#3 How to Use WordPress for your Websites

Podcast – How to Use Wordpress for Your Websites
Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley: Okay, welcome back to another episode of Autopilot
Your Business. My name is Andrew McCauley and on the
line with me today, of course as usual, I have the lovely
Heather Porter.

Hello, Heather!

Heather Porter: Hello, Andrew. Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us
for another episode.

Andrew McCauley: Heather, what is today‟s episode all about?

Heather Porter: Woo hoo! We are talking about WordPress.

Andrew McCauley: WordPress. I am excited about WordPress. WordPress
is one of my favorite tools on the net and I guess we are
going to share with people today why that is the case.
What are you feelings about WordPress?

Heather Porter: Yes, definitely. Well, we are basically going to cover
what it is first of all, why it‟s amazing, how to get the
most out of it and why people are raving about it. We
love it, our clients love it. It‟s a really, really easy and
effective way to get a website on the internet. So, shall
we get stuck in?

Andrew McCauley: Let‟s get stuck in. I know you have had your head
buried in WordPress for the last couple of years, much
more than me. So, I am going to let you answer most

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of the questions. I might just pose the questions and
add bits and pieces and I will let you answer those
questions. One thing I guess we want to be careful of is
not getting too techie. So, anyone that‟s starting to
freak out, I promise you we won‟t get too techie;
otherwise, you can slap us around the face with a wet
fish.

Heather Porter: Andrew, you pretend like one of those people that are
not techie and they have no idea what I am talking
about, just in case.

Andrew McCauley: I will do that, I will do that. Alright, so let‟s get started.
I guess we want to cover what is WordPress. We hear
this term often. Give us a rundown. What is it, what
does it do and why would anybody want to use it?

Heather Porter: Okay. So, just a quick one, basically a step backward –
what is a website? A website is a domain –
www.blahblahbah.com – and when you get a domain,
you have to also have hosting which basically… consider
the domain is like a property, like you buy a plot of land
and then the hosting is where you start to build on that
plot of land. So, you need a hosting company that will
actually sort of be where your address is on the internet
and then once you have that, you actually have to put a
website up. There is a whole bunch of different options
out there. You can do literally crazy custom things with
something called HTML. You can do things like Joomla,
Drupal, and here is all those techie crazy terms…

Andrew McCauley: You are scaring me already.




Heather Porter: But what we love is something called WordPress.

Andrew McCauley: Okay.

Heather Porter: What WordPress is is… you guys may have heard a little
term thrown out quite a bit called „CMS‟ or „Content
Management System‟. In layman‟s terms basically what
it is is it‟s something that you install onto your domain,
on to your host or your server and it allows you to have
a website that you can very easily update yourself.
That‟s what CMS is, it‟s content management system
that you as the user can update yourself.

Andrew McCauley: So, in last episode we spoke about websites and the big
picture overview of how they work. One of the biggest
complaints that we get and I often hear a lot and I am
sure you do too is the fact that people pay a lot of
money for webmasters to look after, so to speak, their
websites but in actual effect, they really can‟t change
anything unless they pay a ridiculous amount of money
for that webmaster to get off his back side and do
something. Is that something that WordPress does as
well?

Heather Porter: Such a great question and what WordPress is great for is
allowing you the freedom and flexibility to update it
yourself. You see a lot of companies up until recently
have developed their own CMSes and that means you
are locked to that company for the lifetime of your
website. As long as you have your website with them,
you have to log into their tools. WordPress is not like
that. It‟s free, anybody can install it and it meets you on
your website and you can log in and change it whenever




you want; but with that said, Andrew, I mean, it‟s also
important that you get sort of the fundamentals and
everything set up for you but from there you can make
little easy updates, tweaks yourself.

Andrew McCauley: If we go back to the analogy that you started off with
about domains and hosting and that sort of stuff, I guess
having a webmaster who looks after your website and
you keep paying them on an ongoing basis would be like
renting a house where you really don‟t own the house,
somebody else owns it, and then if you build it yourself
on a WordPress site, it means you basically own the
house and you can do what you want. Would that be a
right analogy?

Heather Porter: Exactly and it‟s so important you want to do this starting
now and into the future of online because there is
actually a whole new industry that‟s called domaining. I
mean, literally people are considering domains and
websites like Real-Estate on the internet so you want to
own your property and you don‟t want to have another
company owning your property and your systems as
well. So, it should be all yours and so WordPress is so
good.

Andrew McCauley: Cool. What are the pros out there for using WordPress?

Heather Porter: One of the things actually I would start out with quickly
is a lot of people say “Isn‟t WordPress a blogging tool?”
– It used to be a blogging tool, it still is. However, it‟s
much more than that. I mean, when you have a
WordPress site, it‟s like any other amazing looking
website but you can also have a blog as part of your




website. So, don‟t get confused that we are talking
about a blog here. We are actually talking about a
platform that you can do a whole bunch of amazing
things with the website where blog is only a part of it.

Andrew McCauley: I think we covered that in the last webinar, didn‟t we?

Heather Porter: Yeah, yeah, we did it a little bit. That‟s right. We were
going over the fundamentals of websites sort of, what
you need to look at and the layout and we did cover the
blog. You are correct. Well done!

