A lot of WordPress plugins help creating online registrations. The solution we share today is a web form created with 123 Contact Form. Using this service you will be able to register submitters in real time, automatically generate tickets and even receive payments with your form. Forms blend visually with any WordPress theme, as they can be styled using CSS.

For embedding a fully featured registration form on your WordPress page, just follow the steps below:

1. Install the plugin

Download the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress and unzip it. Next, move the folder 123contactform-for-wordpress into your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory. Then go to your WP dashboard -> Plugins -> 123ContactForm for WordPress and click Activate.

2. Create the form

a. Log in / sign up to www.123contactform.com. In your dashboard, click on Create New Form and choose the desired type – Event registration form. It contains the basic fields that you will need. Next, Edit your form. Make sure you include:

• a suggestive title and a brief event description
• a Google map to boost visual impact and to spare attendees from doing searches on the internet (sometimes a simple postal address does not make sense at the first look)
• a field to gather feedback for you (with a question like “Where have you heard about the event?”)
• demographic data about the attendee (gender may be useful to know, especially if you plan to offer them small business gifts such as T-shirts).

Tip: Keep it tight and simple, don’t request too much information from the submitters. The names of your guests are surely important for printing on reservation cards. Their phone numbers and e-mails are equally significant. But not the postal address, maybe – will you be sending them stuff?  Stick to the details you are sure to be needing.

d. Go to the next step, Form Settings. Here you can choose the options that will make the form work:

• email address for receiving notifications – you will be able to track submitters in real time
• CSS customization – style the appearance of the form, include your company’s logo to be more representative
• recording entry ID – this is important for ticketing, to track the number of guests and  assign a ticket to each of them
• a receipt for the submitters – you can set the form’s autoresponder with a confirmation message that sends each submitter the data he/she has entered, so that it can easily be printed from the e-mail client.
• anti-spam options – use CAPTCHA wisely, you don’t want to scare away legitimate applicants. Instead, choose smart CAPTCHA, that only appears if there is a sign of abuse to the form.
• payment integration. Here you can set your fees for the event and integrate the payment processor you need from the available options: PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net.

3. Publish the event registration form on WordPress

In the same 123ContactForm menu of your form, access the tab Get code & Publish. Choose the WordPress option in the left menu and copy the line provided. The code is simple, it will look something like this: [123-contact-form i239584]. Paste the code into your WordPress post.

That’s all folks! Have a great deal of fun on your events!

How to Create Event Registration Forms for WordPress Using 123ContactForm is a post from: WP Kube

However, there will come a time when your WordPress blog starts to feel bloated and slow. The following tips will help get your blog back to the smooth experience it needs to be for your readers.

Update and Clean Up

Inefficiency is a major culprit when it comes to poor performance in any software. Ensure you keep your WordPress installation and plug-ins up to date. Developers will often improve efficiency on their software as they continue to work on it and refine their approach. Do not have old plug-ins wasting valuable memory and bandwidth. Uninstall it if you are no longer using it or it ceases to be supported. There are plenty of other options out there. Be certain your plug-ins benefit the functionality of your blog.

Speeding Up php Execution

WordPress was created using a database retrieval of information method of display. The platform utilizes php to pull the requested information out of the database for display to the user. Thus, a php code accelerator, such as eAccelerator, can be used to significantly increase performance. eAccelerator is a good choice as it is stable with great performance. The minimum amount of RAM to assign with it is 128 MB (eaccelerator.shm_size=“128”).

Tweak MySQL Parameters

The default installation for MySQL utilizes minimized settings. The installation is set up to be useful even on low end systems. However, the minimum settings do not allow MySQL to use the fullest capability of the hardware available. Tweaking the settings can provide an improved experience. A number of performance guides on MySQL are available that can be consulted for greater scope than this article can provide. The following are but a handful of parameters and settings that can be adjusted for performance.

key_buffer=256M
max_allowed_packet=1M
table_cache=256M
thread_cache_size=8M
tuery_cache_size=16M

Create Static Pages With wp-cache 2

Wp-cache 2 is an incredibly useful WordPress plugin that will cache a page when it is requested. Future requests of the page are then drawn from the cache instead of the database being queried for the information with additional php execution. The only downside is its inability to alter content stored in the cache. If something changes in the database, the plug-in wipes the cache to rewrite the page. A blog that generates a lot of comments will not gain as great of a benefit from wp-cache 2 without some fixes implemented.

