It can be very overwhelming when you start looking for information about blogging, especially when you are just getting started. Worse yet, it usually leads to information overload.

In other words, you lay in bed at night and can’t stop thinking about blog post titles, comments to leave, or widgets you should add the second you wake up the following morning.

For this reason, I’m not surprised that the most common question I get is how to (easily) build a successful blog. Unfortunately, there isn’t a blogging easy button that does it automatically.

The good news is that you’re probably already on the right track to building a successful blog. It seems that everyone knows the basics, they just don’t know how to put everything together to create a game plan that can be executed over time. It’s no secret that launching a blog takes a lot of time, sweat, and patience.

(Photo Credit: Boltron)

When’s the last time you took a good, hard look at your blog? Was it a month ago? 6 months ago? Either way, it’s important to evaluate your blog on a regular basis.

Why?

If you don’t analyze your blog on a regular basis, it can easily become cluttered. It’s a common occurrence to constantly add new plugins, widgets, and other features as you discover them.

The problem is that you usually don’t remove other features when you add new ones. This leads to things piling up, which can cause blog clutter. This is bad, very bad. You’re readers want to read your content, not sort through your garage looking for things that might sell for 10 bucks on eBay.

From time to time, we’ll log in to someones blog to help them out with various things. One of the things we often notice first is that they are running a lot of plugins that are out of date.

How Do We Know This?

By looking at the little orange notification that shows up next to the plugins section in the navigation menu (see picture).

Whenever you see the orange notification, WordPress is letting you know (in a nice way) that one or more of your plugins needs to be updated. The main reason it does this is because older plugins can cause issues, whether it’s a security issue or an actual problem with the functionality of your blog.

Popular Plugins Update Often

Another thing you’ll find is that a lot of popular plugins will be updated often. This is a sign that the plugin is well maintained and constantly being updated, fixed, and improved. If you happen to find a plugin that hasn’t been touched in a long time, it may be better to look elsewhere.

However, there are a few plugins out there that don’t require much attention in terms of upgrades. These are usually simple plugins that do things such as insert your Google Analytics code into your theme.

Lets face it, problems happen. Especially when it comes to running a blog or website. From time to time, people will follow a bad link your website that leads to a page that doesn’t exist. This will result in a 404 error. Which isn’t the best thing in the world.

However, you can add a 404 theme to WordPress that will not only make your website or blog look more professional, but it will also help your readers. Depending on the theme you are using, you might already have a 404 page template that can easily be customized. If you don’t have one, you can easily create one using the instructions below.

Add A 404 Page Template

To add a 404 page template, all you need to do is create a file called 404.php and upload it to your themes directory. Make sure…