WORDPRESS: THE PLATFORM GOOGLE LOVES!

What is WordPress?

Quite simply, WordPress is a form of free blogging software / platform which allows you to create a blog with a minimum amount of technical skill required. Now the neat thing about it is that you can easily manage a whole website with WordPress, and not just the blog section, right from within your browser. It is a platform which is very search engine friendly (Google loves WordPress!), and most processes that you need to perform can be automated with the help of plugins.

Getting Started with WordPress:

Well, in order to get started, you need to choose a domain first. Then you need to choose a web hosting plan.

Most web hosting providers have what is known as cpanel, or Control Panel, which comes within your administration area. If you need a list of such web hosting providers, please take a look at this chart.

Okay, so once you have your domain and web hosting plan, you just need to install WordPress. This is easily done by scrolling down to Fantastico within your cpanel in your web hosting admin section. Once in, you will find the option to install WordPress on the left side of the window. Select a ‘new installation’, select the domain where you want to install it, and just follow the prompts (you will need to provide an admin name – which can be your name or whatever you prefer; a password), and then you are done with the WordPress installation on your domain within a few seconds.

You can access the WordPress admin area of your newly created WordPress blog/site through the following URL: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Once there, you just need to use your admin name and password which you had used during your installation. This grants you access to your admin area.

Easy enough?

Okay, now the next step is, choosing your blog’s / site’s appearance. The neat thing about WP is that you can determine this through choosing a WP theme. A WP theme is basically another name for a template. If you feel confused, just remember that Windows also has various themes, which control the appearance of your desktop, the sizes of the various fonts, the designs, colors, etc. This is the same idea.

Themes come in various formats. You can get single column, 2 column, 3 column, or some other formats. If you’re just getting started, you can choose to get a free theme, download it onto your computer, and then go into your wp-admin area, navigate to appearance/add new themes.

There you can upload the theme (usually in a zip format).

There are two kinds of WP themes: free or premium (paid).

The advantage of using premium themes is that you can get some really nice, attractive looking themes, and chances are, not too many other people are using the same theme, since it is paid for. We personally recommend Elegant Themes, which is a great collection of artistic and aesthetically designed WP themes for many purposes.

You can download free WP themes from many sites. Just type in “free WP themes” into Google and go through all the options to find what you like.

There are two aspects of developing your website in WP:

The Posts Section:

This is basically the blog section of your website. The blog section can be arranged by categories (just got to “add a new category” to create a new one). Typically, the posts you make are arranged by date, with the latest post appearing at the top of the page. This order, however, can be changed by going to the settings/reading section of your wp-admin area, if you prefer to have the posts displayed differently.

One thing to remember, when you are making posts, is to make use of keywords in your posts. This involves doing some research in order to make sure that your keywords are not very highly competitive keywords, but once that gets a decent volume of traffic. This would ensure that your blog pages show up in Google / Yahoo / Bing as pages in people’s search. You can use Micro Niche Finder to do your research for this.

The Pages Section:

Under this section, you can create pages, and also assign hierarchy of various pages.

Just like in the posts section, where you can assign various posts to be under different categories, you can create pages and decide which one is to be the ‘parent’ (meaning the first page in a hierarchical arrangement) and which one is to be a ‘child’. You can also set the order in which you want the ‘children’ to appear. For example, let’s say you have a website about laptops. You decide that you will have various review pages of different laptops, categorized by brands. So you have brands like: Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. Each of those brand names will obviously become the ‘parent’. Then pages with reviews of various models from those companies would become the ‘children’. Let’s say you have a page about a laptop model called the Dell Inspiron 9XXX. And then you have a model called the Dell Inspiron 8XXX. Obviously, since 9XXX comes after 8XXX, you might want to have them ordered that way. This is where you select ‘order’ on the page edit view. You can assign any order you like.

Again, it’s very important that you create your pages on the basis of keywords that you have researched well and chosen – so as to rank well in the search engines.

After you have created your page, you need to make sure that you update the page by clicking on the ‘update’ button on the right side of the ‘edit page’ window. This is the equivalent of saving your web page, and will help you see it on the website as the public would view it.

Editing CSS in your WP theme:

If you are wondering how to change the fonts, colors, etc. in your chosen WP theme, it’s not too difficult. Chances are, you probably need to do this anyway, because very rarely do I get a theme that is 100% compatible with what I would like it to be, so I have to tweak things just a little bit.

So how do you do it?

WordPress is written in 2 languages: php and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). In this case you would need to only edit a bit of the CSS code. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard. You can find a tutorial here and here

WordPress Plugins

WordPress manages a lot of extra functions – some of them are very necessary – through the use of plugins. These are typically created by 3rd party developers, and are available in two versions: free and premium (you need to pay something to get it).

Below is a list of some of the important plugins you might want to install on your blog/website to get the most out of it. Unless mentioned otherwise, these plugins are all free to download and install.

RECOMMENDED WP PLUGINS TO INSTALL:

- Add to any: This allows your visitors to share a post with various sites like: Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc. This is a great plugin to install on your site.
- Akismet: This helps you to eliminate spam. Highly recommended.
- All-in-One-SEO: You really need this plugin to automate your SEO work. Can’t do without this. Every time you make a post, this plugin will ping the SEs to send their robots looking for SE food to your website/blog. As an alternative, you can also use the Platinum SEO plugin.
- Google XML Sitemap Generator: This helps you to generate a sitemap for submitting to Google.
- Wassup: This is a great plugin which helps you to see and analyze the traffic to your site.

Get these Free Plugins from MaxBlog Press:

- MaxBlogPress Home Page
- Different Posts Per Page
- MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget
- BlogRush Click Maximizer
- MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup
- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

WORDPRESS GUIDES AND TUTORIALS:

If you want to learn WordPress in a very comprehensive step-by-step manner, we highly recommend WordPress Wizard 2.0. This is a very good course all about mastering WordPress, complete with videos and all sorts of tutorials that will help you learn to develop WordPress blogs and sites within no time.

Click on the banner below to get started with WordPress Wizard 2.0.

Learn to Market Your Blog / Website:

Now that you have gotten your website/blog ready and set up, you need to learn all about marketing your site. If you want to learn how to promote your website with the right types of tools, click here.