SimpleBlogger is an easy to use, lightweight yet advance WordPress theme that can be easily customized to make your own. You can choose your background color, background image and custom logo. It comes equipped with Facebook, Twitter, a built in email subscription form, multilevel drop down menu, threaded comments, etc.

It has 3 footer widgets, sidebar widgets and a featured posts slideshow. All features can be easily updated from the theme settings page without any complications, hence the name SimpleBlogger, it’s designed to be used by anyone out the box. WordPress version 3.0+.

Download: SimpleBlogger
Demo: Theme Preview

I have tested the theme for the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer:
  • 6.0, 7.0, 8.0 – All features work as designed.
• Firefox:
  • 3.0, 3.5 – All features work as designed.
• Safari:
  • 4.0+ – All features work as designed on both Windows and Mac
• Opera:
  • 8+ – Works as designed, except for rounded borders and shadows
• Chrome:
  • 2.0 – All features work as designed.

The theme is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Please feel free to pitch in with comments and bug reports.

Share/Save

Here’s  a list of  plugins that I find useful and I think most of you guys will find useful also. They are not listed in any particular order.  You can search and easily install them by name from the backend of WordPress.

FD Feedburner Plugin

This plugin redirects WordPress main feed and all existing feeds to feedburner making it easy for all users to subscribe to your website, it’s easy to install and very simple to use. This plugin is pretty straight forward and there is hardly anything else to do with the plugin after it’s installed and you enter your email – also don’t forget to  re-direct your feed url to your feedburner account – alot of people forget this step. Once it’s installed – visit your feedburner account and set everything according to your likings – making it easier  for visitors to  subscribe.

Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on your WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. This is a must have plug-in,  it gives all your website traffic data from Google analytics directly on your blog, it can be setup to be displayed in the back end or as a widget.

Google XML sitemaps

Here’s another very useful WordPress plugin, this is one of my personal favorite, it automatically updates your sitemap and notifies the Search engines every time you make a new post or make a change to your website.

Wp-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your website’s database, I would recommend installing it (a must have!) and scheduled to backup your WordPress Database, it’s important to backup your site on a regular basis as you never know when something could go wrong and if does you’ll be prepared.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/ <–download here

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button

This plug-in helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader. The reason why this one is mentioned is because I see alot of blogs using it.

Advance Most Recent Posts

Advanced Most Recent Posts Widget displays your most recent posts with thumbnail images  in any widget areas. It gets posts from selected categories, the user can define the categories, the size of the photos, and the number of posts to display, it’s really useful and simple for people who want’s to display post images in their sidebar. Check out to it –> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-most-recent-posts/

All in One SEO Pack

Here’s another essential plugin, optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (SEO).

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a very powerful and yet simple contact form, you can use this form to make complex forms with ease, within minutes if that long. Forms that usually takes forever to built now is much easier with this. No coding needed, I’ve used other contact forms and this one is the easiest but still advance. It works great for the average person.

My Adsense Plugin

Just about any adsense plug-in is a useful plug-in as they allow you to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. That’s why this was listed.

Please comment and share with us YOUR favorite and  must have plugins.

Share/Save

1. Create link clusters within your blog

A link cluster is a group of links that you can point at a post or page to improve its search engine ranking. Let’s say you have a post that’s ranked for ’stupid business ideas’. Edit 10 of your other posts to create links (using ’stupid business ideas’ as the anchor text) to the ’stupid business ideas’ post and you will surely move up in Google for that keyword. This process can be implemented in about 10 minutes and can be used for any keyword your site ranks for or is trying to rank for.

2. Rework HTML title tags of trafficked posts

By watching your stats, you can often identify posts that get search traffic from a keyword, even though the keyword isn’t listed in the HTML title of the post. By editing your posts’ HTML titles to add the keywords they cover, you can strengthen the rankings and therefore the traffic that the post generates. You can easily make a difference with this method in less than 20 minutes. This method combines very well with #1.

3. Invite your readers to connect with you on StumbleUpon and Facebook

You can never ever have too many friends on SU and Facebook. Inviting existing readers to find you on these services with a post should take less than 20 minutes.

