A guest article by Elena Vakhromova. You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

Why do people guest-blog? For self- or product promotion, for traffic, money or just for interest’s sake. Indeed, guest blogging has become a marketing goldmine and all self-respecting online business owners tend to create a discourse around their product or service in blogosphere. Not all of them have the ability to write excellent posts which make the readers beg for more. Still any writing skills aren’t inherent or intuitive. Instead, good writing is a learned skill and it may be easily developed through practice.

If you’re preparing to plunge into guest-posting, you will need not only a knack for writing but a bunch of good tools to aid you in daily chores. Here is a roundup of handy web and PC-based applications which I find indispensable for everyone aiming at comfortable and effective guest-posting.

Evernote

Those who get tired of MS Word and OpenOffice, will definitely love this free note-taking app. Evernote is an ideal solution for drafting a guest post. Its main asset is being perfectly cross-platform: notes are easily accessible from a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phone and from the Web. Beside text notes, Evernote can keep whole web pages or excerpts, images, HTML code, PDFs, music, business cards, etc. Everything added to Evernote is automatically synchronized and made searchable. Evernote is also remarkable for its auto-saving, absence of cumbersome editing tools and ability to email notes.

FastStone Capture

Flickr

NoDoFollow

Bufferapp

WordWeb

It’s needless to say how grammar and spelling are important for a guest blogger, especially for a non-native speaker. Here WordWeb comes to the aid. This is a free powerful dictionary and thesaurus program that provides the definition, synonyms, antonyms of any given word without requiring you to go online. It has about 150,000 words in its database and allows you to look up a word in online reference sites. The app is also notable for its hot key support: you simply use a hot key combo when the cursor is pointed over any word, and WordWeb will pop up onscreen with all pertinent information. The Pro version ($19.50) includes more word definitions, advanced Web search options and other features.

Freemake Video Converter

Guest posts may get better coverage due to multimedia addons. If you’d like to put a video into a post, you can’t do without Freemake Video Converter. This is a free Windows-based software that lets turn any offline video into web-compatible format (Flash FVL or SWF) or easily upload it to YouTube. You can also cut unnecessary video parts, choose a custom video resolution and even create video out of photos and music.

7 Must Have Tools for Guest Bloggers is a post from: Blog Godown

Back in the old days when people had diaries and journals where they scribbled secret crushes and backstabbing outbursts, a passion for writing can emerge. For those who love to write, every stroke of a pen on paper is a thread of distress washed from one’s consciousness out through the extremities. Writing is more often a stress reliever; other times, writing brings out creativity you never thought you had in you. From short verses to full-length poems and novels, everyone who made a name for themselves started with scribbles.

Back then, people who were serious in writing had to put a lot of effort in creating an excellent masterpiece and having the work published. These days, writers have it easy; anyone can be a self-published writer. If you have the ideas and the blog where you will post your works, you will gradually gain a number of avid readers the world over. So before you bury the days long gone, here is to the notebook who has faithfully kept every joyous moment and every sorrowful tear.

Paper

As you say goodbye to your old notebook, take a moment to feel its edges and smooth surface. Think back on how much it has served its purpose. No need to be emotional; just flip a few pages to look back on how life has treated you. If you think about it, you will be saving Mother Nature by not using notebooks for journals.

Pen and Ink

Feel the grasp of the pen in your hand and remember how much thought and feeling you poured over the leaves through it. Without a notebook, you will not need any pen either. You will save yourself from costs on pens and ink refills, however small the amount. Just think of the other things you can spend money on and you can easily let go.

Hiding Places

One of the fun things about having a notebook for a diary or journal is the many hiding places you can come up with. Some people let it lie under the bed, in a corner of a room, or in a hidden stack in a cabinet. Some even go to greater measures as under loose wooden flooring or a tin box buried by a special old tree in the backyard. Think of how fun it was to strategize on where to keep something memorable.

Say Bye Bye to Journals - Start Blogging Instead!

As you bid farewell to your trusty journal, it is time you embrace the new way of keeping one. Most diary keepers often write about personal experiences and less on topics that can be shared with the world. Start on a personal or private entry for a softer transition. As you feel the creative juices flow, let your thoughts speak for itself on your very first public post. Here are some of things to welcome as you begin the journey of a self-published writer.

Themes

This is not just about themes per se; this is about the whole design of your blog. With an online journal, you have a lot of options on creating your blog’s design and overall look. Let your personality come out through the designs you choose or create for your page. Blogs show your personality not only through the content, but also the way you choose to present your site.

