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Customizing Your First WordPress Blog:

Attracting Visitors (and Google & Co.)

Training Manual 2

by Matt Bisogno

http://www.HorseRacingExperts.co.uk/biz/

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Contents Customizing Your First WordPress Blog: ....................................................................................................... 1

Attracting Visitors (and Google & Co.) .......................................................................................................... 1

Training Manual 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 1

Making Your Free .Wordpress.com Site More Attractive ......................................................................... 3

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3

Making your .wordpress.com site more attractive............................................................................... 3

Changing the theme of your free .wordpress.com site ........................................................................ 5

Adding a Post to a free .wordpress.com site ........................................................................................ 7

Adding a Page to a free .wordpress.com site ....................................................................................... 9

Adding Features to your free .wordpress.com site ............................................................................ 10

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Section 1: Making Your Free .Wordpress.com Site More Attractive

Introduction

As I’ve already mentioned, I strongly recommend you go down the route of securing your own private

domain at the earliest opportunity. However, for now, I will continue to illustrate how to design your

website for both .wordpress.com free domains and privately hosted domains.

In this section, we’ll look at how to make your site look more appealing; how to add your first post and

page; and, how to add ‘widgets’.

Making your .wordpress.com site more attractive

Log in to your .wordpress.com site by going to http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/wp-admin (where

yoursitename is your site’s name!)

This will bring you to the centre of the blogging universe, your Wordpress Dashboard:

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Let’s look in more detail at the parts we’re especially interested in:

So, first up, let’s change the look and feel of our site by amending the header, or changing the theme.

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Changing the theme of your free .wordpress.com site

Click the ‘Themes’ link under the ‘Appearance’ heading, and choose a theme you like from those listed.

Having clicked the ‘Activate’ link, we can now customize the theme with an image of our choice (note

that not all themes allow you to do this. PressRow is one that does).

Select ‘Header’ from the ‘Appearance’ menu, and you will be given some options to change the picture

and the text style, like this:

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Now, choose a suitable image from your computer. (Hint: you can search for images online, but you

should make sure they are ‘rights free’. That is, make sure you have permission to use the image you

choose).

Click ‘Upload’. Crop the image as necessary to fit the header style. And bingo, we have our newly

stylized blog look:

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Adding a Post to a free .wordpress.com site

Posts are snippets of content that move down your blog as new content supersedes them. They act very

much like an online diary, and are the ‘fluid’ part of your website. In the case of Geegeez or Horse-

Racing.ie, these are the reason that people return to the sites again and again, as the information is

always relevant.

So let’s add a post to our .wordpress.com site.

From the dashboard, we’ll go to ‘Posts’, and then ‘Add post’.

As well as text, you can add all sorts of other elements using the top toolbar, as follows:

And the lower toolbar provides more familiar formatting options, such as bold text, italics,

strikethrough, and so on.

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When you have finished writing your post, and adding in any graphics or sound or formatting you might

like, you should add ‘tags’. These are simply words that describe your post or part of its content.

For instance, here is a list of the tags I used when I posted my Grand National 2010 preview:

Each word or phrase was used in the article and summed up an element of Grand National 2010 for me

at that time. Tags are very useful for assisting Google and the other search engines in understanding

what your article is about, and indexing it according.

For instance, a search in Google for ‘Oodachee’ brings this result on page 2 (position 13 of 26,000):

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Before we publish our posts, we also have options to either:

‘Save as Draft’ – finish what we’re doing later without losing any of our work

‘Preview’ – see what the post would look like on the blog before we actually publish it there. This is

especially useful if you’re using images or tables in your post, as they sometimes run beyond the

available width of the blog. Always preview before posting!

Adding a Page to a free .wordpress.com site

Pages are static pieces of content that remain the same (or virtually the same) as long as the website is

there. They act just like a traditional website, and are the main reason I advocate using Wordpress:

because it has all the functions of a ‘normal’ website but with so much more besides, and all from a

pretty straightforward ‘dashboard’ control centre.

So let’s add a page. Adding a page is almost exactly the same as adding a post. We click ‘Add New’ under

the ‘Pages’ menu on the left side of the dashboard.

