Saturday, December 20, 2008

100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes

from smashmagzing
High-quality WordPress themes always come in handy. Whether you are looking for some design inspiration or professional coding solutions — in both cases you can learn a lot, you can apply them and you can build customized designs upon them without reinventing the wheel all the time.
In this article we present 100 free high-quality WordPress themes. Together with hundreds of other designs, these themes have been manually selected, installed and tested over the last weeks. They all can be downloaded, customized and used for free in both personal and commercial projects. Links to demo-versions provide a direct preview of a theme.
Please notice that the listed WordPress themes are presented in 8 sections: vibrant themes, simple & minimalistic themes, magazine style, grid-based, clean and legible, advanced, experimental, photoblog & videoblog.
You might also want to take a look at our previous selections:
83 Beautiful WordPress ThemesAn overview of beautiful, but rather unknown themes you might have missed.
21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant ThemesA quite pretty selection of elegant yet well thought-out themes.
10 Fresh and Clean ThemesThe beauty of these themes lies in their clean look supported by a legible content presentation.
13 Wordpress Magazin-Themesfrom Dr. Web Magazine
You want them — you get them. This page may take a while to load; therefore please be patient and don’t hit “Reload” too often.
1. Vibrant WordPress Themes
PFO Stripes [ Demo ]

PFO Business [ Demo ]

FFF Lemon Twist (Demo and Download)

Several3 [ Demo ]
Adreu r2 [ Demo ]

Blogging Pro Theme [ Demo ]

DM-Bloodless [ Demo]
Illacrimo [ Demo ]

Elixir

Insense [ Demo ]

Zeke 1.0 [ Demo ]

jsThemeComes with a number of themes.

Smashing Theme [ Demo ]

DarkRed [ Demo ]

Gossip City [ Demo ]

Resurrection
Blue Steel

River Run

Yoghourt

Midsight Red & Brown[ Demo ]The original page was virus-infected, the link is replaced with its text-version until the site will be cleaned.

Fluid Yellow Black

xPlosive Reloaded [ Demo ]

Red Stamp [ Demo ]

Dilectio [ Demo ]

Fauna

dfMarine [ Demo ]

Curved WordPress Theme [ Demo ]

Accord WordPress Theme [ Demo ]

2. Simple, Minimalistic Themes
iA

Modicus 0.2

Modern [ Demo ]

Documentation [ Demo ]

Jentri [ Demo ]

miniBits [ Demo ]

GIMP Style

Dayvan Theme [ Demo ]

Tree Theme [Demo ]

DePo Clean WordPress Theme [ Demo ]

BlueBird 1.0

Balance
Paisley [ Demo ]

Autumn

Brilliance [ Demo ]

Pixelate

Pockett [ Demo ]

Artuell [ Demo ]

Plane Jane

Briny

Elite

Blue Moon

3. Magazine Style WordPress Themes
WP Premium [ Demo ]

Modicus Remix

Morning After

Futurosity Magazine [ Demo ]

Structure Wordpress Theme [ Demo ]

Visionary Wordpress Theme [ Demo ]

WP Polaroid [ Demo ]

Overstand Theme

Jello Wala Mello Wordpress Theme

4. Grid-Based WordPress Themes
Gridline Lite [ Demo ]

Refreshed: Grid Focus

5. Calm, Clean and Legible Themes
Sharpfolio

Coldblue

Cubismo [ Demo ]

Yomel [ Demo ]
Lust Wordpress Theme

Abstractia [ Demo ]

HemingwayEx [ Demo ]

Blubbr

Ayumi [ Demo ]

Greenway 3C

K2-U3 [ Demo ]

OldLamp [ Demo ]

Prima [ Demo ]

ProSense

Insan [ Demo ]

Sakeena [ Demo ]

Margot

The Azure Hut

Livegreen [ Demo ]

Simpress [ Demo ]

Glued Ideas: Subtle [ Demo ]

Gluttony [ Demo ]

6. Advanced WordPress Themes
ExtJS Wordpress Theme

Lounge2

Prebuilt

NeoclassicalA 3-column template system with rotating header images.

7. Experimental Themes
Bonsai, Red Growth LiveBig typography dominates.

Trevilian Way [ Demo ]

BrainTied 1.0 [ Demo ]The front page displays only the list of recent posts.

