Create Online Training Courses With WordPress

I love WordPress, and I am still amazed at the creative ways people are finding to use it. I came across a plugin today that got me excited enough to write a quick post about it. Have you ever wanted to create an online training course? If not, you should think about the advantages for a moment.

Advantages To Creating Online Training Courses

• Demonstrate your expertise in a subject – Great for showing your authority (Authority is a positive Google algo signal)
• Keep visitors engaged; Gives them a reason to stay on your site longer and come back often. (Another positive signal to Google)
• This is the type of content that is extremely sharable and linkable. (Say it with me: another positive signal!)
• If you’re looking for a new way to monetize your site or blog, this is something visitors will gladly pay for, assuming you create a rockin’ training course!

The name of this plugin is WP Courseware. It is extremely well-priced at only $39.99 for a single site license, which allows you to create unlimited courses, modules, and units, or just $99 to use it on as many sites as you wish.

Here is a list of …

WordPress Plugin Makes Beautiful Call To Action Buttons Easily

Want to make beautiful Call to Action buttons without having to code them? MaxButtons Pro might be just what you’ve been looking for. I love WordPress plugins that make things easy, and I love shortcodes. MaxButtons Pro lets you create awesome buttons without having to fiddle with CSS code, and when you’re satisfied with the button you’ve created, the plugin gives you a shortcode to use anywhere on your site. Let’s see how it works.

First, I wanted to create a beautiful Call to Action button for my novel, The Grave Blogger. Here is the button I created with MaxButtons Pro in about 20 seconds. Notice that it changes color when you hover over it.

After installing the plugin, I went to the plugin’s admin area and clicked the Add New button.

I filled out a few fields until the button was just the way I wanted it.

Finally, I clicked the Save button and was given the shortcode to use, which is how you are seeing the button above.

Of course, there are lots of options making it easy to change the buttons colors, and you can even add optional icons to your buttons as …

How To Convert A Static HTML Site To WordPress

UPDATE: After you use the instructions below to convert your content to WordPress, be sure to check out my post on how to convert your design to a WordPress theme in 10 seconds flat as well! Or if you just want to skip my post, and jump straight to the design conversion tool, you can do that too.

Recently, on a forum I frequent, an old acquaintance asked how to convert one of his old Dreamweaver sites to WordPress, with the least amount of effort involved. At first, I thought it would be impossible to make it an easy task, but after seeing some other responses, I realized I was wrong. Although the process isn’t completely trivial, it can be done with a lot less effort than I’d originally imagined. And it’s not just limited to Dreamweaver. Nearly any site could conceivably be converted to WordPress this way. (Note that I’ve included some reasons at this end of this post as to why you might want to carefully consider the ramifications of this).

Convert Websites To WordPress

If you have an old non-CMS site lying around that you wish you could convert to WordPress, without too much hassle, this …

Beginner’s Guide To Blogging With WordPress

Introduction

WordPress is designed to be simple to use, however it is also “feature-full”, so utilizing or even understanding all that WordPress is capable of can be a large and daunting task. In other words, the rich features of WordPress can sometimes mask its underlying simplicity. This guide is meant to reinforce the basics of using WordPress, push the complexities into the background, and enable beginners to focus solely on the simple task at hand – creating content. Much of this post will be a visual guide using screenshots of a brand new, self-hosted WordPress installation. Ready? Let’s go.

The Dashboard

When you first log into your blog’s admin (http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/), you are presented with your Dashboard. Unfortunately, there is so much on the Dashboard that a first-timer becomes immediately overwhelmed. So feel free to explore it later but for now, just concentrate on the key areas, and ignore the rest, as the screenshot shows below. Note that the upper section is intended as a newbie Help section. Once you’re comfortable, you can hide that section by clicking the “Dismiss this message” link.

Because a brand new install of WordPress comes with an example post and an example page already installed, …

Convert Existing HTML Site Design To A WordPress Theme In 10 Seconds

One of my most popular posts lately is my guide that shows you how to convert a static HTML site to WordPress. In that post, however, I note that it doesn’t convert the actual design of the site; it converts the content. You’ll need to start fresh with a new theme or convert the design yourself. This post is the answer to that problem.

How To Convert Your Existing HTML Site Design or Template To A WordPress Theme in 10 Seconds Flat – For Free

There’s a new tool out there folks, and it works really well. I’ve tested it and I’m going to show you step by step screenshots of the design conversion I just did for one of my old HTML, hand-coded, non-WordPress sites. Now remember, this is just the DESIGN portion. I wanted to convert the design to a WordPress theme, and the Themematcher tool worked amazingly well. Take a look for yourself. I’ll show you what my old site looks like, then show you each step I took to convert it to a WordPress theme, and how it looks afterwards. Let’s begin.

