WP-Vybe has the following features:

• Theme settings page in your WordPress control panel (see screenshots below).
• 2-column or 3-column layouts.
• 10 different color options with control panel setting for further customization.
• Optional featured article glider for home page.
• Gravatar integration.
• Optional banner ad integration.
• Optional built-in post thumbnails.
• Optional logo/header image integration via control panel.
• Built-in site search.
• Built-in drop-down navigation for sub-categories and sub-pages.
• Built-in author page and author profile with Gravatar support.
• Widgetized sidebars.
• Comment and trackback separation.
• Post author comments highlighted.
• Basic SEO techniques integrated.
• Original Photoshop files (PSDs) available for download via control panel.

It is also reasonably priced at $99 for a single license, $199 for a multiple use license and $299 for a developer license.

The best feature though that really makes this worthwhile for me is the control panel.  You are able to customize pretty much everything in the theme through the control panel without having to ever edit the themes.

If you own a blog you should get yourself a copy of this theme or you can get it for free by writing a review

by ponanwi 

To make things easy and clear, I am going to write this as a bulleted list that you can run through.  Of course, I am skipping a lot of details here, but this should give you an idea.  I hope it helps and if you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments area.

Domain Setup

1. Register the domain or sub-domain.  I use 1&1 mainly because they are very affordable (6 bucks a year)
   1. Set it up to point to your Server IP
2. Create the domain/subdomain with your ISP – I use mediatemple

Database Setup

1. Create the database – usually done through your ISP’s control panel
2. Create a user for the database

WordPress Setup

1. Download the latest version of WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download/
2. Upload the downloaded file to the new domain
3. Connect using the shell to your new domain
4. In the shell, unzip the uploaded file
   unzip filename.zip
5. Edit your wp-config.php file (if you don’t have one, create it using the wp-config-sample.php)
6. Modify the wp-config.php to match your settings (shown in bold)
   define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name_here‘); 
   define(‘DB_USER’, ‘db_username_here‘); 
   define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘db_password_here‘); 
   define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘db_host_usually_localhost‘);  

Blog Setup

1. Navigate to your new domain
2. Enter a blog title and email and click “Install WordPress”
   
3. On the following page, save the admin username and password and click the login link
4. Change your password
   1. Click Users
   2. Click Edit next to the admin user
   3. Type a new password and submit
5. Change the Permalinks to your taste (I prefer the date and name based format)
   1. In your admin site click Options > Permalinks
   2. Select the format you like and click update

by tanakawho

More Setup

1. Add traffic tracking to your site, I use one or more of these:
   1. Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/
   2. WP Stats – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-stats/
   3. Sitemeter – http://www.sitemeter.com
   4. Feedburner – http://www.feedburner.com
   5. SpotPlex – www.spotplex.com (I just started using this, so I am not sure how good it is)
2. Burn your feed – check www.feedburner.com for more information
3. Monetize your site, here are some of the few that I use:
   1. Google AdSense
   2. WidgetBucks
   3. Amazon.com Associates

Customize

1. Change the theme
   1. Upload a new theme to the folder wp-content/themes on your server
   2. In your admin site click on Presentation and select your theme
2. Add plugins
   1. Upload a plugin to the folder wp-content/plugins
   2. In your admin site click on Plugins and activate your plugin
   3. Follow specific plugin instructions to make it work

Resources

1. Themes
   1. http://themes.wordpress.net/ – WordPress theme viewer
   2. http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/theme_browser.php – another WordPress theme browser
   3. http://www.wpdesigner.com/category/free-wordpress-themes/ – free WordPress themes
   4. http://www.solostream.com/ – Very good and affordable themes
   5. http://www.wp-glory.com/ – WordPress design tutorial
   6. http://news.revolutiontheme.com/ – good theme
   7. http://www.uniqueblogdesigns.com – lots of good themes and branding
   8. http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/ – WordPress theme generator
2. Plugins
1. Plugin directory – http://wordpress.org/extend/
2. WP Super Cache – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
3. FeedBurner FeedSmith – http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart
4. Aizatto’s Related Posts – http://www.wp-plugins-db.org/plugin/aizattos-related-posts/
5. Share This – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/
6. Akismet – http://akismet.com/
3. Other good articles
1. http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
2. http://www.internetwealthmaster.com/how-to-set-up-wordpress/
3. http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/wordpress1.shtml

by tanakawho

My Blogs

1. www.theTechBrief.com
2. www.sofachip.com
3. www.emadibrahim.com

It’s really simple but if you are confused watch this 1 minute video clip and you will get.  The important thing to remember is that this will be most beneficial to early adopters i.e. the top of the pyramid.  So signup ASAP.  I hope you will sign up using this link http://www.blogrush.com/r12018762, so I will get the referral.

