WordPress is an incredibly popular blogging platform which you can install on your web hosting account quickly and easily. It is an extremely flexible site building resource with which you can create a highly effective, content packed blog in a very short period of time.
Let‟s start by considering the quickest and easiest way of installing WordPress which is to do so directly through your hosting account.
Start the process by logging into the cpanel for your account using an address like DogTrainingProblems.net/cpanel.
Input the username and password allocated to this account (it will also be in your „Welcome‟ e-mail) and you should see a dashboard page like this:
The exact look will depend upon the page template (known as a „skin‟) that your web host uses as their default, but this is the most common look nowadays.
What you need to do is scroll down the page to find the „Software / Services‟ section of the page, under which you should see an icon for
„Fantastico De Luxe‟. Again, some web hosts might use a different icon and they could refer to is as simply „Fantastico‟, but it is the same:
Fantastico is a pre-installed suite of over 50 software programs that can be installed on your site with just a few clicks of your mouse button.
One of these programs is WordPress which means that you can install it in around 2 to 3 minutes, even if you have never done something like this before.
Click the Fantastico icon, look for WordPress in the list of software programs available (it‟s listed under „Blogs‟, funnily enough) before clicking on it to begin the installation process.
Next, you want „New Installation‟:
Note that this installation will install version 2.6.1 of WordPress.
At the time of writing, the latest version of WordPress is 2.8, so using Fantastico usually means that the version you are installing is not the
„latest model‟.
Having the latest version of WordPress installed can sometimes be important because WordPress changes very regularly. However, unless there are any major security issues or something like that, it will generally do you no harm to install a version that is not bang up-to- date.
As you see a little later, if you want to install the latest version, you can do, but it takes a little more time and you need more technical knowledge and ability to manually install the software. As the intention is to sell the blog as soon as possible, I would recommend using
Fantastico to install a perfectly serviceable version of WordPress rather than worrying about being 100% up-to-date (and wasting time unnecessarily with the installation itself).
To continue with the automated installation, the only screen where you have to add information during the installation process is this one:
At the top of the screen (1), you have your domain name and below that, a box to add the directory name if you want to install WordPress in a subdirectory of your main site. In our case, because we are installing the software on the main DogTrainingProblems.net site, this would appear in the upper box, and we would leave things as they are because this is where the software is supposed to go.
If however we wanted to install it on a sub-site of the main one with a URL like www.DogTrainingProblems.net/BoxerDogs, then the directory name entered in the lower box would be „BoxerDogs‟.
Next, you enter a username and password which you will use to access the administration area of your WordPress site once it is installed (2). Of course, you should make sure that your password is secure – do not use something as easy to guess as the one in the screenshot!
After this, you need to add a site admin name (3) which is the name with which everything you add to your site will be tagged. Then, you add an e-mail address (4) which is generally used by WordPress if there are administration problems and not by site users or visitors.
Finally, you must input a site name and a tagline (5 & 6) which will appear at the top of your blog page once the installation is complete
Incidentally, all of these details can be changed when you flip the blog, so it is perfectly safe to use your own information for the time being.
Finally, click the „Install WordPress‟ button at the bottom of the page, click straight through the next two screens and that is the site installed.
As I have suggested, as this is a site that you’re going to sell, you should not spend any more time than necessary installing WordPress.
But if you really feel the need to have the latest version of WordPress installed, you can download the software completely free from the main WordPress site and by following the detailed installation instructions, you should have it installed in an hour or two.
A little housekeeping for your blog…
Once your blog is installed, you need to undertake a few simple housekeeping tasks to make the site more user and search engine friendly.
The first thing that you want to do is make your blog look more appropriate or relevant to the topic that you are going to blog about.
After all, by default it does not look especially dog training related:
Site templates for WordPress blogs are known as themes and there are dozens of sites where you can download themes that are related to your subject matter completely free.
There is a list of a few of the best free theme sites in „Appendix A‟ at the end of this report. Search to find a theme that you like which is appropriate for your niche before following the detailed installation instructions that you will find on the WordPress site.
Very, very occasionally a particular theme needs to be uploaded or installed in a specific way, so you should check whether there is an installation file in the theme folder, but 99.9% of the time, the standard WordPress installation instructions work extremely well.
Incidentally, remember that when you come to sell the blog, it will help if it is attractive and easy to read. Consequently, I would possible recommend that you use only a black type on white background theme for your blog. Using a theme with garish colors or white/blue/silver/yellow text on a black background can be off-putting and does not look professional either, so try the temptation.
This works well for my site and obviously, the addition of the graphic in the header makes the page look a lot more attractive and relevant to my topic:
Now that you have made the blog more user friendly for your human visitors, the next job is to make it similarly attractive to the search engines. You do this by downloading and installing various plug-ins on your blog.
Plug-ins are small stand-alone software programs that enhance the functionality or usability of one particular aspect of your blog. No matter what it is you want to do, there are appropriate plug-ins available (generally for free as well).
For example, one major aspect of making your new blog search engine friendly is to optimize it for the spiders or small robot programs that search engines send out to see what is happening on the net millions of times every day.
By using some of the marketing strategies that you will read of later, you will force the search spiders to come to your site sooner rather than later, but when they do so, your blog must be optimized so that the spiders can „understand‟ what is going on.
You do this by installing two free plug-ins. The first of these creates a Google site map whilst the other optimizes your blog for the search engines exactly as highlighted.
Once again, I have included a list of the plug-ins that I would recommend you install in „Appendix A‟ at the end of this report. After you have downloaded all of the plug-ins on the list, unzip the files and upload all of the plug-ins to your blog by following the WordPress instructions.
The only additional thing that you need to remember after uploading your plug-ins is to activate them in the WordPress administration area by clicking the „Plugins‟ icon and then the „Activate‟ button for each.
The final housekeeping task to undertake before you start to add content to the blog is to make sure that every article that you publish on your site has a URL that tells the search spiders what that article is about. In WordPress terms, these URLs are known as Permalinks and by default, they are completely search engine unfriendly.
Fortunately however, changing the Permalink structure of your blog is relatively easy. Click „Settings‟ (in version 2.6.1, at the top right hand corner of the page or in version 2.8 in the left-hand side column), then hit „Permalinks‟ before changing the default setting for the one below it:And that‟s it, the set-up is complete.
Now you are ready to move into the interesting part of flipping blogs, which is to start getting your blog ready for sale.
