A lot of people are under the misconception that you can easily set up a blog and start making money from it overnight, and I want to dispel that myth.

It is possible to make a healthy side income stream from blogging, and there are the exceptions to the rule that do it quite successfully, but I would say that only 1 in 1000 people stand a chance at making a living for themselves solely from writing a blog. People ask me how I make my living from my blog, and the fact is, while I make a small stream of income from recommending useful products to you guys, and from a few generous donations for my theme, the fact is, for the last five years, I’ve always made the majority of my income through my client web development projects and marketing consulting gigs.

A blog isn’t a business. But, it is a stellar supplement to your business.

Think of a blog simply as a platform for you to broadcast whatever it is you have to share. Whether that’s simply your thoughts, or whether you use it to promote the projects you work on, the business(es) you create, or the services you provide, etc.

A blog is your online business card.

Every time I receive an email from someone new, asking for feedback, or a favor, or for a partnership of some sort, the first thing I always look for is 1) what email address is this coming from? OR 2) is there a website in their signature? Is this person serious enough to invest in their own domain name, into building their own headquarters on the web?

A blog or website of your own is a place you can share your ideas, expertise, and build credibility. For me, since I started Thrilling Heroics nearly five years ago, it has opened the door to many opportunities for me. I’ve made friends with readers and other bloggers from around the globe, I’ve met entrepreneurs in a handful of countries, I’ve been asked to write for various publications, I’ve found cofounders and partnered on a number of fun projects, and I’ve expanded my visibility online to the point that clients frequently come to me, and I’ve worked with organizations on five continents.

Whether you’re a freelancer, aiming to create and sell a product, or working as a virtual assistant, you won’t find opportunity if nobody is paying any attention to you. Because blogs are such a powerful platform for building an audience, even building a small following is invaluable for anyone seeking to earn an online income.

Establishing your own online headquarters is imperative to your success.

Before we get started, what I want you to do first is click here and read these 9 things you should think about before you get started blogging.

That said, let’s dig into the easiest content management software that will allow you to start a blog, upload your own media, and manage your new website with very little technical knowledge.

WordPress

WordPress is a free, open source publishing platform. Open source means you’re free to add and change the software, and for that reason, there is a massive community of software developers constantly improving the WordPress software, which is good for us if we want to build our own business site, and it means there’s a lot of support available out there, plus tons of free themes and plugins to increase the functionality and aesthetic of your new site.

You’ll need to purchase your own domain name and web hosting, and install the self-hosted WordPress software available at WordPress.org.

Once you install your own WordPress software on your domain (explained below), the WordPress admin panel is web-based, which means you can access and update your site from anywhere. And the biggest benefit of content management systems like WordPress is that they separate the layout and the design of your page from the content. In other words, once you have a suitable design for your new website, anyone can easily update the content of your site! Unlike programs like DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage, even the most non-technical person can create, edit, or update as much content as they want, and never have to worry about corrupting the structure of the webpage!

Purchasing Your Domain Name & Web Hosting

There are literally thousands of web hosting companies to choose from, and combing through them can be an intimidating task if you’re fairly new to this stuff.

If you’re planning on running a WordPress-powered site, make damned sure you find a WordPress-friendly host! Avoid GoDaddy and 1&1, for example, which have awkward backends and aren’t particularly well-suited for Linux hosting (which is what WordPress plays nicely with).

There are many options out there (for much more information about comparing hosts, see here), but through my experience with my own sites and working on behalf of many clients, BlueHost offers the ideal low-cost hosting for WordPress-powered websites. They run fast, reliable servers that are configured precisely how they should be for an optimized blog, and they’ve got free, attentive and helpful 24-hour, 365 days-a-year phone support in case anything ever goes wrong. They’ve provided the most helpful customer service of any host I’ve ever worked with, with the quickest turnaround.

1. Open your web browser and click HERE to visit the BlueHost website.
2. From the BlueHost homepage, click on the big green “Sign Up Now” button in the center of the page.
3. You get one free domain name for life with your BlueHost package. If you haven’t already registered your own domain name (i.e., your own .com), enter it in the “I Need a Domain Name” section.  OR  If you do already own your own domain name, enter it in the “I Have a Domain Name” section. Click “Next”.
4. Double-check that your domain name is correct and complete the Account Information section.
5. Choose your desired hosting package and enter your Billing Information.
6. Read the “Service Agreement” carefully, then check the box and click “Next”.
7. Once your purchase is completed, you will receive an email from BlueHost with your new log-in details.

