A new version of Wordpress was released – 2.8. The best improvement is the posibility to install new wordpress theme from the Admin area and thus eliminating the frustrating moments when you needed to download a theme, upload the files to your blog via FTP and then install it. It`s simpler and less time consuming.

More details at: wordpress.org

WordPress have just launched a new security release, version 2.3.3. It’s recommended that you upgrade immediately to the new version. A flaw was found in our XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow any valid user to edit posts of any other user on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.

The absolute easiest way to upgrade your WordPress installation is to use the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. It takes care of everything and all you have to do is click a few buttons. Database backup, downloading the latest version, cleaning up the installation files, everything done with just a few clicks. You can upgrade 10 blogs in 10 minutes with this plugin installed.

One of the problems that many people encounter when it comes to making money online is that they don’t know what keywords to cover. Knowing the hot and the long tail keywords can make a huge difference in the make money online business.

Imagine a major event like a world cup in soccer, followed on TV by hundreds of millions of people. Take a piece of paper and write all the possible topics that people will search online in this case.

Let’s see what we can come up with:

Country Information – people will look for information on the host countries, the stadiums, the weather and the cities that will host the matches.

Travel – tickets, hotels, rental cars, clubs and probably the price of beer, are things that people will be interested in for such an event.

Betting – another widely searched area that has a huge number of searches during important events. Keywords specific for certain matches, information on what players are missing or the teams history are all hot in the days before a match.

Teams And Players – the main focus of this event, this area will see a huge increase in searches.

Matches – while these happen just one time, and the searches for them die soon after that, they can still bring a huge boost in visitors for a few days.

There are a lot of opportunities for getting visitors in major events, and you have to look at the entire picture in these cases. As you can see, in a world cup these is so much more then just the matches.

It would be best to have a site or blog that is focused on that topic though, so look for major events in the area covered by your site. Writing about a World Cup when you have a gadget blog will not be very effective.

One of the constant goals in the life of a blogger that is trying to make money online, is gathering backlinks for his articles. Improving your authority should be natural in the best case scenario, but you can still give your blog a nudge in the right direction, by using social bookmarking sites.

All you have to do is create a user account on one or more of these social bookmarking sites, submit the url of the article you want to promote, add a description, a title and some tags that are related, and submit. That’s it. The search engines will index the links and your backlinks count will grow.

Many of these sites will also bring you visitors, so it’s a double advantage. More people from the search engines as your authority increases, extra visitors from social bookmarking sites, all this will help with your RSS subscription numbers and your monetization efforts.

Reaching the frontpage of Digg.com can bring 50,000 visitors in 24 hours and get you backlinks from other blogs. I’ve seen articles that got 80,000 visitors from StumbleUpon, if they were of high quality and were submitted to a popular category.

This method can also be used to index a new site or blog very fast. Writing a few quality articles and submitting them to different social media sites can get your site indexed in 24-48 hours.

Notepad Revolution theme for Wordpress is specially designed for those who want a nice looking profesional theme. Everything is placed just in the right spot and each color is user friendly and makes you want to never leave the page.

The theme works perfectly under Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and other major browsers.

Demo | Download

While many start blogs to make money of them, most understand that the way to reach that goal is to increase the RSS numbers. There are a number of ways that you can optimize the blog to gain extra RSS readers, though your absolute best bet is to create great content:

• use both RSS and Email Subscription links. Depending on the niche you’re in, you will see the readers use either one or the other more. I’ve seen niches with 3-5% email subscriptions and others with 90%. The more technical the niche, the better the chance that the reader knows what RSS is.
• put them above the fold in a place that can be seen easily. Don’t hide those subscription links. The reader shouldn’t have to go looking for them.
• put reminders in your posts. Probably better at the end of a post, telling the reader that if they enjoyed reading that article they can subscribe and get them regularly.
• create a page where you explain what RSS is and link to it from the front page.

Though WordPress is a superb CMS when it comes to blogging, you might find yourself looking for an alternative. There are plenty of options out there, as you can see below, so all you need is check them out and see if you’re interested in anything.

