Many of these premium themes can be demonstrated. If you’re interested in any of these for your blog, please email interactivewoo@gmail.com and I will provide you a password to access our Members Lounge where you will have access to all our Premium Blog Themes.
Interactivewoo Members Lounge is a password protected area with access to tools and resources for clients and prospects committed to blogging. To request a password, please email Interactivewoo@gmail.com.

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One of the biggest struggles for new bloggers, or for anyone that is looking to freshen up a blog with a new theme, is the challenge of finding the right theme. Free or Premium? Magazine style or traditional blog style?

Especially for Wordpress users, there are so many choices with multiple types and variances in quality and design. In this post I will provide a comparison of the different types of themes to help you choose the right type for your blog. Before I do that, let me answer the question what are Wordpress themes? Wordpress themes are pre-made designs templates that are made in compliance with the Wordpress Platform. These themes can be installed seamlessly and effortlessly to any site that is utilizing the latest Wordpress script. There are thousands of themes to choose from and the best (premium) themes are download-able for a fee.

Free Themes vs. Premium Themes (varies from $20 to $90)

So how much better are premium themes than free themes? Is it enough to justify paying the price tag? Here’s a list of reasons why you would pay for a premium theme:

• Quality - premium themes are built by design professionals and ideally are of higher quality in design and function than free themes. Notwithstanding a few high quality themes, most free themes are of very poor quality. This is because anyone can develop and distribute a free theme.
• Uniqueness - because of the price tag, premium themes are for serious bloggers who want a professional blog that stands out from the crowd of bloggers using free themes. Most premium themes include code-free design customization whereas to customize free themes, you will have to tweak it in the code of the theme.
• Functionality - most premium themes offer much more in terms of features and functionality such as integrated advertising and analytics, more robust widgets, or customizable front page (magazine themes).
• Flexibility - premium themes also offer the ability to select various color schemes or the ability to choose between 2 or 3 column for your blog without touching the code of the theme.
• Scalability - hopefully your blog will grow over time and you may want to include new features to your blog. Most free themes will only allow you to showcase typical blog posts, while premium themes will have better options for adding pages, sub-pages, categories, archives, advertising.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - a poorly designed theme can cost you valuable exposure in the search engines. Most free themes are very poorly optimized, and in most cases the theme designers give very little consideration to SEO.

Although I always recommend premium themes for the serious blogger, I do also recommend trying out some free themes so you can experience the difference in quality, function and flexibility. For some bloggers, a free theme may offer enough to serve their purpose as they may not hope to make money from blogging or support a business.

If you’re a blogger who wants to increase or produce income through blogging, I highly recommend going with a premium theme. It will help you save hundreds of dollars and hours of your time in the long run. Choose a Premium Theme now!

Magazine Style vs. Blog Style

You all know that in a traditional blog style layout, the most recent post sits at the top of the page with previous posts below it. As blogs grew, there was a need for a better way to organize content so posts didn’t get lost. The magazine style layout was the solution and quickly became popular among premium themes. This layout typically includes a front page that features excerpts or headlines of posts in a grid format, acting as a portal to content. However, the magazine style layout is not a good fit for all blogs. Here’s when you would choose a magazine style:

• Multiple Topics - if you have or plan on having a blog with many different topics and you would like to feature one or more posts from each on the front page to improve navigation and accessibility.
• More Professional Look - if you want to go away from the typical blog look.
• Large Site - if you have or plan on posting content daily or have multiple authors, the magazine style layout can be a great way to organize content.

To the last bullet above, the opposite is true. If you post only a couple of times a week or less, you would go with a traditional blog style. If you’re still not sure what’s best for your blog, don’t worry. Another reason why I love premium themes (to the flexibility point above) is that the best ones (ones that are included in our services) offer the flexibility to choose between both magazine and traditional styles.

Interactivewoo has hand-picked the best free and premium Wordpress themes on the web with consideration to overall look, SEO, readability, flexibility, and more. As part of our blogging package, we’ll work together to find the best theme for you and offer our premium themes with savings of up to 50% of the retail value.
Please send an email to Interactivewoo@gmail.com and if you have any questions.

