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[Guest Post] WordPress Promises More Blog Traffic With The New Follow Button

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This is a guest post written by Joel Newman. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

WordPress has just launched a new follow button for all WordPress blogs as a means to drive more traffic to a personal or business blog. WordPress has developed this follow button to improve page views and increase visitor retention on a blog.

Anyone who isn’t logged into WordPress can visit a blog and find the follow button at the bottom right corner. When the user clicks on this follow button, they will be prompted to enter their e-mail address so that they can be notified whenever a blogger adds a new post to their blog.

This follow button is similar to an e-mail subscription, yet WordPress believes that users are more likely to click on the follow button as opposed to a “subscribe” button to track a blog day-to-day. Many users shy away from the word “subscribe” since they feel that they may have to pay for a subscription or will be signed up unwillingly for e-mail spam.

wordpress-follow

Thanks to the world of social media, a follow button has a friendly association. Most Internet users follow their favorite brands or celebrities on websites like Twitter and Facebook. However, this WordPress follow button is not to be confused with social media; the purpose of the follow button is to provide a blog visitor with an e-mail subscription to receive updates on new blogs that are posted.

If a blogger doesn’t want to display the follow button on their WordPress blog, they can shut off the feature automatically by going to their dashboard, clicking on settings, clicking on reading, and clicking on e-mail. The button will only show up for users who aren’t logged into WordPress. If a user is already logged into WordPress, a follow button is located on the admin bar at the top of the screen.

So what are the advantages of the new follow button by WordPress? This button is going to cater to users who are not logged into WordPress and are interested in following a blog regularly. WordPress has added this feature so that bloggers can gather more traffic by encouraging visitors to subscribe to their blog feed.

Time will tell if other subscription features on WordPress will have the same name change. WordPress is continuing to study the impact of names and wording on all of their features; WordPress has only changed from “subscribe” to “follow” in this example because they believe that it will benefit bloggers by making visitors feel more comfortable in subscribing to a blog feed.

Author

Bethany Ramos is a full-time freelance writer that co-owns her own e-commerce website, The Coffee Bump. The Coffee Bump specializes in a wide variety of Bunn coffee makers and assorted coffee and espresso products.

[Guest Post] Your Company’s Web Apps Are Actually Gaping Security Holes

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This is a guest post written by Joel Newman. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

According to the recent Web Application Attack Report (WAAR), released by pioneers in data security solutions, web applications remain vulnerable to attack. Most of the recent data breaches have been done using botnets on web apps like data systems and email. As large-scale web applications take more time to patch vulnerabilities, hackers get ample opportunities to hack web applications even more. Moreover, this kind of automated attacks using botnets makes it even more difficult to trace the source of the attack.

The most prevalent attacks have been SQL injection, cross-site scripting, directory traversal, and remote file include. Most of the attacks on web applications using botnets are done in two steps: scans the target system using cross-site scripting and directory traversal, and then attack it using SQL injection. Given the huge amount of data handled by web applications, this makes a sensible approach; otherwise, the botnets have to spend more time to scoop out all the data.

In a web application, a request flows from a web client to a web server through HTTP either as a SOAP request or in other XML form. In all web applications, the design of security module plays an important role and it varies from one organization to another. If an attack can pass through a security module by creating fake privileges and authenticated sessions, then the attack can easily pass through other layers.

Depending on a server’s resources, an attacker can create a buffer overflow to gain access to a web application. In this case, an attacker typically constructs an XML request, and makes it call upon itself recursively until it is overblown and causes a memory overflow error. Every web server has a limit to handle the size of an incoming request. Therefore, when the server receives a very large incoming request, it crashes with an error message, which reveals some information about the web application to the hacker.

Even though SQL injection can easily be prevented, it remains one of the widely used methods by hackers to extract data from web applications. If a web application does not validate the incoming data, then the hackers can manipulate SOAP messages with malicious data and get them executed in the database. A hacker achieves this by attacking XML Schema files. An XML schema is like a grammar file that contains preprocessor instructions to validate an XML file. If an attacker can damage or manipulate XML schema files to permit malicious XML request to get through, then false SOAP messages can easily pass through the application to inject commands or query the database.