You can vary the position of the pages, by using the ‘Parent’ dropdown box on the right hand side, and

also the ‘Order’ by selecting a number greater than 0. (The default is 0, which orders all pages equally

and alphabetically).

Finally, if you don’t want to allow comments on pages (as opposed to posts, where typically you’d

encourage feedback), then untick the ‘Allow Comments’ checkbox in the Discussion section beneath the

main area. I also recommend you disallow trackbacks and pingbacks.

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Adding Features to your free .wordpress.com site

Now that we’ve made our site look much more appealing to visitors, by changing the graphics and

adding some words and pictures on our chosen subject, we’re going to make it still more attractive by

adding interactive elements to it.

One of the keys to successful blogging, which many people do not understand, is to create a dialogue

rather than a monologue.

What I mean by that is this: I don’t want to simply pour forth on a given subject as though mine is the

only voice. Rather, I want to present my side of the argument, and invite you to come back to me with

yours. By engaging people like this, you will encourage them to revisit your site and to contribute to its

growing content.

So how do we do this? With widgets and plugins of course!

What’s a widget?

Good question, and – in simple terms – it is merely a little add-in that makes your website ‘do’

something. For instance, the ‘polls’ widget enables me to ask people questions, and get feedback on

things that I’m interested in.

This is very powerful, and so easy to implement. Every blog should have one of these, and very few

actually do!

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Widgets also customize the way our ‘sidebars’ look. Let me explain: a blog site typically consists of two

or three columns of stuff, only one of which is the actual content. Take a look at Geegeez and Horse-

Racing.ie again:

In this case, there is a left and a right ‘sidebar’, and the content area is in the middle. Make sense?

Here we see that Horse-Racing.ie is a ‘two column’ Wordpress site, with just one sidebar on the right.

Neither is better than the other – it’s just a case of personal preference.

So now let’s customize the content in our sidebar to be how we’d like it.

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I want to change the Meta and Blogroll elements to something more ‘consumable’, like a list of recent

posts and perhaps a list of my recent Twitter tweets (because I’m very hip with the kids! ;)

To do this, I just drag the titles from the main area onto the right hand side, and enter any descriptive

text there. I then click ‘Save’ and my choices should be registered. Let’s take a look at the site now:

And that’s it. Thereafter, it’s simply a question of writing posts as and when you have something to say

(if you’re like me, this will be every day, many times a day. I have to reign myself back in!)

And of course, you can add posts – maybe to a page where you have something to sell, maybe to a

betting system review where you can claim a commission (if the product is decent) for your time.

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Section 2: Making Your Privately Hosted Site More Attractive

Introduction

Great, you’ve got a privately hosted domain and installed your Wordpress blog on it. This gives you the

maximum amount of flexibility in terms of what you can do to make it attractive, both to human and

mechanical visitors (i.e. prospective customers and search engine ‘spiders’ trawling your site).

In this section, we’ll look at how to make your site look more appealing; how to add your first post and

page; and, how to add ‘widgets’ and ‘plugins’. Much of it is similar to the sections above, but there are

some key differences too.

Making your website more attractive

Log in to your website’s Wordpress control panel (note, not the cpanel – we’re done with that for now!)

by going to http://yoursitename.co.uk/wp-admin (where yoursitename is your site’s name!)

This will bring you to the centre of the blogging universe, your Wordpress Dashboard:

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Let’s look in more detail at the parts we’re especially interested in. Like I say, there are some subtle but

crucial differences here:

So, first up, let’s change the look and feel of our site by changing the theme…

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Changing the theme of your website

Click the ‘Add New Themes’ link under the ‘Appearance’ heading.

Now, before we go any further, let’s locate a super cool theme for our site. Flip over to Google, and type

in something like, “Free yoursubjectmatter Wordpress theme”, like so:

Search around a bit to find a theme you like, and download it to your computer as a .zip file (most

themes available for download are already in .zip format, so you just download them to your PC).

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Now the file is saved to your computer (remember where you saved it!), go back to the dashboard and

select ‘Upload’ (next to ‘Search’ in the list below):

Then click ‘Browse’, and locate the .zip file you just saved. Then choose ‘Install Now’:

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Now we should click the ‘Activate’ link to upgrade our theme to the one we just selected.

