The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a great theme and and definitely one of my favourite for developing new sites but it definitely takes some getting used to. I’ve been using it for over three years now and when I was first learning how to develop WordPress sites with the Thesis Theme, I used a lot of resources to learn the ropes and pick up little tricks. In this post I’d like to share links to a few of the most helpful Thesis tutorials and thesis bloggers…

• Start Customising Thesis with custom.css – This guide from the Thesis team themselves introduces the way most style changes can be made.
• Introduction To Thesis Hooks by Sugarrae - Hooks are what make the Thesis Theme so special but you need to know how to use them first!
• Visual Guide to The Location of Thesis Hooks - Once you know how to use them, you need to know where to find them
• How to Create Multiple Custom Page Templates – Because Thesis treats custom page templates a little differently than most themes…
• Introduction to Full Width Thesis - Most people seem to use the page layout but you can do great things with the whole screen to work with.

And whilst the above are great examples of specific tutorials that I’ve personally learned from… I’d also share the links to a blogs of a few people who regularly share (or have done so) great posts on how to do specific things in Thesis…

• Andrew Norcross
• Art of Blog
• Berchman
• Bill Erickson
• DIYThemes – (Hint: They made the Thesis Theme)
• Greg Rickaby
• Kristarella
• SugarRae
• ThesisTutor
• Wolf-Howl

Many traditional business owners would probably say I’m committing some marketing crime by linking to these guys as many offer similar WordPress development services to myself… The truth is these guys are all doing awesome things with thesis too, so it would be more of a crime not to link to wealth of knowledge that these guys (and girls) have shared with me and thousands of other Thesis Theme users around the world!

If someone were to ask me what the most beneficial tool has been to my online business I would have to say WordPress. It’s free, it’s powerful and it lets you get a site online in minutes that can make you money for years to come. I say this not as hype but as fact…

I made my first WordPress powered site in 2007 when I decided to start a travel blog for my travels around Australia. I learned a lot and even managed to generate a nice monthly income from my first site through affiliate marketing. Not quite a full time wage but defeinitely a nice bonus that helped keep me going through my travels for nearly a year!

It’s now 2011; I’ve been working with WordPress for four years and I can attribute so much of my success directly to learning how to use WordPress. Throughout my time within the WordPress community I’ve created WordPress sites for many happy clients, built my own small network of blogs, released premium skins, premium plugins, and now I have a new addition to the family…

WPTutor.com is a new site that I’ve created to give back and share some of the knowledge that I’ve accumulated through the years. There are already over 4 hours of WordPress video tutorials inside and many more lined up for the coming weeks. Many of these are available free through a little backdoor that I’ve created for my fans on the WordPress Tutor Facebook page.

Whilst all the bases are covered the plan is for this website to grow and grow to become the ultimate resource for business owners and entrepreneurs looking to use WordPress. The tutorials are designed to be easy enough to follow so that even a complete novice can get a site set up and ready to start earning the same day. So if you want to be on of the WP Tutor pioneers then make sure you head on over and check out the WP Tutor site today and let me know what you think!

So I was researching some great new code snippets for my forthcoming WordPress Tutor website when I came across an advert for a Freelance Mac App Bundle. As I’ve fairly recently made the switch to using a Mac, and I offer freelance services, it seemed like a no-brainer to go and check out what the offer was at least, besides I was still looking for a few mac app alternatives to PC software I’d previously been using. Now I don’t know about you, but when I clicked over there were already a few familiar icons. Here’s what I found…

