Easy tricks to make your Blog/Website look professional

These are the best | few | easy tricks to make your wordpress blog/website ‘tough’!

Note: Many of the tricks below can be used on any website(marked by * | Non-wordpress as well as WordPress hosted websites)

1. Redirection with *

   CO.CC as you might already know, is a free domain(actually sub-domain) registration service. Some of the best features of  include..

   • Google Apps Supported
   • DNS Service: Delegate CO.CC domain like a .com
   • Changeable Zone Records: Co.cc supports for CNAME, A, MX, NS records!
   • Google Adsense supported

   There are many other free Redirection service like co.nr, .tk, co.tv but co.cc is recommended. You’ll understand the reason in the next trick.

2. Subscribe to *

   Google Apps lets you have name@yourdomain.co.cc email ID. Get a Standard Edition for FREE. Standard Edition provides 50 IDs. If you earn enough bucks by advertising, you can also buy the Premier Edition of Google Apps. Some of the best features of Google Apps Standard Edition include:

   * Your domain Gmail
   *Your Domain Gtalk
   * Google Calendar
   * Google Docs
   * Google Sites

3. Free RSS/SMS Alerts of new posts on your blog*

   RSS Alerts
   
   Its simple! All the wordpress blogs already have a RSS feed. For your blog, it will be <http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed>. Just replace the ‘yourblog‘ with your blog’s domain. You just need to tell your visitors or give them link in one of your posts(It is often preferred to make the post sticky). For more info & example, please see bottom of this post.
   
   SMS Alerts(by Google SMS Channels)
   
   These are the steps to create an sms channel and alert your subscribers via SMS, for free, of course…

   1. Go to GoogleSMSchannels.

   

4. 2. Set a nickname and register your Phone(If not already) and click the ‘Try Now’ button. Bottom Right, Highlighted in the above post.3. Type in the name that suits your blog. Choose Category as per your blog and Location as ‘none’. In source, choose RSS and type/paste the URL of your feed(not your blog)<http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed>4. Click create channel.5. After the channel is created, go to ‘Manage Channel’ and then the ‘Subscription link to the Channel’ button. You will get a subscription link something like <http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/subscribe/YourChannelName>
   
   6. Now, Spread this subscription link!

   Drawbacks of GoogleSMSChannels–
   
   * Not available for Non-Indian users.

   * Subscriber requires a Google ID.

4.  Add Widgets

Out of the various widgets available, I recommend you using these–

• ChatRoll.com Chat Room. There are various Chatrooms available to be embedded, but ChatRoll is much better because No, plugin is required, supports sounds, highly customizable, easily embeddable Discussions etc. are supported. To add it as a widget, check out this post. To dedicate just one page to your chatroom(if you get great deal of hits), see this post.
• Dhingana Music Widget (Recommended only if your target audiences are Indian and your blog/website is somewhat related to Music/Youth) Listen to songs online. Afetr you add the widget, your visitors will ba able to listen to the songs LIVE on just your blog. Loved Dhingana? Add it to Orkut!
• Add Fun polls to your blog. Lets get back to the official wordpress. Polls. Just as you open your Dashboard, on the right, there’s Quickpress, Click the ‘Create a poll button[] , then ‘New Poll’, create the poll and  save it. When done, open the list of polls, choose your poll and click ‘HTML code’. Copy the short address and not the long one(Choose the one [Polldaddy xxxxxx]). Go to Widgets page, drag the ‘Text’ Widget to the sidebar and paste the code in it. Keep asking the visitors about the website, ask fun polls.

5.  Contact Forms

I recommend Wufoo form creator, for the following reasons…

• 3 forms avalable for free.
• Easily Embeddable
• No Ads, even in free forms
• Highly Customizable(Create your own themes etc)

Go for it, create forms and link them directly from your blog. Such forms help to keep your own Email ID safe and also add to the looks of the website.

6.  **Logo

Create a logo for your website, Just to spread the word. Like, for DevilsWorkshop, I would suggest something like this to be posted in forums etc. with link to DW…

To make 3D header online for free(like this one), check out this website.

If I get anything new, I’ll surely post it on DW!

Note: An Example of almost all the above services is this website.

(Needless to say, the website is mine.)

(Source(s): co.cc, Google Apps, Google SMS Channels)