WordPress is a great way to run your website and turn it into a power house.
This guide shows you how to install and configure wordpress so that you can maximise the power of your website
It's a free guide brought to you by http://richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com
1. WORDPRESS WIZARDLEARN TO INSTALL AND MAXIMISE YOUR WORDPRESS SITE
RICHARD BUTLER
Life & Business Coach
RichardButlerTheSuccessCoach.com
+3531442 9769
richardbutler.lifecoach@gmail.com
http://richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com
3. Legal Information
This eBook has been written to provide information about WordPress. Every effort has been
made to make this eBook as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be
mistakes in typography or content. Also, this eBook provides information only up to the
publishing date. Therefore,
This eBook should be used as a guide --- not as the ultimate source.
The purpose of this eBook is to educate. The author and the publisher does not warrant that
the information contained in this e---book is fully complete and shall not be responsible for
any errors or omissions.
The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity
with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by
this eBook.
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4. Introduction
Hi, it’s Richard here and I am glad you are taking the time to read this report. I hope
you like it.
It’s the first in a series of reports regarding how to install WordPress and become a
wizard at it! Then you can use this knowledge to start a business helping people set
up their own WordPress site!
If you enjoy this report please comment, share it, print it, give it away, what every
you want!!
To sign up and learn more about the full WordPress Wizard course visit my site.
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5. Apprentice Wizard
Getting basics of WordPress right
WordPress is probably one of the easiest ways to get a website online. Most hosting
companies allow you to do a two click install and hey presto your WordPress Blog is
live. It’s as simple as that, however it does take some configuration.
So let’s look at why you want to use WordPress in the first place.
Installation
The first point would be the ease of install. I remember when I was first building
websites I had to build them first on my computer, test them, then upload them
using FTP, ensuring that my settings were correct. Then of course I had to make
sure that the local web pages I had were as up to date with the ones on the server
and.... yeah it was a little complicated to say the least.
WordPress however allows you to create the pages online, meaning that you can
update your website from anywhere in the world (yeah such a cliché but very true!).
However, it is true. There are now apps that you can use to update your website
from your Smartphone!
Ease of Creation
The second important element of WordPress is that it is a fully featured Content
Management System, which makes it really easy for anyone to create, update and
link pages. Again in the “good old days” it was so difficult to create pages, keep
track of them, update them etc.
WordPress also allows you to manage all of your multimedia elements, such as
videos and images very easily. There is no need for complicated FTP etc
Search Engine Friendly
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6. The third major advantage for me is that it is really easy to get WordPress blogs
ranked. There’s still lots of things you must do but WordPress provides a solid
platform to allow you to rank quicker than a standard HTML website.
As you know Search Engine Optimisation is really important in order to get good
visibility in the major search engines. When creating static pages you had to write
the correct title tag, description, keywords etc. This all had to be manually coded.
With WordPress you can get fields that you fill in so you know exactly what you are
doing!
When WordPress was built the developers of it made sure that the actual structure
of the pages created and the coding behind it is as clean as possible. Search
engines will rank sites higher that have lean and well coded pages. This is what
WordPress does!
Really all you have to worry about is creating content rich pages
Themes
Themes allow you to change the look and feel of your website in just one click.
Literally you download a theme and say Activate and that’s it, every page on your
site now has a new look based on the theme. I don’t know if you remember how
hard it was to do this when you had a standard HTML site. If you wanted to update
the look of your site you had to ensure that every page was changed. I remember
changing the look of a site and then two weeks later finding that I had forgotten a
few pages ahhhh! It was a pain, let me tell you that!
Plugins
Ah, yes the great plugins. Plugins allow you to extend the functionality and
capability of WordPress. By the end of this course you will become a Wizard when it
comes to sourcing and installing plugins.
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7. A plug-in allows you to add all types of extra functionality to WordPress, and if you
know where to go many of the plugins are free. But more about plugins later in the
course.
Installing your WordPress blog
Ok so you need to know how to install your WordPress blog?
Here’s my really short no fluff guide and I mean no fluff!
Log into your hosting cpanel
Locate the icon called Fantastico and click on it
Click on WordPress link
Click on New Installation
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8. Enter in all the required details
Click Install WordPress
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9. That’s it a basic simple install of WordPress, in fact there’s nothing more you need!
Ok time to log in
Remember your login url will always be
www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
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10. The basics you need to know
When you log in your will see the dashboard:
Let’s run thru the basic set up that you need:
Changing the title of your blog
If you wish to change the title of your blog at this stage you can do this. This is
important as it tells the reader your tagline, and is also good for SEO purposes
To change the title:
1) Log into WordPress site
2) Click on Settings from the left hand side
3) Enter in the Site title
4) Enter in the Tagline
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11. 5) Click Save Changes
That’s it! See I told you WordPress was not that difficult!
What do people see when they arrive at your blog?
When somebody arrives at your blog what do you want them to see? If could be a
fixed or static page that appears, or you could show them your latest post. My
personal preference is that they see your latest post.
It’s easy to set this up, just follow the steps below:
1) Log into WordPress site
2) Click on Settings from the left hand side
3) Click on Reading
4) The page will display the following Frontpage displays
5) Click on Your latest post
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12. And that’s it! Pretty simple no?
So far so good, now let’s get a bit more technical!
I said earlier that WordPress was great as it was well optimised for SEO, well that’s
true but there are still a few other tweaks we must do to make sure we maximise the
SEO value of our blog.
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13. Categories
Ok I know we have not even started to talk about writing on your blog but do you
mind if we do some house work first? What I mean is let’s get the blog ready for
your posts that you are going to create.
In order to have a tidy blog we need to create categories for your posts. Well we
don’t really need to but it makes everything more tidy and will also help you later on
(all will be revealed shortly).
