Adding code to your WordPress post can be easy and pain free… or it can be a huge hassle! I originally thought it would be easy enough to just add a new plugin that will allow code to be wrapped in a tag, which will output the exact text that was entered.

I unfortunately found out that many of the plugins available for this need, don’t always seem to work correctly.

If you’re going to be constantly displaying code in almost every post, you may want to try out the plugins that are available. However, if you are just going to be displaying code every once in a while, I highly recommend you use the simple text converter HTMLizer by www.onlinetools.org.

Display Code, The Easy Way

HTMLizer is a simple form that converts all of the special characters in your code into HTML standard code. Its as simple as copy, paste, cut, and then paste. Now that is much easier then spending 30 minutes trying to get a plugin to behave.

Try out HTMLizer and let me know how it works for you. HTMLizer no longer exist, but here is a site that also has an html encoder.

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The State of Affairs is officially 1 year old this month and I was thinking of ways that we could celebrate all of the work, time, and commitment we have put into growing this site. At first I couldn’t think of anything symbolic enough worth noting, but after a while I was able to come up with this list of things you can do to celebrate your blogs first birthday!

1. Donate to all of the plugin developers that have written the plugins you use on your blog.
2. Take a week off from blogging. Celebrate with a break from the usual.
3. Buy each writer a cup of coffee. If you’re the only writer buy your self one and a croissant to go with it!
4. Go for a hike. If you don’t want to take a whole week off from blogging, at lease take one day off and go enjoy some sun.
5. Redesign your site or just do some rearranging. Nothing like a nice spring cleaning for a blog.
6. Congratulate yourself on “sticking-with-it” for the past year. Honestly, most blogs don’t make it a year and the fact that yours did signifies your commitment and determination.

Once you are done celebrating, your next focus should be on where you want your blog to go over the next year. There is nothing wrong with planning ahead and getting a early start right?

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Coming up with ideas and topics for new articles can sometimes be very easy, while at other times can be quite demanding. I find the best way to brainstorm for topics is by simply browsing the web for articles that haven’t been covered yet.

The problem with this approach is that it’s not very goal-driven. I am simply looking for a topic, not looking to write on one yet. This leads to many ideas popping up then simply fading away as I start twittering, checking email, and viewing stats or whatever else distracts my attention.

This is why I suggest every blogger starts keeping notes to help grow their blog and bring focus to writing content. Even if you only note down 4 or 5 words a day, such as “comparison of muscle memory techniques”, you will still be putting time into creating content.

Recommended Note Taking Software

There are two programs that are free and readily available I recommend for note taking. One is a self contained program called KeepNote and the other is a Firefox browser addon called ScribeFire.

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The most popular way to add an online store to your WordPress blog is to use the WP E-Commerce plugin. However, recently (Nov 08′) Roya Khosravi has released a new plugin called WP-osCommerce (WP.osC) that should be replacing the old standard very soon.

So what is the difference between these two plugins? Quite a bit actually. These two plugins have very little to do with each other except they both allow you to easily add a store to your WordPress blog.

WP E-Commerce plugin VS. WP-osCommerce (WP.osC)

WP E-Commerce plugin is a proprietary software that was built with a goal of getting the user to upgrade the plugin for a fee, while the WP-osCommerce (WP.osC) plugin was built using a completely free and open-source software called OS-Commerce.

WP E-Commerce is buggy and has no community support behind it. If something doesn’t work right with your site, where do you go for help? I feel the lack of support and buggy nature of WP E-Commerce rules it out as a reliable means to create an online store.

Stay Open Source!

OS-Commerce is a highly popular and free software to create an online store. The WP-osCommerce (WP.osC) plugin allows you to integrate OS-Commerce directly into your blog and keep the WordPress theme system. The online community support is huge for OS-Commerce and even WP.osC has started a new and growing community for support.

Where do I get WP-osCommerce (WP.osC)

You can download WP.osC from http://wposc.com/. There are many helpful tutorials on how to set up WP.osC as well as a community forum to help you get started there.

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If you are looking to or have already started a new blog and are struggling to find a niche topic to stick to, then this list might spark some ideas for you to ponder. Topics are in no particular order.

What ideas do you have for your new blog?

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Roya Khosravi has just released a great, new plugin for WordPress that makes creating and distributing your blogs custom Google Gadget incredibly simple. WP-iGoogle creates a dynamic Google Gadget that displays your latest post by date with your Gravatar image.

You can try The State of Affairs Gadget right now to see how it looks on your iGoogle page. Pretty slick huh? You can also add your custom Gadget to your webpage or offer the option for your readers to add it to their webpage.

Roya even made it easy to submit your custom Google Gadget to the Google Gadget Directory by automatically generating the link for you on the plugins settings page.

