Blogging has come a long way since the first weblogs burst on the scene towards the end of the 1990s. While early blogs were mainly a combination of text and pictures, and often involved nothing more than regularly updating a static website, today’s specialized software and tools mean people can post online diaries on subjects as diverse as art, photography, videos, music and audio.

Meanwhile, the latest and perhaps busiest example is what’s called microblogging, which takes place on social networks such as Twitter. Here, in interactive real-time, you find out and share information on all kinds of subjects, from a credit card transfer to the best place to get a coffee.

Blogger versus WordPress – the age-old debate

Traditional blogging started with Blogger, and the Blogger versus WordPress argument is an age-old debate. Blogger started out in 1999 and helped create what almost amounted to a totally new profession, halfway between a kind of private journalism and public indiscretion. WordPress, meanwhile, was initially released in 2003. Four years is a long time in IT. Maybe it showed.

People who’ve always sworn by Blogger love it because it’s so simple to use. In its most recent version, you get stats, plenty of whitespace, large buttons to post, preview and save, and an editing pane that looks like your favorite word-processor – with the added advantage of an HTML view for those who feel a little more adventurous.

Blogger’s always been focused more on those who just like writing. Promotion, SEO and customizing plug-ins really aren’t what you might describe as its strengths. Simplicity and usability, on the other hand, are something it’s tended to do quite well at.

WordPress is a different kettle of open-sourced fish. The dashboard is far more complex but with complexity you also get power. The templates available aren’t so easily customizable, but then if you’re prepared to pay someone else for the honor you can get some magnificent results. If you not only want to write down your thoughts but also want other people to read them, perhaps WordPress should really be your choice.

Essentially, Blogger is pretty much like the Wal-Mart of blogging while WordPress is a Macy’s: more refined, more expensive and aiming to be quite a bit classier.

Blogger’s Recent Checkered Past

One thing a blog must never do is fall silent. A popular following sometimes takes years to cultivate, but the worldwide web is such a competitive environment that if you don’t attend to your baby for a couple of weeks, you can lose a large proportion of what you thought was a faithful readership.

In 2011, Blogger fell silent for twenty hours. Blogs could be read but not updated. Some posts were lost for a worrying space of time while Google, Blogger’s owner, attempted to get its act together. In the end, everything was resolved, explanations were given and apologies were made. In a world, however, where milliseconds count, twenty hours of not being able to blog surely made many people think.

One incident does not a checkered past make, of course. Blogger has generally been one of the most reliable blogging platforms on the planet.

Nevertheless, Google itself has been making strides towards integrating its products and services in its massive battle to take on Facebook at its own game. On one occasion last year, it was even suggested by some that the Blogger name might be done away with in favor of total integration into Google’s new Google+ service. In the event, this didn’t happen – but who knows what the future might bring?

Why should I care if Google integrates its services?

It’s not a question of “if”. It’s already happened. On Thursday 1st March 2012, Google integrated all the information it holds about its users. The US National Association of Attorneys General observed the following: “On a fundamental level, the policy appears to invade consumer privacy by automatically sharing personal information consumers input into one Google product with all Google products.”

So what’s that got to do with my blog?

Just imagine the following scenario. You use Google’s search engine, Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, Google+ and a whole host of other products. Each one long since connected to one single login and password.

“Convenient,” you say. Maybe you’re right. One login moment and you can access all those services. The real question, however, is: who really benefits from this process?

Google, of course. That goes without saying. It’s just got to be the case: they wouldn’t be integrating so aggressively if it didn’t add value to their business model.

Is there anyone else on the web who might be able to make a buck or two out of all that precious integrated data of yours?

Let’s just assume Google knows what it’s at when it centralizes data in one database. Let’s just assume no one will be able to hack into that.

That’s not going to be the weak link in the chain, nor where anyone wanting to find a weak link might look first. No. What’s far more likely to put your blog at risk is that shared login that goes with your Gmail or Google+ account. Ever consider the number of viruses that can get through to you via email or social networks? Ever compared it with the number of viruses that can get through to you if all you’re doing is blogging on a blogspot.com blog? There’s no comparison at all. The first is always going to be far more risky than the second.

Centralizing the web is a dumb thing to do – and Google has just gone and done it

We shouldn’t be saying our final farewells to Blogger because we think WordPress is classier. Each to their own: both are great and honorable blogging platforms. Neither is it because of this feature or that we should choose. The real issue is simply a matter of sensible information security practices.

In its pursuit of bigger profits, Google has forgotten one of the most basic laws of both the real and virtual universes. Don’t, whatever you do, put all your customers’ most precious eggs in one basket. Unless, of course, you want them to end up toast.

While I was myself searching a Free Magazine theme for one of my WordPress sites, I thought of making a post of best WordPress Magazine themes that are available for FREE. Though the search was hectic, I tried to scan as many Magazine themes as possible to create this list.

Please keep in mind that the list is in alphabetical particular order, not in order of superiority/rank.

