As a general rule of thumb most errors you’ll encounter with your WordPress blog are the result of excessive or incompatible plugins. While many find the selection of essential plugins a conundrum I believe in testing each plugin one-by-one with the latest version of WordPress so I can isolate the problem to determine the cause of the slow load times, call function errors or php memory limit warnings. The most valuable tool I can tell you when it comes to plugins is that when possible look for existing code that can accomplish the same result.

Of course there are certain plugins that even I use in my WordPress Blogs. I’ve compiled a list below of the top 10 plugins that I use on a daily basis that I believe will help any tech blog:

* AdSense Now – There are many ad insertion plugins for WordPress, but if your tech blog is using AdSense – this is the plugin I recommend. It allows you to insert your ad blocks aligned left, center or middle in 3 sections of a post. It also gives you the option to suppress ads on pages, category pages, tag pages, archives and more.

* Audio Player – Being able to insert mp3 clips or podcasts into your blog can be a problem. Audio Player is a plugin that makes this process simple – simply create a music folder on your site via FTP and then upload mp3 tracks to the directory. You can insert the built-in audio player into any of your posts or pages with a simple line of code – painless, simple and easy.

* Facebook Sharecount – It’s no secret that social networking sites like Facebook are effective ways to create a fanbase, but being able to harness that power relies on an easy way to share your great content. Facebook Sharecount will make it easy for visitors share your posts and monitor your content.

* Foliopress Descriptions – Once your tech blog has hundreds or even thousands of posts you will need a way to mass edit your descriptions. While the importance of meta descriptions is debated, I still believe that a hand written summary should be written for each post. Foliopress Descriptions supports post excerpt, These and All In One Seo meta description fields.

* Google XML Sitemaps – If you’ve read my previous post on how to get indexed by Google and Yahoo you know that having a sitemap is essential. This plugin auto generates your sitemap in a nice and neat XML file and let’s search engines understand the content on your tech blog. After installing and activating the plugin Google XML Sitemaps will take care of the rest.

* NextGEN Gallery – Managing your images and photo galleries can be a pain, but NextGen Gallery makes this simple. With features like auto resizing, watermarks, thumbnail creation as well as gallery effects – NextGEN Gallery is a must have plugin.

* Star Rating for Reviews – When you run a tech blog sooner or later you will start receiving products for review. Creating a solid review is as much about content as it is about presentation. Star Rating for Reviews allows you to create ratings for the products you review or even rate different aspects of the product and averages the ratings to determine a final score. The possibilities are limitless with the plugin – a must have for anyone looking to review tech.

* TweetMeme Retween Button – If you look at the posts on TechBlogStartup you’ll notice a yellow Retweet button aligned to the right. The power of Twitter is growing by the day so making it easy for your reader to ReTweet great content can prove very valuable. If you’ve installed Google Analytics like I explained in my previous post here, then you will be able to monitor just how many visitors enter your post through Twitter. If you are wondering why I haven’t included ShareThis it’s because I manually insert the code instead of using a Wordpress Plugin.

* WP Super Cache – If you’ve heard of Digg then odds are you’ve heard of the Digg Effect where an article on a website becomes so popular so quickly that the flood of traffic to the website causes the server to crash. Since WordPress blogs are built on SQL Databases they are highly susceptible to this condition, but installing WP Super Cache can almost eliminate this threat. The plugin builds a cache of your posts and creates a static html page so that the server load is reduced and your site can handle more visitors. If your tech blog is brand spanking new I would install the plugin but not activate it until I started to see spikes in traffic or one of my articles was picked up by a major tech blog like Engadget or Gizmodo.