Some enterprise applications have different layers of privileges and security modules assigned for every user. This kind of design checks a user’s privileges and security rights at every phase of execution. In such cases, hackers look for ways to hijack a session of an authenticated user. Session hijacking is a method to gain illegal access to a valid user’s session state. As a user’s session details are sent back and forth while accessing a web application, a hacker can sniff the SOAP message and can hijack the session id. Depending on the privileges associated with a hijacked user, a hacker can penetrate to that level in a web application.

A huge enterprise web application connecting various departments handles large volumes of critical data on a daily basis. In that case, a small level of data breach typically goes unnoticed and can lead to large data theft. Moreover, some web applications continue with minor security flaws as fixing security patches or redesigning would take more time, and from hackers point, these minor loopholes turn out to be advantageous for them.

Author

Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She loves to write on technology and lifestyle. Beside this she is fond of gadgets.

[Guest Post] Top 25 jQuery WordPress Plugins

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This is a guest post written by Joel Newman. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

jQuery has gained recent popularity due to its open source, free JavaScript library. jQuery is advanced, powerful, and easy to use and works best when combined with jQuery plugins. These plugins are used by a number of designers and programmers to enhance the design and animation of a website. The plugins can also be used for creating customized web apps for better visitor interaction. [Read more…] about [Guest Post] Top 25 jQuery WordPress Plugins

[Guest Post] Is Google Being Anti-Competitive?

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This is a guest post written by Rebecca. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

Google has always tried to position itself as the champion of the open web. In spite of repeatedly claiming to be the antithesis of the evil corporation, the recent anti-trust inquiries in the European Union and the United States have brought the Google monopoly issue out into public focus. The question of whether Google is being anti-competitive needs to be looked at in perspective.

The problem is that there are two different perspectives – that of regulatory bodies and the competition themselves, and that of Google and the users of Google’s varied web services. Both these perspectives are sound by themselves, especially from a business point of view.

What is not so sound, though, is the high moral ground that all parties in this debate have been claiming when contrasted against their actions.

The war against restrictive practices in the computing and web services industry dates back to when Microsoft was taken to task over bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Sadly, the so-called protagonist of that particular battle, Netscape, has been buried by history. Microsoft continues to retain its position as an industry leader even in a scenario where many of its solutions are fast becoming obsolete as computing itself undergoes a revolution.

google

Google entered the picture at the same time, offering open web solutions whose only possible claim to restrictive practice, at least at that time, was that they were far superior to other available services. Over the years, Google became the new protagonist, initially by garnering the pole position in the search war.

This gave them an edge over other players in terms of advertising revenue. They followed up by introducing a host of other web and computing services including operating systems, codecs, and a browser. Their latest forays into the Android OS for mobile devices and Chrome-books further consolidated their position.

Somewhere along this journey, they have ended up looking more and more like monopolists, at least to their competition, and recently, to regulators as well. Google defends this by claiming that it is their broad footprint in the web services segment that leads to this perception. Official say that it is their endeavor to provide the best-in-class user experience that results in their products and services leaving the competition behind.

Google users have also their own logic of accepting practices like adopting the proprietary Adobe Flash player, or developing an alternative to JavaScript. They point out how Google’s applications and services have actually helped loosen the monopolistic stranglehold of the industry giants. Cloud computing is a case in point. Google introduced its cloud-based document storage and processing services as an “alternative” to Microsoft’s Office suite, the longstanding staple of business computing.

This, however, was followed up by the launch of the Chrome browser, and the Chrome OS for net-books, and then Chrome-books. With most new features in their services being released as Chrome-only, this can be seen as an anti-competitive stance. The reason that many observers will not agree with Google as being monopolistic is in the fact that in the field of web services, the competition is merely a click away, and in no way prevented from attracting the user base.

Many will point out that, were it not for the Google Docs service, Microsoft might never have come out with a similar version of their Office products. Both Google Docs and the cloud based Microsoft offering have come as a major blessing for users who for years have had to cough up the dollars for every Office upgrade.

However, in the haze of claims and counter claims, one thing stands out clearly. Over the last 13 years, Google has made strategic decisions that are inconsistent with its self declared role of guardian of the open web. How this pans out in terms of fair play practices in the corporate world is something that remains to be seen.

