Encryption is one of those words whose perceived meaning is something different to actual meaning. When we say the word encryption, we immediately think of spies, James Bond, the CIA or NSA. Encryption is merely a mathematical method of obfuscating information so only the intended audience can read it. Email encryption is exactly the same. It’s a way of protecting the contents of email so nobody but the intended recipient can read them.

Businesses who encrypt their emails don’t necessarily have anything to hide, or are up to no good. Most often they just want to protect commercially sensitive or proprietary information from the competition, or prevent data leakage. In a savagely competitive business world, we all have to take every advantage we can get, and protect ourselves as much as possible from those trying to take advantage at our expense. Email encryption used to be voluntary, you didn’t have to do it. If your emails didn’t contain company secrets or sensitive data then there was no need for encryption.

Since the overhaul of legislation governing businesses, especially laws like the HIPAA, anybody who has any exposure to medical or financial data has to encrypt their emails. The HIPAA security rule specifically mentions email encryption as mandatory for anyone who comes into contact with PHI or financial data. The protection of data is now a big noise in business, both internally and federally. Fortunately, most email encryption goes on without the user having the slightest notion of it.

Most newer email encryption is performed at the server. The user at their email client has no idea their emails are being encrypted unless their system either informs them or requires them to participate in the process. The majority of encryption is done at the server level before it leaves the network. If the mail is internal, the mail is still encrypted and sent to the recipient where their client with decrypt the message for them. External mails are encrypted and sent with a public key which the receiving mail server can use to decrypt the email. The most secure encryption systems are those that require the sender and recipient to manually decrypt the data by entering a key by hand. This allows them both to retain full control over what happens to their data while it’s being shared.

The mechanics of encryption is hugely complicated, but based on a very simple idea. The actual data is replaced with other data in a specific pattern. The software knows this pattern and provides a key for the recipient to be able to decode this pattern. Using the right key on the right piece of data allows the system to decode the email. With the industry standard 128-bit encryption, there is a staggering 339,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 2¹²⁸ possible combinations for the key. While it isn’t foolproof, this kind of security will prevent all but the most determined, or technologically superior hacker from accessing the data.

Need SEO Help? Contact Us!

If you are going to have a successful online business what is the one thing you need more than anything else? Consistent streams of targeted traffic is the key to your online success. Notice that says targeted traffic, not just traffic. You want people to come to your site who are actually interested in what you are offering.

This brings up the question of where your traffic should come from. Search engine traffic is the best for several reasons. First, if people find you on the search engines they were looking for something you have to offer, which makes them more inclined to purchase or browse around your site. The biggest reason search engine traffic is so much better than say pay per click is the fact that searchers trust the natural results, a great deal more which in turn means more conversions. More targeted than this you won’t find.

Some of the strategies used by our team of experts to dominate search results:

[+] On page SEO

[+] Keyword Research

[+] Social Media Promotion & Management

[+] Blogging

[+] Article & Content Writing

[+] Video Promotion

[+] Link Building

[+] Google Maps / Local Search Optimization

[+] Press Releases

In order to rank well in the search engines you need professional assistance. And this doesn’t come neither cheap or with the necessary qualifications. Many website owners hire SEO firms to handle their campaigns, the problem is a good number of these companies will bleed you for money and only return a few useless back links through RSS or inefficient site submissions. If you want to succeed online, it is important to be careful and know what you are paying for. Thought Mechanics is not that kind of SEO service provider.

What you will find with Thought Mechanics is a company that puts incremental growth of your site’s ranking power as a number one priority. Our company offers your business relevant links on Web 2.0 and niche related websites. You can effectively see the traffic to your site double in no time flat, since all links are given the necessary attention in terms of independent link building campaign for each such quality initial backlink. Do not trust your livelihood to just any SEO company on the block, backlinks that pass on sufficient link juice along side with sustainable referral traffic is the only way to make it in the online world. You need the services of a company that understands this fact.

