WordPress Training For Entrepreneurs

September 23, 2010

WordPress Training For Entrepreneurs

Step-By-Step WordPress Blog Installation Guide For Entrepreneurs

Blogs can be honestly called a new power of influence on readers’ minds, therefore on your potential clients. And if blogs, which are created by means of using free of charge services, lose their importance and have never been presentable, then high quality stand-alone blog can become an effective marketing tool. Certainly, you may ask a professional to create a blog for you, however you can do it absolutely by yourself and this procedure will take you less than 30 minutes to perform. Some people are extremely frightened on hearing such words as php and MySQL, but in fact no special skills are required for blog installation and adjustment. You should only follow file instructions and take 8 steps described below.

Here is a step-by-step instruction for dummies on how to create a website and blog by the example of installing WordPress blog platform.

Domain Name Registration. Domain name should be registered directly with an official domain registration company. Offering domain names web hosting companies often don’t provide clients with access details for their domain accounts. So, they can’t manage their domains. For example, you can consider such popular domain companies as NameCheap, GoDaddy if you don’t want to depend on web hosting provider in the future. Important! You need a Linux Hosting to host a wordpress blog, not Windows Hosting, because you need to be able to create a database, later on in the installation.

Web Hosting Selection. There are different helpful articles describing every detail on how this ‘hard’ task has to be performed. So you will find a lot of information in these regards.

Download WordPress files. You may visit official WordPress website for this purpose.

Login to hosting cPanel and create a new database and a ftp account. Save received passwords, logins of a database and ftp.

Open ftp-client (Use FileZilla, it is a free program or CuteFtp that has 30 days of free trial period). Create a new connection: input user name, address and access details of your web hosting account. After connection is established, find the folder, where our files will be kept (it usually has the name htdosc, www or something like this. Initially, there may be located index.html file that can be deleted as we will never use it in the future.) Unpakage and download files to server.

If you use the services of hosting provider, most likely that you will have WordPress database implemented into the system or hosting company will provide a possibility to create it automatically. Contact technical support team of hosting provider or use cPanel in order to find out all the details concerning database creation and users adding.

If you hosting provider supports cPanel, then you can make use of below-mentioned instructions for creating database and the user in order to install WordPress in the end.

Login to cPanel.
Click on MySQL Databases link.
If you have no WordPress user among Users list, create it:
1. Choose WordPress user (e.g. ‘wordpress’) and enter its name into UserName field.
2. Choose password (it is desirable for password to include big and small characters and figures) and enter it into Password field.
3. Select username and password that you’ve just created.
4. Press Add User.
If you have no a database for WordPress among Databases list, just create it:
1. Select WordPress database name (e.g. ‘wordpress’ or ‘blog’) and enter in into Db field, then press Add Db.
Select username for WordPress database in Databases field using User drop-down list, then choose database in Db drop-down list. Check the presence of all the ticks in Privileges field and press Add User to Db.
When you return to the main window in Properties of MySQL Account, cPanel will reflect the information about the newly created database. You must see the username that you’ve just attached to the database (with marked entry ALL PRIVILEGES) and the additional information about connection settings for using Perl and PHP scripts in order to connect to a database. PHP code will have the following form:

$dbh = mysql_connect(“hostname“, “username“, “<PASSWORD HERE>”) or die (“message“);

mysql_select_db("databasename");

Changeе hostname, username, database name, and the password that you’ve chosen. (Pay attention: hostname field in most cases has localhost value) If you’ve got phpMyAdmin installed on your server, follow the below-mentioned instructions in order to create database and the user for the further WordPress installation. If the database intended for WordPress installation hasn’t been created yet in left drop down menu Database, then create it: Select WordPress database name (e.g. ‘wordpress’ or ‘blog’), then enter it into Create new database field and press Create. Click the Home icon which is located in the upper left window corner in order to return to the Homepage of the program, then press Privileges. If the user hasn’t been created yet in order to begin WordPress installation, create it:

1. Press Add a new User.
2. Select username for WordPress (e.g. ‘wordpress’) and enter it into User name field. (Make sure that User text field is selected in drop down list).
3. Select password (it should include some special big and small characters and figures), then enter it into Password field. (Make sure that User text field is selected in drop down list). Enter the password again into Re-type field.
4. Right down the username and passport that you’ve just created.
5. Make no changes to the options in Global privileges list.
6. Press Go.
Return to the Privileges list and press the Check Privileges icon, which concerns your WordPress username. In Database-specific privileges section select WordPress database that you’ve just created and indicate Add privileges to the following database in drop down list. The page will automatically reload and will bring the changes into user privileges for selected database. Press Check All in order to check once more all the user privileges and Press Go.
Pay attention to the server name on a report page. Server name is located after Server note at the top of the page (it usually has localhost value).
If you have shell access to web-server then it would be convenient for you to use command string, and your MySQL user has the right to create the other MySQL users and databases. In this case you may follow the below-mentioned instructions for creating WordPress database and its user.

$ mysql -u adminusername -p

Enter password:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.

Your MySQL connection id is 5340 to server version: 3.23.54

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE databasename;

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON databasename.* TO
"wordpressusername"@"hostname"

    -> IDENTIFIED BY "password";

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> EXIT

Bye

WordPress installation. Type your domain/wp-admin/install.php into a browser string and then follow the instructions appearing on the screen. It may become necessary to edit wp-config-sample.php file manually in a notepad. You should enter database name, login and user’s password. Then rename it in wp-config.php and download to server. Follow the instructions appearing on the screen.

If some problems arise, it can be connected with wrong files access rights.

So, WordPress has been successfully installed. Now customize blog and install the appropriate plug-ins.

Useful and Profitable WordPress Plug-ins.

(MAKE SURE YOU COMEBACK AN CHECK FOR UPDATES!)

CommentLuv

Each blogger knows that comments and users are crucial for successful blog development. It is very important for blogs to be regularly updated and have high level of activity. Even if you create and run a blog for non-commercial purposes, then its attractiveness will be estimated by the number of comments and activity of website users. Special attention should be paid to personal blogs, where the communication between the author and visitors is much more valuable for their authors. It means that blog commenting and navigation must be comfortable, and the procedure of filling fields should be very simple. Besides, smart commentators and active users of a blog must be provided with some interesting features. Plugin commentluv offers one of such possible competitive advantages.

What does this amazing Word Press plug-in do? It provides a link to the latest post in your current blog post under user’s comment. It gets a link by parsing RSS field of a blog. The link receives no-follow status. If you’d like you may work with exe file and add no-index to it. It will prevent your blog from giving PR to other sites. The owner of blog has the right to decide whether to activate plug-in or not. By default settings his comment will be reflected as usually without having the link to its latest post.

It’s possible to edit commentator posts manually creating links only to people you’re interested in. Nevertheless, manual editing is a difficult procedure that consumes a lot of time. It would be great to modernize plugin in the way which could enable us to provide url or email with their comments having a link to new posts. The installation is quite simple and requires minimal efforts from an owner of a blog. Simply download wp-content/plugins into a folder and then just activate it in admin panel of a website.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Plugin

After each new post is created, your blog will inform ping services about new information on the blog. This procedure stimulates search engines to index your blog as soon as possible. Some corrections of the existing post having been made, notification requests will be sent off. This will keep your blog from a ban of ping services. When you plan to publish new posts once more, then the notification to ping services will be sent only when the post has been published.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Plugin Installation

The installation is quite simple and doesn’t differ at all from the installation of any other plugins.

Upload plugin
Unpakage a folder
Download it to wp-content/plugins server
Go to blog admin panel
Go to Plugins section
Find “MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer”
Activate

“Enable pinging” tick means that plugin is working, but if you decide to suspend its work for some reasons, simply remove the tick or deactivate plugin.

“Ping now”. It commands plugin to send a notification. (If you press this button, you will see the warning that massive pinging may cause a ban)

Pink services list is synchronized with a standard one and appears in the same window.

The conclusion is as follows: never change standard settings, activate plugin and check the presence of tick in “Enable pinging” field. The rest of the work will be done by plugin itself.

