How to Advertise on Your WordPress Blog?

When you build a WordPress site,  you may need to promote one or two of your products  in the sidebar of your blog. So, how to do this? This article will show you some clues. To add an advertisement to your sidebar, you can simply add an image widget to the sidebar; and if you need add more, just add more repeat this operation. Now check the details below: 

Step 1. Add image widget 

As most free WordPress themes do not have image widgets in the dashboard by default, you need to add this widget yourself. Here I recommend your download one from WordPress.org. You can also search one in the plugin:

• Download the image widget here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/image-widget/
• Install and this widget to your WordPress theme: “In your WordPress administration, go to the Plugins page Activate the Image Widget plugin and a subpage for the plugin will appear in your Manage menu. Go to the Appearance > Widget page and place the widget in your sidebar in the Design” If is allowed, you can also directly search the widget in your dashboard: Appearance->Widgets. After choose the widget, install and active it.

Step 2. Upload your image 

Next, you can upload your image to the sidebar. Remember that, you need to resize your image before posting to the sidebar. For example, if your sidebar’s width is 300px, you need to customize your images’ width to be 300px. In addition, you need to set the height and width in the image  widget manually. 

Step 3. Add image property 

After you upload your image, you need to add more details to the image, say, the caption, the link to the product page, and the title.

Step4. Save and publish the advertisement 

After you finish all steps above, you have finished an advertisement on your WordPress blog. Note: Not all free WordPress themes works well with the image widget, so, before you build a WordPress site, choose a business WordPress theme carefully, some free premium WordPress themes for business can be your good choice, however, if your budget permits, you can choose a premium WordPress theme for business, since you can get better support if there is any problem with the theme. To put ads on WordPress blog, you can also embed a SWF video in the sidebar. As for how to put SWF ads to WordPress site, I will talk in another post.

How to Insert Table to WordPress?

Sometimes, we may need to insert tables to our WordPress pages or posts. But unfortunately, it seems that WordPress does not support table as it does not have table support built in. Perhaps this is an effort to make the WordPress easy to use or perhaps the developers think that it is easy enough to turn tables to texts with HTML added.

Manually inserting a table needs you to do a lot. It is tedious, laborious and error prone. So, how to insert such common content component to our sites? Do not worry, there are many plugins can solve this problem. Here I will show you two simple ways to insert tables to WordPress.

Plugins based on shortcodes

Here, I would like to recommend one shortcodes plugin and a table plugin that based on shortcodes.

1. Shortcodes Ultimate
Many shourtcodes plugin supports inserting table. And here, Shortcodes ultimate can be your ideal choice. It supports inserting table directly as well as uploading CVS file. So, to add simple tables, this plugin is enough. See details about this plugin here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcodes-ultimate/.

2. Easy Table
As its name indicates, this plugin provides an easy way to insert tables. It really lives up to its name but does not compromise on features or options.

Easy Table uses shortcode to generate tables, so, you can simply type your table data directly in your post while you writing.

This plugin generates table data in standard CVS format; it’s easiest way to build a table.It is just so easy to insert tables to your pages and posts with Easy Table.

Aside from inserting such simple tables, it can also insert more complicated tables. For details, you can see: http://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-table/

Visual Bulder-TablePress

TablePress is the replacement for WP-Table Reloaded; its downloads are second only to the latter. This plugin input table data in a purpose-built, easy-to-follow Admin interface rather than in a post.

As a powerful table plugin, the TablePress includes a list of impressive features such as row and column spanning, searching, sorting, filtering, paging and horizontal scrolling.

The tables are added to posts and pages with a simple shortcode which makes it easy to use the tables in multiple pages and posts. Exporting and importing tables for sharing across sites are also available.

TablePress is a sophisticated plugin made for sophisticated needs, if you need complicated tables, this plugin would be your ideal choice.

How to Choose the Right Hosting for Your WordPress Site?

With the rise of the self-media, more and more people prefer to build their own blog site. Independent blog site has a great advantage with respect to the many free blog platforms. But for many on WordPress is not too white for understanding, build a blog platform is not an easy thing.

Finding a WordPress hosting solution for your new website isn’t always easy. There’s a lot of options out there and even if you do settle on a host, how do you know which type of hosting you should choose?

This can be a minefield for bloggers new to WordPress, who just want to get their site up and running. Experience too many obstacles and you might just want to give up before you even start.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be so hard. There are solutions out there that are perfect for those of us whose technical know-how is non existent. Read on to find out what those solutions are, what types of WordPress hosting you can expect to find and which one is perfect for your needs.

Why should I use WordPress?

Some people must be very curious as to why there are so many free blog platform, why they have to spend money to build their own blog site? First from the content management, the independent blog sites with full autonomy, it can be completely control content on the blog. But for the other free blog platforms, their own published articles likely to be deleted platform. On the other hand, build their own platform on top of blog advertising to obtain certain benefits, this advantage is generally free blog platforms do not have.

What are the main types of hosting? 
There are various hosting options available, the main type of hosting are shared, WordPress, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting.

Share Hosting - this is where your website is sharing one server with other users websites. This is the most basic type of hosting, its great for starting out with a website and for websites with little content. This type of hosting will be suitable for around 90% of websites, just make sure to look over the package specifics and invest a little more to get slightly better options.

WordPress Hosting - specifically tailored for WordPress websites, its a service where all technical aspects of WordPress is managed by the host. This includes security, speed, updates, daily backups, website uptime, and scalability. It is not required for a basic site running WordPress, but if you want to make sure its all managed then its a good package and probably one of the more secure packages for the basic user.

VPS or Virtual Private Server - Still a form shared hosting, however giving more flexibility on what is run on the server. This type of hosting gives you more flexibility for customization, great for having multiple sites and or if you expect greater amount of traffic as the bandwidth isn't limited like shared hosting, as well as offering better security.

