Wordpress4Dummies, wordpress blog ,SEO, Articles, Templates, Plugin, Skin, Download, pdf

Installing Word Press on your own server space only sounds intimidating. It’s actually a fairly easy process that can be accomplished in a few steps. The most important part of the whole thing is backing up your data, just in case something goes awry.

Note: This how-to assumes limited familiarity with common Web terminology such as FTP, server and directory.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to have a Word Press blog from WordPress.org is server space. If you have a WordPress.com blog, you don’t need space - they host it for you. Same company, same interface, slightly different software and more limited functionality.

Once you have your server space (you can get this through a company like BlueHost or GoDaddy for very little money per month), you need to grab your log in information from your cPanel (control panel, usually found on the hose Web site). This is so that you can use an FTP program to log in and install WordPress and any other software you might want to use on your blog.

If you have chosen a host like BlueHost or similar, you can almost stop here. Hosts such as these also offer a tool called Fantastico. Fantastico will install and configure your Word Press files and related databases for you. If you either didn’t choose a host like that or just want to do it yourself, it’s a fairly simple process.

First, log in to your host’s cPanel - your dashboard for controlling the things stored on your Web server. Find the thing that says PHP Admin. Open that, and create a new database. This takes only a moment. Once it is created, some hosts already have you set up as a user of the new database, some need you to set that up. If you need to, add a new user to your new database. Write down the name of the database, your new user name for it and the password.

Prepping Your Installation

Now you need to download Word Press. Go to the WordPress.org site and click the Download link. This will put a .zip file on your computer. You will want to unzip this so that you can add some basic information to the wp-config.php file. You can unzip this right into your FTP folder (directory) /public_html or a new directory you create called /wordpress or /blog on your host server, but I’d recommend not doing that for your first time installing Word Press, just in case.

Once you have unzipped the file, you’ll need to go in to the wp-config-sample.php file and enter in your server log in and location information. You can do this in any text editor program, or a program like Dreamweaver if you have it. You will need the name of the database you made earlier, the server name, your user name, your blog url, and your password. The people who wrote Word Press have made it really simple figure out where to enter this information. Just look for the text that says ‘localhost’ and replace it with your database name, replace ‘password’, ‘user name’ and the rest as you as well. Once you are done, save the file under a new name: wp-config.php.

Installation Basics

Now use your FTP program to upload the entire collection of files and folders from Word Press to your server. Some people put them in their own subfolder named WordPress or Blog, but many just install the files right to the top level directory. To do this, just open the Word Press folder where the unzipped files are stored and select all, then upload them exactly as they are organized into the appropriate spot on your server.

Once the files are done uploading, double check to make sure you renamed the config sample file as wp-config.php. Go to your browser and type in the address of you blog plus /wp-admin/index.php. When you are done it will look something like this: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php or http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php. That will bring you to the Word Press install script. This will ask you to fill in a few blanks with basic information. One you are done, Word Press will automatically take you to the Dashboard (main editing screen) of your new blog, where you can start writing right away, upgrade a theme, add widgets or plugins and more. We’ll go over adding some extras in our next tutorial, but for now…

Happy Blogging!

Current supported release at time of writing: Word Press 2.6.5, Word Press 2.7 is in Release Candidate 1, and is considered a stable development release.

Welcome to Link4Blogs.com a 100% SEO friendly and an Entirely human edited link directory for every webmaster with a quality weblog. Submit your blog today and our editors will review it for inclusion in to Link Directory

Google is the undisputed king of search. They do it well. What many bloggers may not be aware of is that you can use Google as your site’s main search engine. You don’t have to use your blog engine’s built in search.

There are two really nice benefits to using Google for your site search engine:

1. It’s Google! That means you have full power of Google search on your blog.
2. You can use Adsense for your search results and make some money on your site searches. And the CPM is usually VERY high with Adsense in this case because the ads are super well targeted.

So the question is: how do you do it? Well, I’ll show you. 

