MultiMedia WordPress Themes August 2013

Today’s multimedia audience has been bombarded with multi sensory stimuli that engage and entertain like never before. Competing in such an environment is pretty challenging and demands a lot of creativity especially when it comes to web design. Here are some innovative WordPress themes that offer you more than your usual WordPress fare:

Fuji Full Screen WordPress Theme

Fuji Premium WordPress Theme is an innovative theme with design aesthetics that are far from your typical WordPress theme design. Its modern and clean design is visually refreshing in every aspect. All the best trends in web development have been implemented in this theme: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations are just some of the features of this theme. It also includes features such as: 9 different page types (Home, Standard Page, Column Page, Full Page, Half Page, Collection, Gallery, Video and Blog), Unlimited Galleries, Unlimited Collections (Portfolio) and Unlimited Audio Tracks, and so much more to fit any type of web application you need.

Acid Unique Horizontal Blog and Portfolio Theme

Why scroll downwards when you can scroll or swipe sideways? Acid Premium WordPress Theme combines the best design features you adore in Metro and One-Page and brings it all together into this one theme. Choose from Colorful Hipster, Serious Black, and Retro Grandma to create the website you need in the style that you want. This theme includes the following key features: unique portfolio layout, unlimited color options, mini parallax, unlimited scroll, One-Page horizontal layout with the option to choose and use the Metro Style blog and portfolio or a combination of both.

Anthe WordPress Theme

If creativity is your passion then up the ante and create a website that reflects just that with Anthe Premium WordPress Theme – a reliable, fast and responsive WordPress theme designed to promote small design agencies or big creative minds. This fresh and creative premium theme gives you four page styles and two page layout options. It’s a 2 in 1 theme – multi-page & single-page solution – all in one package. You can combine your WP pages to create incredible single pages with only a few clicks.

WildHorn Full Screen WordPress Theme

Wildhorn Premium WordPress theme is a full screen theme designed to put your multimedia content (images, videos, and audio) in the spotlight. Equipped with the bests trends in web development such as: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations. This theme also comes with an embedded music player (can be turned on or off) to add that something extra to the whole web experience.

Wave WordPress Theme for Artists

If you are an artist looking for a theme to house your art on the web check out Wave Premium WordPress theme – a responsive WordPress theme made for artists that can also be used as a portfolio cum blog by anyone needs a theme to showcase images and galleries and a blog as well. It is designed on a 1180px grid with 16 columns which can be quite flexible for showcasing art in different sizes or dimensions. This premium theme is also WooCommerce ready which opens up opportunities for artists to sell their artwork online right on the spot.

Reaching your Target Market thru List Banking and Media Buying

Advertising has evolved in so many ways throughout the years. The leap of advertising from traditional print media to the blinking gifs during the early days of the internet to the more sophisticated video showreels of today has been an interesting journey.

Online or digital advertising first entered the scene in the mid 1990’s when HotWired launched the first banner ads from major companies like AT&T, Sprint, Volvo, MCI and others. (Check out this illustrated timeline.) This was followed by PPC (Pay-per-click) keyword advertising, keyword ads, mobile ads, pop-ups and pop-unders, Google Adwords, video ads, all the way to today’s technology-empowered “word-of-mouth” via social networking and viral advertising.

Spending on digital advertising has been steadily on the rise. Digital media advertising in the form of contextual ads, banner ads, cross platform ads, email marketing, search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, etc. are already part of a big chunk of the advertising budget of major companies. In fact, global digital advertising spending broke $100 billion in 2012. That’s a lot of money spent on cyberspace billboards. Is it really worth it? How effective are your advertising efforts? How do you measure your R.O.I. on your advertising campaigns? What if you don’t have that kind of a budget? How much are you willing to spend to generate a lead? Where do you start?

