Here are some things to consider when working on your blog’s navigation.

Use Numbered Page Navigation

The standard “Next Page”, “Previous Page” links sort of work, but they aren’t the best way to do it. If you have many pages at your blog, and a user has been browsing through them for a while, it can be easy for them to get lost.

WP-Page Navi

Using numbered navigation can help your users to quickly get an idea of where they are, therefore greatly improving usability. If you’re using WordPress, a good plugin to achieve this is WP-PageNavi. There is also a guide to integrate this in a theme from Cats Who Code.

Focus on Categories

Most blogs are focused on posts, not pages. Apart from possibly your “About” page, the first place users are going to look for information is in the categories. If you think you’ve got a decent category setup, it would be a good idea to draw the user’s attention to them, helping them to find what they need.

Of course, there are always some exceptions. For example, at FWebDe, very few people clicked on, or seemed to care about the category links. So, I decided to take them out in the new design.

It’s important to monitor your site, and possibly even do usability testing, to make sure you are making the right decisions.

Provide Helpful Search Results

When your users are searching for something, keep in mind that they are searching for something. Okay, that was fairly obvious. But you need to keep in mind that search results are important. A common mistake is to neglect your search results, resulting in users not being able to find what they want.

An even worse mistake is to not even have a search form at all. If you don’t have one, take a couple minutes to add one in, right now.

Don’t Rely on JavaScript/Flash for Navigation

One thing that really annoys me is when I come across a site using Flash for their navigation, sometimes only to achieve a cheezy hover effect.

Remember that not everybody has Flash. If you rely on Flash for navigation, your site will be completely useless to those without it. The same applies to relying on JavaScript, which can be disabled. Always have a fallback for those with JavaScript disabled.

Link to Other Posts Within Your Content

If your blog is about a certain topic (which it should be), you’ve probably mentioned something in one post that you’ve written another post about, before.

If a reader is interested in your post, they’ll probably be interested in a related topic mentioned in that post. After reading your post, they might even hop on over to Google to learn more about what you mentioned.

So why not add a link right there for them to follow? It is a great way for your users to find the information that they want, and it helps them to find out more about your site, possibly with them even subscribing to your posts.

Keep the Navigation in Standard Locations

This is a very simple one, but it is very important. The most important thing in usability is to keep everything where users expect it. Users will first look in the same places with the navigation in other websites, so you can keep it in those areas to help speed up your users’ interaction with your site.

The most common areas for the main navigation are across the top of the page, or in the sidebar. Pretty simple, right? It’s something easy to remember. Just make sure you don’t have a bunch of links swirling around the page for your users to chase after (kind of like those Flash tag clouds).

If you have any suggestions, or opinions please let me know below.

Steps to tell what theme your favorite blog is using:

1. Go to the blog.
2. Right click, view source.
3. Control F, search theme.
4. Copy theme name, search it on Google.
5. You now have as much information as you want.

That’s where CommentLuv comes in. One of the main incentives of commenting on other blogs is backlinks. If you leave an intelligent comment on any blog and your name is linked to your site, it could always contribute to more traffic. CommentLuv takes it one step further. This plugin will visit the site of the “comment author” while he types his comment and will retrieve a selection of his last blog posts, tweets or digg submissions, which he can choose from to include at the bottom of his comment when he clicks submit.

It’s a very powerful tool for building any blogger’s community. If you are interested in installing CommentLuv and seeing the benefits unfold before your very eyes, click here.  If you want to try it out, leave a comment below.

However, there are huge numbers of  bloggers have failed to make use of the benefits of creating list post which then have failed to attract quality and huge incoming traffics.

What are actually the problems?

There are few problems and weaknesses that I have successfully identified which we should try out our best to avoid as it will help to bring the best out of our list post. However, these two are the biggest which you should know.

Number of points

List Post

The purpose of creating a list post is to help our blog readers to read through our blog article and take note of the important points. Unfortunately, there are numbers of bloggers that simply dumped in links (sometimes, it can reach up to 100 links) without any quick reviews or explanations for each points.