* All in One SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a key ingredient to driving organic traffic to your tech blog. Writting great content is key, but after you have created that content you need to make sure that it targets keywords and includes some basic optimization to ensure it is search engine friendly. All in One SEO does this job very well. If you are using the WordPress theme I use (Thesis) then you will not need this plugin, but for pretty much every other WordPressTheme I recommend installing it right away so that you can start writing your custom meta descriptions

All of the plugins I’ve mentioned above can be downloaded manually and then uploaded via FTP to your blog or you can add them from within your WordPress Dashboard – personally I prefer the latter. If you are wondering why certain plugins are not listed on my top 10 list – I just don’t find them essential to a tech blog. You will notice that I do somethings with TechBlogStartup that many people use Plugins or Widgets to do – eg. the top 6 articles aligned horizontally at the top of the site or the Recent Posts section in the side bar. For tech blogs that receive a large volume of traffic, limiting the plugins helps reduce the SQL memory load and if you’ve ever had a website crash you know just how important this is. Do you have some WordPress plugins on your tech blog that you think we should know about? Go ahead and drop your own list or links to the plugins in the comments section below so we can check them out.
About the Author: never say never

The Sony DLT-IV backup tapes are highly reliable and have high storage capacity. They are the top most preference of the enterprises over the world. They deliver the best results in the workstation data & server network. The financial institutes and the public sectors as well are mostly using the DLT-IV data backup tape format. The most important feature of the DLT-IV tape is that it powerful & fast and has new technology of “Half Inch Metal Particle”. The recording capacity is also very high up to 80GB (compressed rate). The data transfer speed is fast and the file access is also very quick. The performance of the DLT IV tape is high because of the “Metal Particle technology”. This new technology saves the space in the tape cartridge with single reel, therefore, the compressed recording capacity reaches to 80 Gigabytes. With the help of the”DLT8000 drive” flagship, the data transfer rate can is increased and the compressed rate reaches up to 12 Megabytes per second.

The DLT-IV tape has been added new and advanced feature of “Sony Binder”. This feature enhances the tape performance and reduces the tape reel’s wear with in contact with the head. The passes in the DLT-IV tapes reach up to 1 million. The DLT-IV tape has long durable life and is considered as one of the most reliable and stable data backup storage medium. The body of the Sony DLT-IV has been carefully engineered and manufactured. The tape to head interface is optimized through the “defect detection”.

In the automated systems the Sony’s DLT IV backup data media tape makes it easy to identify the media and the files can also be accessed more quickly. The precious data is protected and made safer, secured because the Sony DLT-IV cartridge has “labeling service”. This service saves the time and therefore, the performance along with the efficiency of the tape enhances. The migration to the system of higher storage capacity is easy because the DLT technology based systems are backward read compatible. In this way the cost can is also reduced when the system is upgraded. The DLT-IV makes the data safe and secure. It has the new, advanced “correction & error detection” technology along with the “multi track redundancy”.

The tape reel’s wear & tear during the contact with the tape head is also reduced due to the “adaptive mechanism”. In order to keep the performance of the tape consistent, the tape drive heads should be kept clean. So, the Sony has developed the cleaning tape “DL3-CL”. This Sony cleaning tape is compatible with all the Digital linear tape (DLT) drives and provides the best results. The cleaning tape gives up to twenty cleanings. The cleaning should be done regularly. The cleaning should be done when the tape drive’s “cleaning lamp” illuminates.

Sony has developed and introduced many popular, reliable data storage mediums like the ? half inch tape, AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) tape, Super AIT tape, Digital Linear Tape (DLT), Linear Tape Open (LTO) format. These data storage mediums are considered as the storage standards. Sony has also developed reliable, efficient, robust and popular Optical Disks (Magneto Optical MO, Compact Disk CD, Digital Versatile Disc DVD).

If you’re thinking of starting a website for personal or business use you should know of some very cost effective ways to get you up and running on all fronts. It is possibly for very minimal investment to get web hosting, advertising and even design out of the way. Doing this leaves you with more time to focus on the core of your business or hobby.

Web hosting is an obvious essential for the online business and for any website. The options for web hosting are nothing short of astounding these days. You can get all the features, free domain names, free SSL certificates and much more for under $80 many times. This alone makes online business very tempting for many. A physical storefront is many times an impossible solution for anyone with less than 5 digits of income stashed away somewhere. An online business can give you unlimited advertising space, a broader market if you’re in a remote area, and very small overhead.

Add to this the fact that some hosting providers offer free pay per click advertising credit with many of their hosting plans and you have a definite winner. This means you can secure a domain name and hosting many times for less than $80 and get free advertising credit to start your marketing endeavors once you get your website up and running. This is beneficial for personal sites as well. Free traffic is free traffic.