Alright, let‟s talk about pros. So, there are so many pros
of WordPress. First of all – and here is another little
jargonistic term but it‟s kind of a cool little term to learn
– it‟s called „open source‟. So, WordPress is open
source. What that actually means is that it‟s free. It‟s a
platform that is not owned by anybody in particular but
owned by everybody that works with it. So, it has
thousands of developers always working on it worldwide
to make it better. There are always updates and fixes
and you can hire anybody at any price anywhere in the
world to do all sorts of different things for you and it‟s
very flexible, very easy to use and you always know you
are going to get really good updates as it grows.

Andrew McCauley: So, I guess, talking about open source and third party
developers, I know Facebook employ that methodology
where they open up their backend, if you like, so that
people can create Farmville and all those crazy games
and can create all those applications and that‟s part of
the reason why internet over the last eight years has
exploded through the roof. Apple did it with their iPhone




and all of the apps. Any app you see on an iPhone
wasn‟t developed by an Apple developer; it was
developed by somebody like you and me just sitting at
home and deciding to come up with an app and Google
did it with Android, Twitter has done it with a whole
bunch of applications and Facebook has done it too. So,
it‟s basically opened the world up to crazy creative
content, if you like.

Heather Porter: Yeah, it‟s set a new standard.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah and WordPress is no different. It has opened its
doors up to anybody and everybody to come up with
what they want to come up with and I guess that‟s why
so many people are finding it hard to keep up with
technology because everybody is now creating
technology rather than those big companies that used to
rule the roost back in the 80‟s and 90‟s.

Heather Porter: So true but also a state of overwhelm you as well
because everybody is creating technology, that means
you have access to so much more. Anything that you
can think of in your mind that you want your website to
do, you can do it already and we will go into this in a
little bit, but these things called plug-ins that you can
add on to your WordPress site. Anything you can
possibly imagine, they are out there. There are
hundreds and thousands of these things that exist.

Andrew McCauley: So, if this is one of those platforms that every day mom
and pop operators, home-based businesses can use, is
that really who they are targeting or is it bigger
companies out there that are using it?




Heather Porter: It‟s now so much more about the big companies as well.
I mean, there is really, really notable brands already
using WordPress and it grows daily. So, to just name a
few, there is New York Times, there is Mashable – we
love Mashable for our techie news – there is CNN, there
is Forbes, eBay, Sony – the list goes on and on and on
and on and we are talking huge corporations building
their websites using WordPress. 15% actually, Andrew,
15% of the world – and this probably has grown since I
got this stat – are currently using WordPress.

Andrew McCauley: Really? Wow! That‟s a pretty big stat and I guess it‟s
growing and growing because I know WordPress is
getting rave reviews and continuously growing at a rapid
rate right now. So, that‟s good. Cool.

And so, how hard is it to update? If we are talking about
going and updating it ourselves, what‟s the learning
curve like for that?

Heather Porter: It literally looks like a Word document. In Word you
have that little button at the top that says Bold or Italic
or sort of different text formatting, colors for your text;
it looks and acts like Word. So, you are going into a
page, it‟s almost like you have opened Word. You can
insert photos, you can change your font and then you
just hit „publish‟ basically. It‟s really super easy to us.

Andrew McCauley: Right. So, when you buy WordPress – you buy
WordPress? How much is the cost?




Heather Porter: WordPress is free. It‟s literally like this little thing that
you download and then put up on to your server to
create a website. So, it‟s completely free. It‟s the
development of WordPress or I should say making
WordPress into a site that suits your business that can
cost money or not… I mean, there is a whole bunch of
other little free things that you could do but we will go
into that too actually coming up in the next step, I will
talk about themes and actually because right now we are
just talking really about WordPress as a platform but not
what it is to make site.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. So, if you are talking about – let‟s go back to real
estate analogy; you buy a house, let‟s say you buy a
brand new house all for playing or however you buy it,
just getting built and you have a choice of what light
fixtures you want to put in there, what taps, what
toilets, shelving, what mirrors, what doors, door
handles, all that sort of stuff, what kitchen appliances, I
guess they would be like the plug-ins for your house
when you have a WordPress. Would that be right?

Heather Porter: Yeah, this is very good analogy actually of what a plug-
in is, yes. So, WordPress, it‟s just a platform where you
could make website but there is a whole bunch of things
that you want to do on your website, maybe in addition
to that, like shopping carts, you can sell stuff, you want
to sync it with your social media accounts so you might
have your tweets and your Facebook posts on there, you
might want to have you blog post go out to other places
online automatically which is great for marketing of your
business, you might want to analyze your posts to see if
they are going to be found easily using keywords,
protect your site – the list goes on and on and on. All
these are little, what you would call, plug-ins that you
add on to your WordPress once you have installed your




WordPress to do all these amazing things for your
website.

Andrew McCauley: So, it‟s almost like going down to Home Depot or
something like that and going shopping for a new site.
Would that be right? So, do you buy plug-ins? What‟s
the general cost of a plug-in and what sort of support do
they have?

Heather Porter: Well, your trolley or your shopping cart would be your
WordPress and you would start chucking in all the little
things like the door handles and stuff and those will be
the plug-ins, most of them are free. They are actually
free, just install it and it‟s so cool about this. After you
have WordPress installed on your domain, when you are
actually in the backend or your area, we can update
your site, you can just go “shopping” for your plug-ins
and you just search. You can search for Facebook
comments or shopping carts or whatever and they will
appear, there is a library of these things that are free.

