Source: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/scaling-wordpress-for-hi-traffic/

Now, they got a limited time offer: Premium Icons Bundle. It contains all 5 premium icon sets, which includes Business Icon Set, Status Icon Set, Portfolio Icon Set, Hand Drawn Sketch Icon Set, Social Media Icon Set. You can get All 5 Premium Icon Sets for Just $20. This is your only chance to save 70% on this awesome deal! You can also check out their Free Icons section too.

Source: http://www.webiconset.com/

Once WordPress is installed, you can login to the admin area to easily manage your blog. Plugins further enhance the functionality of WordPress. To find and install plugins, simply click “add plugins” from your WordPress plugins admin area and type a search term. The following 10 WordPress plugins are great for your blog.

1. All In One SEO Pack

This plugin helps get your blog indexed higher in the search engines by making search engine optimization (SEO) of your blog a breeze. It allows you to enter keywords, title meta tags and description meta tags to each blog post without knowing html and without directly editing the source code of your blog.

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This is another plugin that will help your blog rank higher in the search engines. It automatically generates a sitemap of your blog to help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing index and rank the pages of your blog.

3. Photo Dropper

If you want to add images to your blog posts or pages, Photo Dropper is a handy plugin. It allows you to enter a keyword term and search for images that you can use freely under a creative commons license. The plugin also inserts the image credit for you, saving you time and money since it works well even in cheap webhosting.

4. Contact Form 7

This plugin adds a contact form to your website, making it easy for your visitors to contact you. A contact form is preferable to making your email address available on your blog, because web crawlers search the internet for email addresses to spam. Publishing your email address on your blog is inviting email spam.

5. Really Simple CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” Really Simple CAPTCHA is called by Contact Form 7 when visitors use your contact form, to filter out computers from real people.

6. WP-SpamFree

This is a comment spam-guard for your blog. It is always a good idea to monitor comments for approval rather than choosing the automatic approval setting, but comment spam is annoying to delete, even if it never makes it live to your site. WP-SpamFree keeps comment spam away.

7. Ultimate Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an online tool for tracking a website’s page views, traffic sources and other data. The Ultimate Google Analytics plugin provides an easy way to enable Google Analytics for your blog. You will first need to get a Google Analytics account, but this is free and easy to do. Just go to www.google.com/analytics.

8. Inline Google Maps

If you ever reference geographic locations in your blog posts, it can be helpful to your readers to provide a map. With Inline Google Maps you can easily embed Interactive Google Maps into your posts.

9. WP Policies

If you collect customer data, have Google AdSense or place affiliate links on your blog you will need to post a privacy policy or disclaimer. WP Policies automatically adds policy pages to your blog that can easily be customized for your website or business.

10. WordPress Database Backup

Your WordPress blog is stored on your host’s server, but it is only stored in one place – there is no backup. If you inadvertently do something to mess up your code, you could potentially lose your blog. This includes old posts, settings and plugins you have added. WordPress Database Backup provides a way for you to back up your blog and save the backup file to your server, your computer’s hard drive or send it to a specified email address.

Source: How to Build a Basic Portfolio WordPress Theme

If you are looking to maximize your blogging efforts, then look no further than these wonderful top ten iPhone applications. No matter what type of blogging tickles your fancy, you can bet that in this list of applications, there is the perfect blogging tool for you.

1. If you are familiar with the more traditional powerful blogging forum then iPhones WordPress app may be just the app for you. The WordPress app allows users to seamlessly interact with their existing wordpress blog. This app offers all the blogging power that familiar wordpress users are accustomed to.

2. The WordPress app boasts a tremendous amount of functionality built to serve all your blogging needs. While this app is very powerful, it can be very cumbersome at times. If you are looking for a trimmed down version of WordPress, look no further than TypePad. This great app is the perfect solution for the blogger that wants to dedicate no more time to their blogs than is afforded by their train ride home from work. This great app offers wonderful blogging power with out all the needless frills of WordPress.

3. Bluepulse is another great micro blogger app. This application is much like the twitter app with the exception that it allows direct control over who receives your blog posts. Bluepulse also offers up the ability to attach photos to your post. All in all, this a very powerful blogging app.

4. For the Google blog master a great new app introduced in 2010 is aptly named Blogger. Blogger allows you to not only view and comment on others blogs; it also allows you to post your own. For the blogger on the go, this is a must have app.

5. For the micro blogger who loves to post on twitter, there is a new free app that was introduced in 2010. Twitterific boasts an in app browser to manage your contacts and organize all your tweets. This simple and powerful app is a must for anyone interested in micro blogging.

6. For the Tumblelog user, the Tumblr app is an absolute must have. This simple app brings all the wonderful features of the familiar Tumblr site into that of a powerful handheld iPhone app.

7. Apple currently offers their exclusive blogging forum via their Iblogger application. With the ability to seamlessly edit and view all of your postings from your phone or a p.c. this is a great app for the new blogger to check out on the Iphone.

8. The serious blogger must check out the new Blogpress app for the iPhone. This powerful app allows users to manage their blogs on a variety of platforms. Currently the Blogpress app supports MovableType, LiveJournal, MSN, and Drupal just to name a few.

