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We like it so much that we chose it for our own site. But one thing we wished it had is more colors. Not all the default colors were great and it missed some of the common colors. So, we thought: Why not add more color styles to it? It is a GPL theme after all and it seemed fun to do it:)

Here you go !

We added two more color schemes namely, Golden and Wine.

Wine Color style for LIfestyle WordPress child theme by StudioPress

Golen color for LIfestyle WordPress child theme by StudioPress

Installation instructions:

1. Download our Colorful Lifestyle pack.

2.. This is not a stand alone theme. This contains only few modified files that should be replaced in Lifestyle child theme made by StudioPress. Please purchase Lifestyle child theme and Genesis theme framework.

Once you have the Lifestyle child theme, get the files in the Colorful Lifestyle pack and replace the following original files:

style.css

functions.php

lib/style.php

screenshot.png

Copy the golden and wine headers and thumbs one by one to the following folders:

/images/
/images/thumbs

Please do not replace the whole folders.

Rename the Lifestyle theme folder as colorful-lifestyle .

3. Upload the Colorful Lifestyle child theme folder via FTP to your wp-content/themes/ directory. (The Genesis parent theme needs to be in the wp-content/themes/ directory as well.)

4. Go to your WordPress dashboard and select Appearance.

5. Activate the Colorful Lifestyle theme.

6. Inside your WordPress dashboard, go to Genesis > Theme Settings and configure them to your liking.

Feedback

Initially, we thought of calling this as a grand child theme But we realised that a modifed child theme is also a child theme !

Do you like this idea? Would you like more colors for Lifestyle and for other themes? Just let us know and we will be glad to do it.

More Colors for Lifestyle Child Theme by StudioPress from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

Overview

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the traffic to a website from the organic or natural results of a search engine. SEO does not try to trick search engines. On the contrary, the goal of SEO is to provide information-rich content in a way that is naturally weighted by the search engines because it follows the “rules” of the search engines. Below are guidelines for optimizing content according to current SEO best practices.

Before you Begin

The first step to writing content that is search engine optimized is to determine the primary topic of the page. This will be your initial keyword or keyword phrase and should be the central theme for the content of the page. The more closely the page is related to the keyword phrase, the more relevant the page will be ranked by the search engine. The goal is to write a full page of content centered around one keyword phrase.

Content Title

When writing the title for the content, follow these basic guidelines:

• The title length should not exceed 72 characters. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
• The title length should include at least 4 words.
• Include the keyword phrase in the title. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase. In addition, the title usually becomes the headline for the SERP, and including the keyword will increase the likelihood of a click-through.
• Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Title to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.

Description

The description will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result. Depending on the website that hosts your content, the description may also be used as a subhead for a press release, serve as the first paragraph of a web page or be the <meta> description − only seen on the SERP. When writing the description for the content, follow these basic guidelines:

• The description length should not exceed 165 characters. This will ensure the full description is visible in a search result.
• Include the keyword phrase in the description. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase.
• Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Description to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.

Body

When writing content for the body, follow these basic guidelines:

• The body length should be at least 300 words, ideally centered on one or two keyword phrase(s).
• For keyword density, each keyword or keyword phrase should not represent more than 5.5% of the total words on the page. Otherwise, the search engine may consider the page to be keyword stuffing.
• To give a keyword phrase additional emphasis, bold the first occurrence of the keyword phrase in the first paragraph of body. Including some content in a bulleted list is another way to add emphasis.
• Include one hyperlink for every 120 words of body content spread out evenly down the page. For example, 500 words of content should include 5 hyperlinks with approximately each paragraph containing one hyperlink. Be sure not to “spam” or “keyword stuff” your content with a paragraph of keywords linked to the same web page over and over again.
• Include a hyperlink at the beginning of the body in order to show prominence.
• Ideally, hyperlinks should link to content that is relevant to the keywords, preferably to an interior page of your website, but when linking to another website, link to an interior page. In other words, do not link to a website’s home page if there is an interior page that is more relevant to the keyword phrase.

