Semiologic Pro - A WordPress theme that comes with 83 plugins designed to make your site creation life much, much easier Price - $295.00 Pros - Easy to install, easy to configure, adds search engine optimization and monetization options to WordPress and makes it much faster to create new sites. Cons - Requires that you know how to create a MySQL database and be comfortable modifying a config file (just once). There is no guarantee of support for those plugins not created by the Semiologic Pro author. Rating: (4.25/5)

Product Overview

As my first ReviewGold product review, I thought it would make sense to review the content management software (CMS) that I chose to use on the ReviewGold.com site.

I chose Semiologic Pro, which is a WordPress Theme on steroids. It has a number of built in Search Engine Optimization plugins that are great for getting your site ranked, and it makes building websites a breeze for AdSense publishers (or anyone else for that matter). It also adds some additional RSS feed monetization options.

Installing Semiologic Pro

I love Semiologic because of how easy it is to install and configure. To quote the Semiologic sales page, "Time is money. And the Semiologic Pro Package expedites the process of creating sites with WordPress."

Semiologic does indeed expedite the WordPress site creation process. However, it still has the WordPress requirement that you know how to create a MySQL database, and it also requires that you modify a configuration file with your MySQL information and rename it. Since Semiologic touts itself as a better WordPress solution, perhaps its author should consider automating that process a bit.

Click here to watch a video of me installing WordPress and Semiologic in less than 3 minutes.

Configuring Semiologic Pro

Semiologic is also very easy to configure. The package's author calls it "brain dead simple", and it really is. You don't have to have any HTML or web designing skills to configure Semiologic. It's all done using a few settings pages.

I've created 4 short videos that show you how Semiologic Pro is configured:

1. Basic Semiologic Customization - 9 minutes.

2. Using Ad Spaces to show AdSense (or other ad networks) - 3.5 minutes

3. Using Sidebar Widgets to easily customize the display of your blog. - 3.25 minutes

4. Working With The Plugins (it comes with 83 of them) - 3.75 minutes

Once you've gotten familiar with Semiologic Pro's interface and plugins, you can put up a fully configured new blog in half an hour or less. It's really that easy to use.

Powerful Features of Semiologic Pro

There are some powerful features that I've touched on in the videos but I want to expand on here.

Search Engine Optimization

Semiologic Pro comes with a number of plugins designed to optimize your blog for search engines. Here are some of the ones I like:

Smart Update Pinger

In a regular WordPress blog, every time you create or modify a post a ping is sent to the sites that accept RSS updates. This can cause major ping spam if you modify your posts a lot and get your feed banned. That's a big no-no since one big reason for using a blog is the RSS feeds getting spread around and bringing traffic to your site.

Semiologic Pro fixes this by installing a plugin that causes a ping to only be sent out when you create a new post, not when your posts are modified.

Google Sitemap Generator

This plugin will create an XML Google Sitemaps file for your site that you can submit to Google Sitemaps, ensuring that all of your pages get crawled and indexed.

Permalink Redirect

This plugin makes sure that you only have one distinct link for each post on your blog. The normal WordPress installation can cause multiple links to go to the same post, which can cause duplication problems in the search engines.

Post Tagging

With Semiologic Pro each post can be "tagged" with a category (i.e. "SEO Tools", "Site Builders", etc.) so that when the tag link is clicked all of your posts related to that subject are grouped together. This is great for giving search engines keyword dense subject areas of your site to crawl.

Subscribe Me

This plugin puts up to 11 RSS reader icons on your blog (like the ones on the right of this page) that makes it easy for people to add your RSS feed to their readers. Great for building repeat traffic.

Bookmark Me

This is another great plugin that places links at the bottom of each post you make. Those links let people quickly add your post to the top social bookmarking sites (such as del.icio.us). A great way to get in-bound links and boost your search engine rankings.

Monitization

Semiologic Pro makes it easy to integrate a FeedBurner account into your blog. FeedBurner lets you track statistics about how your RSS feeds are being used, how many visitors you're getting from them and which locations are drawing you the most traffic.

FeedBurner also lets you monetize your RSS feeds by placing ads into the feeds. No more giving away valuable posts for free–now you can earn money from them! Semiologic Pro makes it a breeze to integrate FeedBurner into your blog.

Other Nice Features

In addition to the above, Semiologic Pro also comes with plugins that let your blog home page remain static so that it behaves more like a traditional web site than a blog. It also comes with improved search functionality, social networking bookmark links placed after each post, the ability to include PHP code in your posts, and so much more.

There are 83 plugins in the Semiologic Pro 4.1 package that turn your Blog into a powerful profit-generating machine. I love it, which is why I chose it to be my content management system for ReviewGold.com.

What I Don't Like About Semiologic Pro

You might be wondering: if I love Semiologic Pro so much, why did I only give it 4.25 stars instead of 5?

The reason is that not all of the plugins that come with Semiologic Pro were created by its author, Denis de Bernardy. Some were created by others and just integrated into the Semiologic package.

That means that for those plugins you are not guaranteed support. For all of Denis' plugins there is documentation, FAQ pages, and a support forum (not to mention contact with Denis himself). But for plugins he did not create, you only have a link to the plugin author's home page–and you didn't pay those other authors anything, so they're not required to support the plugin if they don't want to.

Usually that's not an issue, because the author usually does support his plugins and it's pretty easy to find documentation by searching for the plugin name + "Wordpress plugin" on your favorite search engine. But if you really need support, those authors aren't required to give it to you.

However, the plugins are very easy to configure and, like I said, are generally well supported, so it's not something I would hold off on purchasing because of.

Try It Out Right Now!

Click here to go to the demo Semiologic Blog login page. Login as "admin" with the password as "password". You will then be able to see everything in the Semiologic setup.

Please keep in mind that other users may be modifying things as you are, so your changes may not take place exactly as you were expecting. Also keep in mind that I am not responsible for the content of the demo blog!

Highly Recommended

I strongly recommend Semiologic Pro for almost any web site, especially for AdSense publishers. It makes it fast and easy for even a novice to create a great site optimized for the search engines and ready to make money on the web.

Get Semiologic Pro Here