If you are just staring out with WordPress and wondering which plug-ins to use, listed below are a few you may want to consider.

Prevent comment spammers with the Akismet plugin. Most web hosts are smart enough to include Akismet by default with their WordPress automatic installers. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend you get it.

W3 Total Cache enhances the speed/performance of your blog exponentially.  Though it can be a bit server resource heavy. As an alternative you can use WP-Super Cache.

Broken Link Checker checks broken links across your blog on a regular basis. This will be very helpful to have as your site changes over time.

Contact Form 7 allows you to create a customized contact form on your WordPress site. All entries are sent to an email address of your choosing. The best thing about this plugin versus others is that it is AJAX based. So it loads faster and easier on the server. A faster blog is a stickier blog that visitors will stay on for longer periods of time.

You can use WP-DBManager to send you regular backups of your blog by email or save them directly to the server. This is a very important part of managing a WordPress blog. WordPress hacks/accidents aren’t as common as they used to be but they still can happen. You can use Vaultpress as another alternative but it’s a paid service.

If you know nothing about making your WordPress blog more secure then WP Security Scan is an excellent plugin to help you figure it out. It also provides protections of its own.

WPtouch makes it so your website/blog is formatted for any visitor using a mobile device (iPhone, Android, iPad etc.) In this day and age, more and more people are visiting websites from mobile devices so its an important consideration to keep in mind.

1) You can learn CSS and do it from scratch.  CSS and PHP are the basic building blocks of WordPress. There are other technical languages you might want to pick up as well. A good place to start learning CSS and PHP is at ThinkVitamin.com

2) You can design a mock-up of your website in Photoshop or other creative type software or even draw/paint and then scan your work. Once you’ve created a picture of what you want your template to look like you can send it to a designer who can cut it up into pieces which can then be used to compose a wordpress template you can easily use.

3) You can simply pay a designer to design the wordpress design for you, although this could prove to be costly depending on whom you hire and how much work needs to be done.

4) You can design your own wordpress template using Artisteer without touching a bit of code. Artisteer has a nice what-you-see-is-what-you-get  interface that makes designing your on wordpress template easy and fun.

5) If you are a windows user you can use an Adobe Photoshop plug-in called Divine that will cut your design into a wordpress template for you. Right now there is only a windows version of the plug-in. I am eagerly anticipating their mac version of the plugin..

Shared hosting is a wonderful thing but it still has its caveats. That is, some people will encounter wordpress memory limit problems when they administer their websites. I came across this problem recently when I started getting 404 errors after making posts and trying to re-configure one of my websites using the theme settings. I inquired with my web host provider Dreamhost and was told that my websites were approaching the memory limit.

They gave me advice on how to track and reduce my memory usage and also mentioned that I could simply upgrade to a private server account in order to increase my memory threshold. This disappointed me a bit because I wasn’t quite prepared to extend the budget for web hosting just yet.

That said, I tried to figure out a few more ways to reduce my memory limit with a little research and tinkering on my own. I’ll list my findings below:

1) Examine Your Scripts

In my case I had a bad script which was putting visible gobblety gook on the header of my web page. It was a problem I noticed but didn’t realize was related to my memory/page speed problems. Bad scripts can slow down a page significantly. You most likely wont have any added scripts if you are just starting out but as you implement other features into your website you may be required to paste a script or two into your header and this is where the problems can start.

2) Use Firebug

You can test for all web page loading elements by using the Firefox browser and the FireBug add in. Speed page is another tool you can use and it

I’ve been quite interested in the Thesis WordPress theme because it’s one of the most talked about themes out there and for a very good reason.

Why Thesis Is Better

Thesis is one of the best WordPress themes you can have because of the supreme flexibility it offers as well as the SEO advantages.  Just like many before me, I was frustrated with tweaking previously created WordPress themes. Thesis is designed to with airtight code so it loads faster. No matter how you change the look of your website, the underlying primal code remains unchanged and this is quite important from an SEO point of view.

The default Thesis theme will give you a basic working website right out of the box. The settings panel is very detailed with options for changing the fonts, colors, scripts and a large number of other settings. Any changes you want to make are made to only two custom files within the Thesis panel interface, which makes customizing it much easier. A big plus is being able to upload your header and faveicon files directly to the website.

The Thesis Options Panel

Thesis Unique Hooks Feature

What makes Thesis unique is a system called hooks. Basically it allows you to design your website and put things exactly where you want them. The Thesis website references tell you where these hooks are and several websites out there actually

Setting up a contact form for your wordpress blog is easy. You will want to have one your webpage especially if you are running a business website because it would be a good business practice. Its just good etiquette no matter what kind of website you have to make it possible for people to contact you. A Contact form on your website doesn’t mean having to list your name, address or even your email address. In fact this is one of the worst ways to make yourself accessible to the public. It’s just too easy for crazy people to contact you, not to mention you will be spammed to high heaven. The contact form I’m about to describe will make it easy for people to contact you without