Term 1: Themes

A Theme is a collection of files that create the visual look of your WordPress website or blog. Themes are kinda like ‘skins’ that you can easily download, install and start using on your site. Themes also can include some custom features to give you greater control over the presentation and functionality of your site. In general, only one Theme can be used at a time.

Term 2: Templates

In WordPress, templates are one of several specific files that control how a particular page on your site is displayed. For instance, your theme may have multiple page layouts, perhaps one with a sidebar and one without. There are also templates that control the top of all your pages including navigation, called a “header”, the bottom of all your pages, called a “footer”, and “sidebars” (see below). Templates can also be created for a specific page or post, category, and much more.

Term 3: Plugins

Plugins are a collection of files that you can download and install to add some certain functionality to your site. For instance, there are plugins for e-commerce, Search Engine Optimization, to create specific features like a calendar, or to modify how you control and operate your website. There are 1,000′s of plugins, most of which are free.

Term 4: Sidebar

A sidebar is a section of your website that generally displays the along the left or right side of your pages, but can also appear in other places, such as the footer. You can also have multiple sidebars in your site based on the templates you have.

Term 5: Widgets

Widgets are the individual blocks of content that go into a sidebar. You can easily add, delete or rearrange Widgets in your sidebars by dragging and dropping in the WordPress admin center. Many Widgets can also be edited to give you extra control over how the Widgets appear on your site. Some common examples of Widgets are simple text, recent posts, advertising such as AdSense, etc.

Term 6: Pages & Posts

Pages vs. Posts are a bit confusing and could have its own article. In general though, you want to use Pages for any single pages of content that remain in the same place on your site. Pages generally have their own navigation in WordPress and are good for pages like ‘About Us’, ‘Contact Us’, etc. You can easily select different templates for pages and they are not categorized.

Posts on the other hand are used when you will be creating multiple entries about a particular topic. You can put Posts into various Categories. WordPress will then automatically handle creating various Category pages, which will list all of the Posts in that Category, generally showing only an Excerpt of the Post and putting the Posts in chronological order. For instance, if you had a blog on Hollywood happenings, you would use Posts each time you write a new entry about some celebrity doing something stupid.

Term 7: Admin Center

The Admin Center is where you control everything about your WordPress site. To access the Admin Center you will go to a specific URL on the internet and enter your username and password. From there, you will be able to add/edit/delete Pages and Posts, control Plugins and Widgets, manage your users, and much more.

Term 8: Permalinks

How your URL’s are formed is very important to Search Engine Optimization and making your pages more memorable and understandable to your visitors. In WordPress, you can easily create Permalinks, which are a particular structure to your site. Instead of using meaningless URL’s like yourdomain.com/?p=8, you could have yourdomain.com/my-page/. You can control the permalinks for each Page and Post in WordPress.

Term 9: Tags

Tags are similar to Categories, only they are less structured. For instance, you may have a Post about your favorite Football team, which perhaps you are putting in a “Sports” category. You could also use some tags like ‘Football’, ‘Cincinnati Bengals’, and ‘Carson Palmer’. Using the tags makes it possible to have a list of Tags in your sidebar where people can click the different Tags to bring up all the Pages and Posts that have those particular tags. If you have a Search box, then the Tags are also used to retrieve results for the users specific search.

Term 10: Custom Fields

WordPress includes a way to create custom values that you assign to a particular Page or Post. Your Theme, or WordPress developer can then use those fields and values to create custom functionality on your site. For instance, you may want to be able to have a rating system for whatever you are writing about. A developer could set-up a custom field where you just enter your rating and then the system takes that information and makes a pretty display feature based on the rating you assigned. The possibilities are endless with Custom Fields and are a powerful feature of WordPress.

I hope these terms help you to better understand WordPress and how it operates. Even if you have a professional helping you with your WordPress site, you’ll be better off understanding some of the basic principles so you can be on the same page when communicating with your developer.

Best of luck!

Most of you guys know, I am not a big techie person. And I always tell people that the best way to get started marketing online is by setting up a free WordPress blog. You can set up and update your blog with a few easy clicks!

Even if you don’t know anything about HTML or setting up a web page (I still don’t know HTML!), let me show you a real easy way to get a web page set up in minutes—literally!

Here’s what I did–first, I set up a WordPress blog. It was really easy setting up a blog.

I just went into my cpanel within my Host Gator web hosting account, and I clicked the Fantastico button, and my WordPress blog was set up automatically.

Boom—instant website! How’s that for easy?

Now the thing about WP blogs is that WordPress sets up the shell, but then you can customize it and make it look however you want.

You do this by installing themes and plug-ins. There are millions of free themes to choose from, and more plug-ins than you can ever hope to use. I’ll list the plug-ins that I am using so that you don’t have to go searching endlessly for the right ones.