Readers

Becoming a self-published writer with works on online blogs means that you get to have readers from anywhere. Do not expect to gain readers right from the start, though. It will take time and a little search engine optimization if you intend on having everyone read it. And when they do, they can leave comments on your posts if you like. You can also reply to them, and you get to connect with people.

Income

Now, this is something you most definitely will not get from the old journal (unless you published your works from that). If you did publish and sell some of the work you have written before, that will earn you money. When it comes to online journals, you can also earn on the side. You can choose to host sensible ads on your site to earn a few bucks. This works very well when you have a lot of visitors and readers on your blog—every click on the ads can help you earn.

So there you have it: the things you lose and gain as you face the transition from a personal notebook to a public blog. Of course, you do not have to let go of the old notebook completely. Besides, you can only use your blog with a computer and an internet connection. If you are anywhere without these, you can always depend on your trusty notebook and pen.

Goodbye, Notebook; Hello, Blog! is a post from: Blog Godown

So there I was installing some new free WordPress plugins on my blog to try and add some functionality to my site when suddenly – BAM! – all my posts disappeared.

Irrespective of where I went on my blog, all I got was a “file not found” error.

I started to sweat. I could feel my temperature rising. Six months worth of work up in smoke.

I checked my admin panel. No articles. I checked my database. Gone.

All those articles – which had taken months to create – and which were drawing significant traffic from the search engines every day had been deleted thanks to one rogue plugin that hadn’t functioned as it should have done.

If this was my only website that could have been “game over” for me. Time to go and get a real job till I had time to rewrite all the content on my site.

But as luck would have it a few weeks before I put in place a system that I hoped would help me recover from situations like this. Situations which only *ever* happen to other people, surely? It almost seemed like a pointless exercise at the time. Now I needed to test it in the real world to see if it really worked.

I clicked the link in my control panel and waited with baited breathe. Time stood still. Everything depending on clicking that one link. Did the system work?

Less than four minutes later my blog was fixed. All my (previously deleted) articles were back and my site functioned just as well as it did the day before that plugin wiped my site from the face of the planet.

I could breathe again.

I don’t know about you but I put a *lot* of time into making my WordPress blogs as good as possible. I spend hours on creating high-quality content, finding the right images, making my theme just right.

If I lost it all – through a mistake or a serious hacking attempt – I would be devastated. I dread to think how long it would take me to get things back to normal – if that were ever possible. Imagine losing your design, all your content, your internal links, your pictures and more.

Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

So why would you take the risk of not backing up your blog? It’s really not your web hosts duty, and while they *may* be able to help if the worst happens, it’s really not down to them and you will have little or no recourse if anything happens to your site.

This is why a short while ago I set out on a mission to try to find a cheap, simple and reliable way to automatically back up my WordPress sites so that if the worst ever happened I could quickly recover from the problem and be up and running again in no time.

Infact, truth be told, I’m glad I did. As you’ve just read I managed to accidentally delete every piece of content on my site yet my back-up system worked flawlessly. Disaster averted.

So now you know the potential problems of *not* backing up your WordPress site, and you’ve heard about how I got to test the method in the real world with satisfying results let me talk you through the exact system I am using so that you can implement exactly the same strategy on your own sites.

Not Backing Up is a blunder in the making!

I use a combination of two services to back-up my WordPress sites.

The first of these is the WordPress Automatic Backup plugin available for free from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/

The second service is the Amazon S3 online file storage service. Run by Amazon.com this is a fast, reliable and very cost-effective place to store large, valuable files off-site so that even if your hard-drive gets fried you will still have a copy of your files safely held.

The plugin is quick and simple to install and then interface with your Amazon S3 account (which you can sign up for at https://s3.amazonaws.com).

As a useful tip, Amazon S3 can be a little hard to use if it’s your first time. To make life a lot easier download the S3Fox plugin for Firefox which enables you to easily transfer files, create folders and so on in a clear, visual manner much like most FTP software.

You can set the WordPress Automatic Backup plugin to save back-ups of your content, plugins and even theme on a regular basis. Then if the worst happens you can simply go into your WordPress control panel, click on the restore link and the most recent back-up will be downloaded and installed by the plugin.

Go and do it today. You may think you’ve got better ways to spend your time but like me – when disaster strikes – you’ll be glad you spent those few minutes to install the plugin. Back-up now, and enjoy the peace of mind of knowing your hard work is now safely protected.

How I Accidentally Deleted Every Article On My WordPress Blog – And How I Fixed The Problem In Just 4 Minutes Flat is a post from: Blog Godown

Driving attention to a niche blog can be a hard task to accomplish, even if you’re a seasoned veteran at drawing in a ground. Providing readers with great content that engages them and leaves them wanting more is a sure fire way to draw in a crowd and keep them, but grabbing the initial attention of the readers is a hard task to complete. Thankfully, services like MyBlogGuest.com make it easy to connect with other bloggers in your niche so you can essentially swap readers.

