(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!
I’ll be covering list building in depth in these lessons. I use Aweber and recommend them.
Hi Eric. Great lesson. Thanx for your help. Loving all you give. The Lord will continue to reward those who plant seeds.Thanx again, and I am your first follower on Twitter, by the way.
Thanks! And I noticed you were my first follower… thanks!!
I just began using WordPress fairly recently and I find these posts and lessons very informative and extremely helfpul. The best part was that it was so easy to follow! Thanks!
-Carl
Hay Eric
I feel a little overwhelmed right about now. Just to let you know. I am going to re-visit the previous lessons to compose my thoughts. But I’m enjoying the challenge. I need to re-track back to lesson 28-present. I’ve got to get this right. Your faithful student. Hold me up in pray – Peace
Thanks again Eric;
Great material, can a blog at wordpress.net be costomised in the same way
it can be costomized, but not as much. Also there are other advantages of putting it on your own domain (see lesson 23 and 24)
Hi Eric,
Guess what?
I am a member of a blog club and pay $77/month, for information that is 1 year old, non updated membership site.
Guess what more?
You provide more information and no fluff, high quality information for free…
Thanks..
Hi Eric,
If I’d like to put up a video from youtube on my WP blog, what code should I use?
Do you have a lesson on this?
Sorry for the of topic.
Lian Vaiphei
Here is the list I used:
How to Ping Your Blog?
Hope you like it.
Eric, great tutorials with just enough ‘meat’ to allow it all to flow and actually happen.
I’ll look forward to the rest of the lessons.
I do have a question though…
It would seem WP is just about all one needs to create and run a website so, is there really any advantage (or disadvantage) in using Xsitepro compared to WP?
In other words does WP give you everything you will need?
For a membership site, I would prefer to use WP.
The advantage of using XSite is that it’s a “site builder” so you can really customize your own website and build it from scratch… even if you have no web skills.
With WP, you either need to use a prebuilt theme, or you will have to customize the PHP/CSS yourself. I do cover this in lesson #36.
Dear Eric,
Thank you so much for these lessons. I found you at w3schools and it has been a great blessing to my life to be learning such great things about internet marketing. I have been quietly learning all these months and wanted to give a shout and let you know you are appreciated.
Is is possible to cut and paste copy into the posting section, or do you actually have to compose in wordpress?
Thank You Erick!
Your lessons are invaluable! I am totally new to this “world” but so far I got my domain, hosting account with Hostgator (will upgrade this to multiple domains) installed word press and all this mostly following your lessons.
Now I am wondering how to create navigation bar (add buttons to it), how to add opt in form, privacy policy, etc. Have you already covered these topics or if you could recommend some resources for this.
My blog will be about “Regular Joe” without prior experience in this field or computer skills, who tries to figure out if it is possible to make some decent money on line or is this only myth. This would be “live” postings as it happens with all success and failure so other could see what has or has not worked for me and what mistakes have been done.
I am also wondering if it is ok to start with introducing “Erick’s Tips” as very first step if one wants to learn about this field and to avoid to get ripped off by scammers of all kind.
As always thank your for great lesson!
Cut/Copy/Paste will all work in the posting areas in WordPress.
As for the navigation bar, there are a few options. The easiest would simply be to find a WP theme with a nav bar already built in.
You can then adjust those links within your WP admin panel.
As for privacy policy and adding an opt-in form, I will ve covering both of those topics specifically in future lessons.
Sure you can start by introducing Eric’s Tips… I always appreciate free publicity! 🙂
Eric – I already have a wordpress.com blog. How do I transfer daily posts to the new wordpress website. Infact, how do I transfer or link everything on my blog to my new wordpress website.
Here is a tutorial about how to transfer your blog from wordpress.com to wordpress on your own domain:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/03/how-to-move-from-wordpresscom-to-wordpressorg/
Do I have a lot to teach. Victor.
It took me many tries to get wordpress to work on my site. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I played with Site Studio first? Or maybe antivirus and firewall conflicts? Anyways, Eric’s instructions were excellent and easy to follow. I tried manual and the Fantastico one click and kept getting errors after errors. I must have removed all the files and started over 10 times. I tried the Fantastico one click method again and finally it worked that time. I did notice there were two different versions between manual method and Fantastico with manual being the latest upgrade. For now I’m sticking to the one thats working LOL
I’m using a static welcome page until I have time to start a blog.
Still, I don’t think I have everything quite right because when I type in the www address it will bring me to the page without the www in the url.
I really like the WordPress site above the others and want to stick with it.
I want to thank you Eric despite all my problems. Your instructions were simple and straightforward.
How can i increase the font of my posts.
I thought i should have option on html and ordinary text but i couldnt find it.
Please, someone should point me in the right direction.
Hello Kola,
If you are writing your post using the “Text” area, you could use the “Paragraph” button. This button lets you select from a number of heading sizes for your text.
Otherwise, you could paste your desired HTML directly into the HTML area.
Here is the direct link to the WordPress support for the best help:
http://wordpress.org/support/
thanks for the great lesson,
dyuane
you never have to be without internet connection use att/sprint/verizon any of the big ones come with a device for your computer to make it completely wireless its all i use on my laptop so no matter where i am i have the internet access i need and at home i don’t have wires running all over like i use to have.
Thanks for that wonderful lessons that has really changed my mind set to knowing that there are better things ahead.
