Internet Marketing: Writing Your First Post To Your Blog

Now that you have installed a Wordpress blog to your web site, you can now post to that web site something. Let’s start off simple, and work our way up to being more complex.

Simple first.

You will need to log into your blog and click on the “write” tab. On one of the many sub tabs, choose the one that says “Post”.  Writing a post for your blog is very similar to writing an email. You have a subject line and you have the body of your post. Remember, we are keeping it simple first.

Your subject line should be a one sentence description of what your blog is about. On your first post, don’t try to be fancy and win the Nobel Prize for Literature: just something simple like “This is my blog about <blank>” or “Welcome To My Blog About <blank>. You aren’t writing a tremendously long title at this point. We are trying to get you to get used to writing a post to your blog. I actually have many blogs, so I have gotten used to it, but I started out simple as well.

In the body of your post, you will keep it simple as well. Just a short little thing such as “Thank you for visiting, there is mor to come” or “this is a blog about <blank>, come back in the future for more”. You just want to make it inviting. Let the reader know what you are setting out to do with your blog.

We will continue tomorrow and have a GREAT day!

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Saturday, August 1st, 2009 blog post No Comments

Internet Marketing: Installing Your Theme On Your Wordpress Blog

You want to unzip the theme that you downloaded from the Wordpress theme catalog (sometimes referred to as the them viewer). This folder has to be unzipped. The way to unzip the theme is to right-click the theme folder and choose “extract all”.  Then you have to FTP all the files from your computer to your server.  When you connect to the FTP server of your web site, you will find that there is a folder that says “Wpcontent”. Within that folder, there is a folder called “Themes”. There will already be two themes in there: “Default” and “classic”. Now, just  upload the entire folder that you unipped to this directory. You need to be sure that you upload the entire folder.

When you have finished uploading, go back and log into your blog, and find the “design” or “Appearance” tab and choose themes sub tab. Now just select the theme  that you want and choose to activate the theme. It is that simple. Just go back to the blog, hit “refresh” (or F5) and you will see the theme now on your blog.

Whew!

It is a lot harder than you think it is, at least it reads as more difficult.

Tomorrow, let’s discuss posting to your blog. Have a GREAT day!

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Friday, July 31st, 2009 blog theme No Comments

Internet Marketing: What The _ Is FTP?

:-) No, it isn’t dirty. It stands for File Transfer Protocol. You may wonder what it is. An FTP program allows  person to transfer files, zip files, ebooks, html pages , all sorts of files from their computer to their server, or website, on the Internet. A few years ago, I thought that I was going to get things “happening” by having a website. I went to GoDaddy and purchased a name, I got their hosting, a set up a website. I wanted to have pictures loaded of some of the work that I had done (along with my wife) pdrm0074 but I never quite figured out how to do it. I called their help desk, and they said something about an FTP program. 

Huh? 

I was confused. Now I know better. You need an FTP program to “transfer” your files to your server. You don’t have to know all about it. You drive a car, but I am willing to bet that most of you cannot take a car engine apart and rebuild it. You don’t need to.  The program that I use is “FileZilla”. You can get the program here.

Tomorrow, we will discuss set up.

Have a GREAT day!

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Thursday, July 30th, 2009 FTP program No Comments

Internet Marketing: Zzzzzzziiiiiiiiiipppppppppppp!

When you download your theme from http://themes.wordpress.net it will be in a compressed file. You can go to Google and type in “zip file” in the search field and get the software for unzipping files, if it isn’t already loaded onto your computer. The whole premise of zip files is to be able to sent large packets of information in a relatively short amount of time. Once you have your file unzipped.

I find that having Win-Zip software has allowed me to download programs, e-books, music…all sorts of files without spending an exhorbitant amount of time online to do so. There is another step that is necessary, but let’s save it for another day. The important thing is to “un-zip” your theme onto your hard drive. Make sure that you name the folder in an easy-t0-find location.  If you are walking into the middle of this, go back to earlier post and you can catch yourself up to speed.

Have a GREAT day!

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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 blog theme, internet marketing No Comments

Internet Marketing - Finding a Theme For Your Wordpress Blog

In the early days of the Internet, blogs and discussions were text only and that was in just the standard green and black of the CRT. Boring by today’s standards, especially with the increase use of video, music, and graphics. You want a theme that is all about your product. Don’t make it too “busy” because people will be less likely to follow the content of your blog. Your blog needs to be a source of information to which people will return again and again to find that trusted information. When they trust you enough, they will reward you by referring others to your site and by purchasing things.

Just don’t choose the standard setting because some services consider it to be a spam blog  or “Splog”. You can get some excellent themes for your blog by going to the following site:  http://themes.wordpress.net. When you first arrive you will be given over 900 themes from which to choose. It is advised to use a theme with two columns. More than two columns can be distracting for the reader. You can choose whatever color you like, but keep in mind that black with white text doesn’t work well on all computers, and you will lose readers if you choose that color scheme.

