Table of Contents
Hey everyone, I know that many of my readers are also bloggers and that you are faced with choices every day. With so many themes, hosts, plugins, and paid services available it can get pretty confusing and I regularly get questions about the tools and services I use to power this blog. This page is intended as a bloggers resource to answer those questions. Let’s face facts; it requires a variety of tools and services to run a world class blog. But it gets confusing because everyone who is selling related products tries to convince you that they have the best solution.
Every Tool, Service, and Plugin used to Run This Blog
To answer the question What does it take to run a World Class Blog and to help you sort through the confusion, I’ve decided to throw open the hood and show you EVERYTHING I use, along with a brief explanation of what it does and why I chose it. If something isn’t covered and you still have a question, just use the contact form and I will be happy to respond.
Some items on this list will have links to articles, videos, or other helpful resources. Some of them will be articles I have done; others will be off site resources. I will only list things that I actually use. If I use it, that means I like it and feel comfortable sharing it with other bloggers. As important as it is to have the tools you really need, page load time is also critical. For that reason it is also important that you don’t slow your site down with too many bells and whistles. You can check your page load time at Pingdom.
I’ll start with the big five and work my way down from there.
Theme: THESIS is a paid wordpress theme and quite honestly, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. It’s a world class bloggers dream theme. Every free upgrade makes it even better. I seriously doubt that any theme will be able to give you the features, upgrades, support, and cutting edge technology of Thesis. It’s as SEO optimized as a theme can get and that means the kind of clean coding that the search engines love. You can totally change the look of your blog without any alterations to the internal structure. These Thesis videos are well worth watching if you want a little education on the value of a truly optimized WordPress theme. If you are serious about blogging, you should watch the videos even if you have a different favorite theme. Pricing for Thesis is $87 for the personal option and $164 for the Developers option. Both include free lifetime upgrades (about twice a year so far).
note: In conjunction with the Thesis theme, I also use the free plugin called: Thesis Openhook. This plugin allows you to insert arbitrary content into the manyhooks used in the Thesis Theme framework (not as complicated as it sounds). If you use Thesis, I recommend this plugin. You can download it here.
SEO: Search engine optimization is extremely important if you want your blog and your articles to rank highly in google and other search engines. The problem is, SEO is just plain hard and many bloggers ignore it. Having an SEO optimized theme like Thesis is very important, but it’s equally important that your individual posts are fully optimized. To accomplish this I use an ingenious plugin/service called SCRIBE. I am so impressed with the results I get from this service that I did an article and walk-through video that shows you step-by-step how the plugin version works. Scribe is a real blessing for non SEO bloggers (like me). There is also a Web-Based version included with this service. Here is a Scribe video tour that walks you through that. There are several pricing plans depending on usage. The one I use is $27 per month.
Web Hosting. My web host of choice is HostGator. They are extremely reliable, have a huge support team, and all the latest features and tools to simplify blogging. For bloggers, make sure your web host has a Cpanel and fantastico (HostGator does). For a world class hosting company, they are also extremely inexpensive starting at $3.96 per month with live, real person customer support available around the clock 24/7. You can also build a professional website in minutes, without any web hosting experience by choosing from over 4,500 templates! Whether you need a shared server, a dedicated server, or something in between, HostGator has a reliable and affordable solution. To save an additional $9.94 off their already low prices use coupon code >>> ALSDISCOUNT
Autoresponders and email service providers. If you are going to have a newsletter (and you should), or any other type of email list Aweber is the only way to go. You have probably heard that before and there is a reason. They are hands down, the best autoresponder service on the planet and the #1 choice of the vast majority of world class bloggers. Right now you can get a one month $1 Trial Account, that’s the best way to get familiar with this service. I pay $19 per month for unlimited service. Don’t even consider going with anybody else. Here’s an informative article with some really important “need to know” information about what it takes to get your emails delivered in this spam happy world we live in. It’s pure, grade A content. More email marketing tips.
Membership program. If you are going to run a membership site, Wishlist Member is the plugin to use. For most world class bloggers a membership program is their primary source of income and Wishlist integrates seamlessly with WordPress. Regardless of your application (watch – Top 10 Membership Models), they have excellent training that will get you through the learning curve. Wishlist is the gold standard of membership site functionality and as you might suspect, there are lots of reasons why that is so. You can read the details and watch a video if you are considering adding a membership program. I bought the multiple site license.
Wishlist Insider – This is actually a membership site that provides ongoing training, bonus plugins, and membership site strategies for those who use the Wishlist Members plugin. It is only $20 per month and the training they provide is almost priceless. Of course, it’s only valuable if you run or our planning to run a membership site. | Visit site
That takes care of most of the big five. Next, let’s look at PLUGINS
I use the following paid plugins (in addition to Scribe and Wishlist mentioned above)
WP Affiliate Platform – The ‘WordPress Affiliate Platform’ is an easy to use WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking that can be used on any WordPress blog/site. This amazingly affordable little plugin lets you run your own affiliate program from your blog. It allows your affiliates to see everything in real time. Here’s an example from my coaching site. Price: $49.95 | Visit plugin site.
WordPress eStore Plugin – This sleek WordPress shopping cart plugin allows you to sell any form of digital products and services from your own wordpress blog securely with complete automation. Most e-commerce WordPress plugins are a nightmare. This one works extremely well, is very lightweight, and inexpensive. Price: $49.95 | Visit plugin site.
WP Lightbox Ultimate – The WordPress Lightbox Ultimate plugin allows you to embed your media files using a lightbox overlay display. This plugin can be used to display images, mp3, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler video in a lightbox popup. To see an example click the player image in the right column of my coaching site. Price: $34.95 | Visit plugin site.
PopUp Domination– This is the best email list builder I have found | Visit plugin site
I also use the following free WordPress plugins
Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” | Visit plugin site
AntiVirus – AntiVirus for WordPress is a smart, effective solution to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections. | Visit plugin site
BlogAudit – Audit your blogging performance. | Visit plugin site
CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commentor’s blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments. | Visit plugin site
Contextual Related Posts – Show user defined number of contextually related posts. | Visit plugin site
Dagon Design Form Mailer – The WordPress plugin version of my secure php form mailer script. | Visit plugin site
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – Generates a fully customizable sitemap that is more reader friendly than the google sitemap generator (which I also use for search engine purposes). | Visit plugin site
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. | Visit plugin site
Login LockDown – Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range. | Visit plugin site
PrintFriendly – Creates PrintFriendly.com button for easy printing. | Visit plugin site
Redirection – Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors | Visit plugin site
Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. | Visit plugin site
Thesis OpenHook – This plugin allows you to insert arbitrary content into the many hooks that the Thesis Theme Framework provides. | Visit plugin site
WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. | Visit plugin site
W3 Total Cache – The very best caching plugin for WordPress. | Visit plugin site
WP Smush.it – Compresses your images for faster page load | Visit plugin site
Ping List: Get your new posts out there – this is important
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the sites on your ping list. A ping list is also called an update service. For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. Most people use Ping-o-Matic which, with just one “ping” from you, will let many other services know that you’ve updated your blog. Ping-o-Matic is a good service, but is by no means complete. I have added many other services to my ping list and you can do the same in about one minute.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to => settings => writing. Then scroll to the very bottom of the page where it says: Update Services. That box is your ping list. You can add the following 59 ping services with a simple copy and paste. Make sure there are no duplicate entries (Ping-o-matic is already included in my list), and that you separate each multiple service URL with line break. When you are done, save your changes. >>> Click here to open my Copy and Paste Ping List in another tab.
