Today I want to showcase a very nice, clean and good corporate template for business blogs. The theme is on a WordPress platform and it definetly shows the active blog visitor all your nice features have to offer. With a clean blue and white color pack Rushhour is one of the best blog theme additions to have on your corporate business.

Rushhour Features

The main features I want to point out are the very nice content slider on the frontpage the custom category templates that you can use in your testimonials and your portfolio and the three widgets (a 125 ad widget and the 2 tabbed ones).

The theme comes in 2 colors: green and blue. You can set up aditional color options by editing the well commented stylesheet file inside the theme.

Support

As well as I might like a well developed wordpress theme, some of them lack the wigetizing option or the cross browser suport. RH has it all, it is widget ready, it has cross browser support, SEO optimized and gravatar ready.

Other theme options

RH comes packed with the best suport for end user editing. It has a great admin theme option page, a admin ad and banner management section and is code ready for any plugins you use (Twitter for wordpress, WP pagenavi, Easy Contact, Lightbox).

I hope you will buy and download this theme because is a great work and it fits perfectly inside your corporate business.

DOWNLOAD – PREVIEW

Author comment highlighting was never been easyer. I tryed Matt`s technique but it didn’t work because I didn’t find the in my comments.php, so I looked for another way of changing the background color of my author comments in WordPress 2.8.4

You see, as from WordPress 2.7 the developers introduced a special author comment list class that is available only to the author comments. So this means that we will have to set up a css color tag on that class just like in Matt`s example.

So head on and open up your style.css and paste this code:

.bypostauthor {
background-color: #dafbd4 !important;
}

A peel ad is often a great way to advertise a chosen product. It doesn’t matter if it’s your own product or a affiliate product. This type of ad is one of the most successful when it comes to get the users attention. The installation is fairly simple and it can be set up in just 5 min.

If you are the lazy type just like me, go ahead and download this plugin, it does the same thing. If you would like to find out how to code your peel ad here is how to do it:

Download the source files

In order for the ad to work you will need the peel files, that you need to upload to your web server. The best place to upload the peel file is wp-content/themes/your_current_theme/.

Edit the javascript file

Now we need to edit the peel.js javascript file. Open it in your favourite text editor and change the following files:

1. jaaspeel.ad_url – URL you intend to point the ad.
2. jaaspeel.small_path – Path to small.swf
3. jaaspeel.small_image – Path to small.jpg
4. jaaspeel.big_path – Path to large.swf
5. jaaspeel.big_image – Path to large.jpg

Here you have a actual example of how it can be done.

jaaspeel.ad_url = escape('http://www.designstrike.net'); 
jaaspeel.small_path = 'http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/small.swf'; 
jaaspeel.small_image = escape('http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/small.jpg'); 
jaaspeel.big_path = 'http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/large.swf'; 
jaaspeel.big_image = escape('http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/large.jpg');

What files you need to edit

The small image file is the image that the users sees when no hover is applied. You can change this according to your background.

The large image file is the actual ad image that the user sees when it hovers the ad and the peel is released. This can be edited accordingly.

Upload

Upload the entire peel folder inside your theme file. Be shure to specify the paths correctly.

Code insertion inside your theme

Ok, we need to add a little javascript call in your head section of the theme. To do this navigate to your header.php file and insert the following code before the ending head tag.

<script src="<strong>http://www.domain.com/peel.js</strong>" type="text/javascript"></script>

And there you go, instant peel ads without the help of any plugin.

This simple technique will allow your article authors to display a bio and a Twitter link at the end of every article they write. The process is fully automatic, and the authors only need to fill in the required fields on their registration.

This is a simple and effective way to give authors that link love that they deserve for writing on your blog. The tutorial include some simple steps and code to set up. The tutorial is about setting up a author description and bio along with a Twitter link, and finally showing them inside a author box in WordPress.

Let`s get to work

Open up your functions.php and paste in the following code. This code will make a Twitter field that authors need to fill inside the user edit screen of WordPress.

<tr>
    <th><label for="twitter">Twitter</label></th>
 
    <td>
        <input type="text" name="twitter" id="twitter" value="<?php echo esc_attr( get_the_author_meta( 'twitter', $user->ID ) ); ?>" class="regular-text" /><br />
        <span class="description">Please enter your Twitter misname.</span>
    </td>
</tr>

And this is the actual result

Keep in mind that if you want to display something else besides the Tiwtter link, the only thing you need to do is to copy the Twitter code and change every twitter instance inside the code into something unique.

