Blog Tools – Dennis J. Smith

How AI-Generated Images Are Revolutionizing Affordability for Content Creators

March 14, 2025

In today’s digital landscape, visuals aren’t just important—they’re essential. Content creators across blogs, social media, marketing materials, and educational resources face the constant challenge of finding high-quality images that won’t break the bank.

Google AdSense Plugins

December 4, 2010

Google AdSense Plugins What is Google AdSense? Google AdSense is a program from Google that pays website and blog owners to display specific ads on their sites. It is free and you can track your earnings with online reports. The ads are usually targeted to match the relevant content on your site. How do I get started? Visit http://www.adsense.com and Newbie Central for new users to get started and for more information about AdSense. If you have an account with Google you are just a few steps away from Google AdSense. If not you just have to enter a little information to get started with creating ads. I highly recommend that you watch the videos provided by Google. There are several books available to learn more about AdSense and there is lots of information online. AdSense Ad Create Your AdSense Code Once you have an account set-up you can start creating the code that will generate your ad or ads. There are different sizes of ads you can generate and it is important think about ad placement in your blog. Placement of your ads is essential in the amount of revenue they generate. Review Newbie Central for more information on the placement of your ads. AdSense Plugins Several plugins are available to choose from when it comes to displaying ads on your WordPress blog. Search for “AdSense” from the Plugin menu of your WordPress dashboard to generate a list of available AdSense plugins. Click on “Details” for more details on each individual plugin and “Install Now” to install the plugin of your choice. There are also several WordPress themes that have settings to display AdSense ads along with other types of ads. Do a search on Google for “AdSense Ready WordPress Themes” for a list of themes ready for AdSense. I suggest you install a few plugins and see what works best for you. Take your code you created above and copy and paste it into your plugin. Each plugin will be different so read the instruction for the plugin you choose. List of some of the many plugins available for AdSense Things to keep in Mind AdSense policy allows for no more than three AdSense ads displaying per page. Encouraging others to click on ads is a violation of AdSense policies. Don’t risk losing what might be a lucrative stream of revenue. Read Newbie Central so you are aware of policies, best practices and have the knowledge of what works best. Have a favorite AdSense plugin you are using? Please feel free to comment below and share your AdSense experience. Need a WordPress Blog? Contact IgniteHost website and WordPress blog hosting and get started for less than $5 a month. More resources: Google AdSense ““ AdSense Website AdSense Official Channel on YouTube ““ AdSense Videos WordPress Themes ““ AdSense Ready WordPress Themes Newbie Central ““ Information for AdSense Newbies AdSense Blog ““ Inside AdSense Blog Content Provided By Dennis J. Smith

3 Social Media Tools To Grow Your Business

October 15, 2010

Here are 3 tools that are free and will help you grow your business through social media. There are many other applications out there and they appear and disappear as social media changes and evolves. I like these 3 listed below for their ease of use and little set-up time. Please feel free to leave a comments about the tools you use or if you use these. RSS Graffiti for Facebook Simplify your social media marketing with this free application available on Facebook. RSS Graffiti will automatically publish your RSS feeds to any of your Facebook Fan Pages. Setup is easy and and takes less than 10 minutes to establish. You can schedule how often RSS Graffiti updates your wall, set publishing limits and can even publish to Twitter. I use it to publish articles from my WordPress blog to my Facebook Fan Page. Then Facebook automatically send out a Tweet to my Twitter followers that alerts them of a new post on my blogs. Payvment E-Commerce Storefront If you are looking to sell product online with little upfront cost Payvment is the answer. Payvment is a free shopping cart application for Facebook Fan Pages and uses PayPal to process payments. Set-up is easy and most can have a storefront up and running in 1-hour or less. Visit the Facebook Fan Page of Pioneer Soap Works to see what an actual storefront is like. All In One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin This is a must have tool for any business with a hosted WordPress blog. All In One SEO is a free plugin that optimizes your blog for better search engine results. This application gives you better control over the optimization of your post, pages and site home page. Therefore your chances of moving up in search engine results increase. Easy enough for beginners yet fully customizable for those with a little more SEO background. Content by Dennis J. Smith ““ Social Media Author

