Even though the Frugal WordPress Theme is used for all kinds of website projects from business sites to sales pages to any number of purposes, at its core it’s a rock solid blogging platform.  And to reflect this fact (as well as provide an awesome value to those Frugal users who want more Skins to play with) we designed and developed this all new Blogger Skin Pack.

To start it off we created a super clean, professional looking Skin design that would perfectly promote any content that was put on it’s pages.  Then we used this fixed design and created a fluid version to offer the user two different layouts to choose from.  After this we picked out 6 different colors to work with and created a total of 12 unique Skins for this awesome Skin Pack!

Finally, keeping with this Blogging Theme, we created two new Widgets and placed them in a plugin folder for easy installation (on a Frugal powered site or any other WordPress website).

One of the Widgets is an Author Profile Widget.  What this does is provide you with a super easy way to display any author in a Widget area, showing their Gravatar, creating a Bio and even displaying a “Read more” link to take visitors to a more in-depth author page.  The other Widget is a Banner Ad Widget that provides a simple, easy to use tool for displaying 125×125 Banner Ads in your sidebar, spacing them out perfectly.  It also provides an option to display an “Advertise Here” banner, linked to whichever ad page you like (on or off your site) and even an option to choose whether or not it opens in a new window.

The idea behind including these bonus Widgets was to provide even more value to the blogger looking for that perfect Skin to help take their blog to the next level.  And even if you’re not a blogger this Skin pack is perfect for just about any website in need of a clean, professional design.

So be sure to check out the Frugal Blogger Skin Pack Page as well as the Frugal Blogger Skin Demo Page and start mentally placing your blog content in it’s pages to see which color and layout is right for you.

The Frugal Team

We launched Frugal 3.5 while WordPress was still in Beta, with a commitment to launch Frugal 3.5.5 within a week of the official WordPress 3.0 release. Though there was nothing major, the WordPress Team did make some last minute changes to the WordPress 3.0 code. We’ve made adjustments to Frugal accordingly, and are happy to announce that Frugal is now even more totally WordPress 3.0 compatible than ever before with the launch of Frugal version 3.5.5!

If you haven’t already upgraded to the latest versions of WordPress and Frugal, we encourage you to take the plunge now. Both have some incredible new features to play with!

The Frugal Team

One of the Frugal Theme features that makes it so unique is its Skins. Giving the user the ability to Import a completely custom design with a few mouse clicks, the Frugal Skins provide a quick and easy way to give your WordPress/Frugal powered website a face lift in a matter of seconds. Not only that, you can then continue the customization process after the Skin Import, tweaking it to your liking, all from within the robust Frugal Admin Panel.

Isn’t A Frugal Skin the same as a WordPress Child Theme?

Absolutely not. A Frugal Skin IS like a Child Theme in that a custom design can be added to a site without touching the theme’s core code, but that’s pretty much where the similarities stop.

A Child Theme is basically a set of PHP, CSS and Image files that have been created from scratch and then added to a folder to be uploaded into the WordPress ‘themes’ directory for activation. Unlike a regular WordPress Theme, most of the functionality comes from a ‘Parent’ theme. Child Themes generally only change the outside appearance of a site. The nuts and bolts on the back end are all in the Parent.

A Frugal Skin, on the other hand, is still essentially The Frugal Theme. A Skin is a preset configuration of Frugal’s 600+ Custom Options. A Skin is created by adjusting options through the Frugal Admin Panels, adding some custom images, and doing a one-click export from Frugal to a .Zip file. To import a Skin, one only needs to use Frugal’s Skin Importer, select the .Zip file, and click ‘Import’. This pulls in all the option presets and images, completely changing your site’s appearance. For most Premium WordPress Themes, if you were to only update the options you might be very limited in what kind of designs are possible. With Frugal’s 600+ options you have an enormous pool of possibilities to play with.

Frugal Skins vs. Child Themes

What this all means is that a Frugal Skin has many advantages over a traditional Child Theme.

• Keep On Customizing: With a Child Theme, unless you want to fire up your favorite Text Editor and modify PHP and CSS code, you’re pretty much stuck with the design exactly as it comes. With a Frugal Skin, however, you can easily fine-tune (or completely re-customize) after Import without touching any code. In other words, if you see a Skin that’s close to what you imagine for your site, you can use it as a starting point and refine it to perfection.

