(Part 4 in a series of 4)
In the previous three lessons, I’ve been covering WordPress. We started off with by installing WordPress. Then we talked about the best way to configure WordPress. And then in the previous lesson we talked about WordPress themes and plugins.
Today we’re going to take it a step further and look at how to customize a theme to meet the needs of your business…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
See video for examples of…
-Editing the colors, fonts, and other style in the CSS Stylesheet
-Adding an AdSense ad to the sidebar
-Editing the footer to take away a credit/footprint
-Changing the graphics
Action steps:
1) If you’re not happy with the look or function of your WordPress site, customize it!
Remember, if you need help there is a massive support forum at: http://wordpress.org/support/
In the next lesson, I’ll be talking about making money with your blog.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂 And if you’ve customized your WordPress theme, be sure to show it off to us!
Have a great day!
Thank you sir!
just replied.
Thank’s
Hi Eric
Thank you so much for giving
all this stuff for free.
Great content. No hide-and-seek.
Rgds
Hey,
Thanks a lot for all of this video information.
Eric, I don’t remember you covering AdSense. Am I mistaken? Will you be covering setting up an AdSense account?
I’m not planning on covering it, as it’s not really the revenue model I’m teaching. But as you saw, I did talk about it as a method of blog monetization, and it’s certainly a legitimate and potentially very profitable way of monetizing content. They have a fairly self explanatory sign up process at http://adsense.google.com
Eric, Okay…I signed up with GoogleAdsense, got my code, put it in Notepad++, saved it, transfered it to the right side in FTP. It’s not on my blog. I tried putting it into content and into themes. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was supposed to go on the right side of FTP. What did I do wrong now?
Which file did you put the code into? Did you paste it into the sidebar.php file, like on the video?
It looks like perhaps you only dropped the file into the ‘themes’ directory instead of into the ‘thistle’ (the theme you are using) directory within the themes directory. Remember, you need to overwrite the old sidebar.php file.
I tried your suggestion. It still isn’t working. I’m wondering if it’s because my url has the /blog on the end because when I was in adsense they wouldn’t let me list that as the blog name. I wonder if there’s any way getting around that.
Hi Eric,
I have built a normal website but now want to replace it with a wordpress blog site. The problem is that I am generating a steady income from the current site and do not want to loose any SEO and links that I have already. How do you advise to convert over?
The complexity of it depends on how big your site is, how it is structured, etc.
If the site was not so well established, I’d say just setup your site on WP and turn your old pages into 301 redirects to direct them to the new ones. In *theory* according to some SEO experts you could actually do that and still keep the SEO benefits. But I am skeptical, and wouldn’t do it that way if the site is bringing in steady income.
Instead, I would rebuild EVERY page with the exact same name, title, etc.
You can modify WP’s permalink structure to adapt to however your current files are named (index.html, page1.php, or whatever).
You can then use the All in One SEO WP plugin to make sure all of your pages have the same title and meta-tags as the old ones.
As you build the site, you can keep the old pages online, and delete them one at a time as you create their new versions in WP.
On the other hand, if your existing pages are NOT very well optimized for SEO in terms of their file names and/or titles, you might consider using the 301 redirect method, and take the opportunity to make the site even better for SEO. (For example if you have 100 articles and they are on pages like 1.html, 2.html… you might do better by changing it on WP to something like article-keyword-loaded-title.html). But again I am hesitant to mess with stuff like that on existing income streams.
It still does not look like you uploaded the sidebar to the right place. I checked your source code and there is no Google Adsense in the sidebar. I do see that there is Adsense in your first post, but it’s not showing up, and I think I think the reason is that the Adsense code is either incomplete or corruputed (probably due to pasting it into WP’s WYSIWYG editor)…
Hi Eric,
How does Word press deal with site maps and how relevant are they?
Keep up the good work.
