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!

I’ll be honest… I wasn’t a Google Chrome convert at first, largely due to the lack of extensions and an unfamiliar interface. Eventually one day Firefox simply became too slow to handle and I made the jump. When I finally started using Chrome I quickly got used to the new menus and was impressed by the speed it offered in comparison to other browsers. Many months later and I can now say that I’m more than happy with the amount of extensions available and want to share a few of my favourites through this post.

1Password

When you are working on the web you can build a sickening amount of online accounts in a very short time. Of course best practices for the web include a  different password for each site you visit but there is no way you could remember every one. That’s where one password steps in; it can automatically generate and remember every password you use anywhere on the web. Just a single click and you can be logged into any one of hundreds of saved accounts. And if you were worrying about security it does come with a master password feature so you can keep unwanted eyes away from your entire collection. This is an extension to a paid app but it is worth every penny!

Chrome Web Developer Tools

If you develop websites or even just need to dig into the source code of a site every now and then this is a great tool. It offers many options for running tests and editing live sites on the fly. Another great feature that anybody can use is instant javascript disabling for sites that contain too many annoying pop ups trying to mess with your browser.

Facebook: InviteThemAll

As a student entrepreneur I work a lot with Events on Facebook. Any Facebook events/group marketers will already be aware of the continually degrading experience for inviting people to events en masse and this extension takes back some of that power. It adds a simple toggle menu item to your Facebook invite box so you can invite all the friends to an event without having to select thousands individually. I’d highly recommend you use this sensibly as too many integrated invites could see your account getting blocked or at least make you very unpopular.

Rapportive

This is an amazing add on for Gmail users that automatically scans the incoming address of users that email you and provides you with a sidebar containing links to their social profiles and latest posts depending on their privacy settings. If you connect with people professionally over email this can serve as a great introduction to the people behind those random emails you receive and can save you from the occasional memory slip

SEOquake

An SEO toolbar is an absolute essential for web professionals, not only does it allow you to keep track of your own websites placings in the various indexes but it also acts as a great tool for competitive intelligence. You can find out how people are placing and also where their links are coming from amongst many other things. SEOQuake is not the only toolbar I’d recommend but it’s the one I use right now.

View Background Image

As someone that develops websites and works with lots of themes and images one of my biggest bugbears when moving over from Firefox was the lack of a “View Background Image” option in the context menu. This extension brings that functionality to chrome so you can find out the URLs and view the source images for backgrounds on any website.

Finding other extensions…

Obviously this is just a small selection of the many extensions available out there and one mans opinion. I’d love to hear which extensions you are using in the comments. And if you’ve yet to discover the world of Chrome Extensions an exciting new world awaits…

If you haven’t already heard the seasons are changing. I’m not referring to the relentless onslaught of Autumn & Winter or even climate change but instead something far more exciting. Instead I’m talking about a seemingly innocent replacement of the first letter of November. Worldwide thousands of citizens are standing against the status quo and language itself in the naming of a new month called “Movember”.

With a movement that started in Melbourne, Australia thousands of men are uniting as one to grow out their moustache in a fight a global enemy most commonly known as cancer. Whilst I have been lucky enough to avoid it’s direct contact it has touched those I have known and most people including yourself will be, or likely have already been, affected either directly or indirectly at some point throughout your life. So men of the world I call upon you to unite for one month and shout those fateful worlds “OCCUPY MY FACE!”

Starting on the 1st of Movember I will be donating my face to an initial shaving and going on to begin a journey of facial hair growth and discovery all in an act of charity. To document the journey of my facial occupation throughout the month of Movember I will take a picture each and every day, leading to a final display that can only be imagined! All I ask in return is that you donate whatever you can afford to help a charity that that seeks to raise awareness of, and ultimately crush, prostate and testicular cancer (although luckily in most cases not directly… ouch!).

To support help support Movember and the Occupy My Face movement click here. And for those brave souls that wish to donate their face to the cause, simply visit my Movember page and click to join the team in this global movement as you scream “Occupy My Face”, stay strong, it’s going to get hairy!

