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Do a quick search on the web for content management systems and you will see that there are thousands out there, and most of them are free. Almost all of them have the basic features necessary to run a blog, but not all of them are designed specifically with blogging in mind. Is any one of them sufficient for general blogging, or is there an advantage to using a CMS specifically designed for it?

Probably the most popular blogging platform these days is WordPress. It is made for blogging before anything else, although it does have other general web content management features. Because it is designed specifically for blogging, it has features such as content spam filtering and trackbacks built into it. It also supports a plethora of plugins, many of which are catered to bloggers.

Other content management systems may also have blogging features and may even have plugins designed to support blogging. Many also have features that a CMS like WordPress would not have, such as robust e-commerce support out of the box.
Ultimately, the CMS you choose largely depends on your needs. If blogging or news publishing is your primary goal, WordPress or another blogging platform with similar features would be better. If, however, you have other goals for your website that take precedence over blogging, you may be better off using a CMS that can more easily accommodate those goals. If you need both, it is very common to use more than one CMS to meet a variety of needs.

Will Any CMS Suffice for Blogging?

(The Hosting News) – Nexcess, a United States-based managed web hosting company with specialized services in WordPress web hosting, has announced a new line of UK WordPress hosting solutions to be made available effective immediately. This decision was made with the intent of better serving bloggers that desired lower latency to European and Asian audiences.

“In recent years, it’s become very important to us to make sure that our friends across the pond are given the same high caliber of web hosting solutions that we provide here in Dearborn, Michigan,” commented Chris Wells, President & CEO of Nexcess, “We’re very happy to be bringing this new WordPress hosting solution that our engineers worked so hard on developing, and are confident that it will be as popular in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe as we have already seen in the states.”

This announcement follows a similar announcement made last April, when Nexcess announced that they would make their custom-developed Magento web hosting solution available from Surrey, United Kingdom. Unlike most web hosting providers, Nexcess does not provide solely generic web hosting. Instead, the focus of the company’s products across the past decade has been to develop highly-optimized managed hosting solutions that meet the demands of a given application in the best possible manner. Following this announcement, the entire focus of custom-fit web hosting solutions that Nexcess offers in the United Kingdom will be limited to WordPress and Magento-based sites.

Finally, Nexcess’ web hosting operations in the United Kingdom will, as always, continue to provide the same level of customer client service as is enjoyed in the United States. The Surrey-based data center continues to provide N+1 uninterruptible power, N+1 HVAC cooling, and is supported 24/7 by the company’s Michigan-based team of skilled web hosting engineers.

About Nexcess:

Nexcess is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based managed hosting company founded in 2000, with wholly-owned data centers located in Dearborn, and Southfield, Michigan. Nexcess offers a variety of hosting services ranging from entry-level packages to specially-catered clustered/complex configurations, with an emphasis on mission-critical hosting for high-profile eCommerce web sites. For more information, visit http://www.nexcess.net or call +1.866.639.2377.

Nexcess Announces UK WordPress Hosting

In a previous post, we looked at WordPress plugins and asked how many plugins were too many to have on one blog. Another question that many may ask is: “How important are WordPress plugin updates?”

WordPress is updated frequently enough, but then you have to deal with seemingly constant updates of all of your plugins. So, what happens if you just ignore the plugin updates?

Generally speaking, your WordPress installation should continue to function properly. Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons why you should still keep your plugins update.

1. Sometimes, new plugin versions are released to fix serious security flaws, just like many WordPress upgrades.
2. If you just upgraded WordPress, you may need to also upgrade your plugin in order for the plugin to continue functioning properly
3. The new plugin version may have new and improved features, and you have nothing to lose by updating.
4. Updating literally takes seconds.
5. You can update all plugins at once with a single click of your mouse button.
6. Updating takes less time than it takes to read this article.
7. Seriously, why are you still reading this and not updating already?

By now, you should feel guilty for not updating your plugins when it is so incredibly easy. All you have to do is click a few links and all of your plugins will be updated. The same applies to WordPress itself. So, is there really any good reason to not keep everything up-to-date? Keeping your WordPress installation up-to-date is easy to do, and it may very well save your website from serious security issues.

How Important Are WordPress Plugin Updates?

Normally, when a WordPress update is released, the changes are pretty subtle. Although the developers often add new features to the free and open source blogging software, the interface has remained pretty consistent since the last major release. WordPress 3.3 is codenamed Sonny after the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, and this time around the developers decided to improvise and bring in a new interface.

Some of the new features in WordPress 3.3 include:

• hover menus – In older versions, the collapsed menu only showed buttons and revealed the top-level menu options when you hovered over them. WordPress 3.3 furthers the usage of hover menus even to the expanded form, providing them for all sub-menus. Rather than needing to click the expand arrow for each item, you can just hover over it to reveal its sub-menu
• drag-and-drop uploader – There is now a single upload button for all media types, and you can now drag and drop media directly from your desktop or file manager. This uploader works without the aid of Flash player.
• Pointer tips – To help you get used to new features or even old ones if you are a new user, pointer tips popup and reveal important information.
• Better touch screen support – As the world moves to more touch-oriented devices like smartphones and tablets, many users occasionally need to blog on the move without having a laptop handy. WordPress has improved this experience.