• 1Password – This is password management tool that you can use to automatically store secure logins to all of your websites across the web. You can have a different (and complex) password for every site you visit and then you create one powerful master password which unlocks them all and fills out forms for you online. I’d previously been using Roboform and even paid for an extended Mac license but unfortunately Roboform doesn’t seem to integrate as well on a mac and as such I’d be eyeing up alternatives. 1Password was at the top of my list as it appeared to have a beautiful GUI and integrated seamlessly with the Mac experience. The only reason I hadn’t bought this yet was my stubbornness at having already bought a years Roboform license. 12 hours into my purchase and I only wish I’d made it sooner…
• Billings – Potentially the least enjoyable part of my work is logging and the hours, creating invoices and managing the admin and bookkeeping side of my business. I already use a service called Freeagent online but if this software lives up to the hype that I’ve been hearing since I got a mac then it might be time to make the switch. It’s definitely the cheaper option of the two!
• TextExpander - If you are a web developer then it’s likely you already know the power of snippets. I’ve been searching for a simple way of storing the many commonly used pieces of code for my website and so far have been pretty much using a plain text file. TextExpander promises to not only store these snippets by context but automatically input them for you when you start to type their specific combination. This is bound to save me countless hours in my workflow!
• LittleSnapper – Truth be told I’ve already been using the demo version of this for a couple of months. It’s a utility that allows you take entire (or partial) screenshots of websites and edit/store them on your computer. The images captured via LittleSnapper are great for adding images of sites you’ve created to portfolios, creating step by step tutorials or even capturing cool web elements you’ve seen on other peoples websites for some added inspiration when yours is taking a break I’m extremely happy that I no longer have to try and keep my image database below the demo limit!
• WriteRoom – This is an app designed to give you focus in your writing. It blacks out your entire screen and is made so that you can just get your words out and ignore any distractions. I’ve not used it just yet but with it’s auto-save feature it’s likely to be great little app for when I need to create a blog post or perhaps finish a report on a tight deadline but I have hundreds of tabs open in my browser (ok maybe not that many…), with Facebook & Skype both screaming for my attention.
• Radium – This from what I understand is a digital radio player. I almost without fail, play all my music through Spotify on my phone Mac and PC so I’m not the best person to comment but it’s probably fair to assume that if you are someone that does listen to online radio station this will probably offer you some value. Rather than trying to make something up and profess myself as an an expert in something I’m not you are probably best checking out their site if you want to know how this app benefits you!
• Arq – This is an online backup solution for your mac that utilises Amazon S3. You can quite literally back up the entire contents of your hard drive to a private “bucket” online where it’s stored securely in case you ever have any mishaps such as your mac being wiped, stolen or worse… I guess maybe if it exploded that could be worse! Either way I was using a solution called JungleDisk on the PC and this is looking like an almost seamless replacement so I’m very happy to discover it!
• Alarms – This is an excellent app for all you GTD (Getting Things Done) fans out there. It’s like a ToDo list with built in alarm notifications so that you can make sure you are always on task and keeping the pace. I’ve used basic ToDo lists in the past  but none seem to have the power of an alarm reminder on my iPhone so I can only assume that this power will transfer to the desktop environment as well!

So there you have it; a pretty impressive array of mac apps by most peoples standards and when you factor in the fact that it only costs $49 this is a genuine steal. I would talk more about the Freelance Mac App Bonuses but the truth is if you’re not already salivating then this probably isn’t for you. Though having said that I will give a quick mention to the fact that one of it’s several bonuses is a premium WordPress theme that I will probably be adding to my development arsenal.

The Freelance Mac App Bundle is only available for less than 4 days as I write this (yes I was late to the show this time) so don’t walk, but run over to get your hands on this incredible offer and make sure you come back to let me know how you are using these apps within your daily schedule!

WordCamp UK is currently an annual “un-conference” held in various locations around Britain for users and developers of the WordPress software to get together.  Sessions are held throughout the day where individuals share their ideas & knowledge, network and generally socialise. I had heard of the event before and was even the mailing list at one point; however I managed to find out about this year’s event only a couple of weeks back. Despite the late notice I happened to have some time available and it was actually being hosted within walking distance of where I live so it would have been rude not to make an appearance.

As this was only the second un-conference style event that I had attended and the first related to WordPress I hadn’t a clue about what to expect when I turned up early on the first day. On arrival at the venue I nearly managed to walk past the entrance even though I live in the area but luckily I caught sight of a couple of people walking in. Note to organizers: more prominent posters outside may be helpful in future.

