Welcome! We have another truckload of webmaster articles for you today. If you have a blog post of interest for our next edition, feel free to submit it. If you’re interested in hosting an edition on your blog, feel free to let us know (a comment is fine).

First, the Miscellaneous:

• adam presents Improving the conversion rate of your checkout process posted at Conversion Matters, saying, “A summary of the recent e-consultany report about improving the conversion rate of your online checkout process”.
• nitesh123 presents The iPhone: Lots to Love, but Flaws Too posted at anythin.
• Dawn Xiana Moon presents Annoyance and Windows Vista posted at Dawn Xiana Moon: Randomness.
• viju presents Top Wordpress plugins that make your blog smart posted at eTechBuzz.com, saying, “I love wordpress blog platform. Wordpress is easy to manage and for SEO. If you host your blog on this platform I will suggest some plugins that make your blog smart. If you are not hosting on wordpress you are wasting your time on other platforms. Plugins are most useful part of the any wordpress blog design. Here I am going to list some wordpress plugins that are worth to install on any wordpress blog theme.” There are some good ones in there, and I highly recommend checking them out if you use the Wordpress blogging software.
• Ryan Ambrose presents Link Weeding: Do It or Else! posted at The Self-Reliant Post.
• Barbra Sundquist presents Sample Template for Your MySpace About Me Section posted at MySpace About Me.
• Tracy Coenen presents Did you see Sequence Inc. in the Wall Street Journal today? posted at FRAUDfiles, saying, “The Wall Street Journal did an article on entrepreneurs blogging to increase business. It worked for me… and I’m a fraud investigator!”

In the Design category…

• Ryan Ambrose presents Does it Take a PhD to Read Your Content? posted at The Self-Reliant Post, saying, “Is the content on your web site written for the Internet? Read about why you should care here.”
• Yuri presents Use Design Secrets to Create Great Websites posted at Improve the Web, saying, “Learn mind-blowing tips to create websites that will convert more visitors to customers.”
• James Lewitzke presents Top 10 Web Savvy Tips for Beginners posted at Toptenlisted.com, saying, “I wrote this article to help people who want to build a web site from scratch.” I agree with the domain part especially.  You can get a domain name for $6/year from 1and1. You’ll seem a lot more professional if you have a domain.
• Amanda Harris presents Using Free Themes posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Amanda Harris presents Collection of Themes posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Daniel Condurachi presents New Website Project - Marketing Support Web Site - graphic design in progress posted at Daniel Condurachi’s Blog.

In the General category…

• Vandelay Website Design presents 83 Top Webmaster Resources << Vandelay Website Design posted at Vandelay Website Design.
• V. Neely presents Fantastico in a Nutshell: An Easy Way to Install WordPress posted at Nutshell Journal, saying, “Guide for new bloggers: Some tips for installing WordPress with Fantastico. Includes screen shots.” See? A $6 domain name and some cheap hosting are all you need to start a professional blog. You don’t need to be a geek.
• Warren Wong presents Just Do It posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, “Are you pondering over a task? Are you not sure if you should do it? Here’s why you should just do it!”
• Jonathan Deamer presents Ten answers to the un-answerable question: what is Web 2.0? posted at Jonathan Deamer.
• Ybother presents Daily Top Ten List: 10 Steps to Hosting Java on LunarPages posted at A Top Ten List Everyday to Jumpstart Your Knowledge, saying, “10 Step tutorial for those wanting to host Java on Lunarpages. Must reading before signing up!”
• Jimmy Atkinson presents Free Speech Hosting: 11 Web Hosts That Won?t Dump You at the First Sign of Controversy posted at Dedicated Hosting Guide.
• Khalid Hajsaleh presents 31 quick points to instantly understand online conversion posted at INVESP Consulting.
• R.Pettinger presents 7 Tips to Make Your Writing More Interesting posted at Net Writing, saying, “How to make your writing more interesting and stand out from the crowd”
• Bhupendra Khanal presents Avinash Kaushik: Rewriting the Indian Knowledge Economy posted at Analytics Bhupe, saying, “Avinash Kaushik is the number one analytics blogger in the world today and he has achieved this position in less than a year.”
• Stephen Ward presents How to Get the Best Deal on Blog Hosting posted at Building a Better Website.
• Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Evaluation is Critical for Success. How to Measure Your Progress. posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door, saying, “I have learned from past experience with my other projects, goals and small businesses that it is crucial to monitor progress using analytical measures. Regular evaluations of any project are important for keeping it on track and in alignment with one’s vision. Today, on my one month blogiversary, I am illustrating this important evaluation process.”
• Tom Banks presents How to write good meta tags posted at Tips for Webmasters, saying, “This article will help you write good meta tags!”
• Amanda Harris presents Content Resources posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Amanda Harris presents Timestamping posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Amanda Harris presents Setting Up a Business Website posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Tom Banks presents Increasing your google page rank posted at Tips for Webmasters, saying, “This article will help webmasters and bloggers to increase their google page rank.”
• Matt Harzewski presents Don’t Block Firefox! posted at Webmaster-Source.