4. Save your best posts for the best times of the week

Writing a home-run post on a Saturday afternoon will probably happen from time to time. However, does your blog have good traffic on Saturdays? Analyzing your blog’s stats to determine when it naturally has the most traffic can get more eyes on a great post, which will translate to more social votes and more links. If you have created the post of your life, wait for a good day to publish – it will cost you about 1 minute on a later date to put it up.

5. Edit your post one more time

How can you improve your title? How can you improve your first paragraph? Small details in your post, especially in the beginning of your post, can make an enormous difference in its ability to draw social traffic and links. You can definitely improve your title, first paragraph, formatting, and grammar within 30 minutes.

6. Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems

Surfers become readers when a blog provides something that is wanted. A casual visitor may read your blog because they find training, answers to problems, entertainment, or something else they want. This more than likely will mean that they won’t want to read about you, your girlfriend, your cats, your kids, or your catastrophes (unless you have a personal blog that your friends read). Discontinuing the off-topic posts will help you to develop more repeat traffic and takes exactly 0 minutes to implement.

7. Subscribe to the feeds of your industry’s major players

That way, you won’t miss important news releases. When news breaks in your industry, there will be a lot of extra traffic searching for information on the event. Adding your thoughts will almost always generate extra traffic. Subscribing to the feeds of your industry’s top sites should take no more than 15 minutes.

8. Give a great post to a prominent blog

Let’s say that you took the time to write something great. Donating your post to a great blogger can help you to create a win-win. The great blogger gets a great piece of content that will bring him social traffic and links and you can create exposure for your name and brand. Emailing your post to a great blogger or blog takes less than 10 minutes.

9. Go to the store

Look at magazines. Pay special attention to the types of titles that are used on the covers. Write down the most interesting titles and think about what makes them interesting. In order to generate buzz around a post, a great title is an absolute necessity. More on this topic here:  You should be able to find some good title ideas in about 30 minutes.

10. Answer your email and comment questions

Nothing will show a reader that you care more than answering an question (even if you have already answered that question 100 times on your site). Why do people read your blog? Because you solve their problems. Why will they come back again and again to your blog? Because you solve their problems. Answering a person’s email or comment question should take less than 5 minutes.

Share/Save

1. Create a dedicated e-mail account to be used solely for posting to your blog, 2. Configure WordPress to access that account, and 3. Configure WordPress to publish messages from the e-mail account

You can blog by e-mail using most standard e-mail software programs or a Weblog Client http://codex.wordpress.org/Weblog_Client — a program specifically designed to send posts via email.

Setting Up Post via E-mail

Step 1 – Create an e-mail account

1. Log in to WordPress with the administration login you use to administer your WordPress blog. 2. Go to Options > Writing. 3. Read the instructions under *Post via e-mail* at the bottom of the page. At the end of these instructions, WordPress will suggest three random strings of numbers you may want to use for the login name of the new e-mail account you’ll create. 4. Create a new e-mail account on your web host’s mail server or a separate e-mail server, using one of the suggested numeric strings (or your own secret word) for the username (also called a “login name”). A mail server receives e-mails on your behalf and stores them for retrieval. Do *not* use public, free e-mail servers like Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., for this account. *Note:* It is strongly recommended that you use a “secret” address – that is, an e-mail account name that is very difficult to guess and known only to you, such as those suggested by WordPress. Any e-mail sent to this address will automatically be posted to your blog. Be aware, however, that some e-mail servers do not allow numbers-only e-mail accounts or accounts starting with a number. Please check with your web host.

Step 2 – Configure WordPress to access your new account

1. When you are done creating the new e-mail account , return to the Writing Options panel and fill in the name of the *mail server* and *port number* your web hosting provider uses. (If you don’t know these, refer to your web hosting provider’s FAQ or manual pages. The port number is usually 110.) 2. Next, enter the /login name/ and /password/ for your new e-mail account . *NOTE:* In the Login Name field, use the full e-mail address (e.g., user@example.com). 3. Choose the default category that will be assigned to posts submitted via e-mail. 4. Click *Update Options* .

