Destiny Dawn Marie

I’m putting together a new wordpress site tonight. I already set up my  domain name, created my database and uploaded wordpress which is installed and ready to go.

Tonight I am going to share with you the first few steps I take on every wordpress site I build.

First I need a couple of plugins.

The VERY first plugin to go in will be the only plugin that has to go up using FTP, all others will go in through the admin panel of my wordpress site.

# 1 One Click Plugin Updater

This plugin will take the pain out of plugin installation and updating - rumor is this should be included in the upcoming release.

Now that I can install plugins from the admin area I can close my FTP program and get my favorite admin menu plugin loaded so I can navigate quicker and easier.

# 2 Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

Ahhh.. much better, now I can access everything from one screen without clicking around in the menu changing pages to get access to the subcategories.

Before I forget, as it will be needed soon enough - let’s install a plugin that allows us to keep our wordpress install up to date. Yep, one click updating for the wordpress core.

# 3 Wordpress Automatic upgrade

How easy is that to maintain .. ahh the sweet smell of a new wordpress site..

That’s really all the plugins that I need on each and every site just to start the admin work. Ok now let’s go inside the admin section and touch the most common tasks that need done on a fresh install.

# 4 Customize profile / change password

When you install your wordpress a default password is provided. Click on your name and change this in your profile. Good time to fill in what you what in your profile while you are there.

# 5 CHECK your settings under “settings”

Go through each page under settings and set site up how you want. This will include such settings as your site title, registered or unregistered comments, setting your site public or private, and more. The most important setting I want to cover here is under Permalinks.

# 6 Change Permalink structure

This is an important feature of wordpress for best SEO practices. You can change your links to read yoursite.com/really-nice-post-title- here. This makes the link easy to read for human and spider eyes and is much nicer looking then yoursite.com/?p=123. More information on using permalinks.

Other plugins and themes to create output you desire can be found at Wordpress.

It’s Monday morning … what a cold dreary weekend it has been. I was sick Friday and slept a large part of the weekend away. When I got up it was to chilly and rainy to do much outside. The yard is ready for the first mowing. I got the lawn tractor fired up last week but the blades still need serviced.

So I spent my awake hours tinkering at the new WordPress blog - Big Ticket to Wealth Mentor System. I am not going to go into detail here about what it is, if you want to check it out .. click the link and head on over.

I started with a very search engine friendly theme and modified if for my liking, planned out my categories, added a few posts and started promoting the blog. On the marketing side of things, I set up my autoresponder system to mail the blog posts to subscribers and added my form to the website. The automation of the subscription system is the power of it.

When a viewer adds his/her name and email address they are taken to a movie that describes the business to them. When the viewer confirms his/her email address with the link that is sent to them - it then takes them to the Live Call training pages and gives the information on how to access the webinars. It’s truly a win/win. Viewers can access the information as needed and get updates from the site all in one.

I am ashamed to admit I did this myself in one weekend …. after paying another company over $1000 to do this. They didn’t get the job started by the due date!!! So I did it myself and now I am going after a refund. Wish me luck on that. I will be sure to let you all know how that goes.

Peace my friends

In previous parts of this series we have downloaded, unpacked, uploaded the WordPress files to our server or hosting account and set up our databases and database user permissions.

Now we are ready to install the software to make our WordPress work.

1. Enter your domain name in your address bar

2. Choose create wp-config

3. Review required

4. Enter database information

5. Click “Install”

6. Create a Title for blog and enter email address

7. Copy password

8. Log in

9. Go to profile and change password

Your WordPress Site is now set up!

In this step we are going to create a database for our wordpress blog. Your hosting may be different then mine, but the resources should have similar names.

Here are the steps involved.

1. Log into your hosting control panel administration area.

2. Find your database control panel

3. Create a database - by giving it a name

4. Create a user and password

5. Give the user permissions to access the database.

6. Make sure you know if the username and database name have a pre-fix

You are done .. that’s it!

With your domain name and hosting ready we can hit the next step. Pre-Installation. This step lays the groundwork for our blog to operate.

Are you ready?

Here we go.

1. Head over to http://www.WordPress.org and download the WordPress package.

2. Unpack (unzip) the package into a folder.

3. Download and install your FTP program of choice.

4. Set up your FTP program to your hosting account.

5. Upload/FTP the contents of the WordPress folder to your hosting folder.

You are now ready to install the software.

Note:

I use FIREFTP, which integrates with FIREFOX browser.