Kevin
Eric, I’m going back through Lesson #36 to try to fix the Adsense snafoo. Actually there is no room in the right sidebar for adsense. I would like to put it on the left where there is space. How would I do that? Also, the sidebar on the Thistle theme is very busy with things I don’t know what to do with and I don’t want my potential readers to have to look at. How do I get those out of there? Thanks in advanse for your help!
You can put the Adsense anywhere you want, it’s just a matter of inserting the code into the right place.
So you could put it in your left sidebar, you just need to find the right place in the right file. I’m not familiar with the theme, so I don’t know which file that is. But you could just use trial and error.
As for removing things from the sidebar… some of those items can probably be turned off in your admin panel. But most of them you would need to remove from the code of the sidebar.php file.
If you’re not able to figure that stuff out, you might be able to get someone to help you on the WordPress forums. Otherwise, I would recommend hiring from cheap help on Rentacoder
You could probably have someone make all your desired customizations to your blog for about $10, which is probably a good investment vs. how much time it may take you to figure it out.
there are some site map plugins for WP. I’ve talked to some folks who swear by them, and claim their sites get indexed more thoroughly through sitemaps. I’ve talked to others who say it doesn’t matter. I think that the critical factor here is how interconnected your site already is. For example, this site is quite well interlinked through the sidebar. So when google spiders my site, I think they probably see all of it. But if your site is not easily spiderable, or if it goes many levels deep, a sitemap would be advisable.
Thank you Eric!!
94 Percent of CNN’s Audience Doesn’t Use Twitter
from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow
twitter logoWhile today might be a huge day in Twitter world with CEO Evan Williams set to appear on Oprah alongside Twitter’s first million follower man, Ashton Kutcher, CNN’s audience apparently still largely has no idea what the service is all about.
Today’s poll on the main page of CNN.com asks “Do you use Twitter?” With better than 80,000 votes cast, only 6 percent of users say “Yes,” while 64 percent say “No,” and 30 percent say “What’s Twitter?” At first glance, these numbers are surprisingly low given the air time the network has devoted to the service, especially in recent days with the Ashton vs CNN battle to reach one million followers.
cnn twitter poll
Of course, for an organization on the mainstream scale of CNN, 6 percent actually translates into a fairly significant number of people – with over 30 million visitors to its site in March according to Compete, 6 percent is around 1.8 million people.
How will the Oprah moment change these numbers? It would be interesting if CNN asks the same question next week.
eric I purchased the exit splash last night and
it shows up on my bank statement but, how do I received the product? Is it downloaded or shipped. probably a dumb question but I don’t know the answer. Thanks
Eric,
One of the reasons that I do not think Twitter is a fad and going to fade to soon is because of the publicity that surrounds. Most of us that market for a living already know that one of the major keys to survival is advertising and Twitter gets a ton of it and mostly for free. You have have GMA constantly giving it plugs and Twitter is not paying them a dime to do it. They simply just talk about tweeting. Can you imagine if you woke up in the morning and turned on the TV set and Diane and Robin are having a conversation on GMA about how great Eric’s Tips is to learn marketing? Do you think your traffic would pick up? The truth is you would explode in sells by the afternoon as thousands went immediately to the search bar and starting typing in Eric’s Tips.
Just thought I would share these thoughts with you my friend.
You never know. PRAY. and BELIEVE and God may have them have that conversation. As good a person as you have turned out to be. I hope they do Eric. Of course, Not as much as you do huh?
To Our Profit,
Teddy Freeman
270-904-0883
Good purchase 🙂 It is downloadable. Dave provides excellent service, so if he has not helped you yet just let me know and I’ll give you his support info.
Hi Eric,
This lesson really came in handy. I’ve been struggling with header and sidebar widgets in my website. I’m working now on Amazon store pages and have decided that my theme needs to be changed to one with page tabs rather than sidebar pages list. Is it too late to change the theme? I’ve already imported all posts from wp.com blog.
To take this further, I want to use my About page to link to my Amazon Store, my published clips pages, my other published article RSS feeds. The home page will have a daily recipe blog and that will change everyday obviously. But I also want a sticky post that will point visitors to my tab pages. Do I need to change themes to accomplish this? The current theme is default kubrick.