Now we need to save the links

To allow wordpress to save your Twitter link you need to pop this code inside the functions.php file just below the Twitter code we inserted before.

add_action( 'personal_options_update', 'my_save_extra_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile_update', 'my_save_extra_profile_fields' );
 
function my_save_extra_profile_fields( $user_id ) {
 
    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_user', $user_id ) )
        return false;
 
    /* Copy and paste this line for additional fields. Make sure to change 'twitter' to the field ID. */
    update_usermeta( $user_id, 'twitter', $_POST['twitter'] );
}

Now, we need to set up the actual author box we will display at the end of every post that author writes. Here is how you can achieve this:

Paste in the following code inside the functions.php file.

function my_author_box() { ?>
    <div class="author-profile vcard">
        <?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( 'user_email' ), '96' ); ?>
 
        <h4 class="author-name fn n">Written by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></h4>
 
        <p class="author-description author-bio">
            <?php the_author_meta( 'description' ); ?>
        </p>
 
        <?php if ( get_the_author_meta( 'twitter' ) ) { ?>
            <p class="twitter clear">
                <a href="http://twitter.com/<?php the_author_meta( 'twitter' ); ?>" title="Follow <?php the_author_meta( 'display_name' ); ?> on Twitter">Follow <?php the_author_meta( 'display_name' ); ?> on Twitter</a>
            </p>
        <?php } // End check for twitter ?>
    </div><?php
}

Next, let`s add the code inside our single.php file for our author box to show. So open up your single.php and paste the following code just before the comments code:

<?php my_author_box(); ?>

And that is the whole thing. Furthermore you can stylize the author box by adding some extra CSS code inside your style.css. This is my actual code and you can customize it to fit your own needs.

.author-profile    {
padding:10px;
background-color:#c5ecfb;
border: 1px solid #0c529b;
}
 
.author-profile img    {
float:left;
margin-right: 15px;
}
 
.author-name {
font-size:1.9em;
font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;
margin-bottom:2px;
}
 
.author-description {
color:#333333;
font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;
font-size:13px;
margin-top:5px;
}
 
.twitter a {
font-size:1.4em;
color:#005ec1;
text-decoration:underline;
font-weight:bold;
}

And this is the actual result:

To be succesfull with a WordPress blog, you need a fast quality webhost provider that supports those vital components that will make your WordPress blog secure, faster, seo effective and easy to surf.

In this blog post we will present the 5 best hosting providers that you can choose for your WordPress blog hosting solution. Choosing a good webhost is essential for every website, this is because your blog needs speed performance, SEO performance and those small features that include bandwidth, email accounts and MySql databases.

Blue Host

The best WordPress hosting solution, with unlimited hosting space, unlimited bandwidth usage every month, unlimited domains hosted on a single account, a free web domain if you choose to host with Blue Host, 2500 email adresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 99,9% uptime guarantee and has the best support.

SiteGround

A exceptional WordPress hosting solution, with unlimited webspace, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, 99,9% server uptime, Cpanel and Fantastico, unlimited emails, unlimited FTP accounts, blog optimized servers, WordPress installation support, WordPress themes, WordPress tutorials and more.

DreamHost

Providing a WordPress auto-install and upgrade, 1TB of space storage, 10 TB bandwidth, free domain, unlimited databases and 3000 email accounts. With great support this host is highly reccomended. You also receive up to 75$ in AdWords credit.

MediaTemple

A simple host that supports high traffic blogs. It doesn’t matter if you hit first page on digg and you get 10k+ hits, MediaTemplate will provide the best uptime and bandwidth solutions. This is the perfect choice for your blog empire with a lot of hits per day.

GoDaddy.com

Unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited websites, and 1,000 email accounts. With a easy WordPress auto-install and upgrade, Godaddy is the perfect solution for a WordPress host.

A few days back I was asked by a client to set up a hotel reservation form in his WordPress powered website. The problem is easy to solve and implement. This tutorial consists of setting up a WordPress custom page template and some php for a Hotel reservation page.

By the end of this tutorial you will know hot to set up a hotel reservation page, a restaurant reservation page or anything that requires a reservation inside WordPress.