With your BlueHost package, you’ll get one free domain name for life, unlimited disk storage space, tons of email addresses, unlimited transfer bandwidth, you can host unlimited domains on 1 account, and you can have up to 50 MySQL databases (which you’ll need for each installation of the WordPress software).

NOTE: If you want more than one dot com, or if you’re the kind of person who likes to purchase domain names in bulk, I’ve found that NameCheap tends to be the best domain registrar around, with the best prices. You can then easily transfer your domains to BlueHost by following this video tutorial and using the instructions for your particular domain registrar here.

Installing the WordPress Software

With BlueHost, you get an easy, one-click WordPress auto-install! It’s ridiculously simple:

1. Click HERE to visit the BlueHost page.
2. Login to the BlueHost “Control Panel” at the top-right corner of the page using your chosen domain name and the password you chose when you just set up your new hosting account.
3. Once you’re inside the control panel, follow this easy video tutorial.

The Alternate, EASY 3-Minute WordPress Site Setup!

Who has the time to set up hosting accounts, mess with code, or hire programmers and designers? If you’re less technically inclined and you know you simply want just one domain name with an easy, done-for-you WordPress site set up on it, you can instantly create a professional, SearchEngine Optimized, fully-loaded WordPress-powered business website on your own domain name without fussing over all the hosting details, domain registration, software installation, and so on, with Free Blog Factory.

You’ll get a suite of the best premium plugins necessary for creating an optimized site (including many of my top recommended plugins below), and use their wide range of premium professional WordPress themes (you get access to many of the paid themes listed below too) or choose from thousands of others available. Additionally, you get access to over 35 professionally recorded video tutorials that will teach you everything you need to know about getting the most from WordPress, and several more additional business resources and $100 in Google Adwords credits!

Free Blog Factory is an easy, automatic setup that gives you everything you need to run a killer WordPress site!

Configuring WordPress

Your WordPress dashboard will usually be somewhere like http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ so once you’re logged in here after installing your blog, the first thing I’d do is bookmark that link so you can always easily come back to your dashboard.

1. Next, click on “Settings” in the sidebar on the left of your dashboard.
2. To change the title or tagline of your site (as set up during the installation process), click on “General”.
3. Enter your desired title for your site in the “Blog Title” field and your tagline in the “Tagline” field. Click Save.
4. Next, to control the ability for readers to comment on your site, click on “Discussion”.
5. To be sure that your site appears in the search engines, click on “Privacy” and make sure that “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers” is selected.
6. Next, click on “Permalinks”. This is the URL that will be used for your posts and sub pages all across your site. The default permalink is set to like like http://yourdomain.com/?p=123. To help with search engine optimization and the ability for search engines to index your website easier, I recommend selecting the “custom” option and pasting in /%postname%

If you’d rather display a static homepage like your “About me” page or a services page rather than your most recent blog posts, click here for instructions. And see here for more details about the settings tabs in your WordPress dashboard.

Installing Plugins for Added Functionality

1. To find and install a new plugin, click on the dropdown next to “Plugins”, then click on “Add new”.
2. To install a new plugin within your WordPress dashboard, find the plugin you want using the Search box. (See below for a list of plugins I recommend).
3. Scroll down to find your desired plugin and click on the orange “Install” button next to it.
4. In the popup window, click “Install now”.
5. Once the plugin software is installed, you will need to activate the plugin you’ve just downloaded by clicking on the “Activate Plugin” link next to it.

8 Best WordPress Plugins for 2011

• Contact Form 7 – a powerful contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
• Defensio Anti-Spam – an advanced spam filtering web service that learns and adapts to your behaviors as well to those of your readers and commenters. To use this plugin, you need to obtain a free API Key.
• Digg Digg – adds social bookmarking buttons to your blog posts.
• Hyper Cache – the best damn cacheing system I’ve found for WordPress, to improve it’s performance and save your server resources.
• Jetpack – Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress blog. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a free WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users
• SEO Smart Links – provides automatic SEO benefits for your site by automatically linking certain keywords across your site to your desired target pages.
• WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. This is really important in case something happens, to always maintain an automated backup of your blog history.
• WordPress SEO – this one blows the old standard All-In-One SEO out of the water! WordPress is very search engine friendly by default, but this plugin from Joost de Valk covers pretty much everything you need for strong SEO, including XML sitemaps.

