I’m helping a friend to setup a new eCommerce site and am such a big fan of wordpress that I’ve been doing a lot of research to see what can be integrated easily with wordpress these days. Appears I’m not the only one as I have found several themes, plugins and articles.

The two main articles are:

1. 35+ Online Shopping Cart Solutions for Your Business
2. 35 Free High-Quality E-Commerce Templates

Has anyone used the WP eCommerce Plugin?

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Everytime my husband and I go to an event we meet new people and learn a few things we didn’t know before.  We’ve attended several of the Frisco Internet Entrepreneur’s Meetup here in the DFW area run by Charles McKeever.  At the most recent meeting, I learned about several cool wordpress plugins that might help you too.

Flexi Pages Widget: This widget is much more friendly than the pages sidebar widget because it lets you include, exclude and group pages in a flexible and quick way.

WordPress Database Backup: The WP-DB-Backup plugin allows you to create a backup of your wordpress database so if you ever accidentially delete your content, get hacked or have an issue with your hosting company you can recreate your site content quicly and easily.

UserVoice: If you are looking for customer feedback this is a great little plugin that simplfies the process so you don’t have to add the code to every page.

For those who are eBay affiliates, several people recommeded phpBay Pro and Search2Post.   There is a lite version of phpBay that is free called phpBay lite while the phpBay Pro costs $79 (do a google search and you can easily find a 20% coupon for it).  Search2Post is currently $29.95.

If you are having trouble, like I did (see the before image to the left), in getting the default tag cloud to stay within the column you’ve placed it in, then you should try a different Tag Cloud plugin.

I did a search and found a plugin called the Configurable Tag Cloud. I’m using version 4.1. Keith, the author of this widget, titled it “CTC” since Configurable Tag Cloud was too long.

As you can see to the right, now, my tag cloud stays within the column width of the right sidebar and looks a lot better. Thanks for creating the widget Keith!

I have yet to play around with all the other configuration options, although they look easy to use. Let me know how you’ve configured this CTC Plugin. What do you think of my sidebar now? Any other widgets and plugins you’d recommend?

This past weekend I attended the 2008 Dallas WordCamp where wordpress bloggers, enthusiasts and experts gathered to share and learn about wordpress. I met lots of enjoyable people who’s blogs I look forward to reading and who’s paths I hope to cross again in the future.

I’m a fairly inexperienced blogger. Up until this weekend, I didn’t really know much more than how to create and manage a post plus manipulate a little bit of the basic html code. Although, I quickly seem to forget the html code if I don’t use it often. But, that’s okay because I do know how to search for the code when I need a little refresher course. In fact, lately, I’ve just been going to HTML Code Tutorial since they do a great job of explaining how the code works with images (I’m a very visual learner.)

Despite half of the conference sessions being over my head, I still picked up a great deal of tips and suggestions. In fact, one of the best, tip filled presentation was 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog by John Pozadzides. He gave a ton of suggestions on not only the what of blogging but the how. There were several great plugins and even a theme he recommended.

Another good speaker was Lorelle VanFossen. If you are looking for a great book to get you started on learning about blogging, you should really grab a copy of her book “Blogging Tips: What bloggers won’t tell you about blogging.”

Another favorite, Liz Strauss, spoke about being you and authentic in your blog. Liz and John P stood out the most to me as not just bloggers but successful business people.

And lastly, there was Matt Muttenweg, who I’m sad to say I didn’t even know who he was until he spoke at the event. He released WordPress 2.5 and highlighted several of the features that had changed along with giving a little back ground of where they started.

This new blog is my attempt to try out some of the features, tips and tricks I learned. Please bear with me as I get the hang of all these cool features. I have so much too learn!

If you want to see what a weekend of ideas, suggestions and work can do, check out the Internet Lawyer’s Blog and the wayback machine from just a few days ago.

If you attended the 2008 Dallas WordCamp, I’d love to hear your feedback of the event. Or if you are interested in learning more about the event, just ask. Do you know of any other great events like this where you can learn more about blogging?