Work At Home Business Blog

Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

This tutorial is based on WordPress 2.1 with the following plugins installed and activated, newer versions of WordPress may not have all the plugins described in this guide, a different plugin that provides the same function, or a plugin may have been rendered obsolete when integrated into WordPress :

• Adsense-Deluxe
• Google (XML) Sitemap
• Akismet
• All In One SEO
• Feedburner Feed Replacement
• OneClick
• Share This
• Sidebar Widgets
• Smart Update Pinger
• Subscribe To Comments
• Tagalize It
• Ultimate Tag Warrior
• What Would Seth Godin Do

Most of the plugins listed comes from the Authority Black Book written by Jack Humphrey of authoritysitecenter.com. After reading the Authority Black Book and implementing most of Jack’s recommendations for WordPress blogging I decided to help those new to WordPress get their blog setup and Web 2.0 ready. After your blog is setup your next step is to get a copy of the Authority Black Book and see it all come together.If you are new to WordPress the first thing you will notice when you login are all the different options available to you in the administration panel. But don’t get overwhelmed we are going to walk through getting everything setup. There are a few extra steps involved to get the most out of WordPress.

To login to the WordPress admin panel go to your blog directory and add /wp-admin/ to the end of the URL it would look like this is you installed your blog into a directory called blog: www.yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin/

Getting to Know The WordPress Admin Panel

Now you will see a list of items across the top of the admin panel like this:

Dashboard Write Manage Comments Blogroll Presentation Plugins Users Options

Clicking on one of those panels will open a subpanel with more options.
Keep in mind that the contents of some subpanels vary depending on the plugins you currently have installed and activated.

The Dashboard has the recent activity on your blog, the latest information about WordPress and links to more documentation, plugins, themes and the support forum.

The Write panel is self-explanatory; you create posts and pages here.

The Manage panel allows you to edit posts, pages, uploads and categories. From here you can see lists of all your Posts, Pages, and Categories and edit or view anything in those lists. On this page you can also edit your templates and other files used by your blog, import content from various sources, and export your blog.

The Comments panel is where you can moderate comments by others made about your posts.

The Blogroll is a list of other blogs or websites you think your readers my find interesting. The default install of WordPress comes with a few blogs in here, you can delete them if you wish, but be sure to add “Work At Home Business Blog” http://www.esmartjob.com/blog. (I know, a shameless plug).

The Presentation panel is where you change the look of your blog. Here you can change the theme, customize a themes templates, manage themes and add sidebar widgets if you have the “Sidebar Widgets” plugin activated. * Widgets are now integrated into WordPress and the “Sidebar Widgets” plugin is no longer necessary.

The Plugins panel is for activating and deactivating plugins. Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs.

The Users panel is for adding and editing users that will be posting on your blog. Click the Users panel and then the Your Profile subpanel, make any changes here you need to make now and click “update Profile”.

Getting To Know The WordPress Options Subpanel

You may see more options available in this subpanel than explained in this walk through, but for now we only going to look at the default WordPress options. Some of the other options shown in here are for plugins that will be addressed individually.

When you click on the far right Options panel, a subpanel will appear below the main panel. You will then be in the General Options subpanel. Here is where you can change the name of your blog and the tagline or slogan. You can also add or change your email address. Nothing else in here needs addressed at this time.

Next click the Writing subpanel; this is where you can specify the default category for all new posts and other options. Don’t worry about adding categories if you have none yet, you can do that as you make new posts. The last item in here is “Update Services”, that is a list of sites to ping when you make a post. Don’t worry about that list yet; we have a plugin that will take care of that. Nothing else in here should need changed unless you want to post by email, if so fill in that information.

The Discussion subpanel allows you to change the way people can comment on your posts. The default settings here are fine for now, and we will later activate a plugin to take care of SPAM comments.

Still working in the main Options panel, click the Privacy subpanel. Make sure to tick the radio button next to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers.”