Back links are important, but that is not all there is to SEO marketing. 97% of your website ranking will depend on quality back links; however, there are other considerations as well. You need a search engine friendly site structure and good content for visitors. Many site owners self sabotage in the content arena by winding up red flag triggers like duplicate content issues. This is a huge red flag to search engine web crawlers and can result in your site not showing in the search engine results at all, not to mention minimal indexing rates!

You need a partner SEO professional that monitors your online platform on an ongoing basis providing SEO service within and beyond the initial payed for link building or site development jobs. This won’t find with any other SEO firm on the market as far as our marketing department knows.

Search engine algorithms change constantly, thanks in part to people who have essentially “cheated” the system to get good rankings. Our SEO Experts work diligently to keep up with changes and cover all the pertinent optimization angles or methods. This is the type of professionals you want working for your online business, when Google or one of the other search engine changes gears which by the way has turned into a pretty predictable habit.

Like it or not, Google is the platform people use to find what they want on the internet, if you are going to be successful with an online business you have to work within their confines bottom line! Let our team do the ground work in research and render you strategies that produce rapid and long lasting results.

Creating and managing a website that is search engine friendly and relevant to searchers is no easy task. If it were simple, everyone would be doing it successfully by now. But the reality is that only a few search engine marketers dominate top 3 positions in markets that count in terms of making real money. Most site owners do not have the time nor the patience to monitor changes keep up with the trends or do the painstaking keyword research. And they frequently resign in wasting money and time with unqualified SEOs that lead them no ware on the SERP horizons. If you want to work with a company that will take you to the next level consider ThoughtMechanics.

We offer one on one consultation and analysis of your site to determine your keyword ranking chances as well as a complete and personalized SEO campaign and pertinent assessments as to how your website will rank on a give time period backed by our reputation and financial guarantee. Now Really, if our SEO campaign fails to bring your site where we promised it will be, you’ll be given a full refund of your expenses with our SEO services, no question asked.

Is working with Drupal for your development needs something new to you? If so, you really need not be all that worried. In addition to a custom drupal theme or a free one, there are a number of helpful modules out there you can examine to boost your success potential using Drupal. Considering how enormously helpful Drupal can be for your web development needs, the following 10 “must have” Drupal modules will certainly be worth looking into…

10 – Better Formats: Not everyone is all that fond of the fact that Filtered HTML is required for all users. It can prove to be very difficult to accept the fact that altering the default input format changes the full HTML components for all users. Drupal has made this process less problematic by keeping the input format at a filtered HTML and then changing to full HTML when needed.

9 – ImageCache: When you input and upload images, you want a smooth and streamlined process employed. ImageCache means you can upload one size image as opposed to multiple sizes of the same images. Again, you can put in one image and then alter it.

8 – Views: If you want to create customized content from a database, the Views component of Drupal is certainly helpful. Content is certainly vital and necessary. Employing a user-friendly system such as the Views facet is a major help to those in need of it.

7 – Panels: In a similar vein, you would certainly gain a great benefit from the Panels component since it provides effective graphic imaging (in the form of, no surprise, panels) to the webpage. This can add a great deal of coherency to the image that is crafted. Disorganization never aids development and the Panels aspect is a solid inclusion to the Drupal mix.

6 – Quick Tabs: Some might groan at the conclusion of Quick Tabs to the mix. Is it really that big of a deal to add more tabs or to delete tabs that are not necessary. However, it would be unwise to point to anything that provides organization and coherency and present it as something that is unnecessary. Tabs have to be properly managed to deliver the appropriate operational impact. That is why this function is a must have.

5 – Nodequeue: Despite the very unique name, Nodequeue provides a very simple and extremely helpful process that can certainly boost the ability to get the most organization out of the homepage or, for that matter, various other pages on the site. This process allows for the ability to craft specialized lists and they can be put anywhere on your website. Again, this would be another in a long line of benefits in the sense that Nodequeue boosts the organizational potential of a site tremendously.

4 – PatHauto: URLs are vital for the success of a website and that is why PatHauto is such an outstanding component. In particular, the need to customize URLs for each individual content component is a must. Pathauto opens the door for this since it allows you to develop path aliases. This will certainly allow you to get the most out of their URL organization and customization.