Many of the top web hosting companies offer free WordPress installation as part of their standard packages. Even if they do not install the latest version, you can easily log into the WordPress dashboard and perform the update with a few clicks.

A Quick Guide to New Features in WordPress 3.3

(The Hosting News) – OnTheGoSystems has released two game-changing plugins: WP Types and Views. Together, these plugins make it easy for designers to create complex WordPress websites without having to write a line of PHP. All that’s needed from the designer is a working knowledge of HTML and CSS knowledge and the Types and Views plugins make the vision come to life on the screen.

WordPress comes with “Post” and “Page” features; however, there is little room for custom content types such as “Product”, “Website”, “Portfolio”, “Listing” and “Property”. The types plugin, from OnTheGoSystems, creates custom content types, which increases the flexibility of themes. This level of custom content normally requires special attributes, like images, prices and other fields. Developers can use the Types plugin to create all of these additional features, and easily organize this content with taxonomy, to fully customize the WordPress editing interface.

“The Views plugin loads content and displays it. This is where the concept comes into its own,” said Amir Helzer, CEO of OnTheGoSystems.

For single pages, Views creates dynamic templates. And, for content lists, Views will query the database, load just the right content and display it. This allows designers the ability to create templates for their content types without being forced to leave the WordPress dashboard, allowing for every template to display custom WordPress content elegantly and without any coding.

Every real estate site, web portfolio, auction site, directory and classified starts with a list; they’re the cornerstone of complex websites. To create a list, Views queries the database, loads just the right content using filters. The supports an unlimited number of filters, with increasing levels of complexity.

With Views, designers and web developers can deliver fully-functional, working and tested sites in days, not weeks. All it takes is CSS and HTML experience.

“Types and Views revolutionize how designers use WordPress,” said Helzer. “Designers no longer have to rely on a skilled PHP developer to realize their creations. With Types and Views they have a huge amount of advanced functionality at their fingertips.”

Types and Views even come with an embedded mode. This means that theme designers can create beautiful WordPress themes using the plugins and embed the functionality within that theme.
Types is a free plugin and available for download from the WordPress plugin repository. Views costs $49 USD and is available at http://wp-views.com. Every purchase of Views comes with support and upgrades for a year.

About OnTheGoSystems

OnTheGoSystems is the maker of the popular WordPress Multilingual (WPML) plugin, with over 50,000 active websites. With the launch of Types and Views, OnTheGoSystems delivers a complete package for web developers and designers.

For more information, please visit: http://wpml.org/

OnTheGoSystems Develops New Plugins

When it comes to your personal computer, you probably constantly get reminders about updates. Some proprietary and open source web applications will also remind you when it is time to update, but website still suffer from attacks that stem from the failure to consistently keep their apps updated.

In most situations, a software vendor or developer will release an update to either fix a bug or to patch a security hole. If it is for the latter, any website that continues to use that software without updating is vulnerable to attacks, especially after those vulnerabilities have been discovered and made public.

Therefore, the short answer to the question in the title is that web applications updates are very important. Whether you are running a small script or a robust content management system (CMS), making sure you have the latest and most secure version could save your website from disaster.

Some web apps, such as WordPress, are very easy to update, while others may require reinstallation. If you know ahead of time that keeping your scripts updated will be too much for you to handle, you should consider using a web hosting provider that offers free script installation technology. These services are usually integrated into the host’s web-based control panel.

There is a chance that no one will ever exploit old security holes in your web applications, but failing to keep them updated is a risky move, one that you should not be willing to take with the security of your website in jeopardy. Taking the extra time to update all of your web software could be one of the most important things you do as a web administrator.

How Important are Web Application Updates?

This is a difficult question to answer. Almost all WordPress blogs will have at least a few plugins, but the number of plugins your blog can support may be determined by several factors. One thing is clear: too many plugins can slow down your site, so you should choose them wisely.

WordPress is a dynamic blog content management system that uses a combination of PHP (an open scripting language) and MySQL (a free and open source relational database management system) to create web pages on the fly, as they are requested. This means that every time a user clicks a link that takes them to a page on the blog, the web server has to call up the database and create that page.

Every WordPress plugin adds additional PHP code to WordPress and must be loaded whenever a user accesses the site. Too many of these little code snippets can add up to a big chunk of extra code required just to get your site loaded and viewable in a browser. While caching and other performance tools can help reduce the amount of time it takes to load pages, there is no substitute for using discretion when installing plugins.

Another reason to be careful about the number of plugins you install is that you have to maintain plugins just as you maintain your WordPress installation. They need updates, and some lower-quality plugins may stop working with newer versions of WordPress, while the developers are long gone and have no intentions of providing updates.

