Installation / Configuration of a Wordpress site
- You need a web hosting company. There are many many good hosting companies (and a few bad ones), I suggest Hostgator. If you don’t have a web host yet, Hostgator is very established and cheap and they have everything you need, so there is really no need to look further. If you have only one website (or plan on having only one), buy the starter plan, otherwise buy the next plan up and you will be able to host ALL of your websites under the one hosting account for just a bit more money. If you do NOT yet have a domain name, find one you like from a registrar like Godaddy, but buy the domain name through Hostgator when you register for your hosting account. If you DO already have a domain, ask Hostgator support how to change the name servers for your domain to point to your new hosting account (which needs to be done through your domain registrar control panel, which is different from your hosting control panel). You should also create an email account yourname, you do this from your hosting control panel, that Hostgator will send you a link to.
- From your hosting control panel, create either a forwarding email (forward yourname to your Comcast or other email account) or else create it as a POP3 email account (an email account that can be read by Microsoft Outlook or whatever mail reader you use). Either way is good, but I suggest you separate your business and personal email adresses. Note that a POP3 email account can still by read through webmail (if you use Hostgator, it can by read at http://yourdomain.com/webmail) so there is no down-side in creating your email accounts as POP3 right off the bat. However, don’t create dozens of POP3 accounts – if you need multiple email accounts, create a primary POP3 email account and create all the other ones as forwarders (to the primary account
- All of the following steps can be done by my friend Sandeep Numbhraal for less than $50, which may also include some one-on-one training over email, chat or telephone. Website (template) customization is also available for a very reasonable cost.
If you are technically savvy and prefer to do yourself, here are the steps:
- Install Wordpress to the default directory of your site using the Fantastico application , do this from your web hosting control panel. If you do NOT have a cpanel type hosting account (such as Hostgator) contact your web host and/or Sandeep about installing Wordpress.
- Login to your Wordpress administrative area (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin) and then delete all the test pages and post from the default installation (Manage > Posts and Manage > Pages). Also setup any categories that you intend to use for your posts (Manage > Categories). You need to know the differences between “Pages” (static pages on your site – stuff that stays there forever like “About us” etc) and “Posts” (articles that you write, that are distributed to your readers or syndicated to news services). Your RSS feed will only serve new articles (not static pages) which is why you need to setup your SEO settings correctly too (see below – search engines will index both static pages and posts).
- Go through the Wordpress “Settings” options (”Settings” is on the top right of the menu-bar) and configure all your options the best you can. Its particularly important to configure the “Permalinks” correctly, I suggest you use “Date and time” format for the article archives.
- Download a Wordpress template that you like and install it by unzipping it and putting the entire directory into wp-content/themes (using an FTP software like Filezilla). Then activate the template from the Wordpress Design > Themes menu. I love the free templates at BFA Web Designs for their simplicity and flexibility (configurable left- and right columns for examples) and their integration with the plugins below. Once you have installed and activated your theme, go through all the Design menu options and configure them as best you can. Then change the banner and logo images, and you’ll have a very professional looking site in under two hours of work
- Create an account at Feedburner.com for your blog, and note the feed url (normally http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNameOfYourBlog). You don’t have to do this but there is no cost and it will dramatically improve the distribution of your content (especially if you use their free email subscription services for publishing new posts). They won’t put any ads on your site or in your email, not to worry
- Download and install the following plug-ins into the wp-content/plugins directory of your Wordpress installation: All in One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Feedburner Feedsmith, Comment Relish and Subscribe to Comments. Note that you will usually just need to copy a single php file into the plugins directory, but in the case of All-in-one SEO you need to copy the entire All-in-one installation directory into the Wordpress plugins directory. You will need to activate and configure each of the plugins (click Plugins > Activate, which then brings them up on the Settings menu). The Feedburner plugin is very important and you will need to remember your Feedburner feed url. The All-in-one SEO settings are also important, if you don’t know what you’re doing you should use Sandeep or someone else to help you.
- Setup your site appearance (left and/or right side bars) from the Design > Widgets menu (after configuring the column-width in Design > Theme Options). First, I recommend a right side-bar (rather than left) for SEO reasons (you want search engines to find your content as soon as possible in your html page). You add elements to the sidebar with the “Widgets” menu. Widgets can be components – like “Pages” (a list of the static pages on your site), “Categories” (a list of the post categories with an optional article count next to each categories), “Recent posts” (recent posts you have written), or they can be text / html boxes (like the “Quotes” and the “Email subscription” boxes on this site)
- That’s it! You can write articles from your Wordpres admin interface (Write > Posts) or else use the impressive Blogjet application to compose your posts offline. Blogjet is particularly nice as you can insert images and have them uploaded automatically as part of the post (the default editor will do this too but its a bit more complicated). Note that Blogjet has a license fee after 30 days
- There are all kinds of things that you can configure from your Feedburner account, including email subscription options (offer your subscribers to receive new posts via email – a must, since very few people use RSS readers currently), access statistics, etc. Talk to Sandeep or someone else about this. Note that access statistics are also available from your hosting control panel.
- Good luck and remember to have fun!
