Back to Blogging Basics – Cool WordPress Themes for Your Blog

Even before it became the highly stylized content management system that it is today, WordPress has always been and still is the blogger’s choice platform for personal blogging. WordPress themes have come a long way since Kubrick as more authors and developers churn out beautiful themes to fit all types of users. Here are some of the latest WordPress themes for today’s modern blogger:

Clipboard Tumblog Style WordPress Theme

If you are into microblogging Twitter or Tumblr, check out Clipboard Premium WordPress Theme – an awesome tumblog style WordPress theme that comes chock full of style and customisation options. Customization and styling options is easy using the WordPress Live Theme Customizer. The Visualkicks theme translator allows you to translate a single line of text or the whole site. Clipboard’s intuitive and responsive Masonry design allows you seamless transitions while maintaining that minimalist look. Clipboard also supports all of the core WordPress post formats and has been built and designed with simplicity in mind.

Pilcrow Ajax Powered WP Blog Theme

Pilcrow Premium WordPress Theme is a simple yet elegant and responsive WordPress blog theme that will surely inspire you to write. This robust premium theme not only presents your content in an engaging way but because it is also powered by AJAX it provides users an enjoyable experience with its smooth transitions while reading your content. This theme supports custom WordPress post formats giving you maximum flexibility on how you can present your content. You also get several templates such as: a password protected posts template, comments template, and a template for pingbacks and trackbacks. All these and more AJAX powered goodness. Minimum clutter for maximum pleasure.

Keilir Responsive WP Blog Theme

Keilir Premium WordPress Theme is a bright, typographically bold, and beautiful responsive theme designed to make your blogging experience as pleasant as possible. Armed with superb visual design and great support for mobile and tablet devices you can easily reach all your readers wherever they are. This premium theme has 6 custom styled blog formats, 8 bootstrap shortcodes, 6 custom social media widgets (facebook, twitter, instagram, mailchimp, and more), 10+ specially made shortcodes, 600+ google fonts, and a customizable theme options panel, to make your blog your very own.

tdFuture WP Theme

tdFuture Premium WordPress Theme is a dynamic, responsive WordPress blog theme ideal for personal blogs where you can share your articles, images, videos, music, quotes and much more. The big bold design and typographic choices will definitely make your content stand out from the crowd. If you are a blogger who wants your readers to focus on your content without the clutter of sidebar widgets, etc., then tdFuture is the theme for you. This theme can also double up as a portfolio to showcase your creative work. This theme supports WordPress Theme Customizer that gives you an ability to do changes with a real-time preview. tdFuture is a fully responsive theme and will adjust to any screen size.

Literary WP Blog Theme

Literary Premium WordPress Theme is a beautifully crafted blog theme that will delight authors, writers, and publishers. If you’ve been publishing books and you’ve always wanted a place to compile them all for your readers, Literary is the blog theme that can do that for you. This premium theme comes with a post type for showcasing your books and even a post type for your portfolio. Literature often comes with specific illustrations made especially for specific books. Many times, it is the cover that entices people to buy a book. Now you can showcase both books and illustrations on your own website and give readers a chance to enjoy your work both visually and intellectually. Increase your market reach by adding all of your books and linking them to Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you sell them. This theme is built “mobile first” for speed and flexibility and looks great from mobile to large desktops.

Quickly Handcrafted WP Theme

Quickly Premium WordPress Theme is a beautifully handcrafted WordPress theme that focuses on user-experience, usability, and beautiful typography. This Masonry styled theme comes with four predefined color schemes, optional homepage sidebar, post formats and many more design options. This theme also allows you to: mix up content on the homepage with widgets and dynamic post formats, enable or disable sidebar in a click, choose from the predefined patterns and color schemes, change header position, change the thumbnail position, and choose from any of the theme’s predefined custom fonts. Quickly is fully responsive, touch enabled, and comes with a sleek and powerful theme options panel to help you set the blog without having to change any code.

Milli Responsive WP Blog Theme

Milli Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, graphic, 3D inspired WordPress Theme designed for professional or personal bloggers. Choose between light and dark styles, full-width or two column layout, 5 accent color schemes, and you can upload the background pattern of your choice. This premium theme also features super cool sliders with multiple slider effects that can be embedded within posts. Milli also supports custom WordPress posts. This fully responsive theme is designed to look beautiful whether you are using a desktop computer or a mobile phone.

