Every so often I take some time to go through the topics that I write about through some of the Google tools. Just finished a series on using Webmaster Tools.

Today I figured to go do some research in Google Trends on the topics I wrote about here regularly. I started with the three major ones – WordPress, WordPress themes, WordPress plugins.

Found a very interesting fact that has caused me to add a new plugin here. Not sure how it will work but this is a good example of how you can find things using trends you might overlook.

First lets look at what I found.

For WordPress

For WordPress themes

Finally for WordPress plugins

The part that made me feel good was that all of the trends for these topics are going up. As those are some of my primary topics that I write about regularly it will pay me to continue.

The part that caught my attention is that English and the North American region are not the biggest draw any more. These topics have tilted to a much more south east Asia and Indonesian is by far the most popular language choice.

So it is time to look at the translation plugins and get my information available in other languages if I want to get as much traffic as possible.

The other big thing that I know from playing with some of the various language translators is that I need to be aware of using slang that won’t translate well.

The latter is probably a good thing to be aware of even if you are not using translation software as some terms mean totally different things in the US, Great Britain and Australia even though all are “English”.

Testing the Global Translator plugin but if anyone has a good resource for translating pages would love to hear from you.

Take advantage of trends for all of your blog topics as it is a great tool for bloggers and you may be surprised at what you find out.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: google trends, translation plugins, wordpress, wordpress plugins, wordpress themes

Tired of the look on a couple of my blogs and as I have been changing parts of my business since the first of the year it is now time to think about changing themes on a few of them.

Really interested in what you, my reader likes when you visit a blog and more importantly what turns you off.

Time for me to step up my game on some things and your input would be helpful. Leave a comment below with your input. It will definitely be appreciated.

Look for more shortly on Google Buzz as I have been testing some things and may be running a survey on that quite shortly. In the mean time let me hear what you like and don’t when it comes to themes.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: design, picking a theme, themes, wordpress themes

Well as April ends we are fast approaching the release of WordPress 2.8 next month. So far will not be the big culture shock that was there for 2.7.

Dashboard has had no major changes so far. A few things have changed. Plugins area has gone back to the old look. All the plugins show in the same area instead of the 3 separate areas of active, recently removed and inactive.

Fortunately so far all my plugins have worked fine so my guess is that there are not any major changes to the way they interact.

The biggest changes have been in the appearance area for themes. You can now activate or preview or delete direct from the themes area. For those that are listed you can also see if there have been upgrades and in some cases upgrade directly from there.

You can now install themes directly from the dashboard like you can plugins too.

You will be able to do a sorted search, upload from a zip file on your computer, check the featured themes, newest and recently updated.

This should definitely be helpful for new bloggers to be able to change things without having to ftp. You can preview the themes before adding them and delete easily any that you are no longer using.

The search feature looks interesting and I may write more about it as I play around a bit more. You can sort with quite a few criteria.

Just a reminder all of these pictures are from the beta version and some of these features may change before the final release comes out. I am sure there are probably more things that have changed but these are what I have noticed so far in playing around (the truth but I really should call it testing extensively )

All in all though looks like this will be an easy upgrade and the features will make things easier especially for changing themes.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: wordpress, WordPress 2.8, WordPress beta, wordpress themes

Just finished testing out the new Flex Squeeze theme. It allows you to have a squeeze page or sales letter with totally different formatting included in your blog. It is a paid theme but highly recommended for anyone selling their own products on line.

The power of this is that you can make your sales letter or squeeze page part of your actual blog and remove all of the leaks that a blog has at the same time.

Here is a live example.

http://blogging4seniors.com is a brand new product I just released but if you go to http://blogging4seniors.com/second-income/blogging-for-seniors-almost-ready/ you will see that the actual blog behind the sales page is totally different but interlinked with it.

Here is how I plan to take advantage of it. I did my keyword research and have a list of keywords to create articles on that should be commercially viable and achievable with a bit of effort. (If I did my research right )

Use those for blog posts and articles and I should be able to start driving traffic regularly to the new site.

Now to the theme itself.

If you have used the free version of Flexibility it will be quite easy to use. Previously I have done a review of the theme which you can read here.

There are tutorials and sample page included to show you how to get the formatting right. They have a forum for support along with video tutorials.

If you are used to just straight HTML there will be a learning curve but the advantages to this type of site structure are worth the effort in my opinion.

Check out Flex Squeeze theme.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: flex squeeze theme, mini sites, squeeze pages, wordpress themes

I am always on the lookout for new and interesting themes. Yesterday I found something quite neat when finally getting into my reader and starting to catch up.