You can change your theme anytime and your posts will not be affected. The only thing you would have to re-do is any custom coding that you added to the php files (like if you manually added a widget to sidebar.php).
No you don’t need to change themes to do that. I can see your About page (and other pages) already listed in the sidebar of your current theme. But you could certainly try other themes if you want to.
Your category and archive links are missing a / after the domain… maybe that needs to be added to your default blog address in the WP settings.
WELL, BACK IN THE RUNNING—GREAT LESSON! wHEN i TRIED TO ENLARGE THE SCREEN SO THAT THESE EXAMPLES CAN BE EASIER SEEN – I LOST YOU, AND HAD TO BRING IT UP AGAIN. EVEN WITH A SCREEN MAGNIFYING AID, IT’S DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY WHERE YOU ARE GOING UNTIL -IN A FLASH, IT’S ALL OVER! SO I REPEAT MANY TIMES AND TAKE NOTES. YOU KNOW:1,2,3,4,5,6…..ETC. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. AL
Hi Eric,
Finally got thru all the WP lessons.
Remember my Dad’s stock pick site mystockpoint.com that has 2 languages (English and Chinese)? Got questions regarding using WP for my Dad’s site:
1. Do you think WP will work with 2 languages? i.e. can I put links on the home page to point to the other language like you suggested? Or I need to use other site building tools?
2. If so, do I need 2 WP installs for the languages or just need different pages to point to?
3. Will WP pages or posts accommodate tables?
4. We’ve been using a table/calendar format to post daily results and am wondering what are the best ways to do it in WP: using the same table/calendar format on a page/post or a separate link on each post.. but I like the idea that WP blog/post can easily archive the postings but maybe a separate post for daily results generate a lot of postings?
5. Also not sure if allowing comments to each daily results is good or will generate a lot of work in responding the comments.
Appreciate your insights!!
Shirley
P.S. I finished all the online lessons for html in w3school and half way with the CSS.
1- yes WP will work
2- Hmmm… you could go either way with that (1 or 2 installs). But probably 1 install would keep things simplest. You can create a seperate CATEGORY for the 2nd language.
3- yes both will
4- Again you’ll just have to see what works best for you. There are also some good WP Calendar PLUGINS which may save you some time and help keep things organized.
5- Yup… you’ll have to decide about that one too. I’m a member of a trading site that does not allow comments, but sometimes I wish I could comment.
Eric,
1. do you use html site or wordpress for affiliate site.
2. I want to use wordpress. Not sure how to setup the structure. I know wordpress installation though.
I like to have this structure.
– Home page
– blog
– landing pages: use ppc to drive traffic to LP.
here, visitors from organic side, come to home page or blog posts. PPC send traffic to landing page.
Can I use wordpress to set up like above OR I should use a combination of xsitepro and wordpress.
I looked for videos and couldn’t find. SUggestions much appreciated thanks.
You could use WordPress for all of the above.
However, depending on your strategy, you might not want your standard WordPress navigation (sidebar and/or top links) to appear on your landing pages.
Therefore one option would be to find a theme with an OPTIONAL sidebar, or customize your theme to remove it manually from your landing pages.
Your other option would be use use something like XSitePro for the landing pages, and just create those seperately from the main site.
Eric,
Thanks for clarifying. So I setup wordpress, front page as static for Home page. Rest as blog posts, right?
where do I put the Landing pages generated by xsitepro, under public_html or wp-content?
Thanks.
another one:
If I am using home page or other posts in LP also, with only difference being, as you suggested, LP without nav bar, do I need robots.txt or any other means to avoid duplicate content issue.
Thanks for your help.
sorry last one, lol.
what is your take on : affiliate theme or flexx theme, I hear a lot nowadays. Is it easier to setup all three just with wordpress using those themes?
correct, that would work for your home page and blog.
You would put the landing pages in public_html.