Here are some simple steps to help you as you plan your own marketing strategies:

Determine the Leading Performance Indicator (LPI) of your Company

There are different kinds of performance measures. A Performance Indicator (PI) is a measure, which gives an indication of performance. Typically a performance indicator is an outcome measure and not an input OR in-process measure. Key Performance Indicators are the critical gauge of a site’s success or failure. Some sectors say that Cost per Lead is a good LPI, while others argue that there are other factors that need to be considered in determining the correct LPI.

Competitive Analysis

Know your “enemy”. Well not quite the “enemy” because they could later on be allies, affiliates, or partners in the future. The point is to be aware of your competitors, find out what’s working for them, the ads they run, where they run them, the affiliate programs they belong to. In short, learn from their successes and their mistakes. You can also use a paid service called WhatRunsWhere – a competitive intelligence service for online media buying. It allows you to look up what advertisers are doing online, where they are running ads, from who they are buying inventory, and what exact ads they are using. WhatRunsWhere allows you to see what is happening on any website: who is advertising there, who is selling the inventory for them, and what ads they are running. With data from multiple countries and actionable insights from the data, WhatRunsWhere quickly allows anyone to dissect advertising campaigns, resulting in reduced risk and a higher ROI for online advertising campaigns.

Plan your Ad Campaign and Test It

Start smart by starting small. If you’re still getting your feet wet in media buying you can start your campaign in little doses. Target web and mobile audiences, choose a frequency cap of when your ad is displayed, and choose a campaign max to a manageable number for you to study and tweak if necessary. There are self serve ad buying platforms like www.sitescout.com where you can create & manage your ad campaigns easily. Test ads and copy. Use copy that converts well on the website and utilize it throughout your campaign.

Identify What Works and What Doesn’t. Prune Campaigns

Analyze your data. After 5,000 to 10,000 impressions Identify performing banners. Your banner could be driving down your placement and overall site numbers. Display the best performer until it fatigues. Identify performing sites. A site left to run wild can ruin your campaign. Turn off banners with low CTRs.

Optimize What Works

Tweak your campaign basics for maximum optimization. Identify times when traffic runs best and run traffic during those times. Tailor your creative or your ad banner to match your audience. Focus on what works and improve on it some more.

Scaling

Now that you’ve gotten a little bit of experience, broaden your net. Retarget, add more sites, add more banner sizes, offer affiliate commissions, or go direct (www.buyads.com) The point is to take your marketing campaign up another notch.

Whatever evolution advertising goes through, the objective of advertising remains the same, that is, to draw attention to a product, service, or event to persuade an audience (viewers, readers, or listeners) to take some action in the form of sales or attendance. In other words, conversion. Try these strategies and share your stories. We’d love to hear from you.

Reinventing Traditional Media

Traditional Media is dead, Long Live New Media! Well, not entirely so. In fact, the “marriage” of both could result in a more powerful tool to reaching a specific target market IF Traditional Media “reinvents” itself.

Young and adventurous entpreneurs capitalizing on technological skill and savvy have been at the forefront of the digital landscape taking up virtual territories and planting their stakes wherever they set their feet on. Many of them started out as “newbies” but are now the digital brands to beat and conquer. They have upstaged the traditional name brands and have become household names all around the globe. Who does not know Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr? But the traditional big brands aren’t to be dismissed just yet. They might have a little bit of catching up to do but they can still capitalize on the years they have invested in establishing their brands and their name. The good thing that these brands have going for them is the hard-earned trust together with the existing essential structure and framework needed to service their traditional market which can be restructured to adapt to the needs of consumers in this digital age.

The challenge of traditional media is to bridge the great divide between the physical and the digital realm and rethink the way they reach their audiences. The challenge of new media, on the other hand, is to offer more than just content to their users by offering something more substantial, something tangible. In short, physical products or stuff consumers want or need are part of a strategy to retain their audience and increase their reach even more. Yes, “Content is king” but in the marketplace, the “Consumer is king”.

