How to Videos for Wordpress Blogging

WordPress has become a hugely popular open source blogging and publishing platform. The abundance of free themes and plugins as well as its ease-of-use have contributed to the attraction and popularity for using WordPress. While there are some great free themes for WordPress, many only offer basic functionality and simplistic designs.

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes.

However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design

Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Wordpress Theme Features

While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Theme Customization Options and Fexibility

People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customisable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

Theme Live Preview or Demo

There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

Full Wordpress Theme Support

If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalised individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

Theme Supporting Documentation

Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

Free Wordpress Theme Updates

Wordpress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

Well Coded Theme and Error Free

There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers, plus the theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards.

People with Internet and web experience of all levels have worked to make sure that their websites, web service accounts and browsers were as safe as they could be from computer hackers. However, the hackers practice an old baseball saying which goes, “If you want to be a success you have to hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

The weakness that the hackers have found is the WordPress Blog. Many may have never considered a blog to be worthy of a hacker’s attention, yet with the way that advertising and marketing dollar potential have soared, that’s what sets a hacker off on their hunt for a victim.

The hacker attacks on WordPress Blogs take the person who wants to come to a particular blog to a different site that’s full of ads, many of them obscene and many of them virus filled, which obviously does not present what was the assumed landing point blog in the best light. In fact, one hacker attack, no matter how quickly it’s spotted and dealt with, can destroy all the work that the owner of that blog has done. If it’s a blog full of content with years of archive material, a hacker’s attack will turn all of that work into worthless untrustworthy words.

The attacks launched on WordPress Blogs by hackers get even worse for the blog owners. Google, for example, when (not if) their robots detect something suspicious about a WordPress Blog will include the following in the search result for that WordPress Blog.

“This site may harm your computer.”

If a person clicks on that phrase, which appears as a link within the search result listing, they will be taken to a page that will repeat the warning of harm to their computer and suggest that they go to another site or blog that came up in their search results.

Even if a WordPress Blog owner catches the damage quickly, the time it will take to repair that blog’s reputation will be costly at a variety of levels. People will remember the warnings of computer harm no matter how strongly it’s presented that all with that WordPress Blog is well. A loss of blog traffic will mean a loss of ad revenue. In many cases this could mean the loss of advertisers since many affiliate ad programs require a specific level of traffic activity.

WordPress Blog owners make the mistake of thinking that since the warning signs that their blog has been hacked are so obvious that they’ll be able to catch the problem before it becomes a major disaster. They would have to be proactive rather than reactive and monitor their WordPress Blog every minute of every hour of every day. Just five minutes under a hacker’s control can destroy the connection that WordPress Blog had made with the thousands of people who visit it at any point.

While WordPress does the best they can with security updates, that’s still just a reactive option for the WordPress blog owner. There is a proactive step every WordPress Blog owner can take to prevent hackers from destroying the work and reputation of their WordPress Blog.

Internet developer and expert James Stein, with 15 years experience in the development of programs that assist and educate people, has created WordPress Secured. Instead of one plug-in fix after another, WordPress Secured brings total security to every WordPress Blog that anyone can learn and benefit from.

WordPress Secured teaches how to close the many open doors WordPress Blogs contain which hackers exploit. It teaches how to find a blog’s softspots and strengthen them. Users discover how to protect their important avenues of ad revenue. WordPress Secure makes the blog owner not only more secure but more smart and aware about their blog.

WordPress Secure also includes a special feature called BadBot Killer. This program stops the scanning bots that seek out a WordPress Blog’s weaknesses that are the welcome mats for computer hackers. BadBot Killer stops the hackers even before they can find the front door to a WordPress Blog.

The amount of knowledge and information required to do a WordPress Blog post-hacking repair is large and above the heads of many WordPress Blog owners. WordPress Secure is one easy and educational package that keeps the WordPress Blog owner steps ahead any hacker.

Why Is It Important to Monitor Your Wordpress Blog Stats?

