WordPress has immense possibilities if you are willing to do your research, learn and do the tweaks to enhance it after the default set-up. All suggestions in this post are applicable for the self-hosted WordPress blogs (or the WordPress.com blogs ). It is not uncommon to find WordPress bloggers not optimizing their blog to the full capacity. This post lists some changes that you should make to the WordPress blog dashboard and in using the WordPress software to get more advantage out the awesome WordPress software and to enhance its usefulness and usability.

1. WordPress Writing Settings:

Go to the WordPress dashboard>Settings>Writing.

You can make many useful changes in the Writing Settings area of the WordPress dashboard. Many bloggers do not tamper with this region and as a result work in constrained environment. The following snapshot is of the Writing Settings area from the WordPress dashboard.

2. Change the size of the WordPress post box

The default size of the WordPress post box (the writing box) in the WordPress ‘write new post/page’ area is just 10 lines! Now 10 lines is just not enough and looks very small in the writing region and is uneasy on the eyes. You have the option to change it to a number of your choice. I usually keep it at 20 or 25. Go increase the post box size if you have not already. It will also be very helpful for those blogs which has a multi-author blog (read more on making your blog multi-author with revenue sharing option). The following image is of default post box of 10 lines only! You can make it 20 lines and it will be double the size and you may feel you just came to the Business Class from the Economy class! Enjoy the legroom!

3. Optimize the Formatting Options

WordPress gives you two options in the Writing Settings region in the formatting options. These are:

• Convert emoticons like :- ) and :- P to graphics on display
• WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically

The first option is quite clear and you may turn off or enable animation of smilies depending upon your personal choice [if you ask my advice a moderate use of smilies is a good thing ].

For the second option, you would be well-advised to check it so that it is enabled. This will help reduce XHTML errors on your blog and help prevent mark-up validation errors on your site. Let WordPress automatically correct invalidly nested XHTML for your blog. WordPress, as a system, is based on documents written in the XHTML (eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language) scripting language. Keep the option checked and it will keep your invalid XHTML under check and automatically correct it. This option is especially useful for bloggers who are not very technically inclined.

4. Rename the default Post Category

The default post category in WordPress is ‘uncategorized.’ You can change the name of this category and make it something like ‘Others’ or ‘Miscellaneous’ to make it look more professional. You can also indicate some other default category for your blog but if you are choosing the ‘uncategorized’ as your default option then you must optimize it by giving it another name. You can also give it some SEO friendly name depending on your blog’s theme. For SEO reasons you also have the option to give slugs to your categories and tags (dashboard>Posts> Categories>Post Tags).

5. Remote Publishing Option

If you use any external blogging editor like the awesome Windows Live Writer for your blogging, then you must enable the XML-RPC option in the remote publishing options. But if you use the WordPress in-built writer for publishing your posts then you can leave it unchecked. Read this post on the WPWebHost blog on Keeping your WordPress blog secure that also discusses the remote publishing option.

You can also set up the ‘post via e-mail options’ in the writing settings if you want to publish your posts by email (which is useful when you are travelling and want to post a blog entry with just an email and do not want to incur the login hassles).

6. Update the ‘Update Services’

In the Writing settings on the WordPress dashboard, you will find that WordPress by default notifies some site update services (such as Ping-O-Matic which is an Automattic concern)  when you publish a blog post by sending an XML-RPC ping each time you create/update a post. You can add more update services in the list to increase your online exposure. You can see the WordPress ping list of Vladimir Prelovac, WordPress guru. However, too much of pinging is not desirable and you can also use the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin for WordPress (a one-time registration is required to download it).

7. WordPress Reading Settings

WordPress dashboard>Settings>Reading. This portion is more or less self-explanatory. You can choose here the number of posts that you want your blog home page to show. You would be well-advised to keep it limited (default is 10 posts) but if you (or your WordPress theme) do not show excerpts (and show full article) on home page then 10 posts on the home page make increase the loading time for your blog. If you want to know how to show excerpts in your home page you can use the more tag in your posts or edit your template files. Read more on Pro Blog Design on how to show post excerpts in WordPress. Also read techniques to display featured articles on WordPress blog.

You can also control whether to show full feeds or just the summary depending upon your blogging tastes and designs for your blog. Bloggers often show summary of posts in the feed reader to invite more hits to their blog and to prevent content scraping.

8. Permalink Settings

WordPress itself says, “By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.” You must change the permalinks to your blog and choose a more amenable URL structure. It’s also good for SEO purposes of your blog. http://example.com/example/?p=123 should be avoided. A better URL is http://example.com/how-to-write-a-post which is the same as the URL style of the WPWebHost blog and  other SEO optimized blogs.

9. WordPress Discussion Settings

WordPress dashboard>Settings>Discussion. There are many options in the WordPress discussion area that you can use to customize your way of handling the comments on your blog. The following snapshot is of the WordPress discussion dashboard area.

In this area of the dashboard you can control the pingbacks, trackbacks and enable or disable commenting on your blog. In the other comment settings, you can do some important tweaks like you can enable threaded (nested) comments (which gives more organization to your comment area), you can break comments into pages and choose to display the older or newer comments on the top of each page.

You can choose whether to publish comments instantly or get them approved by an administrator before publication in the ‘before a comment appears’ options in the discussion settings.

Then there are the comment moderation and comment blacklist options where you can mark certain words, content, URL, emails, IP addresses for moderation or mark as spam (only one word or IP per line) and save your time from getting spoiled by spammers and bad, foul-mouthed visitors. You can also control link spamming on your comment pages by sending a comment to moderation queue if it contains more than your specified number of links (spammers leave a lot of links in comments which is the primary aim of spammers).

In the discussion settings you can also choose to display the avatar (gravatar) and a gravatar logo, monster ID, wavatar or Identicon or a blank (nothing) depending upon your blog preferences for the comment area on your blog. Please note that some options like threaded comments are not supported by all the WordPress themes and you should contact your theme developer if you are unable to see it in action even after enabling it.

Apart from the above, there are many options in the general settings that need your attention particularly after you install WordPress for the first time. You should indicate your time zone, choose the date format, give a blog title, tagline and suchlike. Now let’s discuss a very important tip for WordPress blogging.

10. Use WordPress Tags to their full advantage

The WordPress codex says that every post in WordPress can be filed under one or more Tags. This aids in navigation and allows posts and to be grouped with others of similar content.