For both traditional and new media, addressing the needs of today’s consumer, evolving as it is because of technology and the way networking has changed the way we relate to each other, is the way to go. What needs should be addressed? For today’s consumer, it is all about Content, Community, and Commerce. New media that is focused on content alone will find it challenging to sustain its audience especially if the same content is readily available elsewhere. Traditional media needs to understand the psyche of the tech savvy consumer and find new ways to encourage customer loyalty from these click-happy butterfly-esque customers. For both media types, it’s about addressing that basic need, the content or information that led them to your website in the first place. Next is connection or community. And finally, delivering this need into the hands of the consumer – the exchange of goods or Commerce.

Businesses who take advantage of today’s digital technologies like audio/visual tools, social networking channels, video streaming, mobile-enablement, and eCommerce empowered facilities, integrating them with all the best known methods in traditional media will stand a greater chance of surviving in today’s digital market.

Comment Management Solutions for WordPress

Who doesn’t love Spam? We’ve consumed cans and cans of this comfort food and we never get tired of it. Unfortunately, spam has become synonymous with what the internet hates the most – especially by bloggers. Too much of it is just pretty hard to ignore.

Comments – Love ’em. Hate ’em.

Admit it. When you started out blogging, you would check your blog everyday to see if someone left you a comment on your post. AND, you were absolutely thrilled when someone actually did. Never mind that it wasn’t from some popular blogger or someone famous. Someone left a comment. Hooray!

Soon after, someone left another comment. And another comment. And another comment. And another comment – this time with a link. More comments. More links. And pretty soon, your dashboard is exploding with millions of comments and links that have nothing to do with your blog post. “Hello world.” just turned into “Hello spam.” Now, you’ve probably realized that more doesn’t exactly mean great. What to do?

Approve. Reply. Delete. Trash.

WordPress has a built-in system that can handle all the basic comment management requirements necessary like approving, replying, deleting, or trashing comments. However, the native WordPress system, albeit simple and easy to use, has its limitations and the more savvy users need more than just the basics. Features like social media integration, media support, public user profiles, or better spam filtering options cause people to turn their heads to third-party solutions especially when comments flood the back end and become challenging to monitor and manage.

Ban-The-Spam Solutions

Why ban the spam? Spam is a global problem and often WordPress comments are the place when bots try to enter bogus content full of links to their sites. Here are some of the blog comment systems and/or plugins you can use on your websites to help you manage those annoying spam comments.

  • WordPress Default Comment System – built-in comment management system that’s simple and easy to use but needs supplemental plugins to ban spam effectively.
    Cost: FREE
  • Akismet – It is an external service for battling spam with a database of known emails, IP addresses, and usernames used for sending spam. This advanced hosted anti-spam service efficiently processes and analyzes masses of data from millions of sites and communities in real time. When a visitor submits a comment, it is checked by Akismet and put in a special Spam folder to be managed by the website admin later on.
    Cost: FREE (Personal, Non-commercial sites/blogs)
    • $5-$50 (For commercial, business, and professional sites / For publishing networks, agencies, hosts, and universities)
  • Disqus – Disqus, Inc. is a blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that uses a networked platform. The company’s platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. Features a powerful moderation dashboard and all the filters you’d expect: blacklists, whitelists, spam controls, and word filters.
    Cost: FREE (core version)
  • Livefyre – Livefyre Comments 3 is a comment platform for real-time conversations. Important features include real-time user generated content-publishing, mobile device-friendly, real-time profanity filters that administrators can moderate and flag comments from directly within the stream, or block by IP address and Web Browser, social media and multi media support.
    Cost: FREE (basic version)

Other practical tips to manage spam:

  • Control which comments are automatically published and which ones need to be moderated. WordPress has a built-in provision for this.
  • Tag comments that have more than one link to be manually approved.
  • Create a blacklist and/or white list of frequent commenters.
  • Disable comments on older posts and pages.
  • Install tried and tested WordPress plugins or 3rd-party plugins to beef up your comment management system.
  • Wipe out your spam folder regularly.

