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One of the most important pages on your blog will be your About Me page as this is the page that will/should hold all the important information about you so that the reader can know who they are dealing with.

I believe that there are three main areas that should be addressed in any About Me page:

1. Who are you?

2. What expertise do you bring to the niche you are blogging about?

3. How can you be contacted.

Your About Me page is just as important to your blog as a sales page/letter is to someone selling a product online. If you produce a poorly worded About Me page then how can you expect your readers to stick around let alone take what you write seriously?

To see a sample why not have a look at what I have written?
http://ineeddiscipline.com/about/

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Are you having trouble getting Alex King’s Popularity Contest plugin to activate? You are not alone, almost everyone who has tried to use it with a version of WordPress over 2.5 has had a problem.

But there is now a solution.

1. open up popularity-contest.php.

2. Go to line 59.

3. Replace require(’../../wp-blog-header.php’); with require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);.

If you have your WordPress in a subfolder then simply add the subfolder name after the ../ part.

You’ll now need to create two MYSQL tables so log in and create the following two tables:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `wp_ak_popularity` (
`post_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`total` int(11) NOT NULL,
`feed_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`home_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`archive_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`category_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`single_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`comments` int(11) NOT NULL,
`pingbacks` int(11) NOT NULL,
`trackbacks` int(11) NOT NULL,
`last_modified` datetime,
KEY `post_id` (`post_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `wp_ak_popularity_options` (
`option_name` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`option_value` varchar(50) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

I’m assuming you use wp_ as your table prefix, if you don’t then change that otherwise it won’t work.

Then go and activate your plugin and if you followed these steps correctly then it should now work.

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If you ask an experienced blogger what the most important aspect of becoming a successful blogger is they will say that unique content is king and this is the only thing you need to work on to make your blog popular.

Whilst I do agree to a certain extent that content is a very important aspect of becoming a good blogger I do not agree that it is the only important thing. I believe that the layout of your blog is just as, if not more, important as your content.

There are many free templates on the market, each one is used by about at least a thousand other blogs so you will have a swarm of blog clones that all look just like each other.

When I started this blog I decided that I needed to make the blog stand out so I purchased a template. I know a lot of people do not like spending money but it really makes all the difference because you know that not many people are going to have the same layout as you, and in some cases your layout is unique to you alone.

There are a number of web sites that offer great premium templates at very low prices but the one design site that I recommend are called Revolution Themes, they are the guys who designed this blog and other blogs run by me.

Below are some of the samples, simply click the images to see a live demo:

Revolution News Theme

This theme is a great solution for those who want the online newspaper look similar to websites such as CNN News, US World News & World Report, etc.

Revolution Magazine Theme

This theme is perfect for those who want to publish an online magazine. It’s built for daily posting, displaying video and is easily monetized with ads.

Revolution Real Estate Theme

This theme is a great solution for Real Estate agents who want to showcase their listings, blog and market themeselves to their community as well as place themselves above competition.

Revolution Pro Media Theme

This theme is structured towards media and has a very diverse homepage – including a place for featured tabs, video, photos, thumbnail images and more.

Revolution Pro Business

This theme is great solution for a small business or company who wishes to have a static web page as well as include a corporate blog.

Revolution Sports

Here’s a great way to turn your site into a major sports news/infromation hub. Feature sports like Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey and more.

Revolution Tech

This theme is ideal for the Techcrunch fan, and who wants their site to feature a technology, focusing on the latest tech news, product reviews, etc.