After registering I slapped on a name badge ready and headed into the lion’s den. I was initially shocked to find only a few people there at the start however I got chatting to a few people and an ape and in the following hour things started to pick up until I’d completely forgotten any thoughts about the amount of people that may turn up and the sessions kicked off.

The weekend began with a round of introductions followed by a talk from @mkjones on WordPress themes. I was impressed to see that even though it was clear that the aerage person in the room didn’t approve of the theme; Thesis still got a mention even though there has been some recent controversy surrounding it’s licensing. With over 27,000 Thesis customers, many of whom will be WordPress developers, I am definitely happy that the theme wasn’t simply ignored as open discussion is the only way that developers and businesses can make informed decisions relating to their business.

The day continued with many more interesting sessions including, what I believe to be, the first public demonstration of a forthcoming open source and fully GPL licensed framework called Wonderflux. This looked to be a very interesting project and as an attendee to this years WordCamp I’ve been given beta access so I will definitely be taking a look at this over the coming weeks and months.

The quality, or perhaps rather more accurately, the personal relevance of the sessions varied greatly but the one constant was the great opportunity to connect with talented individuals living and working in and around the WordPress world. There were some inspired discussions over lunch and in the halls where people’s passions shined through and rather than fade away, the depth of conversation picked up and evolved throughout the day and well into the evening.

Fac 251 was the choice of venue for the evening and whilst I’m sure it was something special for those who had travelled from out of town and were interested in the Manchester music scene of days gone by; I found the dance lights and loud music from 6.30pm a little incongruent with the rest of the event. Nothing that time, some good conversation and a few beers can’t fix but it was definitely not the smoothest transition from the conference rooms.

The second day of the event was where I felt I got the most practical information from the sessions with some great presentations on BuddyPress from @pgibbs. For those that are unaware BuddyPress is a social networking project that has recently been transitioned into a plugin that can be integrated with WordPress. Other notable sessions from the day were based around E-Commerce, Enterprise and an interesting analyisis on a recent project by WordPress co-founder, Mike Little, where shared his unique solutions for a highly tailored WordPress installation at imascientist.org.

Whilst the weekend as a whole was overwhelmingly positive and I met many people I have no doubt that I will be contacting again soon, it did end on a slightly bitter note. The last session was intended to generate feedback which could be used to improve next year’s event however Jane Wells stepped in with an amazingly bad timed and probably misrepresented announcement that we could not have another WordCamp UK.

The problem as I see it with the announcement was that the WordCamp UK brand has now been growing over three years and for the individuals in the room we had spent an amazing weekend associating and identifying with the #WordCampUK title through various channels. After a weekend of becoming completely immersed in the WordCamp community spirit Jane essentially stated that the brand could no longer be used and we would have to separate into rural entities. Whilst I am sure it wasn’t her intention it basically had the effect over the weekend of building an amazing community spirit and and then being told that you are not actually allowed to associate with these people. I want to reiterate, this was almost definitely not her intention, but beyond the actual logistics of local vs national events, I would hazard a guess that this is what has added the most fuel to the fire within this discussion.

So what is the future of WordCamp UK? Removing the semantics from the equation; I think that there wouldn’t be a single person in that room who would object to individual towns running thier own WordCamp events if they were able to sustain it and it would more than likely add a valuable assest to WordPress.org, WordPress.com and the communities that have evolved around them both.

My personal opinion is that I really do prefer the umbrella annual events that bring in people from across the country. There is already in fact a local group within Manchester where I live and whilst this event has made me more likely to attend it at some point the national nature of this event is what attracts me to it in the first place. It is a single gathering of some of the best minds that we have working on and around WordPress within this country.

National events mean that you get people coming from all of the subcultures that we have based around different areas of the UK and bringing their own unique qualities to the table. Of course this happens at smaller events but the fact remains that a national event amplifies the possibilities and throws you in with a group of people that you are less likely to make that first connection with on a day to day basis should you remain in your geographical area. By all means host local events if they are requested and in demand but don’t remove the collective UK community events as the value they offer is immense.