About the author:

Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She likes writing articles on gizmos, technology and travel. These days she is busy in writing her new article on hacking tools on internet.

[Guest Post] Top 5 Free WordPress Themes

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This is a guest post written by Sathish. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

WordPress is a popularly used Content Management System (CMS) for blogging. It comes with various themes, some of which require payment but there is no shortage of free WordPress themes. Like with any product, or software, in the market, you will find quality of all sorts and so it is with WordPress themes. As such, even though what you are going for is free, it is still important to ensure that what you get is of good quality and will be efficient for the kind of blog you intend to create. Some of the top free WordPress themes include:

best-free-wordpress-themes

01. Copyblogger theme

Created by Chris Pearson, this WordPress theme has gone through a few modifications where now users can choose to either have two or three columns. Copyblogger is also said to be SEO friendly so you might want to consider this Open Source Candy WordPress theme.

02. Elements of SEO

The purpose of a blog is to communicate a message and incite a comment or reaction. For people to get to the blog the page needs to be appealing and this free theme is known to elicit exactly that. With professional looking themes, most businesses can benefit from this theme and it is easily compatible with any adjustments or additions that may come about.

03. ProSense

This is an easy theme to work with as it is effortlessly customizable and comes already integrated with Google Adsense. It is simple to create themes using ProSense and it has the added advantage of being SEO tailored. Use it to create your niche blog without worrying about content placement.

04. Arras Theme

A WordPress theme need not only be free but appealing as well and Arras theme is jus that. This theme has three columns which can highlight images and text. Interesting aspect of this theme is that it has a slide feature thus it’s convenient to use for magazine or news blogs. The glide feature makes the theme attractive as alternating images can glide one after the other.

05. JournalCrunch

This theme is easy to set up and is good for portfolios as well as magazines. It’s a WordPress 3.0 theme.

Like these themes? If you are using any of them, let me know via comments and do not forget to follow WebGuide4U on Twitter for more updates on WordPress Themes.

Author Bio

Sathishkumar is a Blogger and Internet Marketer from India. He now works for Pixloo, a free Virtual Tour services company.

[Guest Post] Top 35 WordPress YouTube Plugins Compatible With WordPress 3.1

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This is a guest post written by Rahul. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here.

YouTube – most popular website, use to watch and share videos on web. As a webmaster/blogger we need to embed YouTube video in our blog post to share useful information. Already I have shared how to add and resize YouTube video and now in this post I’m sharing WordPress YouTube Plugin which help you to add, embed video in posts. So for what we are waiting for, here is the list of Top WordPress YouTube Plugin:

youtube-wordpress-plugin

01. Smart YouTube

This plugin offer you total control over YouTube videos and offer you to post YouTube videos in your RSS Feeds, comments and in posts.

02. YouTube Brackets

It allow you to add YouTube videos within brackets.

03. WP YouTube

The YouTube Video ID is more than enough to add the video in your post.

04. YouTube Thumbnailer

You can show a snap from video in posts as thumbnails using the custom field.

05. Lightview Plus

This plugin work like light box fetching videos from YouTube with an editor button.

06. WP JW Player

This is a 2 in 1 plugin, offer you to add YouTube videos and self hosted videos.

07. TubePress

This is a handy plugin to add videos available in 8 languages.

08. Genki YouTube Comments

This plugin allows user(s) to comment on videos in the posts.

09. YouTuber

Simple plugin, simple tags let you add videos which will keep your blog clean and neat.

10. Daiko’s YouTube Widget

This widget allow you to add any desired number of videos in blog’s sidebar.

11. Automatic YouTube Video Posts

It fetch videos from any YouTube account and publish them in your posts. The best thing is that it automatically update your Twitter status as well.

12. TubePress.NET

Best plugin to create video niche site, once added it allow you to search videos using title, description, etc. to import all to your site. There is a thumb view option as well.

13. Berri YouTube Gallery

This help you to add a gallery of videos in sidebars without any special API.

14. Random YouTube Video

Simple, you can understand from the name itself.

15. Google YouTube Video Bar

This plugin offer you to add targeted YouTube videos from Google search results for your keywords.

16. YouTube With Style

This plugin allows you to add custom video player and help you to add videos without leaving site.

