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Five Easy Steps to Get Your WordPress Blog Up and Running

by Jeff · Comments (0)
04 Jun

wordpress-logo-notext-rgbCreating a blog is a great way to get your business up and running. Whether you’re looking to sell yourself as a freelance writer, to build an affiliate marketing base, or just to add another layer of traffic to a growing network, blogging can open a lot of doors for you. Best of all, blogging is inexpensive and, by using a site like WordPress, you can create a professional-style website for mere pennies on the dollar compared to other avenues.

Creating a professional website will cost you a lot of money if you use conventional methods. Even if you decide to do it yourself to save money, you still need extensive HTML knowledge and will spend a lot on different themes, hosting packages, etc.

In the article below, we will discuss how to create a professional WordPress site in five easy steps.

The Five Steps to WordPress Blog Success

1. Installing WordPress

Installing WordPress is a breeze if you have a hosting plan already. If you’re using Hostgator, simply log into the Control Panel and select the Quick Install option. If you’re using another host, find the Fantastico Deluxe option. No matter which option you choose, it’s a very simple install. Just click your option, click Continue, select your site from the drop down menu, fill out the required fields (which you can change later), and choose Install WordPress.

TIP: The installation process usually takes four hours. Use this time to gather up the different files and content you want to add to your site later.

2. Installing Themes

There are many WordPress themes to choose from, but the best theme is the Responsive theme (themes can be changed in the Appearance section ), it can create a one-size-fits-all website or blog for any device, including PC or MC, tablets, iPhones, desktops and anything in between.

3. Adding Pages and Changing Your Homepage

Before you go any further, you must change up the Responsive layout a little bit. To do this, create two new pages — this will make the Responsive layout function correctly, and will allow you to set up a static homepage and a blog posts page. To do this, go to Dashboard, hover your mouse over the Pages tab, and select Add New. Name the first page that pops up ‘Home’ and then publish without any content. Don’t worry, you can change this later.

Repeat the steps for the second page, only you want to name this Blog before publishing. Once published, return to the Dashboard, hover over Settings, and select Reading. You will see your Front Page display, which can now be changed to Static, setting your Front Page to your Homepage. You need to follow the same steps here to change your Posts page to your Blog page. Not only do you now have the right Responsive template layout, but you know how to add new pages in the future.

4. Creating Your Own Logo

A logo is an important feature for your blog or site, so let’s quickly get you something to work with. Stop by Pixlr and select the Editor Advanced option. Select Create New image, add your image, name it, and change the width and height to 800×600. You can change this later. For right now, you want this default size. Make sure that the image you’re adding is a PNG image, so it’s transparent on any background.

Create the logo here, save it to your computer, and then return to your WP Dash, go to Media, select Add New, and choose your icon. A great tip here is to actually crop your icon using this feature and then download it, save it, and re-upload it to WP so you’ll have the right size without any distortion.

5. Adding YouTube and Facebook Widgets 

To add some cool social media widgets, visit your Dashboard, go to Appearance, and then select Widgets. You’ll find your widgets in the sidebar and can simply drag new widgets to replace them. If you want the YouTube widget, go to Plugins, type in ‘YouTube Subscribe,’ and install and activate this widget. Simply drag it back into your sidebar, add your text, choose the right width and height and publish it.

Lori Campbell is a member of PressTheWord, a tutorial channel in YouTube. If you are a beginner in WordPress and Web design, these guys can teach you. Check out their WordPress Tutorial Video.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

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Categories : Uncategorized, Web Development, WordPress

Why Your Website is Failing

by Jeff · Comments (0)
28 May

If you attempted to take a test without studying, you’d fail!

Every single day on the Internet, thousands of newbies are performing the equivalent of the aforementioned test analogy, by putting up a website without having the slightest idea about how to promote it.

And guess what happens? They fail, most do. Most of these failed once, twice and then gave up. Just because they did not do it right, they lost a whole opportunity! An opportunity that others are efficiently using to earn a living from their home, on a regular basis.

The point is, starting a business, any business, without having the slightest idea of marketing is like playing flute before a buffalo and expecting applause!

There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious and enthusiastic, but being ambitious and enthusiastic, and having a marketing plan is better!

Marketing for the web is an entire profession in itself, but at least before starting a new website ask these questions:

* Do you have a Web Analytics program or script in place?
* Would you use E-Mail Marketing and do you have an opt-in-list you can target?
* How will you take care of Blogging if needed?
* How will you take care of Social Media Marketing?
* Do you have the money for Online Banner Advertising or Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
* How will you take care of Search Engine Optimization?

Let’s look into each of those.