This will not only make it harder to read to the end without annoying feelings, it will force our readers to spent a lot of their time to click on the links to read the topics which are in other blogs.

Same old thing

Especially on the WordPress theme topics, there are a lot of bloggers that are not put any effort to find new ideas or approach for their list post. Most of the time, there will only make slight changes on the list post’s title without bringing something new to the list post.

For example, if you search through the Google about top WordPress theme and plugins, you will definitely find the results will give you almost the same content’s title. It may have worked well in the past as there are not much such ‘Top’ list posts before.

However, with the rapid growth of WordPress blogs, do think that it will work well?

Solution? It is simple!

To be honest, the solution is really simple. We just need to put ourselves at our readers’ place – What do you think our readers want? What can we help our readers to read through our blog contents faster and easier?

We must not think only about us especially what can make our task easier and faster. We are the one who have chosen to be a blogger – not our readers.

Limit your points and give quick review about it

For the ‘number of points’ problem, it will be better if we control the amount of points that we are going to list down in out blog post. For me, the maximum should be only 10 points especially they are not ‘proper points’ – only links that will lead others to other blogs.

If there is need to put more than 10 points in your list post, it would be readers-friendly if you can make into few posts i.e. series rather just dumped it into a single post. Through this, it will not make the post to be lengthy and annoying for your readers as most of blogs in the internet fail to realise.

Your readers will also be happy while reading your list post if you can give quick review or short details for each point as it will give them quick idea of what is that particular point is all about. For me, it can be very frustrated to read list post that only contains links and pictures.

Be more specific and let’s think outside the box

For the second problem, the solution is way simpler. You just have to think deeper and more specific on the list post that you plan to publish. For example, rather just make a list post on best WordPress theme; it will be more unique if you can make a list post for the sub categories for WordPress theme such as for Online Store WordPress themes, Classified Site WordPress themes or even the worst looking WordPress themes.

By making list posts that are more specific and unique, you can easily be ‘seen’ by your potential blog readers. Your blog then can easily get huge publicity and buzz on the trend that you have created and followed by others.

Do not follow trend – Be the one who start and create the trend.

What now?

It is up to you to decide whether you want your blog to be the one who keep following others and the trends or the one who decide the trends. If you fail to solve the two biggest problems of list post, you will just get the low and lack of quality incoming traffics which will not be your loyal and great blog readers.

Be the one who create the trend and you will definitely make huge buzz in the internet and social site especially!

Does the two points of problems of list post have valid arguments and what do you think the best way to solve them? Feel free to share your thoughts and share your opinions. Written by: http://huzzer.com

Plug-in

This is part two to the Top 10 WordPress plugins, Nate shared his top 10 here before on my blog.

With all of the experience I have using WordPress these are the top 10 plugins I would recommend.  Sociable, Contact Form 7, Pageear, All in One SEO Pack, TweetMeme Button, Popularity Contest, WP Cumulus, Intense Debate, What Would Seth Godin Do and Similar Posts. Feel free to download them using the links provided and let me know what you think.

1. Sociable

Description: Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! WordPress 2.6 or above is required.

Why top 10?

• Social media sharing plugin.
• Encourages readers to share your posts.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

2. Contact Form 7

Description: Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Why top 10?

• Contact forms.
• Includes many features.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

3. Pageear

Description: Pageear is a free flash pagepeel plugin. It allows you to customize an ad in the corner of your site that peels down. It’s a very catchy script and will be sure to improve you advertising revenues.

Why top 10?

• Peel down ad in corner of your page.
• Visually captivating.
• Encourages more ad clicks.

Download Here:

http://www.webpicasso.de/blog/pageear-free-peel-away-ad/

4. All in One SEO Pack

Description: Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. This allows you to easily edit your SEO options rather than edit everything within the code. It will improve your SEO tags automatically.

Why top 10?

• Easily edit SEO for your blog.
• Improves your SEO.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

5. TweetMeme Button

Description: The TweetMeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

Why top 10?

• Adds TweetMeme Button to your posts, pages and archives.
• Encourages retweets of your posts.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/

6. Popularity Contest

Description: This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports

Why top 10?