9. For the professional blogger a must have blogging app is the new CoverItLive app. This app is specifically created for the journalistic blogger and paid blogger. This application is a must buy for any writing professional.

10. Hub pages is one of the fastest growing blogging sites. Their free app allows seamless uploads and editing of all posts. Whether you are looking through new hubs, or creating hubs of your own; this powerful app offers up complete blogging control for all posts.

This list of apps is some of the very best blogging apps available; recommended not only by users, but also by many online web design schools who certainly know their blogging tools. Whether an online school student, or a blogging professional, within this list of powerful blogging apps there is bound to be the perfect blogging tool for you.

A valuable use of these services is their integration with the pages of your WordPress blog so as to give to visitors short URL addresses ready to be shared on the popular microblogging service.

Source: 5 Practical Ways to Integrate URL Shortening Services on Your Blog

Simply clicking the Next button, you will be taken to the next story of your friends’ submissions automatically. With the List view, you can also view all submissions with the ability of sorting and filtering as well.

And also, they have released another Digg Tool called Fan.Diggerplus.com. It helps you optimize your friend list, so that you know which of your friends are still active in Digg. It analyze our recent submissions and give you a detailed report which of your friends have / have not dug your recent submissions.

Once you are using both tools, you can have a list of most active friends on Digg that digg your submissions daily. And also you can keep track your friends’ submissions without wasting diggs on non-active Digg friends.

Gravatar Hovercards show information about a person: name, bio, pictures, and their contact info at other services they use on the web like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. As a commenter, Hovercards offer a great way to show your Internet presence and help people find your own blog. If you’re a blogger on WordPress.com, you can quickly check out who’s commenting on your blog, and have an easier time connecting with them.

Source: Gravatar Hovercards on WordPress.com

Private cloud hosting is a highly modern hosting format that represents the best in hosting scalability and optimization of virtual resources. Private cloud hosting removes the dependence on a singular physical web server and focuses the process of web hosting through a selection of linked servers that work together to provide you with the hosting resources you need to operate your online content.

Private Cloud Hosting Features

Private cloud hosting is essentially the linking of multiple server clouds to create a centralized pool of web server resources. Each cloud is an individual server and when linked together, they form a private cloud host network. When utilizing private cloud hosting, you receive access to more than one web server at all times and can use the hosting resources from many servers to expand your online content or scale your hosting resources to match your website needs without paying for unused server space.

The features of private cloud hosting provide you with a hardwire and virtualized linked system where you have enough computing power and resources to manage your online content and engage in expansion without being limited to a single physical dedicated server or sharing space with other clients on a shared hosting plan.

Private Cloud Hosting Benefits and Comparison With Other Hosting Types

The true importance of private cloud hosting is based on its various benefits when compared to shared and dedicated hosting plan types.

Scalability: Private cloud hosting gives you the ability to instantly scale the web server resources to match your website content needs. Ordinarily, you’d have to plan ahead by purchasing extra web server space to use in the future or switch to a high cost dedicated server to match your space needs. Instead, you can simply add web server capacity on a private cloud hosting network in order to progressively expand and let the network automatically account for massive spikes in traffic without purchasing additional web server hardware.

Reduced downtime risk: Traffic spikes can often cause slow connectivity and eventually result in an overloaded shared or dedicated server, leaving you with web server failure and a down web site. Private cloud hosting reduces this risk because the network does not rely on a single physical server point. The network load is shared by the linked servers that work together to balance the resources for optimal performance to match Internet traffic demands. A singular server failure in a private cloud hosting network means the other linked servers keep your online content up and running.

Cost effective: Traditional shared and dedicated hosting services operate on a monthly bill where you are accountable for all the web server space you originally agreed to lease, including the server space that is unused when not dealing with traffic spikes. Private cloud hosting services use the utility bill concept where you are billed based on the amount of web server resources and computing power you consume. You only pay for more space and resources when you need it and never in times of slow Internet traffic volume.

When to Use Enterprise Cloud Hosting

Enterprise cloud hosting is most beneficial for circumstances where your website has reached the limits of its original web server restrictions and you need a high-end web server solution that does not require intimate technical knowledge to make it function properly.

Professional enterprise cloud hosting services take care of the hardware, software and technical aspects of how a complex private cloud network operates. You receive a high-end platform that features plenty of server resources, computing power and flexibility to manage your online content without worrying about the technical aspects.

Private cloud hosting is the modern answer to clients who need web hosting that is flexible, powerful, cost efficient and dependable. Through private cloud hosting, you can use the power of linked servers to reliably maintain and aggressively expand your website into a high traffic juggernaut.

About the Author

This article was written by Anthony, a technology veteran and hosting expert. For all your hosting needs, check out Rackspace.com. Rackspace is a company that delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes.

But how much of these features do we really use? Though already simple and user-friendly by default, we might want to Customize the WordPress Admin interface to make it even simpler and more manageable for our clients, our co-authors, and ourselves.

Source: How to Customize the WordPress Admin Area