So what’s a category I hear you ask!
Simple it’s a way of ordering your posts
So for example on my main blog, richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com I have the
following categories and sub categories:
Coaching
-Goal Setting
-Mindmapping
-Stress
Fun things
-Travel
Internet Marketing
-Coaching
-Goal Setting
-Time Management
NLP
Personal Development
Self Help
As you can this allows me to “file” away posts into a logical order. So when I blog
about coaching, but the theme is goal setting, I put in the goal setting category
under coaching.
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14. This puts a little bit of structure and order on your posts. It also allows me to get the
keywords that I need into the url. Do you see the possibilities here? I can also allow
people to find all post in a certain category, so all my posts about internet marketing,
coaching etc. This can also make the navigation and finding of your posts easier.
I would suggest that right this minute you write down 5 or 10 “things” you are going
to blog about. Go on do it now:
Wizard’s task:
Think about what your blog will be about and then write out all the possible
categories you can write about. This has a twofold effect. It gets you thinking about
how to best optimise your site but also gives you ideas for what you are going to
write about. You see where this is going, so now it’s your turn write out your top 10
categories
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15. Can you use sub categories?
The answer is simple! Yes you can. As explained above it is possible to make sub
categories so you can have a main category such as Internet marketing and a sub
category such as coaching internet marketing, you can do this and get a final url as
below:
http://richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com/internet-marketing/coaching-internet-
marketing/what-business-are-you-in.html
As you can see I am now getting more of my important keywords in. Obviously you
want to keep this no longer than one category and one sub category. Also don’t
overdo the keywords either as you don’t want Google to think of your blog as spam.
Your next task is to look at your categories above, and then create 3 sub categories
for each category
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16. Ok so you have that done
Let’s create some categories
1) Click on the down arrow beside the word Posts
2) Now click on Categories
3) Type in the name of the category
4) Click Add New Category
That’s it
Keep creating the categories
Hold on what about sub categories
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17. Good point
1) Create a new category but this time look for Parent
2) Click on the down arrow to the right of the letter none
3) Select the category and then click Add New Category
The next thing you need to do is I change your Permalinks
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18. Permalinks
As I mentioned earlier WordPress is great for Search Engine Optimisation, and here
is your first very important tip. You must change your permalinks. A permalink is the
static or permanent address of your posts.
The standard url that WordPress gives for the permalinks is not very SEO friendly.
Let’s take an example below:
Which of the following addresses, in your opinion, is better for Search Engine
Optimisation
www.richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com/?p=104
or
http://richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com/self-help/follow-the-light-and-bring-hope-
into-your-life.html
As you can see from the two links above, link number two is more descriptive,
there’s more keywords in it, which can help in the getting the page ranked better. Is
it the b all and end all? No but we must make sure that we create our urls, title of
posts etc as descriptive as possible.
This to me is the first thing you need to do before creating any posts.
In order to change this we must change our permalinks.
As you will notice the link is made up of the domain name, the category of the post,
and the post title itself.
Remember those categories you came up with earlier? The are now going to form
part of your blog post url.
How to change the permalink url
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19. 1) Log into WordPress site
2) Click on Settings from the left hand side
3) Click on Permalinks
4) Click on Custom Structure
5) Copy and paste the following /%category%/%postname%.html
6) Click on Save Changes
That's it - pretty simple!
To be honest it is as simple as that. Let me explain what I have done up above
the %category% puts in the category of the post, while the %postname% puts in the
post name. I then add the .html to it to make it look like an ordinary webpage.
The key point to the above is that you maximise the seo value as much as you can.
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20. Links
Links are exactly what they say on the tin. They are a list of other pages, products,
services or blogs (in fact anything) that you wish to link to. You can put anything into
the links section. Many people recommend putting in affiliate links in the link section.
However it’s up to you.
You can have a number of different link categories or headings
The first thing we will do is create a new links category
Wizard’s task:
Think about how you would like to categorise your links, for example, Industry
News, Recommended Products etc. Your task now is to write out up to 3 link
categories that you wish to have on your blog
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Now that you have your categories thought out it is time to create your new link
categories
Creating link categories
It’s easy to remove the default links, just follow the steps below:
1) Log into WordPress site
2) Click on Links from the left hand side
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21. 3) Click on Link Categories
4) In the Name field enter a name for the category for example recommended-
products
5) In the Slug field write an seo friendly link, for example recommended-products
6) Click Add New Link Categories
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22. Tip If you don’t enter anything in the slug field WordPress will automatically create if
for you
Wizard’s task:
Now you are going to think about what links you want to add to your three
categories. Write out three links for each category below
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Adding links
Ok you’re nearly there, you have the links, you have the categories now let’s add
them!
It’s easy to remove the default links, just follow the steps below:
1) Log into WordPress site
2) Click on Links from the left hand side
3) Click on Add New
4) Enter in a name for the new link you wish to add
5) Enter in the full address for the link. Remember to add the http:// otherwise it
won’t work correctly.
6) Enter in a Description that will be shown when someone hovers their mouse
over the link. This may be useful for seo purposes, so don’t forget to add it in.
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23. 7) In the Categories section select the category that you want this link to be shown
in
8) It the Target area ensure that you select the first option, _blank. This will open
the link in a new window. Which means that when the visitor closes the link they
return to your blog. Simple trick but really effective!
9) When finished click Add Link
Tip when you create a category it will not be shown on your blog if there are no links
contained in it.
If you look at your blog page you may or may not see the links!
Don’t worry there’s nothing wrong we just have to activate the links section using a
widget, which we will deal with in the widget chapter.
Keep adding categories and links to those categories. Don’t overdo it but think
about the important links you want to add.
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