Pravda WP Blog Theme

Pravda Premium WordPress Theme is a bold and colorful modern WordPress theme fit for today’s hip and cool blogger. This customizable, ultra responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme has got that young vibe, combining favorite features from Pinterest and Instagram with social networking features, that will appeal to digital millennials today. This premium theme can be configured for business/work, for blogging, or both. It was developed on Bootstrap and is powered by the SMOF Options Panel, which provides multiple options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – for both beginners with no coding knowledge and also seasoned developers. Features include 10 custom widgets, 8 widgetized areas, 5 post formats (image, audio, video, gallery, standard), 6 Home page layouts, and tons of custom theme options.

40 Rocking Rock Band Websites For Inspiration

This article is purely dedicated to music lovers from all around the world, nowadays lots of people are using the internet all over the world, so it’s not that surprising that even rock bands are maintaining their sites to get close to their fans.

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Top Free and Premium SEO Tools

Here are some of the most popular SEO tools and platforms on the market to help you monitor and analyze your SEO efforts on link building, keyword research, page analysis, rankings, authority, and tracking:

SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer allows you to analyze a website’s linking profile by providing you with detailed information (link anchor text, page authority, and domain authority) for the first five backlinks of a domain. Open Site Explorer is an extremely overpowered tool that can provide detailed link information such as: Inbound Links, Top Pages, Linking Domains, Anchor Text, Compare Link Metrics, Advanced Reports, and Just-Discovered links. Link data can be used to analyze Page Authority, Domain Authority, Link Equity, Followed/No Followed Links, and so much more.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“SEOmoz Pro is, by far, the best SEO tool suite on the market today, handily winning our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award. With great link building tools, industry-leading on-page analysis, a massive database of links and authority metrics that powers several other tools, and a community that is unsurpassed in the SEO world, SEOmoz pulls far ahead of the competition.”

Free users are limited to three reports per day but you can run unlimited reports, view up to 10,000 backlinks, export backlinks to a CSV, and use the other suite of SEOmoz tools for $99 USD per month. Free and Premium.

Ahrefs Site Explorer

Ahrefs.com is an independent tool for SEO analysis with a wide range of features. It is designed, first of all, for SEO specialists and site owners but may be of interest to other concerned Internet researchers. It has its own crawler and index, collects and arranges all data without any use of third-party services, and has the largest base of actual data on the links. Their crawler can index up to 6 billion pages per 24 hours. They help to find certain issues on your websites. They can provide social metrics like the number of tweets, Facebook likes, Facebook shares, Google +1 for your pages and referring pages (for all paid subscriptions). They also have a tool, Ahrefs Rank, aimed at solving the same tasks as Google PR. Ahrefs Rank measures the impact of all backlinks with different link juice to a given page. Free and Premium Version.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools, founded in 2007, is a one-stop SEO tool that brings all types of SEO tools, social media tools and advertising tools all under one roof. You can manage paid search advertising (AdWords), link building, keyword research, competitive analysis, social media analytics and basic reporting all in the same place. Raven integrates essential data from Majestic SEO, SEOmoz, Google AdWords and more. Raven’s SEO research tools also pull dozens of metrics, analyze thousands of pages and compile reports in minutes. Its Link Manager keeps your outreach organized, efficient and simple to report and it stores, organizes and tracks every detail for fast reference. 30-day trial.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“One unique feature of RavenTools is its integration with Textbroker, an article composition outsourcing service that can help you bulk up your site’s content. While it can be risky delegating your content creation in large part to external contributors, it can be a useful way to supplement your content needs.”

HubSpot

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software helps customers generate traffic and leads through their websites, and convert more of those leads into customers. HubSpot is an integrated inbound marketing software that includes tools for: tools to attract visitors, tools to convert leads, and tools to close customers using various methods that cover blogging, landing pages, lead nurturing and management, marketing analytics, content management, social media, SEO, CRM integration, email marketing, and more.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“One of the unique and appealing features of HubSpot is its keyword research integration across the board; you can research keywords and compose blog posts focused on those keywords all within their comprehensive platform. It becomes exponentially easier to optimize for the correct keywords when you can focus on writing great content and leaving the keyword optimization to HubSpot’s platform.”

