Blogging Plan - Day 3

On the second day we signed up f web hosting and created our blog using cPanel.

Day 3 – Configuring Wordpress

Objective: To make your blog search-engine friendly, and to give it the look and feel you want.

Open your FTP program and connect to your web hosting. To do this, enter the FTP details (refer to setup email sent by your hosting company) into Filezilla or any other FTP program, and click on connect. You’ll then see a list of folders, look for the folder called “www” or “public_html” and get into that.

You should see all your Wordpress files here, and do a CHMOD 755 to these files:
Your .htaccess file
Your wp-content folder

Using the FTP, upload all the plugins we’ve provided to your wp-content/plugins folder. Make sure you upload the folder contents only (not the ZIP file). Refer to our video tutorials if you’re not too sure how to do this. Check if these plugins appear under the Plugins menu, but
activate any yet.

Login to your Wordpress, and go to Options > General. Give your blog a “Weblog Title” and “Tagline”. Cross check with your list of keywords to determine how to do this right. Then go to Options > Permalinks and modify this to be more search-engine friendly.

Next, activate the “All-In-One SEO” plugin from your plugins page.

Using your FTP program, upload all the provided Wordpress themes into the wp-content/themes folder.

Among the important things you need to do:

  • Upload to the correct folder, and upload only the folders containing the actual PHP files. Do not upload ZIP files here, you’ll need to unzip it first on your PC
  • Set the correct CHMOD of 755 to the selected theme files according to the theme instruction files
  • Enter your Clickbank ID, Google Adsense ID, and MyBlogLog ID to customize the theme
Note: If you don’t already have an Adsense account, you can ignore the field for Adsense ID till you’ve created an account. Remember you’ll need to add a few solid pages of content first, and then you can apply for an Adsense account.

You’ll need to modify the design of your theme header to match the topic of your site. You can do this either by:

  1. Editing the source PHD file in Adobe Photoshop
  2. Creating a brand new one, 960 pixels wide and 100 pixels high, with a free tool called Gimp
  3. Posting your requirement in our forum. Ask someone to help you modify the design in return for a small fee
You may want to create a “Contact Us” page. To do that, first activate the “Contact Form” plugin in your Wordpress, and then create a new page. In the new page, just put in the codes that will automatically generate your contact form.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a “search-engine-optimized” and “adsense-ready” blog. Take a break and give yourself a pat on the back. Call a friend and brag about your site.

Note: If anything goes wrong while editing themes and templates, just upload the same file again to your hosting account with FTP and re-do the process. If there is an option in your FTP to upload using “Binary” mode, use it. Uploading in this mode is ideal for Wordpress files.

Next Day...