WordPress and Cloud Storage Apps – How Safe is Your Data?

Up, Up, and Away!

We somehow have this picture in our minds that all the stuff we upload online is somehow floating over our heads, whisked way, way up into cyberspace. But what do we know about Cloud Storage and what really happens to all the files we upload? Maybe some people can probably relate to this old song about clouds by Joni Mitchell.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Is Cloud Storage all that it promises to be? Convenience, accessibility, tons of file space. Is it possible that this nice, fluffy, feel good Cloud could go wrong and cause seemingly irreparable damage to its users? Case in point, the recent celebrity photo hacks, Dropbox, iCloud, Snapchat, etc. Is Cloud Storage really safe to use?

Of Dropbox, Copy, Box, and other Cloud Storage Apps

Cloud storage service is an amazing innovation, which allows you to upload, store and share images, videos, and other type of content online. How does it work?

Cloud storage is a model of data storage where the digital data is stored in logical pools, the physical storage spans multiple servers (and often locations), and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a hosting company. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible, and the physical environment protected and running. People and organizations buy or lease storage capacity from the providers to store end user, organization, or application data.

Cloud storage services may be accessed through a co-located cloud compute service, a web service application programming interface (API) or by applications that utilize the API, such as cloud desktop storage, a cloud storage gateway or Web-based content management systems. (source: Wikipedia)

Ok. That’s a mouthful. In other words, Cloud Storage “refers to saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. Instead of storing information to your computer’s hard drive or other local storage device, you save it to a remote database. The Internet provides the connection between your computer and the database.”

Hacker Proof Cloud Storage

Does it exist? Probably not. Just like secrets, keeping digital information from getting into mischievous hands is like pinky swearing. There is no fool-proof way. Ever tried to format, erase or delete photos from your memory card or your hard drive? Guess what. They still live there, way below the recesses of your storage device and can still be extracted using recovery software. Yup, even after you’ve formatted or reformatted (quick reformat and not full format) And that’s just local storage. Still very much within the scope of your control. But what about cyber storage? Does this mean that you shouldn’t use Cloud Storage at all?

Secure Your Online Data

People are paranoid about large-scale theft of personal information. Unknowingly, they post more than just the usual profile information required when joining a social or public website. (Check out this amazing mind reader.) Their entire lives are posted blow by blow on social media – voluntarily. But the operative word here is – voluntarily. Quite the opposite of theft, where someone takes away from someone against his or her will or permission.

There will always be risks. Whether online or offline. Once anything is uploaded and publicly shared, the risks should have been supposedly counted already. It can be stolen, shared without permission, downloaded, altered, wrongfully claimed, disputed, etc. It’s a reality. Of course, the expectations change when information is shared with restrictions.

People need to be fully aware of what they are sharing, to whom they are sharing it with, and where (websites, online storage, etc.) they share, post, or upload. Make sure to read and understand (someone said this is the biggest lie online) the terms of use of websites and note if there are any third party clauses that allow these websites to share, sell, or pool personal information to their suppliers or sponsors.

Use a strong password and don’t repeat the same password in different places. Consider a password manager. Use the two-step verification or two factor verification option if a website provides one. Do manual backup instead of automated backups. It doesn’t hurt to create your own self-policing practices to ensure that your rights to privacy or ownership rights are not violated.

Searchable, Crawlable, Optimized Content – The SEO Fix You Are Looking For?

Website owners are constantly looking for that one SEO formula or template that will assure them of that coveted top spot on the search engine pages. Many webmasters have retracted from their black hat ways and are cleaning up their acts – deleting link building campaigns, url redirects, keyword stuffing, etc. – and are turning to more Google-friendly methods to avoid being penalized. One of the many SEO strategies that people are investing in is CONTENT – good, relevant, easily crawlable content. But is it THE magic SEO formula that people are looking for?

