Thursday, March 12, 2009
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9:24 PM
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Author: Gen Wright
There are many reasons why wicker furniture would be the ideal furniture for your home. Before exploring the various reasons for adding wicker furniture to your home, here is a brief introduction on how wicker furniture is manufactured.
Wicker furniture is produced from cane that is commonly found in many Asian countries such as Indonesia. Although it is commonly available, a piece of raw cane is very tough, making it hard for anyone to use it for anything purposeful. However, innovative manufacturers have found a way to soften the tough texture of cane by using a steaming process. The cane, when exposed to heat, softens. And this allows manufacturers to bend them into any form or shape that they like. When cooled, the cane hardened again and the form is set. A finish such as a clear lacquer may then be applied to help protect the cane.
We started off this article by giving you some background information about wicker furniture because this will help you realize that wicker furniture is not just versatile and durable, they are also easily maintained.
Because cane, when softened, can be bent into any shape, it can be used to make many different types of furniture, both big and small. For example, you can find furniture such as coffee tables, sofa sets, bar seats, dining tables
, etc. that are made from wicker.
Note that although the term wicker furniture is commonly used to refer to cane furniture, the word "wicker" actually refers to the manufacturing process. The more accurate term to use is "cane furniture", but most people use both terms interchangeably to refer to the same thing.
Wicker furniture can be easily maintained. Since the primary natural characteristic of cane (bamboo or rattan) is toughness, it is not easy to damage a piece of wicker furniture. Some wicker furniture can last for years even when placed outdoors.
Even though it is not easy for a piece of wicker furniture to be damaged, the cane still becomes old over time. This affects the outer appearance of the wicker furniture.
Fortunately, it is not difficult to refinish a piece of wicker furniture. Any stripper liquid can be used to soften the wicker. The cane can then be loosened and cleaned with a dry brush. Let the liquid stripper dry by itself for 24 to 48 hours. Once it dries, the wicker will harden again. If the wicker has faded, repainting can be done using spray paints to give the furniture a new look. If painting is not required, a clear lacquer can be applied lightly to help protect the surface of wicker.
Durability and low maintenance are key benefits offered by wicker furniture. In addition, wicker furniture gives a more relaxed feel to the home. Perhaps that is the reason why so many holiday resorts have chosen to add wicker furniture to their balconies and swimming pools.
As a homeowner, you can use wicker furniture to give your home a more relaxed atmosphere, just like the resorts, or you can pick modern looking wicker furniture that will give your home a more classy look. Whatever your choice of design, there will be wicker furniture that is a good fit.
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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/diy-articles/adding-wicker-furniture-to-your-home-646367.html
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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6:35 AM
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Wordpress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.
This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme's template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live. The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress theme designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.
Whether users are working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Theme Design will give them the know-how to effectively understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system enabling them to have full control over their site's design and branding. Users only need to be comfortable with the basics of web development and this book will take care of the rest.
What you will learn from this book
* Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design
* Create detailed designs and code them up
* Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics
* Debug and validate your theme using W3C's XHTML and CSS validation tools
* Customize and tweak your theme's layout
* Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms
* Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme
* Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox
* Add interactivity to your themes using Flash
* Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0's template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions
Chapter 1 introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you need to be aware of regarding the WordPress theme project you're ready to embark on. The chapter also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you'll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.
Chapter 2 looks at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. The author explains her own 'Rapid Design Comping' technique and gives some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of the chapter, you'll have a working XHTML and CSS based 'comp' or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.
Chapter 3 uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from Chapter 2 and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this chapter covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of the chapter, you'll have a basic, working WordPress theme.
Chapter 4 discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should employ throughout your theme's development. It covers the W3C's XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This chapter also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons 'good code goes bad', especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.
Chapter 5 discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme's CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress's administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.
Chapter 6 covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress's PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of "The Loop" along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this chapter is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.
Chapter 7 dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier chapters, and enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.
Chapter 8 continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by looking at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. It also gives you a complete background on AJAX and when it's best to use those techniques or skip them. The chapter also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress theme appear 'Ajaxy'.
Chapter 9 reviews the main tips from the previous chapters and covers some key tips for easily implementing today's coolest CSS tricks into your theme as well as a few final SEO tips that you'll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.
Friday, January 30, 2009
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7:45 PM
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Author: Carly Sendagaya
The free open source blogging platform Wordpress continues to be a popular tool for internet marketers who want to create websites fast. Though feature rich, an out-of-the-box Wordpress install lacks some features that many internet marketers rely on. Fortunately, there are many free Worpdress plugins that provide these features. Here are three of the most popular.