3 – Webform: Do you need to compose basic data capture forms? If you do you would probably want the easiest process of all. You would also want the users on the site to be able to do so in an equally easy manner. Do you want some to fill out a contact form? How about having a visitor to the site signing up with a newsletter? If you do then you would assuredly want them to complete the process in the easiest manner possible. Webform is the node that allows all of this to be performed easily.

2 – Token: Token connects with PatHauto in the sense that is provides a basis where other modules are able to connect with other items of text such as taxonomy terms and usernames. Once again, this component aids in the streamlining of system operations.

1 – FiveStar: Saving the most unique for last, FiveStar is one of the more innovative integrated components to employ on a website. It allows for the rating of what appears on the website and that is certainly helpful in terms of the feedback in can provide to a website publisher.

Once again, Drupal has much to offer those that are developing websites. That is why it is a system strongly advised to integrate into your current processes.

While most Wordpress themes tend to be gender-neutral, every once in a while you come across a great one that could be used by your daughter, your sister, or someone else who wants something that is distinctly feminine in the Wordpress Theme category.

Finding a very “girly” WordPress theme is so uncommon that you tend to take note of it and write it down to save. You will get requests to build a Wordpress site that is very feminine in nature. Our list of the best of the feminine Wordpress Themes that we’ve come across in a long time is below for your use.

Stand by all you girly type girls(or guys). The best of the girly themes for your website are all here in one place. They are gorgeous, simple, flashy and not so simple. Easy to use and easy to install each of these girly style themes has just what it takes to make you feel a little more feminine and fun.
 
 
 
1. Marangal Pink

The Marangal Pink theme for wordpress is an outstanding and very full featured theme that offers you the look of elegance. Deep pink and dark backgrounds mean that you’re sitting pretty on your Wordpress site.

 
 
 
2. Seduction

Seduction a premium theme anchored into the fashion trends and celebrity of the day. It has a color-customizable background to fit all feminine tastes. Great features come with the blog and it is widget ready so you can add all those cool plugins to make it really pop.

 
 
 
3. Creative Soul

One of the most unique and superbly stunning of the girly girl themes, Creative soul is a powerful theme that works well with nearly any kind of site. With optional color changes, widget ready, and well balanced, Creative soul will fit in well with anything from a blog to a CMS use of WordPress.

 
 
 
4. Artworks

Artworks is one of the most beautiful of the free premium wordpress themes. It brings together great artwork with feminine colors that work with any site. Optional methods of layout and setup give you the control that you want over your blog.

 
 
 
5. Bloom

From WPNow comes the outstanding theme known as Bloom. While not strictly “girly” in nature, the perfect teal and gray design make it outstanding for a business site while giving it just a touch of the feminine. If you’re up for some amazing colors and outstanding features, Bloom won’t disappoint you.

 
 
 
6. Simplista

Also from Wordpress now, simplista combines gorgeous shades of blue and purple with perfect features in a widget ready site that can take on the world in style. For the feminine side of you, Simplista offers a light color array that can be mitigaged by the featured content slider.

 
 
 
7. Nightlife

One of the premium Wordpress themes that are just about perfect if you’re doing reviews of clubs or coffee houses, the colors are bold and the style is flash. Nightlife is that little something more, and is nothing short of captivating.

 
 
 
8. Elements

Premium priced and with a good reason, Elements has a perfect layout for your blog, your CMS or even your online magazine. Whatever your wordpress site is accomplishing for you, it will clearly be enhanced by the use of Elements.

 
 
 
9. Florance

Bright colors and an overall breezy attitude are featured in the Florance theme. Premium in looks but not on price, this outstanding free theme is designed to make your site get a bit more in tune with your feminine side.

 
 
 
10. The Glow

One of our favorite Wordpress themes, the premium price for this is more than cost effective. Colorful and mystical, the premium theme will set your site apart from the masses and really make it shine. Useful in both CMS as well as blog mode, The Glow is nothing short of elegant and amazing.

It is not just about a  regulatory compliance but the complete performance of your business could have a huge positive boost by sticking to Email Archiving. This one independent system can provide your company a whole new outlook by integrating the enterprise email server for better implementation of its entire activities.

