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PremiumPress Discount Coupons for Free

I just received an email from Mark Fail, owner of PremiumPress, with a bunch of coupon codes for their WordPress themes.

In case you haven’t heard of PremiumPress, they develop great-looking WordPress-based themes that you can use for turnkey websites. You can use their themes to set up an auction website, a shopping directory, a coupon website, a real estate directory, and a classifieds website — in just a few minutes!

Here are the 30% discount coupons that I received today. These coupons are valid from February 2011 onwards.

  • AuctionPress coupon code – SAVE30
  • ShopperPress coupon code – SAVE30
  • DirectoryPress coupon code – SAVE30
  • CouponPress coupon code – SAVE30
  • RealtorPress coupon code – SAVE30
  • Classifieds Theme coupon code – SAVE30

Check out these themes at PremiumPress.com.

Have fun using them!

If you tried one and it didn’t work, please leave a comment so I can check with Mark.

Posted by Jay 1 Comment
Filed Under: Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , ,

Easy Way to Add Amazon Widgets to WordPress Posts

The following is a guest post. If you want to submit a guest post like this, please visit the Contribute page, and then read and follow the guidelines for guest post submissions.

I love using Amazon widgets to monetize my blog posts. These interactive mini-applications (as Amazon describes them) display high quality images and add color to my blog. From my experience, readers click on Amazon widgets more than other ads. I think that’s because of the displayed images and the fact that I’m linking to Amazon.

The only thing I despise about Amazon widgets is the process of inserting them to my blog. It only requires copy-and-paste, but going back and forth between Amazon and WordPress is very frustrating. So, I started testing plugins that would at least automate part of the process. Luckily, I found one helpful plugin. It’s called WordPress-Amazon-Associate (WAA).

amazon associates logo e1296471905653 Easy Way to Add Amazon Widgets to WordPress Posts

WAA is free and easy to use. It lets you add widgets right from your post edit screen — eliminating the need to visit Amazon Associate Central. But with certain widgets, you still must visit Amazon Associate Central. I’ll tell you when to use WAA and when to use Amazon Associate Central.

When to Use WordPress-Amazon-Associate (WAA)

WAA is a great choice when you frequently use these widgets to monetize your blog posts:

  • Carousel Widget
  • MP3 Clips Widget
  • My Favorites Widget
  • Omakase Widget
  • Search Widget

All the widgets’ customizations that are available at Amazon Associate Central are available with WAA — customizing widget’s color, size, title, etc. Actually, WAA is even better. When inserting widgets through Amazon Associate Central you flip from one page to the next to customize and tweak the widgets. But with WAA, all the customizations are shown in one small pop-up window that you reach with a click of a button on your WordPress post page.

When to Use Amazon Associate Central

WAA only supports five of the fourteen Amazon widgets — since Amazon provides the source code of these five widgets only. So, Amazon Associate Central is your only choice for adding the other nine widgets.

Also, WAA won’t work for you if you prefer hand-picking the products displayed on the Carousel, MP3 Clips, and My Favorites widgets.

With Amazon, you are capable to search and select products displayed on the three mentioned widgets. But with WAA, you can only enter the search keyword and it’ll select the displayed products. So you get more customized widgets when using Amazon Associate Central.

To sum up, you are forced to log into Amazon Associate Central if you want to use nine of the Amazon widgets or prefer to hand-pick products displayed on the Carousel, MP3 Clips, and My Favorites widgets. But if you prefer to conveniently insert the widgets from WordPress post, then WAA is your best choice.

Posted by Areej Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sticky WordPress Post

How do I make a particular WordPress post stick to the homepage of my blog? A sticky in WordPress? This is a common question that my friends have just started using WP to blog ask me. So we’ll describe the procedure for doing this in a bit.

Why would I want to create a sticky?
If you have useful content on your blog or website that people read frequently. Or if you have content that you want people to read, making that particular page stick to the homepage is a great way to do it.

Where will it appear on my homepage?
If you configured your blog’s homepage to display multiple posts, the post that you made into a sticky will appear at the top of the page. Your sticky page will remain at the top of the page even if you publish new pages.