Before checking them out, you should know a few things that you need to look for:
if it’s secure. Look in forums and reviews, search with google for any information about hacked blogs that use that CMS
if it’s supported and still worked on
how active is the webmaster community behind it. New plugins and themes are made by the community, so you need to have an active group that support the software.
make a list of pro’s and con’s of the software when compared with WordPress
test it yourself on a sub-domain

Here are a few possible WordPress alternatives:
b2evolution
boastMachine
Dotclear
Eggblog
LifeType
Loudblog
Nucleus CMS
sBlog
Serendipity
SimplePHPBlog
Simplog
Textpattern
WB News
Wheatblog
WikyBlog
ZompLog

Enjoy the search!

New bloggers tend to believe that all they need to be successful is good content or plenty of promotion to become successful. However, for some reason people don’t actually do what they think it’s necessary to succeed. A good tip when starting a new blog is to choose a topic that you can blog about for years to come. If you’re not passionate about the subject, the chances that you’ll be able to write hundreds of posts on the matter are low. There are plenty of mistakes new bloggers do, but here are 5 that are more common: Not being original – repeating what others say in a different form is a common mistake for bloggers. That might happen because they either don’t put in the time to write original content, or because they don’t know enough of the industry to write in-depth articles. Afraid to speak their mind – this can come in hand with the lack of originality. Just because the majority has an opinion, it doesn’t mean bloggers should be silent if they feel different. As long as it’s based by facts, it goes hand in hand with what blogging is all about, conversation. Promoting a blog before it’s ready – a common enough mistake, where people start promoting their blogs before they have enough content to show. Having at the absolute minimum 5 posts (preferably more then 10), allows any new visitors to get a feeling of what the blog is about, and to subscribe if they enjoy the content. Not being focused – when looking to attract a certain crowd to your blog, it’s best not to overwhelm them with topics they’re not interested in. For example, with a technology blog, talking about cars can prove boring to some of your readers. So, instead of having the full potential to be interesting, you’re dropping the percentage. Growing a blog takes time – if you’re giving up after just 3 months, then you’ve wasted a good portion of your life. A blog can take a year or more to take off, so patience is the key, and consistent blogging. Mistakes are done by all new bloggers. What’s important is that you learn from them and you don’t repeat them.

A nice and simple Wordpress Theme made specially for those who go by the KISS(Keep It Simple Stupid) motto.

Download Green Lemon WP theme | Live Demo

In their November wrap-up, WordPress.com announced that 198,000 new blogs were created on their site alone. This makes one wonder what kind of voice a blogger needs to have in order to be noticed, in this sea of content and opinions. As more and more blogs are launched (and abandoned), I think that the marketing skills of bloggers will become increasingly important. It’s no longer enough to write unique content of high quality. Knowing how to market your articles, promote them and network with other bloggers will make the difference between the occasional visitor and the blazing success that many of us dream of. Things that combined make the difference between 10 subscribers and 2,000 subscribers after a month: Quality over quantity when it comes to content. True in most cases. In news type blogs like those announcing new gadgets or car news, quantity is important as the number of daily news is very high. In most cases though, 3 high quality posts per week will bring much more benefits then 15 of them, but of lesser quality. Networking skills. If you can network with other bloggers, links and subscribers will come much easier. Each new blogger you talk to from your field can mean a new subscriber. So why not take the time to send a courtesy email to other bloggers in your niche and get to meet them. Marketing your articles. Mastering social media and bookmarking sites, sending emails to other when you have very high quality articles, creating buzz about your blog, are all traits that can make the difference between a regular blog and a rock star. Search Engine Optimization. When it comes to getting search engine visitors, you have to make sure that your site is ready to receive them. Make the content easy to read by spiders and extremely valuable to people. Keep the size of the pages small, so both spiders and humans are able to read your pages easily. All things considered, hard work is probably the biggest obstacle for most bloggers. Those that succeed have many hours of writing and promotion behind them. What about you?