For a limited time, not available in stores, once in a lifetime opportunity, I’m going to give you a coupon. Now, this isn’t an ordinary coupon that expires in a month and you end up paying extra to make up for the people who received the deal. The coupon in fact does a wonderful thing, it gives you 25 percent off for the entire year. The only catch, to this exclusive coupon, is that you need to purchase at least 12 months of hosting. Personally, I almost always get at least a years worth of hosting because dealing with monthly charges is tedious.

Even if you want to sign up for just a month to test out the service, when you go to repurchase the hosting for a full year, you can input that coupon, and still receive the huge savings.

Good Magento hosting does actually exist, if you look hard enough. Koowii has a specific server dedicated to Magento, and they don’t pack as many customers as possible onto one server. Incidentally, I am one of the people who manages that server, I am seriously impressed by how well Magento performs. Especially when you have gzip enabled, a clean theme, and the deflate mod enabled in htaccess, which I personally installed with the apache compilation.

Qkin is on a virtual dedicated server from Godaddy, I have played with Magento on multiple occasions with this server without great results. You can speed up Magento fairly well. In the long run, you’d be better off just getting the most optimized hosting for Magento because any gains you did make would be lost when traffic increases. Soon I’ll be moving my sites to Koowii, which also hosts platforms such as Wordpress, Pligg, custom code, and the whole plethora of platforms for websites. I just want to wait until most of my hosting has run out.

Fortunately, Magento is improving their code to be able to perform on servers with fewer resources. The process is kind of slow — excuse the pun — and this takes away from the time that you could be starting or building your business.

We can skim through the unbelievable amount of features that are available when you purchase Magento hosting from Koowii.

*Dedicated IP Address
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The prices are definitely fair, ranging from 29.99 to 49.99 a month, with incredible deals for purchasing hosting for extended periods of time.

One of the questions that is asked about Koowii, being an Australian based company, do they support clients from other countries? The answer is a definite, yes!, they even have a few servers based within the United States.

If you enjoy what you see here at Qkin, expect that same type of professionalism and work ethic at Koowii. They also give all of their customers 20 percent off on services such as custom designs, themes, software installs, and much more.

25% off!

Coupon: QKIN

The template can be easily modified to suit the needs of your website. Changing the color scheme is nothing more than editing a few images and using find and replace on the stylesheet.

The CSS is well organized and consistent throughout the template. Silverbullet gives you a straight forward structure that makes adding various elements simple as possible.

I have spent a great deal of time updating this template, after a lot of positive feedback was received from the initial release.

Last time, I did state that donations would be key to me releasing future templates, unfortunately, they were limited at best. I’m not blaming anyone for this, or hold it as a resentment, after all, the template is available for free. You do not have an obligation to donate towards the project.

You’re supporting it by just downloading (not to mention that small link at the bottom of the template that nobody clicks, but helps establish the name). I do however need to encourage everybody to donate to people like me who are willing to spend their time providing you a free service.

I’d also like to thank the Pligg developers, who have spent a great deal of time working on their end to make this template even possible, while giving us an extraordinary piece of software that despite its flaws is still the most significant social bookmarking software available.

Change Color Scheme

Silverbullet comes in 4 unique color variations.
You can change the scheme by simply opening pligg.tpl and finding s_blue.css
and replacing it with one of the following s_orange.css – s_purple.css – s_green.css

Add Your Logo

You can add your logo here /templates/silverbullet/images/logo.jpg
That will replace the default logo with the one you upload. The header was set up too contain almost any size logo without having to modify template files.

More Resources

Support Thread: Submit Bugs and Feedback.

Install silverbullet

1. Backup your modules directory

2. Extract and Upload the templates and modules directories to the root of your Pligg site. Overwrite any files that may already exist.

3. Install the template from Admin > Configure > Templates and change the default template value to “silverbullet”.

4. Navigate to your Pligg Admin panel and click “Delete Template Cache”.

Of course, you do not need to donate, but it will encourage me to update more frequently.

You can use the contact form available in the top menu of Qkin to inquire about work that you might need done, I will get back to you with a quote. Jobs that I am willing to do for a great price are, changing the color scheme, updating your version of Pligg, converting your customized Silverbullet template features to the latest version of Pligg, and doing custom templates. I will not able to accept every inquiry that is sent, but will return any e-mail that is sent to me.

Thank you, enjoy the template.

Choose an untapped niche. Search google for relevant terms.

Choose a tapped niche and do it better.

Adjust descriptions to be at least 250 characters.

Clean up spam immediately.

Stay updated with the latest version of Pligg.

Keep a list of your code changes.

Use a customized template.

Better yet, use my template.

Put a no follow tag on upcoming and tags page.

Submit your RSS Feed.

Add your RSS feed to Feedburner.

Ping your site with Ping O Matic.

Save yourself time and buy Plingger.

Submit articles from unknown websites that are useful. You’re likely to start a positive relationship.

Submit articles, linking to high ranked pages, because its good for SEO.

Add your Pligg to a few high ranking directories.