It is not very uncommon finding bloggers giving very few tags to their blog posts. If you are on WordPress.com then you would be well-advised to keep your tags and/or categories limited to 10-12 (that measure was introduced to prevent tag spamming aimed at appearing in WordPress tags global pages) but if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog using the WordPress software then you must give many relevant tags to your posts. Tags are good for SEO purposes on your blog. WordPress automatically generates blog pages for your tags and you really get the benefits and page rank juice rolling for you when you use the same tags over and over again. WordPress guru Vladimir Prelovac has a great post on the usefulness of tags. You can read his post if you are interested in exploring more on this subject: Improve Search Engine Placement with Tags. Mind your tags, as he says.

So there were some productivity tips for your WordPress blog relating to tweaks in your WordPress dashboard area among other things. Feel free to read all WordPress tutorials on this blog and improve your blogging.

If I had no sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

WordPress is not just an awesome blogging platform and an open source software that millions of blogs are happily using. The WordPress people have a great sense of humour. In fact blogging (and life) is almost meaningless without humour. The folks at WordPress understand this more than anyone else and you as a blogger and writer can take learn from the people at Automattic (the people who run WordPress and several other projects). WordPress is indeed the ‘blogging software with style.’

This post is an enumeration of official instances (with snapshots saved on 18 February 2010) where WordPress/Automattic deserves your praise for making you smile. The Cambridge definition of humour is “the ability to be amused by things, the way in which people see that some things are amusing or the quality of being amusing.” Let’s enjoy the WP humour and see how WordPress/Automattic does things in style.

The names have humour

WordPress, bbPress, Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar), GlotPress (Polyglot is speaking or using different languages, hence the name GlotPress), VideoPress (the Press is taken from the WordPress) have a lot of thought and humour gone into it. These names have a high brand value and they easily linger in your mind and on your tongue. You should keep the WordPress legacy in mind while deciding a title or name for you blog (boring names will not do). What if WordPress had some other name?!

Humorous Description of the staff at Automattic/WordPress

The About us page at the website of Automattic, the people who run WordPress and other services is oozing with humour and will make you laugh. Please note that it is mostly a virtual workplace (“the Automattic crew creates WordPress goodness from all corners of the globe” rightly says the official Automattic statement).

The following image is of Matt Mullenweg’s description on the said site. Read it to smile. Matt has a great sense of humour by the way. See his Hello Dolly plugin and Sympathy for the Devil plugin.

Here are some other instances of humour in that page. Note the title and description. This is a great way of writing short bio for staff!

Barry Abrahamson, Systems Wrangler, makes sure (during the day) the servers are zipping along while trying not to get too much BBQ sauce on his keyboard and at night… ok, well, he’s doing the same When he’s not on AIM, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, or reading about the latest and greatest in MySQL optimization…

Michael Adams, Quantum Bug Creator: After escaping Moscow (Idaho), Mike has been hiding in academia for 20 or so years. We stole him from a PhD in Quantum Information at Caltech to join the real world, or as close as we get to the real world around here.

Nikolay Bachiyski Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiønër: He makes sure the eskimo teens can blog in their native language!

Sheri Bigelow, Happiness Engineer: She has always considered herself a WordPress evangelist, and now her endlessly positive nature makes her a perfect fit as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

Lloyd Budd, Digital Entomologist: Lloyd is Canadian. We forgive him for this. We’re trying to guilt him into sending in a bio. Let’s see how long it takes him to notice. It’s been a few years so we’re not optimistic.

Maya Desai, Perspective Engineer: She still knits scarves for everyone she knows in between changing diapers and making sure everything is running smoothly at Automattic.

Anne Dorman, Finance Engineer: Anne spends her time undoing the damage Matt did in the few months before she joined.

Jon Fox: Title Pending

Heather Rasley, The Deputy: Heather was once a grammar geek. Now she’s just a geek. She was also once a grad student at NYU, but proudly dropped out in favor of joining Automattic and exploring the world.

The Automattic Taglines

Automattic Inc., ‘purveyors of fine blogging services since 2005′ also have some nice taglines on the Automattic homepage. See the snapshot below. The *asterisks mark says ‘including this’! The folks and their work is inspired by you and it strives for perfection.

Also see this snapshot on the same homepage below the fold. Matt Mullenweg, WP founder says, “We are much better at writing code than haikus!” Who can dare deny!?

Kvetch: WordPress invites criticism

Kvetch is complaining whiningly and persistently. The word has become very popular in the recent times and has a humorous connotation. In fact Kvetch is a funny complaint (Kvetch.com is a popular site which indexes kvetch sent via Twitter). The official WordPress encourages you to kvetch and they also publish the complaints. You will agree that self-criticism is an important ingredient of humour. If you cannot tolerate self-criticism and shun it then there is definitely some major problem with you. WordPress invites criticism.

Not many of you would have noticed that the WordPress extend site has a section for Kvetch where you can read them and/or submit your own. Here are some of the Kvetches on that site (go ahead and submit your kvetch):

• Matt can just delete things from core without debating it on mailing list, etc for no clear reason, whereas it takes a lot of time and effort to get anything into core, even with a clear & needed reason.
• Too damn processor intensive
• the ‘featured themes’ on wordpress.org are starting to look a little tired, isn’t it time you gave some other themes a chance?
• “the freaking upgrade process!! It’s such a mess!!”

Rate WordPress

WordPress introduced the poll daddy ratings widget some time ago and put it on the WordPress.com support pages so that people can give thumbs up or thumbs down to a help document apart from introducing it for the WP.com blogs and also as a plugin for the WordPress software. There are many instances where the help documents have more thumbs down than thumbs up but the ratings widget have not been taken off. For example, on the WordPress Contact support page which is quite comprehensive with links, WP.com users have rated it like this (snapshots dated 18 February 2010).

The ‘How do I start blogging’ page has an overwhelming negative rating but they are there. Why? Because it is humour! You learn from criticism and give others a voice to comment on your services. Bloggers should never fail in inviting constructive criticism.

You will find that any good site that cares about people more than profit does not remove negative comments or ratings if they are in good humour. Criticism gives you a window to learn is the important thing to note.

The WordPress code is Poetry

Not all of you may have noticed this ‘CODE IS POETRY’ tag that WordPress.org pages display in the bottom right. If you do not have a great sense of humour you may think that WordPress is about poetry! WordPress is aesthetically inclined. See the bottom right of the snapshot below.

WordPress says Howdy!

You must have noticed the “Howdy” in the top right of your dashboard. It is a nice informal greeting that you get when you log in to your blog though some users have kvetched that it could be just plain ‘hi’ or ‘hello’! See the ‘Howdy‘ snapshot below from my dashboard:

WordPress advisory: Browse Happy

Browe Happy is a WordPress site promoting safe browsers and suggesting users to avoid Internet Explorer and explains why Internet Explorer is unsafe. You may be aware that Internet Explorer is not a preferred browser for bloggers and the net-savvy population. The Browse Happy site suggests many browsers though it has not been updated to include Chrome which is becoming very popular now.