If you see a screen similar to the one above, you’ll know you’ve done this correctly.

To double check, open a new browser window and type in your domain name,

www.yourdomainname.co.uk (or whatever it is). If it looks like the theme you just uploaded, you’ve

done it correctly. Well done! ;-)

Now let’s make the site content look the way we want it to…

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Adding a Post to your website

Posts are snippets of content that move down your blog as new content supersedes them. They act very

much like an online diary, and are the ‘fluid’ part of your website. In the case of Geegeez or Horse-

Racing.ie, these are the reason that people return to the sites again and again, as the information is

always relevant.

So let’s add a post to our website.

From the dashboard, we’ll go to ‘Posts’, and then ‘Add post’.

As well as text, you can add all sorts of other elements using the top toolbar, as follows:

Note that the ‘polls’ option is not available unless you install that plug-in. More on that later.

And the lower toolbar provides more familiar formatting options, such as bold text, italics,

strikethrough, and so on.

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When you have finished writing your post, and adding in any graphics or sound or formatting you might

like, you should add ‘tags’. These are simply words that describe your post or part of its content.

For instance, here is a list of the tags I used when I posted my Grand National 2010 preview:

Each word or phrase was used in the article and summed up an element of Grand National 2010 for me

at that time. Tags are very useful for assisting Google and the other search engines in understanding

what your article is about, and indexing it according.

For instance, a search in Google for ‘Oodachee’ brings this result on page 2 (position 13 of 26,000):

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Before we publish our posts, we also have options to either:

‘Save as Draft’ – finish what we’re doing later without losing any of our work

‘Preview’ – see what the post would look like on the blog before we actually publish it there. This is

especially useful if you’re using images or tables in your post, as they sometimes run beyond the

available width of the blog. Always preview before posting!

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Adding a Page to your website

Pages are static pieces of content that remain the same (or virtually the same) as long as the website is

there. They act just like a traditional website, and are the main reason I advocate using Wordpress:

because it has all the functions of a ‘normal’ website but with so much more besides, and all from a

pretty straightforward ‘dashboard’ control centre.

So let’s add a page. Adding a page is almost exactly the same as adding a post. We click ‘Add New’ under

the ‘Pages’ menu on the left side of the dashboard. This is common to both free hosted .wordpress.com

domains and privately hosted domains.

You can vary the position of the pages, by using the ‘Parent’ dropdown box on the right hand side, and

also the ‘Order’ by selecting a number greater than 0. (The default is 0, which orders all pages equally

and alphabetically).

Finally, if you don’t want to allow comments on pages (as opposed to posts, where typically you’d

encourage feedback), then untick the ‘Allow Comments’ checkbox in the Discussion section beneath the

main area. I also recommend you disallow trackbacks and pingbacks.

22 | P a g e

Adding Features to your website

Now that we’ve made our site look much more appealing to visitors, by changing the graphics and

adding some words and pictures on our chosen subject, we’re going to make it still more attractive by

adding interactive elements to it.

One of the keys to successful blogging, which many people do not understand, is to create a dialogue

rather than a monologue.

What I mean by that is this: I don’t want to simply pour forth on a given subject as though mine is the

only voice. Rather, I want to present my side of the argument, and invite you to come back to me with

yours. By engaging people like this, you will encourage them to revisit your site and to contribute to its

growing content.

So how do we do this? With widgets and plugins of course!

What’s a widget?

Good question, and – in simple terms – it is merely a little add-in that makes your website ‘do’

something. For instance, the ‘polls’ widget enables me to ask people questions, and get feedback on

things that I’m interested in.

This is very powerful, and so easy to implement. Every blog should have one of these, and very few

actually do! (See appendix for the plugins I recommend you add to your site).

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Widgets also customize the way our ‘sidebars’ look. Let me explain: a blog site typically consists of two

or three columns of stuff, only one of which is the actual content. Take a look at Geegeez and Horse-

Racing.ie again:

In this case, there is a left and a right ‘sidebar’, and the content area is in the middle. Make sense?