There has been a lot of buzz recently about the changes that are slowly rolling out across Facebook and for good reason. I’ve been testing it all out through my developer account and it’s going to wildly change the way we all interact with the site.

Our profiles will become a scrapbook of our lives, online and off. The stream is becoming a kind of “match of the day” for our friends daily lifes. And in the new sidebar the most intense data stream seen yet of your friends and families goings on…

Whilst there are issues with it’s implementation in the short run, bugs that be need to be stamped out, and a lot of user shock and dismay to work through. None can sell it so well, and explain it’s true power, than the infamous Don Draper of 60s based ad show ‘Mad Men’.

Enjoy…

Viddler Video Removed – Currently at http://youtu.be/wAcyJhsamcQ

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!

If you consider yourself an Internet Marketer then you are heading for some serious changes in the near future. I recently got to watch Ryan Deiss present about a serious shift that’s starting to emerge within the world of internet marketing and it was a real eye opener. The change has already started, this isn’t a theoretical prediction and it will have a huge and lasting impact on everybody marketing online.

I originally wanted to share this with you a while ago but he took it offline. Luckily he has decided to put it back to coincide with his Digital Marketer launch. Whether or not you are interested his offer or is almost besides the point, either way I highly recommend you watch this video. You’ll understand why after…

Click here to watch the presentation that’s already lead to changes within my business.

Premise is a WordPress landing page plugin that lets you easily create sales pages and squeeze pages within WordPress whilst still using your usual theme across the rest of your website. There have been some great sales & squeeze page themes for WordPress (OptimizePress comes to mind) but I’ve always thought that you should be able to create squeeze pages without requiring a theme to handle it and that’s exactly what Premise plugin for WordPress does.

It’s an established product and I’ve actually been meaning to try it for a while but it wasn’t until they decided to run a promotion on it that I finally got around to trying it out. My first impressions are very good and I will be creating a full video review when I have used it a little more but I didn’t want to make those of you who know they need something like this wait and miss the promotion.

Get Premise for nearly half price!
Use the promo code “DEAL” here.

Unfortunately this promotion ends today but if you act quickly you can still get in at the discounted price and try it out for a full 30 days completely risk free. If at any time during that time you decide the plugin is not for you then you can request a full refund within the members area.

The company behind premise is called Copyblogger media and they are a big name in the WordPress marketing world so you can rest assured this will be worthwhile investment for your business and they will stand by any promises that they make.

NOTE: This article was posted on a former blog but is still relevant today and has been reposted in response to the recent US release of Spotify.

Spotify is an online music streaming service launched in 2006 that is currently available to a few countries in within Europe. Spotify users register for an account where they can listen to an unlimited amount of songs for free so long as they are prepared to listen to a few adverts littered in between the songs.

In theory these adverts are tailored to a your listening profile so that they remain relevant for users and provide a good return on investment for the advertisers. The last piece of the puzzle is that if you want to remove the adverts then it’s possible to pay a subscription fee which will completely remove the adverts from the service.

The business model embraced within Spotify is an interesting one as it is completely born into the digital age and as such has embraced the “freemium” model.

Although not the first person to use the word, Chris Anderson, the author of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” defines a freemium business model as one that provides a free version of a service to basic users, that is matched with a premium paid version.

This has all been made possible due to the low costs of distribution involved with digital music. In fact the Telegraph reports that only 12% of Spotify users need to subscribe to keep the ad-supported service free for the rest.

When you consider that premium subscribers not only get to remove adverts but also gain higher quality music tracks, can download and listen to tracks offline and even gain mobile access the foundations are definitely there. Based on my seemingly perpetual upgrade to Premium and their plans to expand into the U.S. later this year it seems that they’ve created a service that is sticky enough to succeed.

As previously mentioned I just can’t seem to shake the urge to go premium on Spotify. In fact since signing up for Spotify I’ve only had the urge to buy from two artists and part of the reasoning was simply that I wanted to support them more directly. An urge which may have been quashed since I discovered that Spotify are now the fourth largest digital revenue generator for Universal Music Group thanks to Spotify’s move to pay labels per user within the U.K. and Spain.