* Web Analytics:
Most hosts today provide a pre-installed solution like AUSTATS. If your host has one, then you are good. If not, you can use pre-hosted solutions like Google analytics, or a free hit counter. Most free hit counters provide more than just a number these days. Just do a google search and choose one.

You will need this to at least find out which pages of your website are most popular, so you can fine tune them for better SEO, a better user experience, and even getting a step ahead of your competition by providing better content.

* Email Marketing:
Some say that this doesn’t work anymore, but I do not agree with them. Of course, if you send bulk emails to a non-targeted list, then it doesn’t work as well as it does if your list is targeted. Sending emails doesn’t mean you are spamming if members in your list have specifically permitted you to send them emails about your products, launches etc. These are called an opt-in-list.

There are a lot of free and professional pre-hosted solutions for you to choose from. Most of them provide you with a small piece of HTML code which you can use in your website’s HTML to display the signup form. You can give away some freebies to motivate people to join your mailing list.

Once you have a mailing list you can notify your users of new content on your website, new product launches etc, but don’t make it just a promotional mailing list.

* Blogging:
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to stay in touch with your website users as well as have new content on your website on a regular basis. Blogging itself can be turned into a profitable business. Get these free tips for successful blogging. Today you need not even buy hosting or a domain to start blogging. Of course, if you do, you look more professional. If you want some pre-hosted, free solutions, you might use wordpress.com or blogger.com

There is something else which makes blogging a must for your online business. It’s PINGING. When you write a new post on your blog, blog search services are automatically notified of the new content. This allows them to index your blog quickly and display your entry in their search results if appropriate. Won’t this get extra visitors to your blog?

* Social Media Marketing:
Social Media Marketing has become one of the most effective marketing tools today, and if you are not doing it, you are leaving money on the table. My personal favorite would be Twitter because it’s easy to use, can get viral, and you can post your tweets to Facebook directly from your twitter account. Use these free twitter tips that work to your advantage.

* Online Banner Advertising and Pay-per-click Advertising:
If you have the money, you can buy advertising in multiple ways like traditional banner advertising where you place a banner or a text link on another website which has high traffic, or you can go with more complex advertising like pay-per-click. This is where you place an advertisement on another website and you only pay when someone visits your website by clicking the advertisement – sound good? Not so much…

With banner advertising you can get unlimited clicks for a fixed amount, so your advertising cost is kind of controlled. Unfortunately, this is not the case in pay-per-click advertising. Here you pay for every click on your advertisement. Of course, you can control how many dollars you wish to spend and stop your advertisement after that amount, but think about it again.

Suppose you spent 10 cents per click and stopped your advertisement after 100 dollars, you got 1000 visitors, including clicks from your competitors, clicks from members which did not buy your product, did not sign up for your mailing list or anything else. Now let’s say that these “non-converting” visitors were about 50 percent, then you actually got only 500 useful visitors. Depending on your advertisement, landing pages, advertisement copywriting, landing page copywriting, and action required, this number of “non-converting” members could be more higher… This is just normal. Most potential customers “DO NOT” convert the first time. Generally, only about 2-6 percent of visitors convert to customers, and even that’s a high rate of conversion.

Unless you run another campaign and spend another 100 dollars, do you have any way of “re-targeting” those first time non-converting potential buyers?

If you had placed a banner advertisement on another website for a month using 100 dollars, then these same people would have kept seeing your advertisement for a full month, visited your website over and over and hopefully converted!

When using banner advertising make sure that your banner is displayed enough times and not just rotated a few times in a banner rotation script.

When it comes to advertising, you need to think of the solution that works best for you and go with that. Don’t forget to track performance of your advertisements. You did install a Web Analytics program, didn’t you?

* Search Engine Optimization:
Search Engine Optimization, popularly known as SEO is where you optimize your website pages to rank higher in search engines. This is a long process, takes time, and comes with no guarantee, but if your website makes it, you can keep getting a steady stream of traffic for free everyday for quite sometime!

I am pretty sure that almost 20% of the web is full of articles, tips, and tricks on do it yourself SEO, but basically it boils down to just 3 things:

- Keyword research. These are the terms that people are typing in search boxes.

- On-page optimization. This is where you copywrite your web content to target a specific key phrase for which you want to rank higher. Key phrase in title tag, meta tags, heading tags, and a sensible appearance in the regular content.

- Off-page optimization. This is where you get other websites to give you a link using the key phrase you are targeting. Better if the linking page shares a similar topic.

