This is the second in a series on setting up WordPress on a local server. I shall be going over themes, plugins and some initial setup tasks.

To choose a WordPress theme for your blog is quite an important decision as it is the first thing that your visitors will see. A bad design will send visitors running despite the fact that you may have good content. A theme must satisfy several demands:

Matt Nuts has a competition on right now where you can choose your own prize. So here is my review of the prizes.

Here’s a competition with a difference. Most blog comments type of competitions want you to leave the most number of comments at the host’s blog - I don’t, in fact I only need to see ONE comment from you.

How would you like an Internet Marketing blog that’s worth $15,807.12 and a PR of 4 for only $4000? Who would be fool enough to let such a site go for that? Is he crazy?

There are a number of contests around at the moment, so I thought I would collect them all together here. Some of them require you to be a member of entrecard, but that is free and if you have a blog you really should be a member any way.

How do you test out different plugins or themes without messing up your wordpress installation. Or how do you develop a theme without messing your visitors about? Here I show you how to install a web server on a memory stick.

Getting an increase in traffic is just one of the perks of joining EntreCard, the other is in being exposed to sites that I probably might never have found. For this Wednesday’s Links collection I have decided to let you know a bit more about me and my interests by previewing ten of my favourite blogs I have found. So in no particular order here they are.