Cloud Hosting - Similar to shared hosting, its a virtual option that uses a cluster of computers to provide your site with one operating system, unlike shared hosting it allows for great levels of security, also providing greater scalability as most cloud hosting solutions are pay per usage.


Dedicated Hosting - Dedicated hosting is a hosting configuration in which a server is devoted to a single organization or for a single purpose, such as a website. The most expensive option, used for larger websites with large amount of traffic, also requiring a system administrator to look after it. 

Site Traffic
Got huge amounts of traffic or only starting out? This should be taken into consideration when choosing your hosting. If you're a new business you're likely to have low traffic so a shared hosting plan is going to work for the first 6 months to a year, if you have an established blog or site and can see considerable traffic coming to the site, a shared hosting plan isn't going to work.


I would recommend using Google analytics to carefully track your sites progress and the number of visitors, this is also useful for considering when you should upgrade your hosting plan or think about a change.

Speed
Speed is important for your website, look at the various options that your hosting provider offers, this can be anything from shared hosting (which has the least bandwidth) to dedicated server hosting (very fast only for your site). Also consider if the provider you're choosing supports WordPress as this will be the CMS of choice if choosing Flothemes.

Content
What content will you be showing? If you're going to be showing large amounts of imagery 30+ images in your blog posts, galleries, or pages, then you must consider using a better hosting package, as it will require extra punch to push the files to your users. If your site is loading slow this is the most likely reason, or your images have not been optimized for the web. Read more on image optimization here.

Price
What is your price range? In my experience, spend the most that your budget allows, better hosting will improve your sites speed and increase customer satisfaction, which hopefully in turn can help with conversions for your business. Slow sites lead to high bounce rates and users will be more likely the leave the site before even seeing your great content.

The best value providers are Bluehost, Hostgator, Site5 and Siteground (yes they are affiliate links) we have tried and tested them with hundreds of websites and value for money they are great.


Higher up the spectrum we have the WordPress specific hosting providers, offering built in caching, and optimized loading time specifically for WordPress sites. Our recommendations are Flywheel and WP Engine, whilst they are more expensive, especially for multi sites, if you have large amounts of traffic, require fast speed and have the budget, its an investment worth making.

Support
Check out what people have been saying about your hosting provider, do they have good reviews, what is their up time (the time that websites are likely to be live) and do they respond to their customers promptly. The providers we have recommended above we also choose due to their support teams, all offering good support with prompt responses. Again check their locations to make sure that they work well with your time zone.

Conclusion
If you have a current hosting provider and are considering a change, I would recommend contacting one of the aforementioned providers, check the options available, many will provide free, or paid switching services so you can be assured that your content is going to be moved correctly. 


Overall, choosing a great hosting service is a business investment rather than an expense, don't just go for the first provider, and don't consider cost as the main factor, with hosting you really do get more for your money, your decision here will decide how well your website works and that is reflected in the experience your customers receive when they view your site. For a large number of you that are uploading larger amounts of content in your posts then consider a middle of the range package as it will work best for your business needs.

5 Things You Should Know Before Building a WorldPress Site

Now there are many online website building tips, but when it comes to building personal websites need to pay attention to what matters? Paper, small series from five different aspects of the design of the site to do the next detail, hope you can help being designed users of the site.

Search Box

Website information is a large document, format the site is for the convenience of visitors, so it is important to create a search box, users should always remember that. The variety of information classification, the classification of the search box on the site’s home page, easy to find the information they want visitors. But now many users are not aware of this, they do not realize that a lot of articles no classified inconvenient to find.

I would now recommend a more useful tool for Google Custom Search Engine, through the Google Custom Search Engine, users can add the search box on the home page to help visitors easily find the information they need. How to use this tool? Users simply click on the Google Custom Search New Search Engine Engine on the button, and then according to their need to complete all the steps in the code set up on search results pages.

Navigation System

Frankly, the navigation bar is good or bad relating to the rise and fall site. According to the survey, many owners do navigation results are not very good. For example, some owners use the generic label naming navigation, location and navigation have not put right, some owners will be navigating and other things together dropdown menu.

Preferably the navigation bar on the site’s home page, on the navigation bar description should be clear, the font to be significant, the color should be bright. There is a drop-down menu the user should be used with caution, because there’s something more that disorderly do not know how to describe them, these things will affect the search engines to crawl the site and guidelines.

Fonts

Site design time do not use a small font. If your site is too small word, no matter how well written content Nobody wants to see, because it is too laborious. To try to moderate the font, color, do not spend too much, we should pay attention to color matching. In use, when to pay attention to the difference between the font between Chinese and English.

Layout

Whether human or search engines do not like the layout of the cluttered site. Many website owners are not aware of the seriousness of this problem, they just will themselves know cramming everything on one page, so you created a website unreadable.

If the user does not know how to arrange your own website, then I recommended to use the existing WordPress theme. Elegant Theme to collect a lot of themes, users can choose according to their needs to the topic.

Image Usage

Picture undoubtedly help users improve one way traffic, but this does not mean that users can insert a picture in the article. I found that many users insert the picture too much, leading to the readability of the article are reduced. Of course, rational use of pictures can catch the reader’s eye, increase the readability of the article, but we insert a picture of the ultimate purpose is to allow visitors to obtain valid information through articles Yeah. Therefore, users should be used with caution pictures. Select a picture in the small series suggest that you choose some of the more clear, more bright colors, then more in line with the theme of the picture, the picture should pay attention when placing the article beginning on left-aligned.

Many aspects are related to the above matters writing a blog using WordPress to note, users pay attention to these matters can not attract more visitors, so to increase website traffic WordPress blog, the author aspect must be mindful.