Does anyone have any idea why they don’t publish my comments and how to get around it?  Hail Marys?  Donation?  Beg?

xtimeline – Explore and Create Free Timelines  [via Blog Posts Timeline]

Another example is one of my blog entries was mentioned on ProBlogger (a high traffic site) and again my traffic exploded. Going from 2 or 3 views for that post to 250 (and it’s only 7 PM), it will probably be around 300 or so.

What is the moral of this post? Get linked on high profile/high traffic sites. I am not sure how sustainable this will be in the long run, but if I can get a few more of my blog posts featured on other high traffic sites then there should be a substantial increase in my traffic. I will update my blog in a week or so to report traffic patterns.

Do you have any good tips on how to give your traffic a shot in the arm?

[update] Increase your blog traffic. Get a blog rush.

Add a reference to the XML-RPC.net library.

Create a struct for the return result

Public Structure category
    Public categoryId As Object
    Public parentId As Object
    Public description As Object
    Public categoryName As Object
    Public htmlUrl As Object
    Public rssUrl As Object
End Structure

Create the interface for the API

<XmlRpcUrl("http://myblog.blogstogo.com/xmlrpc.php")> _
Public Interface IWP
    Inherits IXmlRpcProxy

    <XmlRpcMethod("wp.getCategories")> _
     Function getCategories(ByVal args() As String) As category()
End Interface

Call the API

Dim proxy As IWP = XmlRpcProxyGen.Create(Of IWP)()
Dim args() As String = {"http://myblog.blogstogo.com", _
                          "username", "password"}
Dim categories() As category
categories = proxy.getCategories(args)

That’s it… Pretty straight forward.

My ideal job is will have to have these elements: write code, try new software, check out new sites and online services, play with new gadgets, pretty much anything tech-related. If I can do all that, blog about it and generate enough money to pay my bills then I will be a happy camper.

I noticed that some of the more successful blogs out there are the ones that give advice or provide a service for free. So, I am going to blog about all the things I mentioned above and at the same time will blog about my stats, earnings, tweaks, etc… that I am using to improve the earning potential of my blog.

Getting Started

I have been blogging for a while but just as a hobby and as part time and haven’t really written any long posts except for a few. I am not quitting my job yet but I plan to be more pro-active about blogging. I also plan to try and write longer and better posts.

Ok, so let’s get started. In this post, I am going to cover the steps I performed to get started with my blog and hopefully one day make it successful. I will keep updating my stats to let everyone know how successful my methods have been.

Set up my blog

I figured if I want lots of traffic, then I should host my own blog then I thought if I can get others to blog for me then I can get more traffic, so I hosted a multi-user blog site BlogsToGo. First I started using Community Server (CS) but then switch to WordPress Mu (WPMU). I liked CS because it was written in .net and I am a .net developer. But WPMU was a better platform in terms of available themes, plug-ins, community support etc… So I bought myself a PHP book “Beginning PHP and MySQL 5” – pretty good book, installed WAMP on Windows 2k3 server hosted at Rackspace (expensive but the best hosting out there).

Customize my blog

One thing I love about WPMU is its endless customization potential. Of course this can be bad since you can spend hours and days tweaking it (I did and still do). I am going to write a post dedicated to the my customization and will link to it here [to do]. But if you can’t wait, check out this post.

Monetize my blog

The obvious one is Google AdSense. AdSense is great and is very easy to setup. Here are some related posts: Adding code to the top of every post in WordPress and Private: Adding stuff to the footer of every page in WordPress that might help you with setting up AdSense. I like their referral program too that lets you refer things like Google Pack, AdWords, Firefox, AdSense and now they have expanded to include third party referral programs.

Amazon.com Affiliate Program – so far this has been a poor performer but it might get better with increased traffic. I use context links and direct links to products. For example the link above to the PHP book contains my associate id, so if you buy it, I will get a percentage (I think 3%). The percentage increases with volume.

I also joined Text Link Ads (TLA) but so far haven’t made any money. I think that will change with traffic – I will report back [to do].

Promote my blog

I have about 400+ blogs (as of July 2007) on BlogsToGo. Most of these blogs, I got by advertising on Google AdWords. You can set a daily budget, set an expiration date for the campaign, assign different click values for different key words and all sort of other customization. But be careful, it can get expensive. I will say it costs me about $5 per blog. Considering that only a small percentage of these blogs are actually active and not spam, the cost is a lot higher. But, I think in the long term it will pay off.

I posted comments in high traffic sites and linked to related comments. One of my favorite sites is LifeHacker.com but for some reason none of my comments ever make it – maybe their spam filter thinks I am a spammer.