Simply do a search for these by title under the “Plugins” > “Add New” tab.

Changing Your Blog Design

WordPress makes it very easy to change the design, look and feel of your blog using themes. There are hundreds of free blog themes as well as many incredible paid premium themes which you need to purchase to use. Try the following places to find a great blog theme:

• Install my freemium WordPress theme: ThrillingTheme
• The official WordPress free themes directory
• 25 Best Free WordPress Themes
• WooThemes – premium designs by top web designers
• Headway Theme – an incredible theme editor for do-it-yourself types

To install a new theme, follow these instructions:

1. When you’ve found a theme you like, download the zip file to your computer.
2. In the main WordPress control panel, click on the “Appearance” tab.
3. Click “Install a Theme”.
4. Click “Browse” and find your theme zip file. Click “Install”.
5. Once you’ve successfully uploaded this file, click on the “Appearance” > “Themes” section.
6. You should now be able to see the new theme you’ve uploaded. To apply this design to your site, simply click on the picture of the theme.
7. If you’re happy with how the theme looks on your blog, click “Activate [theme name]” in the right hand corner.
8. The theme should now have been applied to your site!

Adding the First Content to Your WordPress Blog

Customizing Your Sidebar

If the theme you have chosen is “widgetized”, you’ll be able to easily add content to your sidebar:

1. Navigate to “Appearance” > “Widgets”.
2. From the options available, select which widgets you’d like to add to your sidebar by dragging and dropping them to the available sidebar columns on the right.
3. To add your own custom widget, select a “Text widget”, add a title (if necessary), and either add your custom code to the widget or write whatever text content you want to display, and click “Save”.
4. To remove any widgets you no longer want, click on the widget title you want to remove and then click “Remove”.
5. To re-order the widgets and change the order you want them to be displayed on your site, simply drag & drop the widgets in the order you’d like them to be.

Setting Up Blog Categories

WordPress allows you to create different categories for your posts which help organize your blog content. It’s best to use your target keywords and key phrases as category titles if possible. To set your categories up, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the dropdown next to “Posts”.
2. Click on the “Categories” link.
3. Enter the Category Name and click on “Add Category”.

Categories will only show up publicly on the front end of your blog once a post in that category has been published.

Editing Your “About” Page

1. Click on “Pages” to see a list of the default pages automatically included by default with your fresh WordPress install.
2. Click on the “About” page title (or underneath it, if you hover over you will see an “Edit” link).
3. Make your changes to the content of the page, and click on “Update”.

Adding a New Blog Post

1. Click on the dropdown next to “Posts”, then click “Add New”.
2. Add the title and text of your post.
3. Select the category for your post.
4. When your new blog post is ready, you can either publish it immediately by clicking “Publish”, or click “Edit” to post-date it to be published on a later date and then click “Schedule”.

Go Further with WordPress

Once you make it this far, check out the following:

• 7 Essential Things You Should Be Doing While Your Blog is Still Young
• 21 Actions You Can Do Today to Set Your Blog Up for Massive Success (and sign up for Corbett’s Traffic Toolbox!)
• 18 Months, 2 Blogs, Six Figures
• Nomadic Matt Shares How to Make Money Blogging
• Guerrilla Influence Formula

Congratulations!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Newbie’s Easy Guide to Setting Up Your First Website in 60 Minutes Or Less

UPDATE May 14: The winning participant is reader Daniel Hoang—Investor, Lifehacker, Technologist, Analyst, Careerist! Daniel, I’ll be in touch with you via Twitter/email soon and we can arrange a time for your free 1-on-1 consulting call. Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry!

UPDATE May 10: This contest is now closed. The winner will be announced via Twitter & the blog soon. Thanks to all for your participation.

I’ve been back in the States for a few weeks this month—my only brief trip home this year—and it’s been a lot of fun catching up with friends and going to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in the Southern California desert. But I had very mixed feelings about coming back to the U.S. right now, and my visit has been a little bittersweet.

