That’s right WordPress 2.8 is just around the corner.

The exact date it will be available I am not sure of but there are some cool changes with the widgets and theme installer.

I installed the beta (on a non working site of course) and created a quick video to show you some of the changes that will be coming.

Watch the video below and let me know what you think.

By the way if you noticed the Twitter Bribe below, I might as well tell you there is no bribe if you want to know more about that Robert Plank plugin you can read about it in the Tweet Rewards From Your Blog post.

Blog Content Prison

Everybody is always saying that they don’t know what to write about for their blog hopefully this will change that and improve your search engine rankings at the same time.

When you created your blog you should have done some keyword research to find the keywords that you want your blog to rank for. If you didn’t do any keyword research then now is the time to do it.

Now I am going to assume you have done your keyword research and have a list of keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. Hopefully you have a list of at least 10 keyword phrases if not go back to your keyword research and dig up some more.

List your ten best keyword phrases and this will be the first part of the title of your post.

For example, some of my keywords are:

Blogging Instructions
How To Blog
Blog Site
Blog Themes
Blog Hosting
Blog Content
WordPress

Now look at my posts. You will see that I have a post with a title that starts with almost all of these keyword phrases. (The How To Blog and Blog site are actually taken care of by the domain name and an html insert I have at the beginning of the page.)

What does this do?

Simple it gets my keywords in a prominent position on the website and I since I have all my post titles set to H1 this gives them as much weight as you can for on site optimization.

Now go to one of the pages, here is a link to the blog theme page Blog Themes it will open in a new window.

By the way the post above is a post on the theme that let’s me easily change my post titles to H1 without editing the CSS files, just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Look at the URL in the address bar of your browser you will see that the URL contains the term Blog Theme twice.

Now look at title for the page again I have my main keywords first in the title to give them more weight.

This is what you want to do with your keyword phrases. Now take those ten keyword phrases you have and you have ideas for ten posts to write or to have written for you.

Once you have these ten articles done that doesn’t mean you have to stop using that keyword phrase at the beginning of your post titles. You can write as many post as you can think of on that topic, in fact I recommend you write numerous post on the topic to get more coverage in your longtail keyword phrases.

If you have been setting the correct way you should now have a place to start when it comes to writing an article. Keywords are the soul of your blog, use them, use them often and try to get them in positions that will help you with your search engine optimization (SEO).

As far as the rest of the blog configuration goes that is way too much to put in one post, you can get complete instructions at Blogging Beginners with the benefit of being able to ask the questions you want the answer to. Or you can search through the post here because sooner or later almost everything will be addressed.

Before we begin let me tell you that I am talking about WordPress blog themes.

Why only WordPress?

Because if you haven’t noticed yet I love WordPress blogs. As far as I am concerned if you are blogging there is no better blog platform than WordPress. It offers the most flexibility, the most options, the most plugins and the most themes. Plus it is free.

With that said, as you can probably guess, this will be about WordPress themes and only WordPress themes.

There are literally thousands of themes you can get for WordPress covering almost any niche you might be blogging about. But if you are like me you can never seem to find that one theme that is perfect for you.

You know what I am saying, you find a theme with a perfect header but it is three columns and you only want two.

You find a theme with three columns but they are all on the left and you know that the columns on the right do better in the search engines (a little tip for you there).

You find a theme you really like but you want to change the header to personalize it and you get totally confused when you try to change it because the CSS doesn’t work with your modification.

Basically, if you are looking for the perfect theme you need to know enough to create your own theme to modify the average WordPress theme to your liking.

Or do you?

Enter the Mandigo theme from the guys at OneHertz

pefect wordpress theme

The Mandigo theme is special because it does something I have neve seen in a theme before. I adds a theme options link and a html inserts link into the control panel for WordPress.

The theme options lets you quickly and easily choose:

• One column
• Two columns
• Three Columns
• Change the sidebars widths
• Put sidebars above your content, below your content or both.
• Seven different color schemes and headers (or you can rotate through all of them at random)
• Two different widths for your blog (800px or 1024px)
• Change the background color for the page, the sidebars and the content with an easy click and choose color selector
• Choose a different background image
• Put your own custom header on just by uploading the image
• Use a smaller header
• Create different headers for different pages
• Create dropcaps for your posts on the fly
• Turn individual pages on or off in the header navigation
• Turn comments on of off on your pages
• Automatically fix layout problems and long links breaking your content when inserted in the comments.
• Search Engine Optimization built in
• And a bunch of other cool things

ALL WITH A CLICK OF YOUR MOUSE!

This doesn’t even come close to what you can do and I didn’t even talk about the HTML inserts.

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that even a beginner can make their own this is as close to perfect as I have found.

If you get stuck with anything they have one of the best wikis I have ever seen letting you know how you can edit and change the theme. They even show you how to make your own page templates.

By the way the creators also offer premium WordPress themes, unique WordPress themes and custom services at very reasonable prices.

This is the theme used on this site and the only theme recommended by Blogging Beginners.

All I can say is try it. You will love it.