Andrew McCauley: Wow! Okay, that‟s pretty cool. Now, I know WordPress
is also a bunch of other bits and pieces that you may
need to have a website and property like e-mails and e-
mail marketing and affiliate programs and things like
that. How do they work? Would you buy one plug-in
and it does it all or what‟s the deal with that?

Heather Porter: That‟s a really good point actually. I think that what
that point reminds me of is maybe let‟s kind of take a
step back and talk about… we have talked about when
you put into your trolley but how is your trolley or your
shopping cart going to look? Let‟s take a step back with




that and then we can start to talk about visually, like
what you are saying, the opt-ins and what all these little
extra bells and whistles, what do they actually look like.
We are talking about jamming them in the backend but
where do they sit, what do they do on your site, how do
you get all to come together.

So, really, I mean with WordPress… so, we have already
talked about you need a domain that you can go buy at
www.godaddy.com or www.cheapdomains.com – there
is so many – but you go buy www.yourbusiness.com;
you need hosting, again, www.godaddy.com offers
hosting, www.hostgator.com offers hosting and it‟s
cheap; you can get hosting for like 10 dollars a month.
Then you are going to need WordPress which is installed
into your domain as we said earlier. Then, as you are
looking at all these plug-ins, you also need to dress your
site up. So, right now, we haven‟t even talked about
what the site looks like. I mean, we have the backend
and the tools behind the scenes cranking and making it
work but there is something that is called WordPress
theme that you need to actually make your site yours
and make it look fabulous, have your logo and your
colors and everything on that.

So, think of the theme as the outfit. So, really, there
are a lot of free themes. So, once you actually install
WordPress, you can go theme shopping and you can find
free ones or you can get some really amazing ones quite
expensively. We like themes… gosh! There is Studio75,
there are so many really amazing companies and you
can buy themes for like 30 dollars and change the colors
and do your logo on that as well. I hope that makes
sense. Is that kind of making you sense?




Andrew McCauley: Yeah, I guess the themes… I don‟t know why I am
sticking to real estate analogies today but I am going to.
When you are like painting your house and changing the
color, every house… I am here in the States at the
moment and you go down the street and every house
looks the same – they are built the same, they have the
same shape. It looks like Lego Land really in some
places and they all look the same and I guess that‟s
what you have when you first start off with WordPress
website that they all look the same and you can quickly
tell when you go to a WordPress site that it‟s brand new
because they all look the same. So, I guess themes are
like putting a nice different garden at the front, changing
the colors of the house, maybe moving some awnings
and that sort of thing around so that it looks different
than the house next door. Would you say that‟s what
themes are?

Heather Porter: I absolutely love that you said that. Yeah, that‟s a great
way of looking at what the theme is, exactly. So, to get
a theme again, you can get one free in the admin area
of WordPress, you can go into an area called
„appearances‟ and then there is an area called „themes‟
and then you can do search for themes there or you can
just go out and find other companies like I was saying
for themes or you can just go look for WordPress
specialist or developer and just tell them the type of
things that you want in your site, what do you want it to
look like, and then they can go and actually get the
theme for you and customize it and do that all for you.

Andrew McCauley: Cool. Okay. So, what‟s the next thing we should cover
in WordPress? I guess, what do you need to set up?
Now, I know that there are a couple of different types of
WordPress sites. What are the differences between
those?




Heather Porter: Well, different types of WordPress sites, I guess, really if
you are looking at some that are more focused on being
a blog, some that are more normal websites with blogs
that are part of them, there is a lot of membership
websites that exist that are using WordPress.

Andrew McCauley: If I don‟t want to pay for hosting, if I don‟t want to pay
for hosting, I can still use WordPress though. Is that
right?

Heather Porter: You can. Again, this is not recommended. We were
talking earlier about you want to own your domain and
you want to own your plot of land, your space on the
internet. You can have WordPress hosted for you. If
you go to www.wordpress.com and sign up there, they
can actually host it and I think it will be
www.theusernameyouchoose.wordpress.com and that‟s
where your website will actually sit. You cannot have
the freedom and flexibility of a lot of the things that we
are going to about on this podcast and again, we don‟t
recommend it because WordPress owns that site. What
happens if something happens to the WordPress as a
whole? It will just disappear overnight.

And a couple of other really important things to consider
too when setting up your website and again, I am going
big picture here because what my intention is is that
anybody listening to this will take these show notes or
the transcript and give this to WordPress developer and
say “Here, you do it” but the important things to
consider here are in the backend of your website – I say
backend admin, it‟s the area where you go, where you
log in to do things on your website. There is a couple of




things that are very important that you want to consider,
one being right when you are setting up your website,
there is something called permalinks – it‟s actually a cool
little thing to learn. Andrew, you know you go to your
website and it has
www.YourName.com/freeprize/october11blablabla and
the URL keeps going longer and longer. Those are
permalinks. So, when you get WordPress installed, it
actually names the pages in that URL. It names them
with weird numbers. So, it might be
www.YourName.com/1QRS=blahblahblah...

Andrew McCauley: Stuff you can‟t remember.