How It Works

MyBlogGuest.com is essentially a network of bloggers who are interested in featuring guest content, or bloggers who are interested in providing guest content. This method of content sharing benefits both, as the person featuring the guest post gets fresh content and a new perspective that their readers are sure to enjoy, while the guest author gets backlinks and the potential for more readers to regularly visit his own blog since both blogs are in the same niche.

The service is extremely easy to use and there is no division between the guest posters and the bloggers. The marketplace is divided for easy browsing, but if you have a blog and you’d like to write a few guest posts to increase exposure while featuring guest posts of someone else, it’s completely possible. The best part of the whole service is that it connects you to like-minded people for free, so you’re benefiting each other.

Does It Work?

In terms of providing a place for guest bloggers to have their content published and content providers to find content easily, yes it does. Of course there are always quality control concerns when you have a massive marketplace like this, as anyone can apply and type up anything in the hopes that someone else will publish it. The service does feature quality writers, but slogging through the multitude of blog entries to find them can be tiring.

Thankfully, if you find a blogger or guest blogger who’s work you like, you can bookmark them to find their articles on the site much easier. This makes featuring content from those you trust much easier. The authors of content also retain the full rights of their articles, so there’s no need to worry about losing your valued work. Any links that are established within the article must stay put, so as long as you’re not abusing your link privileges as a content author, then your links will stay intact as well.

Overall, for anyone who needs quick content to maintain their blog while on vacation, or for anyone who is looking for an avenue to reach more readers, the MyBlogGuest.com marketplace is a great start.

Gautam Chips in: I have used Myblogguest.com and found it very beneficial for those who are just new to arena of guest blogging or who are looking for quality content for their blogs. I have had the chance of inviting several guest bloggers from this website and I must say, I was never disappointed with their work (actually I was a little surprised because some of them were really amazing).

MyBlogGuest.com: A Blogger’s Review is a post from: Blog Godown

You have to study the latest trends in order to establish yourself as the best

Readability, visual appeal, and user experience are all important considerations when it comes to keeping a blog that draws the readers in.

The design of your blog is going to have a very large impact on how readable it is, because ease of use and visual appeal are important to the average blog reader. There are certain design and user experience trends that are becoming prevalent, guiding the direction of blogs to better suit the readers they are targeting.

The Direction of Blogs

The blogging arena is one that is constantly changing. What is trendy and important in blogging today may not be the right course of action a few months from now. It is important for bloggers to pay attention to their readers to find out how user experience trends are changing. Using tools like online survey software can help you get answers about what your readers or viewers are thinking. Turn around and implement this feedback on your blog and you will see noticeable differences in your readership.

Design Trends

Design trends change consistently in blogging. Keeping your blog up to date and relevant to your purpose is essential to creating the right user experience. Here are some of the current design trends that are seeing the light in blogging.

• Complex Magazine Layouts: Magazine layout themes are becoming increasingly popular, especially because they allow for an increase in functionality and design elements. Utilize unique layouts, headers, and graphics for a truly dynamic blog design that is complicated in both look and appearance without sacrificing simplicity in use.
• Typefaces: In the past, blog design focus went to the images, and most text was handled with a basic font like Arial or Times New Roman. Today, more focus is going to using unique and relevant typefaces, since there are thousands of different Freeware fonts available for use which can be found online. Font design can be just as important as graphic design in the creation of a blog. Choose fonts that are relevant to the concepts of your blog to help build identity and visual appeal.
• Web 2.0 Trends: There is no concrete answer for what Web 2.0 is, but what we do know is that it is the future of the web, and it is all about delivering the best user experience for your readers. Bold, colorful, easily maneuvered, and user friendly blogs that are graphic-intensive, readable, full of content, and visually appealing will bring in more readers than anything else, which has a lot to say about the future direction of blogs and blogging. Web 2.0 blogs are glossy and shiny, polished and visually appealing with large and prominent graphics, custom typography, and user-friendly maneuverability.

Above all else, you should consider what your readers are looking for in your blog, and center your design on their needs and desires.

The design and usability of your blog should evolve with your readership so that you are constantly bringing your visitors what they are looking for.