In closing I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible and I can say categorically that if the national events continue I will be back!

As somebody that develops WordPress sites for both myself and clients regularly I have done a lot of research on this matter. The general consensus I have got is that the best option to use from an SEO & Usability standpoint is /%postname%/, some marketers recommend /%category%/%postname%/ and this may be worthwhile if you have the chance of similar titles or want an easier visual reminder (SEO benefits of adding category are seen to be negligible.

And finally the famous /%post_id%/%postname%/ is recommend by the WordPress guys for performance however community testing has shown that this will only start to have an effect in super-huge-mega-blogs that the majority of the world will never create. (Update: It will also have an impact on blogs with lots of pages so might be worthwhile if your site is page, rather than post, heavy!)

A few hardcore SEO people I know are testing out solutions like /%postname%.html etc to differentiate blog posts from categories and pages (which is what causes potential performance issue) but it has been mentioned this could have detrimental effects if in years to come HTML / PHP or whatever you use is no longer considered the standard code base.

In summary; most people needn’t worry too much from an SEO side of things and should mainly be focusing on the usability for your site between using

/%postname%/
or
/%category%/%postname%/

And for those with 20 “Pages” or more…

/%post_id%/%postname%/

I hope that helps!

If you own a website it’s imperative that you always keep backups of everything that’s on your server. Technology failures can and do happen all the time whether it be hardware or software based. As time has moved on and we often have huge databases running our websites rather than a few static HTML pages this process has become even more necessary. This post is divided into two main sections, the prevention & the cure. Some of this may sound a little technical at times but bare with me, there are solutions for every experience levels.

The Prevention

There is no better way to protect yourself from these failures than prevention. You should always keep all of your online files backed up locally and even on other online networks. A couple of few great places to back up your files depending on your requirements are:

• Gmail Account – If you run a blog or have just a few small files then this can be a great low cost option. There are plugins that can automatically email your database backups and everything else can be mailed accross in an instant.
• Your Hard Drive – When you are constantly working “in the cloud” you can often overlook the fact that you have a huge amount of storage space literally at your desk. Make a habit of keeping a copy of everything that you create for your website even if it’s created solely online. To make yourself even more bullet-proof you can ever have your hard drive automatically backup elsewhere.
• Amazon Web Services – I would like to note that this is definitely not for the newcomer, however it’s worth mentioning as there are many backup options that tie in quite nicely with the variety of services offered by Amazon. I’m only just scratching the surface with their solutions but already I love it.

As I mentioned above there are even ways to automate a lot of your backing up so you are always secure even if you’re not consciously thinking about it at the time. A good example of this is the WP DB Backup if you are running a WordPress blog. However even the best backup systems have the potential to go wrong even if it’s through human error and that’s where the next section of this post comes through…

The Cure

You get online and see that the nightmare scenario has actually happened… Your website is covered in database errors or even worse, you no longer have a website at all. This can be a terrifying situation to be in and no matter how much work you’ve put into a project, this is the very last thing you want to see. I’ll ask you to put away the noose however, it may not be the end of the world yet…

With some of the more simple database failures it could be that your site hasn’t actually vanished and the data isn’t gone, it’s just hiding. I’ve had it happen before where a my WordPress blog would load as a blank page whatever I tried to do. After the initial panic and a little more research I managed to discover that the problem was caused by something I’d installed onto the blog a day before and it was possible to just disable the new plugin via the database.

No, my site has definitely disappeared…

The first thing you will consider is if you’ve made backups at any stage. If so, are they recent enough that it’s an option to just roll back a little while and just miss a few of your more recent updates? It can be disappointing to lose your recent work but often it can work out a lot easier and cheaper in the long run.

If you have no backups whatsoever, you may try contacting the company that actually host your website. Often your host will perform regular backups so that even if you have not backed up a single thing they will have a copy somewhere. The trouble with this solution is that it can often be costly and you cannot guarantee that they will have everything you need.