17. ZD YouTube FLV Player

It is a cool plugin to add a YouTube and FLV videos, you can add videos using the code below,

[zdvideo]url[/zdvideo]

URL= Video URL

18. YouTube VideoBox Plugin

This plugin let you decide the height and width of the videos added in sidebar, also help you to add YouTube videos in XHTML valid format.

19. YouTube Poster

This plugin helps you to add videos as separate posters in blog.

20. YouTube Sidebar

Add videos to sidebar and best thing is that Adsense ads displayed when no videos matching the set criteria.

21. WP YouTube Lyte

This plugin let you add flash less video in blog, i.e. video load in real-time when clicked the play button. So, page load faster.

22. IFRAME Embed for YouTube

This plugin suggests you to use IFRAME code for videos to add them in blog.

23. Chromeless YouTube

Advantage of this plugin is that, it allow you to add different videos from different sources in single post.

24. Simple Video Embedder

This is simple yet powerful plugin to add videos in posts with traditional option.

25. Easy Tube

This plugin allows you to add Google videos along with YouTube videos with Image thumbnails.

26. YouTube feeder

This plugin allows you to pull videos from the YouTube’s data API.

27. Viper’s Video Quicktags

This plugin support following video site like YouTube videos, Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Veoh, Blip.tv, MySpaceTV, Spike.com, Viddler, Metacafe and Flickr. It also support video formats like, F lash Video Files (FLV), QuickTime (MOV, etc.) and AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc.

28. YouTube with Fancy Zoom

This plugin adds video galleries with Query based fancy zoom effects.

29. YouTube Widget

Simple plugin with traditional features.

30. My YouTube Playlist

This plugin creates playlist of videos.

31. YouTube Embed

This plugin allows you to add YouTube Embed video code.

32. VideoGall

This plugin offer you to add videos from few other sites and offer you to add ShadowBox effect.

33. Advanced YouTube Widget

This plugin allows visitor to add a YouTube account with limited search result.

34. YouTube Full Screen

This plugin offer readers to open videos in new window.

35. Last YouTube Video

This plugin fetch last video from particular account which can be add in sidebar.

Do you find this post useful, share it with your friends and do not forget to check out Free WordPress Installation Service

Rahul is Technology lover and a fitness advocate who is associated with weightlosstriumph. Check out his weight loss blog where he features Medifast promo code for 2011 and coupons for Nutrisystem food.

[Guest Post] How To Write Business E-mails That Will Create Responsive Results

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This is a Guest Post written by Steven Papas. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines here

business-email-marketingHow do you make your newsletter emails get them clicking on the link and seeing your salespage? They’ve got to draw them in, keep them there, and then get them begging for more by the end. It’s not rocket science, but it takes a little bit of practice to craft those messages so that they get them clicking like crazy.

Before we get into the details of how to do this, there’s one tip that every marketer should take seriously – make your newsletter messages sound personal. Nobody wants a bunch of sales hype coming into their inbox. Your emails should speak directly to them, so they’ve got to have a personal touch.

Now, starting with your subject line, let’s look at some ways to pimp out those newsletter emails and make them work for you.

The Subject Line – Make It Unique

There’s a good chance that the subject is all they’ll see. Then, they’ll decide to either click it on, or delete it. That means that you’ve got to make it count. It should be different from all the other stuff that comes into their inbox.

The subject needs to catch their eye and pull them in. Here are a few simple truisms about human nature that will help you do this:

– People want to find out the hidden secrets that the experts don’t want you to know. Tantalize them with this secret knowledge!

– Words like “success” and “power” resonate strongly. Remember to focus on the desires of your prospects, and put those words into the subject.

– Use adjectives like “unbelievable,” “incredible” and “amazing.” Make some serious claims and convince them that your message is going to back them up.

Write your subject line and then look at it. Would you click on it? If not, scrap it and rewrite!

email+business-email

The Greeting – Make It Personal

For the greeting, always make it use their name. There are services that will do this for you automatically. Never underestimate the psychological effect of seeing your first name used.

If you can’t do this, there are lots of other greetings you can use. Again, appeal to their natural desires. Say something like “Attention Success-Minded Marketers,” or “Hello Profit Seeker.” Make it something that’ll have them saying, “Yes, that’s me!”

