Interesting WordPress Themes April 2013

Academy (Online Education)

Turn your website into a functioning e-learning solution with Academy Learning Management Theme from ThemeForest. This premium wordpress theme takes the elegant form of an ecommerce site and tweaks it to meet the needs of the e-learning market. Share, sell and promote your knowledge online effectively. This powerful theme includes features and functions to help you manage course offerings, rate their popularity, and publish subscription plans aimed to reach your target market. This theme includes a powerful options panel that allows you to create courses and lessons.This theme provides awesome features for creating online courses, such as extended user profiles, rating system, questions system, file attachments, embedding self-hosted media, tracking course progress, WooCommerce integration and more.

Responsive Knowledge Base & FAQ WordPress Theme

For the business or website that exists to help people make the most of their computing experience, Responsive Knowledge Base is the perfect theme to use. This premium WordPress theme was built for support providers as a first line response solution for clients seeking answers to their problems, technical or otherwise. This theme acts as a knowledge base or depository where visitors can search your site for solutions to their issues. Users can browse through Q and A pages, articles and similar material or do a live search (jQuery TypeAhead powered) to help them identify their problems and find solutions.

Rescue – Animal Shelter Theme with Petfinder Support

Animal lovers unite! Rescue Premium WordPress Theme is a theme built with a specific purpose – to get animals adopted. Outstanding pet-related WordPress themes are few and far between that’s why Rescue is a special theme pet lovers can find a home in. What makes it more unique is the built in Petfinder API support that allows you to easily sync your pets from your Petfinder profile to your WordPress install. Petfinder is an online, searchable database of animals who need homes. It is also a directory of more than 13,000 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

GymBoom (Fitness)

If you are in the fitness business or if you own a gym, a health club, or a wellness center, check out GymBoom, a responsive fitness theme with a built in dynamic calendar to manage training schedules for those serious health buffs and fitness addicts. This responsive theme also sports a unique diagonal slider created with the slider creation tool. It’s got useful shortcodes to post lists, highlight text, create multiple columns and more. You also get two homepage option styles: one with a slider and a page styles option. Gymboom includes a google map shortcode integrated in the widgetized footer section.

Pocket WordPress – Is It Truly Ready For The Mobile You?

Handheld devices are here to stay. Technology has dished out several tablet options prior to today’s mobile device centric generation but none of them broke through the desktop/laptop barrier until Apple’s revolutionary iPhone and iPad products gave a new lease on the “handy” handheld device. This set the trend for device manufacturers and software developers to rethink their game plans to face this inevitable direction.

Ever since the Blackberry became the corporate executive’s device of choice being able to do basic business tasks and office requirements while on the go, device manufacturers have taken it several notches higher. The average businessman now has management and administrative apps available for every type of task and need. From time management to finance to managing appointments and even vacations – there is an app for all that. Social networking also has never been easier. Connecting and networking are simply a login away. App authors have taken all the brainwork out so that users can enjoy the benefits of these apps straight away. Even the least tech savvy today is still miles ahead of the web guru a few years ago.

Where does the WordPress blogger fit into all these tech and app upgrades? Is the WordPress app up to the challenge of today’s mobile device dependent consumer? Are the same features and functionalities in the backend of every WordPress website as easy as using an iOs or Android app? Or is it just the frontend that’s responsive and ready? Are there themes available that not only make a WordPress website look and work beautifully both inside and out? Is the WordPress app capable of giving you the same experience you get from the desktop or laptop?

Mobile WordPress users who access and manage their websites on medium sized tablets and Android devices will still find things manageable and workable. The other demographic that needs to be considered is the smartphone and the smaller mobile devices that aren’t that easy to maneuver. Perhaps these queries are not only for the WordPress author or developer but maybe perhaps for those who contribute to the WordPress framework itself? Maybe future versions of WordPress will have more app-like versions today’s modern bloggers are more familiar with. Perhaps this version already exists or is in the works. Today’s young bloggers have no idea what a floppy disk is or the old storage devices of decades ago. This generation’s tech knowledge acceleration will continue and they will outgrow today’s latest smartphone in just a few years. Can WordPress keep up and be ready for the mobile you?

Share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC) How Does it Work?