I found a free theme for my WordPress blog within WordPress; I downloaded it, and then uploaded it with my FTP software. I then went to get some plug-ins for my WordPress blog (and you can search for these various plug-ins from within WordPress).

The plug-ins that I decided to use and that I recommend, are the following:

- All in One SEO Pack
- Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button
- Viper’s Video Quicktags
- WordPress.com Stats
- WP-EMail
- WP-EMail Widget
- AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Ultimate Google Analytics
- WordPress Video Plugin
- WP-SpamFree
- WP tags to Technorati

There are a lot of these plug-in, and millions of free themes to choose from with WP. You can tweak your blog, and add widgets, and start adding content that is important to you—that is the best things about blogs! Blogs are so unique and personal—you can really make them reflect your personality and your business any way that you want.

A blog is simply an easy way to share your thoughts, ideas and even promote your products or services. People are on the internet searching for information that interests them and once they find a site that provides good updated content about their interests they will most likely keep coming back for more

Implement some of these strategies and you’ll see traffic building fast.

1) WordPress is the best blogging platform

I recommend WordPress self hosted platform for a number of reasons. If you’re into Internet Marketing or just Blogging for the long run you’ll want to brand yourself and make it easy for people to find your site.

2) Get your own domain name

As I mentioned before you’ll need to brand yourself and having a domain name related to your product or service is the first step. There are many hosting companies that offer great service and pricing but Hostgator is one of the best in my opinion. They will help you to set up your WordPress blog or standard website.

3) Choose your WordPress template wisely

There are so many free WordPress templates available that it can become overwhelming. To start with choose one that is visually appealing and that is plugin ready. Plugins are free as well an can add additional functionality to your WordPress blog.

4) All in One SEO Pack pluging is a must that will help to increase traffic

The -All in One SEO Pack- will help optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines. – It automatically optimizes titles for search engines – Generates META tags for you, – Avoids duplicate content that can be a problem with WordPress blogs

5) Google XML Sitemap plugin

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It will support pages WordPress and custom pages. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap will be updated and all of the major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

6) Content for your Blog

You will need to work on creating original content for your site and updating it on a regular basis. Content refers to the articles or postings that you write and publish on your blog. It should be relevant to your niche so that when people search for information about your niche they can be referred to your site by the search engines.

7) Getting more traffic to your site

There are many free ways to get additional traffic to your blog. Article Marketing is one way. Posting comments on related blogs is another and visiting forums and becoming part of the community will also get you more visibility.

Having a popular and successful blog will take some time even though some may tell you otherwise. It will take hard and consistent work as well as good content and the willingness to educate yourself about SEO and web traffic. If you will take the time to write good content and work on getting traffic you will have no trouble increasing website traffic over time. Staying focused, having a plan and not giving up too quickly. After building a readership you will be able to keep them coming back as long as you post on a regular basis and give your readers information they’re interested in.

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In reality, one can try to avail unlimited bandwidth size and high speed processor service at an especially acceptable price of $12.99 each month. To some this price may appear to be a bit pricey than the one offered by other firms. But what they don’t know for certain is that many firms don’t provide all the small print of their services in their cover cost. They have further hidden charges that the buyer is oblivious of and has to pay once the site is hosted.

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Blogging with WordPress offers two huge advantages:

1. It’s FREE to download and use
2. The Search Engines, in particular Google, love WordPress blogs

WordPress is open source software, which means it’s free to use. When you choose a hosting account, try and choose one that uses a control panel called “CPanel”, because installing WordPress becomes as easy as clicking a handful of icons, it really is simple!

So you’ve bought a domain name, found a hosting company with CPanel and installed WordPress on your new domain! In theory you’re ready to make your first post! But before you do, read on!

Before you post, you need to configure your blog and optimise it for the search engines, doing this before you post makes life a lot easier for the future.

As WordPress is open source, developers around the world have written literally hundreds of plugins that enhance the functionality of your blog, and again the majority are free to install. Take a look at WordPress.org where you’ll find hundreds of free plugins. Ones I recommend are:

- Installer (install this one first, simplifies plugin installations)
- All In One SEO Pack (optimises your posts)
- Adsense Manager (adds Adsense blocks to your posts)
- Google XML Site Maps (creates a site map for your blog)
- Ultimate Tag Warrior (essential plugin for managing tags)
- Sociable (assists with social bookmarking)

Next, within your dashboard, select Options in the menu and then Permalinks. You need to change the settings on this page in order to optimise your post’s url for the search engines, this change will ensure your keywords appear in the url. In the Custom Options box, insert the following text:

/%category%/%postname%/

Typing this will optimise your posts, but you must be careful only to ever select one category per post in the future, and not change a post’s category after you’ve published it!

