I started this blog just a few months ago and till that time I only has static websites and so I was very clueless about the whole blogging gig. The more I blog, the more I learn and goodies just keep popping up.

Important Blogging Lessons

Pick a design with at least 2 sidebars – This is one lesson I learned the hard way! You don’t have to use both right away, but believe me you will need space later. And it is not easy to add sidebar’s to an existing theme, it takes code knowledge and often times the layout needs to be tweaked entirely to make the new sidebar look right.

Use Feedburner to Burn your Feed -I know many of you are thinking DUH! This is obvious, but I keep running into blogs that are not using FB!!

The default feed in Worpdress, is limited and does not offer enough options to please a wide variety of subscribers. Burn your feed with Feedburner and enjoy tons of benefits, for yourself as well as your readers.

Benefits for bloggers: Customize your message to subscribers, tracking, subscription management, subscriber count widgets, analytics, monetize your feed with Adsense and much more.

Benefits for Subscribers: Many more RSS reader options, email option.

Feedburner is free and very reliable! Visit Feedburner.

Provide an Email Subscription Option for your Blog: You may lose significant amounts of subscribers if you do not offer an email option for delivering your posts to subscribers. Not everyone likes to use readers! I am one of those people.

Honestly, I do not need another thing to check everyday, so email is the only way I get blog updates. Also, those that do sign up with a reader because they have no other option, may very likely forget to visit their reader and so they will miss your content!

I have over 200 subscribers now and 100 of those chose the email option!

Blogging Goodies – Very Nice Free Wordpress Themes:

30 + 3 Column Wordpress Themes

Wordpress ThemeLand

Simple and Clean SEO Themes – with Tutorials for Customizing

Fun Stuff for Bloggers

Typezealer is a cool little site that checks the personality of your blog, it is extremely accurate, at least it was for me

Useful Plugins and Tools for Bloggers

Theme Test Drive Plugins – Here is one of the greatest plugins of all time! Allows you to safely test drive any theme on your blog as admin, while all other visitors still see the original one at your live url. No one but you will ever know that you are testing a new theme.

Screen grab to WordPress – Firefox Add-on – If you like to use screenshots in your blog posts, as I do, and I found them to be a great tool for enhancing my posts, or for any other purpose, then get this add-on!

A little button is added to your bottom nav bar and with one click you can save, post to blog, copy a screenshot and much more.

XHeader – Free Header Maker - This is a free software to make website and blog headers.

Cool Text Button and Logo Maker – Free and fabulous! I made the button in my header that says For the Dot Comer in All Of Us with this tool, took about 10 minutes.

One more subscriber increasing plugin

WordPress – Thank Me Later- Sends an automatic fully customizible thank you message to commenters on your blog. Perfect for those one time commenters who comment and never come back. This plugin can really help to increase subscriber counts, as you can add an invitation to subscribe in the message.