BlitzMetrics Personal Blog Setup Guide Welcome! So you've decided to get into blogging and help customers set up a personal blog. You will learn a lot while working on this guide. You will get in touch with many different customers, some very high-profile. You can learn from them and you can become an expert in setting up a personal blog. Then you can also set one up for yourself! This guide is complementary to our Article writing process, so make sure to give it a read after you are finished setting up your blog to populate it with great articles. We've split it up into two sections - The setup process requires the customer to provide their own hosting and domain, along with time required finding themes, installing plugins, and tweaking your site. Ready? Let's begin. Contents Welcome!... 1 Section 1: Hosting your blog on BlitzMetrics.com as a subdomain... 3 Step 1: Set up your blog using BlitzMetrics blog creator.... Fehler! Textmarke nicht definiert. Step 2: Log into your newly created blog... 3 Step 3: Delete the placeholder post, and add your own.... 12 Step 4 (Optional): Make an ABOUT ME page.... 14 Blog Creation Section 1 Checklist... Fehler! Textmarke nicht definiert. Section 2: Buying external hosting and setting up Wordpress... 3 Step 1: Get Hosting and Set up Wordpress... 3 Step 2: Installing Wordpress automatically using Fantastico.... 6 Step 3: Choose a theme.... 11 Finding a theme that suits you... 17 Customizing even further... 19 Paid / Premium Themes... 26 Techcrunch... 26
Metro UK... 27 TED Blog... 27 CBS New York... 28 Step 4: Install Plugins to supercharge your blog.... 30 Facebook Social Plugin:... 33 Google Analytics:... 33 Akismet:... 33 Google XML Sitemaps:... 33 Platinum SEO:... 33 Twitter For WordPress:... 33 Blog Creation Section 2 Checklist... 35
Inputs from the customer In order to get started you need to get the following inputs from the customer: - Access to Wordpress as an admin if already set up - Access to the hosting area (CPanel) if not set up (in any case it s a good idea to have this access in case you need to upload plugins that cannot be uploaded through the web interface - Access to the domain hoster - Name of the blog Get started Depending on the customer you either access an existing installation or set up a new one. If the customer already has a wordpress blog, you only need to log in and focus on the second part. If that is the case, then skip Section 1 and go directly to Section 2. Section1: Buying external hosting and setting up Wordpress This option is provided for those who want total control over their blog, and want to expand. This option has ongoing costs and requires some technical ability to install and maintain the various components necessary for a well-tuned site. Step 1: Get Hosting and Set up Wordpress We highly recommend naming your domain after your brand or your name. This helps your readers recognize your authority, and help you manage all of the various services required to keep track of your content operations. There are free solutions such as Blogger, Tumblr, Weebly, and a subdomain on Wordpress.org. We advise against using these, as they offer limited control over your content and how you manage your sites. They also hurt the above-mentioned authority, as readers may think you're not dedicated to your topic. HostGator.com is the best option for those starting out for it's a per-month payment plan, and the inclusion of an easy to use control panel that includes the one-click installer, Fantastico De Luxe- which allows you to easily deploy Wordpress, and forego the long technical explanations of doing it manually. Once you've picked out a name, you can see if it's available at https://register.hostgator.com/ - We'll use maxdarby.com as an example:
It's highly recommended to have a.com domain. These hold higher authority than.net, and usually.orgs are for non-profit status organizations. If the domain you want isn't available, try a variation such as max-darby.com.
You're ready to check out. Click on MY CART at the top of the page, and verify your information. Hostgator will try to push Domain Privacy Protection, which obscures your registration issue for your website. Unless you're worried about your privacy, take it off of the order to save yourself 10 dollars per year.
Step 2: Installing Wordpress automatically using Fantastico. After you have your domain, you can now deploy wordpress. Log into your control panel with the information Hostgator gave you. After you enter your credentials, you should be on your account overview page. You can check on your server status from here, and make changes Take a moment to look around and familiarize yourself with it.