What is Email Archiving?

The systematic approach of saving and shielding data contained in e-mail messages for quick retrieval later on is what Email Archiving is all about. This new system helps the company to salvage necessary data within minutes which is also required to meet the regulatory submissions. For this, the impartial IT application indexes the accumulated email messages using different technical methods. The major objectives served by Email Archiving are:

+ Record retention for regulatory compliance
+ Litigation and lawsuit requirements
+ Fortification  of task critical data
+ Email backup and disaster recovery
+ Monitoring of internal and external email content
+ Plummeting production email server load

What are the Email Archiving Solutions?

Lots of emails are sent and received by an organizations each day. Securing such important email content either directly from the email application itself or during transfer to be stored on magnetic disk storage for future retrieval is the function performed by Email archiving solutions. Some advanced features of such solutions help to store additional information apart from email and attachments like public folders, contacts, calendar, notes, etc.

Email Backup and Disaster Recovery

Endurance requires any organization to efficiently manage its email contents since today this has become the most important medium of communication. Digitalization cannot improve unless such important data being transferred to and from the companies can be stored and retrieved most effectively. Messaging is the forte of IT infrastructure in any organization. The significance of this entire system is well reflected in the decision making process of the organization.

Most organizations do not encouraging deleting old e-mails especially because on a later date, any email might have significant relevance in a lawsuit. Also holding indefinitely emails sent and received by the organization could be a requirement for different kinds of business institutions. This kind of email backup and disaster recovery can only be provided by using Email Archiving services.

Messaging System and Storage Optimization

Though most organizations would be happy to keep on saving all email communications, their storage and indexing is a big nuisance for them as well. Each email takes up some amount of space on the storage device and that is why storage optimization becomes an important aspect for the organization. Without proper utilization of the resources, huge amount of data stored cannot be properly managed. Things like email backup, retrieving, searching, indexing, etc could become a tedious task and could end up taking precious days of the workforce.

The Verdict

Use of Email Archiving helps Microsoft exchange to keep the messaging system in up-to-date state. It helps to improve the level of performance of email server for primary use and exchange of email messages. Also this helps to avoid deleting all the old emails and helps you to stay ahead of the race always!

By: Selena Narayanasamy / esvienne.com

When you update and optimize your website for search engine traffic, keywords should always be a primary focus. Keywords are the lifeblood that helps drive traffic to your website based on how your website ranks within those words and phrases.

However, what methods do you use to select your keywords? Do you carefully research keywords and phrases, and determine alternate lists of keywords? Do you use your site stats to find out what keywords most land on your site? Or do you use no research at all and employ keywords that you feel are best suited for your site?

The best keyword strategy for search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) is to use web tools. There are plenty of free tools available on the internet for your use. Here are a few of the best recommendations:

1. Keyword Suggestion Tool

The keyword suggestion tool developed by Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com is not only a handy suggestion tool, but it is a powerful analytical tool as well.  Previously free to the public, SEOBook does now require a free membership in order to use the tool.

Once you are signed in, simply enter a keyword or phrase and watch as the tool delivers suggested keywords based on search volumes for all the major search engines like Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It will also provide links to other tools like keyword price estimates from Google Adwords, as well as links to other databases to let you know how your keyword is being tracked in social media, blogs, and directories. This is truly the all-in-one keyword research tool, and it only costs your email address.

3. Wordtracker

The Wordtracker tool is also a great help when researching keywords. This is a paid-member access only, but anyone may use the Wordtracker for free with a 7-day free trial. Membership is $59 per month, but any website owner who makes money through his or her website will find that this tool is worth the cost.

Wordtracker will help generate thousands of relevant keyword ideas to help anyone using PPC campaigns. You can use it to help optimize your own website with the best choice of keywords and phrases. In addition, explore and research online markets to discover niche opportunities using your keywords.

4. Search Engine Keyword Tracker & Keyword Ranking Tool

If you want to know how your keywords position within major search engines, try the Keyword Tracker & Ranking Tool at DigitalPoint. The tool requires a membership registration, which is completely free. With this software, you can track historical rankings of your chosen keywords. Get real time system stats from all major search engines, along with keyword rank, changes, and even the last time it was queried.