Heather Porter: Exactly. This is not friendly to search engines or users.
So, you want to change this immediately when you go
in. You want to change your permalinks so they are
friendly to users and in the notes for this, we will tell you
exactly what to change them to but just know that that‟s
an important thing that you want to do when you are
setting up your site.

Andrew McCauley: Let‟s just clarify. So, when you create a new page or a
new blog post, it automatically has its own URL, doesn‟t
it?

Heather Porter: That‟s correct, yeah, and it‟s assigned by WordPress
automatically with the permalink. If you alter the
permalinks to be custom like how I am saying here, then
you can actually go in and change the name of the
permalink if you do some settings in the back.




Andrew McCauley: And make it meaningful for you and for your followers.

Heather Porter: So, it would be www.YourName.com/MyFreeBonus, for
instance. So, that‟s the power of a permalink.

Andrew McCauley: The power of a permalink – I love it. Okay.

Heather Porter: Okay, privacy. Now, there is a privacy setting in there
as well. Most of the time WordPress, when it‟s installed,
will automatically have this set to private. That means
that search engines will never be able to find your
website. So, you want to make sure it‟s set to „public‟.
Once your site is ready and you are happy with it, then
you want to make sure it‟s set to „public‟. Then it can be
found. Then you officially exist online.

Andrew McCauley: Cool. Okay, privacy. What else is there that‟s
important?

Heather Porter: Blog title. So, here is another important thing. So,
when your WordPress is installed, it will actually just
kind of throw a title up there that‟s your user name and
then the subtitle would be “Just Another WordPress Site”
or “WordPress Blog”. You don‟t change that. Here is
another way of knowing if it‟s a new site or it‟s a newbie
that‟s doing this site – it will actually say up in the top of
their browser their user name and “just another
WordPress site”.




Andrew McCauley: Okay, right. So, it‟s a good giveaway. It might look
good but if it says that, you know they have missed a
very vital step.

Heather Porter: Exactly, exactly. So, it‟s an important thing.

Andrew McCauley: Right. Are there any other basic settings that we need
to consider when we are setting up our WordPress site?

Heather Porter: One more and this is probably one of the most important
– the admin e-mail, the administration e-mail. That‟s in
the settings as well in the admin area. This e-mail
address is important because any time there is new
comments that appear on your site, then this is the
person it‟s going to be e-mailed to approve or moderate
those comments. It‟s also the e-mail that‟s going to be
used if there are any problems on the site. So, you
either want it to be yours or you want it to be your
WordPress developer but just make sure that you have
delegated this to the right person that‟s going to look
after your comments on your website.

Andrew McCauley: Okay, cool. So, we were talking about plug-ins, we were
talking a little bit about plug-ins and themes. There is
another word that keeps popping up all the time and
that is „widgets‟. What is a widget? What does a widget
do and why would I want a widget?

Heather Porter: The widget – yeah, in WordPress you always hear the
words „widget‟ and „plug-in‟ thrown around loosely.




So, a widget – if you go to website, down on the right
hand side, you will generally find a column of smaller
content – sometimes, two columns but nowadays it‟s
turned in to be one, it‟s standard.

Andrew McCauley: Sometimes pictures as well?

Heather Porter: Yeah, pictures. You might have a little form that you
could fill out with your name and your e-mail address as
in the last podcast we called it an opt-in form, it has
maybe your Facebook comments, your twitter, all that.
So, the widgets are where you put this information. It‟s
in the right hand side of your WordPress site most of the
time.

So, how you get stuff in your little widget? And what do
we recommend as well? First one is a Facebook „like‟
box and that‟s the box, when you go to website you can
see their Facebook account, you can see what they are
posting, you can see the actual people that like it…

Andrew McCauley: No, is this the people that own the website or you as a
viewer?

Heather Porter: This is the people that own the website. So, this is
where they would put their Facebook. So, when people
come on to their website, they can very easily „like‟ their
Facebook account from their website without even
leaving their website which is really cool.




Andrew McCauley: Okay, this is cool,

Heather Porter: Very cool. Facebook has a page where you can actually
go and get code that you just copy out of Facebook and
then you paste into the widget and then it automatically
shows up very quickly and very easily on your website.

Andrew McCauley: If you are looking for that information, I think it‟s the
developer web page on Facebook. So,
developer.facebook.com and I think you will find that
information there.

Heather Porter: Exactly. Yeah, you can get it from there.

Andrew McCauley: Carry on.

Heather Porter: Well done! Well done!

The other thing too is what a lot of people use and we
always recommend is to add your social media buttons
there, your little icons where people can actually click on
them to go and check out what you are doing on your
YouTube, on your LinkedIn, on your Twitter. So, I call
them „the follow buttons‟ and it‟s just nice cute little
icons and then you place them in your side widget and
link them to your various social media accounts.

Andrew McCauley: I strongly suggest that you do that to make sure that
you have gotten yourself connected to all of the social




sites and anybody landing on your page has access to
any of those sites because you want as much attraction
as you can for all of the websites. So, I strongly
recommend doing that.

Heather Porter: As you would be the social media bloke.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Heather Porter: It‟s really important because as we always say over and
over again, doing business online is not about having a
website anymore. The website is just the foundation
and the social media and all the interactivity is what
brings you the business. So, any chance you can link
your social media accounts and other things that you are
doing externally of your website on to your website is a
good move.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. What else?

Heather Porter: What else?

