If you have your own hosted WordPress blog it is very important to back up WordPress. It may not happen often but things can and do go wrong. Your host might fail, your WordPress installation could get hacked or you might have made an error and need to roll things back to the way they were before.  So just to be safe back it up. Its easy to do and doesn’t cost anything so there is no reason not to.

Here are some tools to make it easier and carefree:

WP-DBManager

Use this plugin to back up, restore and optimize your database. Optimizing is a great feature because it will help your WordPress blog run faster and more efficiently especially as your blog grows larger in size. You can schedule your backups and have them stored on server or emailed to you. Basically this is a set and forget type of solution I like. I’m sure you will too. Additional features include things like dropping and emptying tables are also available, but use these with extra caution and always use the backup feature first.

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.

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

I’m sure you’ve come across many free wordpress themes on the internet by now. I’ve seen many of these myself and was quite tempted to use these starting out. However, what you need to remember is there is no such thing as a free lunch and in the case of free WordPress Themes this is very often true.

With few exceptions, Webmasters make these free wordpress themes available to you because they want your website to serve as a linkback to them. How would you be linking back to them you say? Well they have built in weblinks to their websites in the theme you’ve downloaded. The reason back links are valuable to them is for two

So I’ve worked long and hard at this project of mine, and that is trying to figure out which WordPress Themes I was going to buy for my website. I was done with trying to make a free WordPress theme work. It was just too much of a hassle and the lack of tech support and options to customize it was making want to pull my hair out.

So if my experience hasn’t convinced you, I’ve listed quite a few more reasons why you might want to purchase a premium WordPress theme:

1) More Control: You have more control of your website appearance and functionality as some of the better premium themes come with customization options that you can easily change without having to edit the code itself. Yes, WordPress is easy but its not that easy. Website themes or templates make it easier for you to customize your site the way you want it to look and function. I’ve found that free themes are some of the hardest themes to work with if you have no knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP code and have bigger ideas in mind for your website.

2) Tech Support: Professional WordPress Suppliers almost always provide tech support to purchasers of their WordPress themes.

3) HTML/Browser Compliance: You can be assured that the theme is professionally made and internet code compliant from a trusted source.

4) Free Upgrades: When you buy a WordPress theme from a reputable source, all future upgrades are usually provided for free or at a low cost.

WordPress Logo

So you may just be getting acquainted with WordPress. Luckily for you there is a great deal of information here on this website and elsewhere on the net. WordPress is a super platform to use, with a lot of scale. You can create just about any type of website you want by using your imagination and the right tools.

In order to host your own website and install wordpress, the first resource you would want to visit is the WordPress.org website. This website is different from the other website WordPress.com which offers visitors a free hosted blog to anyone who wants to start one without having to go through the trouble of purchasing a host account and installing WordPress themselves.

WordPress.org has a great deal of documentation as well. Don’t worry about remembering all the details in the there, just give it a glance over and then try to start working on your website as there’s nothing better than just seeing it for yourself and getting to know first hand. You will see that WordPress is pretty easy to get started with, as you become more familiar with it you will easily be able to implement some of the more advanced features or even design a WordPress template or design on your own.

You will also find the installation files at WordPress.org if you decide to run it locally on your computer for testing. You don’t have to download these files to the website on your hosting account, as your hosting provider will most likely have them there as an easy “one-click” install.

WordPress.org also has some very helpful forums where members can troubleshoot problems and discuss various issues.

The next article will detail how to install WordPress on your domain once you are up and running.