WordPress.com Receives New Visual Editor

by sitemanager

Good news WordPress.com bloggers: the popular hosted blogging platform recently introduced a new visual editor. Developers released the new visual editor last month, introducing several features and performance improvements to the millions of bloggers who use the platform. It's important to note, however, that the update was limited strictly to the hosted version of WordPress, which is found on WordPress.com. If your blog runs the self-hosted version, found at WordPress.org, you won't see the new visual editor. It's Faster So, what kind of changes were made to the WordPress.com visual edi...

6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting My First Blog

by sitemanager

Blog Competition is Stiff To say there's a lot of competition in the blogging stratosphere would be an understatement. While there's no way to tell exactly how many blogs are currently on the Internet, some sources estimate the number to be around 152 million. If you plan on getting noticed, you'll need to focus your blog around a high-traffic, low-competition niche; otherwise, you simply won't achieve any serious degree of success. You'll Need to Moderate Visitor Comments Assuming you allow visitors to submit comments (and you should!), you'll have to invest the necessary time and energy i...

Should I Use Nofollow Links on My Blog?

by sitemanager

nofollow links, broken links on a red background

Nofollow links were introduced by Google nearly a decade ago for the purpose of combating spam. As the name suggests, they tell search engines not to follow a link; therefore, no link juice is passed down to the linked website. As a blogger, though, you may be wondering whether or not you should use them in your blog. Advertisements A good rule of thumb is to make all advertisements and sponsored links nofollow. As noted by Google, paid links should be given the nofollow attribute to prevent them from negatively impacting user experience. If paid links are kept dofollow, they could art...

6 Undeniable Reasons Why You Should Blog

by sitemanager

Deeper Connection With Your Readers Writing a blog will allow you to establish deeper, more personal connections with your readers. Why is this important? Well, by creating stronger relationships with your readers, you'll present yourself in a more trustworthy light. And when readers trust you, they'll feel more inclined to purchase your advertised products or services. It's just that simple. Higher Search Rankings This alone should be reason enough to start blogging. By creating (and managing) a blog, you'll increase your exposure in the search engines. Each post will get crawled by sea...

WordPress Tips and Tricks

by sitemanager

One of the reasons WordPress is so popular is it's easy to use little tips and tricks to improve your blog's visibility. Today we're going to share a few. Use a Custom Avatar WordPress uses a universal avatar system known as Gravatar. So anytime someone posts a comment, the Gravatar associated with their email address is displayed alongside their name. You can create a custom Gravatar by visiting the linked website and setting up an account. Just remember to use the same email address that's associated with your WordPress email address, as Gravatars are linked by email. Highlight Author C...

Benefits of Using Google’s ‘Blogger’ Platform

by sitemanager

So, you want to start blogging? The first step in launching a blog is to choose a content management system (CMS). While WordPress is hands-down the most popular blogging platform, powering an estimated 25% of the entire Internet, there are other platforms out there as well, including Google's own Blogger. In this post, we're going to reveal some of the benefits of using Google's blogging platform. Blogger Is Free You can create your own blog (or a standard website for that matter) on Blogger without spending a dime. Granted, Google offers premium memberships that include extra perks, but...

5 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

by sitemanager

You can spend countless hours crafting the perfect blog post, but it's not going to yield any tangible results in people actually see it. This is why you should promote your blog posts after publishing them. Doing so will drive traffic to them, increasing your posts' visibility and hopefully generating new conversions and/or sales in the process. Share on Social Media One of the first things you should do after publishing a new blog post is to share the link on your social media profiles. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other networks for which you have accounts. Assuming you h...

Make WordPress Look Like a Regular Website

by sitemanager

WordPress is often touted as being the most popular and powerful blogging platform on the web. Of course, there's a good reason for this: the free-to-use CMS is loaded with blogger-friendly features, such as built-in commenting, support for multiple authors, tags, and more. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be used to build standard websites. On the contrary, many webmasters still use WordPress for building standard, non-blog websites. Static Page vs Dynamic Posts If you're looking to use WordPress to build a standard website instead of a blog, you should first switch the ho...

Blogging Without an Active Internet Connection

by sitemanager

blogging offline, no internet connection sign

The secret to running a successful blog is to publish fresh, high-quality content on a regular basis. Content is the heart and soul behind every successful blog, as it gives both humans and search engines a reason to visit the blog. But what if you don't have access to the Internet? Can you still blog? Yes, You Can Still Blog The good news is that you can still blog without an active Internet connection, although there are some caveats that you need to be aware of. For starters, you won't be able to publish new posts "live," until you connect to the Internet. Instead, you must create and pre...

Report: WordPress Now Powers 25% of the Web

by sitemanager

You don't have to search very far to find a website powered by the WordPress content management system. From TechCrunch and The New Yorker, to the Variety and eBay, there are literally millions of popular websites running this platform. According to a new report, a jaw-dropping 25% (1 in 4) of all websites are powered by WordPress, making it the world's largest CMS by a landslide. W3 Techs published the data on its website, revealing that WordPress is used by 58.7% of all websites "whose content management systems we know," which is "25% of all websites." A Little WordPress History WordPre...

Keep up with John’s Blogging Tips