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Flesch Reading Ease Score − one of the best-known and most popular readability indicators. The formula rates text on a 100-point scale based on the average number of syllables per word and words per sentence. The closer the score is to 100, the easier the content is to read; the closer the score to 0, the more difficult the content is to read. In general, a score below 30 is considered very difficult, and a score of 70 is estimated to be written at the eighth or ninth grade level. Research has indicated that a score of 70 is likely appropriate for adult readers. A score of 100 represents that the content is understood by readers with at least a fourth grade education.

Adapted from Flesch, R. (1949). The art of readable writing. New York: Harper. p.149.

Anchor Text – the words displayed on a web page as a hyperlink to another webpage. Anchor text is usually underlined, indicating it is a hyperlink.

Alternate Keyword Suggestion – other search terms related to a keyword.

External Links – a hyperlink to your website from another website.

Internal Links – a hyperlink to another page on the same website.

Keyword – a word (or combination of words) that describes the topic or subject of a piece of content. It is also a word or combination of words that are used in a search engine to search for a topic or subject.

Primary Keyword – a term developed by Scribe™ to designate the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content that are most likely to result in an organic search listing based on Scribe’s analysis of the content and the keyword usage.

Keyword Analysis – a proprietary process utilized by Scribe™ to determine the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content based on popular search terms. It includes a report on the rank, prominence, frequency, density and search volume of the keyword(s)/keyword phrase(s), and provides related terms, along with their search volumes for comparison.

Related Keyword Tag – words or combinations of words added to a piece of content that describe the main topic(s) or subject(s) of a piece of content.

Keyword Rank – a proprietary algorithm developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in relationship to a piece of content and to each other. Keywords are ranked in descending order of importance as either Primary, Important, Significant, or Not Emphasized.

Keyword Density – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content in relation to the total number of words in the content. It is usually represented as a percentage; the higher the number, the greater the density. Current SEO best practices suggest that a keyword’s density be less than 5% for one piece of content.

Keyword Frequency – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content. It is usually represented as a whole number; the higher the number, the greater the keyword frequency.

Keyword Prominence – a proprietary formula developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of a keyword or keyword phrase based on its relative placement within a particular piece of content. Prominence is rated as either Very Low, Low, Medium, High or Very High. The higher the prominence, the more favorable the keyword/keyword phrase is presumed to be weighted in the content by the search engine algorithm. You should strive to achieve a Prominence rating of high or very high for your Primary Keyword/keyword phrase for a page. However, all keywords/keyword phrases on a single page should not have a high or very high prominence rating to minimize the chance that search engines will consider you guilty of keyword stuffing or spamming.

Keyword Research – the act of exploring keywords. The process frequently involves reviewing search volumes of targeted keywords and alternative keywords to determine which keywords to include in content.

Keyword Stuffing (or keyword spamming) – adding an excessive number of keywords or keyword phrases to a web page or repeating a keyword or keyword phrase excessively on one page in place of relevant content. It is typically a technique used by those trying to “trick” the search engines into ranking a website in organic searches.

Trend – the approximate search volume of a keyword or keyword phrase over the past 12 months. Trend is helpful to identify seasonality of keywords that may have a low volume but are on the rise.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – the web page(s) containing hyperlinks to related content provided by a search engine in response to a search query. Usually, the results page returns both paid ads (sponsored links) and organic listings.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the practice of improving the traffic to a website from the organic or natural results of a search engine.

SEO Best Practices (white hat SEO) – utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that align with the guidelines of the search engines’ ranking algorithms without the use of trickery. Examples of trickery include using hidden text, duplicating content, link farming and keyword spamming, to name a few.

Social Media – as defined by Wikipedia: media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.