The U.S. has been hit hard by a down economy, and California is showing visible signs of the recession. Restaurants are empty. Small businesses are closing their doors. A lot of folks are looking for work, a lot are depressed, a lot of people are stagnating.

In this economic downturn, it’s time to take your reputation, and your career, into your own hands. There is no such thing as job security anymore. Pensions and benefits can be taken away at a moment’s notice. And even your retirement savings can’t be relied upon these days.

I believe that entrepreneurship, as risky as it can be, is truly the best solution. As a freelancer or business owner, you take your destiny into your own hands. And if you prefer the “security” of a full-time job, these days you should at least develop a second, side income stream, and actively manage your “employability”. That means staying sharp on developments in your field, keeping your resume fresh, and regularly adding people to your professional network. You should never quit job searching really, because the unfortunate reality is that everyone’s job is disposable.

It’s funny—in conversation you notice there are fundamental differences in the way employees and entrepreneurs think. I won’t say one is better than the other, but I think at least a little bit of entrepreneurial thinking is good for everyone. It keeps you on your toes and makes you realize that you can create your own prosperity if you try hard enough. My mission here at Thrilling Heroics is to help people break out of conventional thinking and pursue their potential, so I expect you guys to be able to hear me say that, or else you wouldn’t be my audience!

Anyways, I’m working on a few things to help everyone kick ass at life just a little bit more. My mission this year, in everything I do, is to empower as many would-be freelancers, entrepreneurs, and other do-gooders to take back their power, to realize they don’t have to be just a cog in a wheel and take what life gives them. You can build an awesome business, you can live a remarkable life, and you can do anything and go anywhere you want! You just have to work for it.

Here we go:

Discount Social Media Consulting for New Clients

It’s no secret that I provide social media consulting and blog development services for select web entrepreneurs and professionals. Just this month I helped Kare Anderson—a dedicated blogger and author who already kicks ass even without my help—launch her new site HowWePartner.com. And I helped coach Eileen McDargh—a professional speaker and management consultant—on introductory ways to utilize social media more effectively for her business. Eileen was completely ecstatic and said this after our first hour together:

“In just one hour, Cody cut through the chaos and confusion of social networks, showing me what I needed to do and—even more importantly, what I did NOT need to do. It was very valuable and worth the time.”

My fees are typically somewhat substantial, because I try to filter out only the most dedicated and remarkable clients, and dedicated people tend to have money to spend on their remarkable projects. The amount of attention and commitment I give to each client makes the investment worthwhile. My job is to follow industry trends in the social media and blogging space, filtering through the noise to find the most important solutions for my clients. I maintain a wide knowledge base and an active network in the blogosphere so that I can provide my clients with relevant news and resources, software and tutorials, and even introduce them to like-minded professionals and key influencers in their niche, to establish authority on the web and improve their business.

Because we’re all feeling the negative effects of this economy, I’m offering a small discount on my consulting for new clients right now. If you’ve got something important to say, I want to help you get the right web technology and social media strategies in place to increase your online exposure. Add me to your team and leverage my expertise in the following areas:

• WordPress
• Blogging
• Social networks
• User-friendly, accessible web design (XHTML, CSS, PHP)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Personal branding
• Online project management & collaboration tools

I usually bill $95 per hour for my consulting time. But if you book an Introductory Blog & Social Media Consultation with me in the month of May, I’ll give you your first hour of consulting for just $75. I’ll talk with you directly via phone or webcam to understand your specific business situation and your online marketing objectives, and help point you in the right direction.

An Awesome FREE WordPress Theme in the Works

There is a sizable market for my premium web services. But I realize there are also several important demographics out there who can’t afford pricey web consulting and development work, including young professionals like myself who are interested in personal branding and establishing their reputation on the web, micro-business owners and other solopreneurs who are tightening their belts right now.

As a low-cost alternative for these rockstars in training, I’m currently building a killer app—a premium, all-in-one blog design, which I’ll release as a free WordPress theme. “Thrilling Theme” will be my masterpiece. It will serve as the framework for my future web development projects, and it will have everything you could ever dream of! The free theme will include:

• Multiple color schemes and style options to choose from
• An easy way to upload your own custom logo or header image
• Integrated Twitter updates, Flickr photos, and more
• Easy insertion of your Google Analytics tracking code, your FeedBurner RSS feed, etc.
• And tons more. Please share your ideas in the comments!