SEMRush

SEMrush is created by SEO/SEM professionals for SEO/SEM professionals with knowledge, expertise, and data to help you take your projects to the next level. They collect massive amounts of SERP data for more than 95 million keywords and 45 million domains, including: AdWords ad copies and positions, organic positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition, number of results, and so much more. SEMrush tracks an immense amount of organic data in Google and Bing SERPs. You can therefore see where your competitors are ranking in the top 20 Google and Bing results for the top 95+ million organic keywords. They collect data on both a domain level as well as landing page rankings for all of the keywords that they track, and they can provide you with an in-depth look into how a website really stacks up in search. Premium.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“SEMRush is the industry standard SEO tool for keyword research, giving unparalleled insights into competitors’ PPC keyword targeting, rankings and traffic data. The tool is amazing in its own right, earning it a spot on our lineup of the best SEO tools.

One of the most useful features of SEMRush is its ability to tell you what other major web properties are trying to rank for your keywords. After you drop your URL in the search box and click the button, you’ll be inundated with useful insights about your organic and AdWords competitors. Armed with this information, you can analyze their strategies to see what’s working for them, or even approach some of the big spenders in your niche and pitch a display ad campaign. SEMRush gives you all the tools you need to evaluate pay-per-click advertising competition.”

Google’s Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites on the following: site data, keyword data, sitemaps data, message center messages data, and crawl errors feed. Google Webmaster Tools shows traffic for each keyword separately; it gives more information about website performance according to Google search query. Google Analytics shows total traffic for a website, such as clicks to your site, regardless of where they came from and what search terms were used. It shows whatever search terms brought up your site in the listings. Free.

Authority Labs

AuthorityLabs was built to be easy and simple enough for the average business owner, but scalable enough for those responsible for large organic search efforts. AuthorityLabs helps you gain an understanding of how search engines are displaying your brand over time. Consumers start at search and often experience a brand for the first time within search results. Easily add domains or pages to be tracked from anywhere, track thousands of keywords within each domain and get ranking data every day for Google, Yahoo! and Bing, monitor multiple related sites in mind. 30-day Free Trial.

Decoding WordPress Shortcodes

A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut. (WordPress.com)

WordPress shortcodes were introduced in version 2.5.They are a simple set of functions for creating macro codes for use in post content. It enables plugin developers to create special kinds of content (e.g. forms, content generators) that users can attach to certain pages by adding the corresponding shortcode into the page text.

According to WPBeginner,

“…a shortcode is a special tag that you can enter into a post that gets replaced with different content when actually viewing the post on the website.

…a shortcode looks similar to an HTML tag, but is enclosed with square brackets instead of angle brackets. This code gets replaced with some other code when the page is actually loaded in a web browser. The really cool thing is that WordPress allows you to create your own custom shortcodes to display pretty much anything. You could use it to output a Youtube video, show your latest tweets, or even customize it however you like.

An excellent article How to Use Shortcodes in WordPress by Lucy Beer demystifies shortcodes and breaks it down in chewable chunks quite nicely.

Simply put, shortcodes are useful because:

  • shortcodes are easy to use
  • shortcodes are easy to create
  • shortcodes simplify repetitive tasks

Commonly used shortcodes include:

  • buttons
  • content boxes
  • icon lists
  • columns
  • drop caps
  • quotes
  • pricing table
  • author info
  • contact forms
  • tabs

Today, WordPress developers are coming out with simpler and easier to use shortcodes that help even beginners to achieve professional looking websites without touching a single code. These shortcodes allow you to create custom design elements that are unique to your own website without having to use complex coding skills resulting in better looking and functioning websites.

Popular WordPress Plugins Updated for Security

In an article on WordPress Plugin vulnerabilities, we mentioned that the top 50 most popular plugins were tested for security and vulnerability by Checkmarx, a leading provider in application security. The first scan was conducted in January 2013 where it was discovered that more than a third of the 50 plugins were vulnerable. The second scan, conducted in early June 2013, was performed on the updated versions of all plugins. However, only six of these updates were free of those previously found vulnerabilities. These were:

BuddyPress

– creates a social network for the organization. # Downloads: 1,319,743.