SEO best practices recommended by Scribe SEO plugin from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

Some significant observations from his talk:

* 92% developers use WordPress as a CMS. It is not just a blogging platform anymore.

* 14.7% of sites online are powered by WordPress. It was 8.5% last year!

* 58 USD per hour is the average hourly rate for WordPress developers. Check ours

* Plugins or themes not updated in the last two years will be hiddden from WordPress.org repository. This is a great descision !

By the way, did you notice the great slides designed by Michael Pick? As Seth Godin says it is an inspiration to make art in everything we do!

State of the Word 2011 from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

Still, here are some ways  for better SEO in your WordPress.com blog:

* First, make sure that your blog is set to allow search engines. Visit Settings – > Privacy in your dashboard and choose the first option.

WordPress.com Privacy settings for SEO

* Register your own domain name and host it with WordPress.com instead of having your blog as a subdomain . Having your blog in your domain name is good for SEO and brand building.

* Register with webmaster tools provided by major search engines and follow the insights provided by them. Visit Tools – > Available tools in your WordPress.com dashboard.

Webmaster Tools Verification in WordPress.com

* Use themes with better SEO. Vigilance and Linen are two such SEO friendly themes.

* Tag and categorize your posts with relevant keywords so that you get listed in global tags pages in WordPress.com. Getting listed in global tags pages can send you direct and search engine visitors.

* Optimise your post content for better SEO. There is a web version of  ScribeSEO that will help you do this. ( You can get this service for free if you avail our WordPress SEO services )

If you have your WordPress blog self hosted like ours, you can have absolute control on every aspect of on-site SEO.

Please note that search rankings are calculated from a combination of over 200 paramaters and what you do above is only on-site paramters that you can control within WordPress.com . Write quality content regularly which will attract high quality backlinks and participate in your community genuinely. Track your stats and improvise. Only this holistic approach will ensure that you improve your WordPress.com SEO.

WordPress.com SEO from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

The site is a niche blog on resources in Tamil language. The site has been online since 2007.

In June 2011, I started implementing some WordPress  SEO measures and observed the following results immediately:

1. Page views, visits and search traffic doubled.

2. Adsense revenue increased 10 times as I added new ad slots motivated by the increased page views.

3. The number of impressions in search results and clicks from search engines increased by 50%.

4. Impressions for some of the keywords increased up to 5,000+ %.

Please note that during this period

* No new posts were added. In fact, I removed some of the less useful posts.
* No link building was done.

So, all this increase has been a result of on-site SEO done which is precisely what we do in our WordPress SEO services package. So, what did I do? Here are the,

WordPress SEO measures implemented:

1. Optimised the Top 10 landing pages as measured by Google Analytics using WordPress SEO by Yoast and Scribe SEO.

2. Fixed broken links.

3. Gave internal links wherever appropriate.

4. Increased site speed by removing unwanted plugins, enabling cache and moving to an Indian server where majority of the site’s audience live.

Please let me know if you have any question or need help.

You may also get our WordPress SEO services package.

Please note that the quality of the content, previous PageRank, theme used, server used and many more factors contribute to the results. So, we cannot guarantee that you will observe similar results. But, we will work our best to ensure you get best results and this is a proof for that.

WordPress SEO Case Study from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

In your post / page edit view, you have two sections for SEO called:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

2. Scribe Keyword research, Scribe Content Optimizer, Scribe Link building.

WordPress SEO is a popular free plugin and quite straight forward.

For each post, you have to add a SEO Title and Meta description.

SEO Title can be different from the actual post title you display in site. This SEO title will be displayed in search engine results. This title should be keyword rich and brief. The primary keyword should be placed at the beginning. You have up to 70 characters space for this.

Meta description is the snippet you see below search result titles. You have 156 character limit for this. You should write a brief and interesting summary of the page, again with your keywords.

If you fill the “focus keyword” section, it will evaluate your page and provide you suggestions. Sometimes you may give a generic short keyword as focus keyword and have different variations in title, meta description and content. This should be OK.

