How would you like to add a custom menu on a page of your choice in Wordpress?  This is something I have wanted to achieve for ages.  I’ve searched high and low for a plugin but to no avail.  Then today, I receive an email containg a link to the top 160 wordpress plugins and low and behold it recommends an awesome plugin called Simple Sidebar Navigation.   I’ve installed it, tested it and it works like a charm.  Now you can have a custom menu on every page/post of your wordpress blog if you so choose.

Oh and the rest of the list isn’t too shabby either.  See what gems you can discover at Top 160 Wordpress Plugins that you hadn’t heard of previously.

In the last month or so I’ve been building a team in the Phillipines to help run my business.   I did this because I simply couldn’t manage the number of websites I’d created nor build new sites efficiently or quick enough any longer.  I have now trained these guys and suddenly find I have time on my hands to start learning once again.

Most of you will know the importance of getting backlinks to your sites but this can be a royal pain because our niche sites, whilst serving a valuable purpose, hardly have people queing to link to them.  Many swear by blog commenting but I can’t stand leaving my target keywords in my name field it looks horrible.

Imagine my delight when I came across a plugin called Keyword Luv which encourages you to leave your name and keywords in the comment.  Check it out for yourself and leave a comment on my blog to see how it works and then grab yourself a copy and we can all help one another without resorting to spam.

I hope you like it.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m updating the site and overhauling the template.  Please bear with me as, to be honest, I’m too busy to keep swapping from one template to another.

Every site I build these days is based on the Wordpress platform and having access to great themes is a pre-requisite.  I used free themes when I first started out but these really were not robust or flexible enough.  Also as I have become more demanding and without being a coder you need pretty good support.

So if you want great themes and even better support I cannot recommend Brian Gardeners Studio Press themes highly enough.

I have been trying to get to grips with tagging wordpress posts and the value of such an exercise.  As we all know finding up to date info on the web on a topic like wordpress can be nightmare.  Gawd knows how many plugins I have installed over the last year that were no longer needed becuase an upgraded version of wordpress has included that functionality.

As an example of a change to come I have made extensive use of the sticky post plugin over the last 6 months or so but wordpress 2.7 will have this feature included.  So my first tip today is to review your plugins against wordpress functionality when upgrading as 1) they may conflict and 2) they may no longer be needed.

Anyway back to tagging.  How do you tag properly?  It seems most people don’t and in searching I came across an article with the title of this post Five Most Common SEO & SEM Mistakes.   Not only does what it says about tagging make sense but so do the other points the author makes so check it out.

It was also interesting to learn how much traffic he himself lost when switching to wordpress and not making use of technorati tags.  Best I can tell the current version of worpdress does not produce technorati tags so if you want to boost traffic an install of the technorati tag plugin is highly recommended.

What to you guys think?  If you’re reading this and think this information is out of date please let me know.

Following my despressing experience with Blogging to the Bank 3.0 (avoid at all costs) I have to say I could write a better ebook myself with only 6 months experience!

I have got a lot more comfortable with Wordpress over the last 3 months or so  and can pretty much tell the good from the bad and the ugly now.  A cracking Wordrpess SEO guide can be found on Yoasts Blog.  Yow will learn a massive amount for free and pick up some tremendous plugins.  Check it out, its free but it’s worth paying for.  Good job.

I also want to give another look out to Mark and Soggy and their respective blogs at thenichestorebuilder.com and buildanichestoreblog.blogspot.com.  I credit these two guys with getting my own niche stores to $2000 per month revenue and rising so if you want to succeed online follow their advice.

I’d love to make a greater contribution myself and one day I will.  For the moment I have to spend most of my time building my own business.  I’m trying to replace an  income of $100,000 a year and I’m only a quarter of the way their.  Hopefully in another 2 years time I’ll have made the grade.  Wish me luck.