Here is an excellent guide that will show you the great benefits achieved through dedicated guest blogging as well as how to master these golden opportunities. I will start the guide off with some Techniques & How To’s.

Guest Post on Popular High Traffic Blogs

As a new blogger one may feel intimidated by other successful bloggers in the industry and feel that they’re not good enough to even approach a star blogger with a request for guest posting. No worries, this is a natural feeling and is simply human nature. However, it is a fear that is not worth nurturing and requires bold steps to overcome. Forget your fears or doubts and go for the most popular blogs you can find and make that request. What’s the point in aiming small? You aim small, your traffic and popularity will be small as well.

Host Blog Should have an Author Profile Section & Allow Linking

Though you’re not guest posting for the sole purpose of gaining and not giving anything to the community, host bloggers really should offer some benefits to their guest bloggers. The basic benefits include, at least 2 links back to your blog, an author bio box below the post or an author bio page. Some bloggers will allow up to 4 links back to your site. Take advantage of these links with effective link text. So if I’m working on improving my search engine ranking for the keyword, “Sam’s Widgets” I would use that link text for particular relevant links to my site.

Guest Post Request Etiquette & How To Handle Rejection

Its very important to remember that the host blogger is not obligated to accept your guest post request and they can reject it for various reasons. In sending that e-mail to request the guest post:

• Be professional – I know you’re not applying for a job but no pro blogger wants a sloppy writer with a “don’t care” attitude writing for their blog. Such attitudes can show in your writing
• Offer a little history – Give a little background information on who you are to better connect with your potential host
• Have a signature line – Have a signature line for your e-mails; it just looks better
• Be polite – Ask kindly for the guest post; don’t demand it
• Be concise and get to the point

In the unfortunate scenario where your request is denied, thank the blogger for their time and move on. Do Not take the rejection personally. Ask the blogger why you were rejected so that you can be better equipped for future requests. That is the most important part in that case.

Read & Follow Guest Post Guidelines

These guidelines are usually found on the blogger’s guest post page and provides information regarding what they are expecting from guest authors. If you know you can’t adhere to the rules after reading then don’t bother to request it. It really is a waste of time to send in a guest post while completely ignoring the guidelines. The host blogger will most likely reject it.

Targeting The Right Niches

You don’t have to guest post only on blogs within your niche since it depends on what you write about. For example, if your blog is about “Become a better blogger or writer” then you don’t need to target blogs that talk about the same thing. Such a topic is beneficial to a broad cross-section of readers and can help them to become better writers in their various fields. So decide which audience can benefit from your advice or topics and write for them. These will be particularly more rewarding.

Choose Your Best Work For Your Guest Posts

Frequently, my guest posts are 10 times better than my own posts for my blog. That’s just how I am, more effort goes into the things I offer others than for myself. Its not a bad trait to adapt. Ensure that you are offering the best quality of work for your host blog; blow some minds away! If you get an opportunity to write for a blog like Problogger.net, which has over 100,000 subscribers, your blogging name could be made just like that. Read my 10 Brilliant Tips For Creating Killer Content For Your Blog article to get yourself started here.

Now for the benefits; here are some attractive benefits for launching an effective guest posting campaign.

Set Reasonable Targets & Flourish Through Victory

It would be best that you set a goal for the number of guest posts you would like to write each month while visualizing your success through it. Make it a part of your blog building strategy by writing your targets down. This will make your goal more tangible and easier to achieve and appreciate. The more goals you achieve in your blogging journey the more fulfilling it becomes and your drive for success becomes stronger.

Quality Link Building

Guest posting on high traffic, high google pagerank blogs will give you the distinct advantage of building superior quality, spam free backlinks to your site. I can guarantee you if you publish 4 to 5 guest posts per week, all on sites with pageranks of 4 or higher, using relevant linking, you will be rewarded with a google pagerank of no less than 2 after 2 months of guest posting. That’s pretty good, especially for new blogs.

Even more important; if you’re trying to rank in search engines for a particular keyword or phrase like “Overweight Pets,” having hundreds of links to your site with that text will help you to dominate the search results for that keyword.

Gain Credibility & Influence

100,000 unique one-time visitors to a blog per month is not worth as much as 50,000 dedicated readers. Since dedicated readers offer feedback and are usually very interactive with your sites. These are the persons who trust your advice and purchase your products. Better to have even 10,000 dedicated readers spending $5.00 per month with you than 100,000 who find you, do nothing and never return. The dedicated reader is what we should cherish and we keep them by consistently producing excellent content. Become a star on popular, credible blogs through guest posting and you will quickly build a following for yourself and exercise massive influence. Then there is reputation gained through association, so write for blogs with superb reputations.

Increase Traffic

In addition to link building you are sure to get new and a long-term flow of traffic from the host blog if your posts are interesting. So use those linking opportunities and ensure these new visitors are greeted with quality content and/or services on your site.

Collaborate & Learn From The Experts

If you develop a very unique talent within your niche, it will be easily identified by the professionals when you guest post. People will seek you for advice and also request for you to write for them. Oftentimes with attractive compensation. Never be afraid or doubtful about your abilities. There are pros in your niche who are more than willing to help you take your blogging career to heights of victory. Collaboration with a master in your field will ensure your success.

Discussion

Following this guide will secure your success through link building, improving your blog’s popularity, brand and influence; ultimately to highest levels possible.

Please share with us your experiences with guest blogging, both good and bad, and let us know how beneficial it has been for you. Feel free to also offer advice from your experiences by leaving a comment below.

So today, I’ll show you how to create your own custom front page that can serve your visitors as a sales page, introductory page or just about anything you wish.

Step 1 – Create your custom page

To create a custom page, simply duplicate your page.php file which is found in your theme’s main directory and give it a name of your choice. This name must be different from “page.php” This is found in your “wp-admin/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/. Where “yourtheme” is the name of your currently active theme directory.

Step 2 – Add required code to your new file

Add the code below to the top of your new page, replacing “New Page Template” with a name of your choice. This is what WordPress uses to detect the file type (whether its a template or not) and the template name.

<?php /* Template Name: New Page Template */ ?>

Step 3 – Select your new page template

Once you’ve created and saved your new template, within your WordPress dashboard create a new page and select the new page template you created in the template selection drop down menu and click publish as shown below.

Step 4 – Publish and set your new front page

Go to Settings then Reading in your WordPress dashboard and select the static page radio button and select your new page from the drop-down as your front page display as shown below and click save.

Final – Create your content

You may look at your original page.php template file to get an idea as to what you may want to include in your custom page template like the header and footer or possibly the sidebar. Remember, the content you place here is up to you.

See how simple that was? You have now created your custom front page for your WordPress blog. You may go ahead and add any content you like to your new page.

If you experience any difficulties in getting this done please feel free to ask for further assistance. I would love to help.

Here are 5 additional tips and practices to ensure that your investment of time, energy and money in your blog never goes to waste.

1. WordPress File Monitor Plugin

This plugin monitors your WordPress installation and sends an e-mail alert to a specified address whenever a file is changed, added or deleted. Usually when a site or blog is hacked or compromised in some way, there is always a file that is altered in your directories. Under normal circumstances we would not know about such low-key changes taking places, so the plugin keeps a constant look-out and reports any changes.

The plugin also shows alerts in the WordPress dashboard, just in case you missed the e-mail alert.

This plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress File Monitor

2. Move Your Wp-config.php File

This tip actually came from Sachin, a fellow blogger and web developer, who commented on my previous security post.

You can further secure your WordPress blog by moving your wp-config.php file (which is found in your root directory) to a directory level that is higher than your www (root) folder. This move will prevent your blog from being hacked through your wp-config.php file.