Your FTP program may look different. Your hosting folders may look different.

This “how to” is meant to be used as a starting point. Once you know what has to be done, you can do more research and ask the right questions as you go.

In the last part of this series we purchased our domain name. Now we have to get our hosting and point our domain name to the hosting space.

Let’s brake it down.

1. choose a hosting service provider - for our WordPress system we need PHP/MySQL features

2. pay for your plan - $7 - $30 a month

3. make sure your hosting account knows the domain name you will be using - normally part of the sign up process

4. find out what your name servers are for your hosting account - will be available from inside your hosting account

5. log into your domain name registrar and set your name servers to the information from your hosting account - word to look for “name server”

It may take up to a day or more for the name servers to begin working for you. I have had some that are available within minutes - others have taken up to 2 days.

WordPress.org has a list of hosting here.

The hosting service I have used for 7 years now –> ThirdSphere

Next step - pre-installing our framework

Now that you have thought of your website’s purpose *see post –>decide on the purpose of our new site* The next step is to register a domain name for your website. You have two main options.

1. Register your domain name yourself

2. Have your hosting company register your domain name for you

I suggest #1. When you register the domain name yourself you have more control over the details of the domain name and ownership.

Registering your domain name will cost you from $7 - $30. I currently use a registrar owned by Directi and have also used GoDaddy and APlus both with fine results. I’m not going to try to sell you on one service over another. I am just telling you how I do it nowadays without getting into the feature offerings or reasoning behind the services I use here. Basically a standard domain registration provides the same thing - and that is giving you control of the desired domain name and setting your contact details to the ownership.

Once you are at your registrar of choice there will be a series of steps that go something like this.

1. Create an account

2. Verify email

3. Log into service

4. Search for and choose domain name

5. Pay for domain name

6. Fill out several contact details information for the domain name

Here is a video you can watch with the whole process.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=pYJB4hJdtVM[/youtube]

You are now the proud owner of a new domain name.

We will be using your new domain name in the next segment about setting up our hosting for our new WordPress site.

I am going to create a small series on how to set up your own WordPress blog. I am going to show you the way I do it - and you can customize the process for your liking. The posts will go up here as I create them - and when I get each segment completed, I will rearrange them in chronological order. OK? OK!

We are not going to get into anything technical today. We are going to use our noggins …

Let’s decide on the purpose of our new site.

A blog can serve many purposes. How you decide to use it, depends on you. Blogs can be a personal online journal, a life documentary, a communication tool between you and select others, offer advice and training, or for poetry and creative outlet. The list can go on .. and on. But I will assume you got the drift.

The most important factor is: Your blog must be something that you have a passion about and like to talk about! Pretty common sense for most. I see to many people create blogs trying to please a certain group of people, or for monetary gain .. and it doesn’t work like that. Remember you have to write about this subject more then once! If you find it a dull subject, or you are only in it for the money .. it will become a dry blog quickly.

So I have decided - I want a new blog. A couple of topics I enjoy talking about are: how to make money online and how to get traffic to your website. Luckily for me these two fit together better then (some of my other favorite topics) such as paranormal investigations and training pet rats. So you see how taking two similar topics can give you an expandable focus. You may want to brainstorm a little and come up with some ideas that will keep you wanting to write for a while!

You may be wanting to start a blog for your passion - out of pure passion of sharing with the world. I have an ulterior motive - that many of you may have as well. I want to make money from my blogging “work”. I have decided to centralize my blog around my business because - my business makes money online. So I can talk about how I generate traffic and the different ways it makes me money, in hopes that others learn and want to work with me. So I have my plan laid out in my head.

I know what I am going to blog about, I know what I want my blog to accomplish, I know who I will be talking to.

Creating a mission statement will help me to keep my blog focused.

My new blog will provide information about how I earn income online by generating traffic through different offers. If I present valuable and useful information others may take my advice and use some of the products that I use and recommend to promote their business and consider trying out my business offer too. My goal is to deliver helpful tips, advice and recommendations - not for the money - but to truly help others make more money with their computers at home.

By reminding myself NOT to write in hopes of making a sale I can be more natural and less “sales pitch” styled posts. For me this is important, as I am a marketer. Sometimes my natural speaking language is quite full of sales jargon even when not on the clock.

So, now I have my idea, goal and a brief mission statement to keep me focused - I am ready to for the next step –> Hosting for our wordpress site.