1. Arras Theme – Free Magazine-Styled WordPress Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

2. Art Magazine 1.0.5 Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

3. BlogStarter Free WordPress Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

4. IsoTherm News Magazine Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

5. Linoluna: Magazine-style Theme for WordPress

• Demo/Preview
• Download

6. Masigasig WordPress Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

7. Monochrome Gallery

• Demo/Preview
• Download (you need to signup a free account first)

8. The Original Premium News Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

9. Turn Out Mag WordPress Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

10. Zinmag Tribune WordPress Magazine Theme

• Demo/Preview
• Download

Web-hosting is one the most crucial elements in Website Administration. A bad web-host can cause serious harm to your websites reputation.

Now you may want to know where your rival websites or high-traffic websites like Engadget etc. are hosting.

There is this website – WhoIsHostingThis/, which can tell you the name of the Hosting Company from the url of the website.

Another website is – Netcraft. They report many different things like – a site’s operating system, web server, and netblock owner together with, if available, a graphical view of the time since last reboot for each of the computers serving the site.

Most of you are using the AddThis social bookmarking and sharing service. Sometimes the webpage do not load faster due to the AddThis script. To avoid this problem do not use AddThis code more than one time on same website.

To improve the performance of AddThis on your site, the script should be loaded once per HTML page. To do this paste the following code between the <HEAD> </HEAD>

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var addthis_config = {“data_track_clickback”:true};
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#pubid=[YOUR PROFILE ID]“></script>

Do not forgot to change
Change YOUR PROFILE ID to your AddThis profile ID.

Source: www.blogger-help.com

When you embed the YouTube video to your website, that video shows a grey bar at the top with the title of the video. Most of you do not want to show this title and rations. You can easily remove this title.

Following the embed code of YouTube video:

<object width=”425″ height=”349″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/FzRH3iTQPrk?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/FzRH3iTQPrk?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”349″></embed></object>

Just replace
&amp;hl=en_US

with
&showinfo=0

This will remove the title and ratings.

Demo

Normal Video

Video with title and ratings removed

Favicon is really important as it adds identity to your URL. Your site can be easily identified from the list of favorites, because of its favicon.

Earlier I told a way to add favicon using Editor. Now there is a WordPress pluin to add favicon easily.

Procedure:

1. Create a image file using your favorite program like MS paint.
2. Upload it to www.html-kit.com/favicon
and download favicon file.
3. You will get favicon.ICO file. Upload it to photo sharing site like PhotoBucket and image URL.
4. Go to Add a New Plugin Page and search for All in One Favicon and install that plugin. Go to the Settings > All in One Favicon.
5. Paste the favicon image URL to the Frontend ICO. And save settings.

Now your WordPress website will have new favicon.

1. BlackPower

Demo

Download

2. zinfolio

Demo

Download

3. SP142

Demo

Download

4. BlueDiamond

Demo

Download

5. The Web News

Demo

Download

6. Marikit

Demo

Download

7. StudioPress_Red

Demo

Download

8. Stripey

Demo

Download

9. Girly Diaries

Demo

Download

10. SoulVision

Demo

Download

In the recent days almost every wordpress blog is using ‘Magazine’ type themes. But one problem associated with Magazine themes is that they use more than one loop on their blog home page for a solution to avoiding duplicate posts on the second loop.

Well this lttle php hack can solve this problem for you.

1. Let’s start by creating a simple PHP array, and put all post IDs from the first loop in it.

<h2>Loop n°1</h2>
<?php
$ids = array();
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
the_title();
?>
<br />

<?php $ids[]= $post->ID;
endwhile; ?>

2. Now, the second loop: we use the PHP function in_array() to check if a post ID is contained in the $ids array. If the ID isn’t contained in the array, we can display the post because it wasn’t displayed in the first loop.

<h2>Loop n°2</h2>
<?php
query_posts(“showposts=50″);
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
if (!in_array($post->ID, $ids)) {
the_title();?>
<br />
<?php }
endwhile; ?>

How it works: At the time the first loop will be executed, all IDs of posts contained within it are put into an array variable. Now when the second loop is executed, we check that the current post ID hasn’t already been displayed in the first loop by referring to the array.

That’s all.

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-use-two-or-more-loops-without-duplicate-posts

Theme Junkie is offering the following 2 Premium WordPress Themes for FREE. Keep in mind that you have to keep the credit links in the footer and no support will be available for the FREE themes.

1.  FashionPress

• Demo
• Download

2. Channel

• Demo
• Download

Keep visiting Webmaster’s Blog for more FREE premium WordPress Themes. You can search all themes on our site here.

Let’s see what Templatic has to offer for FREE -

1. Aggregator

• Demo
• Download

2.  GTD

• Demo
• Download

3.  LiveTwit

• Demo
• Download

4. Visiting Card

• Demo
• Download

5. NewsWeek

• Demo
• Download

6. BizFresh

• Demo
• Download

Keep visiting Webmaster’s Blog for more FREE Premium WordPress Themes.