Imagine ordering a decadent looking 3-tier specialty cake baked by Cake Boss Buddy Valastro himself – intricately designed and made with absolutely the finest ingredients. It’s got everything in it to definitely make it a conversation piece among the guests. But, what if someone forgets to display this wonderfully made cake and it stays in the kitchen where no one gets to see it except the kitchen staff. No doubt it’s a wonderful and probably the best tasting cake your guests will ever taste but unless they see it, admire it, slice it, taste it – they will never know what they are missing. Same thing goes with your wonderful, relevant, crawlable, well-written content. Out of sight, out of mind.

But hey, you can have your cake and probably eat it too if you take a wholistic approach to SEO. Yes, by all means, go ahead and build relevant, optimized, searchable great content. But don’t stop there. Make sure that you get it out there and give your audience a taste of it. Get people engaged enough to share it, link to it, and make them want to come back for more. Use and maximize social media. Add that tested and reliable SEO plugin. Market your brand. Plan your public relations campaign. Grow your audience. Junk those outdated SEO concepts. Analyze and study your statistics. Realize that it’s not a one-time event but it’s something that needs to be maintained constantly. SEO is not a one-template fits all type of thing. It is anything and everything that contributes to your website’s visibility and helps you land on that top page in the SERPS.

For more on this topic, check out this helpful article on Moz.com.

Not Your Usual WordPress SEO Plugins To Try

WordPress as a Content Management System, in itself, is already a good platform for SEO goals because of the way it is structured. But you can always make a good thing better if you want to. Check out these fresh SEO plugins that you might not have heard of but might help make your SEO efforts yield even better results.

Premium SEO Pack for WP

This plugin in gives you a whole array of tools to help you optimize your site’s visibility in internet searches. The plugin includes monitoring tools like Google Analytics, SERP tracking, On-Page and Off-Page optimization tools, the premium Mass Optimization feature that allows you to optimize all your posts and pages at once. Another cool on page feature is Local SEO. This allows you to rank your pages based on the geographic locale. Other noteworthy on page features are: title & meta format, sitemap, SEO slug optimizer, SEO feature optimizer and google authorship. The SEO pack also includes Link Builders, Backlink Builder, Social Stats, Page Speed Insights, Smush It, and also an SEO code insert feature.

WordPress SEO Post-Optimizer

WordPress SEO Post-Optimizer plugin assists you in optimizing page rank posts. This plugin checks your posts againsts SEO criteria, checks for keyword density (the right amount of keywords in a post), and autochecks for the SEO score of your post every 15 seconds. The SEO scores are expressed in percentage. A real time check on the amount of words is also done in recognition of the fact that search engines usually prefer content with more than 300 words. The plugin also checks if the post has images or not and also if there are links to older posts on your blog to improve your internal content structure. The Post Optimizer plugin also checks for internal links, the usage of h-tags and alt-tags, and bold, italicized, or underlined keywords in your post.

Rankie

Rankie is a WordPress Rank Checker plugin that helps you keep track of WordPress rankings on Google keeping a close eye on each keyword position. The plugin allows you to track an unlimited number of keywords on Google and keeps updating these ranks daily. You can also check out ranking trends per week, month or all time. The plugin is also a great keyword research tool that helps you generate keyword lists by suggesting possible alternatives to keywords of interest. You can track unlimited number of keywords ranking on Google and keep updating these ranks daily as it works as a WordPress SERP plugin, generate ranking reports per month, per year or by all time letting you know how ranking is going up or down with details on every single position change for each tracked keyword, including many other helpful tracking functions.

Ultimate Video SEO Plugin

Ultimate Video SEO Plugin is an advanced stand alone plugin for WordPress which covers all aspects of Video SEO. It automatically fetches video SEO details from videos of all major video hosting providers and submit it to a video sitemap. What can it do? It supports self hosted videos in all WordPress supported video formats. It notifies search engines whenever a sitemap is updated or generated. It supports video embedded through shortcode or metabox (created by third party plugins or theme). It supports self hosted videos embedded using default WordPress media gallery. It adds schema.org video object markup to all your video posts/pages. It shows snippet preview of video search results within your post editor.

