For one week:
Site 1 was at 11,765,971 and today it is at 2,876,029.
Site 2 was at 1,795,926 and today is at 1,317,451.

These tips are fairly simple and only took around 2 hours of my time. So its not alot of
work if you want to get a higher Alexa Ranking.

This seems to be a big thing sweeping the web world. So i though i would investigate on how to boost your rankings. So far a few things that have worked for me so far, I’m still testing it on a few sites to see how well these methods work.

1: Install the alexa tool bar and set your site as your homepage. have your friends do the same. (firefox and IE) http://alexa.com/site/download

2: Install the stumbleupon tool bar and review/rate your site or have friends rate it. (firefox and IE) http://www.stumbleupon.com/download.php

3: Add the Alexa button to your site. http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup

4: Use the Alexa outgoing link for your site. http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.yoursite.com

5: Use a autosurfer like autohits.dk (Do not use with google adsense or similar)

6: Blog about Alexa.

7: Create a Myspace account for your site. I havn’t tried this one yet.

For more like this check out my site. Blogging4cash.com 

I though I would share some of the plugins I use most often and I have good results with. Most the time it depends on which site I’m using so not all of them may be installed on this site.

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
Download

All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO.
Download

Adman
Plugin for inserting ads in to your post.
Download

AdServe 
AdServe is the advertising server for WordPress.
Download

Adsense-Deluxe
Another ad inserting plugin.
Download

Archives By Category
Creates a list of posts by category.
Download

Comment Relish
Increases your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘thank you’ relishing type message to users when they first comment.
Download

Dofollow
Disables the rel=nofollow attribute in comments.
Download

Fgallery
Image gallery plugin I use on a few of my design/photography sites.
Download

FeedBurner FeedSmith
This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed.
Download

Flexible upload
Resize picture at upload and make thumbnails. Pertty handy.
Download

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WP blog.
Download

GotBanner
Great plugin for adding those 125×125 ads. See my sidebar.
Download<

Hidden Affiliates Links
Hides affiliate links by wrapping them into a page that will redirect to the actual link.
Download

Leprakhauns Word Count
Adds a word count to your backend without having to submit the data.
Download

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad
A new non-obtrusive way of displaying a single line of advertising message,
a special note or other information right at the top of your blog.
Download

DownloadNiceAdmin
Give your WP admin area a nice clean look.
Download

Popularity Contest
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity.
Download

RSS Footer
Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.
Download

ShareThis
Great Social Bookmarking plugin.
Download

Simple Tagging
A tagging plugin.
Download

Social Bookmark Creator
Create Social Bookmarks to your blog.
Download

Related Post
Returns a list of the related entries.
Download

Text Link Ads Plugin
Really Simple Web/RSS Advertising For Personal or Commercial Use.
Download

Top Post Category
Create a page for your top post. (not working for 2.3).
Download

Ultimate Category Excluder
Easily exclude categories from your front page, feeds, and archives.
Download

WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
Download

WordPress.com Stats
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.
Download

WP-PageNavi
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.
Download

I will update this as I find new plugins that I find useful.
Updated. Jan. 27 2008

“Could not execute AJAX call, server didn’t return valid a XML”

Here is a fix for the spellcheck error in wordpress. I have included the file so you don’t need to worry with changing code or anything just download the zip file, extract it and replace the folder with the one already in the directory:
wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/”spellchecker”

This should take care of the problem on most servers. It has worked for mine. I can’t take credit for the fix. But I did alot of searching till I found a few solutions that worked so I though I would share this with anyone having problems with it.

spellchecker.zip

So I found a neat trick to help with the replacing issue.

Take your Layers you might be switching out.
In this case a Texture and make it a Smart Object.
To do this you can right click the layer and select Convert to Smart Object. 

This is what my image looks like.

Here are my layers. I’m going to replace Layer 2.

Simply Right Click on the layer and select Replace Contents.

Your Browse Window will open and you can select an Image
to replace the current one. 

And now we have a new texture in place of the other one.

Take the Rounded Rectangle Tool.

Create your shape.

You can also set the roundness of the corner by changing the radius at the top.

Now Select your Delete Anchor Point Tool.

Delete the Point on the left/top side and the right/bottom side.

Now to straighten up the points/anchor arms. Select your Direct Selection Tool.

And Line up your control arm point and anchor point.

It will look like this.

Now Use your Direct Selection Tool (while holding Shift Key) and
Line Up the Top Anchor and Bottom Anchor so your side path is straight like the image below.

Now do the other side and your done.

