In a nutshell, split testing is a method of marketing where you compare two different versions of the same thing, and then you determine which was more successful at reaching your goal.  For example, I might have two different layouts for this same article, but one looks one way and the other looks another way.  I would split test to see which one people seemed to like more – then do more article layouts like that.

Here are best split test related add-ons I found for WordPress:

SES Theme Split Test

This plugin lets you set up two different templates with differences that you think might increase conversions, serve these different templates up to users, and track their activity using custom segments in Google Analytics.

Headline Split Test

This plug-in allows you to enter an alternate headline for every post on your blog. The headlines are then randomly alternated on your website until a certain number of "headline views" has been reached. At that point, a "winning" headline (as determined by the number of people that have clicked on each headline to date) is determined and that headline is shown going forward.

Ad Injection

Ad Injection injects any kind of advert (e.g. Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, ClickBank, TradeDoubler, etc) into the existing content of your WordPress posts and pages. You can control the number of adverts based on the post length, and it can restrict who sees adverts by post age, visitor referrer and IP address.

Do you know of a great all in one split testing tool for WordPress? If so, hit me up and let me know.  I would love to test it out.

Everybody has a mobile phone these days (except me) so you need to make sure your website preforms both on common desktop browsers and mobile phone browsers too.  One way to insure that you have the best looking mobile website out there is to pick up the MobilePress add-on for WordPress.

This is a free WordPress plugin that makes your website "mobile friendly".  You can also create a lightweight mobile themes for different mobile browsers. Here is a little more about the add-on from the developers:

MobilePress is a free open source WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a mobile friendly blog when viewed on a cell phone. MobilePress is flexible in that it allows you to customize your mobile presence by creating your own themes, creating themes for specific mobile browsers (iPhone and generic devices) and also allowing you to decide when to display your mobile blog.

You also are able to theme the mobile version of your website to look the way you want it to look.  MobilePress integrates with Aduity.com too, which will cover your advertising side of things. I have not yet had time to install and play with this add-on myself – but after trying to check out one of my websites on my sister’s phone the other day, I am really thinking about picking it up.  You want your website to be as easy as possible to use and MobilePress gives that ability to you. 

To learn more about the WordPress add-on (or to download it yourself) go visit mobilepress.co.za.

The WordPress dashboard is a pretty useless tool if you ask me. I have found some great plugins for WordPress though that add a lot of functionality to it, to make the dashboard useful again.  Check out these five great plugins for WordPress and then try to tell me your WordPress dashboard is not better for having added them into the mix.

WP Hide Dashboard

Hide the Dashboard menu, Tools menu, Personal Options section and Help link on the Profile page from your blog subscribers when they are logged in.

Dashboard Links

Provides a dashboard widget for showing links from a certain link category on the dashboard.

Dashboard Post-it

Adds a simple ‘Post-it’ widget to the Dashboard that allows you to leave yourself or other authors a note.

Google AdSense Dashboard

Google AdSense Dashboard displays your earnings on your WordPress dashboard for a quick heads-up on your earnings for the day.

Google Analytics Dashboard

This plugin will give you access to your Google Analytics data directly inside your WordPress blog.

Know of any other great WordPress plugins that add a little more functionality to the WordPress default screen?  Let me know your favorites in the comments!

From the front page of the website you can start browsing through dozens of great plugins to use on your own website.  There are currently almost 70 plugins to choose from – and I am sure more to come in the future.  Plugin price ranges anywhere from $2 to $35 from what I saw.  While $35 is a little too high I think for any plugin – the $2 to $10 plugins were more than affordable if you really need and want the functionality they bring to your website.

Here are a few WordPress plugin examples:

GWT :: Advanced Settings

This plugin allows you to modify some of the advanced WordPress configuration settings without having to edit your wp-config.php file after installation.

Broken Link Checker Pro

Checks your posts, comments and other content for broken links, missing images and more.

All in one Webmaster PRO

All in one Webmaster solution for your WordPress Blog. Very handy solution.

As far as what I would like to see WPPlugins do in the future – it would be nice to see the plugins sortable by category or by price.  Right now it appears the only way to sort the plugins offered is via search.  So if you are a plugin developer looking to make a little more cash for your efforts or you are looking for a specific great plugin for your own WordPress powered website – give WPPlugins a visit.

Looking for a free script to use that can give you a way to publish multiple authors, run multiple blogs, draft and schedule posts, and is fully extendable via pugins?  No, I am not talking about WordPress – I am talking about Nucleus CMS.  This alternative to WordPress is well worth checking out if you need a blogging script that is reliable, time tested and very solid.

The requirements to get Nucleus CMS up and running are very light.  You only need:

• A server that supports PHP5+ scripting (versions 5.0.6+)
• Access to a mySQL database from that server (versions 3.23.x+)

Those goals can very easily be met these days by any web hosting company out there.  Nucleus CMS also fully supports all of the common blogging core features you would expect.  You have built in support for multiple authors and multiple blogs.  You can sort new posts by categories.  You can set up more search engine optimization friendly URLs too.  If you toss plugins and skins into the mix, there isn’t a lot that Nucleus CMS can’t do.

They also have at least two conversion tools, one for MovableType and the other for WordPress.

If you are looking for an alternative to WordPress, or any other popular blogging script out there – Nucleus CMS is well worth checking into.  It is light, flexible, secure and free.  You can learn more about Nucleus CMS over at nucleuscms.org.

The interface is simple, to the point and you can customize it to suit your needs. As you can see in this picture, I have things slimmed down to pretty simple text-based chatting.

To get started all you need to do is use the Account Editor (Accounts > Manage Accounts) to add the account of the appropriate messaging service. Use the check-box in the account editor to enable the current account.

