I get asked a lot to refer people to different resources that they can use to either create or make their blogs better. People ask for everything from my favorite training sites, to plugins, to themes.
So I’ve put together a list of all of my favorite recommended blogging resources for 2010. These are all resources that I have personally used and would use again.
Platform:
- WordPress.org – Though I started this blog on the Blogger platform, I would recommend that you start out using a hosted wordpress blog. Take my word for it that it’ll save you a ton of headaches in the long run!
Read: how I moved from blogger to wordpress
Hosting:
- HostGator – I love hostgator because it’s easy to use, inexpensive, and their customer service is top notch.
Blog Themes:
- StudioPress – This is where I got the theme for this blog. They offer really great admin options that are easy to use. Also their support forum is amazing! I’ve had to ask questions a few times and I’ve always gotten help super fast.
- WooTheme – I’ve used WooThemes on other blogs and they have a really easy to use, and extensive admin panel. Plus I like the look and feel of their themes.
Blog Training:
- WordPress Chick – This is one of my favorite blogs to find out about cool new blogging tools. Also she is obsessed with StudioPress themes so she has a ton of great training on using and customizing them.
- 31 Days to a Better Blog – This is a workbook written by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse that I highly recommend. It helped me a lot, especially when I was just starting, to really understand how to create content. It gives you a series of tasks to complete each day for a month that will help make your blog better.
- CopyBlogger – One of the best resources online to learn how to write and create better content.
- ProBlogger – Darren Rowse’s main blog is chock full of great stuff. This is a list of his best content for starting your first blog. You’ll be reading for hours!
Blog Plugins
- Askimet – This is a life saver! It helps to catch all of those crazy spam comments before they reach your readers.
- All in One SEO - Though there are other SEO plugins out there, this one just happens to be my favorite.
- CommentLuv – This gives your readers a chance to promote their latest blog post in the comment section. It gives them more incentive to leave a comment.
- WordPress Database Backup & WordPress Backup by BTE – Both of these are really great ways to help create automatic backups of your site. It helped save me from total meltdown when my site was hacked a while back.
- Onlywire - This is a great plugin that will allow people to bookmark your content quick and easy.
- No-Nofollow – This plugin removes the no follow attribute to links in your comment section. If you’re going to use CommentLuv then you might as well give your readers some link juice too.
Other Tools
- Aweber – If you’re building a list (and you should be!) this is one of the best autoresonders around. It’s by far my favorite.
- Feedburner – Helps you to manage your RSS feed and lets people subscribe to your blog feed either with a feedreader or by email.
- Goggle Analytics – Great way to track your blog’s stats. Find out where your traffic is coming from, what pages the read, what they click on, and all kinds of cool stuff.
Hope these will help you in your quest for blogging domination (or whatever YOUR goals are!). Oh and btw, some of those links are indeed affiliate links in case you’re wondering
Enjoy!
P.S. Don’t forget to hit the RT and LIKE buttons to share it with others. Also, if you have any tools to add to my list feel free to share them in the comment section. Thanks!

If you’ve been paying any attention lately to the internet marketing arena, then I’m sure you’ve heard all about the changes going on over in the Google camp. Not only making changes to how they run Adwords, but also making changes to their search engine algorithm. So what does this mean for you?
So I’m sure that you’ve seen blogs, such as this one, that have ads in their sidebars and you may be wondering how you can do that too. Well here is a great little plugin called WP125 that will handle everything for you.