• A Digital Eraser: Once again, a Child Theme is a folder of coded files. To edit the design you must edit the code. What if you’ve made a bunch of changes and want to go back to an earlier point in your design process? Maybe your design took a wrong turn at some point and you’d like to go back in time to try another path. With a Child Theme you’d have to try and remember what all your code looked like at that particular moment in time so you can re-create it. With a Frugal Skin, on the other hand, you can just use Frugal’s built-in Snapshot feature to undo the changes you’re not pleased with. With a Frugal Skin, you have all of Frugal’s raw power available to you while still being able to easily change the face of your site.

• Easy Backups: Let’s say you’ve done some major tweaking to a Child Theme. Now you want to back it up to retain that exact design and protect you from losing all your hard work. What you’ll need to do is use an FTP program to download the Child Theme folder to your computer. But with a Frugal Skin you just use Frugal’s built-in Export feature. One mouse click and you’ve got a .zip file with all your work preserved.

• A Frugal Skin Factory: A huge advantage of a Frugal Skin is that ANYONE can create one. You don’t have to know PHP, CSS and HTML to create a custom Skin. You just adjust the many Frugal Options, add any custom images, type in your Skin name and click the Skin Export button…Voila! Your very own custom Frugal Skin. Try THAT with a Child Theme! Additionally, we always welcome submissions to the Frugal Skin Store. If you’re just really happy with what you’ve created and want to share it with the world for free, we’ll gladly put your skin in our store’s ‘Free’ section. If your creation meets our standards for Premium Skins, we’ll put your skin in our store and split any sales with you 50/50.

We hope this post makes clear some of the distinctions between Child Themes and Frugal Skins, and shows why we think Skins are a perfect fit for the Power of Frugal.

The Frugal Team is proud to announce the release of Frugal Theme version 3.5!

Frugal celebrated its first birthday just a couple weeks ago, and we’ve pulled out all the stops to bring you the most advanced Premium WordPress Theme around.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s an overview of what we’ve been up to:

• Rearrangable Admin Page Option Boxes: The same flexibility and power you’ve come to expect in the options of your Frugal-based sites has been brought home to the admin interface. Each box of option sets is now draggable & sortable, collapsible & expandable. You can organize your admin pages however you want, with your essential options always visible and at the top of the page. The best part is, Frugal automatically remembers how you leave everything, and it will be there waiting for you no matter what browser or computer you log in from. Here’s a screenshot:

• Frugal Theme Admin Menu has moved ‘Above the Fold’: With 3.5, we’ve decided to carve some space out for ourselves between ‘Comments’ and ‘Appearance’ in the WordPress Admin Sidebar. Not only does this save users on lower-resolution screens from needing to scroll down to see the menu, but it’s a subtle way of demonstrating that, with this release of Frugal 3.5, we’re on our way to the top!

• WordPress 3.0 Compatibility: We’ve done extensive testing to ensure that Frugal is ahead of the game and ready for the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. As WordPress evolves from a simple blogging platform to a robust Content Management System, Frugal continues to give you maximum control over your site. The most exciting new WP 3.0 feature, in our opinion, is the fully customizable Navigation Bar. Once you upgrade to WP 3.0, all you need to do to enable the new navbar on your Frugal sites is to flip a switch:

• WordPress MU / 3.0 Multi-User Enabled: Another exciting aspect of WP 3.0 is that the WP Crew has folded WP-MU into Core. Frugal has worked with WP-MU for quite some time, but we’re pleased to see that this feature is going mainstream. We’ve done some testing with Frugal and WP 3.0 Multi-User, and have been highly impressed. If you manage a multi-user site, by enabling Frugal and setting the Dynamic Styles to PHP mode you can let each and every sub-site have its own appearance with just one installation of Frugal! This is a perfect use for skins from our skin store. You can get thousands of unique looks with a single theme.

• Refined image inputs: With Frugal 3.5, we’ve removed the need to type in the names of your uploaded images into the options pages by hand, and replaced the old textfields with drop-down menus showing all available images. This should prove to be a big timesaver — no more “Did I call that file bg-header.png or header-bg.jpg?”