Keep in mind, before you install any of these plugins, you'll want to make certain you have the current version of Wordpress installed to avoid any errors or possible vulnerabilities. The latest upgrade of the platform can always be updated at Wordpress.org's main site.
All In One SEO Pack - Although blog traffic can come from many sources besides the search engines, there's no doubt that free natural search engine traffic is still very important to the success of any website or blog. With the All In One Seo pack plugin, your Wordpress blog will be automatically optimized for onsite SEO. This plugin saves hours of time over tweaking themes, options and individual plugins to acheive the same results.
Please note that because the search engines often change the way they rank pages, you'll want to have the most current version of this plugin. Check back frequently on their main site to make sure your plugin is up to date.
Adsense Plugin - This plugin has been around for a while, but it is upgraded to work with the current version of Wordpress. Seems the popularity of adsense never goes away, even if the earnings per click have gone down over the past few years. If you want a quick and easy way to get adsense or even Yahoo Publisher Network ads showing up on your Wordpress blogs, and you want an easy way to control where they show up and how they look, this is a must have plug-in. The learning curve is very fast with this plugin, and users will enjoy tweaking the settings to increase ad clickthroughs and profits.
Remember though, Adsense isn't your only option for monetizing your blog. You can also run paid ads yourself by dealing directly with other sites that want to advertise. Though more profitable, it is also more time consuming.
FeedWordPress - Feedwordpress is a plugin that takes rss feeds and creates full pages out of them on your blog automatically. It should not be used alone, as your site will start to look like a scraper site. When added to a blog with original content though, it can greatly increase traffic to your site.
A couple of warnings though, the learning curve with this plugin is high and you need to make sure you have permission to use the rss feeds you program this plugin with. Most sites that have rss feeds available also provide a copy of their terms of service for using the feeds, so be sure to check those out. Not complying with another site's TOS can lead to nasty emails or even a cease and desist letter, so consider yourself warned. About the Author:
Bonus Plugin: A new opt-in plugin for Wordpress has just been released. The FasterIM Opt-in plugin allows webmasters to add unblockable popover opt-in forms to your blogs instantly. This plugin is also free and can be downloaded at: http://www.fasterinternetmarketing.com/FasterIM-OptInArticle Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/free-wordpress-plugins-top-3-plugins-for-internet-marketers-501376.html
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Author: Dr. Johnson C. Philip Support for : Busby SEO Test
Whether one should go for a conventional website or the modern blog setup for one's income generation site is a recurring question. My unwavering answer is: opt for the blog software unless you have a compelling reason to opt for the conventional website setup. Here is the reason:
Why Prefer Blog Software: Blogs were invented for writing personal journals, but the format has become so popular that thousands of people around the world have developed new and highly refined blog softwares that are totally free. These programs offer numerous advanced facilities, user-support from the developer and user-community and also numerous add ons.
What Are Add-ons: Most blog softwares are very versatile. However, the programmers realize that given an opportunity, others can add to the functionality. Thus most blog software offer a facility for "plugins" which are software developed by others and which can be "plugged in" to the original software. These add-ons or plugins are easy to add, and offer numerous facilities.
Which Blog Software: Several free software are available, but I would strongly recommend WordPress because if the ease of installation, ease of use, and the unbelievable range of plugins available totally free. What is more, thousands of free themes are available which means that you can almost always find a theme that suits your purpose.
Which Version of WorPerfect: Each new version of WordPerfect comes with added facilities but the installation remains easy. What is more, even the webmasters control-panel is easy, and has been becoming easier and more user friendly with newer versions. So go for the latest version and download it from www.WordPress.org
Which Add-ons (Plugins) To Use: There are thousands of plugins, and it is better for you to choose them after you have some experience with the blog first. Needs vary and so do the plugins. The WordPress site maintains a good list of plugins.
Which Theme: There are thousands of themes and you can locate them either by going to the WordPress site or through a net-search. However, I wish to sound two notes of caution. First, do not go for the more flashy type of themes because they are slow to load and divert the attention to themselves from the product itself. Second, prefer a normal three-column theme because ads when displayed on both sides give maximum exposure and maximum click-through.
Persist: Please remember that persisting with two to three selected blogs is the key. While you might see click-through from the start, it takes a little time to grow. It takes 12 to 26 months on a well-executed blog for ad-income to cross the satisfactory barrier. Count this time as essential investment. Give another 12 months for it to attain a level that can be called exciting.
