11 Free Wordpress Photo Gallery Plugins
Wordpress photo gallery plugins can be an easy way to add some pizazz to your Wordpress site. While photo gallery plugins for Wordpress are most often used by blogs that tend to be more personal in nature (i.e. a photography blog or personal portfolio site) there are in fact some excellent ways to use a WP photo gallery plugin for a business/ecommerce website that looks nothing like a blog.
Wordpress Featured Content Gallery Plugin by iePlexus
My favorite free Wordpress photo gallery plugin is the Featured Content Gallery by iePlexus. This plugin is 100% free as of the time of this post and very easy to use.
Wordpress Photo Gallery Plugin Examples
To view some examples of the Wordpress Featured Content Gallery Plugin in action be sure and visit the official site for a demo and also visit the example website owned by one of our premium members that we are in the middle of making website development tutorial videos for: MMA Supreme (Domain Superstar premium members have access to the tutorial video where I customize the MMA Supreme theme and give instructions for setting up the Featured Content Gallery Plugin here: Customizing Wordpress with Theme Tweaks).
Additional Wordpress Photo Gallery Plugins
Although I have not personally tried any of the below plugins I thought it might be useful to provide a list of some additional options for setting up a Wordpress photo gallery plugin:
2. Wordpress Flickr Photo Album
5. FotoBook
10. Cincopa Gallery
To get full access to all of our domain name tools and tutorial videos then sign up to become a Domain Superstar premium member today!
How to Create an E-commerce Business Website
The purpose of this post is to walk through the process of how to create an e-commerce business website. The thought of creating your own e-commerce site may seem daunting, but this article will give you a step-by-step guide on getting your store up and running. After you finish reading the article, check out our domain tools to pick out a domain for your e-commerce site!
Step 1: Choose a Domain
One of the most important steps of creating your e-commerce site is choosing a great domain name. Your domain name says a lot about your e-commerce business and is important in attracting customers and building your brand. To find keyword domains for your particular niche, try our type-in-traffic finder or bulk keyword checker tools. If you have some domain ideas and want to see if they’re available, then go over to our instant domain finder and see what domains are available. We offer some great tutorials on choosing domain names as well as finding registars so be sure to check those out.
Step 2: Select Your E-commerce Platform
Fortunately for new entrants into the e-commerce market, there is no shortage of e-commerce platforms available to help you get your site up and running fast. These different platforms fall under several different categories:
1. Completely Hosted E-Commerce Website Platforms
The simplest and quickest way to get an e-commerce website up and running is to use a hosted e-commerce platform. This type of e-commerce website is hosted by a company that provides customer e-commerce software from there servers. All the end-user has to do is sign up, select a pre-made template, and add his or her products (a great example of this type of site is Shopify.com). The trade-off with this type of platform is control and price. E-commerce business websites that run on these platforms can expect a monthly fee and more limited control over what they can do to their site. However, usually a store can be configured with absolutely no HTML or programming knowledge.
2. Semi-hosted E-Commerce Website Platforms
This type of platform is a compromise between completely hosting an e-commerce business website yourself and using a complete e-commerce hosting platform. Generally this type of platform allows the user to put up his own site and content, and then transfer over to a third-part website to actually handle the processing of orders. A couple great examples of this kind of solution are 1ShoppingCart and Google Checkout. This solution gives e-commerce business owners more flexibility in the presentation of their products, without having to worry about handling credit card processing on their own site. Some of these providers are free (but take a percentage of sales), and some have a monthly fee.
3. Standalone E-Commerce Website Software
The most flexible, but also the most complex method of creating an e-commerce business website it to use e-commerce website software and to install it on your web host (check out our article on how to find a good host). With this type of platform, the e-commerce business website owner would download the software and install it on his servers. The software would provide an administrative section for managing products, but it would be up to the site owner to apply his own templates, code or install different plugins, as well as set up payment gateways and merchant accounts for accepting credit cards. A couple of the most popular e-commerce website applications are ZenCart and OSCommerce.
Step 3: Set up Products
No matter which way you go with choosing a e-commerce platform, you will be provided with some kind of administrative interface to manage your inventory. Once you have your site configured, you should add all of your products and assign them categories as you like. Each platform will have its own instructions on how to do this.
Step 4: Make Some Money!
Once your website and store is setup, it’s time to start the real work! Check out our how-to guide for tips on monetizing your domain names and our domain development video tutorial series (available to premium members) for more info on starting your e-commerce empire.
Now that your ready to start your e-commerce business website, sign up for our premium membership trial for only $3 to find the perfect domain name for your online store.