Improving WordPress Efficiency

There are a handful of tactics that can be used to increase the efficiency of the coding of a WordPress blog. These won’t necessarily shave off a huge amount of time. One should consider the number of times the code is actually executed for the given action and how much time is lost over the duration.

External Scripts

Instead of adding more code to improve functionality, integrate external scripts. Essentially, a command is added to the base code so when a visitor takes an action that would require that script, it will call and execute it. If a script is integrated directly into the code, 100 visitors would have it executing 100 times. However, by using an external script, only those visitors that specifically undertake the action requiring it would trigger it.

Utilize CSS Short-Hand

Coding has a lot of ins and outs, shortcuts and tricks. Many languages have shortcuts built in just to improve efficiency. Familiarize yourself with CSS short-hand to remove excess text from the actual piece of code. Sub-labels are typically a major contributor. They generally aren’t necessary but are included by the coder anyway.

Speeding Up Your WordPress Blog is a post from: WP Kube

It easily lets you set up a business website or blog with few clicks.

One of the main advantage of WordPress is, availability of tons of premium business themes to choose from. Below are 10 of what I think to be the best premium WordPress themes for business websites.

1. Aggregate

Aggregates comes packed with tons of content and widget-ready areas, and manages to display everything in a clear and readable manner. We have also added some handy new widgets, as well as many new advertisement areas. If you have been searching for a feature-rich Magazine-style theme for your blog, then look no further!

Demo Download

2. Marisa

Marisa is a simple, clean and beautiful WordPress magazine theme with great features, such as the built in review system that lets you review whatever you want and gives you up to 5 rating criteria. Furthermore you can add a “Buy now button” which you can use for example an affiliate link. The theme comes with 2 skins, a light & dark.

Demo Download

3. Insomnia

The Insomnia theme is great for online magazines and personal blogs. The stunning design and clean grid layout makes the perfect backdrop for any type of content. Plenty of layout and customization options will help you personalize to suit your needs.

Demo Download

4. Goodnews

Goodnews is Premium WordPress News / Magazine Theme Fully Customizable , has an extensive Theme Options with Import/export System ,WPML Ready, RTL Full Support.

Demo Download

5. Landpost

Landpost is a powerful Premium WordPress Magazine, News, Community & Blog Theme. It is an excellent choice for any kind of website that deals with a massive amount of content, such as News related websites.

Demo Download

6. Converse

Converse is a clean, modern magazine WordPress theme with loads of shortcodes and options.

Demo Download

7. Rewrite

Rewrite is a versatile WordPress theme with a super clean, responsive design. This theme looks just as great on the iPhone as it does on the desktop. Rewrite has built-in swipe support for your portfolio images and videos. That means your entire portfolio is now fully scalable AND swipe-able. That’s pretty rad!

Demo Download

8. Averin

Premium Magazine Theme that comes with great set of features.

Demo Download

9. MultiPro

MultiPro is a multiple WordPress Theme to online magazines, corporate websites and creative portfolios.

Demo Download

10. Resolution

Resolution WordPress is a professional theme suitable for both blogging and showcase purposes. With Resolution the power is in your mind: create your own home page with the home page builder, and customize almost any style and font with our Style customizer panel. You can really rock up your theme, by using custom pictures and videos all in an integrated fashion that’s as easy as it gets.

Demo Download

Which of these looks best for you? Aside from magazine wordpress themes, what other style of wordpress themes are you looking for? Please let us know in comments below.

10 Premium Magazine style WordPress Themes for Business sites is a post from: WP Kube

Today I am excited to let you know about the a great deal by the Copyblogger team. They are giving an awesome discount on 45+ Professional StudioPress themes.

45+ StudioPress Themes

StudioPress is one of the popular WordPress Themes studio and the makers of Genesis framework which is a easy to use theme. Genesis is a highly secure, fast loading and highly adaptable framework. I am using their themes for few of my niche sites and they all work really well.

• All the SEO, security, and support that come with the Genesis Framework
• 44 current child themes, and all future child theme releases.
• Multiple page layout options for each theme
• Quickly change color schemes without touching a line of code
• Logical navigation & category layout helps readers get what they want, fast
• Unlimited updates, domains you can use the theme on, and support

Remember, the key to the savings is the promo code TEN at check out.

Get all the StudioPress Themes for $270

This deal ends on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. Hurry up and claim your new WordPress theme before the price increases!

Get 45+ Professional WordPress Themes for $270 is a post from: WP Kube

With the new look, you also get to move to a modern responsive design. Now, you do not have to worry about what size screens your visitors are using and how it will on their screen. It always looks the same.