*NOTE:* If you are using the Administration http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels > Settings http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels#Writing > Writing http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Writing_SubPanel > Post via e-mail section http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Writing_SubPanel#Post_via_e-mail to specify the e-mail address /before/ you’ve actually created the e-mail account, remember to use the same login and password when you create the account as you specified in the section.

Step 3 – Publish Your E-mail Posts

You’ve created the new e-mail account and configured your WordPress blog to accept e-mails from that account, but you still need to set up WordPress to publish those e-mail messages on your blog. Do one of the following:

*Manual Browser Activation*

Go to the following link http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php immediately after you send an e-mail to your new e-mail account. (*Note:* You must do this every time you send a new post.)

*Automated Browser Activation*

An alternative to manual browser activation is to add the following iframe code to the footer of your blog:

||

Edit the above line of code so that it refers to the location of your wp-mail.php file. Add this line of code to the footer.php file in the directory for whatever theme you are using (don’t include it within an HTML paragraph).

You may have to refresh your blog to see the new post. New users may find this method the most helpful.

If you’re using or would like to use the Postie Plugin http://www.economysizegeek.com/wp-mail/ for WordPress, use the following iframe code, which will call Postie’s check mail commands:

Add this code to your footer, and the next time anyone goes to your blog, your new emails will be automatically posted, so you need to do nothing but send them. You may have to refresh the blog to see the changes.

*WP-Cron Plugin Activation*

Download, install, and activate the WP-Cron http://skippy.net/plugin-wp-cron Plugin. It will work in the background without user intervention to update your site about every 15 minutes.

*Cron Job Activation*

Set up a UNIX cron job to have your blog periodically view http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php using a command-line HTTP agent like wget, curl or GET. The command to execute will look like:

wget -N http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php

If you use a different program than wget, substitute that program and its arguments for wget in this line.

*Note:* Another possibility is to run “php /full/path/to/wp-mail.php” in a cronjob. This will run the php-script using php, without the need for an extra program to run. (You are more likely authorized to run php than wget.)

For more information about setting up a cron job, see:

* Intro To Cron Jobs http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html * Automating tasks with cron services at USAIL http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/usail/automation/cron.html * Your hosting provider’s FAQ or manual pages

*Note to Windows Users:* There are similar programs to cron available if your host runs Windows. For example, VisualCron http://www.visualcron.com, Cron for Windows http://cronw.sourceforge.net/ and pycron http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://sourceforge.net/projects/pycron/&e=1102&mr=8,2%21619021,%21a:sr4. Consult these projects’ documentation for further information.

*Procmail Activation*

If your server uses procmail http://www.procmail.org/, a simple .procmailrc in the blogmailaccounts home directory will be sufficient:

Shell=/bin/sh MAILDIR=$HOME/.maildir/ DEFAULT=$MAILDIR :0 { :0Wc ./ :0 | wget -N http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php }

This could be more specific, such as capturing certain subject expressions. Check procmail http://www.procmail.org/ for more information.

*.qmail Activation*

If your server uses qmail to process e-mail, you may be able to use it to call wp-mail.php whenever an e-mail message is delivered. To do this, first create a small shell script to call wp-mail.php. You could call the file wp-mail:

#!/bin/sh /bin/sh -c “sleep 5; /path/to/php /path/to/your/blog/wp-mail.php > /dev/null” &

The sleep command causes a 5-second delay to allow qmail to finish processing the message before wp-mail.php is called. Note that the ampersand on the end of the line is required. The above script should go in your root directory, and the execute bit should be set (chmod 700). For debugging purposes, you could change /dev/null to a filename to save the output generated by wp-mail.php.

Then all you need to do create/modify the appropriate .qmail file to call your shell script. Add the following line to the .qmail file for your mailbox name:

|/path/to/your/root/directory/wp-mail

See your ISP’s documentation for use of .qmail files. Naming conventions may vary for different ISPs.