Once you are done with this, you can check the Page analysis to make sure you follow some of the basic requirements.

You can ignore the advanced tab in this. With this you should be done with WordPress SEO plugin settings.

Next is Scribe SEO.

To begin with, you can input your chosen keyword and click “Get keyword ideas”. This widget is in sidebar right top.

You can get keywords based on exact match, phrase match or in a general manner.

This too will provide you the annual search volume of all keyword variations. It is not always good to target the highest volume as it may also have high competition to rank. It will be good to get an idea from this and use a mix of keywords throughout your content.

Next comes Scribe content optimizer. This will work only when you have all three tick marks for title, meta description and content are shown ready.

Once you click analyse, you will get a score out of 100%. It will show you how you can improve the page. It is possible to get a 100% score as shown in this example, but it is not always the target. Even pages above 70% can do well. More than the actual score, it is the areas in which you lag that should be taken care of as needed.

The Scribe analysis page has many more tabs which you shall go through. Reading through SEO best practices shall give you a good overview. Also, please note what your primary keywords are as found by the analysis. Sometimes, unintentionally we might have given importance for non-keywords. You can try to edit the post and remove those unnecessary keywords and implement keyword variations for relevant keywords that have a high density. Even a genuine abundance of a primary keyword in a short post can be mistaken for keyword stuffing.

Next comes Scribe link building widget. You can use this to find authoritative pages within your own website and blogosphere, social media. I have found this not to be so relevant. So, you can ignore this. But, please do take care to promote your content in appropriate forums and social media. Also, remember to link to related posts within your own website. This will retain your visitors while also increasing the PageRank.

That should be all for improving page content for SEO. While following basic requirements, it is also important to keep in mind the value for the end-user and not do anything mechanically just for the sake of it.

Please let us know if you have any question or need help in this. You may also get our WordPress SEO services to configure WordPress SEO plugin properly and optimise your top landing pages using Scribe SEO.

How to use WordPress SEO by Yoast and Scribe SEO? from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

Here are few simple steps to fix timthumb security flaw:

Update: Use Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner plugin.

1. Deactivate unwanted plugins.

2. Delete all inactive plugins and themes. If you have customised any of these themes or plugins, do take a backup in your computer.

3. Go through your active themes and image related plugins and look for a file called thumb.php or timthumb.php . This can be usually found in the root folder of the theme or in folders like scripts, lib etc., If you are looking at the right file, you will see the name of Ben Gillbanks and a link to this project. Woothemes, Gorilla themes, Thesis, early versions of Elegant Themes are some of the theme shops that make use of this script.

Please make sure that the timthumb file is not a modified one provided by the theme or plugin provider. Now, replace this file with the updated and safe script here.

If the file has been modified by the theme or plugin author for additional functions, please follow these steps to update timthumb.

Note: Timthumb is vulnerable even if it is not present in an active theme or plugin. That is why I recommeded deleting inactive plugins and themes. It is easier than checking them one by one. Besides your active WordPress site, do you also have inactive WordPress installations in your server? Repeat these steps for them also. Some might have created a test installation or left a website long inactive and it is easier to forget these. If you have too many themes to check in these installations, it is better to uninstall the site totally  than fixing each theme. Please think twice before doing this and take backup if necessary. Once uninstalled, the data may be lost for ever.

If you need professional help auditing your WordPress blog for this security issue, we are offering this service for 79 USD per one WordPress installation. Please click the “Buy Now” button below to get the service. We will get back to you at once and fix the issue in one business day.

How to fix Timthumb security issue? from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

The purpose of this plugin is to group tags or categories from the WordPress dashboard. This allows queries that fetch terms to use ‘term_group’ as a sort order and and display them in a semantic way in archives and individual posts.

For example,

If we have three groups of categories for size, color and object, then categories displayed as

Small, Green, Table

Big, Blue, Chair

are more readable than

Table, small, green

Chair, big, blue

How to use  this plugin?