WordPress is an Automattic Opus/Ruckus/Medley

If you go to WP.com you will find that the footer changes every time you load it. It will says WordPress is an Automattic ruckus or an Automattic Medley, Opus, Invention, Joint, Contraption and the like. Needless to say  ruckus is noisy situation while medley relates to music! That is Automattic brilliance for you. The taglines are too catchy to ignore. Here are some snapshots saved on 19 February 2010.

WordPress officially gives credit to Movable Type, Drupal and Text Pattern

If you go to the about page on WordPress.org, you will find that it lists names of developers and designers. What is more WordPress also thanks Movable Type, Drupal and Text Pattern with a hyperlink to them! That is humour and humility. You can read WordPress versus competitors in this post on the WPWebHost blog.

You see it is always good to seek inspiration from your competitors and give credit to them for inspiring you.

Everybody in WordPress does support for three weeks

Every new recruit to Automattic/WordPress works for support for the first three weeks irrespective of designation works for support for three weeks! Now that is a great way to teach the new recruits the WordPress software and psyche in letter and spirit. WordPress indeed has that informal, consultative, participative style of management and working. And WordPress does not recruit ordinary people, you have to be a Happiness Engineer or Code Wrangler or a Theme Czar and the like and you have to be the best person in the world for any of these positions willing to help WordPress change the world. If you want to work with WordPress/Automattic, read their jobs page. The following snapshot is of official WordPress staff from their Quebec meet in 2009. Note the smiles.

The Akismet Humour

Akismet is an Automattic product and one of the must have plugins for your blogging needs. Do you know what the name Akismet means? The Akismet FAQ page says “Akismet is a contraction of Automattic Kismet. Our favorite definition of kismet is “Kismet (principle), the magnetic attractive force that actualizes the playing out of karma; often used in the positive sense.” Read more about Karma in this Wikipedia entry.

Now go to the Akismet stats in your WordPress dashboard (top, left) and click on it. You will see the graphs, stats and a lot of humour! You have heard of spam but you will find ‘ham’ too! If you are a vegetarian do not exclaim! Ham is the humorous Akismet term for legitimate comments. See the snapshots below saved on 19 February 2010:)

WordPress.com Stats plugin error notice for new install

When you install the popular WordPress stats plugin and jump to the stats page in the dashboard immediately after install you will get this funny error notice:

Take ‘er easy, dude. You sure got here in a hurry! Your blog has been registered and we are now tracking your stats but there is nothing to display yet. Your stats will begin to appear here within twenty minutes. Have a sarsparilla.

WordPress says Thank You in style

Go to any WordPress.com blog or a WordPress VIP blog like the popular TechCrunch. You will get replies to comment in your mailbox if you subscribe to them. Just below the comment it says, ‘Thank You for flying with WordPress!’ See the snapshot below from a TechCrunch comment in my mailbox.

WordPress.com Support Message

If you submit a support ticket to WP.com on their contact support page you will get this message after you submit your ticket (“your bits are flying through the cyberspace towards us as you read this“)! Also when you delete a blog on WP.com it will say, ‘happy trails until we meet again!’

WordPress Goshdarnit Message

The Goshdarnit message (http 503 error) of WordPress is quite popular and I have mentioned it in an earlier article.  Visit the link for few more instances and snapshots of WP humour mentioned in that article.

WordPress Terms of Service(TOS) Barbecue (BBQ) Treat

The terms of service at WordPress.com are enchanting in more ways than one. In the ‘disclaimer of warranties’ section they have put up a treat for those reading that page/section and it links to this page where you have a BBQ image (“a plate of tender, moist Texas brisket served at the official restaurant of Automattic”)! There are no warranties on service, do enjoy your BBQ just the same!

Funny WordPress server response data

If you see the Resonse header data for WordPress.com or any other blog on WordPress.com you will find this funny message, “If you’re reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header!” See the snapshot below.

Hope you enjoyed reading about the official WordPress humour and their style. This list is not exhaustive as you will find many more instances in things they do and have been doing. Feel free to add your comment if you find more instances of WP humour. And do not fail to integrate humour with blogging.

This is part 2 and final part of the article ‘How To Help The WordPress Community And Improve Your WordPress Interaction.’ You would be well-advised to read part 1 of this article before going through the following if you have missed it.

Submit a great WP site to WordPress Showcase

WordPress Showcase is the site which shows to the world the enormous utility of the WordPress software as a publishing tool by showcasing awesome websites built on the WP platform. If you love a WordPress site that enjoys a high traffic, is very unique and meets other submission requirements, feel free to submit it to the showcase. You can also rate the submitted sites and surf the various sites according to tags or the most voted blogs and websites. Apart from showing websites using the WordPress software, the WordPress Showcase also exhibits the best websites and blogs from Buddypress, the WordPress MU, WordPress.com and the WordPress.com VIP. In a nutshell, if you are looking for inspiration on making a nice-looking blog or want an awesome blog to get noticed, then WordPress Showcase is the place your must frequent. Don’t be so busy with your blogs and blogs in your niche that you do not see the creativity available elsewhere on the WordPress platform. So go ahead and submit a site or surf the sites in that directory with a cup of coffee in your hand.

Spread the Word about WordPress

Tell your family and friends about WordPress. There are people who still think that making a website or blog is a herculean task. Tell them about WordPress and get them started on blogging. They will thank you after some time. You can help install WordPress for them and set up their site or help them move to self-hosted version of WordPress from the free WordPress.com or the Blogger (a web host like WPWebHost does that free of cost for its customers). Sometimes, ‘the greatest need in life is somebody who can make us do what we can!‘ Go help others start blogging with WordPress; you can show them the WordPress Showcase apart from your own great blog(s) to convince them on how great it could be. You can also spread the love among the WordPress community by socially bookmarking their sites and blogs. You can follow your favourite blogs and bloggers on Facebook, Twitter and Digg and stumble their blogs.

Rate and Review Themes and Plugins

You can always review and rate your favourite themes and plugins on the WordPress extend site and the forums. You can also leave a sweet word of appreciation about the theme or plugin on the developer’s blog to encourage him or her to continue to contribute to the WordPress community. Sometimes nothing tastes as sweet as some nice words of appreciation. WordPress is free and priceless because of the joint effort of the community. Do not hesitate to pat someone’s back once in a while. When you review and rate a theme or plugin, then you are also sharing your opinion with the WordPress community on its utility and compatibility with the software version. Doing this does not take a lot of time and effort.