5 Must Have Social Media Plugins for WordPress Blogs

October 1, 2010

With the explosion of Social Media many bloggers are discovering the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and LinkedIn to name a few. With WordPress plugins you or your readers can share your blog postings with others just with a click of the mouse. Here are 5 plugins for Social Media that I think are the must haves if you are serious about promoting your business or cause. Update: Some of these plugins have been discontinued or have not been updated by their developers. WP FB Like With the exploding popularity of Facebook this is a must have plugin because it post to the king of social media. WP FB Like is easy to setup and will add the Facebook “Like” Button at the top and bottom of all your post or pages. When your reader clicks on the button a link to your blog post is added to their Facebook wall. If their friends click on the link they are sent to your blog and directly to the post. Update: This plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress. Sexy Bookmarks Here is a WordPress plugin that does it all when it comes to sharing out your blog post. Sexy Bookmarks lets you pick and choice the social media networks you’d like your readers to share to. Plus you can drag and drop them into the position you’d like them to display on your page. You can display the social media networks at the top or bottom of your post. There over 80 social networks to choose from but I would suggest that you keep it under 20 so as not to overwhelm your readers. WP Google-Buzz With all the buzz about Google Buzz and Google’s jump into the social media arena you’ll want this plugin for sure. If you prefer to keep a minimalist look to your blog you might want to consider going with just a few buttons. Facebook, Twitter, Digg and maybe even MySpace depending on the demographics of your readers. WP Google-Buzz is easy to configure and has several customization choices to fit any bloggers needs. Update: This plugin has been discontinued Disqus Comment System This plugin replaces the default WordPress commenting system by adding elements that will drive more traffic to your blog. Both new and repeat traffic can be generated from the use of this popular plugin. Most major newspapers and news organizations use Disqus on their websites. Readers can check a like button just like the FB like button and can post their comments to Facebook and Twitter. Readers can also subscribe by email or RSS and get notified when someone replies to their comment. What’s not to like about this plugin? PostRank PostRank shows off the top post on your blog and is updated automatically as the rankings change. The look and feel of the widget can be set to match the color of your WordPress theme. Monitor your PostRank scores and social media analytic metrics right from the WordPress dashboard. The PostRank plugin is easy to install and setup is a breeze. Keep in mind that it might take a few hours for the top post to start displaying. Wibya The ultimate social media plugin for your WordPress blog is the Wibya Toolbar. Integrate both your Twitter and Facebook Fan Page feeds into your blog along with a host of other choices. Show off your YouTube videos or pick what videos you’d like displayed. Customize the look and feel of the toolbar to match your WordPress theme. Do you use any of the above plugins with your WordPress blog? Have something else that’s a favorite? Please feel free to leave a comment below and add to this list by letting others know your recommendations. Interested in other WordPress Plugins? Check out this post from the blog ““ How To Make My Blog Best WordPress plugins ““ 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever If you know someone who could benefit from the information above please feel free to share with others. I appreciate it and hope you’ll return again. Thanks!

Expose your WordPress blog postings with a little Facebook “Like”

September 29, 2010

Now you can get some “Like” on Facebook for your WordPress blog post with a simple plugin. You don’t have to know anything about programming code like HTML. While in your WordPress Dashboard go to Plugins on the left-hand menu. Click the “Add New” button and type in “Facebook Like Button Plugin for WordPress” (current version is 0.4a). There’s also WP FB Like which is easy to setup with a few clicks of the options. Pick whatever one you feel comfortable with but don’t delay on adding this must have plugin. The screenshot above shows you some of the options for one of the FB Like Button plugins. I recommend displaying the button before and after an article for maximum benefit. When a reader “Recommends” or “Likes” your posting a link is posted to their Facebook profile. This is an excellent way to drive traffic from your friends Facebook page to your blog. Do you have a favorite plugin you’d like to recommend to other readers? What do you “Like”? Feel free to comment below and click “Recommend” to recommend this article to your Facebook friends.