The Direction of Blogs- Design and User Experience Trends is a post from: Blog Godown

Different bloggers do different things in order to get their blog indexed quickly. Some methods for quick indexing work and others don’t. I, like most other bloggers have been trying to find the fastest ways to get a new blog indexed. But, I took it one step farther and created a few dummy blogs/sites to test different quick indexing methods. Here are a few quick indexing methods that have helped me get my blog indexed by Google fast:

Get your blog indexed fast using popular online forums
This is a very fast way to get your blog indexed. Most online forums allow you to have a few links in your signature that shows up on every page you post on. Since popular online forums constantly add new content (threads and posts), search engines have learned to crawl them frequently. And when search engines crawl a forum, they crawl everything, including links that lead to other sites. So, by placing your new url in your signature and posting a new thread or replying to a thread, your blog will get crawled and indexed the next time SE’s spiders come to search the forum for new content, which usually is every few hours or so. I used this methods on WarriorForum (very popular internet marketing forum) and my test url got indexed within 2 hours!

Get your blog indexed fast using with site evaluation tools
Website evaluation sites like Whois, Worthlook and Alexa are also crawled by search engine spiders frequently. Simply find as many website evaluation sites as you can and add your url to be evaluated. Every time a new url is evaluated, spiders will come looking! There are hundreds of website evaluation sites out there and doing it manually can be very time consuming. Thankfully, there is a free tool that with a click of a button adds your url to hunderds of website evaluation sites, helping to index your new blog in a matter of hours (in some cases minutes).

An added benefit is that you will be building a few backlinks to your new blog as well. Although most backlinks form site evaluation sites don’t count, there are a few sites that do actually count. And hey, for a few seconds of your time, its worth it!

Get your blog indexed fast by social bookmarking it
We all know that Google has a love affair with some of the biggest bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit, which means it sends its spiders to those sites looking for new content, quite frequently (some people think because Google loves Digg so much, Google’s spiders never even leave Digg!). So, any other URL on those sites will automatically be crawled and indexed. I once bookmarked a new URL on Digg and it was indexed in about 15 minutes!

Get your blog indexed using other (popular) blogs
Again, its the same concept, blogs that are popular and are constantly on Google’s radar for new content, provide an easy and quick way to get your blog indexed. If you can, do a link exchange. But, since your blog is a new blog with no page rank, it is unlikely that any bloggers would want to exchange links with you.

However, there is a much simpler way to get a link on popular blogs without linking back to them, Blog commenting! Yes, find a few popular blogs and leave a few good relevant comments. Of course, enter your new blog URL into the “website” section of the comment box.


There are a few other ways that I have heard of, but never tried, including submitting blog’s feed to Rss Feed Aggregators like Syndic8 and FeedAdage, inserting Google Analytics code in your blog (Google has to crawl your site to give you data), inserting ad sense ads on your blog (again Google has to crawl to find out what kind of ads to display) and adding your url to your Youtube account (Google loves Youtube, no doubt about it).

Although, getting indexed is important and the sooner you get indexed the better, I would advice against spending too much time and energy on it. Your blog will eventually get indexed. So, it’s best to focus your time and energy elsewhere, perhaps on more important things such as building backlinks and creating quality content.

Please feel free to let us know by leaving a comment below, if you know or have used any other ways to get your blog indexed by Google fast.

4 Ways to Get Your Blog Indexed by Google Fast is a post from: Blog Godown

It all starts out with being known as an expert.  Before you can take your site to a high level of success, people are going to have to respect you in your chosen field.  And to do that, you are going to have to talk to people in a language that they understand.

A great way to start out into green website ownership is to start a free WordPress site.  Begin blogging about a topic that interests you, that you can contribute something interesting to.  While they say there’s nothing new under the Sun, you might say the same thing in your own way, and have it reach a whole different group of people.  When you have a niche that understands and respects you, you have a very firm basis for your site.

Once you have a lot of people following your blog posts, it may be time to upgrade to a WordPress.org site.

This is significant in three ways:

1. On WordPress.org, you can overlay another domain name, without having to mess with your hosting or your interface.  As a professional blogger, you have much better things to do with your time.

2. WordPress.org (as opposed to WordPress.com) allows you to use plug-ins.  Plug-ins can provide you with some very impressive abilities, such as the capacity to collect e-mail addresses and organize them for easy (and potentially very lucrative) e-mail blasts.

3. You can also pick and choose from a TON of themes (within the WordPress directory, off other sites that do roundups, or from individual theme makers if you want to buy them for a price)

Some green theme roundups and individual themes you may be interested in are:

Green Theme Roundup

Green Stimulus

DarkTouch

Of course there’s TONS out there, if I wanted to list them all I would probably do a post on that alone, so I suggest you browse around the WordPress directory or even Google some themes for variety.

Once you are at the point where you can be looking around for the best plug-ins (such as WordPress-to-lead) to help you acquire and organize your e-mail list.  As your list grows, you can start to think about how to monetize your site. After all, you’re spending a lot of time on there- you may as well make some cash money off of it, right?

Some methods that may not be easy, but a lot of website owners get into, include affiliate marketing, selling advertising space on your site, or the very best way – creating and marketing your own product.

When people respect (and read) what you write, they will want to pay for your “best” information.  And with the right plug-ins, themes and strategy, you can automate the process to the point where what you’re selling almost sells itself.

That’s very over-simplified, but not far from the truth.

Starting a Green Business Website from Scratch is a post from: Blog Godown

Go Green By Blogging using some eco-friendly plugins

Blogging is an integral part of businesses these days and you can make the most of your online business with proper use of plugins and social networking through your blog- you might be setup properly with cloud computing and VOIP phones, but without the down and dirty tools to reach your target audience, you may not be as successful.

Consumers that follow a green lifestyle are excited to be in the know of the latest information available to them, such as new products and green living news. To aid in your own online green business, a blog that ties in with your social networking is almost too good of a marketing tactic to not try. The green community is unique in that,

• The industry is fueled by community and joint participation
• Participants wants to share and get everyone involved with the cause they’re supporting
• The industry is always being shaped and grown, so new strategies need to be visible and shared
• Content sharing is a huge part of the community

Most CMS’s, like WordPress, give the option of plugins to enhance the operations of your site and will work in conjunction with your social networking sites. Yup, even though there’s a gazillion plugins out there for WordPress, there’s some useful ones that you’ll want to find and utilize.

A main component of green blogging and social networking is sharing content- as mentioned earlier. If you are introducing a new product or brand, the most exciting way to create buzz is by sharing the information immediately through the site. There are plugins that will allow the content you put on your blog to immediately show up on your social networking affiliations.

For example, if you have a blog and also have a fan page for your business on Facebook, there are plugins available that will automatically notify all of your fan page followers that a new blog has been posted.

There are even plugins that will allow followers to see the blog post right away. By using a plugin that allows you to share information immediately, you are creating a novelty quality that induces viral marketing. There’s an abundance of WordPress plugins that will work directly with your Facebook page.

• Facebook Dashboard Widget- Pulls in your Facebook updates directly into your WP dashboard. Sure- this doesn’t really work in sync with your Facebook Fan page, but it will help keep you connected with others in the green community from behind the scenes.
• Facebook Posted Items- This pulls in your “posted items” into WP. This way, if you have readers that don’t really utilize Facebook, you can still allow them to see what you’re posting on your site.
• WP-FacebookConnect- This allows you to set your site up with Facebook Connect so your users only need a single sign in to pull in all their information.

On the Twitter end, there’s a few (read: tons) of different plugins, but these generally have been user friendly and haven’t seen as many issues:

• Twitter Tools- Full integration between your WordPress and Twitter account. You can set it to tweet when your posts are published so that your community can see them right when they go up.
• TweetMeMe- Allows your blog post to be shared and retweet
• TwitThis- Another plugin to share, with placement above or below post.

Creating this instant buzz will play a huge part in your branding, which will allow you the platform to introduce more products on a regular basis. When you have become a branded and reputable green website, your followers will trust the new products and information you are introducing to them.

Staying active through social networking and sharing information with easy to use plugins also brands you as an expert in your field. Consumers and followers have confidence in your interest in the green lifestyle because of your active participation in creating new pertinent content on a regular basis- they’ll start seeing you as a source rather than background noise.

Keep sharing and take advantage of blog plugins available to make your lives, and your readers lives, easier.

WordPress Plugins to Share your Green Community Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Kip Keilty of compare broadband plans. Join the discussion and voice your opinion by following our guest blogging guidelines.

Bloggers like you want to earn a living from their work and possibly even become famous. Building a blogging career that takes you from being a beginner blogger into the cream of the crop takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work, but it is possible to realize your dream. To help you accomplish the most from your efforts, here are 7 of the best tools for aspiring probloggers.

1. Wikimedia Commons – As creative property becomes more carefully guarded by its owners, bloggers face increasing pressure to avoid illegal use of images online. This means that more people are demanding that bloggers obtain permission to use the images used on their sites. Some Web users are scouring the Web looking for people to sue over images used without permission. Wikimedia Commons offers a huge repository of photographs and other images that are available for general royalty-free use (usually with attribution) that you can use without fear.

2. Akismet – Years ago, the government supposedly outlawed spam, but the problem has only worsened. Spam is not just in your inbox anymore: it is everywhere, including your blog. Whether you are spammed with users and fake contributors or if you are spammed with thousands of comments about tinnitus and sexual potency, Akismet is there on the front lines with you to help reduce the amount of spam you have to deal with. With solutions to equip more than 20 different blogging platforms and computer systems, Akismet gives you the upper hand in the fight against spam.