Genesis Framework Updated Features

As for what features were updated, the SEO controls, new extendable classes for creating admin menus, color style options have been added for child theme designers, and inline documentation were all updated. For a complete list of details, check out StudioPress’ article on the new updates.

In order to take advantage of these updates, you must be running the latest version of WordPress (3.3.1) to even be able to update the Genesis Framework. So make sure your system is backed up and update to the latest version of WordPress and get your new version of the Genesis Framework!

Genesis Framework v1.8 is Now Live–Update Yours Today! is a post from: WP Kube

Last week I got more than 500 registrations on WPKube and until now I’ve been using an re captcha plugin. I thought it’d be better to look in the WordPress community and search for better anti-spam plugins, so today’s post is a round up of the plugins I found – I will make a follow up post later on with a full review of the plugin I chose.

The most quickest way to user stop registration spam – is by creating the user accounts, manually.

1. Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin

The Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin works by checking the IP address, email and user id of anyone who tries to register, login, or leave a comment. This effectively blocks spammers who try to register on blogs or leave spam. It checks a users credentials against up to three databases: Stop Forum Spam, Project Honeypot, and BotScout. In order to use the Project HoneyPot or BotScout spam databases you will need to register at those sites and get a free API key. Stop Forum Spam does not require a key so this plugin will work immediately without getting a key. The API key for Stop Forum Spam is only used for reporting spam.

More Info & Download

2. Sabre

Sabre is an acronym for Simple Anti Bot Registration Engine. It’s a set of counter measures against spam registration on your blog.

Your visitors are granted permission to register freely on your blog and now you are plagued by fake users automatically created by spammers? Sabre is the solution to stop definitely these robotized visitors!

All the features are activated by parameters. Thus, Sabre is flexible enough and fits the protection policy you define for your blog.

More Info & Download

3.Wang Guard

Check your registered users against WangGuard web service to avoid Sploggers, is fully WordPress,WordPress MU ,BuddyPress and bbPress 2.0 compatible.

WangGuard Always will be free for personal use, this means that whenever you have less than 500 daily registrations or you make less than $200/month, you never have to pay anything for WangGuard.

More Info & Download

4. User Spam Remover

User Spam Remover is a plugin for WordPress that automatically removes spam user registrations and other old, never-used user accounts.

It also blocks the notification e-mail that WordPress normally sends to the administrator whenever a new user registers (annoying when that registration is spam!) and logs it instead.

More Info & Download

5. SI Captcha Anti-Spam

Adds Captcha anti-spam methods to WordPress forms for comments, registration, lost password, login, or all. In order to post comments or register, users will have to type in the code shown on the image. This prevents spam from automated bots. Adds security. Works great with Akismet. Also is fully WP, WPMU, and BuddyPress compatible. It comes with great set of features

• Allows Trackbacks and Pingbacks.
• Setting to hide the CAPTCHA from logged in users and or admins
• Setting to show the CAPTCHA on the forms for comments, registration, lost password, login, or all.

More Info & Download

Bonus: Gravity Forms Registration Plugin

Gravity Forms is a premium plugin that is mostly known for creating custom and useful contact forms. It can be easily used as a custom registration form with the help of “User Registration” Add-on. After setting up GravityForms registration form, make sure to disable the registration settings from the General Settings page.

Get the Gravity Forms Plugin

5 Free WordPress Plugins To Stop Registration Spam is a post from: WP Kube

Google takes speed into consideration as important metric to rank the websites in search engines. Most of the bloggers already know about the importance of having fast loading site/blog.

If you’re looking on how to increase the blog speed, than you might want to check out James post - 8 Things You Can Do to Speed Up Your Site and Get More Traffic in 2012. 

Today, I’m going to list 5 tools that will help you in checking the speed and performance of your blog.

1. Which Loads Faster

Which Loads Faster is a fun way to spread the word that web performance matters. It’s about friendly competition and about testing in everybody’s browser, not just ones that have nice performance tools already.

Visit Site

2. Ping Dom

Test the load time of all Website objects (html, images, Javascript, css, iframes and others). You can also check how fast every element of your Website load and improve the slow-loading items. At the summary of test results, you see the report of the site loading time, loading time of each element, element sizes and the total number of elements.

Visit Site

3. Iwebtool

Iwebtool gives you the option to compare up to ten pages in same time. You also can check homepage, categories or posts loading time with just one click.

Visit Site

4. Google Page Speed

Google Page Speed is an open-source tool to check the Page Speed online and to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.