3. WordPress Anti-Virus Protection Plugin

Hopefully, most of us have anti-virus software for our personal computers, so why not have it for your wordpress blog? This plugin is an extremely effective solution for detecting and protecting your blog against exploitations and spam injections and offers the ability to conduct daily automatic scanning and manual testing while providing e-mail notifications.

This awesome anti-virus plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress AntiVirus

4. WordPress Firewall Plugin

This one is pretty neat and recommended for more advanced users. This plugin has a vast amount features that complement your web host server by logging, detecting and intercepting suspicious parameters and requests. It is also useful for mitigating dreadful zero-day attacks (See definition for Zero-day Attacks Here) and setting different security protection levels.

The plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress Firewall Plugin

5. Encrypted Login Password Plugin

This plugin is very useful for users who do not have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, see definition here) enabled or is not available. The plugin increases the security of the login process by using a combination of public and secret key encryption to encrypt the password on the client side when you log in. Your server will then decrypt the encrypted password with a private key and grant you access. Note: Javascript is required to enable password encryption.

The plugin can be downloaded here: Semisecure Login Reimagined

Use the plugins and tips above to seriously secure and lock-up your wordpress blog to the Max! Remember, its your investment, so do what it takes to protect it.

Discussion:

Please share with us other tips or plugins not listed above that you may have found useful. Also, please share any experiences or difficulties you may have had in the past and what you did to overcome.

Here are 10 very simple steps, tools and tips to ensure that your blog can withstand malicious attacks and not be overrun with spam.

1. Use the Login Lockdown Plugin

Hackers can easily crack your password and other login credentials by using Brute Force Attacks (Click here for a definition). This plugin adds an extra security feature to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range. This plugin can be downloaded from Bad Neighborhood

2. Delete Unused Plugins

Always ensure to delete unused plugins as these can provide loop holes that can be easily exploited.

3. Secure the /wp-admin/ Directory using .htaccess

I found this one on google’s Matt Cutts’ blog. Secure your /wp-admin/ directory by using a .htaccess file to allow access from specific IP addresses only. Create a new .htaccess file, which you can place directly in /wp-admin/.htaccess.

This is what the .htaccess file contains:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from 111.111.111.111
# whitelist work IP address
allow from 111.111.111.111
allow from 111.111.111.111

Replace the 111.111.111.111 with the IPs you would like to whitelist. This file says that the IP address 111.111.111.111 (and the other IP addresses whitelisted) are allowed to access /wp-admin/, but all other IP addresses are denied access. The ‘#’ lines are just notes and can be changed to suit your need.

4. WordPress Security Scanner Plugin

Install this plugin to help detect any loop holes that may exist in your database and blog files. It provides a report on what needs to be done to prevent attacks. This one is very useful and can be downloaded here: WP-Security-Scan

5. Limited Blog Registration Access

If your blog accepts registration, ensure that a user cannot immediately register and receive an administrative access. To change this, go to your Settings option in the wordpress dashboard, select General. Then change the New User Default Role to Contributor. This can easily be changed as the need arise. User privileges can also be assigned using the Role-Manager plugin.

6. Change Your Login Name

The default wordpress username is admin and hackers will always try to infiltrate using this default. So make it harder for them by changing it.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Users and set up a new user account. Give this new user administrator role. Log out and log in again with the new user account.

Go to Users again. This time, check the box beside admin and press Delete. When it asks for deletion confirmation, select the “Attribute all posts and links to:” and select your new username from the dropdown bar. This will transfer all the posts to your new user account. Press Confirm Deletion

7. Use a Very Strong Password

Ensure that you use a strong password that is difficult for others to guess. Use a combination of digits, special characters and upper/lower case letters to form your password.

8. Always Upgrade to the Latest WordPress Version

The latest version of WordPress always contains bug fixes for any security vulnerabilities, therefore it is very important to keep your blog updated at all times. The latest version at the time of this post is 2.9.2 and can be downloaded here.