3. Photoshop online – Serious bloggers depend on creating interesting content, and that requires image editing and optimization. You want your users to have a good experience at your blog, so you want to make sure that the images you show them are not only legal, but that they are optimized to load quickly into their browser. Photoshop online gives you the power associated with the premium image editor at your fingertips via any Web browser wherever you are.

4. The All in One SEO plugin for WordPress – This is one of the most popular blog plugins because it automates the task of preparing blog posts for SEO discovery. Bloggers using the plugin configure it once and then let it do its job. The time saved in optimizing blogs for the search engines is used by serious bloggers for better things such as content preparation.

5. Sniplets – Sniplets is an essential tool for creating dynamic content within a post on a WordPress blog. With this plug-in you can dynamically replace text in your blog with text, code, or other content that is found somewhere else. This relieves much of the burden bloggers have to keep fresh content on their blog. Sniplets can also be used to brand RSS feeds to prevent unauthorized use of your content.

6. Shareaholic – This popular service gives users an easier way to share online content among their social networks. In fact, with just one mouse click, more than one hundred services can be instantly updated with online content. This is a tool that bloggers use to share content that interests them, but bloggers should encourage their users to use Shareaholic as well. It is fun, but it also gives users a new, easier way to spread the word about your blog.

7. Screencast – If you want to spice up your posts then consider Screencast, a place to store videos and make them accessible to other users on the Web. You can get a free 2 GB account for free, or pay $99.95 for a year of video hosting services that come with 25 GB of storage.

The Internet is full of great tools that will help you as you pursue your dream of being a problogger. These are just 7 of the best tools for aspiring probloggers that will get you started on your quest.

7 of the Best Tools for Aspiring Probloggers is a post from: Blog Godown

The contact form has a few important advantages over simply making your email address public. Two of the most essential of them are:

• That’s a spam-free contact method (if you choose a good plugin for that);
• It gives you some more advanced options to analyze and organize your contacts.

The second advantage is just what I’d like to look further into. There are three WordPress plugins that give some great options for learning more about people who contact you.

1. See the (original) referral of the contact

Enhanced WP-ContactForm includes the page the user visited before the contact page, as well as the original outside referer. While the plugin doesn’t offer any stats (you can compile the stats yourself by throwing the referrals into an Excel file), this plugin will help you:

• Better understand the person’s intentions (if he, for example, Googled your name to land on your site – this gives you a reason to think that he has heard about you and has been looking specifically for you);
• Better understand the person’s reasons (you can also see which page of your blog might have encouraged the reader to contact you).

Here’s how it looks when you receive an email via the form:

2. Organize Your Contacts Effectively

WordPress-to-Lead plugin is a great way to keep track of your contacts and organize them effectively (I am testing it myself now). It makes it easier to:

• Track all conversations and interactions
• Organize your contacts and tasks in a single spot
• Easily synchronize with Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!, and more

It does need Salesforce account but if you get plenty of important emails from your blog contact form, you should consider taking this advanced approach for managing them. After all, your contacts are what accounts (or will account) for your success.

Besides, it has a wealth of handy options and settings that allow to configure the look and feel:

What’s more, it has a sidebar widget allowing to add a tiny contact form blog-wide:

3. Track form submissions

Contact form 7 is a very customizable and usable contact form plugin. It has a wide variety of options and is very easy to configure and install.

Besides that, it can be easily connected to your Google Analytics account to track form submissions. Here’s a very detailed tutorial on how to do that.

Learn More about People Who Contact You (WordPress) is a post from: Blog Godown

1. Blogjet

Blogjet includes all the features provided by most blogging platforms, so you’ll hardly notice the difference between blogging on this and directly through Drupal. Features include a WYSIWYG editor, easy image editing, Flickr and YouTube support, a spellchecker, Auto Replace, post management and search tools, blog statistics, and a customizable interface. Prices start at $39.95 for single users.

2. Ecto

Ecto is a slick editor for Mac users. It brings users a whole host of features such as drafting, spell checker, creating links and attachments, categories, text formatting, comment options, syntax colouring in the HTML editor and many more. It comes with a 21 day free trial so you can test it out before laying out any money, and the cost is low at $19.95.

3. Bleezer

The major advantage of Bleezer is that it’s free, so if you want to try out a desktop client, this would be a good place to start. It runs on Windows, OS X and Linux, so it is refreshingly versatile. Features include WYSIWYG editing, image uploading, category support, tags (from multiple tag services), custom markup, spell checker, and advertising support with any service such as Ping Technorati, weblogs.com, or ping-o-matic.

