Free WordPress & Joomla Templates
Jun.28.2008 
If you want to jazz up your WordPress and Joomla installations then add a new (and free!) theme to your website, we have picked out some of our favourite ones below.
Free WordPress Themes & Templates
Easily change the look and feel of your WordPress installation by incorporating a new theme.
Below is a list of FREE WordPress Templates that you can download and install.
1. Free WordPress Themes at Fresheezy
http://www.fresheezy.com/
2. WordPress Free Themes
http://www.wpfreethemes.com/
3. WordPress Templates
http://wordpresstemplates.name/
4. WordPress Themes Archive
http://www.wpthemesarchive.com/
5. Top WordPress Themes
http://topwpthemes.com/
Plugins:
You can also install plugins to extend the functionality of your WordPress installation.
The official plugin website of WordPress contains a huge resource of add-ons that are categorised so you can find what you are looking for fast.
Official Plugin Website:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
Joomla Themes & Templates
1. Free Joomla Templates
http://joomlatp.com/
2. Theme Base Joomla Templates
http://www.themesbase.com/?category=joomla
3. Royalty-free Joomla Templates
http://joomla2u.net/
4. Best of Joomla Templates
http://www.bestofjoomla.com/
Plugins & Extensions
Extend the standard functionality of Joomla by installing add-ons. The official Joomla website offers over 3000 extensions for you to use with your Joomla installation.
Official Extension website:
http://extensions.joomla.org/
Web Server Upgrades
As many of you will know, we have been working hard here at INSTA Host for the last few months on a programme to upgrade all our webservers. We took the decision to do this because some of the early webservers were now four years old. Although they had all been excellent servers and not given us any significant problems, we decided that at that age we could start seeing problems.
We also took the opportunity to upgrade many of the storage servers we use, these actually hold the web site data and the webservers connect to them. In all we moved over 40 Terabytes of data to new servers and all customer websites are now on servers that are less than six months old.
Although this process was expensive we do believe that keeping hardware up to date is an important part of being a web host and is something that you would want us to do.
Improve the Google PageRank of your Website
Google Pagerank is a system for ranking web pages, think of every link to your website as a vote, so the more websites that link to your site the higher your website will rank, especially if these websites have a high Pagerank themselves. This article will cover some effective practices you should follow to help you improve your websites Pagerank.
Increase Your Website Backlinks
There are many ways to help increase backlinks to your website. Below is a list of some effective ways to help you increase you backlinks and, in turn, improve your Pagerank. Remember, content is key, so make sure you have regular content posted on your website to increase the chances of gaining repeat visitors and avoid your site becoming stale, which may result in your ranking to drop.
Write Articles
Create unique and informative articles and submit them to free article submission websites that have a high Pagerank. It’s advised you include a link back to your website within the article to help increase your sites backlinks and also drive traffic to your website. I have listed some of the most popular article submission websites below:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.articleclick.com
www.1888articles.com
Provide an RSS Feed
Make people aware of when content is updated on your website via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Allowing people to subscribe via RSS to your website will increase repeat visitors and also increase the chances of you gaining backlinks. It’s also worth submitting your RSS feed to the most popular blog search engines such as Technorati and BlogSearch, these will help increase your websites exposure. If your website is powered by a CMS/Blog system then it is likely that it already has RSS functionality built in. If you are looking to update your RSS feed manually then the following website should help you, www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/
Social Bookmarking & Networking
Social Bookmarking is an effective way to receive a high volume of traffic very quickly and also allows you to gain backlinks. As mentioned previously, publishing unique and interesting content on your website increases the chances of generating interest; submit this content to websites such as www.digg.com and www.stumbleupon.com and if your article becomes popular expect large volumes of traffic to come to your website. This added exposure can become beneficial especially if you’re posting regularly as it’s likely people will link to you as a valued resource.
Submit Your Site to Directories
Submitting your website to popular directories will help it gain backlinks. Most of the higher quality directories must manually approve your website before it’s added, this will usually take between 3 to 5 months, which can be frustrating. If your website is not listed by then, it’s worth re-submitting. Below is a list of three popular web directories which will certainly benefit your website if you get listed.
Popular Directories:
http://www.dmoz.org
http://dir.yahoo.com
http://www.open-site.org
Helpful Links
Google Pagerank & Backlink Checker
http://www.urlpagerank.com/pr/pagerank.php
Official Google Pagerank Page
http://www.google.com/technology/