It also has built in logging features I really love too.  All your chats and IM conversations can be logged as .txt files to browse through later.  You can also extend Pidgin with plugins too.

You can download Pidgin for a number of different platforms too.  It supports Windows, Mac OSX, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora and more.  Give it a shot if you are shopping around for a new all-in-one instant messenger client.  It is one of the best.

Need a handy guide to WordPress?  Try out some of these great links!

• 9 WordPress Alternatives
• Using WordPress for Static Web Sites
• WordPress Plugins for Regular Folks
• 10 Tools to Turn Firefox into WordPress’s Little Helper
• A Better WordPress Admin Layout?
• How to Get Rid of WordPress Comment Spam
• 37 WordPress Theme Databases and Blogs
• 20 Best Multimedia Plugins for WordPress
• Sticky Post Help in WordPress
• WordPress Plugins for Regular Folks

Let me know which ones are your favorites, and what type of WordPress lists, tutorials or more you would like to see in the future!

WordPress is a great publishing platform to use when you want to circulate your own collection of video or images on the Web.  Thanks to a few great plugins, you can take your dull text-based blog and really snaz it up with some great internet imagery.  Want to great a photo gallery?  Want to plug YouTube into your web site?  I have collected twenty of the best multimedia plugins for you to use with your own WordPress powered web site.

Page Flip Image Gallery – Flipping Book plugin helps you to create Image Gallery with Page Flip effects on your WordPress blog.

Post videos and photo galleries – Post your videos and photo galleries/flash slideshows easily and in seconds.

NextGEN Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option.

WordTube – WordTube is your Media Center plugin for WordPress.

Flickr Photo Album – This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site.

Lightbox 2 – Plugin used to overlay images on the current page into neat Javascript-powered overlay popups.

Smart YouTube – Smart YouTube plugin allows you to insert full featured YouTube videos into your post, comments and in RSS feed.

SEO Friendly Images – SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes the tags w3c/xHTML.

Thumbnail Viewer – A minimalist image viewer with an effect similar to Lightbox JS, only much faster with a whole lot less Javascript.

Flash Video Player – The flash video plugin for WordPress allows the addition of video (and other media) to a WordPress website using standards-compliant markup

PhotoXhibit – PhotoXhibit provides an interface to set up gallery widgets using Picasa / Flickr / SmugMug / WordPress Uploads and jQuery.

Shutter Reloaded – Darkens the current page and displays an image on top (like Lightbox, Thickbox, etc.), but is a lot smaller (10KB) and faster.

WordPress Video Plugin – A filter for WordPress that displays videos from many video services. Enter [videosite id] at a post and you will see a video.

Random Image Selector – Selects a random image from a specified folder, and provides.

podPress – A dream plugin for Podcasters using WordPress.

Yet Another Photoblog – Convert your WordPress 2.5+ installation into a full featured photoblog in virtually no time.

PhotoSmash Galleries – PhotoSmash – user contributable photo galleries for WordPress pages and posts with options. Auto-add galleries or specify.

All in One Video Pack – Easily add full video capabilities to your blog.

WordPress Media Flickr – You can post with Flickr photo, on visual editor toolbar.It’s very interactive interface than other plugins.

TubePress – Displays gorgeous YouTube and Vimeo galleries in your posts, pages, and/or sidebar. Please visit http://tubepress.org for more info!

With any mixture of the above plugins for WordPress, your web site will be taken from a text-based bore to a multimedia powerhouse.  Have any other suggestions for plugins I might have missed?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Looking for a wiki script for your next great web site project? 

As somebody who’s built one from the ground up – I can tell you picking the right script for the job, is not an easy task to do.  With a surprising amount of flexibility and power, BoltWire might be one of the easiest to use wikis out there. 

It takes the cake when it comes to mixing the strengths of various script categories together.  Is it a CMS? Is it a wiki?  It is a little ‘bit of both.

The install process is simple.  All you do is download, unzip, upload and install.  It runs on just about any server with PHP4 (although PHP5 is recommended) and has a simple upgrade process too. The entire download is less than 100k, so should just take a couple of seconds to get started.

What about the Features?

Here are some of the best features about BoltWire:

• Easy to install and upgrade
• Run multiple sites off one installation
• Built in member and group management
• Easy to use wiki markup system
• Powerful search engine capabilities
• In-browser editing of skins & CSS
• Standards compliant
• UTF-8 and multi-lingual support
• One click installation of plugins

If you are new to the script, or you get it installed and start to wonder, “What’s Next?!” I would suggest checking out the documentation.  They also have a nice selection of tutorials to help you out too.

Customization?  Yes, you can customize BoltWire in many different ways.  It comes with both plugin and skin support so you are able to make it do the job you want it to do, and get it looking the way you need it to look. 

All in all, I would highly suggest checking BoltWire out, if you have a web site project that needs just a little ‘bit of wiki and a little bit of a content management system rolled into one. 

Ever been browsing an article or guide online that you wish you could print out, without all the junk that the web site provides?  Print Friendly offers to make any web site out there easier to print.  You can use their web site tool to enter the URL you wish to simplify for your printer, or use the bookmarklet to gain access to the tool at any time. 

You can then e-mail the printer friendly version to your friends, tweet about it, or edit the document removing pictures or blocks of text. 

Want to add this interactivity to your own web site layout, maybe under each article that you post?  You can do that too by grabbing the Print Friendly button code.  For WordPress users, there is even a plugin you can install to add it to all your blog posts automatically.

Overall, Print Friendly is a pretty nice service, if you are looking to do a little article simplification, perfect for print.