Gandree Consolidated

As most of my friends know, I started this blog to gather the information that helps me in my own on line adventures.  Any affiliate marketing that takes place here is incidental to that.  However, that means as I gather what helps me, it often proves valuable to many of my friends and I don’t mind sharing some love along the way.

I am a huge fan of Wordpress blogs.  They are easy to set up and can be molded to fit almost any application.  However, if you are using them “out of the box” so to speak, you aren’t getting their full benefits.  JT Pratt has a post on 20 Things WordPress Doesn’t Do Out of the Box.  Here’s a listing of the subtitles but you really need to visit his post to get the nitty gritty.

1. Page 1: Wordpress Has No Breadcrumbs
2. Page 2 – Wordpress has no Contact Form
3. Page 3 – Most Wordpress Themes have no Archive Index
4. Page 4 – Wordpress Has No Built In Stats
5. Page 5 – Wordpress Has No Sitemap
6. Page 6 – Wordpress Has no Database Tools
7. Page 7 – Wordpress Has No Voting or Polls Tools
8. Page 8 – Wordpress has no “Related Posts” Mechanism
9. Page 9 – You Can’t Reply to Comments Without Visiting Post Page
10. Page 10 – Wordpress Comments are “nofollowed” by default
11. Page 11 – Wordpress Has No Way to Append or Add Content to Your RSS Feed
12. Page 12 – Wordpress Has No Way to Enforce URL Preference
13. Page 13 – Wordpress Has No Mechanism for Adding Code to Posts
14. Page 14 – Wordpress Has No Way to Control Meta Tags or Titles for SEO
15. Page 15 – Wordpress Doesn’t Log or Notify 404 Not Found Errors
16. Page 16 – Wordpress Doesn’t Log What People Search For
17. Page 17 – Wordpress Has No Built-In Translation Capabilities
18. Page 18 – Wordpress Has no Built In Advertising Mechanism
19. Page 19 – Wordpress Has No Monetization Abilities Built-In
20. Page 20 – Wordpress Has No Cache

If some of this makes no sense to you, feel free to comment and ask questions.   Obviously, all of these areas have work arounds.  Usually you just have to add a plug-in and configure it to do what you want.  Sometimes they come in paid packages but often they are free.  Why not use this list to make sure your blog is working its hardest for you and let me know what you think.

I found a sweet new theme.  It’s called Simple Balance 2.2 theme by Blogsessive – Blogging Tips.  Their newest download page shows a Christmas theme but don’t let that throw you.  It is a very simple manner to change the look of this theme from it’s control panel.   You just go to your WordPress dashboard.  [...]

OK, It’s hardly been a week and I’m tired of this theme.  Time to find another one to play with.  The next one will definitely be widgetized!  There are too many good ones out there to stick with one that is a pain in the neck to code.  I thought I had the ads set [...]

My blogs have matured enough to have  some interesting information on them and I feel good about promoting them.  I’ve got backlinks accumulating through Traffic Bug and have submitted them to my accounts on Delicious, Diggo, etc.  In most cases I have articles submitted to Ezine Articles and Qondio and one or more Squidoo pages.  [...]

I just said I wasn’t going to use any more themes that weren’t widgetized and here I am using this one from Hi-Tech Blog.  [sigh]  I didn’t realize it wasn’t widgetized when I installed it.  That just goes to show how the little details can slip by when you are thinking about something else.
I decided [...]