You often hear people talking about PPC, CPC, conversion and all those familiar jargon once you start immersing yourself more and more online. Affiliate marketers are quite familiar with these terms and these have become part of their normal lingo. But what if you are just starting out and you have no clue as to how all these acronyms work and if they have any real value to you at all. Let’s take a closer look at these Internet marketing tools to help you maximize them vis-a-vis traffic flowing through your website.

In recent articles, we have pointed out the enormous traffic potential that you can tap into by following some simple traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit. Let’s say you’ve done your homework and you’re starting to see a spike in the number of visitors that come to your site. What next? Having a lot of visitors does not automatically translate into earnings for you. You need to give something to gain something in return. This is where these tools come in. Let’s break it down.

What is Pay Per Click?

According to Webopedia,

Pay Per Click or PPC is an Internet marketing formula used to price online advertisements. In PPC programs the online advertisers will pay Internet Publishers the agreed upon PPC rate when an ad is clicked on, regardless if a sale is made or not.

With pay per click in search engine advertising, the advertiser would typically bid on a keyword so the PPC rate changes. On single website — or network of content websites — the site publisher would usually set a fixed pay per click rate.

How you earn from PPC now depends on which side of the table you are at. You can either be an online advertiser, an Internet publisher, or even both. An online advertiser is someone who pays a publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad he has placed is clicked whether the click resulted in a sale or not. This advertisement cost on the part of the online advertiser translates into several marketing objectives set for the business he is promoting. A few of these goals are: to introduce a product or service, to send the person who clicked to his money site, to encourage subscribers via email opt-in or other sign up strategies, and yes, to make a sale. It’s the advertiser’s tool to earn. Now whether these goals are met or not, the advertiser still has to pay the publisher based on the PPC rate agreed upon between them. This then also translates as earnings on the part of the publisher – similar to how sales commissions work without the sales. It is merely based on the earnings per number of clicks made on a particular ad.

There are several PPC models out there which you can study to find out which one works best for you. You can adopt the Flat Rate PPC model or the Bid Based PPC.

From Wikipedia,

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the cost per click (CPC) within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors.

In the bid based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot. Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower.[8] This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

There are several reputable Pay Per Click websites that will make money online for you as you look into monetizing your website. Do your research before you sign up and make sure these PPC sites are legit. It will take more than one website to really make a difference in your income stream so study the market and get into the forums. You’ll find a lot of useful information and real life experiences you can learn from. Once you sign up with the legit ones, refer others and continue to grow your networking cycle. The world wide web is actually getting smaller as more people get interconnected.

If you’ve just started your website, accepting ads from online advertisers is a great way to start making passive income online. Just make sure you agree on the terms and that expectations and results are clear.

Web Design Tools for WordPress 2013

Learning is a never-ending journey. There’s always room to grow, things to improve, and ways to make things better, more efficient, and more effective. Here are some (premium and free) web design tools that can help WordPress authors and developers reduce work time, increase productivity and improve work quality:

Sail.js (Free)

Sails.js makes it easy to build custom, enterprise-grade Node.js apps. It is designed to resemble the MVC architecture from frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the more modern, data-oriented style of web app development. It’s especially good for building real time features like chat, it automatically builds a RESTful JSON API, and it supports HTTP and WebSockets. The Sails framework was developed by Mike McNeil with the support of Balderdash.

Backbone.js (Free)

Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions,views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.

Extra Strength Responsive Grids (Free)

Extra Strength Responsive Grids are percentage-based, for smooth, non-snappy width adjustments that enable you to take total control of your layout. ESRG deploys meaningful class names such as grid-half and grid-quarter to make life easier. ESRG is also SASS-enabled.

Easel Design without a Designer (From Free – $99 Subscription)

Easel is an in-browser, high-fidelity web design tool that lets you mockup, share and implement your ideas with ease. This WYSIWYG web design tool aims to make web design and development easier for teams who want to quickly get their ideas online without having to hire a designer. The app is a great resource for people who don’t have any coding experience but know what they want visually.

Responsive Nav (Free)

Responsive Nav is a tiny JavaScript plugin which weighs only 1.7 KB minified and Gzip’ed, and helps you to create a toggled navigation for small screens. It uses touch events and CSS3 transitions for the best possible performance. It also contains a “clever” workaround that makes it possible to transition from height: 0 to height: auto, which isn’t normally possible with CSS3 transitions.

