You’ve probably noticed that some sites have a different icon in your internet browser from the standard internet explorer or firefox icon.

Here’s a pic with a few example favicons on some of my sites:

Some of them actually look pretty cool, but more importantly, they help to “brand” a site and make it stand out.

The icon, called a “favicon”, is also used in the broswer “Favorites/bookmarked sites” list when a visitor adds that site, which again helps that site stand out and be easier to spot, making it more likely that the visitor will remember the site and come back.

so you probably want to know how easy it is to do this for your own blog or website, right..?

Here’s a video showing just how easy it is to create your own favicon using a graphics tools you can download for free here:

Gimp

This video is 6 Mins 5 seconds long.

Later today I’ll post another video showing you how to add the bit of html code you need to your blog or website to make your favicon show up, so stay tuned…

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WordPress has a neat feature where it will automatically “ping” (i.e. inform) a list of RSS directories whenever you make a new post, which can get your blog some links and bring in extra traffic.

I’ve added a list of the sites I “ping” to my Free Internet Marketing Resources site, the video shows where to grab the zip file and how to put them in to your blog.

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Another great aspect of using WordPress is the vast selection of “plugins” available.

These little plugin applications can do anything from helping stop comment spam (Akismet) to adding smiley’s to comment posts (wp-grin from AlexKing.org), and a whole lot more. I’ll post a list of my favorite plugins and what they do soon, but in the meantime, here’s a short video (3.34 mins) showing how to upload and activate new plugins for your WordPress Blog:

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One of the really cool things about using WordPress is that you can totally change the look and feel of your blog in just moments by choosing a different theme and if you do a search on Google for “free wordpress themes” you will find literally hundreds of them, in all sorts of weird and wacky colors and styles.

I’ve finished another short video on using wordpress, this one shows you how to upload new themes to your blog and select them, the video is just over 2 minutes long:

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I’ve done some videos on BlogTactics to show how you can set up a WordPress blog for free using Fantastico in cPanel, and I’ll be adding a couple more videos next week on uploading new themes and plugins to improve/personalize your blog, but the easiest way of doing all this is to use a installation & setup program that maanges it all for you, like WP Manager DX v2.

I’ve just finished a video on how this system works, so you can see it in action for yourself.

Here’s the video, which is a bit longer than normal as it’s just under 6 minutes:

oh, I should probably also mention that there’s a special offer on for WPMDX2 at the moment, you can pick up a copy for just $47…

UPDATE: The special offer referred to above was available when this post was made back in October 2007, and obviously came to an end at some point, so please don’t expect it to still be available. I do believe WPMDX2 is still well worth the full price though!

WP Manager DX 2 Offer

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Looks like I need to apologise again, it’s amazing how time flies when you’re busy…

It’s taken me more than a week to catchup on stuff after spending four days at the UK BritPack IM Seminar.

You can read about the weekend on the blog of a cool guy I met there, Randolf Smith.

He’s posting his comments about how he enjoyed the weekend and as I spent a lot of time hanging out with him and don’t have time to post about it myself, you can read his posts to see how the weekend went here:

BritPack Day 1

BritPack Day 2

Randy also has an excellent book called HeadPaint that’s well worth taking a look at, I found it a great read and it’s dirt cheap…

HeadPaint 

~##~

On a different note, I’ve recently had some readers ask me if I could set up a blog for them, and as I’ve got abunch of PR2 domains that I’m not using at the moment I thought I’d put together a deal.

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The standard default WordPress theme is pretty boring.

You can get lots of different themes to use with your blog, many of which come with pretty cool header graphics, but if you want to personalize your blog and make it truly unique, then one of the easiest ways is to add your own header graphic.

So here’s a video showing you how (3 mins 30 secs):

Click here to see the video on How to create a customized header graphic to your blog

Over the next few posts I’ll start going in to the basics setup changes that you should make to the configuration of your WP Blog to optimize it, as well as how to add new themes and plugins, as well as which ones are good and why…

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If you’re wandering why you would want to do this, well, it’s a great way of keeping in touch with your visitors and letting them know when you’ve posted something new to your blog to get them to come back again.

To do this you will need to have an “Autoresponder” service set up.

I use AWeber and I highly recommend them as they are not only very easy to use and have some pretty cool features, but they also have the highest “email delivered” rate in the market (as far as I know).

What does that mean?

Well most ISP’s (internet service providers) have automated spam filters built in to stop spam, but in the process they will often stop email sent from autoresponders.

AWeber work with the different ISP’s to make sure that their emails don’t get caught in these spam filters, so your email actually gets through to the person that wanted it.

Pretty important really.

Here’s the video on how to add the subscription form (under 3 minutes):

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