Posts Tagged ‘How To’

Can I Learn WordPress in One Week?

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

You own a small Italian gourmet store and are passionate about Italian cooking. You have been advised to start a blog for a long time and now that you have decided to do so, you are a little concerned about the technical details of the whole process. You just want to share your cooking passion with others through the blog and hope to hear about new recipes as well. Not being technically inclined, you wonder if you would be at the mercy of some technical person every time you are in the mood to write up something on your blog. Well, with WordPress, you have the power to build a blog and manage it just the way you want.

Learning the Basics of WordPress

You can certainly learn the basics of WordPress in one week, maybe even less. To begin with, there are two ways in which you can use WordPress. You can install WordPress on your website through your web hosting service provider and customize it to suit your needs. This will give you more flexibility and control over the website, but you’ll need some basic technical skills in setting it up. The other simpler option is to use WordPress.com which provides you free blogging services. You can begin your blog in a matter of minutes. Being a free service, it does have its limitations but is quite enough if you are just starting out. It offers enough customization to give a professional look to your blog.

Note that there are two WordPress sites: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The .com site provides the free blogging service and the .org site provides the technical support, free themes and plugins for more advanced users.

To start your own blog, visit the WordPress.com website and click on the ‘Sign Up’ button. You will immediately be taken through several screens where you will have to fill in simple details like your email address, user name you desire and your password. You will of course be asked if you would like to start a blog and if so, you will be asked for the desired blog name. You may want the name ‘ItalianGourmet’ for your blog and being on WordPress, the complete address will be ‘italiangourmet.wordpress.com’. Your site will be a subdomain because it’s part of the WordPress.com site.

As you log into your new blog you will be taken to the user dashboard. From here you will be able to customize the blog by changing the design, adding useful features – called widgets – like an RSS feed, search tool, area for user comments and so on. You can decide what content goes where on your blog. If you have any problems, you just need to click on the ‘Support’ tab and you will be given access to online help and will also be directed to many user forums where similar issues are being discussed.

Once you have finished customizing the look of your blog and have added enough functionality to it, you are now ready to write your first blog. All you need to do is type your thoughts, give it a suitable title and click on ‘Publish’ for your first blog post to go live. You have learned the basics of how to use WordPress! It’s that easy to get started.

Though WordPress is better known as a blogging tool, it can also be used as a complete website management tool as well. Most hosting companies now include WordPress in their hosting packages. Although this does allow for greater freedom in designing and developing your website on the whole, it does require some technical expertise. A good option is to start off with a blog on WordPress.com and get comfortable using it before moving on to a hosted option.

Kurt R. Hansen

Find out more at: TheWebHostReport

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Blogging on WordPress – A Delightful Experience

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Blogging is an effective weapon using which you can communicate, interact, build credibility and community of readers thereby driving in remarkable web traffic to your website and opening multiple revenue streams.
Blogging, in addition, empowers you to hone your writing skills & pen down your thoughts convincingly on the World Wide Web and enables you to create a strong online presence.
Where to set up the blog?

Thanks to a blogging platform like WordPress! Now anyone can start writing a blog even without adequate knowledge of web designing or web hosting. Take a quick tour of the steps mentioned below that would help you get started with blogging instantly:

1) Create a free account on WordPress.com and give a name to your blog as per your choice. However, there are some important points to keep in mind while choosing a name for your blog:
- The name of the blog must be easy to remember.
- The name of the blog must work for you.
- The name of the blog must not be lengthy or complicated.

2) Once you’re done with filling in all the details & creating your account, you can log in and then you’d be directed to the dashboard.

3) Selecting a theme for your blog matching your blog message can be a mind-boggling task. However, WordPress gives you ample of options to choose from. Click on the “Appearance” section on the left hand bar, which would direct you to the themes page. You get to see the theme thumbnails and then choose a theme that you like the most. Activate the picked theme. Click on ‘View this Site’ and see how it appears.

4) Write a test post that would fetch you some firsthand experience about blogging on WordPress. You can
delete this post later on.

5) Add a Category under which you want your post to be published.

6) To add a new post to your blog, click on “Add New” button that is placed on the left-hand side menu bar.

7) Once you have finished the writing part, you’d like to enhance your write-up with some visually appealing images to add value to your post.

8) You can add images and hyperlinks (if any) in your write up.

9) Before publishing, do not forget to add the tags you want for your blog post. Tags can be the keywords that you have used in your post.

10) Place your post under the relevant category.

11) Once you have added the tags & category, click on the “Publish” button.

12) Now visit your website to see how your post appears on the Internet.