 
 
Remember- no tool is 100% efficient, so don’t rely solely on these. They do make life a lot easier though. What are some of your favorite tools?
 
 
 

If you’re into SEO writing and tagging, you know that you are trying to drive traffic to your website or online business. You want the best tools to help you with this, but you don’t want your profits all eaten away by high fees. So let’s take a look at 10 of the very best, “must have” free SEO tools.

Let’s start by looking at Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com. With this SEO tool, you are enabled to check your rankings for as many as five keywords every day at no charge, and the program also maintains an archive for you, which you are even able to download as CSV. All you’ve got to do is install the “browser button”, and it will then copy the URL of the page that you’re looking at into the tool and perform a quick check on its ranking. At five free keywords per day, you can check up to about 150 of them per month all for no charge.

MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com is another great, and free, SEO tool. Want to check both the Alexa Ranking and the Google SERPS for your websites and multiple competitors of yours? Well, all you have to do with the MultiRank Checker is simply pour all of the domain names into the MultiRank Checker and then copy-and-paste the results table. Save time, multitask!

Next, let’s have a look at the SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com. This is a tool to use to commence with your optimization activities. It gives you a report featuring a detailed list of SEO components which you might want to assess more carefully on your websites. For your convenience, the tool furthermore maintains a copy of your previous reports, which with just a simple mouse-click you can download them all as a PDF. But, remember, this is not a total SEO analysis tool, so you would not want to rely on it alone.

Now we turn to the Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com. With this, you’ll find an organized listing of any website’s most SEO-potent pages. This makes it very easy for you to determine which pages carry the highest concentrations of inbound links. A magnificent way to use this tool is to analyze other successful websites’ pages and then take ideas from them to apply to your own.

Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com is essential for anyone working to design SEO-potent webpages and websites. With this, what you get is an outstanding backlink checking tool. Looking for a starting off point for your backlink marketing? Use this tool. You can analyze competitors’ links, too, in addition to your own.

SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com can provide you with more data than any other from either the search engine or the visited page, making it the perfect tool to get yourself competitive overview quickly. You’ll be given cache date, number of cached pages, PageRank, Yahoo backlinks, domain age, number of dot-edu links, and on and on. With a simple right click. Then all of the data can be exported directly from the SERPs to CSV.

This tool is based on Urchin–Google makes it free to anyone. You’ll get thorough data about funnel information, traffic behavior, content visitation, and on and on. The Webmaster Console tool now gives you a good view of what Google “sees” for your site including: crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, highest PageRank of your site and more.

Want a “dietary supplement” SEO tool? Try using Google’s Keyword Tool. Since the Overture.com went down this is perhaps the most reliable keyword filter tool on the market. All SEO programs that have keyword research capabilities pull in their data from Google’s own stats. So why pay when you could use it for free!

Now here’s a unique one: XENU’s Link Sleuth by Tilman Hausherr. This is something that you download at no charge, and once you do you are allowed to keep your copy in the event that the owner decides to making people pay for it. With this one, you get a spider…so, with it you are able to figure out whether or not a website has, say, broken links, endless loops, redirect detections, and so on. Kill your competitors!

And at last, we come to Visual PageRank by iWebTool.com. For your intuitive side, you get to actually “see” your webpage with page rank overlays for every one of your links.

Count ‘em–one through ten. Put ‘em all in your SEO toolbox–for free!

Honorable Mentions:

• Digital Points Keyword Tracker
• Rank Tracker, it costs money but it’s worth every damn dime. Get this.
• Market Samurai, this also costs money but it can come in very handy.
• SEO Quake FireFox Plugin – This should have been in the top 10 list but Cristian, my blogger has failed not only me but all of the readers out there

So what exactly is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative, increasingly popular stream of income for online entrepreneurs. Being successful in affiliate marketing includes choosing your affiliates wisely, staying focused, and creating a solid business platform that will invariably grow with proper attention. Sometimes we get excited by a business opportunity and forget how to carefully implement a plan to succeed. Here are five additional strategies that the online entrepreneur can use to be successful in this growing industry.