More Traffic Hacks – YouTube, Pinterest, and Linkedin

One billion unique Youtube viewers every month, 48.7 million pinners, 200 million linkedin members in over 200 countries – mind-blowing statistics and very difficult to visualize. You might as well be looking at the stars. But those numbers are real-time stats of real people who are interconnected, interwoven, and networked all across the world wide web. Wouldn’t you love it if all this traffic got sent your way? Of course, it could break your site but that can always be fixed.

Here are some of the traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013:

YouTube

YouTube now allows you to create links to external pages

Enable monetization on external “clickable” link annotations. Send traffic to a squeeze page, Facebook page, or to your main money site.

Video Optimization:

Get more publicity to your videos by exposing it to a bigger market – the shared video loophole or use a paid service like shareyoutubevideos.com or videomarketingblaster.com if you are too busy to do it yourself.

Pinterest

Did you know that Pinterest outpaced Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined for share of referral traffic? Below is a sample on how you can get traffic followers, opt-ins, and sales from Pinterest:

Hold creative Pinterest Contests (sample below)

  1. Create 50 new images with quotes and the opt-in URL.
  2. Create a new page with all the images and the contest rules and prizes.
  3. Sendthe client’s list and FB fans (paid and organic) to the contest page.

When someone shares the images, they enter the contest and send their Pinterest followers to the opt-in page.

Conduct Teleseminars and uses memes like “Pin it to Win it” with urls linked to the squeeze page for the teleseminar</p

LinkedIn

Carl White shared a 5-minute agenda on how to monetize followings on big groups like LinkedIn:

What Carl does

  1. Find people with a big following or list (but aren’t currently monetizing it with continuity). Ex: go on Linkedin and type in a group (e.g. fitness, beer). Use lists available. If you can find them on Linkedin, try to find related group on Facebook. Compare fan numbers with involvement on Facebook (7.5% engagement is very high).
  2. Contact these people and see if they are monetizing their list. Ask the followers what they want to buy. Put the following post as a survey on the fan page, Linkedin page, send out an email, et cetera, “What is the one thing that you need the most help with?”
  3. Google it and find people that sell what the group wants to buy (e.g. white label solutions).

Take these hacks for a spin and see how it works out for you. We’d love to hear your results.

Eye-Catching Retina Display WordPress Themes

The shift towards high-definition in gadgets and devices has been around for a little while. Today, software and digital products are often described as“retina” display read which simply means that these products are graphically ready, in terms of clarity, contrast, and sharpness, to be displayed in high definition devices without diminishing in quality.

Here are some of the newest retina-ready WordPress themes you can try on your HD devices:

Novelty (Portfolio)

This portfolio and blog theme’s clean minimalist look is a perfect complement to outstanding artwork and projects normally displayed in a creative professional’s website. Photographers, design agencies, freelance creatives, and corporate sites will love to show off their pieces in high definition and this theme is ready to do that. It is also 100% responsive replicating that HD experience even on mobile devices.

!LesPaul (Multipurpose)

A multipurpose user friendly theme equipped with Sharp Retina (high DPI) graphics that will look beautiful on modern high resolution displays. The crisp and sharp design elements incorporated in this theme will look great on handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Supreme Magazine (Magazine)

Subscribers will enjoy browsing through your online publication built using this theme. Supreme Premium WordPress Theme is a revolutionary Retina Responsive Magazine/Blog theme integrated with clean, modern, and crystal clear graphics that can be effectively displayed in retina ready modern devices.

Eagle Logistics (Logistics/Forwarding/Shipping)

This premium theme was designed with the logistics industry in mind. It was conceptualized to turn websites into an effective solution for logistic transactions. The retina-ready capability of this theme is most effective in the use of images and text used in promoting products and services related to your logistics business. These crystal clear elements add that attention to detail factor and communicates professionalism necessary in any business especially in this type of industry.

Slurp (Modern Creative Grid Portfolio)

Creative professionals will fall in love with the edgy and modern style of this theme. Images and graphics take center stage on the homepage with the unique organic and asymmetrical manner that they are displayed creating that cool and edgy look. This retina ready and responsive theme will surely wow your users, clients, and potential clients no matter what device they use to view you site.