4. Drivel Journal Editor

Drivel Journal Editor places emphasis on elegant design, but also has some great features, including spell checker, HTML syntax highlighting, offline composition and editing, automatic recovery and journal system extensions. The system runs on GNU and Linux, and it’s free to download.

5. ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension of Mozilla Firefox, and it’s free to download. It integrates with your Firefox browser. Great features include dragging and dropping formatted text from pages on your browser into the editor, taking notes, uploading images and posting to multiple blogs easily.

6. MarsEdit

MarsEdit is a great desktop blogging tool for Mac users. It’s features include a no-frills, easy-to-user interface, Flickr support, easy uploads and a media catalogue, previews, a re-blogging button for your browser, and a customizable editor. The tool is priced at $29.95 and upgrades are $9.95.

7. Thingamablog

Thingamablog runs on Windows and Linux. What makes it stand out from other desktop blogging tools is that it doesn’t require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. You only need FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server. Aside from this, it has some great features, including publishing to multiple blogs, blog entry management, one-click publishing, email publishing, customizable templates, category support, custom template tags, and ping services. All of this, and it’s free to download.

8. w.Bloggar

w.Bloggar is free to download, and boasts of a host of features. Running off Microsoft, the tool includes features that let you import text files, add links and images, format text, publish to multiple blogs, use category and title fields, upload images, import and export, and use colour highlighted HTML code. Added to this, w.Bloggar is now available in a portable version that you can unzip to your USB device.

9. RocketPost 2

RocketPost2 has a lot of the standard features of desktop blogging tools, but a few that make it stand out, such as quote tracking, one-click Technorati, Flicker and Del.icio.us tags, and automatic links to related posts, as well as the ability to schedule posts for future publishing. Prices for home users start at $29.00.

10. Blogdesk

Blogdesk is free to download. Its handy features include image upload, publishing to multiple blogs, a blog wizard, easy linking and automatic links to local files such as MP3s and editing of posts already published.

With features like these, especially on free tools, there’s no reason to delay. Try using one of these tools and see if your blogging productivity increases!

This article is a part of the guest blogging contest. If you like this article, then help supporting this author by retweeting, sharing and commenting on it, which will enable the author to win this contest. By the way, you can be a part of the contest, it is still not too late

10 Best Drupal Blogging Clients is a post from: Blog Godown

1. Measure It

Measure It is a really helpful tool, for designers as well as bloggers. It works like a ruler and measures the height and width of the area selected in pixels.  This tool helps in determining the size of header logo and makes this task really easy.

2. Colorzilla

Colorzilla is an amazing firefox tool. The eye dropper feature can find out the color code of your selection (even if you are clicking on an image). Other than this it has features to choose colors from color picker. You can also zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes

3.  Search Status

It is a must have firefox addon if you are addicted to stats. It shows all the major rankings such as Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank. Along with this it has fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting which helps in finding dofollow blogs, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.

4. SeoQuake

An important task for every webmaster is search engine optimization. After all it is the source of all the organic traffic. SeoQuake is one such tool which helps in SEO and SERPs. It helps you find out that how effective is your SEO. It has a bar which is similar to that of SearchStatus plugin which shows the various rankings (Page Rank, Alexa Rank). Other than the SEObar it shows additional in search engine results such as page ranks and inbound links, which help in estimating the importance of web pages.

5. Feedly

A part of being a blogger is to be updated with all the latest happenings that are related to your niche. For that you need to subscribe to important websites. When there are only 2-3 subscriptions then any feed reader can suffice, but when there are more than 50 sites to follow, then it becomes a tedious task to follow each and every thing. Feedly solves this problem by providing a full RSS feed reader with a magazine like interface. It syncs with google reader and makes it easy to share articles on twitter, tumblr, delicious and facebook.

6. Google Reader Watcher

Another useful tool. If you are a google reader fan, then this add on is for you. This add on will check your Google Reader for unread feeds and if you have, the plugin will display them on your browser’s statusbar.

7. FireBug

Firebug is the most powerful tool that firefox could have. It is really useful for blogger as well as designers. It comes with development tools, which help in changing styles. It also breaks up the source code of the page into Html, CSS and scripts, which can be easily edited and used for webdesigning.

8. GreaseMonkey

Greasemonkey is for those coding junkies. Through this add on, one can change the display of each web page by using simple scripts.

9. Reminder Fox

It is but natural to forget. To prevent you from forgetting important dates, reminder fox helps you remind of important dates and tasks via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarm notifications.

