Wordpress Thesis Theme

Why would you want to pay for a premium wordpress theme when there are hundreds of free themes to choose from? I kept running across posts and articles that were praising the Wordpress Thesis Theme so I thought I would dig a bit deeper and see what all the hype was all about. At first I wasn’t very impressed because the thesis theme looked a little bland and I wondered what all the praise was about so I shrugged it off and kept trying to customize one of those free themes, this can be an overwhelming task as you would know if you have ever tried to do something that should be simple like move or delete a column in a free theme.

There were lots of free themes that looked good but the problem was they never quite had all of the design looks I wanted they either had an extra column that I didn’t want or the design I wanted would have the column on the wrong side of the page and getting reliable help and support can be next to impossible with the free wordpress themes. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I completely messed up my blog just trying to move a column and when I would go asking for some help there simply wasn’t any… Some of the free themes have good reliable support but the majorities are lacking…

I kept hearing about this Thesis Theme and one thing that kept coming up was the great reviews on how good the support was with the Thesis Theme. So I decided to go and take another look.

It still looked like a very bland design but I decided to search out some blogs that were built on the thesis theme. To my surprise I found some very professional looking blogs all built on thesis and I decided the only way I could really understand why so many people were praising this theme would be to bite the bullet and purchase.

I love the thesis theme.

One thing that I really love about Thesis is how simple and easy it is to move your columns around.  Whether you want 1, 2 or 3 columns it doesn’t matter it’s just so easy, maybe you want a 3 column blog with the 2 sidebars on the right or a side bar either side of your main column it’s so simple with thesis.

Change the color and size of your fonts, headlines, header, teasers ect… it’s so simple and easy with thesis just click, click, click and you’re done.

It didn’t take long before I was looking for help with some coding adding the form at the top right of our site and I can tell you that the support you get with the Thesis Theme is top notch all my questions were answered within an hour most times and I have to give a big thanks to godhammer for the patience and support. “Do you ever sleep godhammer?” Thesis was designed for people who want a professional-looking blog without having to know much about coding, but if you have a basic understanding  of CSS and PHP, this theme gives you tonnes more flexibility to create amazing designs.

If you don’t know CSS don’t worry, you can still move elements around on your site (sidebars, etc.) without getting into the code and you can further customize your site using the OpenHook plugin.

On top of all that, Thesis boasts the strongest SEO properties of any wordpress theme and we all know that SEO counts.

I have put a video together to show you what I mean. You can also check out the Nerve Center Post for some more useful wordpress info.

How to Create a “Favicon.ico” File

Ever wondered how they put those little pictures in the the website URL, well it’s pretty easy. Simply use a free photo editor like Gimp or anything that will let you crop and re-size your images, you could also create your own if your a bit creative, but I just used our picture. “Another 15 seconds of fame for me”

Do you think a video would be better or is this clear enough? Let me know what you think…

Ok let’s get going…

1. Create or choose a picture that you want to use as your website symbol or brand. That’s me and Sonya “Hansom beast aren’t I…”

2. I simply used our picture and took it into fireworks, cropped the area I wanted.

3. Then re-sized it to 16X16 pixels.

Yes, it is freak’n tiny!  just save it as favicon.ico thats it! Don’t save it as picturename.favicon.ico If you really want to go the extra mile, you can also create a 32X32 pixel icon, which will automatically be scaled down to size for the Favorites menu and the location bar. Apparently you can put both 16X16 and 32X32 pixel icons into the same icon file. Windows will use the 16X16 for its menus and the 32X32 when the user opens up a folder that is set to display large icons. It’s not really necessary if you couldn’t be bothered.

4. Save the image as an ICO file (named “favicon.ico“).  NOT “picturename.favicon.ico” I emphasize this because I initially made this mistake…Duh!

I was lucky someone told me to check before I waited too long to figure it out…Upload it to your website. There’s no need to upload one to every directory of your site if you don’t want to waste space – just put it in your root directory and the web browsers that support favicons will  locate it eventually.Note: It can take a day or so before you see it, so just have patience.

What If? My Web Host Doesn’t Allow ICO Files!

If your hosting company won’t allow files with the .ICO extension to be uploaded, you could try to work around it by uploading it (in binary mode) with some other extension (like GIF). Once it’s on your site, rename it using your FTP program to the correct extension or get a hosting service that will allow it.

PS. Don’t ask me how to do this because I don’t know! I have never had to find out. Google, Yahoo, Bing it.

Or Get a Hosting Service That will Let You.

Wordpress Nerve Center

Here are a few tips to help you setup a Wordpress blog that will be your Business Nerve Center, it’s going to act as the central foundation where you funnel all your major traffic sources and become the backbone of your marketing campaigns and build your email marketing list. If you’re not sure how to install a wordpress blog then simply watch this video

Why Use Wordpress?

• Your blog is a place where you passively market you and your business to visitors from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other Social Networks
• It helps you attract leads through Search Engine Optimization
• Using Article Marketing and directly linking back to your posts through each article you submit is another powerful way to SEO your blog and attract highly targeted traffic.
• A blog gives you more freedom and allows you to actively market using Pay Per Click strategies. “Something you can’t do with duplicated corporate websites”
• You use your blog to build your email marketing list, which is your absolute most valuable business asset.
• You use a blog to market online and reduce the chance of violating your network marketing company policies and procedures.
• And you can use a blog to build multiple streams of income monetizing your traffic and your leads by sharing the value of useful affiliate products and tools.