Tropical Grunge [ Demo ]

Aspire

Isolated Theme [ Demo ]

Supermini
FontellaThe front page features only the main/recent post of the weblog.

ASCII Themes

Retro Mac OS X [ Demo ]

8. Photoblog & Videoblog Themes
Tumblelog For WordPress [ Demo ]

Nautilus

Nishita [ Demo ]

9. Sources and Further Resources
WordPress Themes That Don’t Suck
BlogPerfume WordPress Themes
48 SEO WordPress Themes
Skinpress.com
WPDesigner.com
Clazh.com
Best WordPress Magazine Themes
ScribbleScratch.com
Photoblog Themes

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Blogging For Website Traffic

by: Richard Legg
Nowadays, it seems that everyone and his cousin have taken to blogging. This form of online self-expression has slowly but steadily taken over the World Wide Web to become somewhat of a phenomenon in recent years. Some people use blogs as their personal journals, some may see them as an outlet for their creative work, and others may just want their own personal place in cyberspace to share thoughts and ideas. Now, a quick question for the Internet businessman. If you have a blog, can you use it to boost your site's exposure and drive more traffic to it? A blog is great for sharing ideas and posting about things you like or don't like, but can a blog help your online business succeed? The answer is a definite YES. Your blog can do wonders for your website, but it all depends on the way you utilize its potential power. I'm going to teach you a tried and proven method that has been effective for other website owners, and this method is applicable for any type of blog. You will just need a lot of creativity and some time to make it work. First thing you have to keep in mind is that most blogs on the Web have a community feel to them. You may think that your blog is your own, since you're the one who installed and developed it. And you may be right. But your blog is also connected to other blogs on the same site. You may also be connected to other blogs that are using the same blogging software as you. This situation guarantees that sooner or later, a person will land on your blog and be able to see all that you have to say. This can also mean that your blog is now getting free advertising within the blogging community. I don't think you need me to tell you how beneficial this can be for your site's traffic. However, you do have to keep in mind what you're posting as your blog's content. If all you're doing is making posts that promote your products or your business, then you're dead. Believe me, that is not the recommended way to use your blog. Have you seen the Internet lately? It's already overflowing with loads of advertisements for products and services. Be different. Your visitors need a good reason to keep coming back to your blog. Use it to give expert and knowledgeable information about your line of work to your readers. If you're selling a product on your site, talk about it on your blog, and don't just post a measly advertising blurb. Let's say you're selling power tools on your website. You can write reviews and other useful posts about the kinds of tools you have on your site. What you're doing is providing some insight for your potential customers about the tools you're selling. These blog posts will then be able to generate confidence in your readers and encourage them to actually buy the products. Another advantage of having a blog is that it makes it easier for interested buyers to get access to the seller (that's you). Usually, readers of a particular blog post are allowed to leave comments on what they've just read. For example, you've just finished a review for the new Ajax power drill. Whenever a reader comes across it and has a question regarding that product, he or she can easily leave a comment. You can then see the questions and post your answers. See? You can now connect with your readers and potential customers personally. This make you much more approachable, as compared to the faceless entity behind the impersonal commercial website. In addition, your readers will also have the option of subscribing to your blog feeds via RSS or to your newsletters, so they can be immediately notified about any new posts you make. If you have established a reputable standing in your niche, a long list of eager readers will soon be waiting for your next post, and lots more will be coming to your website.
from http://www.articlecity.com/articles/site_promotion/article_1702.shtml