Email Format

WordPress will use the Subject line of your email for the title of the post, and all body of the email will be used as the content of the post, with /common HTML tags stripped/. WordPress will file the post under whichever category is selected for “Usual Category” in Step 1, and will use Site Admin as the poster.

Posting by email does not support attachments and any attachments sent with the email will appear in their raw form in the blog post.

Testing

To test your configuration, simply send an e-mail to yournewaccount@yourmaildomain (or to user@yourmaildomain if you used the .qmail forwarding setup). Then do the following:

* If you have no automated system set up, simply view http://example.com/installdir/wp-mail.php in your browser. The script should tell you that it found an e-mail, and print details of the post it made. Then view your blog again to see your email posted. * If you are using an iframe code in your footer, refresh your browser to see the new post. * If you are using WP-Cron, simply wait fifteen or twenty minutes. * If you have a cron job running, wait until the next time it’s scheduled to run (or temporarily edit the cron job to make it run sooner). If you run tail -f /var/log/cron in a terminal, you’ll be able to see the job create its log entry when it’s finished running. When that happens, just view the site in your web browser to see your email posted. * Your email may be recorded with a post status of ‘Pending Review’ rather than ‘Published’. If the status is ‘Pending Review’, then the post will be visible in the Dashboard but will not be visible in the Blog. By default, wp-mail.php will validate the sending email address against the email addresses for authorized users. If the email address is found, the post status will be ‘Published’, otherwise the status will be ‘Pending Review’.

Troubleshooting

If you receive the following error messages, follow the procedures below.

*Error Message:*

Ooops POP3: premature NOOP OK, NOT an RFC 1939 Compliant server

For this error, open wp-includes/class-pop3.php and change this line:

if($this->RFC1939) {

to this:

if(!$this->RFC1939) {

Note the exclamation point.

*Error Message:* There does not seem to be any new mail

This error is a bit of a misnomer – the test just checks to see if anything was retrieved.

If you’re feeling adventuresome, open

wp-mail.php

and search for:

$count = $pop3->login(get_settings(‘mailserver_login’), get_settings(‘mailserver_pass’));

Change the lines following it to something like:

if (0 == $count) : echo “There does not seem to be any new mail.
n”; echo “count = $count
n”; echo “$pop3->ERROR n”; exit; endif;

You’ll then be presented with a more informative message.

The e-mail server may be refusing connections that attempt to provide an unencrypted password – like POP3. If your webserver and e-mail server are on the same physical computer, you can specify localhost or 127.0.0.1 as the mail server. That traffic is assumed to be OK without encryption because it never traveled across the network.

Extensions and Add-ons

There are several add-ons and hacks that will extend the capabilities of posting by e-mail with WordPress. Some of these may involve changing the core files, so do it carefully and *make backups*.

Enhanced Functionality Hack

One replacement file for the original wp-mail.php file has been created:

* Postie http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/postie supports posting to categories, automatic removal of email signatures, POP3/IMAL (+SSL) and more.

Hack E-mail Format

The following enhancements may be made to your wp-mail.php so your e-mail will be translated into metadata for your post:

Sender’s e-mail address The enhanced wp-mail.php looks up the email address you send from in its user database. If there is a match with any user there, it files the post under that user. If there is no match, it drops the e-mail and does not create a post in the blog. (Great for security and spam prevention.) It is set by the *From* field. Subject line If [n] is present anywhere in the subject line of your email, the e-mail will be filed under the category numbered n. Otherwise, it will be posted under whichever category is selected for “Usual Category” in Step 1. Example: [1] This is a Test! would be posted as “This is a Test!”, filed under General.

Blog By Email From Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and Hotmail

By default, most web-based email clients send messages in HTML formatting, which WordPress’s blog-by-email feature filters out.

To get around this, you must select “plain text” before sending.

In Yahoo! Mail, the button for switching to plain text is just to the right of the SUBJECT field. In Gmail a similar button is located at the right end of the text formatting tool bar. Hotmail’s is found next to the SPELL CHECK button in the email action bar which is located above the email message.

Share/Save