I would not worry about it at all if you’ve got a couple landing pages with duplicate content. But if you have MANY pages of duplicate content, then google may assume you’re doing something spammy.
If you’re focusing on PPC and don’t care about SEO, then you still probably don’t need to worry. But if you do care about SEO and need to create tons of landing pages on your domain, then you might consider using a DYNAMIC landing page generator such as lpgen.
but from what it sounds like, you’re probably not building a ton of spammy landing pages.
i’m not familiar, are those WP themes?
They are wp themes, Eric.
http://www.affiliatetheme.net/
http://flexxtheme.com/
yes, that is what I was thinking about. Dynamic landing pages. These will have almost same content except the change in headline and sometext.
My concern, if I am using lpgen, Google might punish my quality score even with ppc.
How to escape this duplicate content issue then?
Sounds like dynamic landing pages could be a good option then. You might not have any trouble with quality scores, as long as the main content of the page is relevant.
If you find that your quality scores are hurt from using dynamic pages, one option (albiet blackhat) is to cloak those pages with alternative content for google’s spider. I don’t think I can adequately explain it here, but if you search for it, you should find some black hatters expaining it.
also, another thing you probably might want to do is put your landing pages on a seperate domain on a different IP… away from your main site. Then at least you wouldn;t have to worry about your site getting penalized from an SEO standpoint too.
I personally don’t worry much about duplicate content, because I don’t worry much about SEO 🙂
Hmmm… those look like good themes, so I think it really comes down to what works best for you. There are plenty of good free themes too. I’ve always used and customized free ones.
I am thinking of using as you suggested:
Home page and blog: wordpress
LP: xsitepro.
Those affilaite themes are ok but I will save money for time being.
Hi Eric,
I don’t know if this email link is still active–but it appears that it might be. So I thought I’d give it a try.
I’ve been going back over your wp tutorials (primarily 35 & 36), but I can’g do all the things you suggest because I can’t find some of the links. For example, on the Plugins section, your screenshot shows the plugins link right under Appearance; my screen doesn’t even have Plugins as a link! I’ve tried everything I can think of without success. So I can’t do a lot of what you show how to do because I don’t have the same page layout. Has wp changed since you made those videos??
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Henry
Hello Henry,
WordPress is always making changes to their site, but you can still access the plugins from the following link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
thanks for the great tips.
Hi Eric, finally got my company web site up at Host Gator…got my email address changed ,wordpress installed, got my theme picked out, installed the plugins Akismet, Flickr, and SEO. I think I’m really getting the technical stuff. I changed the setup a little bit so when I type in my domain name…my wordpress theme comes up…basically I did that by moving the index.php file to the root and editing it. (Directions are found on the wordpress site.) Poosawantos is the umbrella company for all my sites…but I am hoping to come up with a way that I can use poosawantos.com to link things together. Still I am really not coming up with a great niche.
Mmm, feed a person a fish when they are hungry, teach a person to fish and they are never hungry.
Unfortunately I am still hungry, , for now. But that is because I never failed to learn, others failed to teach.
Luv ya
Hi Eric,
If you happen to read my blog, I am pleased to be a student. Emontionally, you are a balance. Spiritually I am overwhelemed. Something wonderful happened to me today and after searching for an answer and waiting, it has arrived, and I am not talking about word press.
Your energy extends beyond the +each
You know, don’t you?
All the best Robbo
Hi Eric,
I think the words: “I Thank you” could be placed as a default in our comments.
I tried hard before posting here. I also lost my day in the WP forum. Found some help like: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/302408
but really couldn’t apply.
My problem is: WP doesn’t seems to allow (as it used to do before at time of your 35 lesson) to choose if your First Home Page, is a page or a post.
I’m trying to make it fixed like a page, and still don’t find a solution. Can you help me please?
Thank you Eric.
You can use any post or page as your home page.
It is under the Settings.
Then under “Reading” settings.
From there you can choose a static page, and select your desired page or post.