1. Install and activate the plugin from WordPress plugin repository.

2. Visit WordPress Dashboard -> Posts – > Categories. You will find an additional field called ‘group’ to add the group number.

3. Add this code where you need to display the categories by group order.

$args = array('orderby' => 'term_group', 'order' => 'ASC', 'fields' => 'all');

$terms = wp_get_object_terms($post->ID, 'category', $args );

$count = count($terms);

if($count > 0){

echo 'Posted in <ul id="catlist">';

foreach ($terms as $term) {

echo '<li><a href="'.get_term_link($term->slug, 'category').'">'.$term->name.'</a> .</li>';

}

echo '</ul>';

}

4. You can group and display tags in a similar way. Just use the word ‘tag’ instead of ‘category’ in the code above.

We made this by modifying the Term menu order plugin by James Lafferty. Thanks, James.

Hope  you find this useful. Please do share your comments and rate the plugin.

Download the plugin now

Plugin release: Tag or Category term_group Order from Ravidreams - WordPress Services

While WordPress saw the growing industry of premium themes 3 years back, now I can see a new trend of child theme market growing on top of premium WordPress themes with GPL license. A good example is the number of 3rd party child themes available for the Genesis WordPress theme framework designed by StudioPress.

Here is a list of child themes for the Genesis theme framework available outside StudioPress:

Individual designers offering Genesis themes

Many designers have their own preference to work with a particular theme framework like Canvas, Thesis or TwentyTen. So, when StudioPress goes the child themes way, they can only follow the trend.

http://www.wpnest.com/category/themes/

http://www.wpchildthemes.com

http://dreamwhisperdesigns.com/genesis-themes/

http://www.themedy.com/

Genesis child themes as part of a service package

This is quite similar to the trend above in that the companies choose the Genesis theme as their platform. Instead of just offering child themes, they have a packaged business model with other services.

http://www.wpsupportdesk.com/wordpress-themes

http://winwithwp.com/

Win With WordPress provides a hosted solution for inexpensive websites for political and non-profit organisations. Not only is Win With WordPress built on Genesis, all of the themes and client sites they develop will also be built on Genesis.

Genesis compatible premium WordPress Theme makers

This is quite an unexpected trend in the WordPress theming community. Most of the theme makers tend to develop their own code base or framework. But Allure Themes USP is to design female friendly themes. So, I guess they are focusing on the design alone and making it available on popular frameworks.

http://allurethemes.com/allure-themes-on-genesis/

Child themes by official StudioPress designers

These are theme designers who have created one of the official Genesis child themes . They seem to have more child themes for sale on their own website or at theme markets.

http://themecraft.com/adspace-theme/

http://creativityincluded.com/genesis-child-themes/photopro/

Genesis child themes at WordPress theme markets

This has huge potential for growth. Most of the criticism on themes found at theme markets point that they have poor code base that is not maintained and upgraded well. Writing child themes for well maintained frameworks can give designers more freedom to focus on the design aspect.

http://www.themegarden.com/category/themes/framework-themes/genesis-child-themes/

http://www.mojo-themes.com/tags/genesis-2/

http://themeforest.net/browse/tags/default/genesis

Free Genesis child themes

One thing is sure. We can see more free child themes in future. This may be the same cycle of free WordPress themes designed few years back and will help transition many budding designers to PRO level. Of course, we may get few quality themes also from good developers

http://www.joshstauffer.com/free-genesis-child-themes/

Genesis child themes directory

http://genesis-themes.com

The latest development is that StudioPress has started selling Genesis child themes in its Marketplace.

Please let me know if you can find more child themes for Genesis or any other popular WordPress theme framework. It will be interesting to have an analysis of the trends.

Related posts:

Premium WordPress plugin trends

Premium WordPress theme markets

Genesis Child Themes from Ravidreams - WordPress Services