How to install Google Analytics
One of the most important tools in the domainer’s toolbox is web analytic software. This type of software will allow you to track visitors coming to your site, giving you valuable information that can help you tweak content and better monetize your domain. In this tutorial, we will describe how to install Google Analytics, one of the most popular and useful web analytic services. Of course, before you can install Google Analytics, you need to find a great domain to install it on. Check out our tools to find your domain today.
Step 1: Create a Google Analytics account
To use Google Analytics, you need to have a free Google Analytics account. To create one, head over to http://www.google.com/analytics/, and sign up for an account.
Step 2: Add your site to your Google Analytics account
Once you have created your account, you can log into Google Analytics and set-up your site. On your Analytics user page, click on the “Add Website Profile” link and follow the instructions to tell Google about your domain. Google Analytics will give you a script that you can add to the bottom of your site. Once you’ve added your site and installed the script, your data will be tracked!
One important thing to note for this step, is that the script needs to be installed for each page that you wish to track. Using a CMS like Wordpress, makes this much easier because you can just add the script to the footer template file.
Once you’ve done this step, you can track many important metrics, including the following:
- Traffic sources (where your visitors come from).
- Unique visitors per day, week, month, or year.
- Google search terms that people use to come to your site.
This list is just scratching the surface of the metrics that you can track.
Step 3: Set up goals
In addition to basic metrics, you can set up goals to see how often people follow paths to your site and how often you are converting. To configure goals, go to the profile settings page for your domain from the Google Analytics dashboard, then click on the Edit link next to one of the Goals in the goal table. From this page you can specify what pages you want visitors to end up on, and even how you want visitors to get to a particular page. This is very useful if you have a page that users go to after signing up for your site, because you can see how many people are signing up for your service.
This tutorial has covered the basics of installing Google Analytics on your website. All that is left is to start making some money! Sign up for a premium membership and start using some of the best tools available for finding money making domains.
How to use Wordpress as a CMS
Wordpress is often thought of as a blogging platform. While it is indeed great for blogging, it can also be used as a full blown Content Management System. In a previous article we went over how to choose a CMS for your domain. In this article, we will offer a step-by-step guide on using Wordpress as a CMS.
Before you can use Wordpress as a CMS, you need a domain to host it on. Try out our tools to find a monetizable domain then follow the steps below to have a easily configurable Wordpress powered site.
Step 1: Install Wordpress
To use Wordpress as a CMS you obviously have to install it. Wordpress is known for being extremely easy to setup, but in most cases, your host (Wordpress.org, download the latest version, and follow the instructions to install your own copy of Wordpress.
Step 2: Choose a Theme
To use Wordpress as a CMS, you should download a theme for it that doesn’t look like a blog. There are tons of great resources on the web for downloading these “magazine style” themes, but a few of the best can be found at WooThemes or Studio Press. Themes like these are set up to resemble an actual website, as opposed to the default Wordpress blog-styled theme. If desired, you can customize the themes you download or purchase to look exactly as you like. Domain Superstar offers programming and design services if you are looking for something like this.
Step 3: Set up pages
Wordpress allows users to create and edit two different types of content. The first is “posts.” These are typically blog posts that can be commented on and will show up on whatever URL you designate for your blog. The second type of content is called a “page” and is exactly that…a web-page for your site. Pages can be given categories to allow them to show up in the menus that your site provides. Pages are a great way to post content to your site. In fact, this article is a Wordpress page!
Just following these simple steps will get started with your new site using Wordpress as a CMS. If you have questions on how to get a domain or a web-host, check out our articles on those topics (How to register a domain name and How to choose the best hosting plan) Then, sign up for a Domain Superstar trial membership for only $3 and use our premium tools to find the domain that is right for you!
Javascript Libraries – Adding polish to your site the easy way
by John
The more web development I do, the more I’m grateful for the plethora of amazing Javascript libraries out there. It’s never been simpler to add advanced front-end functionality like drag-and-drop, animations, or sortable, paginated, searchable tables (like those used in our Type-In Traffic Finder, for instance). Here’s a few of my favorite javascript libraries.
1. YUI
YUI (Yahoo! User Interface Library) is one of my favorite Javascript libraries. The vast majority of our domain tool dashboard is written using it. YUI has probably the best collection of widgets and user interface elements of any Javascript library, as well as great documentation, and great community support. It does tend to be more complicated and verbose than some other libraries when doing simple DOM manipulation, but that should change when YUI 3 is released.
2. JQuery
JQuery is currently my favorite Javascript library. If you’re a web developer and you’re not familiar with
it, I highly recommend learning it as soon as possible. JQuery’s tagline is “write less, do more” and that pretty much sums up my experience with it. Writing code in jQuery is very concise, but very powerful. One of my favorite features: Any DOM element can be animated just by calling the animate() function and then specifying the CSS property to animate (opacity or height for instant). JQuery also has many widgets in their jQuery UI library, but it is not as fully developed as YUI.
