WordPress is currently the world’s number one blogging software.

What I want to talk about in the next couple post is how to use WordPress’s open-source software to build and maintain a website. You see, WordPress is not just for blogs anymore.

WordPress is a content management system — a system that can be customized into exactly what you need. It does not matter rather you are building a blog or a full-fledged website with a shopping cart. WordPress can do it all.

WordPress offers the easiest way to set up and maintain a website. The other really cool thing about WordPress is that because it is open source software, there is a high demand for ever-changing features.

With WordPress you have a framework that makes for both easy and fast upgrades as well as design and technological changes.  All the above and the fact that it seems to becoming more and more popular by the day has caused me to want to spend a little time learning the software.

I am thinking about changing Geeks on Steroids to work exclusively with WordPress. When it comes time for my clients to change text, add new pages, photos, videos or anything else if the CMS makes the changes difficult, then my clients are less likely to do them. With WordPress, not only are we using the easiest and best CMS on the market but we can create “how to videos” to teach and show anyone how to do anything using WordPress.

If we can make using the CMS exciting then our clients will be more involved with their website. I want our clients thinking about what they can change or add to make their sites better.

WordPress puts the power of the website in the owner’s hands, where it should be.

I am going to start at a beginner’s level and work my way up post by post here on this blog.

I want to start by showing you how to make the software work for you in real-world situations, and I want to do that by showing the tips and tricks that make things really simple.

I will be doing this in both print and video.

This might sound bad but if I am going to spend my time writing something I’d like to hear some kind of response from my readers. It doesn’t matter if I’m selling advertising, products or just my ideas I want to have a large readership. I know there are number ways to increase the readership on my blog but I wanted to see what I could come up with off the top of my head.

Okay one thing we want to do is increase the number of pages each reader is reading. I want to be judged on more than one post because the one they are reading might not be my best. I can do this by highlighting related post within each post I make. And then at the end of the article I’ll highlight post that may be of interest to those who like this article.

I believe WordPress has a plug-in that will help me do this. I’ll look into that as soon as I finish writing this article.

The next thing I want to do is to do a series. By doing this I stand a chance of getting readers coming back to my website to see what’s been written, as well as getting readers that find one post to click through to the older post or the newer post either way increasing my page views.

Another way to increase readership is with controversy. If you know enough about your subject and you’re a good enough writer you can get a ton of traffic, this way. This a dangerous game to play if you’re not up to par on your topic or unable to carry on a debate with someone.

And last, but definitely not least, you have to have good quality content. It’s got to be useful, original, and interesting to your target audience. The more you raise the quality of your content, the more you will see your readership and membership grow.

Having a blog is not only fun but done correctly is extremely profitable lifestyle. Regardless you want to maintain and increase a readership.

As budgets get tighter and people look for ways to save money online, there is nothing like a free WordPress theme to help us do just that.

Just in case you don’t know, WordPress is an open source website content management system. It was first released in May 2003.

It is powered by PHP and a SQL data backend. As of September 2009, WordPress is used by 62.8 million websites in the US and 202 million websites worldwide.

In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.

With all that being said the idea is to find a theme that looks close to what you are wanting the website layout to look like and then hire a web designer to modify and customize that theme.

Here are a couple themes from Smashing Magazine that I thought were really cool.

Below are a list of some of the themes I like, however to find more themes and get more information on these themes check out the link above.

Zinepress Theme

SimpleCart(js)

Paper Wall

Cool Retro

Gallery WordPress Theme

Folio Elements Theme

Destyle Theme

Cool Retro

Calmdream WordPress Theme

Berita

AppCloud Theme