The WP Mobile Detector WordPress plugin automatically detects if the visitor is using a standard mobile phone or a smart phone and loads a compatible WordPress mobile theme for each.

It is one of the first to differentiate between a standard mobile phone and a smart phone. With advanced mobile statistics, image resizing, automatically formatted content, and detection of 5,000+ mobile phones, the WP Mobile Detector gives your mobile visitors the experience they desire.

The WP Mobile Detector plugin also includes an installer that will configure everything automatically. All you have to do is install and activate the plugin.

WordPress Mobile Pack

The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog.

It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.
Features include:

• A mobile switcher which automatically suggests desktop or mobile presentation, but lets users switch to the other if required (and remembers their choice).
• A standard mobile theme, crafted by ribot, a top UK mobile design team.
• A set of advanced themes for Nokia and WebKit devices, designed by Forum Nokia. These also look beautiful on Android, iPhone and Palm devices.
• Custom color variations demonstrating how the themes can be easily tinted with CSS.
• Standards adherence, ensuring that mark-up is valid XHTML-MP 1 and the site scores 5 on mobiReady.
• Device adaptation, including the rescaling of images, intelligent splitting of articles and posts into multiple pages, the simplifaction styles, and the removal of non-supported media.
• A mobile admin panel, that allows the blog managers to access the admin interface via a mobile device, with simplified access to the most common features such as editing a post or approving comments.
• A mobile ad widget to easily enable mobile ads with AdMob or Google’s Mobile Adsense.
• Mobile analytics, allowing you to track your mobile traffic with PercentMobile, and view simple local traffic tallies.
• A barcode widget which adds a barcode to your desktop site so that devices with a suitable reader can quickly bookmark your mobile site, or deep link within it.
• Automatic listing on mpexo, making it easier for users to discover that you have a mobile-friendly site. (NB: you can enable the mpexo listing in the ‘Settings’ dashboard menu.)

MobilePress

A WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes. Built into MobilePress is the ability to track your mobile sites analytics and serve ads with Aduity.com.

Integration with Aduity.com enables you to serve ads from some of the biggest mobile ad networks such as Admob, Quattro Wireless, Buzzcity and InMobi. You can also serve you own managed ads. You will also be able to track your visitors every move with Aduity analytics.

The plugin allows WordPress theme developers to create custom mobile themes for MobilePress enabled blogs. Theme designers can create specific iPhone themes or generic mobile themes for other mobile devices.

MobilePress is SEO enabled and detects Google, Yahoo and MSN mobile search bots. These mobile search engine bots will see the mobile version of your blog and get your mobile site indexed in the mobile search results.

Verve Mobile

The Verve Mobile plugin automatically detects the user’s device and loads a compatible WordPress mobile theme.

Key Features:

• Automatic detection of mobile devices
• Easily monetizes your mobile site with seamless integration into The Verve Network
• Advanced mobile statistics including unique visitors, visits, and more!
• Automatically formats content and resizes images
• Includes two pre-installed mobile themes

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This is a very common question among those wanting to start their own blog.

Should I use a free WordPress Blog? Or should I host my own WordPress Blog?

To be clear, a free WordPress blog can be obtained by simply signing up for one at WordPress.com. The username you use to join becomes your blog name. As an example I have a username “xxx”. This translates to my free WordPress blog site “xxx.WordPress.com”

A self-hosted WordPress blog is your own blog on your own domain with your own hosting or paid hosting account upon which you install the WordPress software. WordPress becomes the software to manage your site and your blog. You can download the software for free from WordPress.org. However, many hosting companies today have a push button installation available via Fantastico Deluxe or Simple Scripts.

So on to the question at hand: which is better for you, the free WordPress blog or the self hosted WordPress installation?

FREE WordPress BLOG PLUSSES AND MINUSES

PLUS setup is free

PLUS easy to install and set up (software install is already done for you by WordPress)

PLUS no worry system maintenance (setup, upgrades, backups, security are all done by WordPress)

PLUS reliable servers (hosted on WordPress.com servers)

PLUS possible extra traffic being a part of the WordPress.com community

MINUS non-WordPress provided themes are allowed

MINUS cannot change/update any php code (useful for additional features you may want to include)

MINUS cannot upload any plugins. The WordPress plugin community is huge by the way

MINUS no ad placements allowed. In fact, WordPress will place their own ads on your blog

MINUS Blog will still be under the WordPress brand

MINUS no true ownership of content. Site is still a WordPress site

SELF HOSTED WordPress BLOG PLUSSES AND MINUSES

PLUS can upload custom made and third party WordPress themes. There are thousands of third party themes you can choose from or you can make a custom one.