It’s impossible to fully express how thrilled we are to see how this has all taken shape. With all the new features of Frugal 3.5, combined with those of Frugal 3.3 ( read more here ) and previous versions, we’re confident that what we’re offering is the absolute best Premium WordPress Theme available! We hope after reading this post and watching the launch video, you’re as enthusiastic as we are!

In order to encourage everyone who comes across this post to help spread the word about Frugal, we’re going to be holding a weekly drawing every Friday in the month of May for a free copy of both the brand new Frugal Elements Skin Pack ($99) and Frugal Personal Edition ($87)!

All you need to do to enter is (re) tweet the following:

#frugaltheme 3.5 for #wordpress is here! http://bit.ly/b7KmyI Retweet for a chance to win the 4 new Elements Skins plus a copy of Frugal!

You can copy/paste the text above into your twitter client, or just click this button:

We’ll choose a tweeter at random every Friday afternoon, and both Publicly Announce and Direct Message the winners on Twitter. Everyone is eligible to enter. If you’re already a Frugal owner and are chosen, you’ll still get the Frugal Elements Skin Pack plus an additional Personal Edition License for your copy of Frugal.

• Along with Frugal 3.5, we’ve just released 4 new skins in the Frugal Skin Store. We picked the theme of “The Four Elements – Earth, Fire, Air, Water” and rolled with it! Check ‘em out. You can purchase each one individually for $29, or all 4 for $99. http://skins.frugaltheme.com

• We’re always looking for more User Skin Submissions! You can either send a Free Skin or you can submit a design as a potential Premium Skin. If we add your skin to the store, we’ll split all sales with you 50/50! Frugal now gives you the tools to export skins with a couple keystrokes and a single click of the mouse. What are you waiting for? If you’ve got a great looking design you’d like to submit to the Skin Store, we’d love to see it! http://skins.frugaltheme.com/frugal-skin-submissions/

• With the new localization feature of the Frugal Theme, we’re hoping to recruit users from around the globe to translate Frugal into their native language. If you’re fluent and would like to localize a your copy of Frugal, we’d like to hear from you. We’re giving away a Premium Frugal Skin to each person that completes a translation into a new language. So far all we have is English, so the door’s wide open for applicants!

That’s about it for this post. Please feel free to leave a comment below or contact us with any questions or feedback. Thanks!

-The Frugal Team

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seth and I are always looking for simple solutions to WordPress problems and one escalating issue with WordPress is the continued memory limit of 32 megabytes and yet growing number and size of WordPress, Themes and Plugins.  Whether you’ve received a low memory error or was just unable to install all the plugins necessary to do what you wanted with your WordPress website, this 32mb limit starts to become a hindrance to progress.

Here are some common scenarios:

• You try to run the WordPress Automatic Upgrade program and it spits out a low memory error.  You end up having to de-activate ALL your plugins to get it to run and then have to re-activate and sometimes even re-setup your plugins when the update has been completed.
• You already have a good amount of essential plugins installed and active and you go to activate one more plugin that you need for you site and then WordPress spits out another low memory error.  So you end up skimming through your plugins to see if there are any you can live without so you can activate this new plugin.  You find there are none and end up having to drop a useful function on your site because there just isn’t enough room for them to all play nicely.
• Every time you load your WordPress Dashboard it’s just slow and sometimes renders memory errors instead of drop-down menus.
• Or, the drop-down menus are completely frozen so you have to click on the menu headings just to go to another page in your WordPress Dashboard.

Those are just a few of the common problems associated with low memory in WordPress.

What Is This Whole PHP/Wordpress Memory Limit Thing?

Different web hosts provide different limitations on different server resources for their users.  One of these limitations is a PHP Memory Limit.  This is the total amount of memory is what you as a user on your server and eat up with your website.  It’s kind of like if your computer has 2 gigabytes of ram then that’s how much memory you have to use with your Operating System, programs, etc..  And with this limit, once you surpass it you will get an error telling you that you cannot pass go and you cannot collect your $200 (or something like that ).

