to do it.

WordPress SEO

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:40:37 +0000

WordPress in general is very friendly to search engines.
You need to make sure that you are using the correct plugins and setting to make sure will recive good rating from the search engines.

It is very important to use the permalinks settings correctly:

Permalinks

I am using the following configuration:

Permalinks settings

/%category%/%postname%/

This configuration is highly recommended.

WordPress SEO Plugins

There are many SEO plugins for wordpress, some of them are useful, some of them are not, some of them can even be harmful.

Here is two of the most popular WP SEO plugins:

1) All in one SEO pack

All in one SEO

This is a great plugin, many options works just out of the box, but some other should be configured.

Overall useful, powerful and yet not too complicated plugin.

For more information please refer to WordPress installation page or plugin homepage.

2) HeadSpace SEO plugin

Headspace plugin

Headspace plugin has more options then the SEO all in one plugin but is little more complicated.

WordPress plugins

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:25:01 +0000

What are those WordPress plugins ?

By defoult the WordPress engine has only the basics functions such as:

Adding and editing posts.
Adding and editing pages.
Adding and editing categories.
Adding basic widgets such as: tags cloud, menu widget and more.
Managing comments.
Updating your theme.
Changing general settings.

How ever if you want to expend the functionality of your blog you will need to add different plugins to your WordPress engine.
With the help of those plugins your blog will be able to do almost everything.
Here are some of the functions WordPress plugins can perform:

SEO optimization.
Adding contact forms.
Showing related posts.
Adding ratings to your posts.
Adding statistics.
Linking to tweeter.
Adding galleries.
Adding email/feed burner subscription.
And much much more…

The amount of the WordPress plugin is huge and you will probably be able to find plugins for your needs easily.

Where to find WP-plugins ?

The best place to look for those plugins is: WordPress.org website.
Make sure you are on the Extend -> Plugins page.

Another option is to look for plugins on Google, but this option is not recommended for the following reasons:

The amount of plugins on wordpress.org is huge.

WordPress.org plugins search

If a plugin is not listed in WordPress.org it was not tasted or not approved.
In such case it can be harmful for your blog and information.
I suggest that even if you find a plugin through its website, go to wordpress.org to make sure that it is listed there.
It is much easier to install plugins thorough wordpress.org thanks to the “One click installation” function(there is no need to manually download and extract files to the plugin folder)