If you want to use your own domain for url shortening you may use the Short Url Plugin and make your own url shortening service for your private usage. You can create a url such as blog-install.com/u/21.

The plugin also provides basic statistics that includes the number of times the link was clicked.

Spam Protection

wp-spamfree by Scott Allen
An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. The plugin includes a spam-free contact form too. The plugin works behind the scenes without any captcha’s, challenging question such as “is the sky green ?” or any other inconvenience to your sites visitors. You may follow the plugin’s on twitter @WPSpamFree

CMS

my-page-order – A simple plugin that allows you to easily rearrange your pages into whatever order you’d like.

page-restrict – You can select all, none or some of your pages to be viewable only by registered users. Great for sites being used as a CMS.

Page Template Extended – A simple plugin that allows you to build templates unique to any page by simply building it a PHP file named for its ID tag.

xavins-list-subpages – Allows you to display either all of the subpages, or just the ones you choose, on the parent page.

automagic-twitter-profile-uri – Automatically add your users twitter profile link to comments

faster-image-insert – Image manipulation directly form a metabox.

Getting visitors to sign up!

wp-greet-box – This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. This can certainly help increase your RSS and email subscriber count. The greeting is placed at the top of the post.

Tumblr – Superfast micro-blogging

Tunblr is a micro blogging enviroment for simple, quick blogging with support for posts, images, quotes, video, audio and links – all you need to get your message out as quick as possible. A simple interface for super fast blogging. Not feature extensive as the others.. but that is the beuaty of the beist. Quick and simple, great for personal and quick blogging.

Pros
- Tumblr’s backend is stylish
- 3rd party tools for Tumblr
- large array of themes (but less than wordpress)
- Easy managment from your phone
- Using your own domain on tumblr is FREE
- Can use Google Analytics to measure your traffic

Cons
- Troublesome archives
- Need to tag to support search
- Limited flexability and plugin support
- No direct RSS feed
- Does not expand easly
- No built in commenting

Wordpress – hosted on wordpress.com

For a personal blog that has no commercial value or no intent to become commercial I would recommend using the free wordpress.com blogging platform, it is simple to setup and incldues a selection of wordpress features that would expect to install yourself. The ease of the hosted wordpress.com platform is great if you do not want to pay for your own web hosting and if you don’t want to have the hassle of handling the wordpress installation on your own webhost. Also here you can add your own domain for $15 / year or map a already purchased domain for $10 / year. So if you don’t require custom design, custom plugins and other customizations it would be a good option to start with. Note that there are many popular plug-ins that are highly recommended that are not included on the wordpress.com blogs.

Pros
- Dozens of gorgeous themes
- Integrated stats system
- Commenting with anti-spam built-it
- Good support community
- Mulitlanguage support

Cons
- Using you own domain cost $10 / $15 a year
- Limited plugin support, can not install your own plugins
- Custom CSS / additional storage costs extra
- Ads shown from time to time
- Can not optimize for SEO

Wordpress – self hosted on your own domain

If you have not found your heaven in the above and are looking for more, or looking to start a serious personal or commercial blog, a self hosted wordpress blog is certainly a good solution. You may either signup for hosting that includes pre-installed wordpress that you can start using, or install wordpress yourself. Will a little bit of computer / internet knowledge you could have your blog up and running in 5 min – well it will usally take longer than that, but the basic installation is really simple, it is the customization that can drive a non tech-savy wordpress installer crazy. Feel free to drop us a line for a free professional wordpress installation on your hosting or follow us on twitter via @bloginstall

Pros
- Highly flexable , fully customizable
- Easy installation / updating of plugins (from wordpress 2.7)
- Thousands of gorgeous themes from all over the globe
- Great community support
- Excellent plugins and features for SEO optimization

Cons
- Requires your own domain and hosting
- Requires some technical knowledge and maintanence
- Is not backed up automatically (so make sure you you do)

In the end I would choose from either Wordpress or Tumblr according to the kinds of users and usage. For personal blog I would go for a pre-hosted blog on tumblr or wordpress.com and for a serious personal blog or commercial blogsite I would go for a self-hosted wordpress installation.

Looking for a wordpress guru to install your wordpress blog on your own hosting for free ? let us help!

Adding Google Analytics manually

1. Login wordpress admin panel
2. Goto Appearance > Editor (theme editor)
3. Select the footer.php or index.php
4. Find the </body> html tag
5. Copy and page the Google Analytics code before the </body> tag.
6. Don’t forget to click Update File to save changes.

The only problem with the manual installation is that if you swap wordpress themes you will loose your  Google Analytics tracking. That is why it is better to handle the Google Analytics tracking code within a plugin. The selected plugin is a simple plugin with no-mumbo-jumbo.

Adding Google Analytics with the Header-Footer plugin

1. Download and install the Header-Footer plugin
2. Goto Settings > Header-Footer
3. Cut and paste the google tracking code in the bottom footer textbox.
4. Enjoy.

If you are looking for a more advanced feature packed plugin that can also handle the above and more, you might want to try HeadSpace2.

Please note that this tip requires wordpress installed on your webhost.

Well stop twiddling since Hao Chen has cooked up a online export tool for tumblr that exports your Tumblr data into a wordpress formatted XML file.

How to import the Tumblr XML into Wordpress :

1. Log into that blog as an administrator.
2. Go to Manage: Import in the blog’s admin panels.
3. Choose “WordPress” from the list.
4. Upload this file using the form provided on that page.
5. You will first be asked to map the authors in this export file to users on the blog. For each author, you may choose to map to an existing user on the blog or to create a new user
6. WordPress will then import each of the posts, comments, and categories contained in this file into your blog

If you want to get your hands dirty with some custom integration, the tool is based on the Tumbr API.

Need help getting your wordpress blog installed ? Take advantage of our FREE wordpress installation and customization offer today! Follow us on twitter @bloginstall