For do-it-yourselfers, the theme will be available as a free download. For individuals and small businesses that want some basic help getting started with Thrilling Theme as the template design for their site, a basic setup & customization package will be available for a nominal charge. (We’re talking about a complete social media platform—possibly the framework for your online business—for less than 400 bucks!)

What About for Non-Blogging Nerd Types?

Additionally, I’ll be doing as much as I can to provide free, valuable advice on this blog to help as many people break free as well—talking about going solopreneur, building a strong reputation on the web, and taking your business location-independent if you desire. Blogging and leveraging social media has allowed me to make awesome friends in all corners of the globe, and I’ve even attracted clients from five continents! My only desire is that I can help you guys experience similar success.

I have a few projects on my back burners, some things that have been marinating for a while. In the coming months, I look forward to teaming up more with great folks like Jun Loayza, Jonathan Mead, Carmen Isais, Mark Weins and Tom Barrett to deliver some fresh, unique perspectives and experiment with some new ideas.

Locally, I’ll continue to work with Dwight Turner of In Search of Sanuk to host charity events and fundraisers in and around Thailand, and I hope to provide discount services to many more non-profits this year. I’ve just partnered with Fusion International on a new project to help them relaunch and revitalize their website focused on victims of extreme poverty, conflict and internal displacement. When you support this site, do business with me, or tell people about Thrilling Heroics, you’ll help me continue to support good causes, and promote events like our Bangkok Tweetup for Charity.

The Part Where I Ask for Your Help

In order to empower as many people as I can this year, I need your help to reach the biggest audience possible. What can you do? You can subscribe. You can tell people about my mission and about ThrillingHeroics.com. You can check out my company, Thrilling Heroics Consulting. But I’ll go a step further: if you blog about my mission with link to this post by May 10th, you’ll be entered for a chance at a FREE 1-hour Blog Consultation. It’s simple:

1. Write about my mission to help as many people become Rockstars as possible with discount consulting. Write about the upcoming free Thrilling Theme. You can even write about the competition itself.
2. Include a direct link to this post or to ThrillingHeroicsConsulting.com
3. To make sure I get your submission, leave a comment on this post and include the URL for your blog post about this competition.

On May 10th, I’ll choose one commenter at random to receive a free consultation with me by phone or Skype. You’ll get a full hour to ask me any questions you like about blogging, social media, and WordPress.

Thanks for staying with me this long. Forget the crummy economy. Let’s all combine forces to do some good this year. Check back soon for more on living a remarkable life.

Feature photo credit: Elmo Keep

Can’t get enough Thrilling Heroics? Follow @codymckibb on Twitter.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: I Want to Make You A Rockstar!

I’m starting a weekly review of great articles and resources from around the web on how to master everything from your finances to your personal development, run a successful business, go global, and live the life of your dreams. Today I kick it off with a summary of great finds I’ve stumbled across in the month of February, and next week I’ll start sharing with you more regularly!

Social Media Marketing

For those of you who run a small business and are weighing the cost of starting some online marketing, a new article by Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb is a must-read: How to Reach Baby Boomers with Social Media. Believe it or not, Forrester Research says that 67% of people ages 43–52, and 62% of people ages 53–63 are active social media users. If you’re not marketing to your consumers online with blogs and social media, you should get on the bandwagon!

Starting a Blog

The best thing to do if you’re not very involved in online marketing is to get your business started blogging regularly, and then you can branch out into other social media. Mark Hayward, owner of a successful Caribbean-based business, has 10 Tips for Blogging Your Way to Small Business Success over at Problogger.net.

If you’re starting a new blog on a tight budget, this is a wonderful place to start: Pavel Ciorici compiled a fantastic list of over 50 beautifully-designed WordPress Themes (all free!)—there are rich, premium-type themes that will be a great application for everything from travel blogs to personal pages to your business blog: 50+ Free WordPress Themes for Personal Blogs of High Quality

To Twitter or Not to Twitter?