Persist and you will surely win!
Support for : Busby SEO Test
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-opportunities-articles/which-blog-software-for-ad-income-653795.html
Author: Peter OBrien Support for : Busby SEO Test
Google loves blogs because new, unique and useful information can be added very quickly. Not only can the blog administrator add content but visitors to the blog can leave comments and ask questions. When people find answers to their problems, they will return to your blog in the future. Wordpress is a very popular platform for blogging because it is a complete content management system which also allows you to add themes and plugins which will improve the functionality of your wordpress blog. You can setup your blog for free with wordpress or you can install wordpress on your own domain name. I recommend installing wordpress on your own domain name because you have control of your blog. If you have your blog on the wordpress domain, your blog can be deleted without notice and then all of your hard work is gone forever. Installing wordpress on your domain name is very easy if your web hosting company offers install wordpress. Look for a web host that uses cPanel and has Fantastico. Click on the Fantastico icon and wordpress will be installed in minutes with a few clicks on your part. Now that you have your blog setup, you need to add your wordpress adsense template theme. Not only do these templates have a header graphic for your particular niche but they are also setup with adsense ad blocks placed in high click areas. Good templates will also have the google search box and use the ad units to look like a navigation bar. To install your wordpress adsense template theme follow these simple steps: 1. Open up the folder with all the wordpress files 2. Add your google id to the index.php and sidebar.php files 3. upload all files to wp-content/themes 4. login to your wordpress dashboard 5. Click on presentation tab 6. Click on your theme in available themes 7. Your wordpress adsense template is now your current theme You now have a wordpress blog on your own domain in your selected niche. Start adding your content about your niche and the google ads will change to relevant ads that pertain to your niche.
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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/how-to-use-wordpress-adsense-templates-to-have-an-instant-monetized-blog-607517.html
Author: Roberto Gomes
So I'll discuss a little about the wordpress platform, themes, recommended plugins and some tips.
If you have just started blogging, there are a few steps you should take.
1. Activate the akismet plugin. This plugin comes preinstalled with wordpress but you have to activate it and get a wordpress key (which takes 2 minutes). Akismet blocks spam comments on your blog, so if you choose to enable comments on your posts (which you should) then this plugin is a must, and best of all it's a set and forget.
2. Choose a theme. You could use the default theme, but it's way overused. The ideal is to choose a theme that is very user friendly, with good link visibility, nice color contrast, and a nice and attractive layout. If you know how to design a theme or can change a free theme to your liking, then you should do so, unique content and layout designs are always a better choice than free themes that are probably used by hundreds or more. A good place to get themes is the Wordpress Theme Directory. Another one is searching google for "free wordpress themes" :-)
3. Decide on a permalink structure, permalinks are the actual links to your blog posts, and wordpress gives you a lot of flexibility here. For maximum SEO performance, you should simply choose "yourdomain.com/blog-post-title" but this really comes down to personal preference as I personally don't think it makes that much of a difference, so you might prefer "yourdomain.com/year/month/blog-post-title" that is also search engine (and user) friendly. Whatever you choose, do activate the permalink feature because otherwise you'll have those ugly query strings all over your urls.
4. Download and install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin. This plugin takes care of updating and submitting your sitemap to Google and other search engines. This allows search engine to know more about the structure of your website.
5. Dowload and install the All In One SEO Pack Plugin. This plugin optimizes your blogs output for search engine optimization. Optimizes keywords, page titles and more.
6. Install the ShareThis plugin or a similar social bookmarking plugin. This should go right after your posts along with a reminder letting visitors know they can subscribe to your feed. This way visitors have some options when they finish reading your posts. If they like your post, they will be able to quickly submit it to whatever social bookmarking sites they use or e-mail to a friend.
7. Create an About page. You should use this page to introduce yourself to the visitors, your background, your work, what you do and like and what people should expect from your blog. This gives your blog a personal touch that helps visitors to identify you as an actual human behind the blog. Also consider placing one or several pictures of yourself on the about page (or on a photos page if you prefer) as this also greatly increases the human awareness of the visitor.
8. Create a Contact page. You can simply put up a page with e-mail instructions or use a contact me plugin like Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form. This gives confidence to the visitor that he can reach you if he so chooses and, like the about page, gives the human touch.
9. Create an account on FeedBurner for your blog and give your visitors a visible option to subscribe to your blog by RSS and by e-mail (FeedBurner takes good care of all this). This allows users to use an rss reader or just get your posts by e-mail. Most visitors never return so you should make it easy and worthwhile for them to subscribe to your blog and receive future updates.