10. Fastest Fox

Fastest Fox speeds up your firefox and increases productivity. It has features like parallelized downloads, auto-loading of next pages, improved searching and many more.

11. Google Analytics Watcher

For all the bloggers who are constantly checking out their statistics, this is a real time saver.

12. Fire.fm

Music improves productivity and fire.fm makes it possible to listen to music from the firefox browser. It gives you access to the extensive music library on Last.fm.

13. Zemanta

Zemanta enhances your blog dashboard with content recommendations like relevant images, videos, links and also affiliate links. It has features such as re-blogging, image addition. It can link to your older posts and save a lot of time in blogging. Zemanta supports WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, Ning, Drupal, LiveJournal, Tumblr and email platforms like Google Mail and Yahoo!Mail.

14. ScribeFire

Blogging right from firefox!. It is a full-featured Blog Editor and make posting really easy . You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs. Super easy to add photos or graphics from you places like Photobucket, Flicker or from your own computer. It supports a host of services like WordPress, Xanga, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Myspace, b2evolution and splinder and many blogging platforms including Blogger, Drupal and Movable Type.

15. DashBlog

Another good blogging plugin and lets you quickly collect videos, images, text/quotes, songs and screen-captures from any web page and publish them to your blog (word press, blogger/blogspot, tumblr) and/or twitter. With DashBlog you can do a screen capture and then draw, comment, crop and post all with one simple click.

16. Easy Comment

If you are power commentator, then this firefox add-on is for you. Easy Comment makes commenting on Disqus, IntenseDebate, WordPress, Movable Type, etc really simple. It saves you time to fill out forms, by creating commenting profiles, which can be added by a single click of mouse.

Snapshot Tools

17. Aviary Screen Capture Tool

This snazzy tool makes taking snapshot a piece of cake. You can crop and edit pictures in the browser and download it on the Desktop. It also includes advanced image editors such as Image editor, markup editor, vector editor, color palette editor & effects editor.

18. Pixlr Grabber

Much like Aviary, Pixlr Grabber is a snapshot tool. It saves the time to first save the images to your computer and then cut, annotate or edit them. It does all of these in the browser itself.

19. FireShot

This snapshot tool is unique in its own way. You can upload the images to free screenshot hosting, or save it in various formats (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), print, copy to clipboard, send to external editor or e-mail it.

Social Media Add-ons

20. Delicious Bookmarks

The most popular plugin. It is the simplest way to organize your bookmarks online with tags. It makes it easy to import your existing firefox bookmarks. Also it makes searching through your favorites easier. One can also see the reviews made on a specific page through the info button.

21. Stumbleupon

This is a very handy tool for all stumbleupon users. You can easily stumble through your friend’s shares. If you are viewing a page and you like it, then there is no need to submit it through the stumbleupon page, just click on the Like it option in the toolbar and its done.

22. Digg Toolbar

This is a really a time saver for diggers. When you’re browsing the web, the toolbar will let you know if a story has already been submitted to Digg and if it has, the it will show the Digg count and the number of comments made and also a link to Digg the page. You can also see the latest submissions and comments made by your friends. Though it does not show all the diggs by your friends.

23. AddThis

AddThis is a tool to making sharing on social bookmarking sites really simple. It supports more than 150 services and sharing is just a click away. The content can also be shared via email.

24. ShareThis

Another Social Bookmarking plugin which makes submission to multiple sites super easy and you can store your shares for later to reshare with the ShareThis ShareBox. It has support to more than 45 services.

25. TwitterBar

A simple yet very useful plugin. Tweeting made easy. Just tweet from your address bar.

25 Super Firefox Addons For Bloggers is a post from: Blog Godown

Today I am going to review a really new and unique idea to build a blog community and that too in a 10 minutes.
Conduit has launched a new feature of creating browser(Firefox, Internet Explorer) Toolbars for your Blog Communities. This feature will increase reader engagement and generate more traffic.

Community Toolbar for Blogs/Websites

The best thing of this toolbar is that you can easily edit and create a feature rich toolbar for your community using the simple Toolbar creator in a few minutes. And features are quite comparable to that found in popular toolbars like Google and Yahoo.

The Feature list:

1. Basic Components

• Your Logo – Add a logo and link to your website.
• Link Button – Add links to specific pages.
• Menu Button – Add Drop Down Menus
• News Ticker – A News Ticker as shown in Tv News Channels.
• Link in Main Menu – These links show up in the main configuration menu next to the Logo.
• Separator – It is used to separate sections of the toolbar.
• Label – Add Tags and Labels

Browser Toolbars for Blog communities is a post from: Blog Godown