money for my life

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!

Tags: blog installation

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!

Tags: blog, blog installation

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!

Tags: blog, blog installation

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!

Tags: blog, blog installation

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!!

Tags: blog, blog installation

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!

Tags: blog installation

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!

Tags: blog, blog installation

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

So yesterday, you began the process of installing a Wordpress blog on you website. We will continue today. By now you should have already secured a hosting account like HostGator, set up an administrator name and password.  Now it comes to choosing an administrator nickname, which could be anything of your choosing. Some people choose to use their first name because anything that you post to your website via the Wordpress blog will have your administrator name attached to it. You can use a pseudo name or a pen name. The choice is entirely your to make.

Then you have a place to put your administrator email. You can enter your personal email here, which some say is a good idea. Any blog activity will be sent via email to this email address. The next field is the site name. For this, you can simply put what your site name is. At this time, it is best to use a word or a keyword phrase that is related to your subject matter. This will help you to gain more traffic to your website.

Tomorrow,  we will finish up on installing a Wordpress blog to you own website.

Have a GREAT day!

Tags: blog installation

Internet Marketing - Installing a Wordpress Blog On Your Website

This is a lot easier than you would think (after all, I was able to do it). The first thing that you will need to do is log into your Cpanel account by going to www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel. (please substitute the name that you have purchased for your domain in the spot that has “yourdomainname”).  Enter your username and password and click “log in.” Now that you are logged in to your Cpanel, you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a blue smilie face labeled “Fantastico” or “Fantastico Deluxe”. They are the same thing, it just depends on the hosting service (like HostGator) that you choose to have for your particular website.

You will need to click on the link that says “New Installation” after you read a brief description of what Wordpress is. This will get the process started for you. The click will bring you to another screen that will ask for some information that will be no problem for you to fill out. The first thing that it will ask you is where you want your blog to be installed. Leave it blank. Why? It will default to your root directory, and that is where you want your blog to be located.

This will bring you to the next option of selecting an administrator name. This can be anything  that you want between six and eight characters. The choice is entirely up to you, you can have whatever you like. Then you will need to choose an administator password. It is best if this password is at least eight characters long, but don’t use something too easy like “password”.

Tomorrow: part II.

Have a GREAT day!

Tags: blog installation