WordPress Theme Gallery

Your theme is one of the most important parts of your Wordpress blog. It controls how your blog looks to your visitors. There are many free Wordpress themes available, so you shouldn’t find it too difficult to find one to match your needs.

One thing to bear in mind here is that the free themes have almost certainly been used by hundreds if not thousands of other people. So to make your theme completely unique, you should consider having your own theme created for you.

This can be done very cheaply and for probably less than $100. This can really make the difference between people remembering your blog and coming back to it, or simply to visit and never return again. Places where you can find people to create your themes for you can be found at Elance.com or Rentacoder.com and of course, just try doing a search in Google for unique Wordpress themes.

For more Free Wordpress Themes, please visit WPThemeGallery.com

Installing A New Theme

This is very easy to do. Just login to your site via an FTP program. Then navigate to your Wordpress installation and you’ll see the following files:

Double click on the “wp-content” folder and you’ll see the following files:

Then double click on the “themes” folder and you’ll see the following files:

These are the two themes that come pre-installed in Wordpress. This is where you will upload your new theme. Your theme should be in a folder, just upload the complete folder to this directory.

Next, login to your Wordpress Admin section and choose the “Presentation” option from the top section. You should then see a screen shot of your new theme. Just click on it and it will become your default theme. Click on the “View Site” link to have a look at it.

Changing the look and feel of your site with a single click is one of the most powerful functions of Wordpress.

Now that you’ve successfully installed Wordpress, its time to make some important changes. These will really make the difference in your search engine positions and also to make sure you get as many return visitors as possible.

If you stick with the default settings and themes, you’ll be missing out on a lot of traffic and potentially a lot of money too. So lets begin:

Logging In

To log into your Wordpress Admin section, just visit the installation of your blog and enter the following to the end of the URL:

/wp-admin so if you’ve installed Wordpress in the root of your domain, then enter http://www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin

You’ll see the following screen:

Enter your username and password, which you chose during setup and it should log you in to your Admin section.

Once logged in, you’ll see the following screen, which gives you the main options at the top:

Delete The Default Post And Page

The first step is to remove the default posts which have been made during the installation. So click on the “Manage” tab at the top of the screen. You’ll see there is a post called “Hello World!” and it has options next to it. Choose “Delete”, then click OK to the popup box. This deletes this post completely.

Next step is to remove the default page which has been created. Click on “Pages” at the top of the screen and delete in the same way.

Rename Uncategorized Category

You should change the name of the default category. To do this, click on the “Manage” tab and then click on the “Categories” tab. You’ll probably have two categories, the “Blogroll” and “Uncategorized”. Click on “Edit” next to “Uncategorized” and change the name of it.

The name depends on what your blog is going to be about. It can be “Car Tips”, “My Thoughts”, “Latest News”, basically whatever you choose.

Delete The Blogroll

The Blogroll contains links to the very talented people who add and edit changes to Wordpress. The default installation of Wordpress will automatically link to their sites from your blog. This is a big problem when it comes to SEO. You don’t want to have too many links leaving your blog to unrelated sites as it could affect your search engine positions. So we must remove them.

To do this click on “Blogroll” at the top of the screen. Now check all the boxes and click on “Delete Checked Links”. This will remove all these links from your blog.

Change The Permalink Structure

The permalink structure controls how the URL is formatted on your blog. There are various options to choose from but having the blog title in the URL will always improve your results in the search engines. So which one do you choose?

First, click on “Options”, then click on “Permalinks” to see your options.

The most important thing is NEVER leave the default option checked. This will do you no favors at all.

The best option is one which is not presented in your choices. Here it is, just type the following into the “Custom Structure” box at the bottom of the main options:

/%postname%/

This will add the blog title to the end off your URL, without including any unnecessary numbers or other useless characters.

If you are unsure about this, then the next best option is to choose the “Date and name based” option. This will add the blog title but also the date posted.

Once you have chosen the option you prefer, click on “Update Permalink Structure”. When you do this, one of two things will happen.

1. You will get a message, which says “Permalink Structure Has Been Updated”. If this happens, you don’t need to do anything else.

2. You get a message, which says “You Should Update Your .htaccess now”. If you get this message, it means you will have to make changes to a file on your host.