Visit Site

5. Free Website Performance Test (BrowserMob)

This is a free tool to check the website speed and performance by BrowserMob, a company that offers website load testing and monitoring service, gives you a ton of information about your web page speed such as average load time, total page weight and number of page objects.

Visit Site

5 Sites to Test Your Blog’s Performance is a post from: WP Kube

There is no such thing as best theme and “best” can depend on your need, if you want more SEO you might not care about design so far you have traffic and if all that matters to you is design you have no concern with SEO. By the time you finish reading this post you should be able to conclude which theme is best for you.

• Genesis Theme
• Thesis Theme

Design

When it comes to choosing a theme many people prefer having a cool design, otherwise, they won’t bother buying a theme. Also in the thesis vs. genesis debate we might want to factor in the design. As far as design is concerned genesis theme is presently the best because you can still use its main theme without bothering about poor design but with thesis you won’t have a great design if either you don’t have coding knowledge or you don’t buy a framework.

Also, using the default options and customizations you will be able to get more from the genesis wordpress theme than the thesis wordpress theme.

So as far as design is concerned, Genesis beats Thesis!

Loading Speed

Another critical element when it comes to choosing a website template is the loading time/speed and this is a very important factor especially to your readers in countries with poor internet connectivity.

In the case of loading speed thesis theme is better than genesis theme. I have tested the genesis theme on my blog and I presently use thesis, it is also important not to base my conclusion on my site only but I also tested several other genesis vs. thesis sites but I noticed that the thesis theme is faster.

SEO

One thing people always talk about when they want to buy wordpress themes is the theme’s support for SEO. I actually don’t believe a theme is best or worst for SEO, SEO is based on so many factors and the factor that makes a theme important is a somehow minor factor, that is the theme code. The most important factor in SEO is links so it doesn’t matter whether you use thesis or genesis or woothemes, they won’t help you rank better, it is your knowledge and action that will help you rank better!

Since both genesis and thesis have clean code I will say both are SEO effective themes.

Pricing

Thesis Theme

• Personal License – This allows you to use Thesis Theme on one live website and one development website. $87
• Developer’s License – This allows you to use Thesis Theme on unlimited websites. If you want to use the Thesis framework for client work, you must pay an additional $40 per client site. $164

Genesis Theme

• Genesis Framework – $59.95
• Get all the StudioPress Themes (including Genesis) – $299.95

Get the Genesis Theme or Get the Thesis Theme

Which Premium Theme you are using on your site? Thesis or Genesis ? How’s your experience. Please let us know in below comments.

Thesis Theme VS Genesis Theme is a post from: WP Kube

Its been a few weeks since a round was created here at wpkube, so I thought I thought it be a great idea to share some of my favorite WordPress articles from the last few weeks. 

WPTavern: Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button

www.cms-expert.com1/12/12

“WPTavern: Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button. Januar 12, 2012 CMS Expert No comments. | From WordPress Planet |. Easily Remove Comment URLs With Akismet 2.5.4 Earlier this morning, I discovered that …”

Yoast’s WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack – WPLift

wplift.com1/9/12

“Head to Head: Yoast’s WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack | WordPress Blog, Themes, Plugins & Tutorials.”

How to crop, rotate, scale, and flip images in WordPress | WPCandy

wpcandy.com1/7/12

“You may have thought WordPress couldn’t do such things, but they have all been possible since WordPress 2.9 was released. But do you take advantage of the image manipulation within WordPress? WPBeginner has …”

How to Change Your WordPress Username: Even Shakespeare …

wpmu.org12/30/11

“4 Responses to How to Change Your WordPress Username: Even Shakespeare Would Dig It. Reply. Hey Joe, I have done it this way as well as simply creating a new username and pw, and deleting the admin. Found that for … “

Add Admin Categories to WordPress for Enhanced Workflow

wpmu.org1/12/12

“WordPress is very good at letting you flexibly organize your content. But the emphasis on organizing content is most definitely weighted toward…”

What are some of your favorite articles from the last few weeks?

Weekly Roundup #6: The Best WordPress Resources from Around the Web is a post from: WP Kube

WordPress is the default software that runs the WordPress Kube Blog and pretty much every other blog or website on the internet.

Who doesn’t use WP? Well, we all use it, it’s the best software out there for creating an blog or website.

I have listed the 10 creative bloggers that rocked the WordPress community in 2011. 