Hosting companies many times offer coupons or vouchers for Adwords, YSEM and Adcenter. These credits usually range in value between $35 and $250 when they’re all added up. Aside from free advertising, these credits also give you the oppurtunity to practise and learn pay per click search engine marketing strategies without having to shell out too much cash up front.

As for quick and painless design, there is an answer for that too depending on your needs. There are many large template sites out there offering quality web templates for open source scripts. The scripts I’m talking about are free and cover just about any commercial or personal need imaged on a web page. Scripts like Zen Cart, osCommerce, WordPress, Joomla and others will allow you to implement ecommerce, blogging, content management and many other features that would usually cost a fair amount of money to implement. A combination of one of these and a professional template can get you up and running in a hurry.

As an example, osCommerce is a powerful open source ecommerce platform with support for multiple shipping and payment methods. osCommerce is free, easy to install and templates on Templatemonster go for about $150 apiece. With $150 and $90 for good web hosting you can be up and running and have advertising credit for a total of $240. If you have trouble with installation or need help then open a MySiteFix account for free. Putting in a ticket for oscommerce install will run about $35 and leave you with an easy and cost effective support solution for your small business.

In conclusion, look before you leap. Take the time to do your research and you may find that you get alot for a little. The chance for hosting, domain, design, advertising all in one or two quick purchases makes good sense.

Despite what many people might think, you really don’t need to spend thousands of dollars setting up your digital photography niche blog (or photo site/website – we mean the same thing here). It can be easily accomplished at a mere fraction of that by using WordPress, and we’ll show you how to do that in this article.

You may also have been thinking that you need to have your digital photography portfolio on show at all times too. This is a nice idea… but I’ve found that it’s much more beneficial to post fresh content to your blog often enough, so that the search engines discover you and reward you with good regular visitors (traffic) through to your blog.

To see what I mean, next time, before you jump online, ask yourself ‘what is it I want to learn?’ What am I looking for? I guarantee that you’ll be going online to find helpful information. And maybe great images too. Of course, when you discover great images, you like to read about ‘how’ the images were made, right?

What I’m trying to say here is that writing good content will be the lifeblood of your blog. This will make or break it. Focus on writing good content and you will have it made. You can always add images to this mix at a later stage.

Now, onwards and let’s set up your blog. A recommendation, in this case, is to use the free WordPress.org to create your blog. Wordpress allows you zillions of templates, add ons and plugins, is a very low cost way to build a website. Not to mention that they also have fabulous support forums where you’ll find hundreds of enthusiastic users who can be very helpful to your cause.

You could also use blogger.com, or even squidoo.com if you were hard pressed. With a little online exploration, I’m sure that you’d find other blogging platforms available too.

However once you’ve discovered WordPress you won’t have eyes for anything else. You’ll just want to keep learning and fit all the pieces together to discover how it works. In a nutshell you now need to search for the right WordPress template to use – and there’s hundreds of these available too, so set aside some time for this. (You can always change themes as you go, but try searching for ‘wordpress themes’ for starters).

Of course, there’s a lot more to it than what I’ve attempted to lay out here. But at the core is finding a good theme and starting to post (write) your ideas out, with some sort of regularity. And so if there’s any digital photography tips I can give, it’s just this – start with WordPress, focus on creating great content, and don’t spend thousands on a photo website until you truly know how great WordPress can be.

I need to know an effective way of learning on how to build a Joomla 1.5 website. Apparently,the original creators never even had the thought of making an actual effective tutorial or database on how to make a Joomla website.

One perfect tutorial website is W3 Schools,but there is nothing based on Joomla.

Which is incredibly stupid that I see professionals make them with ease,but I can’t find a single source on how to do them properly!

And the Wiki Joomla site is weak as well.

And no Google does NOT count! I need to find a real useful site on how to do this.

surge suppressors

Building and maintaining a web site is a lot of work; one of the tools that can make it significantly easier is a dedicated content management system.

In a nutshell, a content management system is a set of server side utilities that let you manage your site’s cascading style sheets in an easy to use, centralized interface.

More sophisticated systems include the ability to upload content, allow visitor creation of contents, and even manage libraries of graphics, affiliate program links and more.