The Permalinks subpanel gives you the option to change the way each post’s URL is displayed. By default the URL structure looks like this: http://www.esmartjob.com/blog/?p=123 with the ?p=123 being the actual post URL, kind of ugly isn’t it? There is a link inside this area to explain all the different options available, you could read all about Permalinks here or just paste the following code in the “Custom Structure” box. Tick the “Custom, specify below” radio button and paste this in the box: /%category%/%postname% that will turn the ugly URL into something like this: http://www.esmartjob.com/blog/catagory/title-of-post.

The Miscellaneous subpanel is the less important subpanel under the Options panel; there really is nothing in here that needs to be addressed. Features like file uploads, link tracking and support for custom “hacks” can be controlled from the Miscellaneous options subpanel.

You will notice more subpanels under the main Options panel if I installed Wordpress for you or if you have the recommended list of plugins activated, we will address these options later.

For more in-depth information of the WordPress Administration panel:
Administration Panels « WordPress Codex

Changing and Adding WordPress Themes

From the WordPress dashboard click Presentation on the main panel. Here you will see the current theme first and other installed themes below it. Simply click on the theme you want to use and it will now be active. Now that was simply wasn’t it?

If you don’t like any of the installed themes and want another just go to http://themes.WordPress.net/ for thousands of free themes to download. After you download a theme to your computer do not unzip it. If the “OneClick Installer” plugin is activated you should see the OneClick Install subpanel under the main dashboard. Click OneClick Install, browse to your new theme next to “Browse”, choose Theme on the drop down box and upload it. Go back to the Themes subpanel and activate the theme it if it isn’t already.

I highly suggest choosing a theme that is “Widget ready”. You can sort themes at http://themes.WordPress.net/ for only “Widget ready” themes but at times a few that aren’t will get through. The only real way to see if a theme is “Widget ready” is to activate the theme and look for a Widgets subpanel next to the Themes subpanel.

While we are talking about themes and are in the Presentation panel you should also see the following subpanels or more depending on the currently activated plugins.

Themes Widgets Theme Editor Install Theme Manage Themes Update Themes

The Theme Editor shows the code for the current theme; on the right side are the different templates related to current theme. You can make changes to the themes templates here if you know how but that is beyond the realm of this tutorial. Just keep in mind if you plan on messing around in here be sure to copy the contents of the file to a safe location BEFORE you do anything. If you do make a mistake paste the unedited code you saved back into the editor. If you can’t change it back you will need to delete the file you changed and upload an unedited version to your web host again. The other subpanel items in here are self-explanatory. In the future I may explain how to change the header image and make other minor changes, or if you want search Google or go to www.WordPress.org for more information.

Configuring WordPress Plugins

At the beginning of this tutorial I listed a group of recommended plugins and if you used my Blog Building service most of those are installed and activated. Some of these will still need addition attention and some will need an explanation for proper use. Most of the plugins have an active link in the Plugin Management page for more information.

Using the WordPress OneClick Installer Plugin

The beauty of the OneClick plugin is that you can now upload new plugins and themes right from your WordPress dashboard. Just download them to your computer and browse for the compressed (zipped) folder to upload it’s that simple.

To upload a new plugin from the WordPress dashboard, Click the main dashboard pabel and then the OneClick Install subpanel, from there you can upload the compressed plugin folder from your computer. Then go to the Plugins panel or Manage Plugins subpanel and click activate.

If you used my blog installer service the OneClick plugin should have already been installed and activated for you. If not please contact me or read the instructions here: Upload WordPress Themes and Plugins From The Dashboard

If I installed your blog the following steps have already been done for you, so you can skip to the next section.

First we need to get the plugins installed so you can customize your blog. If I installed and setup WordPress for you then you will have a pretty extensive list of the most popular plugins already installed and activated including the Installer. Installed means the plugin has been uploaded to your hosting account and is available to be put to use by activating it from within WordPress.

The first plugin to activate is called OneClick you can find it on here. This plugin lets you install other plugins and themes without needing to FTP upload them to your web hosting account.