A BuddyPress Plugin is a program, or a set of one or more functions, written in the PHP scripting language, that adds a specific set of features or services to the BuddyPress site, which can be seamlessly integrated with the site using access points and methods provided by the BuddyPress Plugin API. BuddyPress allows easy modification, customization, and enhancement to a BuddyPress powered WordPress site. Instead of changing the core programming of BuddyPress, you can add functionality with BuddyPress Plugins.

BBPress

– forum software. # Downloads: 483,28. Alerted by Checkmarx to their vulnerabilities.

bbPress is forum software, made the WordPress way – simple to setup, fully integrated, multisite forum, simple interface, customizable templates, highly extensible

E-Commerce

– shopping cart plugin. # Downloads: 2,209,352.

WP e-Commerce is a free WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that lets customers buy your products, services and digital downloads online.

WooCommerce

– an e-commerce store. # Downloads: 469,503

WooCommerce is a free, powerful WordPress eCommerce plugin. With the extendability of a huge catalog of commercial themes and extensions we have all the tools you might need to get your shop running. Transform your WordPress website into a thoroughbred eCommerce store, delivering enterprise-level quality and features whilst backed by a name (WooThemes) you can trust.

W3 Total Cache

– site optimization by caching. # Downloads: 1,450,980. Most likely fixed as part of a security overhaul following an external full disclosure of some vulnerabilities.

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

Super Cache

– site optimization by caching. # Downloads: 3,984,976. Most likely fixed as part of a security overhaul as with W3 Total Cache.

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files. This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. Supercache really comes into it’s own if your server is underpowered, or you’re experiencing heavy traffic. Super Cached html files will be served more quickly than PHP generated cached files but in everyday use, the difference isn’t noticeable.

Note: Downloads statistics are as of the time of the tests.

Elegant Themes Releases Their 84th Theme

Never underestimate the impact of a good story. Better yet, the impact of great visuals to enhance a good story and make it as engaging as possible. Elegant Themes has done just that with its 84th premium WordPress theme, Fable.

Fable Premium WordPress Theme is every writer’s delight. If you’ve ever wanted to publish your own writings to reach and influence an audience with your ideas and thoughts in a way that will engage them, Fable is the ideal theme for you. This latest theme from Elegant Themes is beautifully designed with its carefully chosen color styles and typography that will magically frame each post or article. Professional bloggers and serious writers will enjoy the way their posts are put in the spotlight and brought to the fore. Telling a story has never been as easy and as beautiful.

Fable was built with a Post Formats UI that’s a breeze to use. Its minimalist approach, wide and spacious layout, full width and long-format style, and overall relaxed design aesthetic makes for easy reading. Tablet and mobile users can simply grab a cuppa Joe, sit back and relax as they scroll through every post and get lost in your stories.

Fable is more than just fluff. This theme also contains other powerful features like a portfolio, an image gallery, shortcodes, and more. It comes with 4 different post formats – Article, Video, Gallery, and Quote – to support whatever literary whim you have at the moment. These different post types are individually designed to bring prominence to your post by giving it the “stage” that it needs. Its carefully chosen typography sets the tone of the whole theme, however, users can also select from the many font options to give their own sites the character that they want.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Unlimited Color Schemes
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Complete Localization

Fable Premium WordPress Theme includes perpetual updates, unparalleled support, and access more than 80+ high quality WordPress themes included in every Elegant Themes membership.

Get 80+ WordPress Themes For $39!

Beautiful WordPress Technology Themes For Inspiration

Imagine a world without technology. Difficult, isn’t it? No Internet, no computers, no cell-phones, no TV. Surely technology makes our lives easier and more technology makes our lives even easier. New inventions are made every now and then and they need the word to spread so that more and more people will know about them and may use them. In today’s world the Internet is one of the best options available to spread the word about anything. Other aspects like TV commercials, print media ads, posters, etc. are somewhat limited in the sense that they do not provide the “complete information” about a product.