I did some shots the other day with fireworks and had a 2nd light source, which was a outdoor
light for a factory. I noticed it interfered in a few shots and was thinking the quickest and best way to
remove this Red Spot. After experimenting I found the Red Eye Tool worked some Magic for this little problem.
Maybe this will work for you down the line or not.

There is a slight Diffrents in the way CS2 and CS3 work I’m going to show this in CS2. CS3 you can just click and it should work.

So just grab your Red Eye Removal Tool.

Select the area around the Red Spot with your Eye Tool (Click and Drag). This should work.
It may take one or 2 takes to make it all go away.

Now thats alot better.

Final Photo.

The tools that will be used in this tutorial are: Stamp Tool, Healing Brush, and Dodge Tool.

Select your photo. For this tutorial I used a regular eye stock photo.

To Lighten up the skin/eye Go to Image>Adjustments>Replace color.

Do this a few times, selecting different areas each time to pale the skin down to give it a albino look.
* After each selection choose OK and then repeat with another selection

Next using the Stamp Tool, select a plain part of the eye and using Alt+Click and painting over the area with. Make a few selections till the iris is covered. Don’t worry to much with how neat it looks.

Then select the Healing Brush to blend in the area from the Stamp Tool. Again using Alt+click.

After that choose your Dodge Tool, with an exposure of around 25%, and for Range select Shadow. And go over the whole eyeball area a few times.

The final result:

*Note – for diffrent light exposures of some photos you may have to play around a bit more.
* Replace Color may not work well with over exposed photos.

© Tutorial written by Jason Poston – Spllogics All rights reserved.

I do suggest using a fairly large size image of skin or creating your own on a bigger scale.
It is also better to do one letter at a time so you do not get seams in the texture.

At the end of the tutorial I will show you how to define the texture as a pattern to use in this tutorial.

First thing you want to do is select your “Type Tool” and create your letter.

Now select the “Add a Layer Style” at the bottom of your layer palette, and select “Pattern Overlay”.

Then select the pattern you would like to use on your text.
In this example I chose a Cheetah skin I had already defined.

Next adjust your scale to the size that suits you. You may sometimes see that the pattern creates a seam. Simple readjust your scale a bit to remove it.

After that you can add other options to the text if you prefer.
Here I added a quick “Inner Shadow”.

Final Result.

How to Define an Image for a Pattern :

Open up or create a new pattern.

Go to Select>All

Then go to Edit>Define Pattern. Give the pattern a name and click OK.

© Tutorial written by Jason Poston – Spllogics All rights reserved.

The first thing that we have to do for this tutorial is create a Paint bucket pattern fill for later on.

Make a new canvas 2 pixels x 5 pixels.

Results:

Go to Select>All, then Edit>Define Pattern.. Give your pattern a name and click OK.

Main Tutorial:

Next create a new canvas. (Size depends on you, different sizes will have different settings though the tutorial).

I created a quick background layer using a light grey then Filter>Texture>Texturizer with canvas option, and my Text layer.

Then right clicking on the text layer select Rasterize type. This option will allow us to edit and use filters on the text.

With the Text layer still selected go to Filter>Texture>Texturizer

Give it a Sandstone texture with slight scaling and relief.

Next Duplicate your Text layer and CTL+Click on the text layer copy to make a selection (you should see marching-ants around your text now) and go to Select>Modify>Contract.

The Size of the Contract will depend on your Font/Document size. Add just a slight Contract.

It should look similar to this.

Now go to Select>Inverse to inverse your selection and click Delete.

After that select your layer options (small f on the bottom of your layer palette) and choose Bevel and Emboss.

Make your Depth and Size a low percent and a higher Soften effect.

Result:

Now back to your original text layer, CTL+Click on it so that its selected, then create a new layer.

On the new layer go to Edit>Stroke

Give your selection a Slight outside stroke
The stroke size will also depend on your Font/Document Size.

After you have your stroke, go to Windows>Channels.

This is where the Pattern fill in the beginning of the tutorial comes in.

Create a new channel layer (alpha 1). and choose your Fill Paint Bucket, with a Pattern fill option, Select your Pattern selection that we created earlier. Fill the new Channel layer with this pattern.

Then CTL+Click on the Alpha Channel to select it, and Switch back to your Layers Palette and click on the layer we added the stroke to, and Press Delete

Your results should look similar like this.

*Notes:

For thinner or thicker lines create a different size Fill Pattern.

For Vertical Lines Rotate your Fill Pattern then Define Pattern. And Create a 2nd layer Stroke with a new Alpha Channel.

For Logos/Borders Make sure each part of the logo is a different layer

© Tutorial written by Jason Poston – Spllogics All rights reserved.