Well, those are 9 of the things that I think are most common and needed, but I could go on, you should familiarize yourself as much as possible with wordpress (or your other blogging platform of choice), try out new plugins and optimize your theme. It's a work in progress, but you shouldn't let that get in the way of your posting.
You could consider setting up a password protected subdomain and creating a clone blog for testing (or install it on your own computer) because once you start getting traffic you shouldn't go trying new things on your live site where things could break giving your visitors a bad surfing experience. A clone blog is obviously just a blog installation that matches your actual site with the same theme, same plugins and a few dummy posts so you can do your testing.
Once you get your blog ready to go, all that's left to do is start posting! You should make a nice first post, introducing yourself briefly and letting the reader know that you have an About page with more details. You should give some idea of what visitors can expect from your blog posts.
Now for some quick blogging tips:
1. Make constant posts. You should try your best to do about 3 posts per week minimum. This all depends on your ability to express yourself with words. If you're good at it, then post as much as you can, daily or even bidaily. If you're not, well, then try to make at least 3 posts per week.
2. Use post titles wisely. Your post title is very important as it's the part that will be most visible to the web. Create informative titles, the words you choose here will eventually make your site rank on google for some or all of those same keywords.
3. Make medium to long posts. Not saying that you can't do small blog posts, you can and should, but you should try your best to create full length and keyword rich posts. Write your best and biggest posts as if the were articles with a small intro, content and conclusion.
4. Post about other blogs. Read blogs about the same topic than yours and link to them and do your own spin on the post, agree, disagree, whatever. Basically try to engage in friendly debates with other bloggers.
5. Leave them wanting for more. End your posts with a small text about what you'll be posting about next time. Be creative and suspenseful.
6. Proof read and spell check your post before publishing. Occasional typos are ok, but proof reading and using a spell checker should keep them to a minimum.
7. Have fun! You should be having fun blogging. If you're just starting you can probably feel a little intimidated or sometimes don't knowing what to post. But you shouldn't stress to much about it, just take a break and post some other time. Blogging should be relaxing not stressful. Find inspiration around you.
Well and that's it, there you have just some blogging tips to get you started. These are of course mostly geared to blogging beginners. You can do much more with blogs and use the blogging platform to create other type of niche sites and adsense sites but that is topic for a whole different article.
Support for : Busby SEO Test
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/wordpress-and-general-blogging-tips-582536.html
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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7:27 PM
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I've had a ton of people ask me lately how to get started marketing online, and more importantly how to get up their first website and start making money in the fastest time possible.
Most of you guys know, I am not a big techie person. And I always tell people that the best way to get started marketing online is by setting up a free WordPress blog. You can set up and update your blog with a few easy clicks!
Even if you don't know anything about HTML or setting up a web page (I still don't know HTML!), let me show you a real easy way to get a web page set up in minutes-literally!
Here's what I did--first, I set up a blog. It was really easy setting up the Wordpress blog.
I just went into my cpanel within my Host Gator web hosting account, and I clicked the Fantastico button, and my WordPress blog was set up automatically.
Boom-instant website! How's that for easy?
Now the thing about WP blogs is that WordPress sets up the shell, but then you can customize it and make it look however you want.
You do this by installing themes and plug-ins. There are millions of free themes to choose from, and more plug-ins than you can ever hope to use. I'll list the plug-ins that I am using so that you don't have to go searching endlessly for the right ones.
I found a free theme for my WordPress blog within Wordpress; I downloaded it, and then uploaded it with my FTP software. I then went to get some plug-ins for my WordPress blog (and you can search for these various plug-ins from within WordPress).
The plug-ins that I decided to use and that I recommend, are the following:
* All in One SEO Pack
* Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button
* Viper's Video Quicktags
* WordPress.com Stats
* WP-EMail
* WP-EMail Widget
* AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
* Google XML Sitemaps
* Ultimate Google Analytics
* Wordpress Video Plugin
* WP-SpamFree
* WP tags to Technorati
There are a lot of these plug-in, and millions of free themes to choose from with WP. You can tweak your blog, and add widgets, and start adding content that is important to you-that is the best things about blogs! Blogs are so unique and personal-you can really make them reflect your personality and your business any way that you want.
Go to http://www.onlinecashflowguru.com for more of my resources, free tips and videos with all of my secret underground traffic tactics -- along with my new eBook! 30 Websites in 30 Days: One Month To Financial Freedom
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Spiel
Adam Spiel - EzineArticles Expert Author
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