Windows Live Writer makes blogging a breeze

August 9, 2010

Are you thinking about starting your own blog but scared off by technology? It might not be as hard as you think when it comes to starting a blog. If you know Microsoft Office you’re already halfway there. If you don’t its still easy when you have tools that simplify the process. Windows Live Writer from Microsoft is one of those must have tools for bloggers. Windows Live Writer lets you manage your blog regardless of where its hosted or the format you are using. I use it to update all my WordPress blogs and an older blog I have on Blogger. But it can be used with LiveJournal, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint and others. Plug-ins are available that give Live Writer even more functionality. Visit the Live Gallery to find out what’s available and to install plug-ins you find beneficial. The toolbar across the top of Windows Live Writer lets you control aspects of the font, text alignment, adding images, tables and inserting other items into your post. You can also cut, paste and undo changes if you aren’t satisfied. The side bar to the right duplicates editing tools such as current drafts, recently posted articles and inserts into your article. It’s really easy to get around the application to create the perfect blog post. The edit mode tab allows you to create your article much like you would create a Word document(add images, hyperlinks, tables and more). Preview mode loads the theme of your blog and gives you a sneak preview of what your readers will see. It might not display a perfect rendition since it depends on the theme you use. The bottom area of the application lets you assign categories, tags, the author, future publish date and more. Those who have a little more knowledge of HTML can click on the Source tab and use HTML code to customize a post before going live. Here’s a great resource for those interested in learning more about HTML. If you have a blog have you used Windows Live Writer? Another blogging tool? Give it and try and see what you think and share some of the articles you’ve written with Windows Live Writer. Please feel free to leave your comments below. Download Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer Plugin Gallery By Dennis J. Smith

10 must have WordPress Plugins

July 22, 2010

Being the most popular blogging platform in the world has its advantages. There are millions of individuals and businesses that are using a WordPress blog. Those blogs are the stepping stones to promoting a business or a cause. Plugins make those blogs even more powerful and there are over 10,000 to choose from. The best thing is they are all free and install in just minutes! We’ll cover some of the best plugins out there that make your blog more attractive to search engines, one that let you send a newsletter and others that will keep your readers on your site longer and some get you “Liked” on Facebook. All in One SEO Pack If you don’t have this plugin installed you should download it today. It is the most downloaded plugin for WordPress blogs. This plugin is used to assist in the search engine optimization of your WordPress blog. Installation only takes a moment and set-up is fairly simple. Find more information here on how to use it once you have the plugin installed. Akismet This plugin prevents spam from being posted to the comments section of your post. The plugin checks your comments against the Akismet server to see if they look like spam. The “Comments”" admin screen lets you review spam comments before they display below your post. Contact Form 7 Those looking for a way to gather customer information need to look no further. The plugin Contact Form 7 uses CAPTCHA in order to prevent non-humans from submitting a form. This plugin even uses Akismet to filter out any spam. It can help you manage multiple contact forms and is customizable for those with a little more experience with code. Contextual Related Posts Keep your readers around longer with a plugin that displays related stories. This plugin will display a list of related post at the end of the post the reader is viewing. The plugin looks at the tags or the current article to match it with similar post the reader might like. Therefore keeping them around longer on your site instead of reading one article and moving on. fbLikeButton Let your readers “Recommend” or “Like” your blog post and share them with one-click to their Facebook friends. The plugin is customizable in look and feel depending on your blogs theme. The button can be displayed before or after your post. This is a great way to draw traffic to your blog from Facebook. Google Analytics for WordPress This plugin bills itself as the most complete Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. Track where your readers are coming from, how long they are staying around on your blog and more. The newest version promises to be faster when loading the tracking code. Newsletter Keep your readers coming back to your blog with a newsletter you compose. It can be sent out on whatever frequency you like. Your readers can opt-in to your newsletter with just a name and email address. This is a very powerful plugin and you can read more information here. WP-DB-Backup Must have plugin to give you piece of mind that your hard work is protected. This plugin is able to backup your core WordPress database on a schedule or when ever you need. You can save it to the server, your PC or have it sent via email to protect your blog post. It also allows you to backup other tables that are related to your WordPress blog. WP Google-buzz Facebook and Twitter still reign when it comes to social media sites. Google might be the powerful search giant but its entry into social media with Google Buzz kind of fizzled. However there is rumor that Google has something new coming down the pipeline. WPtouch iPhone Theme Give your blog that iPhone look and feel for your readers on the go. WPtouch gives your WordPress blog an iPod/iPhone app look. The admin controls for the plug-in give you lots of customization. Viewer can toggle to the normal view for your blog with a flip of a switch. More information”¦ More Resources: WordPress Plugin Directory Affordable WordPress Hosting from GreenHostUSA ““ Starting at less than $10 a month!

Category: Blog Tools