1. You need an Adsense account. So, if you’re not already signed up as an Adsense publisher, do so now.
2. In your Adsense account, click on “Adsense Setup”. Then click on “Adsense for Search”.
3. Click the “Get Started” button. You will enter the wizard for creating your search form.
4. For “Search Type”, select “Only sites I select”. In your “Selected Sites” box, type the URL to your blog. You can enter multiple sites if you wish.
5. Enter some “optional keywords” which will gear the ads displayed toward your blog subject matter.
6. You can leave all other fields as default. Continue to the next step.
7. Choose the look and feel of your search form. Continue to the next step.
8. Next, you can choose where you want your search results to appear. In order to make the search results appear within your own site, choose “open results within my own site” and specify the URL. For PCMech, I entered “http://www.pcmech.com/searchresults.php”. This is obviously not part of the Wordpress installation, but that’s OK. We’re going to create this file for you in a moment.
9. Choose the ad position and color palette and then continue to the next step
10. Assign a name to the search engine. This is for your own internal purposes later. Then hit the “Save and Get Code” button.
11. You’re going to get two snippets of code. One is for the actual search form and the other is for your search results page. Include the search form HTML wherever you want it to appear in your blog theme (likely either the sidebar or the header). You can use CSS to customize the appearance of the search form to match your site as closely as possible.
12. Now you need to create a file called searchresults.php. The code I use for this file is below. You will need to paste in your results code that Google gave you, modify as needed to suite your particular theme, and upload to your blog’s root directory.

<?php
unset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO']);
//Include current WordPress Theme Header etc.
require(’./wp-config.php’);
function maketitle() {
return ” | Search Results”;
}
//Check if we’re wrapping the WP Theme
//Get Theme settings.
$themes = get_themes();
$current_theme = get_current_theme();
$current_template_dir = $themes[$current_theme]['Template Dir'];
$current_stylesheet_dir = $themes[$current_theme]['Stylesheet Dir'];
//Initialize the WP class to be able to get the header
wp();
//Set status to 200 to override the 404 set by WordPress
status_header(200);
//Include the WP Header
add_filter(”wp_title”,’maketitle’);
get_header();
?>
[ PASTE YOUR SEARCH RESULTS CODE FROM GOOGLE HERE ]
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php
get_footer();
?>

This file will use your blog’s active theme, however you may need to do some modifications to suit your blog. You might also need to go back and define the width of the search results to fit your blog.

When you’re done, you will have a Google powered search engine within your blog

How do you make a link directory? You can pay for the scripts or you can use a free plugin designed for Wordpress.

But why would you want to create a web directory? Isn’t it just going to create reciprocal links, which are pretty much worthless? Well, directories are only good for the directory owner, and not the sites listed in the directory.

To create a web directory in Wordpress, you need to download the plugin. From there, all you need to do is drop it in your Wordpress plugins file, and enable it.

How To Use A Link Directory Effectively

Say you are putting together a health-food related directory. You should solicit webmasters to submit their health-food sites to your directory, and ask them for a reciprocal link.

But you don’t give them the link for your directory. You give them the link for your other site, the one you want to promote. So now you have all of these sites linking back to your main site, and the web directory is filled with a bunch of sites. The sites in the directory don’t do you much good, but over time it can make the directory more useful, and if you put work into it, you can make a useful web directory of health-food related websites.

So now you have a useful web directory, and are getting tons of 1-way links to your main site.

So the next time you see a link directory, realize the guy running it may be a lot smarter thank you think.

DEMO : http://link4blogs.com

This guest post was written by Jean-Baptiste Jung, who maintains a blog over at Cats Who Code that covers WordPress and other webmaster stuff. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

Inspired by the well-known Mimbo theme by Darren Hoyt, OpenBook is a free Magazine style Wordpress theme, which doesn’t require you to manually edit a file.

I first realeased this theme in January, but at this time it was only available in French. So it is the very first English version.

Download OpenBook

Download OpenBook 2.2 Wordpress Theme: zip archive

If you’re looking for a live demo, check out my personnal blog which uses this theme.

OpenBook Features

Here’s what you can expect in OpenBook theme:

• Magazine-style homepage, including 2 columns and SmoothGallery for your featured posts.
• 100% Gravatar compatible.
• Custom fields to insert images on the homepage gallery, on homepage posts and in categories posts.
• Magazine-style dropdown-menu for your categories.
• Not manual editing required. After installing the theme, you’ll find an OpenBook tab under Design, where you can set up the options for the theme, including featured posts, featured category, blog logo, number of posts to display on the gallery, categories to display on the blog homepage…
• If you hate Internet Explorer 6 as I do, you’ll probably be happy: OpenBook have an option which litteraly crash IE6 if checked. If unchecked, IE6 will not crash and people who (still) use it will see your blog just as other users.
• Compatible with Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 6. (OpenBook is also probably compatible with other browsers like Konqueror, I just haven’t tested it myself)
• Widget-ready sidebar
• SEO-friendly titles
• Page templates for Links and Archives
• Compatible with Wordpress 2.3 to 2.5.1

Installing OpenBook

OpenBook install is like installing any Wordpress theme: Unzip the archive, and upload the openbook22-en directory into the wp-content/themes of your Wordpress install.

