Empty Nest Heritage

Christine Blythe is the owner and main author of her Empty Nest Heritage Blogs. During three years of blogging, I have tried dozens of plugins.

In the beginning, I could have as many as 20 plugins installed, and my only excuse is that I didn’t know any better.

Why is having so many plugins installed a problem? Aren’t they supposed to be helpful to us bloggers?

As much as plugins are meant to be helpful, this is one instance where the saying “too much of a good thing” definitely rings true.

The reasons why too many plugins are bad for your blog?

Every plugin you install takes a certain amount of load time, and some are definitely worse than others. Once I realized the importance of page speed for conversions and ad revenue, I got into the habit of testing my site’s page load speed after every plugin installation. If there was a noticeable negative effect, I’d immediately uninstall that plugin.

Some plugins are worse than others, and not just with regard to page speed. Poorly designed and coded plugins can cause conflicts of all kinds, resulting in problems of varying degrees up to and including crashing your site.

Although I use up to nine plugins on any given one of my sites for varying reasons, there are only four that I find are absolutely essential.

FD Feedburner Plugin

FD Feedburner redirects all feeds on a site to a single Feedburner feed, which is similar to “feeds.feedburner.com/TopWebBlogTips, the feedburner feed for this site. This is done simply and easily without having to alter templates or code, set up feeds, or modify code. From this point on, readers need only access the main Feedburner feed and they will receive all of your site feeds.

NoSpamNX

WordPress users have been experiencing major issues caused by SpamBots, and I’ve been battling to maintain control of my blogs and keep them relatively spam free. Then I found NoSpamNX – and I love it! This plugin adds invisible form fields to your site’s comment form to foil the SpamBots. I’ve gone from dealing with hundreds of spam comments a day to one or two a week.

W3 Total Cache

This plugin has a great positive effect on the page load speed of a site when set up correctly, and conversely will have a very negative effect if not set up correctly. Setting up W3 Total Cache can be very confusing, especially for a beginner. I struggled with a high page speed for years until I finally found this plugin. Then I continued to struggle because I found the setup for this plugin so confusing. Finally, I recently discovered a wonderful article on setting up this plugin on the “wpbeginner” site.

Quick Adsense

This plugin is a centralized manager for Google Adsense ads on a site. Although placing ads in the sidebars, upper and lower widget areas is easy, there is no simple way to insert Adsense ads directly into posts and pages. This plugin solves that problem by allowing the blogger to input the different codes for the ads to run, and selecting the position in the post. Once the position is set, it remains the same for all posts, so it is important to be aware of this when setting up the post so it looks attractive to the reader.

Christine Blythe is the owner and main author of her Empty Nest Heritage Blogs. Every plugin you install takes a certain amount of load time, and some are definitely worse than others. Once I realized the importance of page speed for conversions and ad revenue, I got into the habit of testing my site’s page load speed after every plugin installation. If there was a noticeable negative effect, I’d immediately uninstall that plugin. http://www.delicious.com/cjblythe/Wordpress

Christine Blythe is the owner and main author of her Empty Nest Heritage Blogs. During three years of blogging, I have tried dozens of plugins.

In the beginning, I could have as many as 20 plugins installed, and my only excuse is that I didn’t know any better.

Why is having so many plugins installed a problem? Aren’t they supposed to be helpful to us bloggers?

As much as plugins are meant to be helpful, this is one instance where the saying “too much of a good thing” definitely rings true.
The reasons why too many plugins are bad for your blog?

Every plugin you install takes a certain amount of load time, and some are definitely worse than others. Once I realized the importance of page speed for conversions and ad revenue, I got into the habit of testing my site’s page load speed after every plugin installation. If there was a noticeable negative effect, I’d immediately uninstall that plugin.

Some plugins are worse than others, and not just with regard to page speed. Poorly designed and coded plugins can cause conflicts of all kinds, resulting in problems of varying degrees up to and including crashing your site.

Although I use up to nine plugins on any given one of my sites for varying reasons, there are only four that I find are absolutely essential.

FD Feedburner Plugin

FD Feedburner redirects all feeds on a site to a single Feedburner feed, which is similar to “feeds.feedburner.com/TopWebBlogTips, the feedburner feed for this site. This is done simply and easily without having to alter templates or code, set up feeds, or modify code. From this point on, readers need only access the main Feedburner feed and they will receive all of your site feeds.

NoSpamNX

WordPress users have been experiencing major issues caused by SpamBots, and I’ve been battling to maintain control of my blogs and keep them relatively spam free. Then I found NoSpamNX – and I love it! This plugin adds invisible form fields to your site’s comment form to foil the SpamBots. I’ve gone from dealing with hundreds of spam comments a day to one or two a week.

W3 Total Cache

This plugin has a great positive effect on the page load speed of a site when set up correctly, and conversely will have a very negative effect if not set up correctly. Setting up W3 Total Cache can be very confusing, especially for a beginner. I struggled with a high page speed for years until I finally found this plugin. Then I continued to struggle because I found the setup for this plugin so confusing. Finally, I recently discovered a wonderful article on setting up this plugin on the “wpbeginner” site.

