Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress’

There are 3 easy ways to create a wordpress blog. All of them are super easy and i will take you through them all step by step. I am creating this as part of the How To Make Money Blogging post i made.

1. Creating a WordPress Blog on WordPress.com

Creating a WordPress Blog on WordPress.com is probably the easiest way to set up and start blogging right out of the gates. The only down side to this is that you will be using a sub-domains, i.e YGrabMoney.wordpress.com.

Step #1
Click on the sign up button at the top of WordPress.com and then fill out the required fields it presents you with. Make sure that you click on “Gimme a blog too”
*BONUS* Even if you plan on creating a wordpress blog on your own server, it is recommended that you still make an account on wordpress.com. Some plug-ins require a code that you get from that account

Step #2
On the next screen it will ask you your language, blog title, and what url you want for your blog. Again you will be using a sub-domain. After that it will send an email to your email address, go check it and click the confirmation. You can log in from that email but i suggest just moving on from where you had left off at on the other screen. It will ask you your name ect. Now go log in.

Step #3
Log in at WordPress.com and go to “My Dashboard” at the top of the screen when you log in. Congrats your blog is not created and can be accessed and visited by anyone anywhere.
*BONUS* When in the control panel of the blog you can actually set it up to your own domain name. Just click on upgrades below the left side bar. In the menu there should be a tab for domains, just click and add. They will guide you through the process.

2. Creating a WordPress Blog on Your Own Hosting Account

This is the most recommended way of creating a wordpress blog. When doing it this way you have complete control of your domain names, hosting, and blog itself.

Step #1
Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.

Step #2
Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.

Step #3
Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.

Step #4
Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.

Step #5
Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
* If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
* If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own sub-directory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the sub-directory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a sub-directory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.

Step #6
Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.
* If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
* If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

3. Creating a WordPress Blog With Fantastico

Fastastico is a self installing script installer. At Least that’s what i would call it. There are an amazing amount of stable scripts to be installed here including joomla, wordpress, and other popular scripts.

Step #1
Click on your Fantastico Icon. On the next page look for ‘wordpress’ on the left hand side, click it.

Step #2
Click New Installation. In the drop down menu select the domain you want it to be installed on. If you want the blog to be installed in another directory other than the main directory fill in that field, if not leave it blank. Fill in the rest of the details. Click ‘Install WordPress’

Step #3
Then click finish installation, then you are done. You can access the blog at yourdomainname.com/wordpressblog/wp-admin. Obviously fill in with your own domain and sub-directory if used.

So as you can see its pretty simple to create and start blogging. Just one more reason to get in on the action and take your online adventures to the next level. So create your own wordpress blog and get on it.

If you need hosting i would recommend HostGator they have fantastico along with great support. Plus they are super super cheap and reliable.

So i decided to make 5 FREE wordpress themes for everyone to use freely on anything they want. You can customize and use these themes for any project ranging from a website, blog, or a mini-site. You think of it can be done. They are pretty dynamic and really organized. Only thing i as is obviously do not change the link in the footer. With out further delay here they are:

Demo | Download

Demo | Download

Demo | Download

Demo | Download

Demo | Download

I hope you guys enjoy these themes as much as i did creating them. I can also make themes like these in mass amounts or for whatever reason there maybe. I charge $15/theme like these. I can also make custom ones with ad spaces, ad integration, ect. I can even make a mini-site template in a couple different colors that you can use over and over again. If this is something that interests you just contact me through my contact form and we can arrange something. Also feel free to leave some comments!

Alright i know that the presence of the mobile Internet is growing by the day. As some of you may know i was out and about this weekend and i just happened to visit Domaining.com on my Centro and found that there was a mobile version of the website. Kind of made me happy at the same time was a little stunned. I made a post about this on the blog and i got a comment from Mark Fulton from DotSauce.com letting me know about a handy plug-in for wordpress that makes the blog mobilized.

So that brings us to the question: How to make your wordpress blog mobile?

1. Download MobilePress plug-in

2. Install MobilePress plug-in

Seriously its that simple and easy. Now your site will be mobilized. You can even set how it is viewed in different mobile browsers from anything from an iPhone to Opera Mini. On top of that you also download and customize any theme.

MobilePress in action on an iPhone

I think this is a very important and must have for any wordpress blog no matter the popularity. With the increasing number of people browsing through mobile devices you could potentially lose readers that on consistently on the go. So get on over and get this installed.

I was over at Bido.com yesterday chatting it up in the chat they have going on everyday during their auctions, when someone mentioned Artisteer. They gave me a brief description of what it did so i thought i have to check this out. I put it on my back burner until i remembered it last night.

From that point everything else was history. So i preceded to download the demo version of the software to see what it was all about and if what the site said it did was true. Let me tell you what, this product is AMAZING! I casually played around with the tools and design of a template and came up with quite a good design in about 5 mins worth of work.

Now these are not some crappy box designs that you get from a myspace generator. In fact i would call this a “Theme Creator” not a generator. You can control every aspect of a theme everything from how many columns to the images used in the header, background, and menus. This was just the wordpress section! That’s right it does more than just create themes for wordpress it does it for many many other applications.

Artisteer.com Says:

“With Artisteer YOU immediately become a Web design expert, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating Web Design Templates, joomla templates, drupal themes and wordpress themes – all in minutes, without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no technical skills.”

I will go ahead and say that this is the truth about this product. It takes little to no skills to operate and design custom themes.

Even exporting the theme is just as easy as creating it. Just click one button and then upload to your website and unzip! That is ALL it takes.

Why is this product so important?

Simply, you do not have to deal with crappy free templates that everyone and their dog are using. Pick up Artisteer and you will have custom themes for all your mini-sites with little to no work. Make it easy for your development needs and put the real work back in to the writing and take the stress out of design.

Truly top notch product, you can pick it up here Artisteer.com!

You maybe a newbie to wordpress and not know exactly what you need to get your blog, site, or mini-site off the ground. Well here are 7 plug-ins that will not only improve the look and feel of your site but will also give you the edge you need for SEO and comprehensibility when using wordpress.

1. Akismet – This plug-in protects your blog or website from spam comments. You may not see spam comments for a while but once you site gets indexed in search engines or becomes popular you will see them by the thousands. This plug-in comes pre-installed with all wordpress installations so make sure you activate it.

2. All in One SEO Pack – This is the bread and butter of your wordpress site. The All in One SEO Pack is one of the most important plug-ins for you site because it puts everything you need to optimize your site all in one place.

3. cformsII - This is the most comprehensive forms creator out on wordpress right now. It is one click insert and a super simple to understand in creating and storing forms. Perfect for creating contact pages!

4. Google XML Sitemaps - This is another plug-in for optimizing your website. It will automatically creat a sitemap for your site and ping it off of google. Which in return lets the search engines know that you site is ready to be crawled.

5. Sociable – The most perfect plug-in for all of your social network needs. Allows you visitors or you to submit they article or site to various, by various i mean TONS, of different social networks and sites like DIGG or StumbleUpon.

6. WP-Cumulus – If you are a tags person this is the coolest plug-in for you. It will display all of your tags in like sort of a rotating ball that people can look through and play with. Definetly an eye catcher!

7. WordPress Mobile Edition – I know we have quite a few .mobi lovers out here so this one is for you. It will create a mobile version of the wordpress site. Along with that it will automatically detect the mobile browser and list of browsers can be customized.

Well there you have it, the simple list of essential plug-ins for every wordpress site out there. This is a pretty general list of “essential” plug-ins but it will get you off to a great start and let you hit the ground running. IF you want to look up some plug-ins just head on over to WordPress.org.