Wordpress Addicts

Wordpress is not only a state-of-the art blogging platform, it can be used for many, many other things besides blogging. You can use it for creating a membership site, a games arcade, or even turn it into a static looking website. There are many benefits of using Wordpress as a static website. For starters, you don’t have to fuss around with tricky html or css, and it can be updated easily with a click of a button. Here are 3 methods that I use to turn my blogs into static minisites.

1. Use a static frontpage. In your Wordpress dashboard you have the options to turn any of your pages into your front page, so it will be the first page that everyone will see when they visit your site. This will give it the look and feel of a static site. To do this login to your dashboard and choose “settings”, then click on “reading”.

Then choose “a static page” and choose the page you would like to display on the front of your blog from the drop down list.

2. Remove the time and date stamp from your posts. If you don’t plan on updating your site all that often it may  be a good idea to remove the ime and date stamp from your posts and pages. Then when a visitor turns up on your site your content won’t look outdated. To do this you will have to fiddle with your code a little bit, here’s how:

First step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard and then click on “design”. Next choose “theme editor” and choose “single post” from the right hand side. Then you need to delete this piece of code:

<?php the_time('d M Y'); ?>

You may have to open other a few of your other template files and make sure that t his code doesn’t appear there too. (Click image to enlarge).

3. Make prettier permalinks. Dont’t you just hate those standard Wordpress permalinks that look a bit like this: http://YOURSITE.com/?page_id=11. Well these permalinks are not only bad for SEO, they are a huge turn off to your visitors too. To change permalinks, again login to your Wordpress dashboard and choose “settings”. Next click on “permalinks” and choose “custom structure”. Then write in the box next to it “/%postname%/”, like this:

If you want any chance of Google quickly indexing your blog and for people to find you via search engines, then you need to learn how to do some basic search engine optimization (SEO). SEO basically consists of two things: “on page optimization” and “off page optimization”. Here we will go into a little bit of detail about both.

On Page Optimization

On page optimization is all about making your blog search engine friendly. Follow these three tips to ensure the spiders love your blog:

1.  Download the All in one SEO plugin. This plugin allows you to insert meta title, description and keywords into each post or page you write. You are also able to insert meta descriptions for the home page of your blog.

2. Download and install the Google xml Sitemaps plugin. This plugin automatically generates a search engine friendly sitemap for the spiders to crawl.

3. Make your URL’s search engine friendly. To do this login to your Wordpress dashboard and click on “settings”. Then choose the “permalinks” option. Choose the “custom structure” and type in “/%postname%/”.

Off Page Optimization

Off page optimization is all about the links. The more links that point to your blog the more the spiders will love you. Try to get links from other blogs or websites that have higher pagerank. These three tips show you how to get quick backlinks.

1. Write and submit articles on your niche to article directories. Most article directories allow you to leave a link or two back to your blog in the resource box at the bottom of your article. My favorite article directory to submit articles to is Ezine Articles.

2. Find “do follow” blogs to comment on. You should leave a meaningful comment that relates to their post otherwise you risk your comment being deleted or not published at all. You can find a list of do follow blog at Do Follow Diver.

3. Write super great content. If you write original helpful and informative posts, not only will the search engines visit you more often, but people will link to you too. These kind of links are the best types to get because it shows you are doing a good job with your blog.

Now that you have some visitors coming to your blog, it’s time to track them. The best way to track your visitors is by installing Google Analytics to your blog. Analytics track how many visitors arrive, where they come from, how long they spend on your site, and lots more.

First thing you need to do is sign up for a free Google analytics account. Once you have entered your blog details, you will receive a code that you need to insert into your theme code. That code will look something like this:

Login to your Wordpress dashboard and click on the “Design” tab. Then choose the “theme editor” link, and open up the footer theme file. Copy and paste your Google Analytics code into there, right after the </body> tag and before the </html> tag like this:

Click on save, and now you are able to track all your visitors and what they are doing on your site.

Alternatively, if you don’t like messing with your Wordpress code. you can download this free plugin: Adsense plugin that does all the work for you.

You finally have your blog up and running. You’ve added a nice theme and lots of good content. What do you want next? Lots of visitors, of course! The most valuable visitors will of course come from search engines, when people type in a certain phrase and find your blog. Unfortunately when you first start a new blog it can be hard to get search engine traffic. Don’t fret–there are other ways to drive instant visitors to your blog, and they are all free.

1. Social Bookmarking

There are loads of social bookmarking sites online, but my two favorite ones are Digg and Stumbleupon. Social bookmarking sites are designed for users to submit their favorite stories and links from all over the internet and share them with other users. If you are lucky, social bookmarking can drive hundreds of visitors to your blog.

2. Blog Commenting

Go and find other high traffic blogs in the same niche as yours and post some comments. Make sure you thoroughly read their blog post first and make your comment meaningful. Otherwise your comment may not be published by the author of the blog. Some blog owners use “do follow” for their comment links, and this will help with SEO.