When you post with WordPress, it automatically notifies (known as pinging) blog directories of your new content, they index it based on the tags you assign. The search engine robots regularly visit these directories, and as a result your new post will be indexed by them very quickly. Rapid indexing is one of the huge advantages of blogging!

In your blogs configuration, you should add as many directory sites as possible to ping, in addition to the default url. Simply search on the web for “ping list”.

Finally, you need to optimise the appearance of your site. You don’t want to use the basic template that comes with WordPress. If you do a search online for WordPress themes, you’ll find hundreds to download for free.org again in their themes directory. Whilst there are hundreds of free themes around, I never seem to find one that perfectly meets my needs, so I often end up buying one!

Once you’ve installed the theme of your choice, activated all of your plugins, and made the configuration adjustments I’ve recommended, you’re ready to post, so what are you waiting for!

1) Type of server.

You can choose between a Windows machine, or a Linux machine. Windows has become more competitive in recent years with the release of a more user friendly control panel. The features have also been greatly improved. You will want to choose a Windows environment to work in if you are mainly using Windows related products, services, and programming languages. For instance, if your entire website is developed using ASP.NET, then you need to have a Windows server.

The other type of server that you can use is a Linux server. A Linux server has been known to be more robust and reliable. Since Linux is an open source OS, you can expect hosting to be more affordable. In fact, the OS is so powerful that almost anything can be done on Linux servers. This is an immensely powerful OS and is most suitable for programming languages like Perl or PHP.

2) Admin control panel.

Even for the same OS, there are several control panels available. Customers have been complaining for years due to a lack of user friendly control panels. However, the control panels have stabilized during the past couple of years. Today, HELM is the leading control panel for Windows, and Cpanel is the leading control panel for Linux servers. Both control panels offer sophisticated features. You can use file managers to manage files, create databases, create email accounts, read emails online, and more.

3) Programming languages.

Your final buying decision depends a lot on your choice of programming language. Of course, the development environment has a lot to do with the developer’s background and experience. If PHP is the preferred language, then a Linux server with Cpanel as the control panel would be the ideal combination. Although Windows support PHP, you still want to avoid using Windows to run a PHP powered site. That’s because there are still some features that you can’t really run on a Windows machine. For instance, you cannot create cron jobs on a Windows server, but you can do so easily on a Linux server. A cron job is an automated command that is issued to the machine at regular intervals. It can be created manually in Cpanel, or using a script.

It appears that PHP is winning market share because the programming language is open source, easy to learn, and doesn’t require any complicated software. In other words, almost anyone can pick up and programming language. In fact, if you start hiring freelancers, you realize that many PHP programmers are self-taught. They just pick things up as they work on various projects on the Internet.

Consider the pros and cons carefully before signing up for a hosting account.

WordPress has generally been defined as a smart system for those who want to publish their very own blogs. Written in PHP, WordPress is quite easy to use and highly functional. Millions of users have learned to rely on custom WordPress themes for their blogs and are now spreading the word to their friends. Premium WordPress themes represent some of the most popular searches on the web, especially as there are hundreds of websites presenting such templates as great prices. The important thing is that you are patient enough to find the very best.

You may be wondering what the difference between free and premium WordPress themes is. While you may not have to pay for those that are free, these cannot be compared so easily. Custom WordPress themes have a professional look and they are recognized for their top quality. The template is simply amazing and you can convince of the difference on your own, once you enter online and start searching. Two other very important features of a premium theme are represented by: the footer contains absolutely no links, plus the footer PHP file is not ciphered.

Premium WordPress themes are generally used for personal online blogs but you can also expect to find them used for business blogs. If you are interested in purchasing custom WordPress themes, then all you have to do is go to the website of your choice and click on a simple button. The most common method of payment is through PayPal. Online, you will encounter the greatest diversity of premium WordPress themes, with various elements of designs and motives. Those who are planning to start an artist’s blog are invited to use custom WordPress themes, especially those that are art-inspired. We are talking about a 3-column template, with bright shades of red and yellow.

You may have noticed that the number of party blogs has increased in the past few years. People and particularly youngsters are using the revolution in blogging to catch up with friends on partying. They use custom WordPress themes suitable for their needs, with funky designs and awesome colors. You can expect party blogs templates to come in darker shades, such as black and blue. Premium WordPress themes for party blogs can also come in simpler tones and designs, suitable for those who are beginners. It all depends on what you are looking for and what image you are trying to create.

If you are a girl creating a blog, then perhaps you might prefer custom WordPress themes with floral elements. What does red garden suggest to you? Well, you can expect a premium theme that comes with bright red colors and beautiful flowers. This is perfect for your personal blog. There are plenty of other choices out there, such as a pink evening or a windmill sunset in elegant shades of pink and grey. Discover premium WordPress themes today and prepare yourself to amaze all of your friends with your blogging!