Donate to Theme and Plugin developers

Developing a theme and Plugin takes a huge amount of time and resources for the developer(s). You can always make it easy for them by donating a small or big amount to your theme and/or plugin developer. There are so many wonderful free themes and plugins in the WordPress directory and elsewhere. Those doing the hard work need your help and financial support. So do not hesitate to donate if you can or buy something for the author(s) from their Amazon wish list. In the same vein, please retain the author accreditation links in the themes (and plugins if applicable) so that the author(s) get the due credit for their works.

Review your WordPress Webhost

Web Hosting is a very crucial part of the website management. If you are happy with your web host (or unhappy with them), feel free to review them on your blog so that others know about it and take decisions accordingly. Almost everyone looks for reviews before choosing a web hosting company. You can help them with your honest reviews. If you love your web host you can also become an affiliate and earn good commission by referring others to join your preferred web hosting company. The WPWebHost also has a lavish referral scheme in place. Read the tutorial article on finding a web host for your WordPress blog.

Send a Testimonial to WordPress

You can always write to the WordPress how much you love it. Go write a WordPress testimonial. You can also see the WordPress Hugs page which has reviews by WordPress.com users. One of the simplest ways to show your love for WordPress is to write a blog post narrating how it has been of help to you, your life or your online business.

Here is a sweet testimonial sent by a WP user:

I took a chance and installed WordPress. As with many cms scripts, I prepared to encounter some challenges with installation and configuration and disappointments in functionality. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how powerful and easy to use WordPress is.

So there are myriad ways in which you can help the WordPress community. Give back to the WordPress community what you are getting from it. Spread the love. Spread WordPress.

Give Web Hosting Feedback to WordPress

The official WordPress on its hosting recommendation page seeks your suggestions on the listed Web Hosts on that page. You can always improve their knowledge and understanding of the web hosting by providing them real feedback from your experience. They also ask you to suggest a web hosting to be included in that page. So if your preferred web host is not in that list do send them a mail and they may think on it they say (see the snapshot on the left).

In other words if you are hosted with WPWebHost and love the hosting then go and give the host feedback to WordPress. If something is good for the WordPress community, you must let others know and benefit from your experiences.

WordPress, the state-of-the-art blog publishing platform, consists of a thriving community (more than 18 million publishers according to the official WP statistics) and you can contribute to make it ever better. This post is a list of things and ideas that WordPress users and lovers all over the world can do to make the WordPress community even better. This how-to post has many tips and ideas that will help WordPress users appreciate and understand WordPress in a better way.

Help WordPress users in the Forums

The WordPress.org forums and WordPress.com forums are the official WordPress sites where you can help WordPress users who are struggling with blogging. Being active in the forums is a great way to learn and help others. There are many WordPress experts who spend a lot of time in the forums helping others and learning as a result. Forums are also avenues for quality WordPress pastime. You can discuss almost anything related to WordPress in the forums and also make some great friends who share the same passion as you. WordPress forums are really very active sites. Apart from the official support forums, a number of active WordPress-related blogs have their own forums where you can discuss all things WordPress. Also read the Support Forum Volunteers page in the WordPress codex. You can also search in Twitter search or FriendFeed to find a WordPress issue with a user which you can resolve. Forums have a lot of WordPress documentation generated by users which you can use for WordPress troubleshooting.

Give Ideas to WordPress

While using WordPress, you may think of some unique feature(s) that would enhance the functionality of WordPress. Do not restrict your imagination and discovery only to yourself. Feel free to share it with WordPress and it may be considered in a future software update. WordPress gives you the option to share your ideas on what WordPress should be and how it could be better. You can also read WordPress ideas by other WordPress users and lovers and also vote on them while discussing the matter. Visit the WordPress Ideas page and share your priceless ideas. ‘An idea can change the world’ (and WordPress).

Report Bugs and WP Security Issues

They say ‘only the dead and the unborn are perfect.’ WordPress is not perfect, needless to say. You may find bugs once in a while. You may find bugs in the WordPress software, WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, security issues and the like. You may stumble upon some major issue related to WordPress. Do not keep all that information to yourself. The sooner the bugs are caught and taken care of the better for the community. Read the Report bugs page in the WordPress codex for the details. WordPress aptly says, “as long as humans write code, there will continue to be errors in software.” You can also report a site bug on the WordPress.org site.

Follow the Official WordPress Blogs

Keep yourself abreast of the latest official developments and announcements by following the official blog. You must follow the WordPress.org development blog and the WordPress.com official blog (many WordPress software features are first tested in the freely hosed WordPress before being inducted in the WordPress software). The WordPress development blog allows pings but not comments unlike the official WordPress.com blog where you can leave your comments. WordPress Planet in another useful site in this connection. WordPress Planet is ‘an aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world’ (including other WordPress concerns and WP developers’ blogs). It has a list of some useful blogs and feeds and you can also suggest WP to get your own blog included in it.

Join the WordPress Mailing Lists

Keep yourself really updated about the WordPress project by subscribing to the WordPress Mailing lists. You can get mail updates on WordPress announcements, WP developments news and also join the community mailing lists to discuss various WordPress related issues such as the wp-docs (help WordPress documentation), wp-Trac (WP bug tracking system), wp-UI (discuss WP UI) etc. Visit the mailing lists page on WordPress codex and start subscribing if you have not already. If you eat, drink and live WordPress then you should not miss the mailing lists.

Help Translate WordPress

You love WordPress. Let non-English users also get to know and love it. Help translate WordPress in other languages. It will be a great use of time and a nice token of appreciation for WordPress. Visit GlotPress and start translating WordPress documents in Albanian, Arabic, Croatian, Hindi or a language of your choice. You can also help a lot by translating your favourite WordPress Themes and Plugins if there is a need for it. Many theme and plugin developers seek voluntary help from people willing to translate their WP projects. If you think you can help, you must. Give back to the WordPress community what you are getting from it. Read the complete instructions on internationalization and localization in the Translating WordPress page in the codex before you begin.

Attend and/or Organize a WordCamp

WordCamps focus on everything WordPress. These meetings are organized by WordPress community members. Core developers or ordinary users, everyone is welcome in the WordCamps. See the WordCamp schedule and attend a WordCamp if it is in your vicinity. The best feature about WordCamp is that you can also help organize one. Pick a date, budget, sponsors and meet other guidelines, get the T-shirts, stickers and buttons from WordPress and organize a WordCamp! Do not forget to blog about it after attending a WordCamp.

Keep reading. Part 2 of this article will have a lot of other creative and lesser-known tips and will be published very soon on the WPWebHost blog. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

Just as plugins enhance the functions of the WordPress software, the extensions (add-ons) for Firefox make it a really special and extraordinary web browser. You can customize and add many new features to your WordPress blog by adding the various plugins and you can make your Firefox browser simply awesome by adding the various add-ons or extensions. And things can get even better if you align Blogging (WordPress) with Firefox. The two wonderful softwares when used in conjunction can work wonders for you.