Step #1 – Set up a WordPress custom page template

This is fairly easy to do. Go inside your WP theme root and simply duplicate the page.php file and name it anything you want. I renamed my file reservation.php.

Next you need to delete everything in the page loop. So head over open up your reservations.php and delete this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
			<div class="entry">
				<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;</p>'); ?>
 
				<?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>
 
			</div>
		</div>
		<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
	<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>

The next thing to do is to tell WordPress there is a custom page template named reservations.php. To do this simply copy and paste the following before the get_header(); tag.

<?php
    /*
    Template Name: RESERVATION
 
    */
    ?>

So you got something like this:

    <?php
    /*
    Template Name: REZERVARI
 
    */
    ?>
 
<?php get_header(); ?>

Next go inside your WordPress dashboard and add a new page, on the right you will have a option to select a custom page template. Select RESERVATIONS like in the image below.

Step #2 Setting up the reservation php code

Now the only place you will need to work is the reservation php file. Go and edit the file and copy/paste this code where the page loop was.

<script>
function checkform2 ( form )
{
 
  if (form.nume.value == "") {
    alert( "Va rugam completati campul: Nume!" );
    form.nume.focus();
    return false ;
  }
 
  if (form.prenume.value == "") {
    alert( "Va rugam completati campul: Prenume!" );
    form.prenume.focus();
    return false ;
  }
 
  if (form.telefon.value == "") {
    alert( "Va rugam completati campul: Telefon!" );
    form.telefon.focus();
    return false ;
  }
 
 
 
  return true ;
}
</script>
		<h2>Online Reservation</h2> 
<form name="tstest" method="post" action="/reservation" onsubmit="return checkform2(this)">
 
 
To make a online reservation to one of our hotel rooms please fill out the form below:
 
 
                    <table class="BodyTXT" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="100%">
 
                      <tbody><tr>
 
                        <td width="22%"><div align="left">First Name:*</div></td>
 
                        <td><input name="nume" id="nume" type="text"></td>
 
                        </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Last Name:*</div></td>
 
                        <td><input name="prenume" id="prenume" type="text"></td>
                      </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Phone:*</div></td>
 
                        <td><input name="telefon" id="telefon" type="text"></td>
                      </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">E-mail:</div></td>
 
                        <td><input name="email" id="email" type="text"></td>
                      </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Room number:</div></td>
 
                        <td>
 
						<select name="nr_camere" id="nr_camere">
							<option selected="selected" value="1">1</option>
							<option value="2">2</option>
							<option value="3">3</option>
							<option value="4">4</option>
						</select>						</td>
                      </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Room: </div></td>
 
                        <td>
						<select name="camera">
							<option value="Double">Double</option>
							<option value="Matrimoniala">Apartment</option>
							<option value="Matrimoniala cu jacuzzi">Apartment with jacuzzi</option>
						</select>						</td>
                      </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Arrival date: </div></td>
 
                        <td width="47%"><input name="data_intrare" id="data_intrare" type="text"><script language="JavaScript">
	var o_cal = new tcal ({
		// form name
		'formname': 'tstest',
		// input name
		'controlname': 'data_intrare'
	});
 
	// individual template parameters can be modified via the calendar variable
	o_cal.a_tpl.yearscroll = false;
	o_cal.a_tpl.weekstart = 1;
 
	</script></td>
                        </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Departure Date: </div></td>
 
                        <td width="47%"><input name="data_iesire" id="data_iesire" type="text"><script language="JavaScript">
	var o_cal = new tcal ({
		// form name
		'formname': 'tstest',
		// input name
		'controlname': 'data_iesire'
	});
 
	// individual template parameters can be modified via the calendar variable
	o_cal.a_tpl.yearscroll = false;
	o_cal.a_tpl.weekstart = 1;
 
	</script></td>
                        </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td><div align="left">Other comments: </div></td>
 
                        <td><textarea name="observatii" cols="40" rows="4" id="observatii"></textarea></td>
                        </tr>
                      <tr>
                        <td>&nbsp;</td>
                        <td>* required fields</td>
                        </tr>
 
                      <tr>
 
                        <td></td>
 
                        <td><input name="trimitecontact" id="trimitecontact" value="yes" type="hidden">
 
 
                            <input name="Submit" class="RedButton" value="Send" type="submit"></td>
                        </tr>
                    </tbody></table>
 
