• Morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use
• TheFreeSite.com links to multiple sites for photos and graphics
• Stock.xchng.com “the leading FREE stock photo site!”
• FreeLargePhotos.com good for travel images
• Free Photos for your Blog includes a long list of sources, including nature photography and background textures
• FreePixels.com 3800 images in 40 categories, including travel, people, nature, architecture, backgrounds and textures
• FreePhotosBank also provides free speaking characters for your website
• Free Stock Photo Resources another long list of links
• PhotoshopSupport.com lists multiple sources
• The Clipart Site includes photos
• Wikipedia’s public domain image resources

Also, please note that I have not personally vetted all these sources, so, while I believe they are all legitimate, I cannot make any guarantees. Let us know if you have other sources.

• Determine the keywords and phrases most applicable to your content.
• Be sure people are actually searching on them. SearchEngineWatch.com is one of many sites that can help you find popular keyword searches.
• Consider variants of phrases (the “longtail” approach). For example, if you’re writing about WordPress themes, you might want to use WordPress themes, WordPress templates, premium WordPress themes, free WordPress themes, and similar variants.
• Use keywords and phrases liberally but appropriately throughout the copy.
• Use keywords and phrases in subheads and internal links.
• Check your keyword density (3-5% is recommended in text). KeywordDensity.com is one of many sites that will perform this analysis.
• General phrases are more important on home page; specifics more-so on internal pages.
• Interactive content can hep produce inbound links.

And of course, be sure to provide interesting, useful, focused, relevant, and well-written content.

You can always search for “free WordPress themes” (Google returned about 51,300,000 matches) or “premium WordPress themes” (only 19, 100,000 matches). It doesn’t sound very efficient, but it does provide a way to find the latest offerings, which isn’t a bad idea, because themes are getting better and better.

You can review old favorites, like:

• Studiopress
• Elegant Themes
• DIY/Thesis
• Arras

Or you can try sites that provide lists of themes, like these:

• Themeforest
• Smashing Magazine

Remind your client not to purchase a theme until you’ve had a chance to check it out: Will it really do what you need it to do? Is it reasonably easy to customize? Does it seem buggy? How’s the support?

Let us know if you have other favorites.

• A beautiful home page
• Multiple skins/colors (including holiday customization)
• Custom widgets
• jQuery capability (e.g. for slideshows)
• An interactive contact page (nice idea, with example)
• Ad integration
• SEO

The article was written for theme developers, but the content is also useful for helping clients—especially those who are new to WordPress—through the process of choosing a theme.

Bradley and I also came up with these nice-to-have features (what designers want in a WordPress theme):

• Horizontal navigation with built-in pull-down menus
• Automatic thumbnail creation
• A tabbed sidebar

What else? Please add your favorite features (or your clients’ favorites).

1. Akismet: Does a great job of blocking comment and track-back spam.
2. All in One SEO Pack: Makes it easy to include SEO-friendly features in each post.
3. Tiny MCE Advanced: Provides editing flexibility with drag-and-drop icons. Also, stops removing <p> and <br> tags, and shows them in the html editor.
4. Maintenance Mode: Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front end.
5. WP Google Analytics: Lets you use Google Analytics to track your WordPress site statistics

I tried it on my one of my websites (for which I hadn’t done much SEO work) and got a pretty high score, plus a list of specific ideas for increasing my ranking.

“A website grade of 93/100 for www.travelwritersnews.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 93% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.”

Everything is in a single, secure place (organized in folders you set up), no matter whether you’re on a PC or a Mac, and Dropbox acts like a backup; if your computer fries, your files remain safe.

It’s simple to use: install Dropbox, it appears on your desktop, and you just drag and drop your files into it. You’re moving files into Dropbox (not copying them), so there’s no worry about versioning. When you update a file, Dropbox quickly and automatically syncs so the updated info is available from all the computers you’ve connected.

You can provide other people with access to some or all of your folders, too. I’m working on a remote team, and Dropbox is perfect for sharing files with people in other cities and states. Sign up for the free Growl service when you install Dropbox, and you’ll be automatically notified whenever someone updates a file.

In summary:

• Free online file storage (up to 2 gig; after that, there’s a modest charge)
• Set it up for all your computers and on your smart phone
• Access from any computer (great for traveling)
• Works across platforms
• Syncs automatically
• Provides automatic backup
• Easy to install, use, and organize
• Allows retrieval of deleted files
• Perfect for working remotely or with virtual teams
• I love it!