1. Choose Your Industry  Extremely Carefully

Marketing gurus always advise online marketers to do what they love and they will be successful. Not only is this true, but in affiliate marketing it is very important. If an affiliate marketer chooses to market a product or service that they are passionate about, it will reflect in their blog posts, forum posts, and in their customer service interactions. Customers are a peculiar lot and tend to buy when they see and feel genuine passion in the seller’s voice.

2. Use Multiple Merchants

As an affiliate, representing a themed product is fine, but representing several merchants about a themed product is even better. This means that instead of marketing one protein drink made by one merchant, the affiliate can market protein drinks distributed by several merchants and increase his chances of sales. This will likely work best under different domain names as it can be awkward to represent several products by several merchants on one site. Diversity is the key and the affiliate marketer would do well to expand his target market as wide as possible without creating conflicts.

3. Choose Crafty Domain Names

This does not mean the cute or silly domain names that won’t get a second look (such as eyecandy.com for a sunglass affiliate). This name might be cute but… well… do you really think of sunglasses immediately? Crafty domain names and websites include names that tell the customers what to expect. Make the domain names something that is catchy, yet professional, and create a website that is user-friendly and where the customer is sure to return again.

4. Continuing Education

I know that not everyone likes to do work in an industry that requires them to constantly keep learning- but I’m assuming if you’re in this field, you’re probably an entrepreneur of some sort and seek out constant learning. In affiliate marketing, various industries are always changing and improving their services and products. It is in the best interest of the marketer to stay abreast on all developments that their affiliate sites represent, including their competitors. To continually stay educated in the respective industries, the marketer can do several things to increase his knowledge. This includes:

• Subscribing to the affiliate’s blog or newsletter.
• Subscribing to news alerts in that affiliates industry.
• Reading, subscribing to, and networking with other blogs and bloggers in your field.

5. Network, Network, Network

This cannot be stressed enough although many online marketers are deficient in this area. The crux of any business lies in how effective the marketing strategy is and determines how sales will go. In affiliate marketing, affiliates must market their business to interested, targeted markets if they want to see sales increase. Several ways to market include social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Guest blogging and article writing are also avenues to network with others. Another idea that is underestimated is giving away free downloads or products as samples. Giving the customer an idea of what to expect from your affiliate is a great way to close the deal and make the sale. Effective networking opens a channel to do all of these things and help your business become successful.

Keep up these tips and you’ll be a rockstar affiliate marketer in no time. Just don’t get too excited and lose sight of what exactly you’re working towards.

The dilemma of regulating the entire retention schedules for email data is one of the biggest crisis facing most industrial organizations. Unless a full-proof automated system of Email Archiving is in proper place, the company could stand to lose a lot of time, money and productivity of its workers in the long run. Only a good email archiving software can act as a single solution source for all your email management problems on the exchange server.

The Big Question:

No matter how small or big your enterprise may be email records grow as an unending burden every second, every day for all types of companies. This means that keeping accurate records for future could become a dreary job. However with email archiving vendors on the horizon, today there is a possible solution all your email backup concerns.

Placing the right tools in the right place might just help you to save your organization from paying out huge fines as well. Many a times you are required to produce an email history in connection with lawsuit against the organization. In such cases, lack of evidence could very well act against you and not having the proper email backup may end you up in paying thousands of dollars as fine in the court of law.

Regulatory Compliance:

The higher reliance of most industrial organizations on the information system has made the email data storage issue one of utmost importance. However, apart from that, even law makes it obligatory for the organization to have Email Archiving system well in place. Periodic reviews are performed to ensure that such Email Archiving is being used to keep proper documentary records of the company’s major communication medium – the email information. The ‘electronic business communications’ makes it compulsory for the companies to not only store emails but also file attachments, Bloomberg messaging, Reuters messages, pin-to-pin and SMS text messages, VoIP, instant messaging, as well as similar other electronic messaging used in business.