Navigate down to the Software/Services section and find "Fantastico De Luxe": Once Fantastico has started, find "Wordpress" under the Blogs section on the left side:
Click on "New Installation" at the top: Choose which domain to install it for on the drop-down (there should be only one), and enter the appropriate information: Fantastico will create the appropriate database and install wordpress into it for you. For your records, we recommend writing down the database information it provides. Once you have, click FINISH INSTALLATION:
Once finalized, use the bottom box to send the login information to your email inbox for safe keeping. Now go to the admin area URL and log in using your credentials: You now have a fresh Wordpress install! You're almost ready to start creating awesome content:
Section1: Buying external hosting and setting up Wordpress Step 1: Log into the blog You can log in using the Blog Admin page by adding /wp-admin to the end of your blog URL, For Example: You'll be prompted to enter your information here you should enter the information you got from the customer: username + password. You should now be on the Wordpress Dashboard page now. Take a minute to look around and familiarize yourself with it.
Step 2: Delete the placeholder post, and add your own. Once you're ready to begin writing content, click on Posts: Notice there's already a post here. You can hover over the title and delete it, since it's just filler text:
Once you've moved it to the trash, go back to the left panel and select "Add New" from under Posts. This will bring up the new post editor: You're ready to start populating your blog with content! Be sure to read the article writing guide for tips on how to write killer articles!
Step 3 (Optional): Make an ABOUT ME page. Below POSTS, there is another menu for Pages. Clicking on it will look similar to posts, except these are static pages that appear on the top menu of your blog. There should be two pages, currently: Like with the test post, delete these two, and go back to the left-hand menu and click "Add New". Make the title About Me (or whatever you'd like), and write a small bio about yourself. You can add a headshot of yourself using the Add Media button between the title and editor. Choose Upload files, browse to where your picture is on your harddrive, and upload it. I already had my headshot uploaded to the media library. Be sure to give it an SEO-friendly title, set the image alignment to the right, and the size to Medium. Once you're done, you can click the blue INSERT INTO PAGE on the bottom right:
If you don't like the placement or scale, you can drag it around and modify it by clicking on the image. Use the white boxes to adjust the scaling: Once you are happy with your ABOUT ME page, click "Publish" on the right-hand bar:
It should be live on your blog now! You can use the top menu to navigate to it: Feel free to make other pages for whatever topics you'd like to share- but keep your juicy content for your blog (since readers see it immediately). You now have all the tools necessary to start cranking out content! Email the BlitzMetrics content team at content@blitzmetrics.com if you have any questions.
Step 4: Choose a theme. What is a theme? A WordPress theme is a collection of files that change the way your blog looks and feels. It can make it look more like a blog or even make it look like a full site. The WordPress themes are very customizable and many of the more recent WordPress themes have their own options under the "Appearance" tab. Finding a theme that suits you. Wordpress comes with an intelligent theme search engine that allows you to set what criteria you're after. Just go to Appearance, and click ADD NEW at the top. Now you can select what options you want your theme to have: Let's go for something simple and clean with a modern feel. I like the theme GRAPHENE by Silverks based on my criteria:
Once you click Install theme, it will automatically download and install it for you to your Wordpress site: Go ahead and click Activate. To see how it looks, go to the home icon in the top-left corner and click "Visit Site": Do mind at this point, it will look rather barren, since you haven't populated it with content yet. Take a few moments to get yourself accustomed to wordpress, and look over your theme to see if you like how it looks.
Now you're set up and ready to start posting! Be sure to delete the HELLO WORLD! default wordpress post before you do, however. Customizing even further In Wordpress 3.9, there are many different ways for you to tweak your theme. Under the APPEARANCE tab from your blogs control panel, select CUSTOMIZE:
The Customization editor allows you to tweak things in real time, and see how they look with your current theme. Here, you can change the title, which colors it uses, background image, etc- allowing you to make the look of your site your own. We'll break down each of these features Start by customizing your Site Title & Tagline. Some themes do not support a tagline, but if yours does, it will appear below your title:
Colors allows you to set what color your title is, and which solid color to fill the background with. Make it easy on your user's eyes. Note that if you want to use a Background image, setting a solid color is pointless. Header Image sets the picture that occupies the top space above your title / tagline. Use a good picture of yourself, a brand logo, or something that you're passionate about. A neat feature is that you don't have to manually crop the picture before uploading- it's handled within the uploader.