I found this site from reading Pat Marcello’s blog and this post on Artisteer. Pat and I go way back and have talked for years.

This made me sit up and take notice. Pat is not a graphic designer type and if she is using this I figure I can too. The software is available at http://artisteer.com and is a paid software that creates themes. It has a demo you can use to play with but you need to purchase it to download the theme.

I have been playing with it and will be going over after this post and buying the license. There is a personal use at $49.95 and a commercial use at $129.95 with more options to use.

See having a unique theme can really set you apart and I have tweaked quite a few over the past few years but this was very easy to use and the time saving in having a theme already tweaked will more than pay for the license for me.

If you have been having trouble trying to find the perfect theme or you buy custom themes you may want to check this out.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed. Leave your questions for the Blog Talk Radio show on Wednesday also.

Have a new plugin that I will be reporting on tomorrow if there are no new questions. This looks neat but afraid it may be a slow down pig but will report back.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: edit themes, edit wordpress themes, Pat Marcello, themes, wordpress themes

Just saw this from twitter and decided this would be a good post to schedule while I was gone today so this will be showing up while I am not here. That is one of the nice things about pre-scheduling your posts.

Found a great list of WordPress Theme tweaks. This is not for those that aren’t comfortable editing your themes. If that is you don’t even go there.

However, as long as you make a backup before you start making changes these can allow you to do a variety of things so go check out…

15 Useful WordPress Tricks To Make Your Theme Even Better

Will be back tomorrow to start answering any of the questions submitted yesterday.

Have a great day.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: edit theme, theme tweaks, wordpress, wordpress themes

3 Ways To Personalize Your WordPress Theme

Copyright 2009 – Mike Paetzold – Worldwide Rights Reserved

One of the great things about WordPress is the number of themes that are available to change the look of your blog. There are both free and paid versions available. Changing themes is quite easy but…

Finding just the right theme to fit your blog can be frustrating. And that is putting it mildly.

You find one that you like just about everything but that one little thing.

It may be…

• the way it displays hyperlinks
• the size of the sidebar
• the header image
• or any of numerous other problems

Now short of hiring someone to create a custom theme exactly the way you would like it there are a few easy changes you can make to take the almost perfect theme and make it much more YOURS.

Here is how you can change three of the most common things to personalize your them and make it your own.

Before we start though ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have a back up of your files. And I do mean always if you did not guess from the previous statement.

Change your header

In your theme folder you will find an img or images folder depending on which one the theme author used. Inside that folder will be an image called header.jpg or header.gif. You can easily grab a copy of that image and check to see exactly what size it is.

Either create a new image the same size your self or hire a graphic designer to create one for you if you lack the skills. Name this new file the same as the original one and replace the original one. You now have a personalized header.

Hyperlink colors

Just the other day a friend of mine had found the perfect theme for his blog but the hyperlinks were not the standard blue and underlined but they were just black and bold.

He loved the theme except for that and had spent hours finding just the right look. This problem was easily solved by making a minor change in the css (cascading style sheet) file of his theme.

WordPress themes are run using style sheets and you can change the attributes quite easily. In this case it was the hyperlinks so you needed to look on the style sheet for the “a link” attributes.

It will look something like this

a {
color: #000000;
text-decoration: none;
}

Just change the color to the appropriate hexadecimal code in this case #0000ff and then the attribute from none to underline and you have a “standard” hyperlink.

Changing sidebar size

This takes two changes and they have to be the same amount of change. If your sidebar is a bit narrow say 120 pixels and you want to use 125×125 buttons you will have to change the sidebar width and reduce the body width by the same amount.

Here are the two entries

#sidebar {
position: relative;
float: right;
width: 237px;

#content {
float: left;
width: 676px;

You need to subtract from one what you add to the other but this will allow you to customize the size of a sidebar if that is the feature that you don’t like.

WordPress themes can be easily customized to your needs so if you find most of the features you want try your hand at customizing them. Just make sure to have a backup before you start.

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Mike Paetzold is known as an expert on using WordPress for your marketing solutions. You can find other items to improve your WordPress look, feel and usage at Advanced WordPress or more WordPress information at his blog.
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You may use and reprint this article as long as it is posted in it’s entirety and all links and the resource box are included.

Technorati Tags: editing themes, personalize themes, style sheets, wordpress themes

Today’s question:

I had a question about Plug-Ins and Themes where
do you find these at.Does Word Press have them
available and are they free or do they cost.

The answer to the second part is YES to all. Sorry it is the impish side that started this post with that answer. Now to the details.