This post enumerates the important Firefox add-ons that have the potential to make the life of bloggers more comfortable and simple. These are Firefox add-ons that directly or indirectly contribute to better, speedy and more effective blogging. This list is only indicative and not exhaustive as there are thousands of free extensions for Firefox. Feel free to write about your favourite Firefox extension in the comments and how it helps your blogging.

Integrated Writing Tool: ScribeFire

The popular ScribeFire Blog Editor seamlessly integrates with your browser lets you easily post a blog. It has been downloaded for about 2.7 million times! Need I say more!? Go ahead and download it and find its utility for you if you have not already.

Ultimate Password Manager: LastPass

As a blogger and somebody with a rich online life you have to open account on so many websites and it is very cumbersome to remember all the passwords. With LastPass, you just have to remember just one master password and LastPass does the rest for you. You can automatically create very strong passwords (you must because WordPress or any software for that matter is vulnerable to hacking) using special characters, words and numbers knowing you do not have to remember it.

There are so many features with LastPass that will simplify your online life and blogging including but not limited to encrypted passwords one-click login to your favourite sites, screen keyboard, easy import and export, sharing logins with friends, automatic form filling and the like. Forget Roboform or the default Firefox password manager and embrace LastPass. PC World (one of the best products of 2009), ZDnet, PCMag and Fox News – they all recommend it (visit the LastPass website here). If you are not using it already, embrace it better late than never and you will discover that you just can’t live without it. Some of the best things in life are free including LastPass, Firefox and WordPress! Visit the LastPass page in Firefox add-ons inventory.:)

Track Me Not: Ghostery

Want to see how you are being tracked as you browse the web? Ghostery, this beautiful add-on, will let you see the invisible web (i.e. the scripts tracking you). It tells you about the web bugs, ad networks an widgets on every page (such as Google Analytics, Statcounter, Google Connect, Adclick, Quantcast, Google Adsense) as a pop up or status bar list. It is also fun watching how various sites are tracking you. What is more you can also block the trackers. To quote the popular blog Lifehacker, “…if you’re worried about your privacy online, this extension is definitely for you. ” Visit the Ghostery add-on page on Firefox.

Time is Money: Time Tracker and ReminderFox

As bloggers, we do spend a lot of time on the web. Sometimes, it is more than the normal time that we should spend with the internet and blogging. This is the Firefox extension to keep track of the time (Firefox 3.6 compatibility, alarm, stats functions are in the pipeline for this extension). After all time is money! Click here to visit the Time Tracker add-on page in Firefox. You can also install the LeechBlock Firefox extension if you want to block some sites that you waste a lot of time with. ReminderFox is a popular Firefox extension to remind you about your to-do list as you immerse yourself in the blogosphere and the World Wide Web (see snapshot below).

Developer’s Heaven: Firebug

As a blogger and webmaster, you may need to monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript on a web page. This Firefox add-on gives you all the development tools. With the Firebug extension for Firefox, you can inspect and edit HTML, tweak CSS to your liking and debug JavaScript among other things. You can also use the Yslow add-on to analyse your web pages. Click here to go to the Firebug page in the Firefox add-on inventory.

Organized RSS Reading: Feedly

The Feedly Firefox add-on will give you a full feature RSS reader that is more organized and user-friendly than your normal feed reader such as the Google Reader or Bloglines. You can have a magazine like user-interface, organize RSS feeds in tabs and categories, configure multiple views ( such as titles only, or titles and summary only to suit your tastes and preferences). One reviewer has this to say about the Feedly Firefox add-on: “It does a magic job of finding interesting posts and putting them on the magazine-like digest page. Fastest news reader, hands down!” Go ahead and get the Feedly Firefox add-on and read updated content from thousands of websites in a more efficient way.

Cool Previews: The CoolPreviews add-on

As a blogger you have to click hundreds of links daily which can consume a lot of your time. CoolPreviews lets you as the name suggests is a cool Firefox utility to preview or browse the link/image/video without leaving your current page/tab thereby saving time. With this tool you do not have to go on opening new tabs for every link as it helps you get a customizable preview of the link in your current tab itself. It is one of the most recommended add-ons for Firefox with about a million downloads and has been praised by Lifehacker and ReadWriteWeb, the popular tech blogs! Click here to download the CoolPreviews add-on for Firefox and save your time while surfing the internet.

Say No to Ads: Adblock Plus

Bloggers are intelligent netizens who do not click on the ads very often. If you do not like ads on a web page and think it is irrelevant and annoying for you or you think the slow, over-loaded ad-servers are slowing down your surfing then you can disable them using the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. It is presently the most popular Firefox add-on in the Firefox add-ons inventory.

Enriched Blogging: Zemanta

Zemanta could be very useful for your blogging. It recommends you content as you write your posts and you can use it to enrich your content among other things. Bloggers who use Zemanta are often hooked to it. Click here to go the download Zemanta add-on in the Firefox extension directory. By the way, Zemanta is also available as a WordPress plugin and you can get it here. Try it and you may find it a revolutionary tool for blogging like many lovers of Zemanta.

Social Bookmarking: AddThis and Share This

Bloggers do a lot of social bookmarking. AddThis and Share This are two cool Firefox browser add-ons to enhance and simplify your social bookmarking and sharing activities on the World Wide Web. The two are also available as plugins for the self-hosted WordPress blogs. Click here to download AddThis and here to download Share This. The following two images are snapshots of the two addons in that order on this website.

Handy SEO Tools : Site Information Tools and SeoQuake

Site Information Tools will provide a handy link to the wmptips.com info page where you can see all the info about a web page including but not limited to WHOIS info, Page Rank, IP data, top ranking keywords, Technorati rank and the number of RSS subscribers for the blog.

SeoQuake will aid your web mastery and helps you gain instant SEO knowledge on various parameters. It is more exhaustive than the Site Information Tools and has been downloaded about 0.8 million times. Another useful SEO add-on is the RankQuest SEO toolbar. Web Developer is also very popular among Firefox users.  The two snapshots below are of SeoQuake for this website.

Screen Capture: Screengrab and Capture Fox

Bloggers often have to publish images with the blog posts to make it comprehensible and visually appealing. Capturing the screen is often a need in blog  publishing. Two popular Firefox add-ons for capturing screen images are Screengrab and Caputere Fox. ScreenGrab captures the entire page, selection or a particular frame. This handy tool has been downloaded about 3 million times while this post is being written.

Capture Fox (Windows) will let you capture your screen and also help you make screencast videos with which you can design tutorials and e-lessons.