I linked to other related blogs and blog posts through pingbacks and trackbacks.

I just joined MyBlogLog a few minutes ago (at the start of this blog) and I already have 2 readers and 8 page views. That’s not bad for a few minutes. I will report back on how successful this becomes [to do].

I submitted my site to several search engines but I think Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask should be enough to cover 95% of the population.

I added a link to my blog in almost everything I do: Email signatures, online profiles, resume, online comments, social book marking sites.

I asked friends and associates with blogs to link to my blog and I linked to theirs.

The longer I keep my readers on my blog, the more likely they will find an interesting ad to click on, so I interlinked to other posts in my blog to get them to read relevant posts and get increased page views.

The most important thing, I think is GOOD CONTENT. So, I am going to try harder to post better content and more frequently. Although, from reading online, I heard that frequency isn’t that important – but that could be wrong.

Track My Blog

So you do all these things and hope everything works. But before you quit your job, you need to track your progress and all your different optimization techniques. I track my sites in several ways which I think might be an overkill. So, if my traffic increases, I might just switch to one or two tracking methods to increase site performance.

I love Google Analytics but it doesn’t work very for tracking per-post-traffic. Here is a sample of my dashboard for June 2007:

For per-post-traffic, I use WordPress Stats

I also use SiteMeter to track overall site traffic – you can view this site’s traffic at http://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s41blogstogo

Then of course, you need to track your earnings. Google AdSense has all sort of reports but I usually just check the homepage to get a quick view of today’s earnings. My earnings for June 2007 are

Amazon.com Associates also has a reporting feature – not a good one though.

MyBlogLog has tracking built-in but I don’t know how well it works since I just set it up. I will report back [to do].

I also like to check the value of my domain once in a while. As of July 07, 2007, BlogsToGo.com is worth $920.

My Alexa traffic rank as of July 2007 is 3,113,741 - in case you are wondering, that sucks. You can see the current rank at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=blogstogo.com

Resources For…

… Starting your blog

• WordPress – www.wordpress.org
• WAMP – http://www.wampserver.com/en/
• Community Server – www.communityserver.org
• Book: Beginning PHP and MySQL 5

… Customizing your blog

• WordPress Themes – http://themes.wordpress.net/
• WordPress Theme Generator – http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/
• WordPress Theme Browser – http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/theme_browser.php
• WordPress Plugins – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
• WordPress Plugin Database – http://wp-plugins.net/
• WordPress Widgets – http://widgets.wordpress.com/

…Monetizing your blog

• Google AdSense – http://www.google.com/adsense
• Text Link Ads – http://www.text-link-ads.com
• Amazon.com Associates – http://www.amazon.com/associates

…Promoting your blog

• Google AdWords – http://adwords.google.com
• MyBlogLog – http://www.mybloglog.com
• Google Submit – http://www.google.com/addurl/
• Yahoo Submit – http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
• Live Submit – http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
• Networking sites: Digg, Del.ici.ous, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Link to relevant blogs and get a blog rush.

..Tracking your blog

• Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
• SiteMeter – http://www.sitemeter.com
• MyBlogLog – http://www.mybloglog.com
• WordPress Stats – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

…More (and probably better) advice

• How to make money from your blog – http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog/
• Great tips for bloggers – http://www.problogger.net/
• Audio casts for professional bloggers – http://andywibbels.com (let me know if you like them).

Thoughts

Do you like this post? Is it helpful? If so then you can help me by donating money, checking any of my sponsors/affiliates, linking to my post/blog/site or telling your friends.

Feedback

Since, I am constantly trying to improve, let me (and others) know how if you have other tips, recommendations, a better way to do something. Share your feedback as a comment for everyone to see and benefit from.

I basically added a function to emit the javascript:

function sitemeter(){
echo ‘
<!– Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 –>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s41.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=s41blogstogo”>
</script>
<!– Copyright (c)2006 Site Meter –>
‘;
}

Then at the bottom I added this function call to emit the javascript above to my site footer:

add_action(‘wp_footer’, ‘sitemeter’);

Scroll to the bottom and click the sitemeter icon to view the site stats.

• Add Meta Tags – Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives.
• Akismet – Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• Now Reading – Allows you to display the books you’re reading, have read recently and plan to read, with cover art fetched automatically from Amazon. I am not using this plug-in because I didn’t really like the way it looks but I noticed other members are using it (http://mannythinksoutloud.blogstogo.com/).
• Share This – Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.
• WP-ContactForm – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you.
• WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

Note that unlike Andrew, I am running WordPress Mu, so this is proof that these plug-ins work with WPMU.

PS: Increase your blog traffic. Get a blog rush.