Inexpensive Tips For Getting Website Traffic

by: Richard Legg

You can get a lot of website traffic without having to spend a lot of money. If you want to develop a busy and profitable website for your online business, there are a lot of techniques for getting website traffic without it being expensive. Some of these cheap website traffic techniques include article directories, SEO, blog posting and even forum posting. Among these methods, one of the most practical and most effective is submitting articles to article directories. These articles should contain a link or two back to your own site, which can help you increase your site traffic from readers who may be interested in seeing more of what you’re offering. There are already several excellent article directories available for your submissions. As long as your articles remain in the directories you submitted them to, this method will be one of the best and cheapest ways to pull in traffic. Using SEO, or search engine optimization, is another inexpensive yet very effective way for getting traffic to your website. By using proper search engine optimization, your articles and your website’s overall content will become more search engine friendly, as well as your website. Include your keyword in the domain name of the website that hosts your articles. Also include keywords in the first paragraphs of your pages, as well as the title of the page itself. These SEO techniques will help your site get better exposure with search engines, and your articles will rank higher on search results. Blogging is now becoming more popular than ever before, and you should take full advantage of it. More and more online businessmen are using blogs to promote their products and services, and it just makes perfect sense to follow suit. There are several good blogging sites on the Internet that allow people to sign up and create a blogging account with them for free, such as Blogger or Wordpress. Create your blog and link your home page to it. Updating your blog regularly will allow it to become more relevant to search engines, and as a result, it will help to drive more traffic to your site. It would help a lot if your articles and posts contain the appropriate keywords. Another inexpensive website traffic technique that you can use is to join and participate in forums. Finding a forum that is related to your website’s content is even better. You can then easily post discussions, answers, and even start threads that can be useful to other forum members. You can pull in traffic by making entertaining or informative posts, since you’ll develop a reputation for being an authority on certain subjects. And don’t forget to have a link to your site in your signature file or your member profile. See? You can get a lot of website traffic without spending a lot of money, just by following these techniques. Remember, effective usage of relevant keywords in your posts and articles, proper SEO methods, article submissions, blogging, and forum posting can all become invaluable but inexpensive tools for driving traffic to your website.
from http://www.articlecity.com/articles/site_promotion/article_1703.shtml

Good Website Content

by: Gally Reznor
Reading a website is not similar to reading a book or a newspaper, therefore before you start spilling money on campaigns be sure your site is built in accordance with internet writing standards. Lets talk about few simple rules you don't want to break when building a website: Don't waste your visitors time Time is money. Most people decide whether they are interested in what the website has to offer in just to seconds. Therefore make sure your landing page provides the most crucial and appealing information about your business. Number one time waster is a heavy loading pages with lot's of flash animations and pictures. Make sure your web pages are not too heavy otherwise you might loose your visitors before they entered your website. Most of the visitors need to find what they are looking for fast, otherwise they look for it elsewhere. As a webmaster you must make sure your data is well categorizes and divided to relevant pages , categories, headlines and sub-titles. A visitor must be able to navigate your website easily and successfully. Avoid too much "Special affects" By this I mean don't include too much flash movies and avoid using music if you don't have to. As we mentioned earlier, Flash has a large loading time which damages viewer experience, besides too much flash may be annoying and search engines can't read it. Music is a great thing, but somehow music and websites do not fit too well. If you want to put some background tune anyway, make sure a user can silence it quickly and easily. Or in contrary , let the user click "Play" and begin the music when he decides. Pop-ups and new pages If you have links in your site , I strongly advise you not to use the pop-up option and not to open these links in new window. Seemingly pop-ups and new windows are a very good idea if we don't want the visitor to navigate from our website but many years of experience shows that users prefer to click "Back" buttons. As to pop-ups , most of browsers tend to block them , and you don't want to waste your viewer time on enabling pop-ups. Text Use standard fonts which are supported by all browsers, like Arial and Times New Roman. You don't want your viewers to get gibberish and go away from your website. Don't use very small or very large fonts . You don't want your pages to smear for miles and you don't want to scare away people with poor vision .