It all begs the question if you can listen to music both both on and offline as well as downloading it to your phone whilst on the go for only £9.99; Has purchasing individual tracks and albums become a thing of the past? I know where I stand but I think it would be interesting to get some conversation going and see what the general consensus is on the future of music. Will subscriptions, purchasing or plain old pirating prevail?

When you are running a Facebook page you are initially given a URL that contains a whole bunch of numbers that don’t really add anything and make your page address practically impossible to remember. Luckily after you have at least 25 fans on your page you can update this to get a vanity URL such as www.facebook.com/redbull. You can set this by visiting www.facebook.com/username whilst logged into your account.

One question that often comes up though is whether you should use capitals in your URL?

Well the simple answer is yes, but…. Unfortunately unlike publishing platforms such as WordPress when you create your URL with Facebook you cannot use hyphens-or-dashes and you definitely can’t use any spaces. This means URLs with a mixture of upper case and lower case lettering can often look messy and confusing. This leaves you with the option of using all lower or all upper case lettering and frankly lower case just looks better in the digital environment such as Facebook, search engine results page and it also makes it easier for users to remember how to link you.

With all of that said, there is some light at the end of the tunnel… If the main reason you want to use upper case letters in a URL is for print display in your marketing then both upper and lower case letters will redirect to the same page. So /ThisURL /THISURL /thisurl will all point to /thisurl. This means you can get the freedom of using both styles along with the benefit of having a nice clean lower case URL.

I hope this helps you to make a decision about which style to use for your page and I look forward to hearing from any creative fan page or URL examples that you may have to share…

So after a couple of days using Google+ I received an email this morning notifying me that my Google profile has finally been indexed by Google. Whilst it will be interesting to see the longer term impact this has on the general SERPs and clickthrough to my sites I decided to do a little poking around now…

The first things I should mention is that ever since signing up for the Google+ beta I have seen my profile at #1 position in Google whilst logged in with a little “edit profile” link as seen below. Whilst this can be handy it’s not really a game changer as I’m the only one seeing it (until now!).

Straight after getting my Google+ alert I ran over to search my name in non cookied browser to see if the first page situation had changed at all. Not only had it changed but I found the following listing at the bottom of the first page (where Google is sometimes known to show social content).

Whether or not this will stay is yet to be seen but it does have big implications for those hoping to optimize their Google+ listing. Here is what the listing listing currently contains:

• Full Name – Google Profile
• https://plus.google.com/117893476287021965250
• Location – Job Title at Company Name
• First 64 characters of your profile headline including spaces wrapped in quotation marks
• First 71 characters of your introduction including spaces
• 17 character keyword link to first URL in your profile
• 14 character keyword link to second URL in your profile
• 18 character keyword link to third URL in your profile

Now the as a marketer the first thing you probably going to be inclined to change are the profile links. When you look at my my breakdown above you might be wondering why the keyword links are at such odd character counts. From a quick analysis of the three links it looks like Google are allowing the first 14 characters of a link except where the fourteenth character forms part of another word which is being shown whole pushing the character amount up slightly.

The next thing Google+ listing inspired me to change was both my headline and introduction text. I realised that the headline was almost an exact copy of my job title and instead crafted the headline and introduction text to create a more descriptive and hopefully engaging flow within the Google listing whilst still retaining their own independence on my Google profile.

After hitting the save button on my profile edit I hoped that somehow I’d landed on a magic solution to instant links in Google… Crazy wishing aside it appears that even my Google profile will have to wait to be crawled again for my listing to be be updated. With the profile only just being listed I will have to wait and see how long it takes for a refresh but I’ll be sure to update on this blog when it does.

Whilst I’ve researched as much as I can with the data I have available I’d be interested to hear your experiences with the Google+ listing appearing in the SERPs. Have you been listed yet and if so what steps are you taking to optimise your Google profile?