• Calculates how popular your posts are.
• Includes popularity reports.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/popularity-contest/

7. WP-Cumulus

Description: WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard but it does take you to the appropriate page.
Why top 10?

• Shows 3-D rotating tag cloud.
• Visually captivating for visitors.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/

8. Intense debate

Description: Intense debate comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Full comment and account data sync between Intense Debate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!

Why top 10?

• Beautiful design for comments system.
• Includes many features and built in plugins.
• Easy to customize on http://www.intensedebate.com.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/intensedebate/

9. What Would Seth Godin Do

Description: Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors. By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. The message can be excluded from Pages if desired.

Why top 10?

• Raise your number of RSS subscribers
• Cool customizable text, asking to subscribe to your blog.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/what-would-seth-godin-do/

10. Similar Posts

Description: Similar Posts displays a list of posts that are similar or related to the current posts. The list can be customized in many ways. Similarity is judged according to a post’s title, content, and tags and you can adjust the balance of factors to fit your own blog.

Why top 10?

• Great for readers to find other similar posts.
• Easy to customize.

Download Here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/similar-posts/
So what do you think? Any recommendations or comments?

A self hosted blog is completely Yours. Unlike a WordPress.com hosted blog, no one can take away your blog from you for any reason because it is yours! The only way you could lose your blog is if you severely violated your hosting company’s TOS, but hey let’s discard that scenario and get started shall we?

#1) Grab a domain from GoDaddy

I recommend GoDaddy mainly because of it’s widespread popularity and the fact that since a lot of people use their services, they have great customer service. When you visit GoDaddy dot com you will be promted to register for an account – this is completely free and takes minimal effort. Once this is done it is time to purchase your domain. Choosing a domain name is important, your domain name tells viewers what to expect before they even arrive at your site. It portrays your image, your goals and what you’re on about to the world.

Be sure you at least incorporate your name or part of your name in the domain, make it catchy and easy to remember, and lastly it should be relatively short in length. Here is a video tutorial that will walk you through the buying process.

But wait! Before you go out and start snatching up all the domains out there you may want to take a look at these coupon codes that can really save you money. *Remember we are only buying a domain from GoDaddy at this point, we do not need hosting from them.

#2) Grab Hosting from HostGator

There are a couple main reasons why I highly recommend HostGator for all your hosting needs. Firstly, it is cheap without sacrificing any quality or features. Secondly, and most importantly, they have 24/7/365 support. I am not talking about email support, live forum support or some ticket based turn system crap. I am talking about 24/7, any time of the day and any day of the year live human support. You can call their help line at 3:00AM Christmas morning and you’ll speak to a live person. This to me is an important feature to have and is why HostGator has such a high customer satisfaction rate.

As you can see there are three packages, the Hatchling, Baby and Business which cost $4.95, $7.95 and $12.95 per month respectively. However, since these are promotional prices the costs do go up on each of the packages to $7.95, $9.95 and $14.95 respectively.

The Baby package will suit %99.99 of your needs to the vast majority of new and experienced bloggers alike. The Baby package is what I use and is what you should get too. The problem with the Hatchling package is that you only get 1 domain allowed, where as the Baby package allows for completely unlimited domains. You can essentially host as many WordPress blogs as you want. You get unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited everything.

Grab a Baby hosting package and you should get an email confirming your purchase as well as guiding you to your CPanel. Now comes the slightly tricky/technical part. But don’t worry it is fairly simple to do. What we need to do now is redirect the name servers from GoDaddy to HostGator.

• Access your HostGator CPanel (should have gotten a confirmation email after purchase which will guide you there) . Once in the CPanle scroll all the way down and look on the left hand side of the page to find “Account information”. Here you will see “name servers”, you want to find the two name servers which look like [ns1321.hostgator.com].

• Go back to GoDaddy dot com and log into your account. Find “my domains” under the Domains tab in the main menu. Here you will see a list of the domains you’ve purchased. Click on “advanced details” and find the NameServers tab. Check the bubble at the bottom labeled “I host my domains with another provider”. Copy the two name servers from GoDaddy and paste them into here. Save the info and you’re done!