What WordPress does is force this limit when running a WordPress website to 32 megabytes.  This way, if you host is super stingy and only provides its users with 32mb of memory to work with you won’t have a problem.  But these days, most solid web hosts are going to allow at least 64mb if not significantly more.  And when WordPress first set this limit to 32mb the themes, plugins and WordPress itself were much lighter.  I mean, a few years ago the number of people trying to run a full CMS (Content Management System) website using WordPress as the platform was quite small.  But these days everybody and their brothers, daughters, dogs, nephew is cranking out a CMS site or 10.  So 32mb just doesn’t make so much sense anymore.

But Isn’t Small And Light The Way To Go?

When you can go small and light then that’s the way to go, for sure, but these days it’s really not always feasible.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen my share of bloated messes, with 50 large plugins causing all kinds of chaos both in the Dashboard and in the site itself.  We’re big fans of keeping it light whenever possible, but this doesn’t have to mean you need to bow to this 32mb limitation when a few extra megabytes will get you a whole lot more functionality.

Isn’t There Already A Solution To This Problem?

Yes there is.  But it requires you to add custom code to a core WordPress file and this is something many people, like myself, would prefer not to do.  But hey, if that’s your style, more power to you!

How Does The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin Solve This WordPress Memory Limit Problem?

The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin is a free, simple, light WordPress plugin that first shows you some useful information about your WordPress website such as your PHP version, WordPress version and your current PHP and WordPress memory limits.  Then it goes a step further and tells you how much memory your WordPress installation is actually using.  Finally, it provides you with the option to increase your WordPress Memory Limit to either 64mb or 128mb.

Just by changing a drop-down menu to your desired memory limit and clicking the save button you can double or even quadruple this often hindering resource limitation.  Now your WordPress Memory Limit has been increased and so has your possibilities.  No more need to de-activate plugins to run the WordPress Automatic Upgrade program.  No need to drop that super useful plugin so you can activate another super useful plugin.  This isn’t a plugin that forces you to eat up more of your servers resources, but it does raise the bar and let YOU choose how much or little you’re going to use.

Can Everyone Use This Plugin?

In a perfect world my answer would be yes, but unfortunately there are still some web servers who restrict their users to 32mb.  And if you were to try and set the limits above this threshold with the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin you would probably be met with a memory error that might even require you to FTP into your server and delete the plugin to get rid of the error.  So it is very important you know for certain that your web host will allow an increase to either 64mb or 128mb.  If they do then you should find the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin to be a great new tool to add to your WordPress arsenal, but if not, then you either can’t use this plugin or it’s just time to find a better web host.

If I Have The Latest Version Of The Frugal Theme Do I Need This Plugin?

As of Frugal version 3.3 you will find this same functionality built right into the Frugal Theme.  The main difference is that currently we only allow you to increase your WordPress Memory Limit to 64mb with Frugal and 128mb with the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin.  We may change this down the road, but for now we decided to go a bit more conservative with Frugal to reduce the potential of people pushing the limit higher than their web host allows.  But if you are using the Frugal Theme and you need to go higher than 64mb you can certainly use the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin to do so.  Both the Frugal Theme and the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin work fine together and whichever is set to the higher limit, that is the one that goes into effect.

How Do I Get The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin?

It’s super easy!  Just sign up for the Frugal Theme Newsletter by using the form in the sidebar.

See it in action!

Here you can see that with 32mb you can easily start to push the limits and start of feel cramped.

But with a few mouse clicks your breathing easier and able to do what you want with your WordPress Website.

Frugal version 3.3 is now available and takes design control to a whole new level.  The following video will go into detail, but here’s a brief run through of what 3.3 brings to the table.