When you’re ready for the next stage of social media interaction, a ton of folks are getting involved on Twitter.com and raving about it. A lot of you probably still don’t know what Twitter really is or how to get any value out of it, so here we have a Twitter triumvirate for you:

• Twitter: The how to get started guide for businesspeople from Computerworld
• Kristi Colvin shares 7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers at the Blog of Mr. Tweet (follow her @kriscolvin)
• Timothy Ferriss gives you 5 tips on How to Use Twitter Without Twitter Owning You. (Follow Tim @tferriss)

Other great stuff from around the web this month:

• Seth Godin’s 7 Tips for Startups in a Down Market (an interview by Andrew Warner)
• 10 Things to do After Installing WordPress at Pro Blog Design
• Beyond TweetBacks: Introducing TweetSuite by Dan Zarrella
• Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz at TheFutureBuzz
• 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog by Neil Patel
• Five Best Cities to Live in 2009 if the Economy Keeps Tanking from Matador Abroad

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One of the most important parts of my job is keeping up with industry news and headlines, and cutting through the static for my clients to find what’s current and what’s important. If you’d like to receive good recommendations from me on a more regular basis, please feel free to connect with me on your network of choice:

• Follow me on Twitter
• Subscribe to my Google Shared Items
• Subscribe to my reviews on StumbleUpon
• Subscribe to my bookmarks on del.icio.us
• Connect with me on Digg

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Best of the Web: February Edition

If you need help with WordPress Hosting, Themes, Maintenance and Support, check out FreelanceWP to find answers and hire freelance WordPress designers & developers!

I’ve had a few great guidebooks on my shelf ever since I started fiddling around with blog templates years ago, but when Michelle Goodman recently asked me a few questions for ABCnews.com, it brought my attention to the fact that many of the resources I recommend are aimed at readers with more XHTML, CSS, and PHP experience. So I immediately mined through my bookmarks for the best books I had read or come across so far for the less technically-inclined. Here are ten of the best books for WordPress beginners, either recommended by Automattic themselves (developers of WordPress), or highly respected in the business blogging community, in no particular order:

Blogging For Dummies

In this super-easy introductory primer, Susannah Gardner & Shane Birley provide a guide to blogging for business owners and folks with a cause to promote. They teach you all the basics of the “blogosphere,” about the anatomy of a blog, how to stand out in the crowd, find your niche, attract readers, generate revenue from your blog, and much more.

WordPress For Dummies

Fellow WordPress evangelist Lisa Sabin-Wilson wrote the definitive beginner’s WordPress bible! She explores the differences between hosted accounts on WordPress.com, self-hosted WP blogs, and multi-user blogs, and examines all the basics of plugins, templates, moderating comments and spam, and troubleshooting common problems.

WordPress Complete

Another introductory look at WordPress, designed to get you up and running quickly with your very own blog. Looks at the main aspects of a blog—users, communities, posts, comments, news feeds—and how to manage them using the open-source WordPress software.

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble (whose blog has over 3.5 million readers!) discuss the benefits of blogging as a communications channel: they’re easily publishable, findable by search engines, social and viral in nature, syndicatable, and linkable!

Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging

The original blog evangelist, Andy Wibbels, gives a history of blogging, compares the features of several blog software options, provides tutorials for creating and maintaining your own blog, and shares key tips for a successful business blog.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

Some sources say Darren Rowse’s two blogs bring in over $20k per month! In this new publication, the Problogger founder teams up with Chris Garrett to look at how bloggers make money, the best monetization strategies, and optimizing your advertising.

Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress

Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little, and Jared W. Smith look at content management systems, blogs, and online forums, and the most popular open-source platforms that run them.

WordPress Theme Design

Tessa Blakeley Silver gives clear, step-by-step instructions and best practices for building your own blog templates for WordPress, including code markup, testing, debugging, and incorporating third-party plugins.

Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them

Bob Walsh takes a no-nonsense look at what blogs have to offer, and how to use them for job hunting, business branding, news gathering, and more.

Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers

Michael A. Banks interviews thirty of the most influential and successful bloggers, who write about everything from business trends to parenting. Includes eye-opening insights from Dave Taylor, Chris Anderson, Gina Trapani, Frank Warren, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and many others.

Remember, if you need help with your WordPress Hosting, Themes, Maintenance and Support, check out FreelanceWP to find answers, and hire freelance WordPress designers & developers!

Happy reading!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The 10 Best Books For WordPress Bloggers