This is usually very easy to do but depends on your particular webhost. When you get this message, there will be a box at the bottom of the page which has some code in it. It looks like this:

You should copy all this code onto your clipboard. To do this just right click your mouse inside the box where the code is and choose “Select All” then right click again and choose “Copy”.

You should then create a text file on your desktop. This can be a standard notepad file. Create it and call it “htaccess” then paste the code into it and save it.

Next thing is to login to your webhost using an FTP program. WSFTP is recommended for this or any other FTP program will do the job.

Login to your Wordpress installation where you see the Wordpress files. You can then upload the htaccess file which will be shown as htaccess.txt in your FTP program. Upload it into the installation folder of Wordpress. If you installed Wordpress in the root of your domain, then it will be in your “public_html” folder.

So upload the “htaccess.txt” file and then rename it to “.htaccess” this will then setup your permalink structure.

If this is still confusing then check out the Wordpress Permalink Section Here.

Add Your Ping List

Your ping list is a list of services that will be sent a ping, each time you update your blog. You can update this list by clicking on “Options” then “Writing”. The list is at the bottom of that page, called “Update Services”.

Obviously the more services you add the better. But, a word of caution, the longer your list, the more server resources your blog will use. If you are using shared hosting, your hosting company may remove your blog. So just a small list of the main services is recommended. Here’s one you can use:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

Wordpress can be installed on most hosting accounts with just a few clicks of your mouse. If you haven’t already got a hosting account, then one that is highly favored and has all the requirements needed is Hostgator.com.

The thing to look for when choosing a hosting account, is that it must come with cPanel and has Fantastico built into it. Most hosting accounts will have this already but you should always check before making a decision. I know Hostgator.com has them.

Fantastico allows you to add many scripts/programs to your website, just by clicking a few buttons. Wordpress, Forums, Message Boards, Picture Galleries, all can be installed without you needing any knowledge of them whatsoever.

OK, so now lets assume you have your hosting account and are ready to install Wordpress. First you need to login to your cPanel of your domain. This is normally http://www.YourDomain.com/cpanel but your host will give you this information. Once logged in, you’ll be presented with the following screen:

Normally at the bottom of the page, you’ll see an icon which says “Fantastico De Luxe” or just “Fantastico”.

Click this link and you’ll be taken to the page of scripts that you can install on your website. It looks like this:

As you can see, on the left of the page are all the scripts you can install. Under the “Blogs” section, you’ll see a link for Wordpress. Click on this link and you’ll see the following screen:

This will list any current installations of Wordpress that you already have. As this is probably your first installation, it should like like the page above with none listed. So to continue, click the “New Installation” link and you’ll be presented with the following page:

The boxes have been numbered so we can go through them step-by-step. Here we go:

1. This drop down box will contain a list of domain names or sub-domains that you have on the account. If this is a brand new site, then you’ll just have the one domain name in the list and will not need to change it.

1. This is where you choose where you want your Wordpress blog installing. If you’d like it in the root of your domain (http://www.YourDomain.com) then leave it blank. If on the other hand, you want it installing in a separate folder (http://www.YourDomain.com/blog) then type in the name of the folder into this box. You do not need to manually create this folder; the installation will do it for you.

1. This will be the username you will use to access the Wordpress Admin section. Choose one you will remember.

1. This is the password for your Wordpress Admin section. Again, use something that you will easily remember.

1. The Admin nickname is what is used when you are posting to your blog. For instance, when you post and view the blog, you’ll see that it says “posted by …” this is what will be displayed. You could use “Admin”, “Owner”, or simply “Your Name”.

1. This is the email address that will receive emails when new comments are posted on your blog. This will probably be already filled in for you. You can alternatively use another address.

1. This is the name of the site and on most Wordpress Themes, will be displayed in the top and bottom sections of your blog. Just choose something approprite here, you can always change this in the Admin section at a later date.

1. This is simply a brief description of your blog. This is sometimes displayed on the sidebar of certain themes.

1. – 10. – 11. – 12. These settings control the “Blog by email” section. Boxes 9. 11. and 12. will probably be already filled in. You should just have to fill in the password of your chosen email address. In most cases, these details aren’t important, as you will be manually posting to your blogs.

Once you have filled in these details, click on “Install Wordpress” and you’ll see the screen below:

This will just give you a quick rundown of your details. Check they are correct and then click on “Finish Installation”.