Ah, opt-in form, what I was just saying. So, this is
where you would put, right up top. You would put “Get
Our Free Report”, “Get Our Free Video Series”, “Opt In
To Check Out Our Video”, whatever you are going to
give away for free; this is where you put that code and
this code that I mentioned will come your e-mail
platform. So, it might be Aweber or Mailchimp or
Salesforce or Officeautopilot – there are so many of




them – but this is where you would paste your code to
actually allow people to opt-in directly into your website.

Andrew McCauley: And why would they do that?

Heather Porter: Because that builds your list, that builds your client list
and that‟s the initial point where you take your clients on
a journey with you. This is where you get to give them
value over time via e-mails, little freebies or bonuses,
talk to them about discounts or sales. It‟s the point of
engagement. It‟s the initial “Hello! Join me on this
ride.”

Andrew McCauley: I think we have a whole entire podcast coming up on
that particular topic.

Heather Porter: Yes.

Andrew McCauley: So, stay tuned for that coming up because we are going
to speak about opt-ins and building a list and how to
build it and the best ways to build it and one of the best
things to be given away and how you can monetize that
activity as well.

Heather Porter: Yes, we love that part. That‟s exciting because that‟s
when you really get to hang out with your clients to get
to know them.




Andrew McCauley: Yes, totally. I know that‟s widgets, they are widgets and
they are the main ones we should use. What specific
plug-ins would you recommend for anyone starting up a
new site because you can get lost, you can get
overwhelmed with the amount of widgets that are there.
It‟s like walking into a shop and you don‟t know what
you want to buy and then you are presented with
hundred thousand different items, where do you start?
So, as an expert in this area, what would you suggest
would be the main ones that people start with?

Heather Porter: First of all, less is more. Keep it simple, please, because
you don‟t need a lot of plug-ins. If you start to put a lot
of plug-ins in there, then some of them can actually not
work well or play well together, they can give you
problems. So, there are really only a few key areas you
want to focus on.

Again, plug-ins, they are little things that you install into
your WordPress to make it do amazing things. So, you
want to focus on getting plug-ins that do search engine
optimization so you can be found easy online in the
search engines. You want to have your social plug-ins.
You want to have your comments, tracking, protection,
and anti-spam.

Andrew McCauley: So, tell me what‟s comment? What does that mean?

Heather Porter: Cool. Okay, so when you go on to a website, nowadays
what you really want to enable is to allow people that
visit to leave comments and they can leave a comment
at the bottom of the page underneath your article.
Often times you will see that people are probably more




accustomed to it from blogs where people are writing
articles and you can write comments below the articles.
So, you want to make it really, really easy for people to
leave comments and nowadays there are two key
commenting systems that we recommend. First being
Facebook, it‟s the Facebook comment system and that
allows people to actually leave comment using their
Facebook account. That‟s cool because it‟s easy for
them but also because it can go viral. So, they say
“Wow! Great article, really loved this!”, it will show up
on their wall and then with the link to your website and
then people will actually go “Wow! What‟s my friend
looking at over here?” and then it will help to generate
traffic into your website.

Andrew McCauley: Great, I love it.

Heather Porter: Love it too. And the name of that plug-in is Facebook
Comments For WordPress. So, if you are in your plug-in
area, you can do search, you can give this to your
WordPress person. Again, we will have the actual links
to these plug-ins for you as well on our page.

Andrew McCauley: Great.

Heather Porter: Yes. The next one is called Disqus Comment System
and this is actually becoming quite a worldwide
phenomenon. It‟s huge. It‟s basically a very nice
looking commenting system where you can keep track
as a user of all your comments across the internet on
various blogs and it‟s also a way, if you don‟t want to
use your Facebook comments, then you could be more




private about your comments and use the Disqus
commenting system.

So, have both on the pages where you want comments
actually turned on. I recommend putting Facebook up
top because that‟s preferable and then Disqus below.

Andrew McCauley: Great, okay. And you spoke about tracking, Google
Analytics and tracking. Why would that be important for
someone starting out?

Heather Porter: Okay. I cannot tell you how many times we have gone
in and then taken on new websites and new clients and
we said to them “Well, how is your website performing?
How many people are coming to your website every day,
where are they coming from, what sort of analytics or
tracking software do you have?” and they say “I don‟t
know.” The whole purpose of having a website is to
know is it growing and what people are actually doing on
your website. So, the big one that everyone uses is
called Google Analytics and there is a little plug-in that
you can installed called Google Analytics For WordPress
and it‟s really easy – you set up a Google account and
you put the code in there and then you can actually log
into your Google account at any time and see how many
people are going to your website, what pages they like,
what are they doing on your website.

Andrew McCauley: I guess it‟s like a business having no idea whether they
are selling enough money to keep open or not. If you
are spending a lot of time on your website, you are
spending money on somebody like a webmaster to keep
your website up-to-date and you don‟t have any idea of




how that‟s working for you, then you got to ask yourself
“Why am I spending this money?” if you don‟t know how
it‟s working for you, really.

Heather Porter: So important to be able to tract. Google Analytics –
Wow! That‟s a whole other episode, that‟s a deep
subject but just know that you need to have it. You can
learn about it later.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, yes. Just get it. At least get it in there and then
you can work it out later. It‟s a lot easier to work it out
later when it‟s been running for a while rather than leave
it along and not put it in there and then add it six
months later because you‟ll lose valuable information.