• One Click Skin Creation: Once you’re done designing a Frugal Skin (adjusting the Frugal Options and creating and uploading your custom images for your Skin design) you just type the name of your Skin and click ‘Export Skin’ to create and download your new Skin file and you’re done.
• One Click Skin Installation: Installing a Skin is even easier. You just locate your Frugal Skin zip folder, click ‘Import Skin’ and you’re done!
• Much refined Import/Export feature: Now there’s a One Click Frugal Options Export button and the Import is just a matter of checking the boxes next to the options pages you want to Import and then upload your Export file.
• Bulk Delete Images: No longer do you have to delete images one at a time.  You can now select all and then delete.
• Increase Your WordPress Memory by flipping a switch. This new option allows you to raise your WordPress memory limit to 64 megabytes if you need a bit more memory to run WordPress, your theme and all your plugins (be sure to confirm with your web host that it will allow a memory increase to 64 megabytes as a few still do not).
• Frugal Snapshots! This one is super cool! Every time you click ‘Save’ in a Frugal Options page Frugal will take a snapshot of your entire options set.  This allows you to restore your settings back to a previous point or even forward if you want to UNDO the restore.  With this Snapshot function you’ll be able to see the date of the ‘Save’ down to the second, the actual page where you saved the changes and a list of all the changes you made.  Just select the Snapshot and then click ‘Restore’ and Frugal will revert to that exact state.  How cool is that!!
• Full Localization: Frugal now includes an .po and .mo file to make it much easier to translate Frugal into any language (currently no translations have been performed, but the localization is done).

A screenshot of the All New Snapshot feature in action:

Check out the video below for more details and see for yourself how Frugal 3.3 raises the bar once again:

Click here to view the embedded video.

One more exciting piece of news is that there is a new member of the Frugal Development team!  I’ve recently hired Seth Atwood (I said ‘Atkins’ in the video, but I meant ‘Atwood’.  My bad, Seth. ) as a Full Time Frugal Developer.  He’s pretty darn amazing with code and design and is mostly responsible for the new options/refinements in 3.3.  Now we’ll be able to push ahead much faster as we strive to bring you the best WordPress Theme available!  We’re already working on some amazing stuff for the next release so stay tuned!

Eric Hamm

Hey guys, it’s finally here!  The Frugal Skin Store that I’ve been talking about for the past few weeks is up-and-running and ready to help you make your Frugal powered websites super slick, or clean, or however you’d like them to look.   There are only 7 skins available at the moment, but more are coming very soon!

Frugal 3.25 is also here.  I’ve added some very useful new options like new location options for the Navbar and Feature Boxes, new Static Homepage Layout Options, Category Navbar Right options (ie. RSS | Email, Twitter, Search, etc..), FULL design control for Captions, independent styling for the WordPress ‘Pages’ widget, and more!

So check out the video to see what I’ve been up to with Frugal and then get your butt over to the Frugal Skin Store and see some of the possibilities that await!! (NOTE: All Skins are 20% off until March 1st!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you haven’t yet purchased Frugal you can do so HERE.  Otherwise you can just login to the Frugal Forum and you’ll find version 3.25 available in the download section at the bottom of the forum homepage along with instructions for upgrading.

Eric Hamm

Introduction Into A Whole New Level of Website Control:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here you will see some of the awesome new features in frugal 3.2.  Just a few include:

• Full Import/Export control over your many frugal settings. Now, creating a complete backup and restoring that backup to your frugal websites is as easy as a few mouse clicks.  Transferring a site is a breeze and implementing custom designs (skins) is now incredibly simple!  (For more info into how this option works you can check out THIS VIDEO)
• Built-In Image Uploader. No longer do you need to use an FTP program to upload custom images to your frugal website.  Just browse and then upload the images directly to a frugal uploads directory on your server.  You then have the ability to rename or delete the image.  It’s super simple and amazingly useful when custom designing your frugal site.
• Full Background Control. Before you just had the ability to change the background colors of most any element on your frugal website.  But now you have FULL control!  Change the type (like horizontal and/or vertical repeating image, static image, color only, transparent, etc..) and, if using an image option, you can specify the image name to be used in that background area.  This, with the new Image Upload option, now gives frugal users a whole new level of design control!
• Thumbnails, Thumbnails, Thumbnails! With the latest Image Thumbnail feature in WordPress 2.9 you can now easily add thumbnails to your post excerpts.  With frugal 3.2 you now have full control over how these thumbnails display.  Change they way they are re-sized and cropped, their alignment, dimensions and even complete border options.  And turn them on or off at will.
• SKINS!! Both free and Premium skins are and will be available to make creating awesome designs with frugal super easy!
• Some Option Refinement. I not only re-organized the frugal options pages to make it easier to maneuver around to the different settings, but I completely re-built the way frugal interacts with the WordPress database.  It’s much more efficient, but it does require that you use a simple plugin (that I created) to upgrade from a previous version of frugal.  No need for new installs, but just a heads up if you are upgrading.  (For more information on how to upgrade to frugal 3.2 check out THIS VIDEO)
• Miscellaneous additions and adjustments. I made a few subtle changes like adding independent H1 and H2 font control for your content headings and providing alignment options for logos (both image and text), where before you just had padding to play with.