While there is a technical layer to using a manager, the essence of one is that you can buy something “off the shelf” to get your web site up and running rather than paying for a custom developer to write one for you.

Your need for a CMS will grow as the number of pages (or linked sites) you run increases.

The most common installation strategy for a content management system is when upgrading an existing web site to be more interactive, most often when the client is asking you to replace a sporadically updated company web site with blog-style software.

If you’re maintaining web sites for clients, the point of a management system is that now your client can do the mind numbingly tedious bits of posting new content; it no longer comes to your inbox to be sorted, formatted and posted, when those operations can take longer for the applications to load than it does to do the operation in question.

If you’re maintaining your own web site, it does you more good the more you intend to update a site. Lots of sites are still holding to the 1996 model of company web sites four pages that never ever change.

The key to getting good traffic (and good responses) on your web site is all about fresh, regularly updated content, and the CMS makes that easier for you to do less overhead and less work, and more time spent doing the kinds of things you went into business to do.

Choosing the right system means looking at what you intend to do with your web site. In a nutshell, your choices come down to the following:

Hire someone to write one for you. This can get expensive, fast. If all you’re looking for is a front page blog, avoid this one WordPress or Movable Type do it better and are free.

If you’re looking for something more specific, like on site whiteboards or version tracking of submitted articles, or deadline management for freelance contributors, then a custom content management system is worth looking into. Buy (or license) a commercial package. If you’re doing enterprise grade IT work, a commercial package with support might be your best bet.

If you’re running your own business, there are good odds that your hosting provider provides a couple of content management packages that you can use. Install an open source package. These have the advantage of the right price (free), but may require more technical expertise to set up and run.

If you’re running on a hosting server with shared hosting environments, you may have to get your hosting provider to install it and set it up for you.

With this knowledge in hand, choosing the right management system should be a straightforward decision.
About the Author: graduation favors

Anyone can make a website these days using the services and products readily available to us all. But for a first-time web master, it can be a slow and frustrating process, as you figure out how everything works, what is compatible with what else and how everything slots together.

A simple website can easily go from nothing to a finished, published site in less than a day *if* you know what you’re doing. Otherwise it can take weeks if not longer – and that assumes you get finished at all!

So in this article we’re not just going to look at how to make a website, we’re going to be more specific and consider how to make a website fast and easy so you can get your site online sooner rather than later.

Okay, well the good news is that with all the software and services around at the moment there is a greater chance to make a website fast and easy than ever before.

Let’s take a look at some of the resources that will help you achieve this…

1) Wordpress

You can use Wordpress software free of charge to make a blog super-fast. Within minutes you’ll have a basic website set up for you to tweak when you have time. Add some articles and you’re done.

2) Blogger

Google’s offering for bloggers offers a similar service to Wordpress though differs being easier to use but less fully-featured.

3) Nvu

Nvu free web design software lets you make a website easily on your home computer without splashing out cash.

4) Free Website Templates

Whether you decide to make a website from scratch using software like Nvu or using an online blogging solution like Wordpress or Blogger you will be able to find a host of free site templates that you can either use as-is , or modify to perfectly suit your needs.

A quick search in your favorite search engine will likely turn up hundreds of sites listing these template files.

5) CoolText

Allows you to create your own logo free of charge. Just visit the site, type in your website name, select the color, the font and so on and out pops your finished logo. What’s more, they look great!

6) Royalty Free Images

Websites like IstockPhoto allows you to get royalty-free images to use on your website so you can add professionally-photographed pictures, animations and cartoons to your site, without breaking the bank or risking a letter from a solicitor.

7) Low Cost Web Hosting

There is plenty of competition in the market now for web hosting. If you’re wondering how to make a website fast and easy, then select a budget web hosting company to host your site. Then consider using Wordpress or Blogger to actually build a site, together with a free template to give it a professional look. You can be set up for under $5 a month with this solution, including your own website address.

The end result is fantastic and it’s quick and easy to set up. This is my own personal favourite technique for making a website fast.
About the Author: search at google

I just started a club penguin blog at wordpress.com and I was wondering how you put a Who’s Among Us web counter in it? Thanks for your help!