400WPThemes.com How to Install WordPress iesHosting.com is our reseller account we do make commissions and we do appreciate your business! If at any time you need help call us! 302-945-1025 Copyright 2012 Eagle Studios, All Rights Reserved 1 Table Of Contents: 1. Why you should start a WordPress website 3 2. How to install a WordPress 4 3. Settings to adjust for your new WordPress website 40 4. How to make your WordPress website more secure 50 5. The most frequently downloaded WordPress plug-ins 57 6. WordPress plug-ins available for your website 61 7. Legal Notice 71 2 CHAPTER 1 Why you should start a WordPress website. A WordPress Website is a very quick fast and efficient way to create niche websites. Once you have a hosting account established that allows multiple domains, several websites can be created at no extra cost. Internet Marketers rely on this service as the backbone to their business. Because WordPress is open source, literally thousands of templates and plug-ins are available royalty free. A WordPress Website will become your professional online presence this will be the foundation in which you will build your business on. Learning how to make WordPress Websites will be the most important part of your business as it will take many small niche sites to produce multiple streams of income. 3 CHAPTER 2 How to install a WordPress There are two ways to install WordPress. The manual way, and the automated way. You should be able to do both however to speed up your learning curve we will take a short cut and let iesHosting do it for you. Before we begin with the installation process there are two things you will need to have. You will need a Domain and a Hosting Account. 4 Your Domain will become your internet address that connects users to your website. Your domain should be short unless you are using it as a keyword-rich name for SEO purposes. Your domain should be relevant to the product or service you are representing. Acquiring a dot com will be most desirable. More can be discovered about domains by reading our SEO Handbook, The 5 Key Basics. Stop here now and do get the book and read just the part on Domains and come right back. Your Hosting Account is the actual server space you are leasing to store all of your HTML code for your WordPress website. Go to http://www.ieshosting.com/ and click on create an account. 5 6 7 At this step you will want to document all the information you entered. IesHosting.com provides 24/7 customer support. You will need to verify your 4 digit pin number when calling in. Note: For your email account, set up a Gmail account on Google. This will serve as your вЂњhome baseвЂќ email account that you will receive all notifications from iesHosting and all other accounts associated with your business. The purpose for using a web based account is for one reason and one reason only. In life stuff happens! If you lose your cable or dsl connection and you use the email account associated with those services you will lose your email address. Having a neutral web based email account, ensures access to your business information is available. 8 After you have created your new account this is the screen you will see: 9 Congratulations! You have created the first of many foundation building blocks for your Internet Marketing business! Having this account will allow you to make purchases from a variety of products from iesHosting. At this point we hope you will have read about domains in the The 5 key Basics. If not вЂњclick hereвЂќ. Lets now purchase your first domain. Log into your new iesHosting.com account. Hover over the blue navigation button that says вЂњDomain NamesвЂќ. A drop down box will open and you will select вЂњRegister DomainsвЂќ. The picture on the next page will show you exactly what to look for. 10 11 The next screen you will see will look like this: 12 Enter in the вЂњStart your domain search here..вЂќ box the domain you have selected. Click вЂњGOвЂќ If the domain is available you will see a screen like this: 13 Select the red add to cart button. Your Domain will only cost you $9.99 per year. Click on the blue вЂњContinue to RegistrationвЂќ. 14 You may get this pop-up. This will give you the ability to purchase the associated domain names like: .net, .org and .me. 15 You can add the additional domains or just click the вЂњNo ThanksвЂќ button. If this is your first purchase you will be required to provide a means to pay for your domains and associated products. This is the next screen you will see: 16 You can pay by Credit Card, Check or PayPal. After filling in the required fields, press the вЂњPLACE ORDER NOWвЂќ button. On to Step 2, here you will select your registration length. A 1 year minimum is required. Domain Certification can be added. Hover over the ? to learn more. 17 Click вЂњNextвЂќ and on to Step 3. This screen is where you will select your privacy setting on your domain. If you wish to keep your information private select вЂњPrivacy with Business RegistrationвЂќ. 