This switch may take up to a couple days but usually only a couple hours. Once this is done it is time to move on to our next and final step, installing WordPress onto your new site.

#3) Installing WordPress

This is the easiest step of all. it literally can be done in a couple clicks. Firstly you’ll want to go back to your HostGator CPanel and find the button called “Fantastico De Luxe”. It is a blue smilely face that looks like this. Click on it. On the new page, select WordPress on the left hand side. Click new installation and follow the steps from there. Now you’re up and running with your very own blog! Uninstalling WordPress is just as easily done from the same menu should you want to start fresh. There is an excellent tutorial help guide that can teach you the ropes of CPanel.

If you need additional help with this 3rd step you can view this post on How to Install WordPress.

You’re Done!

You’ve got yourself up and running for very little costs. The domain is $9.99/ year but pretty cheap the first year if you used some of my coupon codes. On top of this you’ll be paying a mere $9.95 per month for the best hosting in town. *Note, if you’re paying more than $9.95 or are being upsold for more features than you need you’re being ripped off! The Baby package from HostGator is all you need!

Of course in no way is this list finite – it’s ultimately just my opinion. That being said the following list of plug-ins are incredibly vital to your blog’s survival and will make life a whole lot easier (and in some cases prettier too). So let’s get on with it!

10. WordPress Database Backup

Think of backing up your wordpress blog in the same way as backing up your computer. It is just as important for obvious reasons. You never know when you might do something foolish messing around with your database or accidentally screw something up. However, much life backing up your hard drive, backing up your database can be a daunting task to many. This is where WordPress DataBase Backup comes in making the entire process fast and painless.

9. Wp-Cache

WordPress cache is all about smoothing out the user experience on your site. By preloading and formatting your data, Wp-Cache allows for faster load times and smoother navigation of your entire site. This plug-in will also make it so that your site will be capable of handling large influxes of traffic from social networking sites – for that time when you finally make it big and strike gold.

8. Adsense-Delux

Most blogs nowadays have a built in adsense feature which makes the entire process of formatting ads into your site that much easier. But for those of you who aren’t blessed with this luxury, the Adsense-Delux plug-in is for you. If headaches have ever resulted form you trying to stick adsense into your site without error codes and text wrapping in weird ways then get this plug-in right now.

7. Easy Contact Page

A contact page is a must have for any site. But that is easier said than done as rerouting requests and ping inquiries to your email in an orderly fashion is often times a job for a paid service such as Awebber. Easy Contact plug-in allows you to create a beautifully simple contact page that is fully customizable and routes to any email.

6. External Links

External links makes it easy to process all outgoing links, rather than ones just within the content. You can also add an icon next to your outbound links of choice. Have the power to open all links in a new tab or window instead of going through each and every post. Finally,with the External Links plug-in you can also add the rel=nofollow option to all links which can boost your page rank depending on how you’ve been linking.

5. Google XML Sitemap

Create a sitemap of any wordpress blog or site that is easily read by major search engines like Ask.com Yahoo, Google and MSN search. Every time you update your blog or make changes to your site, the Google XML Sitemap generator will notify these search engines of your changes and it will be logged right away.

4. Stat Press

Google Analytics is a given in my mind. Everyone who considers themselves a Blogger must have a Google Analytics account. Viewing the analytics of your site is a task that shouldn’t be overlooked and can help you increase your traffic and quality of your blog. Stat Press is there to work in tandem with or as a stand alone plug-in next to Google Analytics. It breaks down your traffic in tons of different ways and is an incredible asset to any good blogger.

3. Akismet

Wow. I owe my sanity to this plug-in right here. Spammers work in packs like wolves. They will pick out and target a blog – and if it seems weak, allowing the spam comments even for just a minute they will attack in full force. On a previous blog to this I once was attacked by spammers and in just one day I had 400 pending comments that were all over a page long full of links. Akismet works with its advanced database pinpointing and eliminating even the most cunning spammers while allowing legit comments to flow through unimpeded. No damn captcha codes or messy equations here. Bring down the hammer on those dirty spammers, get Akismet.