Browse Faster: FastestFox

As the name suggest, FastestFox extension for Firefox saves your time by speeding your repetitive tasks (auto-loading of next page, improved searching etc). You can use the saved time to devote to your blogging. It is one of the most popular plugins for Firefox.

Other Miscellaneous Firefox Add-ons:

• GreaseMonkey : Very popular add-on; use small bits of JavaScript to customize a web page or write your own script
• Adsense Notifier to display your AdSense earnings
• Fire FTP: the hugely popular free FTP client for Mozilla Firefox
• Down Them All: Very popular download manager/accelerator
• Tab Mix Plus: Enhance Firefox tab features
• Read It Later: Save pages to read later (do not clutter your bookmarks folders)
• Evernote Web Clipper: Clip and save text and images on Evernote
• WordPress Helper: Suggests help from WordPress codex
• WordPress.com Sidebar: Quick access to your WordPress.com account
• Fast Dial: Customizable thumbnail bookmarks
• PDF Download: PDF files become more browser friendly
• ColorZilla: A very handy tool to get color readings at any point in browser. Looking for a new colour for your blog? Try this Firefox extension to make the choice!
• TwitterBar: Post to Twitter from address bar
• SessionSaver: All your browser sessions saved which you can restore later
• ScrapBook: a very popular Firefox extension to save webpages, snippets, websites
• Aviary Screen Capture: Another screen capturing tool
• AutoCopy: Select text and automatic copying to clipboard
• Download Statusbar: View and manage downloads from a cute and tidy status bar
• ReloadEvery: Refreshes web pages every so many seconds or minutes. Will be very useful if you are waiting for the thanksgiving hosting discount announcement on your web host’s website after midnight!
• easyComment: Fill out blog comment forms easily
• Gmail Notifier: Monitor multiple Gmail Accounts inside browser
• All-in-One Sidebar: Very useful; open Bookmarks, History, Downloads, Add-ons, Page Info, Page Source, and Error Console in the sidebar
• Dict: See definition of a words on a web page
• DTWhois: Domaintools.com WHOIS button
• HTML Validator: See number of errors in an HTML page
• Link Checker: Check out the validity of links
• Web Developer: It will add a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools
• Copy as HTML Link: create an HTML link to the page
• ShowIP: See IP address of the page in the status bar
• iMacros for Firefox: A great add-on to record and replay repetitive work; automate what you do with Firefox
• See the list of most popular Firefox add-ons on the official Firefox add-ons inventory

Google is full of goodies that you can use to optimise your blogging. It is next to impossible to find a blogger who has not benefitted from one or more Google services. This post is a quick recap of the most popular Google services (other than the free blogging platform called Blogger) that bloggers must use for a more effective blog. If you are not using most of these services then your competitors are certainly getting the better off you. Needless to say, all these Google services are free as some of the greatest things on earth are free!

1. The name is still FeedBurner

A very important Google service for blogging that probably no professional blog including the WPWebHost is without. The popular FeedBurner was acquired was Google in mid-2007 for around $100 million dollars. It may have cost Google some 100 million USD but for bloggers it is just priceless! RSS or ‘Really Simple Syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’ is the sine qua non of blogging, so to speak. Burning your feed with FeedBurner has super-cool benefits for small or large publishers (bloggers). You can burn a feed, publicise, optimise and monetize your feed in many ways. Blogging and FeedBurner go hand in hand. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog then you will be well-advised to use the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin. Read more on creating your WordPress feed using the popular FeedSmith plugin. So go ahead and use FeedBurner and enhance the power and effectiveness of your blog feeds using the FeedBurner if you have not already. In the same vein, Google Reader is a very useful tool to keep track of updates from blogs and websites of your choice and share feeds with others and keep up with what’s popular on the web.

2. Masterly advice: Google Webmaster Tools

You along with Google Webmaster tools can be a better webmaster for your blog(s). Once your site is verified with the Google Webmaster tools (which is a very simple process) you can get a lot of Google-esque analysis of your blogs and tweak it accordingly (see an illustrative snapshot on the left). When you are verified with Google Webmasters you will get to know how the daddy of search engines called Google crawls and indexes your site and what problems or issues are there and how you can resolve them with the expert advice from Google.

Google Webmaster is very important from the point of view of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google indexing of your websites. Among other things, you can specify your preferred domain, analyse the crawler access errors and stats, see the top Google search queries for your blog, see the links to your blog and target users in a particular geographic location (geotargeting). And don’t forget to follow the official Google Webmaster Central blog if you are SEO-conscious like most bloggers.

As a matter of fact, you should follow all Google services related blogs if you want to stay updated with the latest developments.

3. Analyse your blog: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most widely used Traffic analysis tool. It is used by a whopping 86.6 per cent of the top 1 million websites (the WpWebHost website uses it too, needless to say) according to the W3ctechs.com web technology survery. If you want to analyze the flow of visitors to your site then Google Analytics gives thorough statistical analyses about your blogs and websites. It has truckloads of information about your site usage that can overwhelm newcomers. You can see your site usage statistics, visitors overview, mapped stats, traffic sources overview, content overview details and whatnot! It is also very useful for Google AdWords users as it helps you find the effectiveness of your AdWords campaign. Some other tools that you can use for statistical analysis of your blog are Statcounter, Sitemeter, WordPress Stats plugin and StatPress plugin in WordPress.

4. Optimize it: Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer, as the name suggests, is the tool to enhance the effectiveness of your website to increase your rate of investment (ROI). You can test various versions of your site content and find out what is more user-friendly content on your site. You can set up one or more experiments to test the efficacy of your content and determine whether or not the target users land from the test page to the conversion page thereby providing you with the data you need for your content analysis. Your website optimisation tests can take a number of forms from the testing of a newsletter to the time spent by users on your site. The Optimizer helps you understand your visitors and more importantly understanding their psyche which tells you how you can optimize your site to get the visitors to take the action you want them to on your website. Website Optimizer could be your aid for professional blogging and online business if you are willing to do the necessary research for it. If your website is not as effective in getting the returns and results you want then it is time you used the Google Website Optimizer and made the required improvements after some experimentation, analysis and testing.

5. Stay Alert: Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a very handy tool that could be of great use for professional blogging, among other things. These alerts are emails that are automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for the search term that you specify. You can get email alerts or feeds in a feed reader of your choice. It is important for professional blogging because it can keep you ahead of the competition by providing you the information in a timely manner. If you are a professional blogger who likes to keep track of things real-time then Google Alert is your companion on the internet. Keep abreast of any development and follow the latest happenings on any topic of your choice. Smart bloggers use Google alerts. You cannot afford to ignore the real-time information related to your online business or blog niche. Google Alert will also give you a lot of ideas for new posts for your blogging as you will keep a tab on the latest posts and developments, industry trends, articles from other websites and blogs on the keywords and phrases of your interest and business.