18 Step 4 is another up-sell. You will receive a 1GB web based mail box with your domain purchase so you can skip this step by clicking on the вЂњNextвЂќ button. 19 The next screen will take you to a вЂњReview Your Shopping CartвЂќ screen. Here you will preview your order and make any adjustments. At this point you can get a discount on your domain if you choose вЂњKeep ShoppingвЂќ. You will then go back to the main screen and hover over the Web Hosting button. 20 A drop down box will appear and you will then select вЂњHosting PlansвЂќ 21 Here you will have three options Economy, Deluxe or Ultimate. If you plan on expanding your business by having more than one website choose the deluxe plan. The advantage here is being able to host an unlimited amount of websites up to 150GB of space. As you get more involved in Internet Marketing this is the right choice. If you feel 150GB of space is to limiting get the Ultimate Plan and you will benefit from unlimited amount of space and bandwidth and an unlimited amount of MySQL databases. One MySQL Database will be required for every WordPress website you activate. You can always upgrade at a later time. The Economy Plan is not recommended as it will only support one domain and one website. It will take several niche sites to produce any kind of appreciable income if you choose to take the website creation method of making money online. We will assume that creating niche sites is what your interested in doing 22 therefore the Deluxe Plan is the way to go. The next screen you will be taken to is another annoying up-sell page. Here you can choose to add to your cart as you feel or just scroll down the page and click the вЂњNo ThanksвЂќ button. 23 Here is a screen shot of the bottom of the page: 24 If you select вЂњNo ThanksвЂќ the next screen will bring you back to the вЂњReview Your Shopping CartвЂќ screen. Click вЂњContinue to CheckoutвЂќ 25 Now the fun begins! I mentioned earlier we would be taking a short cut. Here it is. We are going to have iesHosting.com complete the balance of the WordPress installation. Why? Because it is fast. For those of you who wish to venture in to techie land, below this explanation is the Manual Method for installing WordPress. Be sure to have your customer number and log in pin number available as the customer support representative will need to authenticate your account in order to proceed. Call: 480-624-2500, When the customer representative gets on the line you are going to tell them you have just acquired a domain and a hosting account. You will then ask them for assistance in setting up WordPress. They will then walk you through the balance of the steps to get your WordPress Website up and running. 26 You will go through a series of steps that will include setting up your hosting account in the process you will set up the DNS to point your domain to your hosting account. You will be required to have a user name and pass code for your hosting account. This will be used in the future for loading files to the server via FTP. Next you will go through a process to establish WordPress on to your server. You will have two set of user names and pass codes here. One set for your SQL Database and the other for your WordPress Admin Access. Write these down. WordPress will automatically install. You will have to wait a period of 12-24 hours for the server to propagate. What this means is your domain will take time to resolve to the World Wide Web. To be perfectly honest we have had this process only take a couple hours. That's it! Done! Below is the manual method if you used the short cut, skip through it. 27 WordPress Manual Installation Setting up your hosting account. Login to your iesHosting account. Hover over the blue navigation button вЂњWeb HostingвЂќ and choose My Hosting Account. Find your hosting plan and click on Setup Account Select the check box and click вЂњNextвЂќ. Enter a user name and pass code for your hosting account and click,вЂњNextвЂќ 28 You will then be prompted to select a domain for this account, find your domain name and click on it. This is located on the right side of the screen. Finish the setup by clicking Submit Get your FTP Account Information When your hosting has been setup you will get an email iesHosting.com en-titled вЂњHosting Account SetupвЂќ Locate your вЂњFTP Account InformationвЂќ in the email. Hosting/FTP User Name: your user name 29 from Web Site URL: your domain URL FTP Site URL: your FTP URL Your Web Site Visitor Statistics: Your stats URL NEXT YOU WILL NEED TO ESTABLISH A MySQL DATABASE Create MySQL database: The Microsoft SQL Server is a computer application used to create desktop, enterprise, and web-based database applications Login to your iesHosting.com account. 