30 Dark Web Sites For Inspiration

Only some people dare to use complete dark backgrounds against to regular cool and official colors. This decision makes their sites look unique and special, Today we have collected such sites which use dark backgrounds for their sites, so take a look and you will find some inspiration for sure, Enjoy….

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Traffic Hacks using Facebook

If you could show your product or your business to approximately 1.06 billion users, would you? What if you could direct these 1.06 billion users to your website, would you do it? Whatever your thoughts are about Facebook, undeniably, it is obviously a huge dam of cheap, targeted, and more profitable potential traffic that your business could greatly benefit from.

Here are some tips and tricks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 that you can use to start tapping into Facebook’s traffic potential.

Identify Your Goals and Targets

  • Do you want to get more fans?
  • Do you want to send users to your website?
  • Are you promoting an event or an activity? Where – on Facebook or on your website?

Get a Facebook Page for Yourself or Product

Setting up a Facebook page is free, easy and you can create as many pages as you need for yourself and for your business.

Use Page Post Ads, not Promoted Post

  • 90 characters of ad copy, then link to any landing page on or off FB.
  • Highlighted links- direct to landing page.
  • Add an image, link or video to stand out.

Use Facebook Offer Ads

  • These are like Groupon offers.
  • They are very specific offers and promotions that attract more qualified prospects.
  • This type of ads are perfect for live events and webinars.
  • You get free news feed activity when an offer is claimed.
  • International ads are cheap to run.

Promote to Custom Audiences.

  • You can upload your email list (or mobile phone list) and your ads will be shown to those people. It is easier to sell to those who you already know.
  • Tailor the creative to each segment of your list.

Test and Monitor Your Results Closely

Keep track of your ad activities to see which ads perform the best that way you can adjust and make changes accordingly making it less likely to waste money and closer to achieving your goals.

How To Improve Performance On Your WordPress Site

Great content is at the mercy of site speed. No matter how wonderful your content is, taking more than 4 seconds to load can mean significant loss of traffic and loss of potential income for your website. Why? People hate slow websites. The slower it takes for your page to load, the faster people leave it. Patience is not a virtue when it comes to the internet. That is why site speed is important.

Google is obsessed with site speed and has incorporated it as one of the signals for determining search rankings. In a previous article on determining a website’s quality score , we learned that user experience is now a major element and part of the equation in determining and improving your site’s ranking. A fast site creates satisfied users, improves user experience, and improves overall site quality and performance.

If your website is taking longer to load than necessary, it’s time to take stock and audit the elements causing the delay. Here’s a checklist of some of the things you need to consider as you work on improving your site’s performance:

  • Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to load heavy scripts and images and to lighten the load on your server.
  • Optimize caching – Browser caching stores cached versions of static resources. This speeds up page speed tremendously and reduces server lag.
  • Remove/Reduce/Compress large images, videos, and other content. Resize and optimize images for web use. Specify image dimensions and use the right image format.
  • Minify JavaScript and remove unused CSS files. Reduce HTTP loading requests for CSS style sheets, scripts, images, and HTML
  • Remove/Reduce/Deactivate unnecessary or unused widgets or plugins. Plugins and widgets are bandwidth thieves. Try deactivating all of your plugins to test your speed. Activate a widget or a plugin one at a time to see which one is the speed culprit.
  • Check the loading time of your ads or affiliate codes to see how they affect page speed.
  • Check your WordPress theme for compatibility issues with your WordPress version or your browsers.
  • Choose a good web host or switch to a better one with a proven uptime track record if necessary.

Here are some of the tools you can use to help you analyze your site’s performance:

Page Speed

Page Speed evaluates performance from the client point of view, typically measured as the page load time. This is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.

Yahoo! YSlow

Firefox/Firebug Add-on that analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance, based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.

Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast

Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and page views.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable server, network and website monitoring. They use a global network of servers to monitor customers’ sites 24/7, all year long. The service includes statistics for uptime and response time, and can send out alerts via SMS, email, and more.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is designed to improve user experience and page speed of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

In conclusion, as far as website essentials go, the adage “less is more” is best. Sticking to only what’s necessary and throwing away what is not needed will help your website float to the top. The faster your website loads, the better your site performs and the experience your users have will be more pleasant, favorable, and hopefully more memorable, making them want to come back for more.