In “Monetization”…

• Don presents 7 Tips For Building An Opt In Email List For Increased Profits posted at AffiliateWatcher.Com, saying, “Article submission can bring in a flood of targeted traffic, which leads to a higher click through rate and increased purchases. Find out how to do it right and the most effective tactics to increase your website or blogs earnings.”
•  Steve Ashton presents How To Get Started With Google AdWords posted at MoneyMakingShed.com, saying, “Learn how to get started using Google’s CPC advertising tool. The steps you need to get you up and running.”
• Ant presents Make More Money with AuctionAds posted at The Beef Jerky Blog.
• Scott Allen presents Make Money with Embedded News Video from TheNewsRoom posted at Revenue River, saying, “A new site (in beta) is offering a nice embedded news video player which includes CPM advertising, typically unavailable to smaller publishers.”

And Traffic-Building…

• Kiltak presents How to write posts that people will actually read posted at [Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News.
• Madeleine Begun Kane presents Ode To The Google PageRank Obsession posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.
• Raj Dash presents Better Websites: 7 Elements of Good Link Building Articles posted at Logo Design Blog, saying, “Link building is an important part of raising the profile of your website. Done successfully, it also has the side effect of increasing your traffic.”
• Anna Farmery presents A-Z of Promoting Your Podcast posted at Podcast Freq.
• Amanda Harris presents Pajama Mommy Community posted at Pajama Mommy.
• Paul Heingarten presents Search Engine Marketing: how to do it for less money posted at PRH Solutions Blog, saying, “It is really easy to spend a lot of money promoting your website. Read this article on how I promote my websites without spending a lot of money.”
• Paul Heingarten presents Article Marketing - Write Your Way Into Search Results - Traffic And $$$ posted at Internet and Businesses Online: SEO Articles from EzineArticles.com, saying, “SEO, SEO, wherefore art thou SEO? Or something like that.”
• Don presents Yahoo Answers - Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Site posted at AffiliateWatcher.Com, saying, “This little know tactic can drive hordes of targeted traffic to your website…if done properly. In this article, I’ll show you how to take advantage of this untapped traffic source!”
• edithyeung presents How to Drive Traffic to Your Website or Blog - Part 1 posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

Technorati tags: webmaster articles, blog carnival.

Webmaster-Source’s Starting a Great Blog (with Wordpress) tutorial is now complete. The twelve-part series walks you through starting a blog. The sections are as follows:

• Domains and Hosting
• Installing Wordpress
• Configuring Wordpress
• Themes
• Posting
• Spreading the Word
• Monetization
• Stat Tracking
• Wordpress Plugins
• Social Bookmarking
• Conclusion

That’s a lot of reading, isn’t it? Take a look if you’re interested in starting a blog. Stand out from the Blogger and Livejournal users. How? Get a domain, hosting, and spend time (and effort) to make it a good blog. A domain and hosting will only cost you $35/year, so what are you waiting for? If you have something to write about, start a blog.

Google just bought Feedburner! Is that surprising? It’s not to me (well, not too much anyway). Think of it this way:

•  Feedburner = RSS “re-hosting”, feed stats, and feed ads
•  Google = Web site stats, website ads

So, you combine the two.

I believe the feed stats will eventually be integrated with Google Analytics, the ads with Adsense, and the “re-hosting” as-is. I’m guessing feedburner.com will stay as it is now, but the services will be available in other parts of Google as well.

For example, you could access your feed’s stats at either feedburner.com or through Google Analytics.

I wonder how much Google paid for Feedburner. More or less than youTube? Personally, I think Feedburner is worth more than YouTube.

Hey, I saw a useful thing on Digg today (unbelievable, I know)! CSS Slicing Guide, a website that teaches how to use Photoshop (or other programs) to slice a layout into working CSS code instead of tables.

As you may have noticed, there are tons of sites that still use tables to line up images into a layout. I admit I’ve done it in the past. If you’ve ever used Photoshop/Imageready to slice a layout, you have to admit it’s a lot easier to do it as a table. Hopefully this guide will help improve the state of the web. Personally, I don’t mind the table-based layouts…others do though.

I’m going to have to read the guide thoroughly. Why? I want to improve my slicing techniques for CSS layouts. I’ve gotten pretty good at tables, but I’m not anywhere near as good with the CSS output. I can hand-code CSS layouts fine, put dealing with the output from Imageready isn’t much fun. Then again, it’s not much fun editing the output for table-based layouts either…

I wish Imageready had options to output code that can hold content (of varying lengths, of course) instead of a bunch of stuff that just holds images in place. It’s a big pain to go through all of it and change 3/4 of the code just so it will hold content without breaking up funny.