30 Hover over the blue navigation button вЂњWeb HostingвЂќ and choose My Hosting Account. Find your domain name and click on Manage Account On the upper navigation menu select вЂњDatabasesвЂќ and select вЂњMySQLвЂќ. Click on вЂњCreate DatabaseвЂќ. Enter a user name and password. Write this information down! Click вЂњOKвЂќ and wait for iesHosting.com to establish your MySQL Database. 31 When the MySQL Database has been setup, click on the pencil to вЂњEdit/view detailsвЂќ and save the following details: MySQL Database Information Status: Setup Host Name: your host name Database Name: database name you have chosen Database Version: 4.1Description: description you have chosen User Name: user name you have chosen NOW, Download and install WordPress ~ Go to WordPress.org and download the latest version ~ WordPress comes in a .zip file so unzip it. 32 ~ Now you have a WordPress folder Locate the wp-config-sample.php file and rename it to wp-config.php Open wp-config.php in text editor (like NotePad++) and find this part: // ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** /// ** The name of the database for WordPress */ define(вЂ™DB_NAMEвЂ™, вЂ�putyourdbnamehereвЂ�);** MySQL database username */ define(вЂ™DB_USERвЂ™, вЂ�usernamehereвЂ�);** 33 MySQL database password */ define(вЂ™DB_PASSWORDвЂ™, вЂ�yourpasswordhereвЂ�);** MySQL hostname */define(вЂ™DB_HOSTвЂ™, вЂ�localhostвЂ�); Take your MySQL Database Information you have from iesHosting.com and insert the information into the places marked in bold. ~ Your MySQL Database Name should replace putyourdbnamehere ~ Your MySQL User Name should replace usernamehere ~ Your MySQL password should replace yourpasswordhere ~ Your MySQL Host Name should replace localhost 34 Locate the following file in your wp-config.php: define(вЂ™AUTH_KEYвЂ™, вЂ�put your unique phrase hereвЂ™); define(вЂ™SECURE_AUTH_KEYвЂ™, вЂ�put your unique phrase hereвЂ™); define(вЂ™LOGGED_IN_KEYвЂ™, вЂ�put your unique phrase hereвЂ™); define(вЂ™NONCE_KEYвЂ™, вЂ�put your unique phrase hereвЂ™); Visit WordPress secret key and copy details you get there and insert them instead of the above. Save wp-config.php 35 Login to your web hosting ~ Get a FTP client (like FileZilla) ~ Open FTP client and login to your hosting account using your FTP account information ~ Place all the files from your WordPress folder onto your server ~ In this example place all files in root directory (http://www.yourdomain.com). The directory will look something like this when the WordPress files are uploaded: ~ Run WordPress installation by going to: 36 http://www.yourdomain.com/wpadmin/install.php This is what you will see when you enter the address: Insert picture here ~ Fill in your Blog Title ~ Fill in Your E-mail ~ Make sure your Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati is checked ~ Click on Install WordPress 37 ~ The next screen you see should say Success! and should give you your User name and Password. ~ Click on Log In. ~ Now you will see your blogвЂ™s Log In page. Make sure to bookmark that URL. ~ Fill in the User name and Password you have just received ~ Click on Log In. ~ Now you will see your WordPress Dashboard where all the optimization, customization, post writing, plug-in installing, comment moderating takes place. 38 This means your blog has been setup and is live online. Check your http://www.your_domain_name.com to see it. You will also get an email titled New WordPress Blog which includes your URL and your user name and password. You are now ready to dive into WP101 and learn WordPress. 39 CHAPTER 3 Settings to adjust after you install a new WordPress website WordPress features many customization options and settings. Spend some time and get familiar with the WordPress dashboard. This is a look at some of the settings you can adjust for your a new WordPress website. Set-up Website title and tag line. (In Settings - General) ~ You donвЂ™t want your website to be branded as вЂњjust another WordPress websiteвЂќ ~ Enter the title and explain why your blog is unique in the blog tag line. 40 Change permalinks (In Settings - Permalinks) ~ You donвЂ™t want your website articles to be named: http://www.yourdomain.com/?