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Around the WordPress Neighborhood

The WordPress community is comprised of people from all over the world – developers, designers, experts, users, writers, volunteers, and everyone else no matter what skill level they are at – movers and shakers who collaborate and contribute to enrich this ecosystem we belong to. We enhance our own knowledge and grow and improve by learning from one another and by opening ourselves to different perspectives and different points of views.

Here’s a roundup of useful articles from contributors in and around the WordPress community that we think you will find useful.

A Conversation with Om – by Siobhan McKeown

Siobhan McKeown is in search of WordPress users to feature in her book about WordPress and blogging and Om Malik is one of the people on her list. She shares Om’s blogging journey and how it has evolved since the early days. Siobhan McKeown is editor in chief at WP Realm and runs Words for WP, a copywriting service dedicated to WordPress service providers.

Contributing To WordPress – by Siobhan McKeown

If you have been wanting to be more involved in the WordPress community but didn’t know how or where to start, this article opens up the doors to how you can take part. This article shares why you should get involved and enumerates the many ways you can contribute, no matter what your skill set may be. Find out where you can plug your self in and be a proactive member of this dynamic community.

The Future of UI – How Mobile Design Is Shaping The Web – by Sarah Cannon

In this slideshare presentation, Sarah Cannon shares valuable insights on how smart mobile devices have impacted the web. She discusses the influence of mobile on design, trends, and implementation methods, as well as how touch is changing our lives. She also touches on topics such as HiDPI graphics, UI/UX patterns, touch target sizes, gestures, and managing expectations. All the while not losing track of what’s important: Content.

5 Ways to Support High-Density Retina Displays – by Craig Buckler (SitePoint)

In this article, Craig Buckler gives a quick rundown on how to support high retina displays. As hardware manufacturers move towards HD Retina Displays in all sorts of devices, Craig Buckler gives some practical advice on how to manage images and resolution. Craig Buckler is a Director of OptimalWorks, a UK Consultancy dedicated to building award winning websites.

What is a WordPress Child Theme – WPBeginner

p>This article published by WPBeginner is a very good and solid introduction to understanding how WordPress Child Themes work. It explains in detail what a WordPress Child theme is, its use, its advantages and disadvantages, and what to look for as far as picking a good parent theme. WPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site that provides tips, tricks, hacks, tutorials, and other WordPress resources geared towards WordPress beginners.

Business and Solutions – by Thomas Griffin

If you are a WordPress developer, author, or designer, Thomas Griffin’s insights regarding the how the WordPress marketplace is affecting developers like him. Read about his thoughts regarding Avada, Envato, and Genesis and his shift from being a developer into a marketer. Thomas Griffin is an expert WordPress developer, creator of hundreds of themes and plugins, WordCamp speaker, and a valuable contributor to WordPress products.

Redefining My Website – by Brian Gardner

Brian Gardner is well-known in the WordPress community and is the man behind StudioPress and the popular Genesis Framework. He has released several WordPress child theme designs that are currently being used ii and around the WordPresseaommundty. on about his current website redesign and glean insights from his creative journey.

Owning Your Content – A WordPress User’s Guide – Alex Denning (WPShout)

Interesting read about protecting and “owning” your content on the web as Alex Denning shares about protecting images, licensing content, and how social networking sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook impact how your images and content are treated. Alex Denning started WPShout around 4 years agoa as a collection of WordPress tutorials.

Finely Tuned Consultant – Aaron Campbell (WPEngine Interview)

WordPress professionals will glean a lot and learn valuable lessons and insights from WordPress Consultant Aaron Campbell in this interview published by WPEngine. Aaron shares his experiences as a WordPress professional and how he deals with the challenges faced by every WordPress consultant on the job. You can find more of Aaron Campbell’s work at Ran.ge

Migrating a Website to WordPress Is Easier Than You Think – Jonathan Wold

If you need are a WordPress beginner and you want to migrate an existing website to WordPress, this article gives you basic and concrete steps you can take to accomplish this. From evaluation, to set up, to importing content, to the actual migration and publishing, Jonathan Wold guides you through each process using instructions, code, video, and images. Jonathan Wold is a full-time business consultant and WordPress developer specializing in basic and advanced WordPress migrations.