You’ll then see the following screen:

This will again give you the details of where you have installed Wordpress. Take a note of these details for your records.

Congratulations! You’ve just installed Wordpress!

Although these steps may seem complicated at first, once you do it once, it will literally take you about 30 seconds to setup your next one.

Wordpress blogs promote themselves very easily. Once you have added your list of services into the “Ping List” and setup the Google Sitemaps plugin, each time you post you will automatically informing these services to come and visit your blog to index your new content.

But what else can you do?

Well, quite a lot actually! Web 2.0 is a phrase which you may have heard of. It is basically a collective term for the newest forms of Web Services, such as social networking, social bookmarking etc. Informing these sites of your latest posts to your blog is a great way to get almost instant traffic.

A quick way to do this is to create a free account at Onlywire.com. Onlywire has a list of the most popular social bookmarking sites. You simply sign up to all these services and they all get saved into your Onlywire account. Then each time you want to submit a new bookmark, just use the one form at Onlywire and it will automatically bookmark ALL the other services for you. This is a huge timesaver and a great way to get spiders quickly to your blog.

Things To Do After Each Post

The first thing to do after you have posted to your blog, is submit the page to Onlywire as above. Next you should use the following services:

Digg.com

Digg allows you to submit a new story. This is ideal to use for each blog post you make, just create a short summary of your new post and submit it to them.

Reddit.com

Reddit is similar to Digg, in that you sign up for free and then submit useful links to your account. If you are lucky enough, your post can make the front page of Reddit and should see a few hundred visitors in a day or so.

Stumble Upon

Stumble is another very popular bookmarking service. To use it you will have to install their toolbar. This is done very easily and is free from any spyware or popups. After each new post to your blog, just click the button on the toolbar and submit the page. This can bring in a steady trickle of traffic.

Pingoat.com

Pingoat will submit your new posts to all the popular RSS feed services. This in addition with your own ping list, should see a lot of spider activity on your blog in a very short space of time.

Just doing these 5 things after each blog post, will see your blog spidered very quickly by all of the major search engines and will almost certainly see instant traffic also.

There are of course an unlimited amount of extra ways to get free traffic but they go far beyond the scope of this guide. If you find something that works, stick to it and don’t get distracted by other methods which may not be as effective.

Plugins are useful tools that can be added to your site. Like most of Wordpress functions, they can be added with just a few clicks. They all have there own uses, some are very useful for getting more traffic, where as others can add a “stickyness” to your blog, to keep on it for longer.

There are literally hundreds of plugins available, so we’ll just discuess the essential ones below. These all help in SEO, return visitors and tracking your statistics. Every blog you make should have all the plugins listed below:

Google Sitemaps

Optimal Title

Simple Tags

Chicklet Creator

Ultimate Tag Warrior

Tan Tan Noodles

So lets see what each one does:

Google Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps plugin creates an xml sitemap for Google to read and it also pings Google whenever you make changes to your blog. This plugin usually see’s any new posts you make indexed in Google within just a few hours. Sceptical? Give it a try!

Optimal Title

Optimal Title is used for SEO purposes. It adds your blog title to the beginning of your Meta Title tag. This gives you a boost in search engine rankings.

Simple Tags

Simple Tags plugin allows you to add Technorati tags to your blog posts. This can bring in extra free traffic from people searching in Technorati.

Chicklet Creator

Chicklet Creator adds RSS buttons to your blog so that people can subscribe to your RSS feed quickly and easily. It gives you the options of which services you want to show and which to turn off.

Ultimate Tag Warrior

Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin allows you to add tags to your blog posts. These tags can then be shown on your blog and sorted by popularity; this can be a good indication of which pages on your blog are most popular. They can be added to the top or bottom of each post or alternatively to a “Tag Cloud” on the sidebar of your blog theme. (Unfortunately, the site that holds the plugin is quite often not working, so you may have to search for another location).

Tan Tan Noodles

Tan Tan Noodles is a plugin which allows you to view your Google Analytics and Feedburner stats from within your Wordpress Admin section. This can be a great timesaver as you don’t have to visit other sites to get your stats.

To install these plugins, just upload them into the plugins folder of your Wordpress installation. Then login to your Wordpress Admin section and choose the “Plugins” tab at the top of the screen. Scroll down and “Activate” the plugins you require.