3. Forum Posting

Find high traffic forums related to your niche and register for them. Again, don’t spam your blog link everywhere! Just a simple link in your signature will do. If you do spam the forum you may risk having your account banned and you will only earn yourself and your blog a bad reputation. However, if you post meaningful and helpful posts, you will get plenty of clickthroughs to your blog.

4. Social Networking

Sign up to some blogging social networking sites like MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog. This is where many bloggers hang out and check out each other’s blogs. Fill out your profile information to attract other bloggers who might click through to your blog from your profile page. Interact and socialize with them.

5. Submit Your Blogs RSS feed to RSS directories

Your blog’s RSS feed usually looks like this “http://www.YOURSITENAME.com/feed”. Look online and find as many RSS feed directories as you can and submit away. This will increase exposure to your blog and its feed.

“How to transfer my Wordpress blog to a new host” is one of the most common questions I get asked. The task might seem daunting, but, in reality, it’s not difficult at all. All it really entails is the transfer of your Wordpress files and your sql database. Here I will give you my step by step guide on how to transfer.

1. The very first thing you will need to do is change the nameservers on your domain name so that they point to your new hosting. If you have no idea how to change the nameservers on your domain then take a look at this earlier post about changing nameservers.

2. Once your nameservers have changed you need to login to your hosting cpanel and click on “phpmyadmin”. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Choose the database that belongs to your Wordpress blog on the left and click on it. Once you have chosen your database click on export at the top of your screen.

Then make sure “Add DROP TABLE/VIEW/PROCEDURE/FUNCTION” has a tick next to it like this:

Then scroll down to the bottom click on “Save as file”, choose “zipped” and click on “GO”. You could make a new file on your desktop and name it “blog transfer” and store this sql file inside for safe keeping.

3. Next step is to download all your Wordpress files from your server. I use my favorite ftp to do this. It is a free download from Coreftp.com. Once you have your ftp software connected to your server, locate all your Wordpress files and download them into the folder you created earlier titled “blog transfer”.

So what we have now is two sets of files, one set is your actual Wordpress files and the other is you sql database file.

4. Our next step is to upload all these files to your new web host. The first thing we need to do is make a new database. Write down your database name, database username, and password as you will need these in a moment. Once your database is created, go to “phpmyadmin” and select your newly created database from the left hand side. Next, click on “import” up at the top of your page.

Then click on browse and find your sql file you downloaded earlier. Next, click on “GO”. It may take a few moments for your sql file to upload so be patient at this point.

5. The next thing you must do is change the details in your “wp-config.php” file. This is to ensure that your Wordpress files connect with your new database. Look inside the folder you made on your desktop to store your files that you downloaded earlier and open up “wp-config.php”. Remember you wrote down your database name, username and password earlier? Well this is what you need to change in this file.

6. Once you have edited those details, your very last step is to upload those Wordpress files to your new hosting account using your ftp. You have now successfully transferred your Wordpress blog.

Wordpress on its own is perhaps  just another blogging platform, but what makes it extra special is the vast amount of plugins that are available to enhance your blog. There are plugins that help with SEO, plugins that help you track visitors and stats, and ones that help you social bookmark your posts. In fact if you look hard enough you will probably find a plugin for almost anything.

Whenever I install a new Wordpress blog there a few plugins that I immediately install I call these my “Must have plugins”.

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin helps with SEO. This plugin adds another option on your writ post or page screen so that you can choose your meta name, description and keywords for each individual post or page. If you go to “settings” in your wordpress dashboard and the choose “all in one seo” you can also choose to add meta information for the front page of your blog.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Every now and again you will notice that your Wordpress installation or certain plugins need upgrading to the newer version. Normaly you would have to download the new version and upload it to your site which can become a pain in the butt. This plugin makes the upgrade process of both your Wordpress installation and plugins as easy as a few clicks in your dashboard.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin automaticaly generates a sitemap for the search engines to crawl and find all your new posts or pages. If you want your site to be indexed fast you definately need this plugin.

Statpress

This plugin helps you track stats about your bog. It tracks visitors, spiders, where your visitors come from and what keywords they typed in to find your blog. You can view all this information from right inside your dashboard.

Add To Any Share/Save/Bookmark

Once installed this plugin adds a little bar automaticaly at the end of each of your posts which lets your site visitors bookmark your blog to their favorite social bookmarking sites. This can help increase your traffic.

These are only my top 5 essential plugins and I use a lot more on different blogs, it all depends on what the blogs purpose is. There are literaly thousands of plugins to choose from, you can view a large list at the Wordpress.org plugins directory.

Installing plugins is similar to installing a new theme. Once you have downloaded and unzipped the ones you wish to use to your desktop. Use Core FTP to connect to your site similar to how you would connect if you wanted to instal a theme. But instead of opening up the “themes” folder upload it to the “plugins” folder.

Next login to your Wordpress dashboard. Click on “plugins” and then activate them.

Once you have your new Wordpress blog set up, the next step is to install a new theme. It’s not hard installing a new theme, but if you are having some difficulty, here is a step by step guide to help you.

