When I signed up for my first WP blog years ago I hadn’t the vaguest notion that WordPress is a content management system (CMS) for all intents and purposes. I understood what a blog was, ’cause I’m a smart cookie, but never thought of blog and CMS together though it’s pretty bloody obvious now. Anyway, back then, I never thought of content management systems at all ’cause I was an exclusive Dreamweaver and notepad hand coder. Anyway, since I like tinkering with code, especially when I have no idea what I’m doing and where it will all lead, I started learning and figuring out how to use plugins, tips I learned on the web and all my web design and development knowledge to make WordPress do more, whatever “more” meant and continues to mean per project. I realize now that WordPress is just like another fabulous company whose services I use almost religiously, Netflix. WordPress is as useful and resourceful as you make it.

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It takes a little bit more finesse to search engine optimize (SEO) your WordPress blog compared to a regular website. But fortunately, the web being a particularly wonderful place, there are answers out there to make it a less painful and inexpensive experience.

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So I was working on a client’s blog recently and was having the most frustrating time trying to embed video onto the site. I recall also having the same trouble on my Film Tops blog. I went to WordPress’s Plugins page and low and behold, I found a solution with a simple plugin.

EasyTube is a WordPress plugin that allows you to embed a YouTube or Google Video in your blog post without WordPress assigning p tags where they don’t belong making your published posts and those below them screwy looking. Anyway, the cool thing about EasyTube is that the code you have to put in your post is soooooo simple: or http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=:URL, that’s it! “URL” should be replaced with the actual URL where the YouTube or Google Video is found. You can also assign width and height: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=:URL Fabulous, ain’t it!

Found this cool new WordPress plugin I think many bloggers may find useful especially for those who have blogs posts that have geographical significance. PostMapper.com hopes to be the biggest, baddest blog post mashup. PostMapper is a geographically orientated blog post directory. It’s part API, and part Mashup, and they even have a WordPress plugin that does all the work, save writing the post & entering an address. Allow bloggers to geocode their posts, and mash them up on a central post map. All travel blogs, photo blogs, and any blog with posts that concern locations can come together in one place. Check out the WordPress PostMapper plugin. If anyone uses this plugin, please let me know what you think.

How does one go about blogging? Well, first read Poles Apart Design’s article What is a Blog? Why Should I Blog? Who Blogs? This article should especially help you in deciding if you should blog and why. Now that you’ve decided to blog, you want to know how to go about it. Well, here’s a somewhat comprehensive list on how to blog:
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So you’ve decided to transfer your free WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog and you have no idea which web host is needed for your blog. Well, picking a web host for your WordPress blog is like picking your web host for a regular website in most ways. You just have to know how much space you need, what kind of scripts and tools you’ll need and so forth for your WordPress blog to work. Now, you’re probably asking, “How am I supposed to know what I need for my blog?” Well, there are only three requirements for self-hosting your WordPress blog:

• PHP version 4.2 or greater
• MySQL version 4.0 or greater
• The latest version of WordPress.org to install on your web host’s server downloadable here

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Here are a few WordPress plugins you may find helpful in giving your WordPress blog some added functionality:

RelatedPosts provides a variety of options for displaying posts that are related through tags.

TextMe sends a carbon-copy of all admin emails sent via SMS to your cell phone.

Video Embedder makes it easy to embed videos from various sources, such as YouTube and Google Video.

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The following are three new WordPress themes I think you’ll love:

Longhorn

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