This is where having a blog hosted on a subdomain or a separate domain becomes useful. You can link to your website from your blog which will be considered as an external link. Of course, this is not enough to get you in the top search results, but it will at least help get your website indexed, especially if you are using a pinging service.

I’d personally recommend out sourcing this job to a SEO firm if you have the money and the need. Working on this yourself will take a lot of your time and you will end up adding another SEO website to the 20% SEO-Web!

How do you think I became a WebMaster? Yeah, I was already a programmer, and in love with my PC, but my first website in 2004 had nothing to do with website services etc., but the second one in 2005 did. Since then I’ve been a full-time webmaster! That’s 7 years, and you wouldn’t work for 7 years for free, would you?

If you still want to do it yourself, read these free search engine optimization tips that work.

Follow S. Kumar on Twitter or visit BlogOfWebmaster.com to learn why the BlogOfWebMaster is called the Black Blog of Web Business Success.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Web Development, Website Design, Website Traffic
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How to Make a Website Interesting and Easy to Read

by Jeff · Comments (0)
26 May

Almost anyone can learn how to make a website. Software programs that create the code for the user have turned what used to be a complex process into a simple task that even a child can master. However, just because you can make a website doesn’t guarantee that your website will be easy to read or interesting for the reader. Fortunately, with a few simple techniques, you can make your website content engaging.

Break up Content

Studies show that people read information differently on the web than they do in print. For example, website users only tend to read small amounts of information at a time, and they are less likely to read all of the information. For this reason, experts call the web a “non-sticky medium,” meaning that readers won’t stick around to read every last sentence, especially if the information is poorly organized or if there is too much text on a page.

As a result of these reading patterns, you must write small amounts of content for a single page rather than create a long, scrolling page. Users are less likely to read information that they must scroll down to find. Keep the amount of information small, and get to the point quickly to ensure that the users read and understand the essential points.

Use Headings and Subheadings

In addition to placing only a small amount of text on each page, use headings and subheadings to label the content, especially if you must place more than a few paragraphs of text on a single page. Headings and subheadings facilitate skimming and help the user find the information he or she is looking for, which makes them more likely to stay on your website until they have gathered the information they need.

Make Content Stand Alone

One common mistake made by people who are learning how to make a website is to write content for each page on the website that assumes that the user has read the other pages. Instead, the content on each page should make sense when read by itself, even if the user does not visit any of the other pages on the website. Many users will only visit one or two links on your site, so you can’t assume that the user has read any of your other pages. If a user lands on your page and can’t understand the content, or if the content refers to information on other pages that they haven’t read, the user might leave the website without reading any of your other information or visiting any other links.

Consider the Audience

Some website authors assume that they are writing for a general audience, or that because the web is available to anyone with internet access that they don’t have to think about their audience’s needs and reasons for visiting their website. This is a mistake. While your website is technically available to a wide audience, people will visit your website for specific reasons. For example, if your website is about cooking and wine, your audience will probably consist of readers who are adults who like to cook and have a sufficient level of income to afford to buy wine.

Cater to your audience by choosing topics that might interest them. For instance, if your audience is primarily youth and young adults who are interested in motocross, feature a motocross athlete that has been in the news lately. Then, update your content and add new content frequently to ensure that the audience keeps coming back to your site to read more.

For a free step by step video tutorial on how to make a website visit, http://www.makeawebsiteguide.com

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

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Categories : Web Development, Website Design
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5 Pet Peeves Designers Have With Developers (and How to Avoid Them)

by Jeff · Comments (0)
20 Mar

Original posting in webdesigner depot

Cats and dogs. Cain and Abel. Designers and developers. These are just a few of the great historical face-offs.

Designers and developers often seem to come from different planets and have completely different brains.

Developers want a website to work right, designers want it to look right.

While these goals have a lot of overlap (and, of course, I’m stereotyping here a bit), the differences often come down to the designer and developer’s expectations of success.

Managing expectations is a matter of communication: making points clearly to the other side, finding common ground, and agreeing on goals.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that easy, but it is important for both sides to at least try to understand each other.

In an effort to promote goodwill between designers and developers, I will share some pet peeves I have encountered and explore the issues that lead to them and their solutions.

Peeve #1: “Why can’t the developer just make it look like the comp?”

You create a great-looking design and hand off the comp to your developer, but when you get the site back, it looks like a patchwork quilt of what you designed.

Issue
Comps are not Web pages; they are not a mixture of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. Photoshop, Fireworks, and Illustrator can do a lot of things that are impossible (or at least wildly impractical) on the Web, which often means that developers will have to scale down the design.