=123 ~ You want to make your URLвЂ™s unique, keyword-rich, SEO and user friendly. ~ On HowToMakeMyBlog.com I use the custom option field like this: /%category%/%postname%/ ~ By doing this my blog permalinks look like this: http://www.your_website.com/category/post_name/ 41 Clean up ~ Delete Hello World! generic post (Located in Posts). ~ Delete the generic About page (Located in Pages). ~ Delete generic blog-roll (Located in Links). ~ Delete Hello Dolly plug-in (Located in Plug-ins). ~ Activate comment spam filter (Located in Plug-ins). ~ Akismet is a spam filter and it comes with WordPress. You will need to get the WordPress API key to activate it. 42 Update ping services (Located in Settings - Writing - Update Services) ~ Pings help you promote your blog by automatically notifying different online services when you publish a new blog post. Here are a few sites that are available: http://www.my.yahoo.com http://www.feedburner.com http://www.blogdigger.com http://blogsearch.google.com http://www.weblogs.com http://www.twingly.com http://www.blogstreet.com 43 ~ Get own blog theme (located in Appearance - Themes) ~ Do change your website theme. The default is just not pretty! ~ Find the theme you like and download it ~ Upload the theme onto your server (/wp-content/themes/) ~ Activate 44 Setup RSS news-feed ~ WordPress has a default RSS Feed (http://www.your_domain.com/feed/) however in order to be able to offer email subscriptions and enable you to track your feed stats, it is best to use Google FeedBurner. Register for FeedBurner and move your default RSS Feed by installing a FeedBurner FeedSmith plug-in. ~ In Feedburner you can optimize your RSS footer to include links like Subscribe to comments, Tweet This, Stumble It, Digg It and much more (Optimize вЂ“ Feedflare) ~ Many people still do not use RSS, so make sure to offer the email option via Feedburner. 45 (Located in Publicize- Email Subscriptions). You can expect about 20% of your subscribers to use this option. ~ Also when you have 50+ subscribers make use of the feed counter in your dashboard sidebar as this will give incentive for more people to subscribe (Located in Publicize вЂ“FeedCount). Track visitors ~ Setup Google Analytics tracking for your new website and add the tracking code with Google Analytics for WordPress plug-in. It is very important to track your visitors, how they interact with your website. 46 Webmaster Tools ~ Establishing an account with Google. Then visit Google Webmaster Tools and submit your domain for indexing account. In Google Webmaster Tools, you will find some very important information on the do's and dont's which can and will effect your standing with Google. 47 Sitemap ~ Having a Sitemap is very important if you want Google to be able to crawl, find, and index your articles. Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin makes the process of setting a sitemap simple. ~ Submit your XML sitemap directly to Google via Webmaster Tools. By doing this Google will crawl your new site and index it within a day or so. Preferred domain ~ In Settings in your Google Webmaster Tools chose your site Preferred domain. I still use www version but have recently started liking no-www version so my blogs in future may be without www. 48 Traditional SEO ~ If you want the traditional META-Tags added to your blog posts and pages, use All in one SEO plug-in. 49 CHAPTER 4 How to make your WordPress blog more secure WordPress websites can become targets for hackers. Most site owners are not aware of threats posed by hackers. Most will not even know that a successful attack has taken place. Security measures must be in place to ensure your website will not be high-jacked. Create a new user account It is tougher for a hacker to hack your website when both the user name and the password have to be cracked. This is why you should create a new user and delete the WordPress default вЂњadminвЂќ. 50 Create a new вЂњUserвЂќ by going into вЂњUsersвЂќ then select вЂњAdd NewвЂќ in the WordPress menu. Set this users role as вЂњAdministratorвЂќ.This will allow full authority over your website. Now log out of the default вЂњadminвЂќ account and log in with the new user name and password . Be sure to choose the option to transfer your old posts to your new user name before deleting the вЂњadminвЂќ account. 51 Use a strong passwords Do not use simple passwords when creating the new user account. It might be simple for you to remember however, easy for a hacker to crack. Your password should contain a combination of upper case and lower case letters and numbers. For extra security add special characters. Example: MixAnd8for! 52 Set a new nickname You do not want your new user name to be the author name. Set the nickname WordPress uses as author name to something different than your user name. Make this change in вЂњUsersвЂќ under вЂњYour ProfileвЂќ in the Nickname field. Choose a new nickname and set вЂњDisplay name publicly asвЂќ to your new nickname. 53 Use Login Lock down plug-in Login LockDown plug-in records the IP address and time stamps each failed вЂњloginвЂќ attempt to your WordPress website. If more than a specific number of login attempts are made within a period of time from the same IP range, the log-in function will be disabled for all requests from that range. 