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use A Free Hosted Blog Service For Your Primary Blog.

1. You have heaps more flexibility with a self hosted blog and you can get ranked in the search engines easier with a self-hosted blog, using your own domain name.
2. Free Wordpress or Blogger pages are owned by companies, and they have the power to revoke your website at any time. Rumor has it they have recently been removing network marketing and affiliate marketing sites. This may turn out to be only a vicious rumor but the mere fact that it’s circulating is good enough reason to steer clear.
3. Plus a free blog with a yourdomain.wordpress.com address just doesn’t look very professional.

Choosing a domain name that will brand you or your business opportunity.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about websites in general? Here’s a hint; website.com “99% of us just assume .com” So a .org or .net domain will probably be more of a hindrance than a help. Try to get yourself a .com.

Your domain might be yourname.com or something that relates directly to your niche i.e.: mlm….com, affiliate…com. Remember you’re choosing your domain for branding purposes.
I always use the Google external keyword tool to choose domain names. Try to think what keywords your target audience will be typing into the search engines and use the external keyword tool to help you make an informed decision.

Try to keep your domain easy to say, easy to spell and easy to remember. I use and recommend www.GoDaddy.com for all of my domain names.
Now you need to host your blog with a service that is easy to use and fast-loading. GoDaddy.com load times are slow with WordPress blogs.
I use and recommend HostGator or Just Host both are less than $10 per month for a package that will work fine with a standard type blogs and Just Host has an option where you can host multiple domain names on one account and they both incorporate a tool known as Fantastico which makes setting up a wordpress blog a synch.

Now you’ll want to get a cool WordPress theme to stand out in the crowd.

The standard Wordpress themes are pretty ordinary…
I use and recommend Thesis. The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a high-quality SEO “Search Engine Optimization” theme that you can use to improve your site SEO immediately.
Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today thanks to its expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework. Not only that, Thesis also contains additional options that will allow you to fine-tune each and every page of your site. The days of worrying about your in-site SEO are over—with Thesis, your strategy is “just add killer content.”
Not a coder? Not a problem. The Thesis option panels allow you to command your site with ease, while Thesis does all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. You’ve never had this much control over your site before, and this is precisely what makes Thesis indispensable to critical webmasters all over the globe.
Recommended WordPress Plugins

Traffic Generating Plugins For Wordpress

You’ll want to get an Email Marketing Account.

You need a way to keep in-touch with your prospects and continually help them and market to them. Getting leads is great but you need to keep up the marketing intensity. Some leads may buy one of your products this month and others wont be interested the timing may simply be wrong for them and if you offer them another great product next month or next week it may be just what they are looking for at that moment in time.

The bigger your list the more potential for sales.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: The money is in the list, so you’ll want to have a form on your blog, so that people can opt into your email list. Using a primary form on every page is a good idea and I use separate forms in some posts when targeting a different audience.
I use and recommend AWeber to build your Email Marketing list, as it’s easy to use and it is compatible with wordpress blogs that I use for Internet marketing.

For the majority of readers out there, this post may seem like I am stating the obvious. But it has come to my attention that some of the newbies may need a little help with this topic.

Whenever you are writing a new blog post you should write in some kind of word document then save it before you copy and post it to your Wordpress Blog.
For Example: Microsoft Word, Wordpad, Notepad.

You can find Microsoft Word by clicking

- > Start (bottom left corner of your screen) – > All Programs, – > Microsoft Office
You can find WordPad & Notepad in, Start – > All Programs – > Accessories

This is what Start looks like in Vista, “The circular object with the red, green, blue, yellow wavy flags”

My preference is Microsoft Word because of all the extra functions and “Don’t quote me” I think it was Office 2007 where word also started offering an extra option where you could choose a Blank Document or New Blog Post.
Anyway the reason I recommend you write and save your posts into a some kind of word Processor is you will have a copy of all your work, what would you do if for some reason your site had a major malfunction and you lost the lot, don’t think that this is not possible, it can happen!

It may even get lost by your hosting service. “Not likely, but not impossible” another good reason is, you can then go back to a previous article or post that you have saved separate to your blog and add-subtract at will and not have to worry if you run out of time and leave it incomplete, you can simply come back tomorrow and finish off. Yet another good reason for doing this is you could have some kind of upload problem when you finish writing your blog, “possible internet connection issues” then all your work will have to remain in limbo while you sweat and worry if your work will still be there when things come back to normal.

There many, many more, very good and valid reasons why you should always write you primary copy into a word processing software before uploading to your blog. It may save some major headaches in the future.

When you are done you simply copy and paste your work into your wordpress blog then ad your anchor text and pictures and pretty things up.

Always give a good description and use your “alt tags” to name your pictures appropriately to help google and the other search engines find all your content .

Once you understand this, head over to Pings, Pinging, Ping Lists and learn how to install them and use them correctly.

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