In order to use this plugin you will need to change the permissions of the plugin and themes directory in your web hosting account. Login to your hosting account, go to the file manager and browse to your blogs directory. In there open the “wp-content” folder and change the “plugins” and “themes” folder permissions to 777.

I am going to get off on a tangent here but it’s very important to know what do when a plugin goes bad. While you are in your web hosting account and in the “wp-content” folder, click on the “plugins” folder and look around. If by chance you activate a plugin and you can’t see your blog or dashboard anymore go back to your plugins folder in your hosting account and delete the plugin you activated. That will get your blog back and a lesson not to use that plugin again!

Now lets activate the first plugin. Click Plugins, here you will see a list of the available plugins, scroll down to find the “Installer” and click “activate” on the right side. Some plugins are that simple, others may need configured after activating depending on the plugins use. We will go through the rest of the WordPress plugins later, for now lets get your blog looking the way you want.

Working With WordPress Widgets Customizing The Sidebar

WordPress widgets are things you can use to put content into your WordPress blog’s sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page. Using simple drag and drop and cut and paste you can make changes to the sidebar with a click of the mouse.

Activate the Sidebar Widgets plugin by clicking the Plugins main panel, scroll down to “Sidebar Widgets” and click “activate” on the right. If you have the “Installer” plugin activated you will also see a Manage Plugins subpanel, both will allow you to activate or deactivate plugins.

Clicking the Presentation panel will now show a new Sidebar Widgets subpanel is your theme is “Widget ready”. Click the Sidebar Widgets subpanel, and you will now see a “Sidebar Arrangement” screen. The number of sidebars in here depends on the theme; you may see one or more sidebars.

Below the “Sidebar Arrangement” you will see some “Available Widgets” boxes, you can now drag and drop any of those boxes into the “Sidebar Arrangement” above and arrange them in any order you wish.

Further down you will see two drop down lists, one for “Text Widgets” and another for “RSS Feed Widgets”. You can add up to 9 of these widgets, the most versatile are the “Text Widgets”. You can add anything in here you want including HTML and scripts such as an opt-in for your autoresponder and Google Adsense, the possibilities are endless.

Go to the drop down for “Text Widgets” and choose a one or more and click save. Now the number you chose are in the “Available Widgets” box. Drag one of them into the sidebar. You will now see a little box on the right side of the widget that means it is customizable. Click the little box on the widget and it will open displaying two boxes, the very top can be the title (optional, text only) and the bottom can be anything (HTML, scripts or just text).

Keep in mind once you place a widget into a sidebar and click “Save Changes” only the widgets you dragged into the “Sidebar Arrangement” box will now show up on your blog. Until then the default sidebar will be shown. You can arrange the widgets in any position on the sidebar by dragging them into any position in the “Sidebar Arrangement” box.

See this post for more information and a video: Setup FeedBurner And Widgets On WordPress Blog

Getting a FeedBurner feed and adding it to the sidebar

FeedBurner optimize your RSS feeds distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.

To setup FeedBurner click the main Options panel, then the FeedBurner subpanel. The directions in here are very easy to follow. Just click the “create a FeedBurner feed” link and signup for your feed. Then place your new feed address into the field in line 2 and click save.

Next we need to add your new feed address in a few other places:

Click the main Presentation panel, then the Sidebar Widgets subpanel, scroll down to the Available Widgets section and drag the RSS 1 widget into the sidebar above (if it isn’t already in there). Next click on the little box on the right of the RSS 1 widget and it will open up. If the screen turns gray and you don’t see the box scroll up to make it visible. Place your FeedBurner URL in here and if you want a description also, close the box, drag it to the desired position on the sidebar and click Save Changes.

Now your FeedBurner feed will display on your sidebar.

The last place to add your FeedBurner feed is in the WWSGD plugin.

The WWSGD plugin displays a small pop-up box to your visitors asking them to subscribe to your blogs feed. We are going to change that to your FeedBurner address.