54 Do not allow guest user registrations If you do not have a membership blog, then there is no reason to allow visitors to register for a guest account on your blog. To check that you have this setting turned вЂњoffвЂќ, click вЂњSettingsвЂќ and make sure that вЂњAnyone can registerвЂќ option is not checked. Update your WordPress website regularly Always upgrade to the current version of WordPress, the current version of your WordPress Theme and the current version of any plug-ins you have installed. Having the current installations of software and plug-ins will decrease vulnerability in older versions. WordPress 3.3+ all upgrades are automated with one-click, within the WordPress Dashboard interface. 55 Backup regularly Taking regular backups is important. In case if something happens, use can always use the backup to recover your blog files. WordPress Database Backup plug-in makes it simple to backup your files. Activate the plug-in and set it to automatically take backups and send them in a file to your email address. Performing these simple steps can prevent your website from being taken over. 56 CHAPTER 5 The most frequently downloaded WordPress plug-ins WordPress plug-ins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction. ~ All in One SEO Pack - Automatically optimizes your WordPress websites for Search Engines. (Search Engine Optimization) ~ Google XML Site-maps - Create a Google site-maps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress website. ~ NextGEN Gallery - A full integrated Image Gallery plug-in for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option 57 ~ WordPress.com Stats - You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.comвЂ™s stat system. ~ WP Super Cache - A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files. ~ Contact Form 7 - Just another contact form plug-in. Simple but flexible. ~ WordPress Automatic upgrade - Allows a user to automatically upgrade the WordPress installation to the latest one. ~ Sociable - Adds links to your favorite social websites to all your posts, pages and RSS feeds. 58 ~ ViperвЂ™s Video Quicktags - Allows XHTML valid posting of videos from various websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo. ~ Simple Tags - The successor of Simple Tagging plug-in and is a tool to manage your WP tags. ~ WP-DB-Backup - On-demand backup of your WordPress database ~ Google Analytics for WordPress - Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics. ~ Google Analyticator - Enables Google Analytics tracking. 59 ~ Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button - Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and over 100 more ~ WP-Polls - Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can also easily add a poll into your WordPressвЂ™s blog post / page ~ Sidebar Widgets - Adds вЂњSidebar WidgetsвЂќ panel under Presentation menu. podPress - A dream plug-in for podcasters using WordPress ~ WP-PageNavi - Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog - 60 CHAPTER 6 WordPress plug-ins available for your website Remove spam comments Akismet - If you have been indexed by search engines, and are getting a lot of traffic, you are bound to get massive amount of spam comments. This plug-in make managing your website much easier. You will need to get an Api-key to activate this plug-in. Remove broken links Broken Link Checker - Search engines do not like broken links. Your visitors do not like them either. This plug-in scans your posts automatically, displays broken links in the WordPress dashboard and lets you make changes to fix or delete. 61 Create contact forms Cforms - If you need a contact form on your site, this plug-in is simple to setup and works great. Thank commentators Comment Redirect - This plug-in is used to redirect visitors when they make their first comment on your website. This will redirect to a thank you page where you thank the person for the comment and ask the reader to subscribe to your RSS news feed. Write a comment to this post, and see this plug-in, in action. 62 CSS Compress - plug-in removes all the unnecessary lines in the WordPress theme code, and that way makes the blog smaller and faster to load Google XML Sitemaps - Google indexes sites much quicker if you have a site-map. Submit it through Google Webmaster Tools. Nice and simple way to ensure that Google finds and indexes your website. Optimize ping update MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer - WordPress automatically updates all your ping services even if you just update or edit a post. If you edit your posts a lot, your website risks of being banned from ping services for excessive pinging. This plug-in solves the problem by pinging your post when you publish it. 63 Confirm the unconfirmed subscribers Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers - If you are using Feedburner email subscribe option, you know that some subscribers never confirm their subscription. This plug-in lets you easily notify all the unconfirmed subscribers and inform them that they need to take additional step to approve their subscription. Welcome your visitors Referrer Detector - This plug-in detects where your visitors are coming from and automatically displays the corresponding greeting they get this message: вЂњWelcome Googler! If you find this page useful, why not subscribe to the RSS feed for more interesting posts in the future.