Short statistics in the lower part of the page will show you all the actions done by plugin. Everything is quite simple and you will make it out easily.

MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet

For any blogger who ever struggled with low subscription rates, there’s a brand-new WordPress plugin proven to increase your sign-up rate by 3x times faster and easier than before.

Easily add the opt-in form anywhere in your wordpress blog, including the sidebar, footer, within the post itself and even in the comments.

Get it Here!

KeywordLuv.

This is also a very interesting thing, which enables commentators to provide required anchors for a link provided in user’s comments.

The user should enter the commentator name in the following way: name@keywords. As a result nickname will be simple text while keywords will be the link of the author’s blog. Certainly, you may put all the necessary keywords into ‘Name’ field without this plugin. However, the author of the blog will realize that this is spam and delete your comment immediately.

Spammers will undoubtedly like KeywordLuv, that’s why some commenting restrictions should be stipulated. You may simply turn on moderation or search in settings of plagin and WordPress. For instance, you may restrict the quantity of keywords that are usually entered or allow only trusted readers to make comments and so on.

Do-follow

In Word Press default settings each outgoing link to the author’s website is provided with rel=’external no-follow’ status. As a result, it doesn’t allow such search engine as Google and others to index links provided by users in comments. According to the statistics, the main part of blog users is online advertisers and internet marketers. They use blog commenting as fast and effective link development method in their website promotion and SEO strategies. The point is that the procedure of commenting topic-related blog posts will provide the targeted traffic to a website and have a positive impact on search engine rankings. That’s why the main purpose is to get rid of this “unnecessary” status in the links of comments. By attracting more users blog owners will be able to increase the activity on a blog.

If you do not like to work with system codes because you’re afraid of spoiling something due to the lack of programming skills or you simply prefer using plugins, you may try to make use of sem dofollow plugin. It possesses the ability to remove ‘unnecessary’ no-follow status from links of user’s website.

The process of installation for this plugin is quite simple – download module with all the necessary files to ftp into /wp-content/plugins/ folder, then activate it using admin panel.

Share This

Most people prefer using online social services. This distinguishing feature can be effectively used for internet marketing strategy of your Word Press blogs. The list of such services includes the following: notification email, news columns, telecommunications and interactive conversations. There is plugin, which is intended for adding your web pages and blog posts to numerous popular social bookmarking services. So, if an interesting article is posted on your blog and it makes a good impression on users they can share it by adding a web page of your blog post to various social bookmarking sites. This will definitely result in increasing link popularity of your blog, attracting new visitors to a website and will improve indexation of web pages by popular search engines. In other words, it will provide additional activity on a website and will increase targeted traffic. Acting in such a way, users will be able to help you in promoting your website a great deal.

Share This is considered to be one of the best plugins, which enables your blog users to add blog posts and pages to various social book marking services like Digg, Delicious and many others. Plugin installation procedure usually includes the following actions:

Download plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.1.zip

Unpack plugin into plugin’s folder.

Activate it using admin panel.

After installation Share This button will be added to each article or webpage provided on your blog. This button will remind your users about social bookmarking services. So, if users of your blog will find a blog post interesting and informative they will be able either submit it to social bookmarking sites or just add +1 to existing pages and make your article more popular acting in such a way. After pressing the button there will be console with three tabs in it.

The list of social services is a long one. You may edit settings on official plugin website. Editor interface is very simple, easy-to-use and clear. String code will appear after editing. You will have to put it into plugin settings. ShareThis plugin has user friendly interface by means of which it is possible to look through different statistics.

SEO Slugs

SEO Slugs installation is the last manipulation you should make for your regular links in order to improve search engine optimization of your Word Press blog. It will automatically remove stop words from your webpage addresses immediately after post publication. So, you won’t notice any long URLs while composing a stylish headline sentence.

Themes

There are lot of themes out there that are free and awesome, but if you want your blog to stand out from the masses, you should consider buying a theme. I use a theme which is called Thesis Theme for WordPress because it adds more power to my blog. Also, check these awesome Thesis Skins

To your success!

Professional Internet Marketing Coach
Certified M1 Consultant