Add your Pligg to Pliggsites.com.

Use Adsense. Float a 250 x 250 float:right;width: 250px to the right of the story. And a 336 x 250 margin-top:8px; at the bottom of the story. Blend the ad to the background color, no borders, black text, same color link as the other links on your site. Increase the length of the description under configure > submit > description from 10 to at least 250.

Register for the Pligg Forum.

Add your link to the footer of the Pligg Forum, ask questions, answer questions, and get feedback on your site.

Use search engine friendly urls. They are easy to read and google loves them!

Not exactly the case, you can use dynamic urls and still have good SEO.

Don’t worry about Digg and Reddit.

Do worry about linking with relevant potential partners. You’re a free outlet for them.

Create a twitter, blog, facebook, myspace and squidoo.

Importing RSS is a great way to add content to your website. The function is built into Pligg.

Search engines do not like duplicate content. Be careful. You won’t find many Pligg sites that are successful on RSS import alone.

Try, try, try, again then try something else.

Realize that even great ideas can fail.

Be dedicated. Pligg sites are not easy to manage.

Be patient. Your site will probably not launch like a rocket, it will most likely start like a turtle.

Post yourself, especially on slow days.

Don’t hog the submissions. People will question your sites legitimacy, if they see you on the front page everyday. Remember, if you wanted to be the only poster, then you should have started a blog.

Don’t post as God. It makes you seem kind of arrogant. It is also not personalized.

Encourage originality during the article submission process.

Submit to search engines manually.

Redesign your Pligg site. Search engines appreciate the new look.

Thank your users in any way you see fit. Possibly, the best way, is by having competitions. You can use the live page as a means of statistical information and award the top posters with small prizes like a gift from Amazon or a free link in your sidebar.

Don’t exaggerate the importance of embedding videos. I know, videos are the latest phenomenon on the web, but you can still have a resourceful content-based site. A lot of these videos just die out, are subject to copyright infringement, while text lasts forever. I’m not ruling out videos, I’m just saying that you don’t necessarily need videos because everybody else is doing it.

Strength in numbers. The more people posting the better. You want diversity in opinion and differing view points to fight for the eyes of your audience.

You want a common purpose, but don’t risk becoming stale by having too many similar stories.

Work real hard. I promise you, people are not going to come out of the wood work to post on your site. You need to find your market and go appeal to them. Hopefully, you will bring a few back, but don’t count on it.

Submit to social networks as a means of advertising your Pligg. Not as much with your articles because you’re a social network.

Add your site to google webmaster tools, google analytics, and google everything.

Don’t put your Pligg at the root of the domain. Advice from Matt Cutts of Google in 2007 that seems to be respected.

Love your topic. You want to be very passionate about your Pligg site when you’re advertising it.

Be innovative. Think about what makes the social networks that you’re currently on great. Replicate that and expand on it.

Be willing to invest. You might need to be willing to invest in a customized template, a certain module that you’re being asked to add, a advertising campaign.

Most importantly, have fun. Starting a Pligg site, is not an expensive thing to do, start it as a hobby, and just enjoy it.

Read my article on Pligg Seo for more.

I’d like to give credit to the person who originally gave me the idea to put together a list like this, but I can’t find the article. Thanks to him, nevertheless, and be sure to comment with your own ideas.

Since version 1.0, Pligg, has dramatically improved the “out of the box” SEO for urls and titles.

The documentation for Pligg SEO is quite light because so much of it is seemingly out of your control.

Three aspects that are crucial with SEO are duplication, article quality, and quality of link.

You can start off by adding a no follow tag to the search, upcoming, and tag pages.

Open pligg.tpl

Find

{elseif $pagename eq "upcoming"}<title>{#PLIGG_Visual_Name#} | {#PLIGG_Visual_Pligg_Queued#}</title>

Add After

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

Find

{elseif $pagename eq "upcoming"}

Before Add

{elseif $pagename eq "tags"}

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

Find

{elseif $pagename eq "tags"}

Before add

{elseif $pagename eq "search"}

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

You added a no follow tag to the upcoming page because of the quality of articles in upcoming. This section is where all the spam will be, the horrible articles, and where the good articles will be promoted. When the articles become promoted, they will find their way to the search engines, in ways that we will discuss later.

As for the tags and search pages. They just contain duplicate content that is already on the category pages. Great resources, for the user, but search engines have no use for it.

You will want to increase the length of your descriptions because search engines prefer at least medium ranged-to-long articles. You can easily configure the length configure > submit within Pligg’s administration panel. I’d suggest adjusting the size to at least 250 characters (default is only 10).

By using this method, you will scare away potential spammers, who simply want to get their link up as fast as possible. I know, at least in my experience, when I’m presented an opportunity to leave a long description, I do so.

Encourage originality: You can ask your users to make unique descriptions and not copy and paste.

Making your website alive to search engines.

Please, start a twitter, facebook, myspace, blog, squidoo, feedburner, submit rss feeds, add your link to directories, google yourself and ping once a day.

