OMNINOGGIN

I have been blogging seriously for almost one year. I’ve learned a lot on the topic of WordPress and blogging from intense online research and trial-and-error. It wasn’t until Alex Sysoef (author of a blog I regularly read) gave me the opportunity to preview his Platinum Membership of the Expert WordPress product that I realized how inefficient I have been at promoting and monetizing my blog.

What is this product?

The product includes a pre-packaged blog optimized for serious bloggers who do not want to worry about the technical details and access to priceless video tutorials (personally I believe this is the meat of the product) to help you succeed in blogging. If you are a new-found serious blogger, you would find that the pre-packaged blog contains all the necessary tools you will need to help you blog, promote, and monetize effectively right out of the box. Here is what Alex has to say about the platinum membership.

What I love about it?

The videos. Want to learn about seach engine optimization (SEO), effective monetizing, driving quality traffic, or blog tweaks/maintenance? Alex walks you through all these time-tested techniques and more in a series of easy to understand tutorial videos that is included with the product. These tutorials will help you get started the right way so you do not waste any time making mistakes and fixing them as I did. I honestly regret not having seen these videos in my earlier blogging days because I would’ve built a better blog in less amount of time.

What I don’t like about it

Of course no product is perfect. Personally, I would like to see a cleaner Web 2.0 theme get pre-packaged into the blog installation. One important aspect of converting a new visitor is to have a clean theme that is less cluttered to make a good first impression. That being said, I do believe that the most valuable part of the product is the tutorials itself. I would have purchased the product just for the videos that cover strategies on seo, blogging, promoting, and monetizing. This is also why I believe that the gold membership is redundant. I think most people should ditch the gold membership and go for the platinum. This is because once you’ve setup your blog, you will need to learn how to effectively use it anyway.

The bottom line

I highly recommend the platinum membership for serious bloggers who are looking to quickly and efficiently deploy a blog to promote their business. This product is a prime example of the motto, “Work smarter, not harder.” Thank you for putting this product together Alex. I will implement these techniques to empower my blog in the coming months and I am confident that my blog will gain the much deserved authority.

Check out the product here!

What’s up the affiliate links?
At times, I get offers to review a new product in my niche. I do my best to give it an honest review and report it to my readers. I also make an effort to add affiliate links any time I honestly recommend a product or service. They do not harm you in any way, but they do help offset the costs of running this website. Just assume that I get paid for everything I say.

What more can I say but “GPL FTW”. This is what happens when you release something under GPL and do not put in much effort in supporting it. Someone else takes it over and releases a better version of your own code leaving the consumers to benefit! Donncha O Chaoimh from Holy Shmoly! released WP-Super-Cache, a WordPress caching plugin built on top of WP-Cache. From Holy Shmoly!, here are the differences between WP-Super-Cache and WP-Cache:

1. A plugin and hooks system. A common complaint with WP Cache was that hacking was required to make it work nicely with other plugins. Now you can take advantage of the simple plugin system built in to change how or when pages are cached. Use do_cacheaction() and add_cacheaction() like you would with WordPress hooks. Plugins can add their own options to the admin page too.
2. Works well with WordPress MU in VHOST or non-VHOST configuration. Each blog’s cache files are identified to improve performance.
3. Normal WP-Cache files are now split in two. Meta files go in their own directory making it much faster to scan and update the cache.
4. Includes this WP-Cache and protected posts fix.
5. Automatically disable gzip compression in WordPress instead of dying.
6. As Akismet and other spam fighting tools have improved, the cache will only be invalidated if a comment is definitely not spam.
7. Version 0.2 supports gzip compression

Did you see that? Supports gzip compression! Finally, an easy way to enable gzip and WP-Cache. The best part of all of this is that the automatic WP-Cache enabling method still works for this plugin since it was built on top of WP-Cache. I encourage everybody to upgrade!