To make a post stick to the home page

  1. Log in to your WordPress blog.
  2. Create a new post by clicking Posts > Add New.
  3. Fill out the post title, content, and other fields that you want to configure.
  4. When you are ready to publish the post, look for the Publish widget.
  5. In Visibility, click the Edit link.
  6. Select the Stick this post to the front page check box.
  7. Click Publish.
  8. Go to your blog’s homepage and verify that the WP page that you stickied appears as the first article.

You’re done! That was easy, right?

Note: Only posts that are public can be “stickied”. You cannot sticky something that is password-protected.

how to make wordpress post sticky Sticky WordPress Post

How to Make a WordPress Post Sticky

Visit my WordPress archives for more tips and tricks on using WP. If you also have WP tips and tricks that have not been covered (or covered completely), I invite you to submit a guest post. If you think you have something useful to share, send it in!

Posted by Jay Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Invisible WordPress Text

Earlier today, I tried to write a new post but I couldn’t see the text that I was typing into the post box on the WordPress (WP) admin panel. I tried using HTML view, but the text was also invisible. However, when I highlighted the post box, I could see the text. I wasn’t sure what was causing it.

I did a search and found a thread on WordPress.org discussing the same issue. It sounded like the issue is caused by a WP plugin, but I wasn’t using the plugin that they mentioned in the thread.

wordpress invisible text Invisible WordPress Text

Example of invisible text in WordPress post box

Anyway, I thought I’d try to disable all my WP plugins to check if the issue will go away. If you want to disable all your plugins, just do the following:

  1. Go to the Plugins page.
  2. Click the All link under Manage Plugins.
  3. Select the check box before the Plugins heading.
  4. In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu, select Deactivate.
  5. Click Apply.

I did that and the problem indeed was resolved. The next step was to identify which specific plugin was causing it. This was a trial-and-error process — I had to enable the plugins one by one on one tab, and then check on another tab if the text in my WordPress draft post was still visible. Of course, I had to refresh the tab with the draft post every time I disable a plugin.

I’m using 16 WP plugins on Metahead.com. After disabling about half of them, my draft post became invisible. And that’s how I caught the culprit. I disabled the offending plugin, and my WordPress world returned to normal.

It appears that this issue could occur with a number of plugins. In the WordPress that I mentioned, the thread starter mentioned that it was the ‘Default Post Content’ plugin that was causing the issue. It was a different plugin in my case, so the only way to catch the plugin that is causing the issue is to perform the trial-and-error process I described above.

Did this post help you? If it did and you’re able to figure out which plugin caused the issue on your blog, please leave a message below with the name of the offending plugin to help other bloggers who are experiencing the same issue.

Posted by Jay 3 Comments
Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

Edit the Thesis Footer Easily

If you are using WordPress for your blog like the rest of the world (except for my grandmother who doesn’t blog), you  may have already heard of the Thesis theme. In my opinion, it’s one of the most customizable and flexible themes ever built. It includes a lot of design, search engine optimization, presentation, and content options for your blog, which is why I decided to purchase it. Yes, it’s a paid WordPress theme, so you will have to shell out some cash to take advantage of the power it can add to your WordPress blog. I will do another post on why I think it’s a killer theme, but for now, we’ll focus on one of the things that you’ll probably want to customize after you buy the theme.

NOTE: If you are not using Thesis on your blog but you’re curious, go check it out at DIY Themes.

I’ve started customizing my Thesis installation — to make it more different from the default theme that I got when I purchased the theme. One of the first things that I wanted to do was to change the footer to link to metahead.com, instead of to diythemes.com.

Here’s how I did it (and this is very possibly the simplest way to do it).

What You Will Need

How to Edit the Footer

  1. Using a text or HTML editor, open footer.php that is located in the \lib\html\ folder of the theme.
  2. Make sure you view the source code.
  3. Edit the following text: Get smart with the <a href="http://diythemes.com/thesis/">Thesis WordPress Theme</a> from DIYthemes. to change it to your own footer. I changed the footer for metahead.com to: Copyright &copy; 2010 Metahead.com <a href="http://www.metahead.com/">Make Money Online</a>.
    See the highlighted text in the screen shot at the end of the post.
  4. Save footer.php.
  5. Upload footer.php to your Web host.

You have completed editing the footer of the Thesis theme for WordPress. Now go visit your site and check your new footer!

edit thesis theme footer Edit the Thesis Footer Easily

Posted by Jay 13 Comments
Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , ,