When you own a website there is so much to learn. You need solid resources for website owners by website owners to help you keep up with what's going on and to learn the tried and true best practices of marketing, content creation, design, how to convert, how to call visitors to action - the list goes on.

Then there are the things that you need to learn about measuring your success like understanding analytics, conversion rates, split-testing, ROI, Adsense, page views, unique visitors, etc. Especially if you're just getting off the ground with a new website there are so many things going through your head that it can be overwhelming. Content strategy, marketing, email newsletter campaigns - all of these things and more are vying for your time.

So how do you find these resources? What blogs should you be reading? There a so many more good blogs out there, but I've whittled down this list from my own Google Reader to recommend some of the best for your (and my) enlightenment and edification. All of these are completely awesome and you'll be glad that you subscribed.

Ever struggle with creating content? Yeah, me too. Sometimes ideas just dry up and you sit there staring at your computer hoping that something - anything - will jump out at you and be the creative spark to get your mind moving and the keyboard firing. 

I'm a fan of good info graphics and Brian Clark has created one that you need to bookmark for those times when your creative drive to create content wanes. I'm always searching for creative inspiration - whether it's creating content, great design work, new uses for old processes, business philosophy - you name it. 

In this post you'll be quickly reminded that there are so many ways to create content, and so many ways to find something that you can share with your readers. Combined with your area of expertise, this is a great tool to get your mind moving! There are a ton of awesome ideas on this info graphic. I'll be sure to use some - if not all - of them myself.

If you can't find some inspiration, or at least a good idea, here you need to check your pulse and make sure you're heart is still beating! I'm already adding stuff to my content calendar from this one.

And for the more visually inclined, you'll obviously not miss how awesome this info graphic is.

Now, go ship something.

It's a cool almost-spring morning in lovely Tallahassee, and I'm enjoying a steaming hot cup of coffee while digging in to work with my two faithful canine companions at my feet. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning! And I've got good stuff links to share - even better!

I dont' know if you noticed, but Pinterest is the "new Facebook." Apparently everyone I know is on there now and pinning to their heart's content - my inbox is overflowing with "[Insert new Pinterest user here] is following you on Pinterest" emails. I guess I need to actually log in to my account over there and check out what all the fuss is about. Makes me wonder, how will Gentlemint and Fancy do as similar networks?

Anyway - on to some cool stuff from the last couple weeks:

Extending the functionality of your Wordpress website is probably the second thing you want to do, right after you've chosen your premium theme. Wordpress is great out of the box but if you're like most users, you'll want to do some things pretty quickly that just aren't native to the Wordpress core system. But there are literally thousands of plugins available for Wordpress so which ones do you absolutely need?

Your plugins need to accomplish a couple different things for you to get started. They need to help facilitate search engine optimization, they need to facilitate social sharing, and they need to make your site more secure and create backups. There are a lot of other plugins for ecommerce, user roles and permissions, editorial calendars, etc. and you'll want to look in to adding some of those types of plugins too, but for now we're going to cover 10 essential Wordpress plugins for your blog.