(Part 2 in a series of 4)
In the previous lesson I talked about some of the benefits of WordPress, and I walked you through the process of installing it on your website.
So today we’re going to talk about what to do after you’ve installed it…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
– structurally not much difference
– posts are archived and categorized
– examples: lesson #32 is a POST. My products page is a PAGE.
– Use Posts for a series of blog posts, articles, or other content that you add regularly to your site; use Pages for the pages of your site that don’t necessarily fit into a blog category.
– You can use parent pages and sub-pages.
– Some marketers claim that Posts are better than Pages for SEO.
General: I usually do not use a tagline.
Writing: I like to increase the post box to 20 lines.
Reading: Choose a static page for your home page if your site is not a blog.
Discussion: I moderate all comments.
Permalinks: I use a custom structure, such as /%postname%/
-better for your visitors
-better for search engines
You may or may not want to use the year and month within your Permalink structure. Consider whether it will be better or worse to date your content.
You can tweak the Post Name part of the Permalink URL when you are adding or editing a Post:
-Don’t make it too long (I prefer no more than two dashes)
-Use a keyword in it, such as a product name if it’s a product review
Action steps:
1) Add at least one category and make at least one post, or create at least one page on your WordPress site.
2) Adjust the WordPress settings to best meet the needs of your site.
3) Choose and set up your WordPress permalink structure.
In the next lesson we’ll move on to the FUN stuff!
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
Hey Eric,
Thanks for informative lesson. I wanted to know by using WP can i built a blog site wherein people can open there account and start blogging on different issues or its just for individual blogging, I am just starting and new to the concept. I am planning to make a blogging site catering a specific class of society.
D
Yes it is possible to create a group blogging site using WP.
Hi Eric,
Thanks want to understand will you be covering that in next lesson.
D
This is some of the clearest instructions on setting up WordPress I have seen. Great Job Eric. I will be adding some links on my blog and sending some people over to check it out.
Thanks
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer
Hi Eric,
I have a WP question. I wasn’t going to use WP but when I found out I could attach it to my main website in a /directory, I thought that might be kind of cool(just didn’t want it to be my primary site) Is using WP in a directory just as good or effective as using it as a primary webite? I was going to go with Blogger but WP looked so much better…glad I did!
After I installed wordpress I started snooping around all the options…wow…this is exciting!
😉
Get 150 *Top Quality* NICHE Websites With Your Paypal ID On Each!
http://Instant-Paysites.com
I will not be covering group blogs, but it’s not too difficult to do.
thanks, I appreciate it!
Yes it should be just as effective in its own directory. And if you were thinking of using blogger… I like WP much better because then you OWN it, rather than google.
Maybe I’m not as dumb as I thought I was! Thanks Eric
Eric, what about your PING LIST? Do you use one? If so, can you share it? For new content, is there an advantage to using CATEGORIES as opposed to dumping all new content into GENERAL?
I just wanted to add my thanks to the list of your many friends and subscribers.
Your lessons are the first message that I look for in my mass of emails. With your help and some luck I may survive the internet marketing learning curve. Thanks Again, Gene
Thanks for this video. I am starting to experiment with blog plugins now and I was curious to know how you set up yours and if you were using a plugin to get rid of the time and date stamp on your blog posts or is it something I can do without a plugin.
Hey Eric,
I love WordPress and your instructions on Permalinks helped as I was a little confused about the structure. I do have some problems with images though. I tried to add a page with free ebook downloads and have them one under another (flush left) with the title and discription right beside the ebook cover image.
The images come out sort of nested (can’t explain in any more than that) no matter what I tried it would not work so now I’m only showing one book
http://www.reachsuccessonline.com/free-ebook-download-of-the-week/
Any suggestions – I was doing it in the WYSIWYG format
Thanks,
by the way do you twitter
I love Word Press. In particularly, the additiional functionality I can get from all the free plugins. I hear there are over 3,000 plugins at this time.
Hi, Eric
Great tutorials. I am just setting up the WP blog
i created with fantastico.
I hope you will cover how to create the tabs on the top
and insert picture in the header.
This part in my view, is one of the most
important of these lessons.
Thanks for the clarifications
I have had a WP blog for several months, but without understanding any of the inner workings. Then just last week I had someone put my website on WP. This lesson and I’m sure the next few are going to be most helpful. Thanks, Eric.
Hello Eric,
Nice post you have. Mostly what you write here I already do it on my blog. I have to admit WP is really a best platform I ever used.
But I have one question, why you not use a tagline in your post?
Thanks
Nice tips!
I actually switched my site to a WordPress blog last November. And it is looking pretty nice. Is there any quick tips you could give me?
haha, glad I could help clear that up 😉
I just use the default pingomatic, because they ping a bunch of different places. If anyone has any proven strategies regarding pinging, let us know.
I think the main advantage of using categories is organizational, and user experience. It could also potentially help with keywords. For example, one of my categories is “PPC Marketing”, so that keyword appears in the sidebar of every page of my blog.
I’ll be talking about plugins in the next lesson, but the time stamp is something I actually did manually by removing it from the theme. I’ll be covering manual customization as well in another lesson.
I’m guessing you might need to go into the HTML tab on the edit Post page, and see if you can fix the code there to do what you want it to do. WYSIWYG is not WP’s strongpoint… which is one of the reasons I always turn the visual editor off.
Maybe someone else can give better advice.