Preview of The Premium Skins (Coming Soon!!)

Click the image below to check out a demo of a Premium frugal Skin that will be available soon:

If you have any questions or feedback you’d like to give or if you’re a developer or designer who might be interested in creating skins for frugal and making some extra cash (as well as sharing your design skills with the frugal community) you can contact me any time.

Eric Hamm

NOTE: This is an extension of a post that began here… 2010: A New Economy, A New Marketplace And A Need For A Presence Online

In 2010 we will no doubt see an even stronger push for both a business and personal presence online.  In our new economy we have little choice but to stake our claim online or face being left behind by the rest of the business world.  As you’ve already read in the linked post from above, our recent economic woes have pushed forward this natural shift to an online marketplace and a thriving Internet community.  With ’09 we were faced with the shock of this shift, but in 2010 we are poised for prosperity if we have the right tools in our arsenal.

Starting with the basics and then moving to more advanced advice, I’d like to share with you the tools I have found to be invaluable as I’ve made my move online.  Starting from scratch in the summer of ’08 and making a full time living online less than a year later, I used these tools to help turn a dream of greater independence into a reality.  So I hope you find this information useful as you too pursue your online endeavors.

The “Stuff”

Just like any endeavor, moving online requires the obtaining of “Stuff”.  Let me lay out my favorites and let you know why I like this “Stuff” so much.

Hosting: Hosting is thankfully fairly cheap these days and most of us can get by with the basic shared plans offered by most any hosting company.  These plans usually provide near unlimited space, bandwidth and domains and reliability to boot.  I’ve been using Hostmonster for years now and have been nothing but pleased with them.  Their up-time is excellent, customer service impeccable and the overall speed of their servers seems well above average.  I’ve never run into a single bit of incompatibility between my Hostmonster server and anything WordPress (or anything else for that matter).  You can read more about my opinions about Web Hosting if you’d like, but in short, I’ve worked with many different hosts and have yet to find one I prefer over Hostmonster.

Domains: A domain is just the name/location of our website (ie. frugalTheme.com) and can be had for $10 per year or less.  The most popular place to purchase a domain is GoDaddy as this allows you a centralized location to house your growing list of site names (and believe me they will be growing, whether now or in the near future).  GoDaddy gives the user a full spread of powerful domain options and therefore should be strongly considered.  I house some of my domains at GoDaddy, but have actually preferred leaving my main ones with Hostmonster.  Having both the domain and hosting reside with the same company can be a double edged sword, but I prefer it none the less.

Website Software: There are many great options out there when it comes to website software.  Free programs that easily install on our servers and allow us to quickly create and launch a professional presence online.  Some have more options while others tend to be more user-friendly.  But the one that seems to hit the sweet spot for most (and certainly myself) is WordPress.  Super easy to master on the backend, yet powerful and flexible with tons of great support.  I believe I speak for many when I say that WordPress is a huge blessing to those who want to spend more time building their online presence and less time building their website.

WordPress Themes: Now you knew this was coming.   Seriously, though, the skin of your WordPress website is just as important as any other piece to this puzzle.  Having a powerful, well built WordPress theme can really give you an edge in finding success online.  Now you know I develop and sell my own, so of course I’m going to recommend frugal, but I have no problem saying that there are TONS of great themes out there (both free and Premium) that can provide you with what you need to build a successful business, blog and/or community.  So whether you buy a copy of frugal or find that perfect fit elsewhere, be sure not to settle when it comes to your theme.  First impressions are a powerful thing and making a good one is absolutely crucial!

WordPress Plugins: When WordPress and your theme don’t provide an option that you want or need, look no further than the plugin section of WordPress.org.  Find what you need to address your issue and go about your way.  Just be careful not to get too plugin happy as you’ll start to bog down your site and make it a chore to move from one page to the next.  You can learn more about some useful plugins here and here.