Thanks for every thing and may your knowledge increase for the betterment of every one of us and the society/world in general.
I don’t often see this comment box as open on my blog.
To see it, one have to click the comment botton to make comment.
What do i need to do to show the box by default?
Most themes have comments by default, but you might want to double check. Then make sure comments are enabled in your WP admin panel settings.
Eric, it has the comment box is not automatically open.
Check the blog i’m talking about using the silverlight theme.
http://incomechamber.com/blog
Hello Kola,
It looks like you can’t comment when your on the home page, which is normal, because comments are always made on specific posts.
When I opened one of your blog entries, the comment option was automatically enabled for me!
I have started to read the blogs first before watching the video. Mainly to see if you are keeping up with everything Eric. You have a lot to do and I am interested in your methods. However, in reading some of the user blogs I cannot wonder whether your patience keeps up with your kindness. A lesson to us all.
What I”m most interested in are your formula
to use on “thinkorswim”.
When can I expect to receive those ?
Hello Freddy,
These strategies are a part of Eric’s Trading Pro System:
http://www.tradingprosystem.com/
What is the disadvantage of tags or tag line Eric ?
I don’t think its really a disadvantage… tags are good.
Great work Eric.
However do you really think WordPress Blogs are good vehicles for affiliate sales? I see a lot with adsense and product reviews, but they don’t look very professional (excepting highly customised ones with designed tempaltes etc.
John
Hello John,
They really can! This very site is a WordPress blog with over 50,000 subscribers!
I was wonder if you could use one of those modems instead of cable…..Thanks for the tip
Hi Eric,
Happy New Year to you! In addition to working on my Dad’s stock picking website (still in the works since it’s much more complicated with membership, 2 languages and also learning about stock picking myself etc.) I recently put together a website for my husband’s architectural business using WordPress. It’s rather easy to build. Your lessons are invaluable and really help a ton. I learned html and CSS like you said and it made tweaking themes and things in WordPress much easier.
I do have a question for you regarding using WP for my husband’s site:
I created a “Home” page in WP and made it as the Front Page of the site. When I click on “Home” in the navigation bar, the permalink shows: http://www.example.com/home/ How can I delete the …/home/ from the permalink so that it will show just the http://www.example.com as the homepage like a regular site?
I want to use WP to make a regular site with a blog/post area for my husband’s site. I found out if I don’t have post, the site will use the index.php where I have the homepage content and it works out fine with the permalink. However, if I add post, and select a created Home page as the front page in WP, the homepage permalink will show http://www.example.com/home/ which I don’t want. Please help.
As always, you are great teacher and I can’t wait to continue the lessons after I finish this stage of building website.
Shirley
Make sure you are using a Page rather than a Post. Then when you go to edit the page, there should be NO permalink listed below the title of the page.
Is the correct home page actually appearing at example.com? If so, then another option would be to simply hard code the link in the sidebar.php file to point to your URL.
Hi Eric
Thanks for the stellar lesson as usual. There is no way you could deliver the lessons any better.
I installed a WordPress blog in a blog folder with no problem. However when I tried to change the permalinks as you showed in the video the links came up like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/blog/category/private-label-rights/
where the blog post name was Private Label Rights.
Can you tell me what I am likely to have done wrong to cause the word category to show up?
Thanks
Joe
I believe you just need to remove the category tag from your permalink structure.
Hello Eric… I have a problem with my music blog. All posts are in wrong order. The oldest one is always on the front page. I tried various things to change that. I also installed some post plugins, and de-installed them again, because it did not change anything.
Have you ever heard of that problem?
Do you have an idea what I could do about that?
The blog is quite new, but I am ranking pretty good and have already quite some visitor. This is my favorite blog. I want to update regularly, and I really need a solution for that.
Maybe you know what the problem is.
Thank you in advance.
All the best,
Arne
Looks like you got it fixed! I’m guessing it was wordpress settings?
hi eric again thanks for th lessons i am learning so much but also getting confused about what would be my best option please dont look at this as some kind of sob story i just really need to do something quickly to earn even a really modest income after being layed off over a year ago i have had no luck in getting work for some reason the pump manufacturing industry harent taking anyone on and as u may imadine im living on the breadline so i need somethin easy to understand that at least i wont lose money on . its just you seem like a real honest guy and i have been burned so many times i would feel so much safer if u had any suggestions .
These lessons do contain my best advice. As I said in the first few lessons, it’s not for everyone and it doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s worked for me and many others. In lesson #4 I mention many ways of making money online, and if you think the information product route is the one you want to take, then these lessons will show you the way.
Hi Eric….finally, someone who REALLY teaches you how to use WordPress! I have been trying to get this down for some time now and finally your lessons…you know everyone says how easy WordPress is to use. Well, for a newbie, it’s not really that easy. On the other hand, your lessons are clear and really do make it easy. I can’t thank you enough Eric, and I anxiously await the next lesson. Thank you so much.
Mike
Hi Eric,
What is /%postname%/ mean?And the postname refer to the recent post? Is this the only way to create permalink?.
I”m a real dumb about this.
Thanks.
Aly
It is the title of the post. So if you write a blog post called “How to give your dog a bath”, the URL would be…
example.com/how-to-give-your-dog-a-bath
However, in new versions of WordPress, you can customize the URL of any post as well.
Just commenting because its the 100st comment
But very thanks eric. I’ve been looking for these kind of things for long. And now i foud you!