The final things that you can try as a last resort and I really mean as a last resort is this; Nearly all search engines these days will create a cache of your website to make their life easier. This basically means that they hold a copy of all the websites in their database for a limited time so that they do not have to actually query every site each time a search is run.

Now in many search engines you will often find that there is a little link at the bottom of each result that is called ‘Cached’. When you click on this link you are taken to the search engines copy of your web page which can often be a couple of days old depending on how often they refresh your site. What this means for you is that you can run a search for your website in all the major search engines and collect the cached files of your website and replace it from these.

You can find a pretty comprehensive list of the search engines that keep a cache here. Before you get too excited though, please bare in mind that this will be a very labor intensive method depending on the size of your website and you are almost guaranteed to not find everything that was on your site before the crash. As a last ditch effort though, it can take away some of the pain of losing your site and help you to get back on your feet a little quicker.

Armed with this information you not only have the power to pick up the pieces on a lost website, but ultimately protect it in future. As always the best thing that you can do in any situation is backup in advance and with the ideas provided here you should be easily on your way to turning your next disaster into a minor set back because it’s not a question of if, but when…

If you’ve been blogging on a WordPress powered site for any amount of time then I’m sure, you will have come across a few plugins that make your life easier. Rather than just sit here and hoard the information I decided today to share a few of them with you so that you can go away and make use of these with your websites from today.

1. All in One SEO Pack (Free) – This is the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin that I have come across in my time working with WordPress to date. Once it’s installed even the most novice of users can set up the basic title structures for their blog. Advanced users will not be disappointed either as there is plenty of flexibility to delve even deeper into the SEO workings of your blog.
2. Ultimate Google Analytics (Free) – If you want your blog to succeed then the often overlooked area of tracking can have a huge impact. You can register completely free of charge for a Google Analytics account and easily hook it up with your blog install via this plugin. The functionality that Google Analytics is so advanced that  before the original company was bought out it was sold to website owners for upwards of $1000. This should give you an idea of how effective this really can be.
3. Twitter Tools (Free) – Everybody is talking about Twitter and regardless of your views it’s likely you will know a few people who are devout fans of it. This plugin is designed for those devout fans, and if you are one of them, you! Automatically create tweets for your new blog posts and hook up your tweets through your blog. This is the most full featured Twitter plugin that I’ve seen even if some of the options from my view are plain daft, use with care!
4. Wishlist Member ($97)- You love WordPress but you’ve been thinking of setting up a membership site? Well you finally can have both with this plugin. Built in is the option to protect certain areas of even your entire installation to paying customers or registered members depending on your set up. It fully integrates with major payment providers and auto-responders. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s possible to have your own very own paid membership site in a day with this plugin.
5. WP DB Backup (Priceless) – It’s the moment that every blogger dreads; you log on to your site and there are error messages left right and centre or even worse… there’s nothing at all… Believe me I have been there in the past and it is not a good place to be. That’s why it’s important to not only keep a back up of all of your theme files etc but also use a plugin like this to regularly backup your WordPress Database. With some hosts charging up to $150 to roll back your hosting account a day or two it’s worth the few minutes it takes to install something like this on every blog,  even if it’s “just in case”.

Hopefully within that list there will be one or two that you haven ‘t come across before and are interested in checking out or perhaps you currently use them all already. Either way it would be great to hear some of your favorite plugins for wordpress. If you have a moment why not leave a comment with the plugins that you simply couldn’t do without.

It is inevitable that if you are working online in the current day and age you will end up using several third party websites/applications throughout your day. Online marketers will often write articles for EzineArticles, create viral videos for YouTube and even create fan pages on Facebook. Not only is it mostly unavoidable but often these things are necessary to get the competitive edge in any of your business ventures.

One thing that occasionally gets overlooked by people new to affiliate marketing however is the importance of having your own website. The truth is when you create work for these third party websites you are leaving yourself at the mercy of the company. This is even more true if a single company is responsible for the majority of your income.