Solution
Talk to your developer while you are designing, not just afterward. Ask them whether an effect you are using will be easy to accomplish or whether a better alternative exists. Also, as you learn more about Web development, you’ll be able to better tell the difference between when your design is impractical and when the developer is just slacking off.

 

Peeve #2: “The colors are all wrong!”

You don’t choose colors arbitrarily, but developers seem to think that “close is close enough.”

Issue
I don’t know whether this is true of all developers, but I once worked with a developer who was red-green color-blind (he was a huge fan of our content manager, who sent all of her emails in pink text on a lime-green background). However, being color-blind didn’t stop him from being a kick-ass developer.

Solution
If you want the colors to be right, then spell out all of the color values on the page. Don’t rely on your developer to eyeball the color values or to sample the colors in Photoshop.

You also need to consider that the problem may not be with the developer but with you. Colors look different on a Mac and in CMYK (if you happen to accidentally enable that color space). Make sure that your document color mode and proofs are set to generic RGB by default.

 

Peeve #3: “Do developers even know what ‘white space’ means?”

You’ve left plenty of breathing room around elements to create a fluid eye path and improve readability, but the developer crams everything together, telling you, “It’s the only way it will all fit.”

Issue
I once complained to a developer that he left no space between the border of a module and its content, making it really difficult for most people to read. He replied, “I don’t care about other people. I can read it.” While most developers are not quite so callous, they have not been trained in the fine art of mixing positive and negative spaces to guide the visitor’s eye around the design.

Solution
If you really want your designs to be as precise as possible, don’t just give the designer a comp and expect them to figure out the spacing. Specify the exact widths, heights, and lengths in a design specifications document. This serves as a blueprint that you and the developer agree on for how things should be spaced.

At the very least, define general rules for margins and padding. For example, “All modules must have a minimum of 10 pixels of padding between the content and the border.”

 

Peeve #4: “The developer can never get my designs to look the same in different browsers.”

You look at the site in Firefox and it looks fine, but when you switch to Internet Explorer it falls to pieces.

Issue
You have to be sympathetic to the plight of developers when it comes to making designs look consistent across browsers. Each browser has its own quirks with spacing. Things are getting better (especially with the slow death of Internet Explorer 6), but getting them all to completely play nice with each other is still hard.

Solution
I generally allow a few pixels of wiggle room in my designs to accommodate cross-browser issues, but it helps to know what these issues are while you’re designing, so that you can help the developer avoid them.

Don’t be afraid to point out cross-browser problems to the developer and expect them to be fixed. But resolving some of them may require that you tweak your design.

 

Peeve #5: “This will take how long?”

Nothing is more depressing than burning the midnight oil on double-time to get your part of a project done on schedule, only to get back a development LOE (Level of Effort) that puts the project release date back a month from the end of eternity.

Issue
In a classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Scotty explains the facts of engineering life to Geordi La Forge: “You didn’t tell him [Captain Picard] how long it would really take, did you? Oh, laddie. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.” Some developers think of designers in the same way that Scotty thinks of Starfleet Captains.

Solution
Developers know they will encounter unforeseen problems and so tend to grossly pad their estimates. This also makes them look really good if they get their end done a lot earlier than estimated. Haggle with the developer down to a reasonable timeline and then hold them to it. As you get to know a developer, you will hopefully find your own way to be a “miracle worker”.

 

Special Bonus Peeve: “Developers just don’t understand designers.”

Or worse:
“The developer thinks they’re a designer!”
It’s bad enough when developers seem to simply refuse to see the designer’s point of view, but that difference of opinion can usually be mediated (usually by a good project manager). However, when the developer thinks they know more about design than the designer, tempers can flare.

Issue
I’ve had to deal with more than one developer who read an article by Jakob Nielsen and then wanted to lecture me about good design practice in the middle of a meeting. This not only shows disrespect for the designer but slows down the project as debate ensues.

Solution
Working with know-it-all developers is tricky, and the way to handle these situations depends on the size of the ego you are dealing with. Generally, I find it best to simply listen to what they have to say and then, if they have a point, acknowledge it and move on. Avoid arguing with them if possible.

Often their complaint is about a design “rule” that’s been broken. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge that you broke a rule—that’s what innovative designers do—but make sure you can justify why you broke it.

Whenever I find myself in this situation, I think back to my review days in design school, when I had to defend my work against some pretty brutal criticism. These sessions were often ego-bruising, but they taught me how to quickly defend my decisions while keeping my cool.

It may seem humiliating to have to constantly justify your decisions, but the more you show the “method in your madness,” the more you will find that your colleagues value and trust your judgment.

Written by Jason Cranford Teague.

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Categories : Web Development, Website Design
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