Most of the blogger are using WordPress as their blogging platform. I recommend WordPress to all people who would like to start blogging, because it is so powerful but easy to use. WordPress themes are premade designs that can be installed seamlessly and effortlessly to any site.

Elegant WordPress Themes provides WordPress themes of quality and integrity. They craft their themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism, and strive to inject each design with a dose modest elegance. Each of their WordPress themes come widget readt and coded in valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and CSS. Every theme is made in compliance with the latest version of WordPress, and are compatible with Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 6/7, Safari, Opera, and Netscape.

You can have a look at the gallery page which contains all of the themes you can use after joining the Elegant WordPress Themes membership. Each theme comes with a unique set of features, click “feature” to view a list, and click “preview” to see a live demo of the theme. You get downloadable access to all of their themes immediately, as well as all themes released during 1 year following your purchase after you sign up! It is only $19.95 per year. Do not miss the chance and join now today!

They do provide support for all themes as well. If you have experienced any problems with the themes, you can contact them immediately for a quick fix.

Want To Start a Website – Choose Wordpress Hosting

Starting a website is for the inexperienced person an almost impossible task. Understanding coding in html, ASP or PHP can seem like climbing the Chinese wall, even for the accustomed Internet user. And as a natural result of a high demand with little know-how, web hosting companies have stepped in to assist beginner website builders in creating professional and good looking websites. But even so, there are far too many terms and available options for the inexperienced not to feel confused. However, with wordpress hosting all you need to do is choose a web host, register a domain and the host will take care of the rest.

The Misconception of Blogs

We are talking about the prospect and benefits of starting a blog. A general misconception is however that a blog isn’t a real website, only fit for people like Perez Hilton to use as a daily online dairy. This is of course not an accurate observation. A blog is a simplified CMS, content management system used by most dynamic websites today, allowing the webmaster to login and easily administer the website from a user-friendly control panel. Getting a blog is the best way to get started if you do not know so much about developing websites. It will give you a proper website and a platform from which you can control web design, content, settings and additional features.

What does a Wordpress Host do?

A Wordpress host is simply a web host that offers free tools to help you install a blog. Wordpress is, if you don’t know already, the most popular and used blog developer with a unique control panel and management system, adapted to the beginner user. The 5-minute installation that is advertised by Wordpress can however be quite tricky, seeing as you have to create a MySQL database and edit the config.php-file, and letting someone else handling this is advised. That’s hence where your Wordpress web host enters the picture. With one click and a few steps the host will install the Wordpress blog for you – in less than 5 minutes.

Don’t even think about it anymore. Trust us – if you want to start a website but lack knowledge, time and money to set one up yourself – choose this hosting type. If you want a website to easily manage, with the aspect of choosing between hundreds of design templates, adding video and image slideshow content, banners, your own header/logo, pages, posts and so on. Choose this type website hosting.

Another really nice WordPress theme released on SmashingMagazine. Agregado Lifestream Theme — a free professional Wordpress-theme features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with custom control panel options. You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission.

Agregado was inspired by the recent popularity of services like Twitter, FriendFeed and Tumblr, and by a recent trend Zeldman calls ‘the vanishing personal website’. The theme attempts to rebuild that idea of a personal website, incorporating a lifestream carousel alongside standard blog posts, keeping your fragmented data all in one place. The theme also contains a custom Archives page.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.6+, Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, IE7+, PHP 5+
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/08/agregado-a-free…

When it comes to online publishing, most of us are firm believers of the same old rule – Content is king. We’d like to argue a point that, even with the greatest blog that constantly pumps great contents, it’s not to overlook the importance of interface design. This includes overall color matching, the typography, attractive logo, proper text and paragraph alignment, clear navigation, etc. Another way to look at things is when you put an image and a row of text side by side, image is where the eyeballs are while the text plays a supporting role.

HongKiat has spent weeks going through hundreds and hundreds of blogs in the blogosphere, looking for blogs with nice and interesting design. They marked down those with great interface, graphically beautiful, unique personalities and styles. Here they bring you – 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Design. You might learn something or perhaps inspired by these designs. Full list after jump and get prepared to scroll.

Source: 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Design

Your company has decided to launch a blog, and you’re the lucky blogger. Maybe you’ve even asked for this pleasure, suggested it to the boss yourself. Only now, you have to deliver, and you have to stay consistent. It’s not always easy to keep up a steady blogging pace, and there are days when you might run into a roadblock or two that might keep you from delivering on your schedule. I am sure a sample blogging workflow will definitely help you.

Here are some ideas on how to build and maintain a steady blogging rhythm, be it for your personal blog or your business blog. Chris Brogan has covered goals, tasks, tools, and some bonus secrets for blogging

Source: A Sample Blogging Workflow

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HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

Because the configuration of meta-data can be a complicated and tiresome process HeadSpace provides several shortcuts to reduce your effort:

* Meta-data nesting – data is collected not only from the page itself, but nested parent pages
* Dynamic data extracted – why repeat yourself when you can extract data from the post itself?
* Full GUI interface – data is entered alongside post content, and with a full auto-suggested AJAX interface for tags and keywords
* Mass-editing – now you can edit meta-data for all pages and posts at one go!

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

We have seen so many beautiful, highly decorated WordPress themes. We need a break, we need a Minimalist Wordpress Theme called Modicus Remix. This theme is based off of Upstart Blogger’s Wordpress theme “Modicus“. Thus aptly titled “Modicus Remix”.

The original Modicus theme may be a tad more versatile (such as a three-column option, which remix does NOT have). So if you plan on wanting another column, or a simpler starting point, I would recommend the original theme. Modicus Remix supports Wordpress 2.5. The HTML and CSS coding is improved and dramatically optimized. I really like this clean and comfortable WordPress theme, how about you?

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.5+
Source: http://www.artculture.com/wordpress-themes/modicus-wordpress-theme-remix

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial we’ll be learning how to create a unique, and professional-styled bookmark/promote box for your personal Blog, or maybe even your website. Having a promote or a bookmark section at the bottom of your articles can be a great boost in traffic for your Blog, especially if your Blog is new and you’re looking for more ways to get traffic.

There’s nothing like seeing a huge peak in traffic then an influx of new subscribers to your Blog!

Final Image Preview

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OrderedList has conducted a Content Management Survey recently. You can see the result that WordPress is by far the most broadly used system. In general, people seem relatively satisfied with the CMS they have, though there is definitely room for improvement.

Overall, only 12% of respondants indicated any dissatisfaction with their current CMS, while 38% said they were very satisfied. Expression Engine was notable because the low level of dissatisfaction, and the high rate of ‘Very Satisfied’, even though the software costs money.

Source: Content Management Survey Results

Google Analytics for WordPress easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code to all pages within your blog. That’s it’s main functionality, it adds the following nice extra features as well.

Tagging outgoing links

This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. You can choose where it tracks those links too! It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you’re sending where.

Tracking downloads

This WordPress plugin gives you the possibility to track downloads with Google Analytics based on a set of extensions you specify.

Tracking AdSense clicks

By enabling AdSense click tracking, your AdSense clicks are tracked to /outbound/asclick.

Tracking image search keywords

Adds the possibility to track all image searches as organic and collect their keywords.

Adding extra search engines

By default Google Analytics only tracks a select group of search engines, which might not include your local big search engine. With this plugin, you can add extra search engines to those Google Analytics tracks by default.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/