Heather Porter: Exactly. Well said!

Andrew McCauley: The other thing is „protection‟. You were talking about
„protection‟. What do you mean by that?

Heather Porter: Okay. So, more and more frequently websites are
getting hacked and this has happened actually the other
day to our server. There was a hacker that got in and
dropped some code or some software on it to send out
250,000 Viagra e-mails from our server.

Andrew McCauley: From your server, great.




Heather Porter: And the reason why they did that is because one of our
client‟s websites didn‟t have enough protection on it.
So, a hacker was able to get in and do naughty things.
So, really, there is a couple of things you want to
consider for protecting your WordPress website. The
first one – and again, we are still at plug-ins, these are
plug-ins that you get for free – the first one is called
Login Lockdown. So, that allows basically… it puts a
special little lock in your admin page. So, when you
actually go and log in to make changes to your website,
it only gives you five chances or it locks you out and you
probably are accustomed to this with bank sites and a
whole bunch of other high-security sites. This is the
same for your website. So, then a little robot comes
along, tries to hack into your site and will get shut out
after 5 attempts. So, it‟s very important to have this.

Andrew McCauley: Right.

Heather Porter: Another one – WordPress Firewall 2. Now, here is
another really good one to have because what it does is
it actually e-mails you as the administrator – remember
we talked about where you set up the administrator e-
mail – it e-mails you and says “You are getting hacked.
Watch out! Check out your website. Make sure it‟s
secure.” So, it actually is telling you when hackers or
robots from around the internet are coming into your
site and repeatedly trying to break into it. So, it‟s a
really cool little tool that protects your site and just lets
you or your developer be aware that your site is
vulnerable right now and you want to make sure it‟s
protected and nothing fishy going on behind the scenes.

Andrew McCauley: Now, is that the same as spamming? What‟s the
spamming? We get a lot of problems where people are




saying “Spammers keep spamming me on my
comments.” What can you do about that? What‟s a
good plug-in for spam?

Heather Porter: Similar sort of concept where you have robots going in
and doing crazy things on your website but this is more
geared at the comments field. So, you might find if you
don‟t have this protected over time as your site grows,
there will be little spam bots that go in, spam robots,
and they are trying to build links for other people‟s
websites and they just repeatedly make stupid
comments that make no sense in your site. So, there is
one that actually comes installed already with WordPress
and it‟s called AKISMET and you just have to enable it.
It‟s a cool too. It‟s really cool. It‟s amazing. If you
haven‟t used it before, when you turn it on, you will
notice that you rarely get a spam robot coming in and all
the comments you get are from users, like real people
from that point on.

Andrew McCauley: Wow! It is that good that WordPress decided to install it
by default and I think they install two plug-ins by default
when you load up your WordPress site and AKISMET is
one of those.

Heather Porter: Yeah and Hello Dolly for whatever reason.

Andrew McCauley: Hello Dolly is just a gimmicky one but they decided to
keep it there but AKISMET is the other one. So, it‟s
definitely a good one. You have already got it, you don‟t
have to look for it. Just make sure that you follow
instructions on how to set it up because it‟s quite easy.




Heather Porter: It‟s really easy.

Andrew McCauley: But as I just said, once you got that, it will save your life
and save your e-mail inbox a ton of times.

Heather Porter: Yeah. The next one though I want to talk about too is
the social plug-ins because I know you appreciate this.

So, social plug-ins – the big one that I just recently
discovered that I am loving is called Twitter Facebook
Social Share and what it is on every single page, right
up at the top or the bottom, you get to choose, it has a
whole bunch of buttons there to allow people to socially
share your particular page. So, it has Google+, it has
Twitter, it has Facebook, LinkedIn and a couple of others
there as well that you can put in. So, with one plug-in,
you can have all those really cool buttons on your
particular site or on your page for people to actually
share across the internet.

And Andrew, I mean, let‟s have a quick talk about why is
that important. When you see those buttons on your
website, what does it actually mean?

Andrew McCauley: Well, one of the keys things about that is that you want
as many people in the world to find out about your
content, find out about your website and if you don‟t put
those buttons on there, somebody will come along, they
will read a blog post or an article you put on your
website, and it will be great. They will say “That‟s pretty
cool. I will tell people about this” but they may forget
what the URL is, what your website address is. We have




all got busy lives and they may just disappear and go
“You know what, I will come back to it later” and they
never do. So, that great blog post, that great blog
article will only stick with that person; they won‟t go and
share it or tell their friends about it because they simply
can‟t remember. So, by putting „share‟ buttons on
there, like the social „share‟ buttons, what it does is it
prompts people to say “Hey, while you are here, you
might just click on this button” and by clicking on
whether it‟s the Google+ button or Facebook or Twitter
or LinkedIn or any of those, by clicking on that, what it
does is it automatically grabs the URL from your
website, from your blog post and it posts it out to those
people‟s followers.

Now, let‟s say for instance, the average follower right
now has around about 174 Facebook friends and if
someone reads your blog post and you click on the
Facebook share button and they share it out to their
Facebook followers, you are going to have a chance of
174 more people reading that blog post and coming to
your site where you may sell some items or your
products or your services or just get to know who you
are a little bit better. So, by giving them the
opportunity to do that, you are enhancing your
readership dramatically. Now, that‟s 174 people of the
average person. There are people that have lot more
friends than that. So, you want to make sure that you
have got the ability to let people share it as soon as they
read it.