PLUS can edit php code if you so desire. There are many php code examples and plugins available.

PLUS can add plugins! The WordPress and PHP development community is huge and you can get a plugin for just about anything including security, backups, marketing, and traffic generation

PLUS as you can edit the code and themes, you can add your own ad placements and ad monetization. This is a huge reason people blog in the first place is to earn money through ad placements

PLUS your own brand/domain name

PLUS ftp access to your site

MINUS you need to install WordPress on your own. This has become much easier, though, as many hosting accounts now offer push button installation of WordPress.

MINUS costs involved to setup. You have to pay domain registrar fees which is about $15 a year. Hosting fees can be $4 to $10 a month.

MINUS you need to do your own site maintenance including spam control, security, and backups for example. There are plugins to help you but it is a process you still need to do on your own

MINUS make sure and find reliable servers. You don’t want slowness or crashes to bother your site. Most hosting companies these days to stay competitive offer some pretty good server reliability

In summary, if you want just the most basic blogging features of the traditional blogging sense, a free blog is for you. If you plan to monetize it even with AdSense, then you will want a self-hosted paid blog. Moreover, if you want to add your own custom look and feel, you will want a self-hosted paid blog. You also have access to many free WordPress themes as well. And finally the world of plugins is the big kicker. Think about apps for the iPhone. There is a quote that whatever you want,.there is an app for that.. Plugins are much the same from security to SEO to driving traffic to membership sites to just about anything.

That is why in most situations, I recommend a self-hosted paid blog, though again there are still many situations where the free WordPress blog will be helpful as well! So now it’s just up to you to go through the points and figure out which is best for you! Have fun!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Emil_Yau

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Choose the right keywords: This is always the key to successful SEO, it is worth spending time at the outset to review the competition and be aware of the amount of work it will take to rank for the chosen keywords.

Use an SEO friendly Theme: Many themes are designed to look good rather than support WordPress SEO. It is therefore advisable to choose a theme that satisfies both, even if this does mean looking at premium (paid for) themes.

Set Permalinks: Make sure that the Permalinks are set to “%postname%” which means that the post/page title will appear in the URL. For WordPress SEO purposes this is much better than the default setting which is to use a number.

Create Sitemap: Create a site map for the search engines. A plugin like “Google XML Sitemaps” makes this easy.

Install the “All In One SEO Pack” plugin: This is the best known and most popular WordPress SEO plugin. It improves WordPress SEO in a number of ways and most users will be happy with its default settings. What you do need to do is enter a title, description and keywords for the homepage. These will be shown on the search results when the link is to the blog rather than an individual page or post and should entice people to click on your entry. Other functions of this WordPress SEO plugin include:

• Giving control over how titles are displayed
• Controlling duplicate content by preventing it being indexed
• Allowing entry of meta data for each page post

On Each Page/Post:

• Write a compelling title including a keyword.
• Edit the URL as necessary. If your title is long, shorten the URL making sure to keep the keyword.
• Use the keyword in all headings.
• Use the keyword throughout the content and particularly in the first sentence.
• Include a graphic and put the keyword as the ALT text.
• Write a good meta description.
• Have links to other pages/posts on your site.
• Include external links to authority sites in your niche. Be careful not to link to any site that Google may consider dubious as this can reflect on your site.

Producing search engine friendly content is really the key to WordPress SEO and you really need to check each page/post before publishing it. Fortunately you can install a plugin to do this for you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Ogram

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To change your WordPress Avatar:

You’ll need to sign up at http://www.gravatar.com with the email address that you’ve associated in your blog with your admin user account, and upload you image to gravatar.com.

Once you’ve done that your gravatar.com image will appear whenever you post on your own blog or on other WordPress blogs (if you put that email address into the mail field of the comment form at that other blog).

Presto!  Now everyone will know just how beautiful you are.  :)

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What plugins could you not live without, and why?

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Author: Ajay Matharu

Tweet Old Posts is a plugin designed to tweet your older posts to get more traffic.

Tweet Old Posts randomly picks your older post based on the interval specified by you. The primary function of this plugin is to promote older blog posts by tweeting about them and getting more traffic.

Some of the options you can configure for the Tweet Old Posts plugins are,

v1.1

Twitter Username & Password – Using this twitter account credentials plugin will tweet.

Minimum interval between tweets – allows you to determine how often the plugin will automatically choose and tweet a blog post for you.

Randomness interval – This is a contributing factor in minimum interval so that posts are randomly chosen and tweeted from your blog.

Minimum age of post to be eligible for tweet – This allows you to set how old your post should be in order to be eligible for the tweet.

Categories to omit from tweets – This will protect posts from the selected categories from being tweeted.

Get the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet-old-post/

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