вЂќ 64 Track what your visitors are looking for Search Meter - This plug-in tracks what your visitors are searching for in your вЂњsearchвЂќ field. Allowing you to know what your visitors are looking for and what they find. Tracking searches can aid in demographic research to create targeted content. Notify visitors of new comments Subscribe To Comments - This plug-in allows your blog readers to subscribe to the comments on articles. Each time there is a new comment they will get an email notification. 65 Thesis OpenHook - This plug-in allows insertion of Thesis content hooks without editing the theme files. It is only for Thesis Theme users. List your most popular posts WordPress.com Popular Posts - This plug-in shows up in the sidebar to show the 10 most popular posts on your website. It is a very good way of showing your visitors your most popular posts, and it does improve usability of the site, plus improves your stats like pages viewed per visit, time spent on site and bounce rate. 66 Get your website stats WordPress.com Stats вЂ“ You may want to use the stats plug-in because the WordPress.com Popular Posts plug-in takes the data from this plug-in to show the most popular posts by number of views. It does not count the views of logged in users, so your visits to your pages will not be counted. You need an Api-key to activate this plug-in. 67 Never lose any of your material WordPress Database Backup - This plug-in helps you keep a database backup of your blog. It is very simple and easy to use. You can set the plug-in to make a regular backup of your blog and send it to you via email automatically. WP Super Cache - Another technical plug-in. It will improve your blogвЂ™s loading time and will speed up your blog significantly. Create a Twitter field in comments WP Twitip ID - This plug-in adds another field to your blogвЂ™s comment form so your readers can add their Twitter IDвЂ™s when writing a comment. 68 Show related posts Yet Another Related Posts plug-in - this plug-in allows a user to show a list of related posts from their blog archives after each article written . It improves the user experience and increases the time userвЂ™s spend on site, pages viewed per visit and bounce rate stats. All in One SEO Pack - This plug-in makes it easy for you to optimize your article titles and other meta tags. Google Analytics - This plug-in makes it easy for you to insert your Google Analytics code and start tracking your blog visitors. 69 WP-Note - This plug-in lets you insert notes in your article to make them stand out. Kind of similar to the yellow colored notes WordPress Gravatars - This plug-in lets you display Gravatars. 70 CHAPTER 7 Legal Notice: You may not sell this book, give it away, display it public or private, nor may you distribute it in any form whatsoever. While reasonable attempts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided in this publication, the author does not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of this information and any damages or costs incurred by that. The author does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are completely accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. 71 Legal Notice continued: This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field. While examples of past results may be used occasionally in this work, they are intended to be for purposes of example only. No representation is made or implied that the reader will do as well from using the techniques. The author does not assume any responsibility or liability whatsoever for what you choose to do with this information. Use your own judgment. Any perceived slight of specific people or organizations, and any resemblance to characters living, dead or otherwise, real or fictitious, is purely unintentional. 72 Legal Notice continued: In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly. You are encouraged to print this book for easy reading. Use this information at your own risk. 73 Now what do I do?: Now that you have taken the first steps in owing your domain and hosting account and have set up Wordpress, now is the time for you to learn how easy it is to make changes to the basic template to create your very own unique website. Click on the link below to be taken back to 400wpThemes.com and move to step #2. Here you will find 23 Wordpress videos that will guide you in transforming your new website to give it a custom feel. Once again, If you have any questions you can call iesHosting.com's 24/7 customer support line or call Eagle Studios directly at: 302-945-1025. 74