13) Also if you wish to customize your blog some more, you can:
- Remove the default post by clicking on the Edit button under “Posts” on the dashboard. Put your mouse on the post that you wish to delete and click on the “delete” button there.
- You can also edit the post similarly by clicking on the “edit” button there.
- You can edit the default “About Me” page that comes with WordPress blog. You can write down some about yourself, your career interest and other personal information such as likes, dislikes, hobbies etc.
- You can also adjust your widgets, which can be easily accessed via Appearance button. Remember to put the widget appropriately on your blog post.
- We hope that by now you must have gained a fair idea about blogging on WordPress. Get started with sharing your thoughts with the world in the company of your online friend-WordPress.

Mark is an online marketing consultant and has worked with renowned organizations and published authors for more than 5 years now. With stupendous professional business writing related to the topic Web Hosting, Domain name etc.. and a penchant for traveling around the world, Mark has got a lot to say.

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WordPress is No Longer Just For Blogging

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Seems like a rash statement I know. But by the time you finish this article you will know six ways to use Wordpress besides as a blog. Exactly why WordPress is more powerful than the majority of static websites. And why you should be using it too.

WordPress is well known as one of the best, if not the best, blog platforms around. What you may not know is that with minimal effort WordPress can be used in not just one or two other types of sites but at least six and probably ways besides Being used as a blogging platform. Don’t believe me here are six different ways you can use WordPress.

1. As a squeeze page to collect leads for your email list

2. As a review site allowing you to make affiliate sales

3. As a sales letter for your product that is search engine friendly

4. As a static looking site for any regular content site

5. As a membership site to help you generate residual income

6. As an affiliate site to promote your favorite affiliate programs

Those are the ways that you can use WordPress That brings up the question as to why you would want to use it for any of those things. There are 3 primary reasons.

1. The structure of a WordPress blog with just a couple of plugins is very appealing to the search engines.

2. Search engines tend to spider them faster because of the structure that is inherent in the software.

3. Add in the automated RSS feed and you have a perfectly set up spider friendly site quickly and easily.

Think how many more visitors you can get by having the search engines liking your site structure. Think your page just may rank a bit higher in Google, Yahoo and Bing? Will that generate more visitors to your site for whatever purpose you are using it? I sure think so what about you?

The other great thing about WordPress is the ease of installation and the vast number of plugins. You can add lots of functionality quickly and easily. There are literally thousands of plugins available to you.. The really nice part is most of them are free.

There are also a huge number of themes available to customize your blog to get the look you want to achieve. All of these things together mean that once you get comfortable with WordPress you just may put your webmaster out of a job. It is easy when you know how.

To discover exactly how to bend WordPress to your will spy on this programming nerd and watch exactly how he does it at http://WPNerds.com

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How to Reset WordPress Administrator’s Password

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

You installed WordPress and you forgot the administrator’s password. You’ll need it back for a lot of reasons.

  • you need to perform certain administrative operations, from time to time. You must be logged as an administrator do do that.
  • if you are the sole author, usually you’ll publish as an administrator
  • if you posted as an administrator and you got a reply, you have to get inside the adminstrative panel in order to approve it or to delete it.

The password is stored in the WordPress MySQL database, in the encrypted form. In order to reset it, you have several choices.

1. You can use the link “I forgot the password” to receive a reset link by eMail. The problem is that, sometimes, you don’t receive that eMail.

Possible reasons for not getting the eMail:

  • you set a wrong eMail address when you created the blog
  • the eMail is filtered by the ISP’s SPAM filter and you don’t have access to it
  • the hosting server is simply not sending the eMail.

2. You can access the database, using PHP MyAdmin. This method is very hard to do because:

  • you might not have PHP MyAdmin available and your hosting company will not allow you to install it
  • you need to know MySQL well enough to be able to write an encrypted password in the database
  • the name of the table that contains the password can change from version to version. WordPress made quite some changes to the table names over the years.

3. You can use only FTP and simple search to reset WordPress administrator’s password

Try to think as the program. What the program does is simple:

  • it compares the password you enter with the password from the WordPress database
  • if they are identical, it will let you access the administrative panel
  • otherwise, it will ask you to enter another password.

The above behaviour can be changed. There is only one character, from one file, that needs to be changed. After changing it, the system will allow you to login using any WRONG password. Once inside, you can reset the password, by using the WordPress’ interface. Guess what? WordPress will not ask you for the current password.

Method 3 has some exceptional advantages:

  • it works with ANY version of WordPress, because it’s not influenced by the changes of the tables from the WordPress’ database.
  • it’s by far the most safer, because you’re not playing with the database, but with some plain text files.
  • it does not need PHP MyAdmin to work. You only need FTP access to transfer back and forth one file from the server to your computer.

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How to Secure WordPress

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

If you are an internet marketer, you probably have quite a bit on your plate already.   You have spent a great deal of time putting together a good website or blog and are really concentrating on how to deliver your product or information.   Unfortunately, there are a certain breed of people out there in cyberspace whose self appointed mission is to break into your vault and create havoc.