I know, its overwhelming at first, but you can add one a month.

Twitter: You will begin a more personal relationship with your users. Make sure to link it on your Pligg site.

Facebook: The most active social network on the internet. You want them to know you’re alive. Link your account. People who visit your website will add you to their facebook. You’re now open to a gigantic new market.

Myspace: Same idea as facebook.

Blog: You can start one on blogspot, wordpress, your own website, I don’t care, its a great way to keep people updated with whats going on with your site. Just as important, search engines, like it. Add your RSS feed and update often.

Squidoo: You will able to add your RSS feed. Start networking, find relevant friends, and connect your twitter, facebook, blog, pligg site all together.

Feed Burner: You’re giving more access to RSS feeds.

Submit RSS: A quick search on google will yield you a million websites that allow RSS submissions. You can weed out the best ones and manually add (yourdomain.com/rss.php) to all of them.

Submit Directories: High ranking directories with relevant topics.

Google: Add your website to google analytics, google webmaster tools, and google everything.

Ping Yourself: Pligg has a handy tool for sale in their shop called Plingger that automatically pings search engines. You can purchase the item for 10 dollars, if you’re too cheap, submit your RSS feed to Ping O Matic or similar tools.

Remove Spam

Google penalizes websites with spam and users don’t want to see it.

Read 50 Tips For Pligg

Read the tips, you will learn everything that I’ve found to be true about Pligg sites over the last few years.

***I will add more later, this is a very rough draft, before this article was linked to a wikipedia***

I am absolutely impressed by my friend at Think Design as he has just released his second wordpress theme for free.

The theme was hand-coded by me with valid xhtml/css. Of course, the lay out was created by Think Design.

I would describe the theme as a nice, clean theme with subtle design elements. An easy to use interface for the viewers of your website. Did I mention its free?

A lot of great themes are released for wordpress on a consistent basis, but many are over complicated or too similar to previous designs, which isn’t the case for Versatility Lite.

The sidebar serves as a convenient space for advertising purposes. You can simply add your Adsense code or other source. Most webmasters will able to modify their theme accordingly.

The sidebar also comes with a variety of simple navigation to help your users maneuver through out the site.

You can learn a lot more about Versatility Lite over at Think Design.

The license allows for modification for your own purposes or to build upon the work. As long as credit is given to the original author.

Some examples of these sites are digg.com, live.com, and cnet.com.

If you would like to save some time, it is good practice to reuse certain web design elements. In this short tutorial you will learn how to quickly create a search box that is easy to do and visually appealing.

Note
The code for this search box is designed for wordpress, but could be easily modified to work with another cms.

I’ve used a search box like this one on many cms’s including Pligg, PhpBB and Wiki-Media.

You must have a valid doctype
Here is a list of valid doctypes.

I’m not going to explain what each particular part of the code does because it’s pretty self explanatory.

The xhtml

<div class="search-box">
<form method="get" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/">
<input type="text" size="15" class="search-field" name="s" id="s" value="Search.." onfocus="if(this.value == 'Search..') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search..';}"/>
<input type="submit"  value="" class="search-go" />
 
</form></div>

The css

form{margin:0;padding:0}
 
.search-box{ /*outer background*/
background:url(images/search-box.gif) no-repeat top left;
height: 26px;
padding: 5px 0 0 10px;
width: 165px;
}
 
input.search-field{ /*input field */
float: left;
border:0;
margin:0;
font-family:tahoma;
font-size: 12px;
padding: 3px 0px 0px 4px;
height:18px;
background: #ffffff url(images/search-form.png) no-repeat top left;
width: 123px;
}
 
input.search-go { /*search icon */
float:left;
border:0;
margin:0;
padding:0;
margin-left: 5px;
height: 21px;
width: 21px;
background: url(images/search-icon.png) no-repeat top left;
cursor: pointer;
}
 
input.search-go:hover{ /*search icon hover "Does Not work in ie6" */
background:url(images/search-icon.png) no-repeat bottom left;
}

The Images Used

Source Image for search icon

Feel free to make comments and leave trackbacks.

Change Color Scheme

Silverbullet comes in 4 unique color variations.
You can change the scheme by simply opening pligg.tpl and finding s_blue.css
and replacing it with one of the following s_orange.css – s_purple.css – s_green.css

Add Your Logo

You can add your logo here /templates/silverbullet/images/logo.jpg
That will replace the default logo with the one you upload. The header was set up too contain almost any size logo without having to modify template files.

More Resources

Support Thread: Submit Bugs and Feedback.

How do I install a Pligg Template?
Installation is a simple 3 step process:

1. Download and extract the template file from the internet
2. Upload the extracted folder to your /templates directory where Pligg is installed
3. Navigate to your Pligg Admin Panel and click on the Configure link. Then under template you will need to change the name to the folder you uploaded into /templates.

Of course, you don’t have to donate, but if you do so, it will encourage me to release more free templates.

SSH abilities made me happy.

Hope everyone is having an absolutely great holiday.