First of all, you need to find a theme that you like. Here is a list of my favorite Wordpress theme sites with thousands of free themes to choose from:

WordpressThemesFree.com

FreeWordpressThemes.net

Themes-Rock-Kitty.net

TopWPThemes.com

SkinPress.com

AmazingWordpressThemes.com

ThemeHybrid.com

Free Revolution Themes

Once you have found a theme that you like you should see a download link by the side of it. Click on this link, download, and unzip it to your desktop.

Next, you need to upload the theme folder to your blog. To do this you need to download some FTP software. All the FTP software does is allow you to upload and download files from your hosting server. I use a free FTP software called “Core FTP Light” .

Once you have downloaded your FTP software and set it up to connect to your site you need to find your “wp-content” folder. Click on it and then click on your “themes” folder like in the screenshot below.

Once you are inside your themes folder, choose the theme files from the left and click on the little blue arrow that points to the right to upload your theme.

Once your theme has finished uploading your next step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard. Next click on “Design” and you should see the theme that you uploaded there. Choose your theme and then click on “Activate Theme”.

There you have it, you have just given your Wordpress blog a completely new look :).

In part one of this post we talked about registering a domain name, getting hosting, and pointing your domain name to your hosting account. If you missed that post, you can view it here: Installing Wordpress Using Cpanel - Part 1.

Now that we have those three things sorted out, we can move on to the actual installation process.

The first thing we need to do is login to your hosting cpanel, and find the “Fantastico De Luxe” option (it is typically identified with a smiley face icon). Once you click on it, you should see a list of options along the left hand side. Click on the Wordpress option, then choose new installation.

Next, you will be presented with a screen like this:

From the dropdown menu, choose the domain on which you’d like to install Wordpress. Fill in your details like in the above diagram, but make sure you leave the box that says “install in directory” empty. Don’t forget to take note of your “administrator username” and “password”, as you will need this information to login to your Wordpress dashboard. After you have clicked “Install Wordpress”, the next screen will ask you to “Finish Installation”. Click this and we are done.

If you now go to your website you should see something like this:

The very last step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard and have a good look around. You will be able to do this by typing you site address in your searchbar followed by /wp-login.php, and entering your login details. Your host may send you an email with a link to the login screen.

I know this post really is getting back to basics, but there are still Wordpress newbies out there who need help and information on how to get started with Wordpress. Firstly, in order to install Wordpress you need a domain name and hosting. To register all my domain names I use Namecheap. I have never had a problem with Namecheap, and you can find some great coupon codes to save you money on the web.

For hosting I strongly recommend Hostgator. Whenever I have had a problem with anything (even if it wasn’t their fault) I received top notch customer service. I use their $9.99 a month baby plan and pay monthly for it. If you pay for 3 years in advance you get it $7.95 a month. For this price you can host unlimited domains with them. Most of the tutorials you find here will feature screenshots from hostgator cpanel, but if you are using other hosting don’t worry, it will probably be similar.

Now that you have the domain name of your choice and some hosting we can get started.

1. The first thing you need to do is point your domain name to your hosting. We do this by changing the nameservers. If you have hosting with Hostgator you would have received your nameserver information in your welcome email, and it would have looked something like this:

ns989.hostgator.com

ns990.hostgator.com

Next, login to your Namecheap account, and find the domain name that you will be using. Once you have found your domain name click on it and you should see an option on the left that says “Domain Name Server Setup”. Click on this and you should see a screen that looks like this:

Enter your Nameserver details into the top two spaces and click on save changes.

Next, login to your cpanel, and find the “addon domains” icon. Click on it and you should be presented with a page that looks like this:

Enter in your details like above but replace “yoursitename.com” with your actual site name. Click on “Add Domain”, and you are done. You have now pointed your domain to your hosting account, and are ready to install Wordpress on that domain. All pictures that are in this post are taken from Namecheap and Hostgator. If you use different hosting or registered your domain name elsewhere, don’t worry, it should look similar to the images above.

Welcome to Wordpress Addicts! As you probably already guessed, this blog is dedicated to my love of probably the best blogging platform ever. If you are wondering “what the hell is Wordpress”, well where have you been for the last 5 years :-P.

Wordpress first started in 2003, and at first was a major underdog in the blogging world. But as the years have gone on Wordpress has become more and more powerful with its many themes and plugins. It has now become the blogging platform of choice in the blogging world.

Before we go any further you should know there are two types of Wordpress: Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.While both are free (in theory) to use there are many differences between the two.

Wordpress.com

• Completely free to use
• Hosted with Wordpress
• Some great free themes but there is a limited variety
• Unable to use plugins
• Unable to monetize
• You will usualy use a Wordpress subdomain (something like www.yoursitename.Wordpress.com)

Wordpress.org

• Downladable blogging software
• You need your own Domain
• You need your own hosting
• Massive amount of themes available both free and paid all over the web
• Massive amount of plugins available to download (we will talk more about themes and plugins later :-))
• You are able to monetize (we will also talk more about this later)

In this blog we will mainly be talking about Wordpress.org as it is way more fun and versatile to work with. You will find all kind of handy tips and tricks from the very basics, to customizing your blogs, and from monetizing to promoting your blog. I hope you enjoy and feel free to leave your comments both good and bad.