2. All in One SEO

The updated Platinum SEO pack may be newer but it isn’t any better. I still recommend All in One SEO because of its reliability (Platnium SEO has had problems and in many cases isn’t compatible with certain themes) and because of it’s simplicity. You can tweak the SEO of your blog with All in One Seo by adding to or changing the title, description and keywords of your posts without actually changing the asthetics of your blog.

1. YARPP

Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in or YARPP for short is an amazing plug-in. It will dramatically add to the look, feel and usability of your site. By including related posts below or above your content (below is optimal in my opinion) you can keep the reader flowing through your content after they’re done reading. Instead of digging through your posts to find another piece of juicy content to sink their teeth in, related content will be posted right after your post allowing them to just keep on reading! If you have analytics, watch the average time on your site and I gurantee it will double after you’ve installed YARPP.

Now let’s talk about the asthetics of your blog…

Don’t get me wrong here; making your blog elegant is not the same as filling it with a bunch of multi-media and crap. The following plug-ins are perfect to give your blog that extra sparkle of professionalism without intruding on the user experience.

• Author Image: Not just for people with multi-author blogs, Author Image is also a cool thing to have on your personal blog as well. It is a nice touch to your site and brings that extra bit of personality to your readers and first time visitors.

• Sociable: One of my favorite plug-ins, Sociable adds some nice looking icons below your post to allow the reader to bookmark your site on any number (up to 100) of social bookmarking sites. Choose from dozens, literally over a hundred, of different sites to include; from stumble upon to Twitter. It’s fully customizable and can be tailored to fit your needs. Sociable will add that extra bit of awesomeness (yes awesomeness) to your blog without taking anything away from the user. View my blog post on Sociable here.

• Post Footer: Add some ads or add some fully customizable html text to the bottom of every post. This is a must have accessory for any blogger as it allows them to add their message or what needs to be said below every post or every page. Add Post Footer makes life much easier.

• WP Cumulus: Display your site’s tags, categories or both in a flash animated 3D box that is definitely eye catching. WP Cumulus doesn’t make life much easier but will give you a touch of uniqueness.

This list will keep building as I continue to blog – but for now this is it in terms of the asthetics. Remember you don’t want to overload your blog with too many plug-ins that add looks to the content as this can dominate the user experience (your content needs to be the center of attention not your plug-ins) and make your site slow and cumbersome.

If anyone has something to add to either of these lists please feel free to list them here.

Feel free to view the source of this article Top 10 Must Have WordPress Plug-ins

Arthemia

Arthemia combines a magazine and a weblog into one; it is not too magazine-ish nor too blog-ish. The front page of Arthemia shows the headline and featured post of yours along with the pictorial representation, that’s the magazine style, while the rest of your post will be shows sequentially just like a usual weblog. In the middle of the front page, Arthemia has a nice blue-and-black category bar which will help your readers exploring you site. At the bottom, Arthemia is outfitted with a blog must-have section, a three-list of favorite posts. A true beauty!

Entrepreneur Press

Entrepeneur Press is a highly customizable theme. The slider texts and photos are very easy to configure. It can be used equally as a blog or a site. The sleek sidebar is located under the slider and is also great for the technologically challenged. Highly recommended theme.

Premium News

Premium News comes with an integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme. Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos. Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images. Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery; Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments. Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide. Pretty dropdown navigation everywhere and widgetized Sidebars. Don’t miss out!

Vibrantech

VibranTech is a two columns lime blue WordPress theme with four featured content frontpage. This theme is suitable for personal blogs devoted to technology and news. The four featured columns on top is best to present your featured articles or popular news to quickly catch the attention of your readers. VibranTech also comes with widget-ready and thread comment ready functions. Great theme!

WicketPixie

WicketPixie is a free “premium” Social Media WordPress theme. This was designed to make it easer for you to add more power to your blog with easy configuration options and often-requested features. Best for social mediaddicts!