Meta Tags Optimization

Meta Tags are keywords used by search engines to find useful information. A lot of times the title and nature of the content may not be associated with the right meta tags. The Meta Tags Optimization plugin advices the admin whether the page is optimized correctly, by highlighting with green and red colors the Meta Tags that are found on the page. While the plugin will not tell us what tags to add or eliminate, it will highlight with red the incorrect inputs. This plugin gives useful information to the writer by highlighting meta tags on the page that may not be the best suited for the content. This plugin also lets you optimize meta tags for posts/pages by providing you clear instruction to repair your meta tags.

Best WordPress Themes 2021

UPDATED April 12, 2021: 2021 is sure to be another great year for WordPress Theme development. Like the millions and millions of people using WordPress, we eagerly await the Themes and Plugins to be released this year, and you can …

WordPress Slider Mania

Sliders are staples in websites nowadays. A homepage without a slideshow seems an oddity considering the media intensive content this generation craves for. For all the benefits sliders give website owners, there are indeed some sliders that really standout from the rest. Below is a listing of 5 of the most popular sliders available in the market today:

Slider Revolution

Considered the most popular plugin in the Envato marketplace, Slider Revolution is a slider definitely worth considering. This plugin features tons of unique transition effects, an image preloader, video embedding, autoplay that stops on user interaction and lots of easy to set options to create your own effects. This plugin is one of the few that offers full screen slideshows, it is also noted for enabling almost any type of content that can be put in a slideshow, and, it is quite popular for its responsive feature as well. The plugin also enables easy slider creation using Visual Builder. Using its animation builder, you can conveniently drag and drop captions, and, create your own custom animation easily. Slider Revolution also allows you to integrate SEO optimization measures on your slides thus further improving your page’s performance on search engines.

Royal Slider

This slider plugin was created especially for mobile devices. What makes Royal Slider standout is its affinity toward touch screen interfaces. Create your own custom slideshows and css3 banner rotators with images, videos or HTML content in slides, allow dynamic population of data from Flickr, Instagram, Featured posts and even WooCommerce products, display vertical or horizontal thumbnails with the plugin’s photo gallery. While it doesn’t have much of fancy transition effects, Royal does guarantee a stable, accessible, high performance slider experience on any device. RoyalSlider is tested on Mac, PC, iPad 2, iPhone 4, HTC Desire, Lumia 920, Surface, Blackberry PlayBook and even on Kindle Keyboard

Layer Slider

Layer slider is most noted for its use of cutting edge technology to give you more than 200 preset 2D and 3D slide transitions to give you the smoothest slideshow experience available. At the very heart of this slider is its layered design that enables you to have 3D like slideshows. Easy to use interfaces enable you to create your slideshows in a WYSIWYG manner which include live previews, drag and drop slider builder, etc. The plugin supports responsive layouts, multiple layouts and touch screen gestures to ensure that your slideshow experience is the same regardless of device. Layer slider is SEO friendly allowing you to build semantic markup with custom attributes that search engines can index easily.

Slider PRO

This fully responsive and mobile ready slider plugin in comes with 150+ options to help you set-up your very own slideshow. The plugin allows you to dynamically load content from your content. Slider PRO also enables you to add animated or static layers into your slideshows to create 3D like slides. The plugin uses a user friendly media loader to enable easy population of content into your slideshows. Slider PRO offers 100+ transition effects which can be optimized into hundreds of possible variations.

Touch Carousel

This slider plugin was created with mobile devices in mind. Touch carousel enables touch navigation on iOS, Android and Blackberry devices. Over 20 settings are available to control speed, layout and slideshow. Touch carousel allows you to slide any post type including WooCommerce and Jigoshop content. You can select content based on taxonomy, popularity or date.