Newsletter Software: Capturing a continued connection with your audience is key when seeking success online.  We see it all the time (even on this very website) where someone offers some free content for the visitor’s email address.  I used to think this was cheesy, or somehow tacky, but quickly realized that it was not only NOT tacky (you’re providing the visitor with useful free information), but it was a powerful tool that couldn’t be ignored.  There are very few ways to more effectively connect than through old fashioned email and no better way to capture this valuable resource than with Aweber.  I’ve been using Aweber for about 6 months now and have been nothing but pleased with it.  The setup is easy and it just does what it says it will do.  You can find cheaper offerings out there, but I truly that with newsletter software (like many other things) you get what you pay for.

Feedburner: If you have a blog you’re going to want to give your readers a way to subscribe.  The simple answer to this need is Feedburner by Google.  Signup, add your RSS and Email subscription links to your blog (did I mention frugal provides simple options to add these to your WordPress website.. and you’re good to go.

Social Media

Creating an effective presence online can be a challenge in and of itself, but adding a million different social profile possibilities does nothing but complicate the situation.  My suggestion is to just start with one or two avenues and then go from there.  Twitter and Facebook are good starting points as they are the most popular (Facebook is by far the most popular of the bunch, but Twitter is quickly growing and provides an means of simple connection that even Facebook falls short with).

There are many different things to talk about when teaching someone how to use these powerful programs, but the most important thing is to note the benefit of both being yourself and yet maintaining mindful communication.  We don’t want to be fake, but creating an effective online presence, one which will draw potential customers and followers, requires that we do more than chat about our random musings.  Providing useful information and insight, things that others truly benefit from, is a crucial habit to create.  I’m not suggesting that chatting with friends on Twitter will hurt your reputation or chances for online success, but doing nothing BUT chat about will most certainly be of no benefit.

A Continued Source Of Information And Inspiration

There are many great websites out there that provide both up-to-date information on those need-to-know concerns of the Cloud as well as thought provoking inspiration to keep pushing forward with our goals and dreams.  I’d suggest taking some time to search for such websites and then keep their bookmarks handy as you’ll most certainly need to reference then along the way.

The Rest Of The Story

The above information should give you most of what you need to succeed in terms of logistics, but the rest is really a matter of perseverance, flexibility and a willingness to learn new things all the time.  Just like anything worth achieving, online success almost never comes easy.  I’ve worked my freaking butt off for the last 17 months and have pushed past many times of serious discouragement.  I’ve tried many different avenues and constantly kept my mind open to new ideas.  Much of it has been a struggle, but worth every stinking second!

Here’s a few tips I’ve found invaluable:

• Make friends where you can and build your network of social connections whenever possible. You need a close friend or two who you can truly trust.  This is someone you may one day partner with on a project.  This is a valuable commodity to say the least.  I’ve had a blogging buddy since shortly after I started and it has been one of the keys to my growing success.
• Never put all your eggs in one basket. It’s too easy to focus all our attention on one possibility for online success.  The danger here is that if/when this goal fails to pan out we having nothing else to fall back on.  Discouragement sets in and we risk giving up all together.  I always try to keep one or two other projects on the back burner.  There’s always more than one way to achieve our goals and always having a few options to choose from can keep us moving in a positive direction.
• Live a great life offline. Once you stop enjoying your family, your hobbies and taking care of your mind and body while not connected to the Internet, you’ve lost.  Even if you do find success online it will have been for nothing.
• Keep trying different things until you find what works. If you need to make money online and it’s just not happening with your current venture, set it aside and try something new.  I bounced around from creating blog content with ads, to writing ebooks, to designing websites to developing WordPress theme software (and then some) and learned something new along the way as well as found what worked for me.  Now I benefit from all of the above and continue to try my hand at other possibilities.
• Never give up and always have fun whenever possible. These are the two most repeated tips for most any venture out there.  But this is only because they are universal truths to success in life.  The second you decide to stop is the beginning of your failure.  The moment you find no more enjoyment is the second your goal has become worthless.