Background Image is like Header Image, but will fill the entirety of your background with a selected image. You can set how it repeats, it's positioning, and if it stays fixed in one place, or follows the page as you scroll Static Front Page customizes what users see when they land on your index page. Normally, your latest posts are shown, along with sidebars and other information, but if you want your site to be less blog like and more just for information, you can customize which page is shown.
Featured Content changes how posts you want to showcase are handled. You can display posts in a grid format, or have them in a rotating slider. Any posts tagged with "featured" will show up in this area. Widgets: Primary Sidebar, Content Sidebar, and Footer Widget Area configures the content for each widget- what's displayed above them, how many items to display, etc. Widgets are small bits of content that allow you to show different information in a hierarchal fashion. You can also add more widgets from these dialogs:
Go through each widget and understand what each one does- for example, You can add a Facebook LIKE button to the right side of your site by using a FACEBOOK LIKE BUTTON widget in the CONTENT SIDEBAR: Take a moment to play around with each section and tweak each one until you like how it looks. None of these changes go live until you hit SAVE & PUBLISH at the top. From this point, you should be ready to start pumping out content, but keep reading if you want to learn about premium themes and plugins.
Paid / Premium Themes Beyond Wordpress's recommended themes / customization ability is a world's worth of different solutions. If you're looking for a site with snappy custom look that's full of features, Wordpress is able to be customized as far as you want- it just depends on how much time or money you're willing to invest in it. Many sites you've visited have used Wordpress with a customized them- we bet you didn't even realize it! For example: Techcrunch
Metro UK TED Blog
CBS New York All of these sites are highly customized off of "premium" themes, with many hours put into tweaking for their purposes. In selecting a premium theme, here's are a few things to think about: Free or not free: Do a search for "free wordpress themes" and you'll find tons of results, paid and organic. The official free wordpress theme directory is at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/, so start from there before you decide to buy anything. Don't Just Try One: Download a couple themes and perhaps try them out to see which gives your users better navigation or readability. You've got a flexible blog, why limit it? Don't Be Too Cutting Edge: If there is a really cool theme that you think looks just great, make sure that it is also usable. There's nothing worse than having a good blog but have it unusable due to something as simple as the theme. Navigation is the most important part of the site, if you're just playing us all the crazy themes you like but if you're trying to get a good user base, just stick to the basics.
Use traditional navigation menus Find a theme that uses conventional menus, horizontal across the top and/or vertical down the left hand side, to navigate important pages. Each time a web page loads, the surfer's eyes naturally start in the upper left corner of the screen and move down and to the right from there. This is called the "Golden Triangle." You want to have your most important information and navigation located in this area. Menus on the right of the screen, or the bottom of a page do not take advantage of this natural behavior. Avoid big headers Designers have a tendency to push the artistic side of their abilities whenever they can. On a theme this can mean an oversize header area with big text, lots of images and design, but no purpose. The space on your site that appears above the fold (whatever you can see when the page loads without scrolling) is your most important real estate. You can make the best use of this by choosing a professional design, that incorporates a small, efficient header, and places your content high up on the page. If you are going to have large images, a big logo, or an oversize header, be sure they have a direct purpose in presenting your product, and do not repeat the header on every page. Plan the layout in advance Make sure to choose a layout that fits your needs. Picture the key information you intend to present and identify where it will be located on the page. Logos, tag lines, content text, lead forms, login fields, bullet points, pictures, contact info, banners, or any other content must have a place on each page. WordPress themes normally support 1, 2, or 3 columns, so choose a layout that will contain everything you intend to incorporate on your site. Start simple Do not spend too much time choosing your theme. You can always come back and swap out, upgrade, or customize the look of the site- It's not locked in stone. Find something universal that fits your overall layout, install it, and get started. If you are going to have a designer customize your layout, it's best to start out from something very basic. If you are going to use the theme out of the box, it might be beneficial to you if you select a very customizable theme. Make sure it loads fast It's easy to get carried away on the looks of a theme, but functionality is often more important. Test your site once the theme is uploaded. How fast does it load? Does it load faster with a simpler, less complicated theme? Your site needs to be on par with the largest money making sites online, and this means that you need a theme that loads as fast as possible. Use a service such as WebWait.com to see how fast your website loads, and try to keep it under 8 seconds maximum. A few useful links for finding your perfect theme: WordPress' Main Theme Repository Free Theme Forest Premium - $30+