Heather Porter: It‟s powerful. It‟s incredibly powerful.

Andrew McCauley: Very.




Heather Porter: So, yeah, you definitely want to stick this on your site
the second you are listening to this. If you already have
a WordPress site and you do not yet have these social
buttons, go get it now and put it up there.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. Great!

Heather Porter: Here is an easy little social tool – I stuck it as social but
it‟s kind of more generalized, I guess – is if you don‟t
have an opt-in box or an opt-in form to put on your
website right now because you just do not know what to
give away, this is one of these really important ones to
get out there just right now straight away. It‟s called
Subscribe2. What it is basically is it automatically puts a
little opt-in box on your site in your widget on your right
side bar to allow people to subscribe to your updates.
So, whenever you do a new post or article on your
website, they will automatically be sent an e-mail and
it‟s incredibly easy and you can actually customize the e-
mail a little bit. So, at least you are building a little bit
of a list immediately from the start.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah and that‟s a great point. You want to start building
that list as soon as you can. As soon as you get your
website up and running, get people in there, get people
in that list so that you can interact with those people
who are going to attract.

Heather Porter: Exactly. Even if you are not 100% sure right now about
what to do with it, we will teach you later. So, make
sure you get it up and running.




Andrew McCauley: Get it up and running. So, we have covered plug-ins
and widgets and…

Heather Porter: We haven‟t covered SEO yet actually.

Andrew McCauley: Oh, I am sorry. I bet your pardon. Tell me about SEO.

Heather Porter: Last but not least, SEO is kind of one of those things
that I think people get scared of and they are like “Ooo!
SEO. I don‟t …”

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, it gets really geeky and techie.

Heather Porter: Geeky and techie but why I love this plug-in is because
it makes it so, so simple. It‟s called WordPress SEO.
It‟s otherwise the nickname known by Yoast but the
actual name when you go searching for the plug-in, it‟s
called WordPress SEO and what it does – you don‟t need
any other SEO plug-ins other than this. There is a whole
bunch of other ones floating around. Just do this, it
does everything you need.

So, when you are writing your articles, it allows you or
your SEO expert or your WordPress developer to actually
analyze the page as you go and you can hit a little
button and say “Analyze” and it will actually say “Okay,
well, I can see that these are your keywords or the
words that people are going to find this article from
using Google and Yahoo! and Bing. However, because




you have not used enough of words in your post, we
recommend you also put it in your title, you put a few
more words in your post.” It‟s a cool little tool that
actually holds your hand and sort of leads you along the
way you are supposed to do as you are writing your
post, so you can be found more on the internet.

Andrew McCauley: Doesn‟t it make life so much easier?

Heather Porter: So much easier.

Andrew McCauley: I have got a couple of clients that have used this and
within merely days they were the No. 1 search results
out of millions and millions of other searches. So, just
by utilizing what Yoast tells them to do, they shoot to
the top of the rankings. Now, if somebody is searching
for you in your industry, they are going to find you. No
one‟s going to look on page 93 or 97 or even page 4 or 5
to be honest with you. You got to be on #1 and Yoast
will help you do that. I can‟t guarantee that it‟s going to
do that every time depending on how much demand
there is for your services, like if you are in the real
estate game, you may find it a little bit challenging but if
you are in a niche something that‟s not as popular as
property then you might find yourself quickly on page 1
by using what Yoast tells you to do.

Heather Porter: Andrew, it‟s a good point because when I put that out on
my personal bog, I had some articles in there that were
not getting any people coming to them or just a few,
handful, and I just did a few tweaks using what this
plug-in told me to do and within three days, there were
three articles that I had on my blog forever that




suddenly are now getting hits. I mean, it‟s powerful.
It‟s a really cool little thing to use. So, highly
recommend that one as well, a little toolkit of plug-ins.

Andrew McCauley: Alright, any other plug-ins that we have missed out?
Before I jump the gun, is there any other that we
missed?

Heather Porter: Look, that‟s it. Those are the ones that I recommend to
get started and as your site grows you can look at other
ones later.

Andrew McCauley: Before we wrap this call up, there is a couple of pressing
questions that we often get. One of them is “Where can
I list my website so that I can promote it? We hear a lot
about putting your website out there for people to find
it. Is there any places that I can actively promote it?”

Heather Porter: Yeah and that‟s a whole big thing of “If you build it, they
will come” – no, that‟s not the case online. You need to
actively constantly be putting your website out there all
over the internet and there are two directories that you
can actually list your WordPress site which are great, the
first one being called Technorati, it‟s a blog directory.
So, it‟s www.technorati.com and you basically choose
your industry, you set up an account, and you list your
blog in that directory and people actually go there to
look for resources in particular industry. So, you
definitely want to be listed there at Technorati.

The other one. Andrew, do you know about Networked
Blogs, that‟s a Facebook tool?




Andrew McCauley: I certainly do. It‟s a Facebook tool. Networked Blogs,
do you want me to speak about that? I don‟t know if
you would like to talk about that one.

Heather Porter: Yeah, you speak.