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Blue Host - $6.95 per month
WordPress Auto-Install, UNLIMITED disk storage, UNLIMITED data transfer/bandwidth, free domain name, 2500 POP/WebMail addresses, 100 MySQL databases, voted best support from 2004-2008, free control panel, 24/7 network monitoring, 99% up-time guarantee, mirrored storage backups, no hidden fees.

Powweb - $3.88 per month (1st year) then $5.77 for 2 yr plans
Wordpress Install, UNLIMITED Disk Space (Raid Storage), UNLIMITED data transfer/bandwidth, UNLIMITED POP/WebMail addresses, free domain name, Load Balanced Technology, 75 MySQL databases, daily database backup, e-Commerce ready, 24/7 email and chat support, Toll-free phone support, free control panel.

DreamHost - $5.95 per month for 10 yr plans (increase in price with decrease in yrs)
Wordpress Install, 500GB Disk Space, 5TB data transfer/bandwidth, UNLIMITED POP/WebMail addresses, free domain name, UNLIMITED MySQL databases, etc. The difference between DreamHost and all other webhosts is the community feel of their web panel. Besides the standard links for things like email and domain management, there are areas for customer suggestions, DreamHost newsletters, the DreamHost Site of the Month, DreamHost donations, the unofficial DreamHost directory, the DreamHost Rewards program, as well as a customer discussion area.

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The ability to install plugins is one of the major benefits of having a wordpress blog hosted on your own server

Wordpress plugins are free and download-able and can extend your Wordpress blog to do almost anything you can imagine - from useful plugins that back up your database to “cool” plugins that customizing your message to new vs. returning visitors. To be faced with the thousands of plugins available to you and choose the right ones that work with your blog can be a daunting task. There are many plugins that do the same thing but with very different results.

Here is my list of Top 10 Best Wordpress Plugins that I have come across and also use on my blogs (in no particular order).

• FireStats (includes Most Popular Posts) - one of the best statistics plugin for Wordpress. Also includes a “Most Popular Posts” widget for your sidebar.
• AddThis - help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services. You may also consider ShareThis as an alternative look.
• WP Post Ratings - adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.
• Simple Tags (includes Related Posts) - Tagging made easy. This plugin has flexible configuration and suggests tags from the net and Yahoo which is great for SEO. This plugin also allows you to include “Related Posts” to your content based on your tags.
• CFormsII - cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. It may be a little hard to configure but you can really do so much customization with it. If you’re looking for something simpler, try Contact Form 7
• WP Database Backup - don’t risk losing all your work! WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core Wordpress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database. Save to database, email or desktop.
• All in One SEO Pack - this plugin automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (SEO: Search Engine Optimization)
• WP Super Cache - this robust plugin will increase the responsiveness of your website and reduce the server load. It works by caching your pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests without querying the database. It is also built to handle sudden bursts in traffic.
• Google XML Sitemap Generator - the biggest advantage of using Wordpress is the manual work you save because the software already knows where all of your content is. This plugin is a huge boost to your SEO as it will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your blog to Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN Search every time you update your site.
• Akismet - spam is a huge problem for wordpress blogs. As soon as the search engines recognize your blog, you will start to receive spam in your comments. Akismet makes this a non-issue by checking your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. It was created by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress.

A few more plugins deserving mention:

• Seth Godin’s First-time vs Returning Visitor - displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.
• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - wordpress automatic upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one.
• Subscribe to Comments - this robust plugin enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent comment entries so you can keep track of the discussion.
• Lighter Admin Drop Menus - creates drop down menus for Wordpress admin panels so you can navigate to the page you want with one click. Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, comes with silk icons and an options page.

Want more? Browse and search through the entire Wordpress plugins directory.