6. Multipurpose: Gmail for bloggers

The inclusion of Gmail (called Google Mail in United Kingdom and Germany) in this list may be a surprise for some but the undisputed fact is that Gmail is a very useful service for blogging. One Gmail account is your passport to the various useful Google services. The free (actually priceless) Gmail is full of features (including but not limited to Webmail, POP3 and IMAP service). Here are some of the features that you as a blogger should be of special interest:

• It offers a storage of more than 7 GB. Bloggers get a lot of emails and you need a lot of space in your mailbox
• Bloggers get a lot of spam because your mails are in the public domain but Gmail spam guard will rarely let you down
• You can connect, network and chat with fellow bloggers and your readers most of whom use Gmail as their primary account (or have a Gmail id).
• You can get multiple Gmail accounts and forward all mails to to one Gmail address and send replies from one Gmail account
• You can use the powerful mail ‘filter’ feature in Gmail to give pre-set custom treatment to some types of mails
• You can use the Gmail labs features to try many interesting features
• You can give links to your blogs and profiles in your mail signature which will aid your blog traffic
• You can use the Gmail keyboard shortcuts to save a lot of time and devote that time to blogging

7.  Other Miscellaneous Google services

Here is a quick list and briefing on some other Google services that are useful for blogging

• Google AdSense: Want to monetize your site with the help of Google? Apply for an AdSense account. Just keep in mind that not everybody gets an AdSense account. Read the terms and policies carefully before applying and also while using it.
• Google Friend Connect to make your site more socially rich and vibrant.
• Use Google Groups to created your own group for collaboration, discussion and communication. You can use Google Groups as a forum if you want to save money used in hosting a forum site attached to your blog.
• Use Google Wave, the real time communication platform, that combines features of an email, instant messaging and social networking. Read this Linkedin debate on whether or not it should top the list of flop products of 2009.
• Use Google Blog Search to find quality posts from blogs online.
• Use Google Apps for business or personal use.
• Use Google Transliteration to write a blog post in Russian or Arabic and many other languages including Hindi.
• You Tube, Google Calendar, iGoogle (personalised Google homepage), Sites (website creation tool), Google Maps, Orkut (create your community page), Google Public DNS (the free DNS resolution service), Google Gears (to speed up WordPress) and Blogger (free blogging platform by Google) can all be used in varying degrees for enhancing your blog.

There are millions of blogs and billions of web pages on the world wide web and your blog has to be outstanding to compete with them. According to one estimate there are more than 100 million blogs on the internet and and about 0.2 million blogs are created every day! Your blog can just get lost by the sheer weight of competition and therefore it has to special to survive and be successful.

That’s an uphill task but not an unachievable one. The internet is full of blogging tips that are high on techniques and hard skills but many people while tweaking their codes and themes forget that there are some simple aspects in blogging that you must take care of if you want to make a professional-looking blog. This post is an elaboration of some random tips on blog sustenance, layout, user-friendliness and readability that you must ensure your blog follows.

Use Paragraphs and Subheadings Effectively

Use paragraphs to your advantage. As far as possible, write in small paragraphs. The more the number of paragraphs the better and easier it is to read. You can present a long post as very readable if you have broken it in enough paragraphs. You may be aware that the attention span of a reader on the internet is very short. You must utilize on whatever time your reader has spared for you. If your content is not easy on the eyes, then you are losing your visitors who will move to better-looking content on other blogs. Go see any nice blog and you will find that it is very well-organized and is visually pleasing. One big chunk of content is very difficult for the eyes is what all experts will tell you. You may be writing great content but if it not organized in a great way then you will be less impressive.

In the same vein, give subheadings to your content (just like this blog) using the h2 or h3 tags. Apart from making the content more presentable it also helps search engine optimisation (SEO). You must separate your blog in 3-4 sections  and use subheadings to make things clearer.

Fonts On Your Blog

The fonts you use should be easy on the eyes. Ensure that the blog theme you use has user-friendly, web-friendly fonts. You can always change the fonts and font size on your blog if you know how to tweak your theme. Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Gerogia, Trubuchet are some web safe fonts. The font size is also important and it should not be too big or too small that can give problems to your readers.

Colours On Your Blog

The colours you use on your blog should be pleasing to the eyes. You should avoid using black and white in contrast, a lot of black background and extreme colour contrasts (like white text on black background). The looks of your blog matter. Use it to your advantage. Give more attention to content of course but don’t forget that your blog’s look and feel also matter. Also keep in mind not to choose a theme that could be disturbing for the eyes of your readers. Choose a theme for your blog which is aesthetically pleasing. Bad colour selection may be bad for your blog.

Brevity

‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ and blogging. As far as possible do not write very long posts unless you have some special needs such as the tutorials here on the WPWebHost blog. About 400 words of length is a good size of a blog post. Packing more thoughts in less words is a skill that every blogger must acquire with time. Remember, if it takes really long to read your post then you run the risk of losing your readers’ attention. Time is important for everybody you know! KISS is the acronym to stick to: Keep it Short Stupid!

Caution On Smilies and Images

Unless you have an image blog, you should take care that you blog does not have more images than what is absolutely needed. You must optimize your images (including compressing them) before uploading so that they take less time in loading and do not hog server resources or keep a visitor with low internet speed waiting. Too many smilies will make your blog look childish and too many images (except where needed) will make it sluggish. Smilies and images should aid your content. So they should aid your blog’s progress and not curtail it. So use them effectively to your advantage. Use images and smilies to supplement your content and make it more presentable and not only to make your blog look more beautiful and stylish.

Correct English, Simple English

Language and Grammar skills really matter in blogging. Unfortunately many bloggers ignore this aspect. You will be hard-pressed to find a successful blogger who makes spelling mistakes or grammatical errors while writing. Remember you are communicating to your readers via your words. You cannot afford to commit grammatical errors in your copy. Readers take you less seriously if  you are making English errors.

Another hazard to avoid is using bombastic words, phrases or idioms in your content. Remember you are catering to a vast category of audience (many of whom may not be native English speakers). So write simple and easily understandable English. Write to communicate, not to impress. People come to read your blog and not to get impressed with your English. So simple correct English should be your style and that will impress because simplicity itself is a great style statement.

Humour

‘There is no life (and blogging) without humour!’ Don’t be a bore! Be interesting and exciting. You can make boring things very interesting with humour. A blogger and blog without humour may not be as effective as one with humour. You must develop a sense of humour. Try to see what is not obvious to your naked eyes and you will find something interesting and different in everything.