from http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_1446.shtml

Friday, December 12, 2008

How to Maximize your Page Rank

by: Gally Reznor
Why care about the Page rank? As mentioned in previous articles, Page Rank is one of the familiar variables in determining appearance in SE results. Although today the importance of page rank has been descended, and sometimes we see pages of PR 3 or 4 getting to first places in Google, Page Rank is one of the variables SEO's often deal with because this is the variable we know a lot about and can approach sensibly. The second good reason to learn about PR is using it to emphasize important pages of your website, like the Homepage ( you know how annoying it is when SE presents some negligible page of your website higher than the Homepage) What is PR? PR ranges from 1-10 and indicates the number and quality of page incoming links. Page Rank is calculated as follows: PR(A) = log10((1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))) when : 0 PR(T1) – Page rank of page T1 linking to page A. T1, ….,Tn C(T1) – number of outbound links in page T Notice that the 1-10 scale is accepted because of logarithmization of the equation. Therefore , each group of page rank ( PR1,… PR10) is not equal in size and getting to higher PR group is getting harder with every step. This article deals with page rank maximization techniques: PR0 – Page rank zero This rank is usually given to: new pages pages with very few incoming links websites being caught using Black Hat Strategies to promote their website. Webpages with PR0 can harm your website in case that one of your pages links to PR0 page. Although, if PR0 page links to your page , your pages is not hurt nor benefited because Google assumes you don't have absolute control over your incoming links. Even so , you may exchange links with PR0 page in case that The PR0 page doesn't contain hidden text or other forbidden elements of black hat SEO The page is new and therefore gets zero ranking. PR leakage Although PR depends on your incoming links, linking to other websites can cause you PR leakage, therefore use only necessary links to other websites. Linking to pages inside your website does not cost you PR therefore you can do it freely. Make sure every page in your website links to other important pages since every link has its contribution. Leaving Dead end pages wastes this contribution. Use PR to emphasize important pages: Creating links smartly to most important pages of your website, like Homepage, gives it PR boost and helps emphasizing its importance in front of less important pages in the website. This is the most popular and beneficial link scheme emphasizing your homepage: All pages in the website link to Homepage (first priority page) Page of x priority is not linked to other pages of x priority but only to Homepage, page of x+1 , and X-1 priority. (for example, categories are not linked between them). No jumping between pages in non hierarchic order : for example Page priority 1 doesn’t link to page priority 3 , and page of same priority are not interlinked. If we count the relative distribution of PR between all the pages, in this scheme, Homepage gets the highest rank. If we link the categories , Homepage rank descends and category PR raises a little. If we link all the pages at the website to each other, all of them get the same but low PR. To get the highest Homepage PR we must link all the pages to Homepage only and Homepage must link to all the pages. Exchanging/ Purchasing Links Incoming link is more effective if it comes from high PR page. Page with few links is better contributor than page with lots of links (in case they are of same PR) Exchange links only with well ranked websites because exchanging links cause PR leakage. This leakage must be weaker than link contribution otherwise the exchange is not beneficial. Don't exchange pages with PR0 pages because in best case scenario it doesn’t help you. (Unless you expect this page to be very popular in short period). ww.articlecity.co www.articlecity.com

Make Your Own Website: Achieve Success With Your Site

by: Tem Balanco
There are many reasons for you to make your own website. You may want to sell a product or service, or you may want to share your thoughts and dreams with the world. No matter what you want to do online, you can design a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) to do it. When you are thinking of making a site on your own, there are a few things to think about. The first thing you will want to decide before you make your own website is what you want to accomplish by doing so. This is the most important thing you can do when you are ready to make a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/). Knowing the purpose will allow you to make any other decisions more clearly. After you have completed these stages, you need to locate the company that will be your web host. This company will provide several important pieces for you. At a minimum, they will be responsible for registering your name and associating it with an appropriate web address. In general, you will be running your service from their space, so the host takes over administrative and physical security responsibilities. If you choose to use their equipment, you must sign an agreement concerning additional charges should you need more bandwidth or disk space than the minimums. Dedicated web space is space that you paid for. There are no advertisements on dedicated web space unless you want there to be. Unlike free hosts, paid hosts will not insert ads onto your site. If you make your own website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) and pay for the hosting, therefore, you have more control. Choosing your own domain name allows you to personalize the site even further. There is a ton of information about website building online. Some companies offer website building tools, while others only use HTML code. You will be able to find lots of HTML tutorials online if you are interested in learning. Doing a quick search in your favorite search engine will find hundreds of links to websites that offer these tutorials. The sky is the limit from here. You will be able to create a personalized and snazzy site. How it ends up is up to you. You can put as much time into the project as you want. Either way, when you make your own website, you will end up with something that is entirely your own. This is almost a form of art.
http://www.articlecity.com/

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic Starting Yesterday

by: Terry Leslie
Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic. So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic. If you already have a site and you want think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday. Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday. To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday. 1) Invest in good advertising with search engines Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic. You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising. 2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected. 3) Use Viral Marketing Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people. 4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you. 5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link. 6) Join forums and form online communities Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need. 7) Lastly, Offer newsletters. If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic. In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success… OR if you would like to succeed immediately to create financial freedom working only 4 hours a week, check out http://www.Secrets2InternetFortunes.com AND for a Limited Time, you will also receive a FREE copy of a limited number of the amazing 60 page eBook “52 Highly Profitable Instant Online Business Ideas That You Can Steal As Your Own And Start Today On A Very Tight Budget!”, which is jam packed with so many ideas you can use to instantly create an automated income for life! That’s my GIFT to You as a way of saying thank you for reading my articles.
www.articlecity.com