You also have a choice on whether you want a fixed width or not. Choose the fixed width. Have consistency in your blog and people will consistently visit. The nice thing is that if you don’t like how a blog is working out for your, you can always change it. You will choose a theme and download it to your local hard drive. Tomorrow we will look at how to install this theme.

Have a GREAT day!

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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 blog, blog design, blog theme No Comments

Internet Marketing - The Final Step To Configuring Your Wordpress Blog

The final step that you need to fulfill in order to fully get your Wordpress blog up and running on your website is a fairly simple one. Click on the tab “writing” sub tab on your blog. You should already be in settings from setting up your permalinks. Scroll to the bottom of the page to where it says “Update Services”.

This field should already have one pinging service listed. Copy and paste the following service into that section. Once you are pasted in, click “save changes” and you are finished,

Here is the list to copy and paste:

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Have a GREAT day!

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Monday, July 27th, 2009 blog No Comments

Internet Marketing - More Blogroll Configuration

For the contact information, you will want to put the URL for your website. Putting in the other contact information is an alright option. There is an option, though, that you will want to pay particular attention to. It is the “about yourself” option. Write two or three lines about why you are an expert in the area in which your website is all about, or why you are so excited to be involved in this area. Then you select “Update Profile”. It should then say that changes to your profile is complete.

Almost.

You still need to set up your permalinks, and again you will go to the upper right corner and click on the “settings” tab. Choose the sub tab, “permalinks”.  Choose the very last option that says “custom structure”. Type in the following line exactly as it is:

/%postname%.html

Once that custom structure is entered, click “save changes” . Now your permalink is updated. There is one last step to setting up your blog.

That will be covered tomorrow. Have a GREAT day!

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Sunday, July 26th, 2009 blog No Comments

Internet Marketing - Clearing the Blogroll

Today, we are going to set up your Wordpress blog to clear the blogroll.

What you need to do is click on the tab that says “Manage” , and the sub tab for “Links”. Once you have clicked on the “Links” tab, it will list a bunch of other web sites that are related to Wordpress. The simplest thing is to just select each and every one of those links and click on “delete”. It is that simple, because now you have cleared your blogroll.

You will now move to set up your profile. You will find what you need to do in the far right corner in a link called “users”.  You will find your admin name and click it, which will give your several options. You will have the ability to change the color scheme for the admin control panel and other actions. The most important thing is putting in your first and last name as well as your nickname. This will be the name that will display every time you post to your blog, so it is important that you choose your nickname wisely.

Tomorrow we will finish exploring the setup for your blog.

Have a GREAT day!!

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Saturday, July 25th, 2009 blog No Comments

Internet Marketing - Configure Your Wordpress Blog

There is a little left to do to properly configure your Wordpresss blog on your website. It is a few little steps that will save you headaches later on down the road.

First, you need to activate the Akismet plug-in. This is an anti-spam plug-in that will check comments left on your blog against the web service of Akismet to see if the comments look like they might be spam or not. This has been very effective for me, and has kept numerous comments (that link to unwanted sites) from being attached to my site.  Look for the link that says “Plug-ins” in the upper right of your blog. Select the Akismet plug-in and you will notice that it is “deactivated”. Click on the button that says “activate this plug-in”. As the popular commercial says, “so easy a caveman could do it.”

Once you have clicked the activate button, it will ask you for your Wordpress API key for it to become functional. Click on the link and enter your Wordpress API key. Getting the Wordpress API key is free. Just go to the Wordpress.com website and set up an account. You will then go into that account and click on the link that says “edit your profile”. In your profile, you will see the Wordpress API key.

Copy and paste the key into your blog, then click on the utton that says “Update Options”. Your key should be activated.

Tomorrow, well will explore how to set up your Wordpress blog to clear the blogroll.

Have a GREAT day!

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Friday, July 24th, 2009 installing a blog No Comments

Internet Marketing - Installing a Wordpress Blog On Your Website, part III

The next bit that you have to do is to click on the button that says “Install Wordpress”. You will then have some information provided about your blog, like that a data base was created, what your username and password is, and other bits of information. You could write all that information down, but look instead for the button that says “Email Wordpress installation to”  or “Email installation details to”. Just enter your email address to that screen, save your email to a file that you can find at a later time.

That’s all that is required, and now you will have your very own blog installed on your very own website. That’s a great first step to having success with your Internet Marketing.  Now you can begin writing a post on your blog. You will be able to set it up so that it will “ping” your website each time that you update it and make it available to the search engines and the whole World Wide Web will be able to find you. Of course, there are a few small steps that you have to take that make sure that your blog is properly configured, but we will cover that in the next few days.

Have a GREAT day!

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Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 installing a blog, internet marketing No Comments