Here we see that Horse-Racing.ie is a ‘two column’ Wordpress site, with just one sidebar on the right.

Neither is better than the other – it’s just a case of personal preference.

So now let’s customize the content in our sidebar to be how we’d like it.

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I want to change the Meta and Blogroll elements to something more ‘consumable’, like a list of recent

posts and perhaps a list of recent comments too. But hang on a minute, the list of widgets available

seems a little ‘thin’...

Don’t fret, because this is where we’ll grab our first plugin and install it. Somewhat confusingly, a plugin

can often be used as a widget. That is to say, a plugin can contain more functions for our sidebar(s).

It’ll make sense in a moment, if not already. Here we go. Let’s go to ‘Plugins’ in the left side and select

‘Add New’. Now type in the search bar, ‘GD Simple Widgets’, and click ‘Search Plugins’:

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Click the ‘install’ link top right, then ‘install now’ on the next screen, then ‘activate plugin’.

Groovy! Now go back to ‘Widgets’ under ‘Appearance’, and we are spoilt for choice!

Now I can add my recent posts, and maybe some recent comments as well...

So, in another tab, I take a look at my website again, and hey presto, the sidebar is as I’d have it.

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Making Your Site Attractive to Google (and the other search engines)

Finally, in this section, we need to let Google know what we’re about and where we are, so that they

can index us accordingly in their search engines. This, of course, is so that people who are looking for

what we have can find us!

To do this, we’ll use a couple more plugins: a sitemap generator, and an SEO tool. (SEO stands for search

engine optimization, and it does just that: optimizes your website content for the search engines whilst

being unobtrusive to human visitors).

All in One SEO Pack

So at the ‘Plugins’ link, type in ‘All in one SEO pack’, and install the first plugin displayed:

You will be prompted to add some settings, which you should do right away as follows:

Make sure the plugin status is enabled, and add some meaningful content to these three boxes. Leave

everything else as it is.

Click ‘update options’ at the bottom of the page, and that’s your SEO done (for now!).

[You will note that All in One SEO Pack has been added to the Settings on the Dashboard. You can

update your default settings for it, and indeed for most plugins, from their links there.]

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XML Sitemap Generator

XM-what Site-who whatjamacallit?! It’s a very clunky title for what amounts to a contents page for your

website. Look, here’s the one at Horse-Racing.ie (or part of it, at least):

In the Plugins menu, ‘Add New’, search for ‘Google XML Sitemaps’, and install, and activate. It’s the one

by Arne Brachhold.

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Now go to the ‘XML Sitemap’ option in the ‘Settings’ on the dashboard (bottom left). Click it.

At the very top of the page, it says your sitemap wasn’t built yet. Ignore all the other guff on the page,

and just click the link to build your sitemap!

Once that’s done, just go to www.yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml and you should see something like

this. If you do, another job done. This will dynamically update when you add content, so you never need

worry about it again :-)

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Summary

And that’s it. Thereafter, it’s simply a question of writing posts as and when you have something to say

(if you’re like me, this will be every day, many times a day. I have to reign myself back in!)

And of course, you can add posts – maybe to a page where you have something to sell, maybe to a

betting system review where you can claim a commission (if the product is decent) for your time.

There are of course masses of other plugins you can use to add value to your site, but none are as

important as the ones mentioned above.

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Appendix: Other Recommended Plugins for Privately Hosted Domains These are the key plugins I use on my blogs. I’m not going to go through how to install and configure

here: there is ample documentation supporting each of them on the owner’s websites.

But if you feel sufficiently advanced / brave, then try these out! (Note, a couple of them cost money...)

More on the next page....

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That’s it for this training manual.

By now, you should have your blog installed, looking reasonably pretty, and your plugins and widgets

doing what you need to do.

If you have, give yourself a pat on the back. It will never be more difficult than that, I promise!

Look out for part three in this training series, coming soon, which addresses the problem of ‘I don’t have

a product!’.

Until then,

Matt

http://www.horseracingexperts.co.uk/biz/training.html

http://www.horseracingexperts.co.uk/biz/training2.html