So far I give this plugin 5 stars and have found it incredibly easy to use. Drop me a comment below or send me a email if your interested in knowing how to edit the plugin so you can submit a screenshot of your Gadget to the Google Directory.

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Here is a list of some really great plugins that will definitely help your site rank higher under search engines. These plugins are not ranked on performance but more overall features.

Add Link Attribute

This plugin will allow you to add a link attribute such as nofollow to any template generated list, such as pages or blogroll, without having to edit the wordpress core. Next time you won’t have to reset all of them when you upgrade to a new wordpress version.

Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button

Add to any will allow you to put a sharebookmarksubscribe button on the bottom of every post, helping your visitors share and save your site. This is great for building up link backs to boost your SERP.

All in One SEO Pack

With All in One SEO you can easily add titles, descriptions, and tags for search engines to read. It also helps deal with duplicate content issues. If you get any of the plugins on this page, get this one.

Google XML Sitemaps

Automatically notify Google, MSN, Yahoo, and ASK.com about changes to your site. This plugin will build a sitemap according your preferences and automatically submit it to the major players like Google and Yahoo.

Nofollow Links

With the Nofollow Links plugin you can choose on a link by link basis which links in your blogroll with carry the nofollow attribute. Some similar plugins only allow you to nofollow all or none of the links. This one allows you to select the individual links you want to nofollow.

Nofollow Tag Cloud

Simply adds nofollow to all of your tagcloud links. Some would argue against this one and some would argue for.

Noindex Archives

A WordPress plugin to add “noindex” attribute to archive links. This plugin helps with duplicate content issues.

Permalink Redirect

With the Permalink Redirect plugin you can be assured that there will be only one link associated with each blog post. Great for fighting duplicate content. All of this is done with a 301 permalink redirection so it will still pass page rank.

Robots Meta

Robots Meta has too many great features to list. One of its main benefits though is to choose the robots meta information for individual pages and post. Check out the site for more info.

SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images automatically updates all of your sites images with ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set.

SEO Slugs

The SEO Slugs WordPress plugin removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs which looks nicer, ranks higher in search results, and has a much higher click-through rate when compared to the longer versions.

SEO Title Tag

This plugin is similar to the ALL in One SEO plugin except it focus more directly on Post titles and Post slugs. A great feature of SEO Title Tags is it’s mass edit mode where you can list and edit many different post titles at once. Great for Spring Cleaning.

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It’s been 4 days since our last post here at The State of Affairs, but not to worry we have returned. I personally have been quite busy with a few different design projects. One that I am especially excited about is Mtsidesign.com which is moving to a new WordPress powered theme.

I had been wanting to convert the static HTML version of Mtsidesign to a dynamic WordPress installation, but held back due to my lack of knowledge of how to fully utilize WordPress as a CMS. I must say that it was a learning process, but also a great creative expansion.

With the new versions of WordPress (I believe 2.5+), setting up any site you want possible is not a far fetched dream and you get to keep all of the great plugins and SEO options with wordpress. I’ll get into the details on my experiences in my next post on how to utilize WordPress’ as a complete CMS.

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Performancing Ads is a new advertising network that can help you make money online with your website or blog. If you want to Make Money With PerformancingAds I recommend you sign up for a publisher account on their homepage.

A publisher account allows advertisers to buy ad space on your site in areas that you designate for ad space. For example you could have 4, 125×125 ads placed into your side bar and get payed by advertisers that book that space. One great feature is that you set the price for your ad space.

Another nice feature of signing up with Performancing ads is that you can participate in their Exchange ads program. How this works is, if their is unbooked adspace on your site, other ads will be shown in that space. When these ads are show on your site you receive credits. These credits are then converted into adspace for your advertisements on other sites.

So if you’re ready to make money With PerformancingAds I recommend you sign up today. It’s free and a great place to start monetizing your blog.

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If your looking to start a newsletter or simply organize your current mailing system I recommend you check out PoMMo, formerly bMail project. Basically PoMMo is a mass mailing program that will allow you to track, organize and reply to all of your subscribers with ease. It stores all of its information in a sql database and provides a attractive management panel that makes setup and mailing a breeze.

Want to see it in action? Sign up for The State of Affairs newsletter! Also the team over at PoMMo has set up a demonstration account at http://try.pommo.org/ so you can get a feel for the admin panel to see how great it actually works.

One of the nicest features I have found is the option to group subscribers into different catagories so you don’t have to send the same email to every subscriber. You can actually customize a different email to send to one group and send a completely different one to another.

PoMMo is freely provided under the GPL. I will admit PoMMo has some small flaws in it here and there, but what software doesn’t? Especially free software. So far it has worked without a hitch since I launched it a month ago so I think its fair enough to say I recommend you give it a try if your looking into starting a mailing list or newsletter and are trying to avoided that whole “cost” thing.

Read more about PoMMo on their Homepage.

Let me know about your experiances with PoMMo here by leaving a comment

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