9. Install the Akismet Plugin

Once installed, Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and prevents them from being published. Spam is stored in a separate folder where you can review all that is caught. This can be downloaded from Akismet.com

10. Backup Your WordPress Database

There is a free plugin that can schedule backups of your database to reduce the risk of loss of data. This can be downloaded here: WP-Database-Backup

Yeah, I know its a pretty tedious ToDo list but invest the time to secure a robust wordpress blog. It will cost 100 times more to recover from a malicious attack. Think about down-time, lost revenue, loss of trust from your readers, hiring a professional to get rid of malicious code, loss of information, loss of integrity and the list goes on forever.

Are you doing what it takes to secure and protect your presence online? If not, now is the time to do so. If you have any additional ideas on how to protect a wordpress blog please leave a comment to let us know.

Step 1 – Add your bio to wordpress

Fill out your profile information in the wordpress Users’ Profile section. Ensure to add your first name and your site’s name because the script will be calling and displaying this information on your posts.

Step 2 – Code in the Custom_functions.php file

Access your Thesis Options (Located at the bottom-left in your wordpress admin) and select Custom File Editor, this is where you will add the code to call the bio information. Within the thesis custom file editor, ensure that custom_functions.php is selected in the file selection drop-down menu at the top. If it is not selected then select it from the drop-down menu and click Edit Selected File.

Then add the code below at the end of the file and click save:

function post_footer() {
if (is_single())
{
?>
<div class="postauthor">
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_id() , 120 ); ?>
<h4>Article by <a href="<?php the_author_url(); ?>">
<?php the_author_firstname(); ?> <?php the_author_lastname(); ?></a></h4>
<p><?php the_author_firstname(); ?> has written <strong><?php the_author_posts(); ?></strong> awesome articles for us. <br/><br/><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
</div>
<?php
}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post_box', 'post_footer');

Note: For the code in the bold highlight above, the RSS feed addresses should be changed to your own.

Step 3 – Code in the Custom.css file

Within your custom file editor select Custom.css from the drop-down menu and click edit selected file. Then add the css code below at the end of the file and hit save:

.postauthor { background: #F5F5F5; border-top: 1px solid #e1e1e0; border-bottom: 1px solid #e1e1e0; overflow: hidden; padding: 1.5em; }
.postauthor img { border: 5px solid #e2dede; float: left; margin-right: 1.5em; }
.postauthor h4 { color: #666; font-size: 2em; margin-bottom: 5px; }
.postauthor p { color: #515151; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 12px; }


You should end up with something like this: And that’s it. Hope you found this useful.

Please let me know if this works for you or if you have any difficulties. Everybody is going crazy over the Thesis theme, can anyone convince me as to why I should switch?

This will require that you access 2 of your template files, however, very little coding is required; just copying and pasting, unless you want to make further customization.

Let’s get started.

Step 1 – Code to call the Author Biography Info

Copy the code below to your single.php (Single Post) file, which is found in WordPress by accessing your Appearance tab then select Editor. Search for the <?php the_content(); ?> line of code, press enter to give some space then copy and paste the code below that line, then save:

<div class="postauthor">
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_id() , 120 ); ?>
<h4>Article by <a href="<?php the_author_url(); ?>">
<?php the_author_firstname(); ?> <?php the_author_lastname(); ?></a></h4>
 <p><?php the_author_firstname(); ?> has written <strong><?php the_author_posts(); ?></strong> awesome article(s) for us. <br/><br/><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
</div>

Step 2 – CSS Files

Copy the CSS code below to your style.css or custom.css file. This will control the background color, width and text alignment. You may change the color schemes as needed to fit your theme.

