One of my favorite features of Wordpress is the fact that it is so very customizable.  And it’s so very easy to add in pieces that maintains a level of control over the site without having to manually change PHP or HTML files.  You can access it all from within the back end of Wordpress.

You can customize these pieces and this extra control with Widgets.  I’m not going to go into to much detail here.  If you’ve been using Wordpress for very long you know what Widgets are.

The key point here is that you can add a Widget section and then easily control, add, edit the content of that section from the admin of Wordpress under the Appearance section.

Adding a Widget section is pretty straight forward even.  In your functions.php file, (or custom_functions.php for Thesis) you will just need to add something similar to the following line:

register_sidebar(array('name'=>'New Widget', 'before_title'=>'<h3>', 'after_title'=>'</h3>'));

The above is pretty simple right?  The “name” is set to whatever you want to call it.  And then you set the tags you want to wrap around the title. Make sure you use something descriptive for the name so you know what the widget is for.

After adding this to the function file you should be able to visit the Widgets section under Appearance and start adding Widgets to it immediately.

But we still have to decide where the widget is going to show up.

So in your template page you’ll need to add some code to set where the Widget shows up.  Usually you’ll add some default text that will display if there are no Widgets for that section yet.  Here’s an example, naturally you can style it how you want:

<div id="footer-widgeted">
<div>
<ul id="footer-widget">
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('New Widget') ) : ?>
<li>
<h3>Testing Widget Area</h3>
<p>This is an example of a widgeted area.</p>
</li>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>
</div>


That should do it. In a future post I’ll go into more detail and give some specific examples of adding widgets around a site.

If you’ve been online for very long you’ve probably clicked at least one link or visited some page that resulted in a 404 error.  I even went and asked a friend of mine, who is probably the most internet illiterate person I know, about 404 errors.  She immediately responded with oh yeah 404 I see that pop up sometimes, it means the page can’t be found or something right?  I just go back or leave immediately and try to find what I need elsewhere.

This is part of the problem I see everywhere.  When I do see a 404, the majority of the time, I usually notice that the error page is blaming me for going to a page that no longer exists.  And probably more than 90% of the time all I did to get there was click a link from some other website.  So how exactly is it my fault again?

Are you blaming your visitors for getting a 404 error?  And more importantly is it really their fault?  And even if it is their fault, is it better to take the blame and help them move to a page that does exist, or just go ahead and leave a default error page up and loose that visitor to the rest of the internet?

Personally, I feel responsible for all 404 errors that someone might get on my site.  The time the visitor might have clicked a link from Google that no longer exists.  Maybe they clicked a link from another blog where the other blogger typed the link wrong.

I should have been redirecting any pages I deleted to a suitable replacement.  Or I should be watching for incoming links to my site and if they are wrong redirecting them to appropriate pages.  The idea is that I feel I should be as proactive as possible to prevent 404 errors when possible, and when I fail to do so it is my fault.

There of course are some 404 errors that you can never find or be proactive to take care of, such as a visitor manually typing an address on your pages and ending up at a 404.  But even in this case I don’t want to just blame them and loose a visitor.  Instead I’d rather accept the blame and try to help that person the best I can to move into a legitimate page on my site.

So what are your thoughts?  Most people over look this area of their site, and maybe it’s not a huge issue, but when fine tuning your site it is something often overlooked.  How would you better your 404 error page?

I’ve been working with Wordpress it seems like forever. I’ve tried so many different Wordpress Themes that I couldn’t count them all.

You have free ones, and if you try them you know you get what you pay for. But free ones can still work if you are a developer, they’ll at least put you at a starting point to make your own creation.

There are a lot of paid ones as well. As in any market some better than others.

It’s all about what features you need, and how well each theme can fill those needs.

The best paid theme I’ve ever had the pleasure of using, is the Wordpress Thesis Theme. There are many themes/templates out there that meet specific needs for a niche set of websites, but the Thesis theme is probably the most flexible theme I’ve found.

And they just released a new version with all new features:

• custom file editor in your WordPress dashboard
• dropdown navigation menu
• comprehensive font color controls and new design controls

There are a lot of other improvements in regards to the general design of the theme as well. Plus what more could you want with the included SEO abilities. I think this one theme replaces the need for several plugins, which is very cool if you think of plugins in terms of overhead. (watch our blog for an article on this later this week)

About Thesis — Find out more about Thesis and the DIYthemes philosophy

Here’s their motto:

Thesis Theme Motto

They really meet this in my opinion. It’s always being improved upon.

I’m going to put together a video later this week to show off some of the Thesis features.

Wordpress IS the ultimate content management system and it’s progressing more with every update. On top of that, more and more very cool plugins and themes are being developed to help make your Wordpress sites the best they can be.

I did a post a while back about using Wordpress as a salesletter for your products and services.

In that post I talked about how you can use Wordpress to present your product or service salesletters and still get all of the huge SEO benefits that come with Wordpress.

Now I want to tell you about very cool WP Theme that ROCKS THE HOUSE when it comes to selling products and services and using Wordpress.

The theme is call “FlexSqueeze” and it’s AMAZING!

This one theme lets you have BOTH a normal Wordpress blog AND separate pages in full salesletter and “SqueezePage” format.

This is the ULTIMATE Wordpress theme right now.

Imagine being able to have all of the power of normal search engine optimized WP blog, and being able to setup special optin and product pages that are built to convert more people into buys and still have the powerful WP SEO built right in.

It’s amazing.

With all of the search engine changes and it getting harder to get really good SE ranks without some sort of a blog or power system behind your sites, this is the perfect time to start using Wordpress as much as possible for ALL of your websites.

“FlexSqueeze” is an all-in-one answer.

• Listing building - covered
• Salesletters - covered
• Normal blogging - covered

And when you add the power of other WP plugins like All-In-One SEO and Twitter Tools and some of the other more powerful plugins, you’re blog is going to skyrocket and you’ll see more optins and customers.

So – should you get the “FlexSqueeze” theme?

Well, are you serious about blogging and making money – that’s the question you should be asking yourself.

If you are serious, then YES! – if you’re not that serious, just go get a free theme from the Wordpress theme site.

I recommend “FlexSqueeze” though

So there I was, looking around the search engines for some new info, tools and resources to help my coaching clients with their WP blogs, and I came across this very interesting “Cheat Sheet” for WP themes.

Now I think it’s safe to say to that most people know having a custom WP theme has huge benefits, but most people out there don’t know anything about the subject.

So, I wanted to share it with you…

The WordPress Help Sheet includes the following:

* Basic Template Files
* PHP Snippets for the Header
* PHP Snippets for the Templates
* And Extra Stuff for WordPress

Read More At: http://wpcandy.com/articles/tutorials/the-wordpress-help-sheet.html

Having a “Cheat Sheet” is a great benefit and much needed resource for even the seasoned pro when it comes to WP themes.

I recommend go to the address above and grabbing a copy of the “Cheat Sheet” now – it’s FREE which makes it even better as a needed resources