 
      </form>
 
 
 <?
if ($_POST['trimitecontact'] == "yes")
{
	$nume = $_POST['nume'];
	$prenume = $_POST['prenume'];
	$telefon = $_POST['telefon'];
	$email = $_POST['email'];
	$cam = $_POST['nr_camere'];
	$tip = $_POST['camera'];
	$di = $_POST['data_intrare'];
	$die = $_POST['data_intrare'];
	$mesaj = $_POST['observatii'];
 
	$message = "This reservation is from:\n" .
	"------------------------------------------------------------\n" .
	"First Name: $nume\n" .
	"Last Name: $prenume\n" .
	"Phone: $telefon\n" .
	"Email : $email\n".
	"Room Number: $cam\n" .
	"Room: $tip\n" .
	"Arrival Date: $di\n" .
	"Departure Date: $die\n" .
	"Other Comments : $mesaj\n".
	"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------\n" ;
	$uself = 1;
	$subject = "New room reservation at your hotel";
$headersep = (!isset( $uself ) || ($uself == 0)) ? "\r\n" : "\n" ;
$http_referrer = getenv( "HTTP_REFERER" );
$mailto = 'CHANGE@THIS.TOYOUREMAIL' ;
$ip = getenv(REMOTE_ADDR);
mail($mailto, $subject, $message,
	"From: \"$nume\" <$email>" . $headersep . "Reply-To: \"$nume\" <$email>" . $headersep . "X-Mailer: chfeedback.php 2.08" );
echo '<strong> Quote sent</strong>';				
}
?>
 
   <span class="text_contact">
 
The reservation will be considered after receiving payment.
                  </span>

And this is the result:

Note: You must set the action=”/reservation” of the form imput to match your custom page php name. Ex. if I have a custom page php called joomla.php i would rename the action to action=”/joomla”.

Remember to chage the $mailto = ‘CHANGE@THIS.TOYOUREMAIL’ ; to your desiered email where the messages will come.

When you develop a new blog, often, the big question that comes in to the mind is where and how can you get readers and trusted visitors to read your blog posts. Well, recently I found a great plugin for WordPress that helps you achieve and increase your blog readers.

WP Greet Box is a wordpress plugin that greets your blog visitors on every post page based on what place they are coming from.

This is how it works: let`s say a visitor comes from google on one of your blog posts, then the plugin enables a message to be displayed informing the google user to subscribe to the RSS feed to stay updated.

Here is one of the messages for a Google visitor:

There are different types of greeting messages based on the place that the visitor is coming from. For example if a visitor comes from Twitter, the message is asking the visitor if it would like to retweet the post just like in the image below:

The great thing about the plugin is that it really increase blog exposure and readers, so it`s a new must on my wordpress plugin list.

Customizing and configuration

There are plenti of customization options for this plugin. You can disable/enable greeting messages on posts/pages, you can detect the visitor’s search keywords from major search engines and automatically display related posts under the greeting message and many more.

Here is a list of all the plugin`s features

Also, you can create new greeting messages

You can personalize your greeting message by creating a new one for any referrer you like just like in the picture below:

Enough said, just go ahead and download the plugin. Also you can find the documentation for the plugin on the developer`s page and if you would like to donate a coffe for this amazing plugin just make your way here.

Everybody loves SEO, and everybody loves to have a well read blog or website. In the digital world having a well read blog is not all about writing cool, original and unique stuff. You need to make a sacrifice to the all mighty god known as Google, and that sacrifice is known as SEO.

Here is how you can set up some really nice features inside your wordpress blogs, whouth the use of plugins, just only clean harmful code. These tips can make the difference between your blog and your neighbours blog, so follow them closely.

To understand the basic of search engine optimization you need 3 things: a post description, post keywords and some very nice URL set up.

How to embed a meta description inside a wordpress template

First open up your header.php file inside your theme folder, and just after the title tag insert this variable:

 
<meta name='description" content="
    <? if(is_category() || is_archive()) {
        echo the_excerpt();
    } else {
      echo "This is my default description to use if a post or page doesn't have an excerpt";
     } ?>
    " />

This is the description mini-loop, to use simply write a description in the post excerpt inside the post creation section of the wordpress administration.

