Installing an Attractive WordPress Blog Has Never Been Easier
If you have been intimidated by the thought of installing a WordPress blog, think again. With the recent upgrades to WordPress, it has never been easier to install a nice looking blog and tweak it to your heart’s desire.
INSTALLING A BLOG
If you do not have a blog yet, simply go to the control panel at your site – generally www.YourSite.com/cpanel - click the Fantastico icon, and then click the option to install WordPress in a directory of your choice. Once the blog has been installed, you will want to go into your administrative panel, which is called a dashboard. The dashboard enables you to easily update the blog software, add plugins, and change the look of your blog. This is also where you add content in the form of new articles and posts.
UPDATING THE BLOG SOFTWARE
Recent updates to the blogging software have allowed you to update the software with just a click within your dashboard, and also to search, review and install plugins directly from the administrative dashboard. Plugins enhance your blog’s capabilities.
HOW TO WORK WITH BLOG THEMES
In its June 2009 update, WordPress took the plugin capability a step farther by expanding it to include easy theme installation. The new WordPress Version 2.8 offers an outstanding and super easy to use theme feature that is similar to the plugin feature. You simply specify the type of theme that you want; for instance, a 2 column blue and gold theme, click search and then preview the free themes that are available. Select the theme that appeals to you and WordPress will install it from the dashboard. The days of unzipping and then FTP’ing your theme to your site are over and you’ll save a heck of a lot of time.
Once your theme is installed, you can edit the php pages if you want. The process is much easier with WordPress’ new color-coded theme editor. The code display in the new WordPress platform is now numbered and colored, making editing your PHP and stylesheet pages much, much easier.
There are some awesome free themes available, including the magazine style themes that look like a professional publication. If you use these types of themes, you will be working with a plugin called Timthumb that will display your images as thumbnails on the front page and display larger versions within the blog post. Timthumb and magazine style WordPress themes are pretty easy to work with, but sometimes the help file is not entirely clear because it assumes that you know things that you do not know. At Not Guru, you can find a step-by-step tutorial, replete with screen shots, which show you how to work with magazine style WordPress themes.
RECENT TWEAKS BOOST YOUR BLOG’S SPEED
The new WordPress software gets even sweeter – they’ve tweaked the blogging platform so it runs a lot faster.
BLOGGING WILL IGNITE YOUR STAGNANT SITES
WordPress blogs, when updated frequently, are a fantastic search engine traffic magnet. The key is that the blog should be updated consistently. When it is, new posts generally show up in the search engines on the same day and often within hours. There’s a way to make this process even faster and it is free. What you do is install what is called the SEO blog plugin. WordPress’ plugin installation feature makes installing the blog traffic plugin a snap. In just a few minutes and a couple of mouse clicks, the zip file will be uploaded from your computer hard drive, unpacked, and fully installed. Once installed, the plugin will tweak your blog, have you install other traffic-pulling plugins, and optimize the search engine capabilities of your blog. As you tweak your blog using the SEO blog software, you can see your SEO grade, like 80% or 90% optimized. You will see a huge difference in your blog’s performance once the SEO plugin is installed.
Blogging is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website and to keep a site up-to-date and indexed. Installing and maintaining a blog has never been easier, thanks to the new WordPress release. Blog installation tips, computer help and other practical guides are provided daily at the Not Guru blog.
Tags: Blogging, how to install wordpress, how to optimize your blog, how to tweak WordPress, seo, wordpress, Wordpress plugins, WordPress themes