3. Prototype/Scriptaculous
I have less experience with Prototype and Scriptaculous, than with YUI and jQuery, but this is another mature and well-known library. Prototype focuses on DOM manipulation and more core functionality, and Scriptaculous is a UI library built on top of Prototype. These libraries are included with or supported by many popular web frameworks like Ruby on Rails and CakePHP.
Even if you’re not a developer you can use these libraries to snaz up your site.
You can find many good tutorials on adding javascript effects at NetTuts. There are many other sites with lots of prebuilt widgets and tutorials that can be found via Google.
So what do you think? Any other libraries or resources to add?
How to Build Websites at Home
Building websites is an exciting, fun, and often profitable activity, but to many people, is also a daunting task. This article will show you how to build websites at home and will show you that doing so is much easier than you imagined! The number one step in building a website is having a domain. Whether your goal is to have a personal site or to make money, try out our tools now to find a great domain.
Once you have a domain, you are ready to start building websites!
Step 1: Find a Hosting Plan
You need to have a web host to build websites. You can find many types of plans – from cheap plans that allow you to run one domain, to dedicated servers that can potentially run hundreds of sites. A couple of good web hosts are HostGator and GoDaddy
Step 2: Configure your Nameservers
Once you’ve your bought your domain and selected a host, you need to configure your nameservers to point to your domain. A nameserver is a server on the internet that maps your domain name to your web host IP address, allowing browsers to get to the right site when they type in your domain. Generally, your domain registrar will have a control panel where you can specify the name server you want to use for your domain. For detailed instructions on setting up your nameserver, check out our how-to guide on configuring your nameservers.
Step 3: Pick a CMS
Once you’ve configured your nameservers, you need to choose a CMS for your domain. A CMS will allow you to easily choose a theme for your site, and to easily add new content. To see a list of criteria when choosing a CMS, check out our article on choosing a CMS for your domain.
Step 4: Add Content
Once your CMS is configured, you need to add relevant content do you domain. Write some articles and author some blog posts to get your site fleshed out. If you want some community with your site, then download some plugins for your CMS to configure it exactly how you want.
There you have it. Building a website isn’t as hard as it sounds. Sign up for our premium membership to find your domain and begin building your website.
How to choose a CMS for a domain
If there is one tool that is essential for the domainer, it is got to be a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is a framework that allows you to publish pages, articles, and blog posts to a website through a convenient user interface (as opposed to going through html code by hand). The purpose of this article is to help you learn how to choose a CMS for a domain. Before installing a CMS, you need, of course, a good domain to install the CMS on. Check out our tools today to find a great domain for your site.
There are several considerations to take into account when choosing a CMS.
Features
The number one consideration when choosing a CMS is it’s feature set. Does it do what you need it to do? Some users need to have tight access control. Some users need to scale their website to thousands of users. Make a list of the features you need in your CMS and make sure that the system you choose has those features.
Flexibility
Flexibility is another very important consideration when choosing a CMS for your domain. It is very important to be able to tweak a CMS to your liking as you develop your site. A couple of specific things to research are the plugin system for the CMS (can you add user developed plugins to improve the functionality of the CMS?) and whether or not the CMS is open source. If it is open source, then you can obviously change anything you want with the right time and effort.
Support
Many users want to know that if they have problems that they can get help. Check the user communities for the CMS you are looking at. If it is a CMS that is not free, then check to make sure the support is available 24/7 and that you can access it as often as you need to.
Ease of Use
Ease of use is another consideration. If multiple people are going to use the CMS, then you need to be able to easily and intuitively make the necessary changes to the site.
Performance
An often overlooked criteria for choosing a CMS is performance. A CMS adds a lot of extraneous code to a website to make editing it much easier, but this can have a performance cost. Spec out the CMS you are looking at to ensure that it’s performance meets your needs.
Some popular CMS systems
There are literally hundreds or thousands of CMSs on the market today, but here are just a few of the most popular and well known.
- Joomla – Joomla is a well known full-featured CMS that offers extensive community support, plugins, and themes. It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but can cover almost any use imagineable.
- Drupal – Drupal is another well-known open-source CMS that is full-featured and has good community support.
- Wordpress – Wordpress is often thought of as blogging software but can be easily used as a full-blown CMS. Here at domainsuperstar.com we love Wordpress (and used it for our site). Check out our wordpress tutorial video to see how to configure Wordpress and use it as a CMS.
We hope this article has given you some idea of what to look for when choosing a CMS for your domain. Give our premium membership a try to help you find a great domain now!