Andrew McCauley: Okay. So, Networked Blogs is a great tool that I use on
Facebook and essentially what it does is it connects
Facebook to your website, to your blog, and every time
you write a new post, it automatically goes out and let‟s
Facebook know that you have written a new post and as
soon as that post is written, Facebook will send it out to
all of the followers that are following your page or your
personal profile so that people get to know that you
have written a blog post without them having to go to
your website. Now, there is a link there that you can
read more or there is a link there you can actually go to
the website itself and read the entire post. Networked
Blogs is a great little viral application that lets people
know that you have got more information coming out of
your website.

Does that cover it?

Heather Porter: That covers it, yeah. And again, you can go to
www.networkedblogs.com or you can even find it from
within your Facebook; I think it‟s
www.Facebook.com/networkedblogs.




Andrew McCauley: Yeah, just type in „networked blogs‟ in your Facebook in
your search bar.

Heather Porter: This is another really just cool tool just to use both of
these actually to do some market research about what‟s
going on in your space as well. So, even though you are
listed on them, I would recommend having a little
browse around and actually seeing what your
competitors are doing to get ideas of what you could do
on your site as well.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. So, we have covered a whole bunch of
different things about WordPress today and WordPress is
definitely one of the most easiest to use options out
there. If you are looking at some of those other website
tools that create websites, you will find that they are a
massive learning curve and you will almost need a
degree; and for most people, they don‟t really want to
learn all that sort of stuff, they just want to get their
business up and running and hit it on the web like they
should so people can start finding them online. So, we
have covered a whole bunch of stuff.

Now, if people do want more help, Heather, or some
assistance or want to find that more, firstly, where can
they go, how can they find the information about these
podcasts that we have spoken about like the website
links and that sort of stuff? Where can they go for that?

Heather Porter: Sure. Okay, first of all, to get this list and everything
that we talked about today and actual links to the plug-
ins and everything that you need to give to your
developer or to give to a person to do for you or to do




yourself, you head on over to
www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/podcast and we also
have our transcripts, they are available for you as well.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah.

Heather Porter: But the biggest thing, Andrew… I mean, with this
session, I just don‟t want people to get overwhelmed. I
really want you to understand that this is more of an
education so you understand what is all this fuss about
WordPress, what are plug-ins, what are widgets, how
does it work, how can it help me? Really, I don‟t really
recommend that you do this yourself. I mean, it‟s taken
me 3 years to learn what I have learned and I am an
expert at it; and for you, just use the experts to get the
knowledge and then give to somebody else to do.

So, there is a whole bunch of different resources for your
out there that you can actually get other people to do
this stuff for you. There is www.elance.com. There is
www.odesk.com. There is even www.fiverr.com, in
Fiverr actually you could go for 5 dollars and get
somebody to actually install WordPress and a basic
template or a theme on your site for you.

Andrew McCauley: I think we will do a special podcast on outsourcing.

Heather Porter: I think we should. I think we should.




Andrew McCauley: There is a lot of talent in the outsourcing world. We
know it pretty well. So, we are going to do a podcast on
outsourcing tips and tricks and what to do and what to
look for and where to find the best people for various
different roles because it‟s funny, just to let you know,
certain countries have better skills than others at certain
things. So, graphic designs maybe better done in India
or computer programming maybe better coming out of
Belarus or Israel or something like that. We know where
all of those are. We will let you know in a podcast when
that comes up.

What are we doing next call, Heather?

Heather Porter: Well, I think we should move on to landing pages and
the reason why is because we have basically almost
covered all the website stuff that people need to know
about except for landing pages which is another really
important thing and a landing page is a one-page mini-
site that has one outcome and one outcome only and
that is to get the client to do something, to take action,
whether that‟s to opt in to your list, whether that‟s to
buy something from you. So, there is a whole art to do
in a landing page and what you want to consider when
you are actually building these pages and they are
separate from your website.

Andrew McCauley: Can a landing page be put up on WordPress?

Heather Porter: Yes, we love WordPress for landing pages.

Andrew McCauley: Alright, just tied into wordpress it‟s cool.




Heather Porter: Really, really easy but as we come to a close, look for
other people that can do this for you. Please action of
the stuff straight away because this is important to the
user tracking things on your site. You can even just
Google WordPress developers, WordPress specialists.
There are so many people out there that can help you
with this and we will list all this in our show notes as
well.

Andrew McCauley: If you have got any other questions, you can also visit
us on our Facebook page, the Autopilot Your Business
fan page, we‟re there answering questions and that sort
of stuff. So, if you got any questions or you want to
share some great results, if you want to ask for any
advice, then shoot us through a message on Facebook.
We would love to hear from you. Show us some love
from there.

Heather Porter: Yes and we would love to answer your questions as well
and let us know what you want to learn more about your
business and how can we help you automate your
business online.

Andrew McCauley: Totally. Alright, Heather Porter, thank you very much.
It‟s been very enlightening. I have learned a few things
actually myself on some of those plug-ins. So, thank
you very much. I always learn stuff when I am talking
to you.

Heather Porter: Same.




Andrew McCauley: So, thank you and I look forward to the call that we
have coming up next which will be on landing pages.

Heather Porter: Okay, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, so
much for your brilliant questioning skills as always.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. Thanks, Heather. Take care and see you later.

Heather Porter: Okay, bye.

**End of Audio**



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