1. Alex Fraiser

Alex is an 18 year self taught WordPress designer and blogger based in the middle of nowhere, New Jersey. He has been blogging & designing since he was 14 and is former owner of Blogussion, an Blogging Tips. He’s just 18 year old and already making hundreds of thousands of dollars with his creative design skills.

He has been living a pretty “out of the ordinary” lifestyle and by that he means He’s not going to college.

I love his blog. He doesn’t write usual life / success tips – he writes & teaches the stuff  he’s personally experienced.

Site: LifeNotion Twitter: @afrais

2. Oliver Dale

Oliver Dale,  a web designer turned entrepreneur with 15 years online expererience and 8 of professional web development. He has been designing and running the sites since 2003. His first site was DesignersTalk.com, a place to communicate with other designers and share knowledge with them.

His current project is WPLift, a blog about WordPress plugins & Themes. Moreover, he has released a number of freebies and plugins for the WordPress community. Head over to Kooc about page to know more about Oliver.

Site: Kooc Media Twitter: @OliDale

 3. Ryan Imel

Ryan Imel is  a web developer, entrepreneur, blogger and Editor of WPCandy, and the one you get to be upset with if something goes wrong. He has been running a best WordPress news site on the web and keep doing awesome things from time to time.  He spend most of his days working on developing websites with the WordPress software platform in one form or another.

He has spent several years working professionally on the web in one way or another and his latest business has been co-founding GooRoohq.

Site: WP Candy Twitter: @RyanImel

4. Kevin Muldoon

Kevin Muldoon is a full time blogger and webmaster from Scotland who is currently living in South America. He have been working online since early 2000 and been able to make a living full time through the web from around 2003 and 2004. He has also worked extensively in the UK financial sector in Financial Regulation, Pensions and Investment.

His current project is WPMods, a dedicated blog to modifying WordPress; whether it be changing your theme, editing your design or using a plugin. Kevin also write about the latest WordPress news and ongoing WordPress related topics.

Site: Kevin Muldoon Twitter: @kevinMuldoon

5. Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner. He is known for his agressive marketing skills, creative designs, and expertise in SEO. Syed has been in the industry for over eight years, and he has worked with some of the top brands in the industry. He blogs at Balkhis.com and recently launched list25, an interesting blog that compiles lesser-known intriguing information on a variety of subjects.

Site: AwesomeMotive Twitter: @SyedBalkhi

6. Pippin Williamson

Pippin Williamson, a Freelance web developer that has an unhealthy love for coffee and WordPress.

WordPress is his passion, and He constantly striving to make himself better, and hopefully, help out a few people along the way.

Pippin write quality articles about WordPress Plugins and recently he got interviewed by WPME.

Site: PiPPin Pages Twitter: @pippinsplugins

7. Michael Martin

Michael Martin is a WordPress developer from Northern Ireland. He blogs at Pro Blog Design and founder of PliablePress, a WordPress Theme store where bloggers can find high quality themes quickly and cheaply.

He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smiles.

He has had a large influence on the design community with his in-depth and incredibly useful articles on his blog.

Site: Pro Blog Design Twitter: @problogdesign

8. Kriesi

Christian is a 30 year old Web Designer from Vienna. Kriesi, is the first author to sell $1,000,000 Worth of Items at ThemeForest Marketplace.  He has been designing and building Websites in HTML and WordPress since 2007.

At the end of 2009 He quit his day job and started to work on his own projects and to build sleek wordpress and html themes to sell them at themeforest.

Site: Kriesi Twitter: @Kriesi

9. Bogdan Condurache

Bogdan is one of the co-founders & designers at Themefuse. He is what we’d call a visual person, because he can’t remember last names or phone numbers but he can tell you what color & print your t-shirt had, when he saw you 3 months ago.

He also loves to create detailed designs & cool UI’s, many of which can be seen in Themefuse’s work.

Site: ThemeFuse  Twitter: @BogdanGC

10. Josh Kohlbach

Josh is a professionally trained programmer from Brisbane, Australia who helps business people harness the power of the web.  He started freelancing in his spare time about 2 years ago when He realized that a lot of people needed quality help with programmers they could trust to get the job done.

He love working with passionate small to medium businesses that want to break through the fog and sort out their web presence. He blogs at CodeMyOwnRoad and creator of ThirstyAffiliates, an Affiliate Management plugin for WordPress.

Site: CodeMyOwnRoad Twitter: @jkohlbach

Do you know of someone that has rocked the WordPress community in 2011? Let us know in the comments below.

10 WordPress Bloggers to Watch in 2012 is a post from: WP Kube