Click the main Options panel then the WWSDG subpanel you will then see a box of code similar to what’s shown below. Replace your FeedBurner URL address with the existing URL shown highlighted. Make sure to place it between the apostrophe’s ‘.

<p style=’border:thin dotted black; padding:3mm;’>If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my <a href=’http://feeds.feedburner.com/esmartjob/vdxg‘>RSS feed</a>. Thanks for visiting!</p>

I suggest choosing the location of the message Before Post and then changing the Repetition box to at least 7 and click Save Settings.See this post for more information and a video: Setup FeedBurner And Widgets On WordPress Blog

Configuring Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress

AdSense-Deluxe is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress 1.5+ (including WP 2.0) for quickly inserting Google or Yahoo! ads into your blog posts, and managing when and where those ads are displayed.

If I installed your blog then Adsense-Deluxe should already be installed and would just need activated and configured. If it is not already installed you can follow these instructions or contact me to do it for you.

Installing the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin is very easy, just copy the adsense-deluxe.php file to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. So if your blog were installed in the root directory of your site login to your hosting accounts file manager, go to the “wp-contents” folder then the “plugins” folder and place the file in there.

Now login to your WordPress admin panel, go to “plugins” and activate the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin on the right. Clicking the main “Options” panel should now present you with a new “AdSenseDeluxe” subpanel click that and let’s get started.

In the Options for AdSense-Deluxe Plugin page on the right click “(Add New)”, under “New AdSense Block” put a name for your new block, if this is your first one it will revert to the default name <!–adsense–> so it really doesn’t matter what you call the first block. Now just paste your AdSense code in the “AdSense Code” box and click “Add AdSense Block”

Adding additional blocks will now add the name of each new block, for example if you create a new block called “new” will return a name that looks like this:
<!–adsense#new–>

Placing the ad blocks into posts is as simple as pasting in the name of the block where you want the ads to appear, but you must paste them into the “code” box and not the “Visual” box in the “Write Post” screen. You could write your post in “Visual” mode and then switch it “Code” and paste the AdSense block (<!–adsense#new–> ) wherever you want.

There is an Adsense-Deluxe drop-down box that can be used from the Write Post panel but only if you chose not to use the visual editor when writing. To turn this option off go to Users, then the Your Profile subpanel and uncheck the box next to “Use the visual editor when writing”. Now the AdSense Deluxe drop-down box should appear when writing or editing a post. Simply place your curser where you want your AdSense ads to appear in the post and select what code you want from the drop-down box.

I suggest creating a post template filled with all your AdSense codes (and anything else you may want), just start a new post called “Post Template” and save it without publishing it. Then when you write a new post open the post template in “Code” copy the code and paste it into your new post. Now delete what you don’t want in your new post, add the new content and publish.

This WordPress plugin is very versatile and you can use it for more than ads, you can put anything you want into the “AdSense Code” block and display just about anything you wish. There are also some advanced options for using it in templates in the read me file.

See this post for more information and a video: How To Use The WordPress Plugin AdSense-Deluxe
WordPress Plugin Smart Update Pinger

Smart Update Pinger automatically pings or notifies a list of services when you publish a post. You can modify this list by going to main Plugins panel then the Smart Update Pinger subpanel. The Ping Log may show numerous ping errors and if some sites show in here on a regular basis you may want to delete them.

This plugin causes your post to take longer to publish because as soon as you click Publish on a post the plugin goes to work pinging your blog.

If you have this plugin activated it is not advisable to use any other services to manually ping your blog, pinging too often is not recommended.

I will continue to add to this page and notify all those that utilized my Blog Builder service of any updates.

You can also find more information in the WordPress Blog category or over at WordPress Guides.

So others may benefit, if you have any questions or comments please post them below in the Leave A Reply Box. You can also be notified of any other comments by checking the Notify me of followup comments via e-mail box.

About the Author:
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Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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