Quick Adsense

This plugin is a centralized manager for Google Adsense ads on a site. Although placing ads in the sidebars, upper and lower widget areas is easy, there is no simple way to insert Adsense ads directly into posts and pages. This plugin solves that problem by allowing the blogger to input the different codes for the ads to run, and selecting the position in the post. Once the position is set, it remains the same for all posts, so it is important to be aware of this when setting up the post so it looks attractive to the reader.

Syndicated content from a href="topwebblogtips.com" target="_blank"Top Web Blog Tips

There can be issues when uploading and installing WordPress Themes.

These can be the result of a number of factors, but the two most common are file upload limits on your server; and conflicts with installed plugins.

I have prepared a static page titled ‘How to Install a Theme Using the WordPress Admin Interface‘.

This is meant to help with basic, automatic installation and to assist with troubleshooting and installing when encountering any issues.

Christine Blythe is the owner and main author of her Empty Nest Heritage Blogs. Since I’m just learning, please be patient with any problems you may see. I’m working to set everything up and address any problems that crop up.

I’ve been inspired to start this blog as I’m a housewife and the mother of two teenagers – a boy of 17 and a girl of 18. I’m like every other woman who struggles to balance fulltime work and home life. I feel the same guilt and try not to let my feelings of inadequacy overwhelm me. I have, however, found some ways to make my life easier and maintain a healthier, happier family. I will post on a wide range of topics that affect all areas of our lives, including life, health, wealth, education, work, hobbies and happiness.

To address the health concerns of most families in our situation, I will periodically cover tips and hints I’ve learned for reducing the number of times I have to resort to unhealthy foods in order to make fast meals.

My first tip to offer is a quick and easy one:

QUICK PICKLED CARROT STICKS.

Are you tired of the same old dry, boring carrot sticks in your lunches? Try this: pour excess or saved pickle ‘juice’ to cover carrots in a sealed, water tight container and leave overnight. The next day, pour off the pickle ‘juice’ to avoid an overly strong flavour and reseal. Just add to your lunches. I find these great also to munch on when I get to work if I haven’t had time to eat breakfast.

You’d be amazed how many of these your kids will munch on at home or at school if you make them readily available.

IF YOU’RE A PICKLE LOVER, YOU’LL LOVE THESE!!

Christine Blythe is the owner and main author of her Empty Nest Heritage Blogs. From the a href=’featheringtheemptynest.com’Feathering the Empty Nest blog

LEGO is the world's greatest toy; it was voted as the 'Toy of the Century' in 2000 by Fortune magazine. Lego still captivates and helps build millions upon millions of children's minds even after 56 years since the plastic brick was released.

Here are some facts about LEGO

LEGO started from humble beginnings back in 1932 -W hen Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen almost went bankrupt during the great depression. He lost so much carpentry work that he decided to make children's toys out of wood and sell them from his workshop (his first toy was a wooden duck). In 1934 Ole named his company LEGO derived from the Danish word "leg godt" meaning "play well". Interestingly, LEGO in Latin means "I put together".

LEGO Bricks were released in 1947 - Their first bricks were called the Automatic Binding Bricks and were almost an exact copy of the Kiddie Kraft Self Building Brick, a British design from years earlier.

LEGO Bricks are hugely versatile - It has been calculated that just 6 eight studded bricks can be arranged in 915,103,765 ways. (That should keep the kids occupied for a while).

Lots of LEGO is produced - LEGO pumps out over 19 billion LEGO bricks per year, primarily from it's headquarters in Denmark. Its manufacturing is so precise that only 18 in every one million bricks made is defective.

LEGO is the world's number one tyre manufacturer - Did you know that LEGO produces over 306 million tiny tyres every year for their products? This figure makes LEGO the world's number one tyre manufacturer.

Consistency is the key - Did you know that LEGO bricks produced from 1958 will interlock with LEGO bricks that are produced today? That's right kids, you can now ask your great grandfather for his LEGO set to get those extra bricks you need (although original bricks have become quite valuable in recent years).

LEGO Minifigures were introduced in 1978 - The first minifigures were introduced in 1978 with the Town, Space and Castle playsets.

LEGO decided that their always happy faces should be one colour - yellow. Minifigs have no sex or race and initially did not have any movable arms or legs.

In the 1980's facial expressions were introduced (good, evil, grumpy, happy) with the Pirates playset. In 2003 different skin colours were introduced for LEGO Basket ball.

They hurt like hell!! - One more fact that I'm sure you all know, is that if you step on LEGO pieces in bare feet on the wrong angle, they hurt like hell.

LEGO is the worlds greatest toy, it helps build children's minds and creative flair. Check out LEGO's new animated movie and associated play sets at www.legomoviereview.com

Article Source EzineArticles.com?expert=Geoff_Ryder

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