You can find themes (some are free and some are paid) by doing a quick search on Google. There are quite a few free ones available at the WordPress Theme directory.

Now a bit about themes. The free themes almost always require a link back to the designer or someone that paid for the theme development or both. Not all themes work well so sometimes you get an easy to use theme and other times you get quite frankly a piece of crap. So beware and test the theme before using it.

Now to plugins you can do the same. If I am looking to add a particular functionality to a blog I will go to Google and input “Function WP plugin” and usually find something to do that in the first few results.

WordPress does have it’s directory of free plugins that are submitted to their service and these will be what show for automatic update in your dashboard. You can access it at Plugin Directory and this am when I checked they had 2,874 plugins listed.

Like the themes most work well but some are crap. Some also interfere with other plugins so always add them one at a time.

There are also plugins that are paid. Usually these will do very specific tasks and may or may not be worth the cost. I have bought and use a few for specific tasks like creating light box pops and adding automated affiliate links for specific blogs.

Hope that helps and answers your question.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

P.S. Will try and review the new WordPress 2.6.2 later today time permitting. Have not had a chance yet to play with it.

Technorati Tags: finding plugins, finding themes, wordpress, wordpress plugins, wordpress themes

Today’s question:

Does or should a Blog have a sitemap? I see too many blogs that are all over the place in their design. I want to be able to follow some kind of “order with a purpose” in designing my blog but not too busy that it drives traffic away. It seems as though there is a delicate balance here, right.

A very good question but I think you don’t quite have the terminology quite right.

I do recommend that you use a sitemap plugin so that you can automate the spidering of your site. I do not use a sitemap for people to read.

One of the things that WordPress does quite well is to organize the navigation of your blog. The more tightly targeted your content is to a single subject the better a blog performs with a few exceptions.

One of the things I like to do especially for my niche blogs is to pick out the major areas I want to emphasize and use them for categories. If you are dealing with a very specific topic this will probably give you between 4 -10 categories. These would be your upper level keywords you want to target.

Now if you are doing a general blog like I do with my name blog it can end up being many more because it tends to be more eclectic and cover a much wider range of topics. (Not something I recommend except for name blogs.)

If I understand your real question and unfortunately this means I have to use that ass/u/me word, you are looking for a checklist more for your side bar so that it doesn’t become too overwhelming.

The key will be how you are using the blog and what your monetization is. For most I use something like this but it does vary from topic to topic.

1. Lead capture form – If you have followed me at all you know why.
2. Pages – this is where I will have things like about but it will depend on the theme as this theme lists pages in a top header so this would be redundant on this particular theme.
3. Categories
4. Recent posts
5. Recent Comments
6. Links
7. Subscribe Me
8. Tag cloud

That would be the basics but if you use things like My Blog Log I would use their widget too.

The key though is not to copy the order but see what your primary goal is. If it was to attract people to my links then that would move up as an example. It really depends on your own goals and testing and tweaking to see what gets the most attention and putting your primary goal in that position.

Hope this helps as I hate answering questions where I use that ass/u/me word. If not resubmit or leave a comment here and we can continue the conversation.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

P.S. I just updated the 7 Tips book and if you have bought it before you need to login and download the latest version.

Technorati Tags: side bar, sitemap, theme, themes, wordpress theme, wordpress themes

Which theme is best for SEO? [ 3:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s question:

What’s the best theme to use for SEO. I saw site at SEO-Themes.com. So are some themes better optimized for SE’s or can I just add plugins that will even out the playing field?

First I went over and looked quickly at their site. They don’t say what they do different just that they have tweaked the themes. I did not take the time to download one and look through it to see what changes they are making.

As I can and do get great results using plugins that has been how I do it. Title tags and targeting the right keywords has been the primary factors in getting good rankings.

I have tested this on more than one occasion and a good title tag can make a huge difference in the ranking of a post for a specific keyword.

Using All In One SEO allows you to customize the title tags and that along with the XML Sitemap plugin are the prime ones for ranking and getting indexed.

You do need to actually use it and quite often I use one title for the post and a different one for the title tag.

Now as to what makes a good theme. I really like themes that are documented with notes inside. As a general rule if the person writing the theme has left good notes they usually have created a good theme.

More than once I have tried a new theme and usually the ones thta have had performance issues aren’t documented well at all. The same has been true of other script too. This is something that the better coders around always document what is what because it makes it easier to update.

Unfortunately, you will only be able to tell this after you have downloaded the theme and in my case usually installed it. (Have lots of excess themes on my hard drive.)

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: seo friendly themes, themes, wordpress themes