How to embedd the keywords inside a wordpress theme

Open up your header.php and after the meta description tag we reentered before just paste in this code:

<meta name="keywords" content="<?echo single_cat_title("");?>, <?echo     single_post_title("");?>" />

This will insert the category title and the single post title as keywords for your post so make shure you write relevant stuff in the two titles.

How to set up search engine friendly URL-s in WordPress

Just make your way inside the wordpress administration -> Settings -> Permalink and insert this variable inside the custom structure field: /%category%/%postname%.html

And you have a decent SEO optimized blog. Just make shure to write relevant and unique stuff inside the excerpt and the title sections. The rest is up to you.

Want to automate things?

Just download All in one SEO pack and let the work be done for you.

Reader Feedback

Quote from Cosmin
I would add to the permalink structure: if you don’t really care about using categories in your URL, you can disregard the %category%

I’ve seen this done on major blogs and it seems to help. Of course, this is not a decisive factor – just an idea that in some cases I’ve seen to help.

Having your social account present inside your blog is great for connecting with your friends and letting them know what you`r doing. Everybody loves sharing stuff on Twitter or photos on flickr, so why don’t you include your own photos and tweets inside Wordpres.

So here is a list of WordPress themes with flickr and twitter options to integrate inside your blog. You can embed Twitter and Flickr trough plugins and we will list some of the best to flickrize and twitterize your WordPress theme.

Themes with Twitter and Flickr support

Lunated
A free wordpress theme with premium features such as animated gallery, post thumbnail, flickr photos, latest tweets, social bookmark, popular posts and more.

Titan
Features a robust theme options menu allowing you to integrate your Flickr photos, Twitter updates, and Feedburner email updates and even more.

WordPress Twitter and Flickr plugins

Here are some great plugins to integrate inside your WordPress theme for Flickr and Twitter updates.

Flickr Post
Automatically includes specially tagged Flickr photographs in WordPress posts. For a photo to appear, it must be tagged with the word ‘wordpress’ and with the post slug of the post.

Flickr Widget
A simple WordPress widget that displays your latest Flickr photos.

WP-Flickr
WP-Flickr also allows you to browse and add photos from your Public Flickr Photostream, Favorites or Sets, straight into your post or pages, directly from the WordPress admin interface.

Twitter Tools
Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Twitter Widget
Adds a sidebar widget to display Twitter updates (uses the Javascript Twitter ‘badge’)

TweetMeme
The TweetMeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

If you have other plugins or themes that you would like to share drop a link in the comments below and I will surely add them to the list.

First of all I want to know if someone out there has made any money with a blogging platform like wordpress and a get rich follow-up program. These programs can always guarantee that you will make 123,213213.122 $ in just 6 months with no work what so ever.

Well tell you the truth, I never bought any of those programs, and never made a dime with any of the schemes (I`ve read them tho). The only money I make is explained in the points below so make shure to read them carefully.

There are a definite few ways of getting your blog monetized. Some are harder to implement, some are easier to implement.

My list of ways to make money blogging on WordPress

#1. Adsense. The easiest and best performing ad solution for any blog (except with adult content). Adsense is the Google Advertising Center where you get paid for displaying ads on your blog. It`s as simple as that, and you can head over and sign-up for a Adsense account right away.

#2. Chitika. The program doesn’t work on every blog, and it has a minimum traffic level for acceptance, Chitika made my day on some other websites that I helped develop, and along with Adsense it`s a great earner so I would recommend checking it out.

#3. Text Link Ads. Wee, TLA, one of my best earners in the text link ads for blogs. More and more users say that TLA is a better network aven than Adsense when it comes to earning with text. Another great tool is the feedvertising (Rss feed ads) that TLA includes. You don’t need to be a traffic guru to be accepted, but a little PR and some SE presence is required.

#4. Envato Network. This is affiliate money making with Envato. You know the network has 5 websites, and you can promote stuff on all 5. A theme website, flash website, audio, graphic and video. The income is very very good if you know hot to do it. And here is how you should do it with the help of a free report.

#5. Private Ad Deals. Make shure to include some options for these also. They can bring a small amount of income but well worth it if you have a decent traffic blog. you can automate thing by signing up @ buysellads.com

These 5 things monetize my blogs every month, more or less. I do not spend a dime on paid links, AdWords or any other promotional services. The only things I bought are the Problogger Ebook – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and the preorder for the SmashingBook.

Have fun making money with your blog, and drop me a line below if you found something interesting, I truly appreciate it.