/* Author's Bio Box */
.postauthor { background: #F5F5F5; border-top: 1px solid #e1e1e0; border-bottom: 1px solid #e1e1e0; overflow: hidden; padding: 1.5em; }
.postauthor img { border: 5px solid #e2dede; float: left; margin-right: 1.5em; }
.postauthor h4 { color: #666; font-size: 2em; margin-bottom: 5px; }
.postauthor p { color: #515151; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 12px; }

Step 3 – Author’s Bio

Add the author’s bio information in the About Yourself section in the WordPress dashboard. Please note that if you wish to add links to the author’s bio, they should be entered using the <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”> Your Site’s Name </a> format.

That’s it! I hope this tutorial was simple enough and very helpful.

Questions / Suggestions

Please leave a comment and let me know if this works for you, if its simple enough or if you have an idea for improving the code. There is always room for improvement.

The .htaccess file

First of all, .htaccess (hypertext access), in several web servers (most commonly Apache), is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration. The .htaccess file is placed inside the web directory tree, and is able to override a subset of the server’s global configuration; the extent of this subset is defined by the web server administrator, which is you. Basically, you can allow or deny access to your site, whether robots (crawlers) or human visitors.

To create the .htaccess file, simply open your notepad application on windows and save the file as .htaccess There are no characters before the period. This file should be uploaded to your website’s root directory and will contain the commands below. For example: http://www.yourdomain.com/.htaccess

a) To block the IP address, my basic .htaccess file includes:

order allow,deny
deny from 127.0.0.1 (Replace this IP with the one you want to block)
allow from all

* So type this info into your .htaccess file, save it and then upload it to your root directory.

This will refuse all GET and POST requests made by IP address 127.0.0.1, an error message is shown instead and they user can’t access the site and thus won’t use any precious bandwidth.

After uploading the file I started monitoring my hit statistics a week later and I’m glad to say that the culprit IP is no longer there.

b) More options

To block multiple IP addresses, list them one per line.

order allow,deny
deny from 127.0.0.1
deny from 127.0.0.2
deny from 127.0.0.3
allow from all

You can also block an entire IP block/range. Here we will not specify the last octet in the .htaccess file.

e.g. – deny from 127.0.0

This will refuse access for any user with an address in the 127.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.255 range.

Note: Instead of using numeric addresses, domain names (and subdomain names) can be used to ban users.

e.g. – deny from isp_name.com

It bans users with a remote hostname ending in isp_name.com. This would stop all users connected to the internet via isp_name.com from viewing your site.

Using .htaccess to block an entire range or name is likely to lock out innocent users so use these options with caution.

So, here ends this short tutorial on blocking IP addresses using a .htaccess file, hope you found it useful.

The .htaccess file can be used to complete quite a few other tasks such as creating custom error pages, setting up hot-linking protection, password protecting files and directories and more. I will be posting follow-up tutorials to cover all these topics in the very near future.

This is  a very short and simple tutorial on how to redirect your web pages using a simple php script. You may need to do simple page redirection for quite a few reasons. For example;

1) You’ve change your domain name and the old url no longer exists so when the user types in the old url they seamlessly get redirected to the new one

2) Users are redirected to browser specific web pages

3) Location specific web pages, e.g. a user who lives in the Dominican Republic who tries to access google.com will automatically be redirected to maybe google.com.do where the site is in spanish.

Do not use redirects if the destination page is completely different from what the user might be expecting. So, if you have a link that says James Bond movies the destination site should not end up being entirely different content. This won’t be good for search engine rankings and will not be good for user experience.

Page Redirect using PHP

Web page redirection using php is very simple. Simply add the following code at the beginning of your web page file, before the <html> tag. This needs to be first on the page. The safest way to do this is to remove all other content from page, that way no mistake can be made.

<?php
header( ‘location: http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html’ ) ;
?>

You will need to replace the URL above with the URL you wish to direct to. Also, remember to save the file that contains this PHP code with a .php extension. This tells the server to expect php code within the file and therefore parse it accordingly. That’s it.

Note: When using the ‘Back’ button, the user is taken to the last viewed page and not the redirect page.

In summary, there is nothing wrong with the auto-redirecting method, provided that the final destination contains what the surfer expected to see.