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When blogging, one thing you always want to do is to keep in touch with your readers. You’ll always have your quiet readers who never comment, etc, but there ways to get them to speak up…without having them actually speak up, which we’ll get into later.

But to the point, it’s very important to connect with your readers to be a successful blog. Because, let’s face it, without your readers…you don’t have much of a blog, do you? There are a few ways to connect with your readers that take little time or work on your part.

The first thing you can do as a blogger is simply get involved with the comments that your readers read. For some unknown reason, many bloggers will read the comments but don’t really take the time to interact with them. I’m not sure why? I mean, in a way, you have a very small “celebrity” type personality when you own a blog, and people do enjoy hearing from you, the blogger…so take the time to write back to their comments, be it a question or not. It’s lets the reader know you are reading what they’re writing and are willing to take time out of your busy schedule to let them know they’re important.

Another important way to connect with your reader is using the “social platform” method, which is simply letting your bloggers know more about you. As a blogger, you should fill out your “About Me” areas of your blog and do so thoroughly. Readers like to know about the blog owner/author and it’s a good feeling for the reader to have more than just an idea or image in their head about who exactly you are. Pictures also work well. A face to put next to the writing really improves a readers perception of you and your blog. In addition to the “social platform” method, you also should take the time out to connect with your readers through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. If you don’t have an account, time to sign up. Make sure you let your readers know you have profiles on those websites as well.

Lastly, use your sites content to your advantage. Through the stats page in your blogging platform, you’ll be able to see the popular postings and what people like. In addition to that, set up public polls that will allow readers to help you decide what types of things will improve your blog. There are many readers that are quiet (as I stated above), that will be more than willing to anonymously help you improve your blog…so let them. Ask simple questions about how you can improve your blog, what they would like to see more of, see less of, etc.

It’s very important that you include your readers in your decisions, because without your readers, you have a journal…not a blog.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice blogger or an advanced one, a problem almost all of us run into is the design of your blog. Thankfully, there are a lot of talented and non-greedy web designers out there that spend hours creating blog templates/themes for free, allowing us to spice up our blogs with the click of a button.

But, as you advance into your blogging, there might be a time when you’re desiring more for your blog other than a “standard” blog theme/template. So, what do you do then? It takes a special and unique talent to be a web designer, a talent many of simply don’t have. Sure, we can try to teach ourselves but the amount of time required simply might not be worth it to many. In this situation, we need to look for some professional web designers, especially those that specialize in blog designs.

Below, I have listed a a few awesome web design teams that will put your blog on the right track to perfection for a pretty small price, in many situations less than $100 dollars. To visit the site, simply click the name:

The Blog Studio - This website is very professional and makes very professional themes, some that are pretty pricey if you’re just blogging for fun. However, if you own a business, this is a place you need to check out.

Moxie - A very interesting website that has a collection of amazing pieces in their portfolio. While they do customize any blog style, the majority of work does point more towards female related blogs, such as “Mom blogs”, etc.

Unique Blog Designs - UBD is one of the most popular, if not the most popular custom blog design website on the net. With a vast portfolio of work, you’ll be amazed with their work in a few moments.

Radiiate - When you visit the Radiiate website, you’ll be taken back by the creative designs this self proclaimed “Wordpress Rockstar” has created. If you’re looking for something a little different, a little off the wall, and something that could never be replicated, he’s your man.

One thing you also need to look into when creating a custom blog design is creating your own unique logo. Many, if not all custom blog design companies will create a custom blog logo for a small fee, so make sure you ask about this as it’s vitally important for such a small fee.

One of the most interesting benefits of the Wordpress.org platform is the ability for programmers to create their own mini scripts which allow Wordpress.org blog users to add all sorts of interesting and neat features to their blog with a single click or two.

Below, I will preview a few very interesting and beneficial plugins for your Wordpress.org blog. Simply click the name of the plugin and it will take you to the download page:

WP Super Cache - This plugin “cache’s” your blog, which results in faster load times for returning visitors. It really does speed up the site for your visitors, but, at times when you update your blog it may take 15-20 minutes for the update to actually reflect. That does NOT qualify for blog postings however…those will post instantly, but any graphical changes you make to your blog, etc, will take a few minutes to show up. Even with that, it’s well worth the download.

NextGen Gallery - A very cool and sleek plugin which will turn all of the photos onto your blog into a gallery format. All pictures, when clicked, will now have a very nice looking black border and look extremely professional. You can also create gallerys to display on pages or in blog postings. A very nice plugin for all blogs, and especially for art or photo blogs.

Wordpress.com Stats - Odd that this plugin has the “wordpress.com” name in it? Not really. To use this plugin you must sign up (or have) a Wordpress.com account. Most of us do anyway, but, if you don’t…you’ll need one. This plugin gives you very intensive and deep stats on your blog, and is one of the better stat tracking plugins on the internet.

Contact Form 7 - This is a very simple plugin and is exactly what it says…a contact form. There are some nicer contact forms available for download, but, some can get pretty tricky to install. My personal preference says this contact form is the easiest to install and is pretty nice on the eyes as well. If you don’t have a blog theme that has a pre-installed contact form, try this one out. The most beneficial part of a contact form is that spam bots can not attack them and send you random spam e-mail and/or steal your e-mail address as this contact form has a “human verification” system in it which forces the e-mailer to answer a simple question prior to the sending of the e-mail (example, 1 +1).

If you didn’t find what you were looking for, stay tuned, as we’ll be adding more plugins in the near future.

If you’ve recently moved to your first hosting package you may be struggling to get to grips with getting the files you want online. When using a web-based host, such as Wordpress.com, you don’t have access to your root domain but once you move over to Wordpress.org (or another self-hosted platform), you’ll need to learn how to properly use an FTP Client as it will be instrumental in the installation and maintenance of your blog.

First, the term “FTP” stands for File Transfer Protocol which in simple terms is the program you’ll use to transfer files from your computer to your website. Think of it as the car which will get you from home to work.

There are many places to download FTP clients and most are free. I personally suggest you visit a trusted website like Downloads.com (click here to visit) and download whatever FTP client you’d like. They’re sorted by popularity, so, pick one of the more popular ones in case you need some support.

Once you’ve installed the program after download, the next thing you’ll need to do is input the needed information which will be the “address”, “username”, and “password”…all information you’ll receive in an e-mail from your host once you’ve paid. There might be some additional fields that would like information, such as “description” or “name” and you can fill those out if you are so inclined. Once done, “connect” and you should be connected to your blogs root domain. One final tip you might want to look at however is the “Transfer File Type”. There will be an option for “auto”, “ASCII” or “binary”. You’ll want to leave this on “auto” unless told otherwise.

After you’ve completed these steps, the last thing you’ll need to do is transfer files. You should see the files and/or folders on your computer to your left and the directory of your blog/website on the right. Simply drag them over and they’ll then be begin  to transfer. That’s it! You’ve transferred files!

If you are setting up a Wordpress.org blog, once you’ve transferred over the folder/files that it tells you to do in the Wordpress instruction/readme file, you then will need to actually go to that directory (literally type it out in your web browser). For example, once the files have transferred over, you will need to type out “http://www.YOURSITENAMEHERE.com/wordpress/wp-admin” and let the script run, which will install your blog.