The Opening Sentence – Grab Ahold Of Them And Don’t Let Go

The first two lines or so should be focused on grabbing their attention. Make it bold or highlighted. Ask them a question, focus on what’s on their mind. These first two lines or so should lead directly into the first paragraph. It should be a smooth and logical continuation. If you use a question, have the first sentence of the paragraph answer it. Remember that the whole point is that now you’ve got them looking at the message; this first part has to get them seriously reading.

business-email-marketingThe Body – A Template You Can Use

Here’s a simple template that you can use for your lesson body. Just plug-in your content and you’ll have a great email:

1. The first paragraph. This should be 3 or 4 lines long and no more. Quick and to the point.

2. One sentence followed by bullet points. No more than 5 points.

3. Another paragraph that quickly summarizes the things you mentioned in the bullet points.

4. A link leading to your salespage and the product that they’re dying to buy.

The Call To Action – What Are You Waiting For!?

This last part is very important. We call it the “call to action.” It basically says to the reader, “here’s how you do it… do it now!” You’ve already explained the key benefits, now it’s time to show them how to do it. Your words should move that mouse and click that button. Tell them that they need to act now.

But Wait… There’s More!

Say goodbye to them with a “Best Regards” or “To Your Success,” and sign that with your name.

Then, give them a PS. The reason every message and salespage you see has a PS is because it’s an area of the page where the reader’s eyes are naturally drawn. They always want to see what last-minute thing you have to add to your message. This is where you can make them another offer, and this will make your pitch irresistible. Slap a PSS on there too!

And that’s all to it. This is the proven formula for writing newsletter emails that get them to your salespage just salivating for more. Good luck!

Guest Author

Steven’s new venture is VeryBestSoftware Reviews & Coupons where he gives blogging tips, reviews and discount coupons for the top selling digital products and software, like the Symantec Endpoint Protection Coupon and the Norton 360 savings coupon.

[Guest Post] Most Popular CMS Systems

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This is a Guest Post written by Alex L. If you would like to write for WebGuide4U, check out guest posting guidelines.

Content Management System is a software program, which help user in managing content of their websites easily & efficiently. User can store, create, edit, delete the content, which can be text, images, pictures or the other media files. A person who has limited technical knowledge can easily handle or use CMS as it does most of the tasks for you. There are so many types of CMS web design software available in the market today. Among them, some are very famous due to their quality features and use of ease.

cmslogo+wordpress+drupal+joomla+cms+pupolar-cms

Today WordPress, Joomla & Drupal are some of the most famous and extensively used CMS on the Web. Looking briefly on these famous CMS’s:

WordPress

WordPress is an open source CMS, which is a well-known blogging platform which allow user to publish, manage and organize,  content of the website. In recent times, many companies have realized importance of using WordPress as CMS and it has become quite popular. It not only support web blog application but also has a rich suite of useful widgets and attractive themes. It also entails pingback and trackback features. WordPress web design is fully SEO friendly. It allow user to order content of their websites without any hesitation so that it get indexed by search engines very fast. It also facilitates user to customize the URLs means choosing of your custom domain name instead of sub-domain name thereby helping them pick up the most relevant keywords.

Joomla

Joomla, a freely available open source CMS, which enable number of users to work, publish, manage and organize the content of website. Using Joomla you can very easily add some good features to your website. It is widely used throughout the globe to develop everything from simple, personal homepages to complex corporate web applications. This award-winning CMS also enable users to build online applications and makes uploading of content easy, fast and effective. It is one of the most famous and extensively used CMS on the Web. It is very easy to use and can be used for all kind of websites, from simple to complex. Joomla also has a great community support of Joomla developers and designers to solve all kind of Joomla related queries.

Drupal

Drupal, freely available back-end CMS software package that allow anyone to easily publish, manage and organize the content on all kind of websites efficiently. It support thousands of people, organizations, RSS feeds and customizable layouts to power an endless variety of sites. Drupal is a PHP based CMS, which runs on every computing platform and SEO friendly. It has an extensible code base and a powerful theme management system. There is no need of special programming skill to install Drupal. Drupal development is the right choice for large websites with huge traffic.

Do share your views about CMS systems in comments section. Which CMS system you like most?