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• Reader Attention Span - It is pretty well documented that the typical web reader has a short attention span when it comes to reading content online. The average blog readers stay 96 seconds per blog (I’ve seen other more scientific tests that show similar results). What ever the number - it’s generally not long. As a result many bloggers purposely keep their content length down to a level that is readable in short grabs.
• SEO - There is a fairly strong opinion among those considered experts in Search Engine Optimization that both extremely short and extremely long web pages are not ranked as highly as pages that are of a reasonable length. Of course no one really knows how many words are ideal - but the general opinion seems to be that a page of at least 250 words are probably a reasonable length. Similarly, many advise keeping pages under 1000 words.
• Quantity of Posts - One theory that goes around is that shorter posts allow you to write more posts and that more posts are better for generating readership with RSS and in Search Engines. While I don’t know their strategy personally, some believe this is what sites like Engadget and Gizmodo do with their high number of short posts which make up the majority of their content.
• Topic/Genre - The type of post that you’re writing will often determine it’s length. For example when writing a review of a product you’ll generally write a longer post than when you write a news related post where you link to something someone else has written.
• Comprehensive Coverage of the Topic - Ultimately this has to be the main criteria that bloggers go with. You should write enough to comprehensively cover your topic and then stop. Long posts for the sake of them are not a wise move - but so are short ones that don’t cover the topic well.

Darren is a top blogger about blogging, especially when it comes to blog writing. I would personally suggest that when in doubt, be concise. You don’t want to lose your readers with long posts. If you must write a longer post, use headlines to separate different sections or use a bullet list (like this post). Read more about bullet lists and sections.

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What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of new content on their favorite websites. In the old days of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to “bookmark” websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added. RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of “subscribing to” new and relevant information (feeds) that is sent to an “aggregator” of your choice, for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published. As a blogger, allowing your readers to subscribe to your content via RSS helps build longer viewership and lasting relationships.

Is there a way to track who is subscribing to your feed or content?

Yes. Feedburner is the most popular free tool that provides statistics on who is reading your blog through RSS feeds. The Google company also allows readers to subscribe to new content via email updates (important if your reader has not been introduced to RSS yet).

Aggregators or Readers

I recommend Google Reader (google.com/reader) and Bloglines (bloglines.com) as aggregators of RSS feeds. If you like other readers, please feel free to include them in the comments.

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• What is a Blog? Everything You Need to Know (1)

Defining a Blog

A blog is a type of website where content is organized in the form of posts. As described in the video above, posts are usually arranged in chronological order with the most recent at the top of the main page, keeping the content of the blog “fresh” all the time. Blog posts are usually organized in categories and tags so they are accessible from the main page. Blogs also have traditional web pages and archives of older posts. Most blogs have the common characteristics of having a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) “subscribe” button where content can be delivered to the reader as it becomes available. Most blogs also have the ability to for readers to leave comments on the posts, hence creating a discussion over the posted topic. There are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of and bloggers with similar interests or topics are building relationships and building communities like never before.

Main Components of a Blog

• Post - A post is where you write the main content of your blog. Each post has a headline describing the content, the date the post was created, tags associated with the post, and one or multiple categories
• Page - A page is a traditional web page where you want content to remain static. An “about us” or “contact” page are examples of pages
• Comments - Each post can be a topic for discussion using comments. You can set comments to appear automatically or after a review. Comments encourage discussion and increase engagement for future readers.
• Categories and Tags - Posts can be organized through categories or tags. Depending on the breadth of a blog, categories are used for a high level organization of your posts and tags are used for more details. For example, a tennis blog with a post about Roger Federer defeating Andy Murray in the US OPEN Tennis Finals can be categorized as US OPEN and tagged as Roger Federer and Andy Murray.

A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few, bookmark your favorites, and become engaged by leaving comments. The BEST way to learn about blogs is to start blogging yourself. Continue to “How to Make Blog”

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Start with Wordpress.com

Blogging is no longer only for the tech savvy. Anyone can start a blog very easily and quickly on one of the free hosted Blog Platforms (Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com). I started blogging on Wordpress.com because of the platform’s ease of use and flexibility over Blogger.com. I quickly learned the basics of blogging and I encourage you to do the same.