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Moving Towards a New Domain Name

The first thing to do is create a database back-up. The entire WordPress installation needs to be downloaded with no exceptions. This is not the time to tidy up your install or to upgrade/change anything. That would have to wait after the blog has been moved and is shown to be working. Your computer should now have these items: one or more database backups plus all your wpfiles, folders and images directories. The backups should be copied again to somewhere safe on your machine so that the next stage can be done on a copy.

Alterations are needed to be made. The details of your new mysql connection have to be changed by opening the file “wp-config.php” on your WordPress install. The file: SCR 1.0.002 Freeware Edition (13KB) should be downloaded to search and replace your website URL with your Xampp url. This is because your blog address inside the database has to be changed. Database files can be very large, thus opening them can be excruciatingly slow. It could even crash your machine. By replacing the old address with your new address, the URLs within your site will still work.

Moving hosts will mean changes in your passwords. You can double check your new passwords for your mysql connection as well as other passwords that you have in use. After which, it is now time to upload all your files to your new web space and restore your database. From the website cpanel, select the database you are using. You should still need to look inside the “wp – options” table to check that the values in “site – url” and “home” are correct. Clear your cache and cookies before checking your new site.

It is possible that you will get a blank page when looking at your blog right after moving. In this case, the themes should be checked. A faulty theme file causes a blank page. You can try changing themes or uploading a new theme then changing to it. Should this step not help, you should check whether all the WordPress files are present and are of the correct size. You can use your ftp client to download a new set of WordPress files, if needed.

There may be instances where you would need to move WordPress around within your server. WordPress is flexible enough to handle this situation. Moving WordPress from one server to another is also possible.

Moving Within

WordPress files can be moved from one location on your server to another. Start by creating the new location using any of these methods: create the new directory when you will be moving your WordPress core files to a new directory, or move the WordPress to your root directory by making sure all index, php, .htaccess and other files that might be copied over are backed-up and/or moved. This will then make the root directory ready for the new WordPress files. It is crucial that you set the URL locations before you move the file.

When done, test your site to confirm that it works right. Make sure that you let people know the new address when the change involves a new address to your blog. Consider adding some redirection instructions in your .htaccess file to serve as a guide to visitors towards the new location.

Handling Redirects after Moving a WordPress Blog

Concerns should not be limited to the moving of the actual WordPress program files but also on finding a way to redirect visitors that may be following outdated links to an old content. It is possible that redirects can mess up RSS feeds and search engine results thus an ideal redirect option that preserves both past and current search results is the key. After moving your WordPress blog, look into how 301 redirects can be properly handled.

A suggested way goes like this: open your .htaccess file in the directory that houses your newly moved WordPress file and edit in either your host’s file manager interface or by downloading to your local machine. Insert a line at the top that reads: redirect301/blog/http://www.yoursite.com/. You have to make sure to insert the opening and trailing / at the end of the destination path. Save your .htaccess file. Reupload it if you’re editing on your local machine rather than on the server. Load your old WordPress URL to make this work.

Moving Several Posts from One Blog to Another

When you decide to move over all your WordPress related posts from another blog, the task is basically to extract a few posts and their comments and to insert them into the database of the new blog. This can be accomplished by following these steps: click on the wp-posts table name in the left panel when you are in the proper database. It should be noticed that other tables might have a different prefix. Click browse on the top in the next panel. Select the checkbox at the beginning of the rows that you want to extract or export. Select “Export” at the bottom of the rows where it says “with selected”. Deselect structure on the next panel, leave selected Data, check Save As file, then Go. You will then get a prefix – posts.sqlfile.

Open the file in your chosen text editor such as Notepad. Change the wp-part everywhere to target_ -, depending on the prefix of the tables where you want to move the post using Search/Research. You are ready to go if you move the post to a new, empty database. However, if the target blog has posts in the database, there is some more work to do. You have to check in the database what the ID number of your last post is in the target blog. You should also go back to the .sqlfile and take a look at the first line below Dumping data for table…

Moving a WordPress Blog to Your Own WordPress Installation

WordPress is a platform you install on your own/hosted server and maintain the installation yourself. However, attempting to make the move should only be done if you’re comfortable with ftp, basic work in the UNIX shell, basic SQL and a little bit of general hacking. Expertise is not really required but possessing the basic skills and the willingness to give it a go are.

The first thing to do is to install WordPress and get a hosting service. Choose one that does an automatic install of WordPress to do away with fiddling. Of course, you would need http://mysql.php, some form of ftp access and a shell account. The challenge lies on setting up your blog on a new place while finding the theme and the plugins you want. The themes on http://WordPress.com normally have links to places you can download them from.