The other day, I was asked if I could provide some insight into some WordPress themes that were politically based that didn't end up looking like crap. The theme must also do a good job displaying photo/video type posts. Here is my SHORT list of political based WordPress themes. 1. Probama Probama is an elegant two column theme that features a large right-hand sidebar. The sidebar comes with two configured blocks for a featured video ...

So, I will be the first to admit that I can garner a temper when someone mindlessly bashes something I write. I could let it all slide, and let things be said about me and my writing, but, then again, I should have the right to defend myself when someone criticizes what I write. Well, it is a complex thing, and one must compose himself or herself in a correct manner to avoid ending up ...

As I was reading a post written by Lorelle over at the BlogHerald discussing how to help readers keep up with your blog, I came across a tip which I thought I would illustrate here as well. It has to do with defining acronyms within your post in case your readers don't understand the lingo of your niche. I've been wondering for quite awhile now if there was a way to illustrate what an acronym ...

Many people still believe that using Twitter is a waste of time. Perhaps those notions will change now that a company has come along offering to pay you for using their service to shrink URLs. Introducing Adjix. Adjix is a brand new company that is both an ad network and a service which pays people who shrink their URLs through their site. Adjix calls people who shrink their urls, linkers. Adjix places ads at the ...

Katy over at I'm Blogging That has published a great article that goes in depth on choosing a monetization strategy. Her post covers various monetization strategies such as banner advertising, choosing an ad service, ad placement, and much more. Of particular interest to me was Katy's thoughts on pricing. Everyone that comes to you for banner advertising will do so for different reasons. Because of this, there should be some things you take into consideration ...

The topic for todays social media bootcamp was: The Secrets Of Digg Success. Till this day, I have yet to appear on the Digg frontpage. The closest I have been to the front page of Digg is an article which received 35 or so digs. In todays bootcamp, I learned that it is not just a matter of catering to the Digg crowd but that there is much more involved in a successful Digg post. ...

Our most popular free theme releases of the past have been Brian Gardner designed themes (yes, the Brian Gardner of Revolution fame). So all WordPress theme conoisseurs will be glad to know that this month we're releasing Brian's latest theme, Nitrous. Besides it's ultra-clean look, perhaps the coolest feature of Nitrous is the way it can auto-generate drop-down navigational menus using your WordPress pages and sub-pages. This allows you to give your readers lots of ...

Here at Performancing.com, we have covered a variety of different angles in which comments you leave on blog posts can help drive traffic back to your own blog. For some, this information and technique has become redundant but I thought I would share an experience which clearly illustrates why this is good, sound advice. Lifehacker.com, an extremely popular blog focused on tips, tricks, and techniques in which to improve productivity published a post on staying ...

Recently I came across search engine called scour, which claims that users will get paid to search on their search engine. I was bit of confused about this idea of getting paid to search so i decided to give it shot. What’s new in scour? Scour combines search results of google, yahoo, msn and display it when you do the search query. It asks you to comment on the search result. It asks you to ...

The fine folks over at theNEXTweb has published a video showcasing just how easy it is to manipulate your subscriber numbers in FeedBurner. Apparently, it's as easy as creating an OPML file, placing your FeedBurner URL into the file about 1,000 times or however many new subscribers you want, then importing this OPML file into Netvibes. Each module in NetVibes which loads your RSS feed will count as an RSS Subscriber to FeedBurner. Feedburner hacked! ...

The folks over at SixApart have recently announced what might be some of the biggest changes in Movable Type's history. It certainly is making noise throughout the blogosphere. This release marks a significant change to SixApart’s license agreement as well. This is another attempt to persuade WordPress users to make the switch, but the features are so good that even I am considering installing a new blog on Movable Type. The gap between the CMSs ...

Twitter is great, don’t get me wrong, but FriendFeed is a whole new beast that has quickly established its importance to the blogosphere. My first reaction when playing around with FriendFeed was that it was a source of information overload to the extreme, and that was pretty much the case for the first few months, but after I got involved, again, and mastered the “hide” functionality, I was quickly able to view FriendFeed as a ...

Apparently a lot of people are interested in starting a new blog because “blog titles” and “blog names” are two of the most popular search queries that lead to Performancing. I previously wrote about creating [link to article] great blog post headlines, but you should have a good name to fall back on. However, you must realize that the name can only take you so far. Qualities of a Great Blog Title/Name Simple The first ...

Hat tip to Search Engine Journal author Ann Smarty (nice name :) who compiled a list of useful online SEO tools. She starts with three criteria for those online SEO analytics services: they are all useful for SEOs they are all web-based (no desk-top ones or FireFox extensions so far) they are all free She divides her collection of online SEO tool into different areas (her table of content, *=main points, o=sub points): * Backlink ...

The blogosphere has brought us some amazing bloggers who have been able to captivate readership that even some magazines and newspapers would be jealous of. There are your Scobles, Arringtons, Rileys, and Chows, but even more people are getting in on the action. People who were once nobodies are now some-bodies. The question is simple: who are the three bloggers that you would want to sit down and have dinner with? My Picks Louis Grey ...

WordPress is known by many to provide SEO qualities right out of the box. Thanks to the clean code base, search engine spiders have an easy time crawling your archives, categories, and pages. However, thats not to say that the SEO qualities with which WordPress contains out of the box can not be improved upon. Here are some tips and tricks on how to boost your WordPress installations SEO. Custom Permalinks - WordPress gives users ...

In a time where we have Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Facebook, and all kinds of services to socialize with, it is far too easy to forget about the value of a personal blog. For some of us, a personal blog might be a place to express ourselves in our free time, but for others, it is an excellent opportunity to create quite a following. However, many of us have neglected our personal blogs, some of us ...

When WordPress 2.6 was released, quite a number of plugins worked out of the box while others broke. Unfortunately, PodPress was one of those plugins which broke. It has been discovered that PodPress has some sort of incompatibility with the new post revisions feature found within 2.6. Mightyseek, the author of the plugin claims that he is working on a new version and that it was going to be released within that weekend, or the ...