WooThemes Premium - $70 $150 Beyond just choosing a theme, you'll need to outfit your customized blog with plugins that expand on Wordpress's built-in features. We'll cover this later in the guide. Step 5: Install Plugins to supercharge your blog. Plugins help you add new features to your blog such as social networking comments, picture galleries, contact forms- more things than we can name here! The ease of plugin installation in Wordpress has grown exponentially over the years. You can easily search for any of the plugins listed below by using Wordpress's built-in search engine. Click on "Plugins" and then click on "Add New":
Search for the plugin you're looking for - in this case, we'll use Platinum SEO:
Click on the "Install Now" link to the right of the listing, which will ask you if you are sure you want to install the plugin. Once you click OK, it will automatically download the install package and deploy it. Once it's finished, it will report that it had successfully installed the plugin. Click Activate Plugin to turn on the plug-ins features Now, the Platinum SEO options should appear in your control panel's sidebar, allowing you to configure it: If you are prompted for your ftp information which was provided by your hosting provider. The first time you'll need to fill it all out and the subsequent times you will just need to put in the password.
Below are some must-have plugins for any blog: Facebook Social Plugin: Facebook integration is crucial for any WordPress blog. This allows any user from Facebook to sign into your blog using their Facebook credentials and post comments, and share items on Facebook with one click. This creates conversions which you would never see and gives you some personal information about the sort of people coming to the blog. Facebook Connect is easy to install and implement, the plugin can be found here. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is very important for your blog as well but rather than having to go in and edit your theme manually and add the script, you can simply install the Yoast Google Analytics Plugin or search for Google Analytics. You'll need to be sure to create your Google Analytics account. Akismet: Akismet is crucial for your sanity, it is an anti spam tool provided by WordPress which is excellent at filtering out spam comments which you'll as soon as your blog starts getting indexed by Google. You need to install it via the download or search, but be sure that you also sign up for a WordPress.org account so you can get your "API Key" for Akismet. Google XML Sitemaps: Google XML Sitemaps is very important for your SEO. It will generate an HTML & XML Sitemap for your site which are readable by Google, other Search Engines and visitors of your site. There are a lot of settings for this, however the default setting will work for most users. Tweak it later if you need more detail or find that the sitemap isn't getting generated how you like it. Download it here or search for Google XML Sitemap Platinum SEO: Platinum SEO is a great tool for making sure that your blog posts, pages and overall site have the correct description and keyword information for Google. It adds meta tags, improves page titles and several other things that make your site overall more Search Engine Friendly. The plugin can be downloaded from here or search for Platinum SEO. Twitter For WordPress: Twitter For WordPress displays your twitter information in the sidebar on your blog as well as allowing you to update your Twitter with each blog post. It's great for making sure that your blog and Twitter stay in sync and it can both get you new blog followers as well as Twitter followers. You can download it from here or
search for Twitter For WordPress.
Blog Creation Checklist for existing wp installations Log into the created blog. Delete the placeholder post. Make your first post. OPTIONAL - Create an "About Me" page. Decide whether to use a free or paid theme. Customize your theme using Wordpress's CUSTOMIZE feature. Install and configure essential plugins for your blog. Write your first blog post. Blog Creation Checklist for newly set up blogs Read Section 1 on setting up your own domain and installing / customizing wordpress. Find and purchase a domain using Hostgator. Log into your cpanel. Set up Wordpress using Fantastico De Luxe. Log into your newly created blog. Delete the placeholder post. Make your first post. OPTIONAL - Create an "About Me" page. Decide whether to use a free or paid theme. Customize your theme using Wordpress's CUSTOMIZE feature. Install and configure essential plugins for your blog. Write your first blog post.