It is not unusual for a free service to suddenly require payment of some sort, or for an overnight change to the terms of service. You may think you are invincible or it will always happen to somebody else but if your main source of revenue gets shut down overnight you will be wishing you’d got your insurance out on the table a lot earlier.

There was quite a high profile case on the BBC recently of a Ronaldo fan having his Facebook fan page being shut down. A few questions were raised over the copyright issues of his posting a video to the page which ended in the 3 million strong fan page, with 500,000 monthly hits being shut down overnight. Over a year of his life dedicated to this one information stream and it’s gone in an instant. The truth is that it wasn’t even a commercial venture for him but he still felt the pain. I’m sure you don’t need to imagine the distress if you’d spent a year building up to 3 million readers of anything and for it to be gone overnight.

If he’d only created his own blog or website alongside this fan page and posted nothing more than the updates he’d added to Facebook his story could have been quite different. Not only would he have been able to promote his website through the fan page but he would have had tangible online real estate when his page was closed down and retained much of the hours of work that had gone into building his readership. This can happen to anyone at all, including myself and even you, it pays to be prepared with your own self-hosted content.

At the very least you should have your own self hosted blog or basic website. When you take this step you start to build your online real estate and even in the unlikely event that all of your third party websites turn around and close tomorrow you will still have your home project.

Setting up a blog can be as simple or as difficult as you like. You can aim for the leading blog in your industry or you can simply use one as a place to congregate your marketing messages. The main thing you will want to ensure is that you are using your own hosting account along  and you have full power over your content.

Without a doubt WordPress is one of the most powerful solutions today to create your own blog but if you need assistance it may be worth having your blog installed and set up professionally especially if you plan on it becoming your biggest source of clients/income. Whether you decide to follow these important steps or not, just remember, whenever you post any information to a third party website you face the possibility of losing it all without your own self hosted content.

Answer: They were all swimming around my head at 4 in the morning.

As you are all probably more than aware I like WordPress. It’s the engine that runs this blog, it’s used as the platform for a membership website that I have in development and was featured in my top 60 day challenge picks a couple of weeks ago.

What you probably don’t know however is that one of the things that really bugs me about WordPress is finding appropriate themes with the freedom to match my vision of a website. I have been known in the past to spend two hours simply looking for a correct theme to modify for a website.

Well a couple days ago I bought a product from the guys over at Location Independent that mentions skilling up. Though technically they were aiming their comments at people who have little to no experience in website design it still struck a chord with me. Sure I can build a ‘normal’ website in no time at all but when it comes to working with WordPress, my favorite engine, I have to spend a couple hours searching for an appropriate theme to meet my vision.

That was the moment that I decided I was going to go under the hood with WordPress. It’s perfect  now as I have a little free time at the moment and need a theme for WordPress that is completely away from anything that I’ve seen before. I jumped in with this amazing introduction to creating your own themes and realised that as long as you have the basics of HTML, CSS and PHP down it’s all about bringing them together.

Cut to last night; it’s 4am and I’m designing a travel theme with beaches, WordPress and a lot of coffee running around my brain.  It’s not yet finished but the design is perfected on paper and I’ve got a graphical mock up created on my computer. The whole thing should be ready by the end of next week or Sunday depending on how engrossed I get in it over the weekend.

Though I’ve strayed a little of course with this, the purpose of this post was basically to say that if you have knowledge of creating websites the transition to WordPress themes really isn’t as hard as it seems from the outside. CSS plays a huge part, a lot more than it typically has in my past designs but otherwise it’s very similar.

If you have an interest in WordPress, some background knowledge and a little time it’s worth spending on themes, even if only to get an understanding of what you’re working with. It will give you the ability to tweak under the hood a little more. As a side note, if you want to work on the web and don’t have the background knowledge, you will probably want to get a grasp of basic HTML/CSS so you can have a go at creating, editing or just developing a better understanding of the websites that you own.