If you are using WordPress as a platform to blog from, here are a few tips on how to secure WordPress

Keep WordPress Updated and Backed Up

Older versions of WordPress still have many vulnerabilities that are widely known in the hacker community.  To their credit, the WordPress people are always doing their best to plug security holes and are updating constantly.   So your first line of defense is to keep your blogging platform updated.

Medical Tip:  To avoid increasing your blood pressure, always be sure to make a backup of your blog before installing any updates.   Its a good idea to regularly to keep your WordPress backed up regularly anyhow, since any number of things can go wrong.

Another tip is to delete the meta tags that tells the world of the version of Wp you are using.  This info is usually in the header file.

Keep Your Plugins Hidden

One of the great things about using WordPress is the plugins. While they greatly increase your blogs capabilities, they too contain certain bugs and vulnerabilities that are exploited by hackers.   So be sure to keep them updated also.

It is easy for anyone to see what type of plugins you are using by visiting the wp-content/plugins folder.   To keep potential intruders from finding out the plugins that you use, create an empty  ‘index.html’  file and place it in your plugins folder

Its also a good idea to check your plugin folder and make sure the plugins there are the ones you want.  Some hacker, once they get into your files upload their own plugin.   So if you see something that you are not familiar with, delete it.

Here is a  Free WP plugin that keeps track of the attempts to login to your site.   Many hackers use brute force to try and get your password.   So, if there are too many of them coming from the same IP address within a short period of time, the plugin will disable the login function for that IP range.   Login Lockdown:  bad-neighborhood.com.  Click on login lockdown and you will be taken to the download page.   Be sure to check out their other plugins to.

Change Your Passwords

This is an easy hack that is often exploited.  You can have a more  secure blog by making up a crazy, difficult password.   Even change it monthly if need be.

But not only your WordPress login.  Don’t forget your hosting account and your ftp passwords as well.

Headache tip: Be sure to write your passwords down immediately and keep all your them all in a safe place.

Secure the /wp-admin/ directory

Your  most sensitive Wordpress information is stored in the /wp-admin/ folder.  By default, WordPress leaves that folder open, so people can access these files to make changes  if they know what they are doing.

To secure this folder:

Place an .htaccess file inside the /wp-admin/ folder to block the access to all IP addresses, except yours.

Here is the code you need to put in the .htaccess file:

AuthUserFile /dev/null

AuthGroupFile /dev/null

AuthName “Example Access Control”

AuthType Basic

order deny,allow

deny from all

allow from xx.xx.xx.xx

allow from xx.xx.xxx.xx

Now, ff you ever find your site being redirected to another website you will need to:

Check For Hidden Code

This requires a bit more knowledge of the inner workings of WP on your part, so don’t mess with it unless you know what you are doing.

Browse your theme files

Log into your WordPress control panel, go to the theme editor, and look inside your theme files.   See if there are any lines of code that are not supposed to be there, or that contain a PHP code that you don’t recognize.

Check your database tables

Some hackers upload fake images to your “Uploads” folder and activate them with a plugin call.   To detect this you need to open PHPMyAdmin, browse the “wp-options” table, and edit the “active_plugins” record.

On that record you will see a list of all the plugins that active on your blog.   Delete any that seem unusual or that you aren’t using

Browse your site files through FTP

Log into your FTP account and browse through the folders on your site.   You are looking for any files that have a strange name or that look suspicious.    If you have another WordPress blog installed on another site, compare the structure of the files to make sure they match up.

Tip to avoid a heart attack:  Remember: Backup, backup, backup, before you star messing with anything!

Be Fearless

Billy Ojai

Do you want to make more money in Internet Marketing? One way is to learn good copywriting techniques. Pick up your Free copy of ‘Copywriting for the Web’ at http://billyojai.com

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Add Google Analytics to WordPress

Monday, June 1st, 2009

So much has changed in the way business is done and viewed of since the internet and numerous internet-based technologies were introduced. And a fact is that a lot of entrepreneurs and marketers are doing very well with the help of the internet, whether the business maybe online or an ordinary company having a website for customer attraction.

Marketing certainly plays a very vital role in operating a business and this is one business aspect that entrepreneurs cannot afford to ignore. Marketing a company’s products or services does not end with creating advertisements or creating a website. But this doesn’t mean you also stop with just the creation of the website and having it up live.

Operating a website provides a very good opportunity and gateway for entrepreneurs to monitor how their products or services appeal to the general public, most specifically people who visit their websites. It enables entrepreneurs to check and analyze everything that goes on in the website and use this information to come up with ideas to improve or generate solutions for weak points that they could point out. This is all made possible by website statistic options available online.

