Well the first and most important resource is WordPress itself and you can download the software at WordPress.org.
Spend some time exploring the WordPress site – for free themes, plugins, the documentation, support and forum – anything that you could want to know will be within that website. Allow a few hours to browse, read and learn.
Please note that any links on this page that have * beside them are affiliate links – that means we receive a percentage of any purchase made from that link.
Hosting: our first recommendation is Ezpzhosting – affordable and reliable with brilliant customer service with servers in the UK and in the US. If you decide to trust them with your hosting too, use this link * and coupon code Blogmistress10 for 10% or Blogmistress£5 for £5 off your first order/purchase.
Premium WordPress Themes that we work with:
- Thesis – clean and straightforward
- StudioPress for the popular Genesis theme and more
- iThemes for a similar Builder theme
And we also like WooThemes but need to save more buttons to include that one in our stable…
A wonderfully simple Favicon generator – you just upload your original image and a perfectly sized favicon.ico file is generated. We used this for the W favicon above.
Google’s Keyword Tool – essential both to identify your real keywords and for blog post ideas. This blog post from last year will take you through the basics of using this tool.
Blogging - we know of many resources that can help with your blogging, to suit all approaches and styles. Take a look at these and see what may work for you:
Nikki Pilkington’s 30 Day Blogging Challenge is a good place to start and it’s free at time as at April 2011.
Sarah Arrow has written a book for Advanced Blogging * which gets to the nitty-gritty of blogging once you’ve got to grips with it.
The ProBlogger, Darren Rowse is an essential chap to follow – keep up with his blogs.
And we especially love working with Chris Garrett – take a look at his site – you will find something useful.
My Blog Guest is a great place to find guest bloggers, and places to post your own guest blog posts.
For Internet marketing strategy – Ian Lurie’s Conversation Marketing book is still one we recommend, as is Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug – both essential for anyone with a website.
Of course more useful links will be added here and if you want to suggest any, please pop an email to hello@blogmistress.com with the details. Thank you.