The advent of Email Archiving Vendor:

Using an email archiving vendor is perhaps the best way to solve all issues related with email communications. What this additional service will do for you is to give a backup from an independent server that is installed into your system. This one step could also help to prevent data corruption and dynamically store huge amounts of data without ever fearing to lose any of them ever again!

Final Thoughts:

Email Archiving is considered as a significant investment in the modern business environment. With rise in corruption cases and huge lawsuit settlement issues; this has become a pre-requisite for any good business enterprise. In fact, today the email in its original form is considered as a very valuable piece of evidence in the court of law and hence email archiving vendors could just be the thing you are looking for. Running off a server, an email archiving vendor provides you backup around the clock. Providing you with add-on protection and a good piece of mind, the email archiving vendors are well wroth the investment.

Unlike the extensive variety of website building platforms from which you can choose, there are three platforms dominating the blogging universe: WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. Here’s a rundown of the three and what each has to offer.

WordPress

Is the most popular and widely used blogging platform available today. It is what is referred to as an “open source,” which means it is not owned by any company and is available license-free. Blog sites can either be hosted free at WordPress.com or the software can be uploaded to many commercially available web servers.

The difference is when hosted on a commercial server there becomes an almost endless variety of “widgets,” plug-ins that allow for specific enhancements and usages. A worldwide WordPress developer community exists where literally thousands of site themes and hundreds of enhancement widgets and plug-ins are available for purchase and many are free.

There are several advantages using WordPress including:

[+] It can be free when hosted at WordPress.com. Plus, you can re-route your domain name to the one supplied by WordPress.

[+] You can design and use the WordPress “static page” feature producing flexible website pages.

[+] A variety of themes can be used to produce an almost limitless amount of website appearances.

[+] WordPress supplies a very strong ant-spam feature called “Akismet.”

[+] Since it is an open source software, there exists and immense amount of free help provided by developer-savvy amateurs and professionals willing to share tutorials, documentations, widgets and site themes.

[+] Statistics are available that can be used for many purposes including marketing

There are disadvantages as well including:

[+] WordPress editing is not intuitively user-friendly. There exists a need to have, or follow directions for, editing knowledge about PHP, the mark-up language upon which the platform is written.

[+] The themes available free at WordPress.com are usually not flexible enough providing to meet all your requirements unless you opt for paid upgrades.

[+] Also, the embedding of any type of code may be limited using the free WordPress.com hosting as well as when self-hosted unless you use additional plug-ins that may be available for a fee.

TypePad

Is the hosting software offered by Six Apart that runs its blogging product, Movable Type, which is used by many high-profile e-commerce sites. There is a 14-day free trial version that leads to a monthly fee charge of approximately $15. Once an account is established, multiple blogs can be created. Software is also available to be loaded on commercial servers as well.

The advantages using TypePad include:

[+] TypePad possesses an interface more user-friendly than WordPress.

[+] Designing a site is simple employing a drag and drop system and a sidebar can be implemented.

[+] A TypePad account can accommodate many blogs through using addresses such as blog1.typepad.com, blog2.typepad.com. etc.

The disadvantages include:

[+] Although it is also open-source software, there is a limited number of TypePad “community members” restricting availability of help sources to any design or operation problems that come up.

[+] Domain names are always in the “xxx.typepad.com/blog” configuration so any attempt at forwarding will reveal your blog is hosted here.

[+] Spam is not handled as well as it is on WordPress.

Blogger

Unlike WordPress or TypePad, Blogger is not open-source software, therefore, there are no clever and talented web geeks working toward making it better, bigger and more user-friendly. It is a product produce by Google hosted at Blogger.com.

The advantages using this software include:

[+] Great and easy integration with many other Google products like Picasa (photo sharing).

[+] Code is easily placed in templates for making quick fixes, although there may be some maintenance challenges.

The disadvantages include:

[+] Limited looks or themes that restrict designing like a traditional website

[+] There are no self-install versions of the software so using it is limited to “blogspot.com.”

[+] The only availability for a static page is the offer of an “About” page.

[+] There is no development community for finding themes and plug-ins.

Information can be exported and imported between WordPress to TypePad such as posts, comments and pages. However, there are some items like photos that might not be transferable.