For this very specific purpose, Google Analytics would be the best choice for any website operator or owner. It is one of the most efficient and effective website statistics services available on the net. The best part is that it doesn’t cost a thing. It’s completely free. It allows you to monitor and track the activities on your website and analyze this information in order to find ways on how to increase traffic and gain more customers. You can check the number of visits by the day of the week, the time period, the page view, bounce rates, the sources of traffic, the location of visitors and a whole lot of valuable information.

First things first, you have to sign up with Google Analytics. Make sure to use a Google account. If you do not have one, sign up for one and use this information for Google Analytics. Then go to the Analytics page of Google and click on Access Analytics. If you already have an account, you will be redirected to your Overview page. If you do not have a website registered yet, you should create one. Make sure to provide all necessary details required for the registration especially the URL. This information will be necessary for the monitoring and tracking of the WordPress site you will be registering. After filling up the necessary information, click on yes after reading and agreeing to the Google Analytics Terms and Services.

This will then take you to your tracking code information, which you will need to copy and paste for reference purposes. There are two kinds of tracking codes provided:  urchin.js script which is used for older versions of WordPress and the new ga.js script which is used for the updated WordPress. Also take note of all the instructions available in the same page.

For an existing Google Analytics user, from the Overview page you can access your profile and copy your tracking code by going to the Action column of the profile and clicking Edit. At the top right of the ‘Main Website Profile Information’ box, click Check Status. You can view and copy your tracking code from here and view the Instructions for adding tracking to your WordPress.

Now you’ll have to download a zip file for the Google Analytics plugin. The plugin is set up to automatically ignore authors that are logged in, and track special events that may occur on your pages, including newsletter subscriptions and also allows you to easily add Google’s web tracking script to your site.

This could be downloaded through WordPress.org where all you’ll need is the Analytics Account Id which is embedded in the tracking code. You could also get this through a company called Semiologic.com which effectively manages WordPress. You can download it from there and once you check your plug-ins section, you can see that you have a Google Analytics option where you can paste the tracking code.

You’ve completed installing and encoding Google Analytics into your WordPress. Wait for 24 hours till you start seeing reports and other valuable information.

For a video instruction on Add Google Analytics to Wordpress visit: http://www.TheCustomerCompass.com/add-google-analytics-to-wordpress/

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Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers & Designers

Monday, April 27th, 2009

webdeveloperWeb Developer – Add a Web Developer toolbar of various web development tools with web developer extension. This extension add a toolbar with various web development tools like css, cookies, images, forms.

ietabIE Tab – Designers and developers can view their CSS projects on Internet Explorer using this extension.

firebugFireBug – A console for debugging JavaScript, HTML, and Ajax code snippets.

addoniconGreasemonkey – With this Firefox extension you can control any aspect of web page behavior by adding Javascript code to any webpage.

addoniconW3C Offline Page validator – The web developers nightmare – Validating. Offline Page Validator is a simple tool that will send your page to the W3C validator by simply clicking an option on the right click menu, works both online and offline.

palettegrabberPalette Grabber – Creates a color palette for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, Flash, Fireworks, or OS X based on the current page.

fireftpFireFTP – FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

colorzillaColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes.

livehttpheadersLiveHTTPHeaders – View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing in real time.

addoniconJavaScript Debugger – A powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Mozilla based browsers.

addoniconMinimizeToTray – Minimizes Mozilla windows into the system tray. Also includes a right clickable tray icon menu to further load only the windows you want visible.

fasterfoxFasterFox – Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

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Moving Your Wordpress Blog to a New Directory

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
  1. Back up all the files from you old blog directory.
  2. Copy them to your new location.
  3. Go to the Settings General and change the location of the blog (‘WordPress address (URI):’ and ‘Blog address (URI):’).
  4. If you move wordpress from root directory to sub-directory(http://YOURBLOG.com/blog/), copy the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory into the root directory of your site (Blog address).
  5. Open your root directory’s index.php file in a text editor.
  6. If you moving to root directory change the line to: require(’./wp-blog-header.php’); If your moving to another directory change the line to: require(’./YOURDIRECTORY/wp-blog-header.php’); Your must using your directory name.
  7. If you’re using PermaLinks, make sure your .htaccess file is updated with any necessary changes (eg RewriteBase /blog/ and to RewriteBase / if your use root directory).
  8. Logout of the blog, and login at the new location.
  9. Delete the old directory.

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How to enable Google Gears in WordPress 2.7

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Prior to 2.7 a “Turbo” button at the right top corner of the admin dashboard. Just click that and if you had Gears installed you were good to go. In WordPress 2.7 the “Turbo” button has been removed. To enable gears login to your Admin section and go to the Tools. Once there you have the ability to use Google Gears to make WordPress work in a “Turbo” mode.

How to enable Google Gears in WordPress 2.7

How to enable Google Gears in WordPress 2.7

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