2010 Is Whatever You Make Of It

I hope the very best for you in 2010 and know that each one of us has the ability and opportunity to flourish.  It’s now just a matter of deciding it’s time to make things happen and stick with it until the very end.  The posts I have provided should give you a solid foundation to stand on, but in the end it’s really up to you.

Happy New Year!

Eric Hamm

WordPress is no doubt an amazing website and blogging platform.  Not only is it well coded, well supported, very user-friendly, (SEO) Search Engine Optimized and super flexible, it’s totally free!  With an ever growing community of users, WordPress is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing Do-It-Yourself website programs out there.  Yet, just like any piece of software, there is always going to be a need for good documentation and tutorials to help us, as users, figure out how to make WordPress do what we want and need it to do to achieve our online goals.

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is not only the place to download the latest version of WordPress, but it’s also packed with super in-depth documentation on just about anything you may be interested in regarding the software.  You can find what you need to know about WordPress by checking out their Documentation, searching and posting to the Forum as well as stay up-to-date with the latest WordPress news by reading their Blog.

The Many Great Blog And Forum Resources…

Even with all the great information packed into the pages of WordPress.org, sometimes you have questions that are more custom in nature.  Maybe you want to do something that WordPress doesn’t do by default or maybe you’re working with a theme or plugin that requires a more broad focus in terms of support.  This is when Google becomes your best friend.

There is a growing list of super useful blogs and web forums out there with free content just waiting to be ingested.  Tons of knowledgeable bloggers and designers/developers who spend their days cranking out useful information on WordPress, plugins, themes, etc…  The problem is that our needs are often too specific and ever changing to find all we need in one place.  I really can’t think of a single resource that has provided me with every WordPress insight I’ve required.  Often times I need to know how to do something very specific and may happen upon a completely random website that just so happens to have the answer I require.  Chances are I’ll never even return, yet that one visit was all I needed.  So learning effective search techniques is absolutely essential!

Effectively Searching Via Google

When you want to know the answer to something specific and you want to know fast, Google is the way to go.  Yet just typing a few keywords into Google and pressing ‘Search’ is rarely going to get you the results you’re hoping for.  More often than not you’ll find yourself scrolling through page after page of ‘almost the right answer’ websites.  So you need to learn a few Google Searching Techniques so you can pull your answer up on page one every time.

The simplest way to refine your search is to add quotes around your search text.  When doing so you are telling Google to not only find websites with the text you type, but in the order you type it.  This can quickly take that ‘needle in a haystack’ search and land your answer at the top of page one.  Just don’t use it every time as you will often find the need to let Google broaden its reach for certain inquiries.

There are many different ways to refine your Google searches to help you quickly get the answers you need.  You can search for items that show up in a title of a page or in the URL itself.  Or you can have Google search for your keywords only in a specific website (domain).  There are many more ways to refine your searches, all enabling you to pinpoint  what you want/need to know to accomplish your online goals.  For more information be sure to check out this great resource for Google Search Operators.  Also read about how you can take advantage of Google’s Advanced Search.

Twitter

Another great way to quickly get WordPress answers (or at least get pointed in the right direction) is to ask on Twitter.  Just be sure to use the word WordPress and add a hashmark (ie. #Wordpress).  This way you’ll not only have those following you see the question, but those who follow #Wordpress tweets may chime in as well.  Either way this can be a great way to pinpoint answers as you’ll often find others who had the same question at some point and already came across the answer.  A quick link from a Twitter friend can go a long way in reducing your search time.

Bookmark Along The Way

Finally, be sure to bookmark websites and specific web pages as you come across them.  I find that while searching for one answer I’ll come across other useful content regarding WordPress that I know I’ll want access to down the road.  So bookmark it now so you don’t waste time later, trying to remember where/how you found the page in the first place.  Also, do yourself a favor and create a few folders to organize your growing list of WordPress bookmarks.  There’s nothing more frustrating that knowing you’ve got the link somewhere, but not being able to locate it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of useful WordPress resources, but with this content you should be able to effectively locate those answers you need to WordPress questions.  The more success you find, the easier it gets.  It’s like fishing…you first need the right gear and then the right location, but after that it’s experience that lands you the big one.  OK, that was a really BAD analogy!!  You get the point.

Eric Hamm