Start Blogging in 24 hours the right way
Although starting a blog on Wordpress.com is free and easy, there are many limitations for a blogger serious about blogging. I’m talking about being limited to having a standard look, generic domain names, no design customization, and less control. This is because Wordpress.com blogs are hosted by Wordpress and they set the rules. Read this important post about why host your blog on your own server.
Most serious and successful bloggers host their blog on their own server. I made the switch to my own server very soon after I started blogging. You may be thinking right now that you’re not web savy enough to get your own server, install the databases let alone do any customization - and that’s okay. You can either spend the time and learn it on your own (which I absolutely encourage you do over time - just don’t spend weeks reading and not doing) or let a design professional set up your blog in 24 hours the right way; with all the right tools; and answer all your questions over the phone. Read about our services.

3 More Excellent Resources on Blogging for Beginners

If you’re interested in learning everything from setting up a blog to building your readership to making money from blogging, but you don’t know where to start or who the experts are; I (as well as Darren Rowse and Brian Clark) highly recommend Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind as your step-by-step coaching program. Yaro’s program is satisfaction guaranteed and already has more than 500 students. I highly recommend that you check out these resources by Yaro Starak:

• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program - one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Become a Blogger Videos - a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog. Easy to understand and best of all, free.
• Blog Profits Blueprint - a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

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Hosted on the Blog Platform’s Servers

Many people interested in blogging start with this type of blog because it is free (wordpress.com or blogger.com), cheap (typepad.com) and relatively simple to use. The blog platforms also makes software upgrades automatically. However there are many more limitations that comes with this type of blog hosting:

• Less Control - Blogger.com does not allow you to create any categories while Wordpress.com does not allow for advertising. This is the main reason why people host on their own servers.
• Standard Look - limited selection of themes (look and feel) that makes your blog look like every other free hosted blog.
• No Design Customization - without knowing CSS, you cannot make changes to your design colors or structure.
• Generic Domain Names - your domain name will be “yourname.wordpress.com” or “yourname.blogspot.com.”
• At Mercy of Blog Server - although you own the content, you’re at the mercy of server down time.
• Hard to Change Your Mind Later - if your blog gets bigger and you want to start hosting on your own server, you may lose traffic, readers and search engine rankings.
• Inability to Install Plugins - plugins are tools that make blogs better.
• Inability to Install Other Tools - Google Analytics, etc.

Hosted on your Own Server (or Stand Alone Blogs)

Hosting on your own server does require a little more technical knowledge as you will have to set up a hosting plan with your host server, set up the databases, install wordpress and establish ftp to your server for the transfer of files and for software upgrades. Luckily, this is something that can be down for you (or taught to you) by a design professional. There is a cost for hosting on your own server as well but these days, you can buy a robust shared server for as little as $5 per month. Like the top bloggers in the blogosphere, I host all of my blogs on my own server and here’s why:

• Full Customization and Control - If you’re CSS savy, you can tweak any template to make it look your own. If you’re like most people and don’t know much about web design, there are many premium themes (design templates) that offer “dropdown” design customization that is easy and intuitive to use. There’s nothing that screams your own than a blog design that is customized to your liking.
• Premium Themes - you can use any theme available on the internet including premium themes which have a more professional look and are customizable without coding.
• Free Tools for your Blog - One of the reasons why I recommend Wordpress as the choice blogging platform is the availability of the best plugins (Read about the Top 10 Best Wordpress Plugins). Plugins can add functions to your blog beyond the basic install of wordpress.
• Add Google to your Blog -  you can easily add Google Analytics to track your blog stats and add Google Adsense to start making money of your content.
• Your Own Domain Name - Imagine interactivewoo.com as interactivewoo.wordpress.com. Having your own domain name is having your own brand - professional and easy to remember.

To Summarize

In the words of Darren Rowse (top blogger about blogging): “If you’re wanting to develop a serious blog and have aspirations for it to be used on a professional sort of level (whether as a business or corporate blog, as a blog to build your own profile or a blog to earn income from advertising) I’d recommend you go in the direction of a stand alone blog. Even if you are not highly skilled in this area it’s worth spending a little money to get it set up with a designer…”

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