New Website Tutorial Video Released: Customizing Wordpress Themes
Although the focus of Domain Superstar is of course all about our domain name tools and making it easy for anyone to consistently find loads of valuable domain names we do also have some additional perks for our premium members, one of them being some hopefully very helpful website development tutorial videos.
The tutorial videos make it easy for you to “watch over my shoulder” as I first find a valuable domain name in the first video and then take that domain name from just a name to a fully functioning e-commerce money making website.
I use the software program Camtasia so that I can capture what is on my computer screen and record my voice at the same time.
The domain name/website that I use as an example throughout the video series is actually not my domain name but the domain name of one of our premium members. MMA Supreme is the name of the domain name and the website is close to being halfway finished as we have just made tutorial video #4 “Customizing Wordpress with Theme Tweaks” and are at the halfway point as we have 4 more videos to release in the future.
No matter whether you develop your own websites, you pay someone to do your website development, or you could care less about developing your domains be sure and sign up for our premium membership so that you can consistently find valuable domain names using our tools!
999 Small Business Ideas + Why Most New Business Ideas Are Worthless
I love hearing/thinking about/dreaming up new business ideas. Why? It’s fun and the payoff can be huge! Lots of hard work is involved of course but starting new businesses and new websites is something that is definitely enjoyable. I usually put up 3-5 new websites every week and I like to think of each website as it’s own individual business with its own market. From a domain name tools site to a website backup site to hundreds of other types of sites – it can be a lot of fun to think of new business ideas.
BUT…
Even the best idea is not worth a whole lot if you cannot execute. So before I give you a link to the list of 999 small business ideas I would challenge you to read this quote that I found here at the online version of the 37signals book: “Getting Real: Done! (Chapter 6)”. Here is the quote by Derek Sivers that I absolutely love in it’s entirety:
“It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Explanation:
* Awful idea = -1
* Weak idea = 1
* So-so idea = 5
* Good idea = 10
* Great idea = 15
* Brilliant idea = 20
* No execution = $1
* Weak execution = $1000
* So-so execution = $10,000
* Good execution = $100,000
* Great execution = $1,000,000
* Brilliant execution = $10,000,000
To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.”
Before you set out to start a business or even register a domain name with the intent to develop the domain into something meaningful ask yourself, “Am I really serious about executing on this plan or am I just wasting my time by thinking up ideas that I never have the nerve/discipline/work ethic/etc. to actually do something about?”
I would challenge you to spend less time dreaming up things to do and more time getting down to brass tacks and tackling your big ideas. If you fail then so what? Chalk it up as a learning experience and dare to attempt your next big project.
Of course, remember I said that I love thinking up new business ideas at the beginning of this post so please don’t get the impression that I believe that taking the time to think up good business ideas is a waste of time. It’s not – BUT it can be if you do not follow through and execute.
Here are a few action steps:
1) Read this list of 999 business ideas.
2) Choose some of the best business ideas from the list to refine as your own.
3) Use tools like our premium membership, business formation services from MyCorporation.com, etc. etc. to execute on those business ideas.
What do you think?
Why You Should Use a Website Backup Service
If you are like me then you can sometimes be very paranoid about losing your website data, your site going down, your hosting company screwing something up, a hacker doing damage to your site, etc. etc etc. (the more paranoid you are then the longer the list can grow). One thing that I do to help alleviate some of this paranoia is to consistently do full backups of all of my websites files and databases to multiple locations.
This is especially important if you are like me and you have multiple websites on multiple servers. Of course, doing complete website backups at least once a week and even better once a day is just plain smart even if you only have one site.
While it is true that many hosting companies offer automatic website backups for their customers it is crucial to never rely on your hosting company alone for your website backups because if there is a company wide or server wide issue then your website backup data will be lost right along with your primary website data.
With all of this in mind John and I recently created an automatic website backup service that lets you enter your website info in, schedule how often you want your website to be backed up (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.), and then select an option to receive email notifications whenever your backup has completed successfully.
Everything is automatic so you just have to enter the info in once and then sit back and let it do backups for you according to the schedule that you specify. This is nice because you can just set it and forget it without having to worry about anything technical. The site will let you backup an unlimited number of websites and it does a full backup of all of your websites files and databases and will store the last 30 backups for you to log in and download at any time if a website data loss occurs.
The plans start at just $7/month which is pretty cheap insurance against the catastrophe that could occur with a loss of website data. Of course, if you are paranoid like me then you will want to backup your websites in triplicate by backing up at multiple locations or even more but with just a few clicks then this website backup service may be one really good option for you take take advantage of. Try it out and let us know what you think!