I don’t twitter because I’m too one track minded, and I don’t want to have to think about what I’m going to tweet next. It would be a distraction for me, and take too much focus away from income producing activities.
I would recommend just finding a theme with tabs on it, and an image. I will be covering themes in the next lesson 🙂
the tagline I was referring to in the video, is the tagline of the blog, which appears under the blog title in most WP themes. WP also has something called “tags” which you can use to tag youe post with relevant keywords, and it’s fine to use those.
I think you’re off to a good start. The biggest thing I would advise is to figure out how to use your blog to build a subscriber list. And I’ll be covering list building extensively in these lessons 🙂
For people who wish to setup group blogging sites and love WordPress, they have a totally different package called as WordPress Mu. You can check it out at http://mu.wordpress.org/. The feedback on this is pretty good and as always WordPress rocks.
Thanks Eric for this very helpful and clear tutorial on WP settings. I have used WP in my blog and somehow I have not considered just using the postname as the permalink! I think this is a great suggestion for newbies. One question though. I noticed in your Eric’s tips blogs, the date of the post is not shown but for default WP installations, the date when you post your article is there. How do you disable this feature? Thanks for the tips.
Hi Eric,
thanks for your emails, always on the mark. I am enjoying your WordPress tutorial Lesson #34 and often revisit saved emails to find answers. I believe I can move forward with my WordPress site more confidently now as you unleash easy steps to follow. Looking forward to more of the same.
Hi Eric,
Excellent lesson!I’m a teacher and I think your video is clear and clean.
Good job!
Thanks,
Andy
Hello Eric I’ll make this e-mail short because I know your very busy. I want to create an online directory and one of the ways I wanted to monetize was to charge a small ($10 a month) fee to businesses in the listing. I would use this money to help in the marketing efforts. Is this business model realistic? I know that this question is off topic but I just wanted your professional opinion. Thanks
thanks for the tip!
I actually did that manually by removing the applicable line of code from the single.php file of my WP theme. In lesson #36 I will talk about editing themes.
The business model is realistic, but it is not new and has already been done in most markets. One strategy would be to focus on a particular niche (most likely a city) and try to become an authority site for that geographic location. Then keep in mind that your income will be derived by selling directly to businesses, so you need to be good at selling, or willing to hire an outside sales person. So I’d say it’s definitely realistic; just be prepared to work hard to turn it into an authority site and make it profitable.
Hi! Eric, great lesson, I used WordPress to create my last blog on my domain:
http://michaelacernescu.com
but I learn doing trial and error, I am sure I don’t know everithing and I listen with great interest your lessons to be sure that I have all the right elements on place.
Thanks Eric
PS The Membership site is facinating, I am reading that one as well. I am in “reading” mode now.
Regards
Michaela
Hi Eric
Fantastic video –
You know it does not matter how much I absorb information about wordpress there is always new or information that will help me.
Your information and video content is brilliant
Many thanks
Hamant
Hi, Eric. Just want to say that your e-mail and videos are really helpful. I am totally non techy but getting there and your support helps a great deal.
Kind regards
jo
Hey Eric,
Another great post. I love the simple break down, which really works for me,
Rich
Hi Eric,
In lesson #33 I installed WordPress and Adobe Reader couldn’t open it.
So I tried using Notepad to open it.
What I saw were all coded messages!
Is there a way to open it using Notepad?
Thanks,
Mike Wong
Hi Eric,
I’ve been following your lessons through and wondered if it’s possible to download the videos. Would be a great help to go back to those lessons as reviews or ‘I’d-remember-Eric-said-something-about-it’ thing. Please advice.
I’m not sure why you are trying to open it with either of those. WP consists of PHP files, and you need to upload it and install it on your website in order to view and use it. You can edit the code offline, using Notepad.
I am not offering them for download, because I am trying to avoid them being distributed outside of this website. I am planning on selling the series on DVD when the lessons are done. But for now, you can go back and watch any of the previous ones on my site:
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/category/lessons/
I finally got my WP installed on my website using my cpanel with Hostgator and it worked this time.
Yeh!!!!!!!!!!!
I even understand it a little better.
Appreciate your help and this lesson was a relief.
Looking forward to the next.
Hi Dilip,
Thanks for your tip, yes i want to make a blogging site, so whats the basic difference between both of them.
Hey eric,
Hope you don’t mind me asking Dilip.
Regards
ddmagar@hotmail.com
congrats!
http://mu.wordpress.org/ is if you’re going to have multiple authors writing multiple blogs on the same site.
I just got to your reply at this moment. I’ll look at my single.php file and try it out if I can do also what you did! Thank you so much…
Hi Eric,
Thank you for the video. I like the way you focus on the most important things. Can’t wait for the next lesson.
Hi Eric,
I just read your post regarding putting the lessons in DVD. I like the idea and pls give me a heads up before launching. It would be easier to get access to the lessons if it’s on DVD because we can always go back to the lessons especially when we are outside without internet connections. 🙂
Hello Eric
I just have to say how great these instructions are. They are detailed & clear to the point & explained slowly that any newbie can understand what you say. I was paying money to learn what you are teaching for free & they didn’t even come close.I have put a link to my site, not to promote but hopefully so some one can help me put right the mess I am in with the site.For a donation of course
Dear Eric,
I don’t know how to get a email subscribe like the one below your image in this site. Can you give me some hints? thanks