Especially if you are a WordPress blogger, you may be knowing by now how WordPress has humour in many things it does. WordPress hires people who are  Theme Czars, Happiness engineers, Code Wranglers and Systems wranglers and not just ordinary techies. WordPress is officially an “Automattic Ruckus” and not an Automattic enterprise or endeavour and Matt Mullenweg, one of the PC World’s top 50 people on the web, wears a Christmas cap in his gravatar to capture the Holiday season mood and the name Akismet is contraction of  ‘Automattic Kismet’ (the playing out of Karma)! There are many other instances of humour in WordPress. If you post on wordpress.org forums in quick succession you may get this notice that will make you smile!

The Goshdarnit message (HTTP 503 error) when things are down on WordPress is yet another instance of humour

You see WordPress has a humoristic pedigree. You can afford to be humorous!

Finally, Don’t Lose Your Sleep

The blogosphere is full of bloggers who are losing sleep over becoming an overnight blogging star without realizing that ‘Things Take Time’ (TTT). Your blog is your baby. Give it the time it needs to prosper and flourish. Do not worry incessantly about earning and blog stats and miss the fun! Do hard work with smart work and sooner or later you will succeed if you have what it takes. Be a happy blogger and not one who is perpetually in tension seeking fly-by-night success. Don’t become lazy, just the same.

Finding a good reliable web host for your WordPress blogging could be a herculean task as there are zillions of web hosting companies and all of them claim to be excellent and desperately seek your patronage. Especially if you are new to web hosting then you can simply get lost in the maze of the web hosting world (given the gigantic magnitude of the web hosting industry). It is imperative that you do the requisite homework before signing up with a web-hosting company. This post is a brief tutorial on finding a good WordPress web host. It has all the basics of finding a good web hosting company for your WordPress blog hosting needs and enumerates the research that you must undertake before signing up with any web hosting service.

Ensure That The Basic WP hosting Needs Are Met

This is step # 1 needless to say. Before you even begin your research on the good and bad aspects of a web-hosting company you must ensure that the company under consideration meets the basic minimum requirements for WP hosting needs. In other words, it should have latest PHP (version 4.3 or greater for now), MySQL (version 4.1.2 or greater for now) and the The mod_rewrite Apache module. You cannot host your WordPress blog if these ingredients are missing from your web hosting service. Apart from these, it will be an advantage if the web hosting company is also offering the one click Fantastico install for WordPress and WordPress-related issues support. In fact WordPress experts will strongly suggest you not to choose a web hosting company that does not offer automated installs or one which has little or no experience with WordPress troubleshooting. A web hosting may be hosting a lot of websites of various configurations but you need specialists to handle your WordPress blog.

So carefully read the web hosting features offered by the company and/or seek explanation from your would-be web host and proceed only if the basic WordPress hosting needs are met. Most web-hosting companies are equipped with running the open-source WordPress but it is still a good idea to clear any doubts before signing up. Do not marry in haste and repent at leisure!

Determine Your Hosting Needs

Be very clear about your blog web-hosting needs. You will have to decide a suitable hosting plan for your WordPress blog(s) depending upon your hosting requirements and your budget. In other words, you should be able to answer the following questions, among other things: How much web hosting space you need? How many domains/subdomains you are going to host? How much traffic your blog(s) will attract? What are the CPU constraints and uptime guarantees in the hosting terms of service (TOS)? Does the web-hosting company willing to host your WordPress blog(s) offer the popular Cpanel? Does the company have core update compatibility for WordPress 2.7? What are the WordPress hosting constraints (if any, such as the use of a particular WP plugin etc.)? Is the hosting WordPress optimized? Is the staff suitably equipped to handle WordPress-related issues? Are the fees affordable or exorbitant? What are the money back guarantees?

Depending upon the answers to these questions you should zero in on a web host that offers a suitable service for your WordPress blog(s). You may want to consider a web host that offers multiple domain/subdomain hosting, fewer constraints on web space/data transfer, unlimited MySQL and FTP accounts, web-based email access and the like. The less the constraints the better but think twice before going to a web-hosting service that promises everything unlimited. They may promise you the moon and you will always be crying for the moon! Remember there is no such thing as a free lunch in web hosting.

Read And Research On Web Hosting

Knowledge is power. The more you know the more empowered you are and less likely to be cheated. You may surf the internet and learn about web hosting, WordPress related issues in hosting, read various forums on web hosting, read about various web hosts and the like. There are two important things to keep in mind here. Firstly, do some research on your would-be web host before you sign up. Secondly, the internet is full of spam blogs/websites, hosting affiliates and forums where unethical hosts promote themselves and seek credulous customers. Also there are blogs and websites dedicated to publishing fake bad reviews (‘XYZ hosting sucks’ types) to bring down a rival company!

When there are companies and people out there who are waiting to lure unsuspecting customers, you must separate the wheat from the chaff and read only genuine reviews and recommendations. A bit of scepticism while researching on a web host will help. A short cut may be to join a big web host (or one in the official WordPress recommendation page) but remember big and famous is not necessarily also effective and good. For example, there is a web host who claims to be the ‘daddy’ of all web hosting and yet there is a full-fledged genuine website by frustrated customers warning people against their service and exposing them!

Write To, Read About And Chat With Your Would-be Web Host

It is always good and advisable to write to your would-be WordPress web host while making up your mind. Many web hosting companies today provide the live chat option. You should send one/more email(s)/support ticket(s) and/or chat with their chat representative. You can talk to the sales team or the technical team and seek explanations about your queries and doubts. It is always good and desirable to shed the laziness and walk the extra mile to accomplish some interaction before joining the web host. You should also read the company blog, support documentation, forums, Twitter page, Facebook fan page, genuine testimonials and recommendations of the web hosting company to get more ideas about the quality and standard of the web hosting service. Be frank in asking your web hosting questions so that all doubts are cleared in the beginning itself and you do not have to incur disappointments later.

You can also judge the web hosting company by the quality of their answers and the amount of time they take in responding to your tickets(s). Some questions that you can ask to your would-be web host are: How long have they been in the web-hosting business? Are they here to stay? How many domains are they hosting? Do they have their own servers or are they small-time resellers? Is the support available all the time? How many WordPress blogs are they hosting? Are they offering the fantastic Fantastico install or not? How much WordPress experience they have? Can they handle WP issues with ease? How much downtime have they faced in last six months? Are they offering any discounts?

The company seriously into business 365x24x7 will answer your queries with promptness and all necessary details unlike a fly-by-night company. Good and reliable web hosting companies (including the WPWebHost) also have the money back guarantee policy which you can use for test and trial so that you are fully satisfied before you become a full-fledged customer.

Web hosting can make or mar your WordPress blog. Make sure you are not cheated and you join a web host who will offer you the great hosting service and the peace of mind that you deserve.