The key to good plugin management is to start with the plugins you actually need. There may be a handful, perhaps 3 to 5 plugins, that you must have on your blog. Others may seem attractive, but only add those that will actually be of benefit. If you stop using one, do not forget to uninstall it.

How Many WordPress Plugins are Too Many?

The web is filled with millions of blogs. Many of them, perhaps the majority, have been abandoned. They float aimlessly in the void of cyberspace. A few are successful, and the rest sit somewhere in between. In order to propel your blog ahead of the rest, you need some type of competitive edge. While nothing is more important than good content, there are also some technical changes you can make to have a better blogging experience.

1. Find a Blogging Web Host

Probably all web hosting companies have the technology to host blogs. The software is not very complicated, and many, such as WordPress, are available for free. But many hosts do not optimize their hosting accounts for blogging. If you find one that does, you will get better performance, have easier site management, and get better support.

2. Use Plugins Wisely

With WordPress in particular, it is extremely easy to become addicted to plugins. They are so easy to install and can add so many exciting features. In reality, you will probably only need 5 to 10 – maybe even less. Too many plugins may bog down your site, and indiscriminately adding them might bring you to one that crashes your site completely. Focus on functionality first, and if you still have room for a few more, add a little style.

3. Learn Some Hosting Basics

Your web host may have installed your blog CMS for you and even provided you with a pre-designed template, but it is probably still a good idea to learn a little about how to make and manage a website. That way, if something ever goes wrong, you may be able to fix smaller problems yourself.

If you thought blogging was just about writing, you should have a different understanding now. Just as novel writer needs to know how to use word processing software, a blogger needs to know about the web. Doing so will help you tremendously down the line.

3 Tips for a Better Blogging Experience

It is a frightening scenario. Your WordPress blog has been running just fine for years, but you finally decided to try out some new themes. One of the themes you try goes crazy and completely brings down your WordPress site. Instead of the blog you worked so hard to create, you are left with a white page and a single-line error.

First of all, do not panic. While it seems quite awful, you can fix this situation. There are a few reasons why a theme or plugin might knock out service on your blog, but we will cover those later. First, you need to get it working again. If the culprit is your new theme, the easiest solution is to FTP into your server and delete the theme directory found in “wp-content/themes.” Once it is gone, WordPress will detect its absence and allow you to login to “wp-admin” and change the theme back to something that works.

For plugins you need to do the same thing only with a different directory. Find the plugins directory associated with your rogue plugin in “wp-content/plugins” and remove it. You should now be able to login to WordPress, and it will inform you that the plugin is missing and has therefore been deactivated. If WordPress still shows remnants of the plugin, make sure you remove it completely. If you installed multiple plugins and do not know which one caused the mess, you can use a database method to disable all your plugins at once.

Some themes cause WordPress to choke because they require other components that you have not installed. Often times this is because the theme is part of a set that requires a particular theme engine. If you install the theme engine first, it will work. For plugins, the problems are wide-ranging. Some are just incompatible with your version. Others may have problems with settings on your web server. You may need to consult the plugin creator for more help.

How to Fix WordPress Theme Errors

(The Hosting News) – When WordPress users would run into a problem or had a question, they had two options: try and figure it out themselves, or spend thousands of dollars to hire a WordPress developer.

That’s how it used to be.

But with the launch of MyWordpressExpert.com, any WordPress user now has access to affordable Wordpress support from website designer and WordPress developer, Brandon Yanofsky…All they have to do is call.

“When I first started using WordPress, I had to figure everything out myself,” says Brandon Yanofsky, founder of MyWordpressExpert.com. “I’d spend days wasting time trying to figure out how to use WordPress. There were times when I wish I could just pick up a phone and call someone.”

Knowing the frustration many WordPress users face, Brandon started MyWordpressExpert.com so users have a phone number they can call for help any time.

MyWordpressExpert members are given a phone number and email address. Whenever they have a problem or question, they simply call or send an email. Brandon then schedules a time when they can discuss the problem.

Understanding that some matters are extremely urgent, such as when a small business’s website goes down, MyWordpressExpert.com also offers “Urgent Help.”

With this option, members still call or email, but they receive a call back within the hour, many times within 5 minutes of sending the message.

For those interested in MyWordpressExpert.com, individual, 30 minute sessions and monthly packages are available.

As a launch special, MyWordpressExpert is offering a $125 discount to charter members.
For more information, visit MyWordpressExpert.com.

About MyWordpressExpert.com

MyWordpressExpert.com is an affordable, WordPress support solution. Whether users need help installing WordPress, learning how to use WordPress, or customizing a WordPress theme, MyWordpressExpert.com offers the help you need.

About Brandon Yanofsky

Brandon Yanofsky is a website designer and developer. He’s worked with a number of clients and customers, from bloggers to home business to small businesses. He’s also the founder of numerous companies, including MilitaryGirlfriendClothing.com and BlistMarketing.com.

MyWordPressExpert.com Launches