Screenshot Of My Old Site Design

Enter The URL Of Site Design You …

Brilliant Landing Page Plugin For WordPress Increases Conversions

You’ve written great content, socialized it like crazy, guest posted, generated backlinks, promote awesome products, and you’re now tearing your hair out trying to figure out how to get your blog to make more money. Instead of spending all your time trying to get more and more traffic to your blog, spend a little time increasing conversions on the traffic you already receive. As @GrowMap says:

“It does not matter how much traffic you receive if those visitors do not take the desired action. … Investing in increasing your conversion rate will pay off much faster and better than increasing your traffic.”

Use Effective Landing Pages To Increase Conversions

If your goal is to increase conversions of any kind – sales or giveaways of your own product(s) or affiliate product(s), lead generations, newsletter signups, etc., then you need a page that is designed specifically to convert that traffic. Traditionally, that meant spending considerable time becoming an expert or considerable money hiring an expert in landing page conversions. Those days are gone. If you aren’t a landing page expert, and would rather not spend a lot of time or tons of money, you can still create an effective landing page on …

My 10 Favorite WordPress Premium Theme Sites

WordPress premium themes have come a long way in the last few years. They started out by offering just a few special options or a new type of design not commonly used in free themes. But over the years, they’ve blossomed into offering strikingly beautiful, creative, and ingenious designs. Below are my favorite sites to browse when I’m kicking back on a rainy day, looking for inspiration or ideas for my “next big idea”. The people behind the designs deserve awards. Many of them are incredible.

Themeforest

Themeforest offers a dizzying array of themes to choose from, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one I didn’t like. This one might just be my favorite of them all.

iThemes

iThemes has some very nice themes, with two that are different, in that they have the ability to be extremely flexible (Flexx and Builder).

Woo Themes

Woo Themes are a favorite amongst many WordPress aficionados because it offers monthly membership to get new themes each month. You can still opt to just buy a theme without membership, however, and they are always giving free themes with each purchase, so good deals abound here.

Kadom

Kadom Themes hit my radar because I …

6 Powerful WordPress Plugins For Extreme Content Control

If you’ve longed for really powerful plugins to help you manipulate your blog content in ways that WordPress doesn’t normally allow, you’ll probably wish you’d known about these 6 free plugins long ago.

Show Content Based On Certain Conditions

Below are 3 plugins that allow you to show or hide content based upon certain conditions. Each is useful in different circumstances.

Optional Content adds a button to the Visual Editor toolbar that allows you to select from a dropdown list of conditions.

Display content within an individual post or page based on the following conditions:

• Manual on/off setting
• Before, after, or between specific times (repeated daily)
• Before, after or between specific dates

Based on if the visitor is logged in

• Based on a specific user (by user id)
• Based on GET variables (variables passed on the URL in the form of http://www.example.com/about/?test=value where the variable is ‘test’)
• Based on POST variables (variables sent via forms)
• Based on REQUEST variables (either GET or POST variables)

One of many examples might be the need to display a coupon code within a post only if today’s date is between two particular dates, but have it automatically hide that content on all other dates.…

Using WordPress As A Traditional CMS

People often want to create a site that doesn’t look like a blog. Usually, if you ask them enough questions, you’ll find that they want to have a site that mostly consists of “static” pages (content which doesn’t change very often). They want a home page that isn’t a list of reverse chronological, ever-changing blog posts. They probably want to include a blog as a subsection of the site, but not have it be the focal point of the site.

These people usually either create static HTML sites (difficult to manage), or they use a traditional CMS application. A CMS allows them to dynamically generate and manage “static” (or rarely-changing) content. They usually don’t consider using WordPress to create and manage these types of sites. Because WordPress has its roots as a blogging tool, it can easily be overlooked as excellent way to manage content of any sort. Don’t be fooled by its normal use as a blog-centric content manager. Content is content, and WordPress rocks as an easy way to manage content.

It only takes a few additional steps to rid WordPress of its blog-centric roots and use it as a “traditional” CMS. The key is to use Pages…

6 Great Lesser-Known WordPress Theme Packages or Clubs

I love premium WordPress themes. Generally, they are well-designed and come with lots of great options. The drawback, of course, is that they cost money, and if you tend to create blogs often, that adds up pretty quickly. For those people who love to create new blogs, or are simply theme junkies, theme clubs/memberships or theme packages are great deals. With theme packages, you pay one price to download all the current (and sometimes future) themes available from the site. With club memberships, the same applies, however, you also pay a monthly fee to download future themes, get extra support, etc. Either way, these kinds of bulk theme deals can be extemely economical for people who frequently need new themes.

There are already some well-known theme clubs / packages, but those aren’t the ones I’m highlighting here. I’ve looked around to find six lesser known theme sites that have great package or club prices, with nice themes to go along with those nice prices.

General Facts About These Packages and Memberships

One major positive about each of these six deals: All the themes are GPL licensed, enabling you to use them as often as you wish on as many domains …