You have blogging goals, presumably, and how will you know if you are hitting those goals if you don’t know your wordpress blog stats.

Your statistics can tell you many things: how many people visit each day, where they come from geographically, which pages they visit most and many other things as well.

Where Do I Find My Stats?

The first place to look for your stats is in Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google (obviously) to help you to monitor your wordpress blog traffic. Google analytics can monitor the traffic on any website not just on blogs. The key is to set it up properly.

We have a video in our video catalog called Install Google Analytics which will show you how to set up Google Analytics if you haven’t done so already.


Once you have installed Google Analytics you need to make sure that you have the proper filters in place. Our video on Google Analytics – How to Install a Filter is a useful blogging tool that you can find in one of our earlier posts. The filter is used to filter out your visits to your own wordpress blog so that Google doesn’t include your visits in your statistics.


The second place to look for your traffic statistics is in your cpanel which is connected to your hosting account. The statistics in your cpanel account will be different from those in your Google Analytics account because you can’t apply filters to your cpanel statistics.

Still it is useful to have a look in both places because you can glean extra information.

Step 1- Log Into Your Google Analytics Account

The first thing you will see is an overview of your wordpress blog traffic. Google Analytics keeps a running tally of how many people have visited our blog and compares it to the previous month (you can change these settings).

Step 2 – Look At Your Wordpress Blog Traffic Statistics In More Detail

Click on the view report button and you are taken to the dashboard. You see a graphical representation of the visitors per day along the top. You can change the time period displayed.

The dashboard also gives you an overview of the:

Whenever you click on view report under each category you see more detailed statistics. For very separate category you can find out:

The bounce rate is how quickly someone clicks onto your site and leaves again. The higher the bounce rate the quicker they are leaving so a lower bounce rate means they are actually staying on your wordpress blog site and reading or watching your content.

How Many People Visit My Wordpress Blog?

If you drill down deeper in the Visitor Overview section by viewing report you can see how many unique visitors you have had to your wordpress blog and how many are returning visitors.

The statistics also tell you how many pages on average they view on your blog, how long they stay on your blog and even the web browser they are using.

Where Does The Traffic To My Wordpress Blog Come From?

Clicking on the view report under the “Map Overlay” section of the Google Analytics dashboard will show which geographical regions your visitors come from. As you might expect most of our visitors come form the USA and Australia but we have European and Asian visitors as well. If you click on a country that you are interested in you can get more regional data as well. It’s actually quite amazing how specific you can become with these statistics.

Which Sites Send Traffic To My Wordpress Blog?

The traffic sources report gives you a visual representation of your traffic sources using a colored pie chart. You can easily track the main sources of your wordpress blog traffic. The major categories represented in the pie chart are referring sites, search engine and direct traffic.


A high proportion of search engine traffic means that you are getting lots of organic traffic. A high proportion of direct traffic may be coming from other strategies such as Google Adwords campaigns. Presumably, for a wordpress blog organic traffic would be the preferred traffic source.

If the content from your blog is being picked and utilized by other bloggers you might see a high proportion of referred traffic. Referred traffic may also come from other strategies such as using articles to drive traffic to your blog.

Which Keywords Are Important Sources Of Traffic For My Wordpress Blog?

Google Analytics even tells you which keywords draw the most traffic to your wordpress blog. This feature can be found within the traffic sources reports. This feature can help you track you Adword Campaigns. It can also tell you if you are using your keywords and keyphrases in an optimized way.

Which Parts Of My Content On My Wordpress Blog Are Drawing The Most Traffic?

This information can be found by drilling into the content reports. You can see which of your pages are being viewed most often. By using the site overlay feature you can see which of the links on your page are being clicked on most frequently.


There is also much more information that Google Analytics provides but these are the variables to check regularly so that you know how your wordpress blog is performing.


Your cpanel will also provide you with similar information but since each cpanel provides their statistical data in a slightly different way, it is too big a topic to discuss at this time.


If you need any help setting up Google Analytics on your wordpress blog our video on Installing Google Analytics will give you step by step instructions.