What is This Site About?

Whatever this site is doing, it is certainly doing something right. It has an awesome page rank of 7 and a great Alexa score.

However, figuring out what http://www.wpdesigner.com is about is not that easy.  It sometimes refers to itself as web host and if you do a site analysis using Adwords, the vast majority of the references relate to web hosting. On the other hand, the title is WPDesigner which indicates that it is about WordPress theme design and many of the links on the home page relate to theme design and development issues.

The about page provides some insight. Small potato, the fascinating and talented founder of the site writes:

“Wpdesigner.com is a blog focused on developing WordPress themes and improving your blog’s performance through code and design tweaks.”

He adds:

“I started Wpdesigner.com back in May 2006 because I was not happy with the quality of free WordPress themes at that time and decided to learn how to create one for myself and release it for free. Gradually, Wpdesigner turned from a simple place where I release free themes into a blog, which covered WordPress tips, tutorials, and general web development topics. Along with more than 50 free WordPress themes, I managed to put together a series of articles on how to create a WordPress theme scratch, which is the most popular series of this blog.”

He eventually turned the site into a membership site which is now defunct.

In summary, web host is a site which has a dual role. It provides guidance on developing WP themes, reviews many themes and provides overall WP advice. Currently, it has metamorphosed into a web hosting review site which is accompanied by a number of very enlightening articles defining web hosting and providing guidance about all sorts of web hosting and website development issues.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The site has some excellent articles and tutorials. The WP designer articles have very clear and well written tutorials describing how to do a number of things. One good example is the WordPress Date Button tutorial.

The WWMD (WordPress Weekend Must Do) section is chock full of great ideas and suggestions for improving your blog. His treatment of reducing bounce rate is especially noteworthy.

The hosting articles are very well written and informative. The Transferring Your Website to Another Hosting Provider removes the anxiety one migh

t have about doing this.  Choosing a web design firm is well thought out and covers all the bases and relevant issues.

A comprehensive review of the site’s top 10 web host picks is provided on the home page.

Small potato was a unique character and added a certain panache to the site. An example is his insistence that all guest bloggers for

Wpdesigner must upload a 100×100 pixels photo for him to draw a mustache on it.

Chris Cagle

guest blogger

small potato has basically retired and he recounts details of his current plans with Chris Wallace

The WordPress content is good but it is somewhat dated and is not getting updated. The theme club that is described no longer exists and some clear statement about this should be made up front The site could use a bit of reorganization to make it easier to navigate and discern the intent of the site.

I personally found the light brown text on a dark brown background somewhat difficult to read. It could just be my well used eyes but I think an enhancement would help.

Summary

Web host as it is currently known, has a lot of very insightful and interesting content. The WordPress stuff. although high quality,  is getting a bit long in tooth and the site is transitioning to a web hosting review site. The web hosting information is high quality. It can use a bit of an upgrade but many will find useful information here.

Review Date: 8/19/2009

People put things up on the web in order to publicize information for one reason or another. SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of doing things to make the search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo etc.) promote you since the way people find things on the web is via the search engines.

The 3 things that need to be done to get traffic to any site, including blogs, is to use popular keywords in the proper way, generate links to your sites and induce the search engine spiders to pay attention to your site. All of these things will cause the search engines to give your site a higher ranking.

SEO software can help in this process. My SEO Software article and my SEO Software review article describes this in detail.

SEO Blogging Software

What software or aids are available to get your blog up there?

General SEO software helps blogs. However, there are certain SEO books, utilities and programs created specifically for blogs. There are packages that will set up a blog for you to do the right things. The eBooks provide crucial information for getting the most from your blog. There are programs that take advantage of the trackback feature to gain valuable links to your blog while collecting useful posts from other blogs to let you easily generate new articles rapidly.

Jeff Johnson has released a package of free SEO blogging software that sets up a new WordPress blog with various options and settings that can be done fairly easily manually but his package automates all the drudge work. It makes sure that the naming of the blog entries is search engine friendly (the blog name contains the keywords that the article is about) by setting the permalink format (the way your blog post’s URL is built) properly. So if your blog is about happy songs, the URL of your blog about the songs of the 80’s would look like www.happysongs.com/happy-songs-of -the-80s. It also provides you with useful plugins that are commonly used to improve blog SEO such as the AntiSocial plugin which promotes your blog in the social networking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon. It also fills in the ping list of servers to be notified when a new post is added. Andy Beard has reviewed the product and the Davinator has also reviewed this package.

The automatic features are very helpful and the package offers a large number of free videos that offer a wealth of data that can really help you to soup up your blogs SEO. It’s free so there is no downside in getting it and installing it on a new site.

Although this package is helpful in setting up your blog and will save you some time, in my opinion it’s better to understand the principles behind what he is doing and do them yourself. Josh Spaulding has an excellent eBook on this called The Ultimate Blogging Blueprint which is excellent for the beginner and has some great SEO tips for the more experienced bloggers.

Jack Humphries has released 2 powerful programs that solve 2 problems at once. The main problem that bloggers face is the need to produce quality content on a consistent basis. Creating fresh and interesting content is a challenge. Bloggers also need links to rate in the search engines.

Jack Humphries programs solve these problems in an elegant fashion. Both of them search blogs for articles related to keywords that you provide. They then allow you to easily integrate these articles into your blog and set up trackbacks for you so that if the blog that you referred to accepts your trackback you will get a link back to your site. Jack has provided informative videos that describe their operation in detail.

Jack has incorporated these 2 programs into a powerful new program for creating highly profitable blogs very quickly. He offers a great tool called Blog Talk Monitor that allows you to get the latest buzz about your topic of interest and keep on top of your niche. Find out about Blogsuccess and visit Trackboost and Utility Poster to see these programs in action.