Then, go to your WP administration panel, Design » Theme and select OpenBook.

Now, you should go to Design » OpenBook and fill the various fields:

• Your blog logo url
• ID of your featured category
• Number of posts to display in SmoothGallery.
• IDs of categories to display on the homepage.
• If you want to make any IE6 crash, just check the related checkbox.
• Number of posts to display on the homepage, by category

Configuring SmoothGallery

SmoothGallery is a very pretty mootools script by Jonathan Schemoul which display posts along with big images. In order to configure it, you must create a new category (In this exemple, we’ll call it featured) and report its ID to Design » OpenBook.

When you want to show a particular post in the SmoothGallery, just edit the post and check the featured category. Of course, you can add the post to other categories as well.

Now, you should define an image that will display in SmoothGallery. Juste create a custom field, give it featuredimg as key and your image url as value. Once saved, the post will be displayed in SmoothGallery.

The ideal SmoothGallery image size is 600*250 pixels. You can use different size, but the image will be cropped or will not fill all the available space.

Using custom fields to display images in posts

As I said above, it is possible to assign one or more image(s) to a post. Theses images will be displayed on the homepage, or in categories pages, depending of the custom field used.

Here’s the custom fields keys, and the place where the images will be displayed.

• featuredimg » The image will be displayed in SmoothGallery (Only if the related post is in the featured category)
• Image » The image will be displayed along with its related post, on the homepage.
• catimage » The image will be displayed in category pages. Ideal size is 125*125 pixels.

Please note

The OpenBook theme is (and will stay) 100% free. I also try to always help people who use it as much as I can. The only thing that I’m asking, is that you leave my link on the theme footer. Thanks in advance

Edit on July 3, 2008: I just wrote a simple tutorial for modifying OpenBook color scheme. You can read it here.

Today we’re happy to announce the launch of the WordPress App for LinkedIn, the largest online network for professionals.

The WordPress App for LinkedIn helps you share ideas and updates with your LinkedIn network, keeping your trusted contacts in the loop, effortlessly.

To add the WordPress App to your LinkedIn account, visit the LinkedIn Application Directory. Select the WordPress App, enter your blog’s URL, and choose to display either all of your blog posts or just those tagged with “LinkedIn.” Save, and you’re all set!

Now your network will be notified when you post something new to your WordPress.com or WordPress.org blog. Your WordPress avatar will automatically display alongside the top post (we, of course, suggest you use Gravatar for that).

You can opt to display your WordPress blog on your LinkedIn Profile and your LinkedIn Homepage, where it’ll display as a drag-and-drop module in the right-hand column.

The WordPress App for LinkedIn is built on Open Social and is open source. If you don’t already have a LinkedIn account, head here to try it out.

Update: LinkedIn was struggling to cope with the load after launch, which caused problems for some users. Things seem to be working better now. And just to reiterate: the WordPress App for LinkedIn works with both self-hosted WordPress blogs and WordPress.com blogs.

1 http://dir.yahoo.com/ 9
2 http://www.dmoz.org 9
3 http://www.stpt.com/ 8
4 http://www.lii.org/pub/htdocs/home.htm 8
5 http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/ 8
6 http://www.blogwise.com/ 8
7 http://www.open-site.org 8
8 http://www.bloggernity.com 7
9 http://www.podcastzoom.com/ 7
10 http://www.blogrankings.com 7
11 http://www.bloguniverse.com 7
12 http://www.femina.com 7
13 http://www.gogreece.com 7
14 http://www.lanic.utexas.edu 7
15 http://www.polishworld.com 7
16 http://www.nationaldirectory.com/ 7
17 http://www.sacentral.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm 7
18 http://www.worldhot.com/ 7
19 http://www.123india.com/ 7
20 http://www.kinderstart.com 7
21 http://www.portal.eatonweb.com 7
22 http://businessweek.directorym.com 7
23 http://www.elib.org/ 7
24 http://www.ezilon.com/ 6
25 http://www.yourwebloghere.com 6
26 http://www.epooch.com/ 6
27 http://www.christiansunite.com/ 6
28 http://www.toronto1.biz/ 6
29 http://www.vxbox.com/ 6
30 http://www.canadianeh.com 6
31 http://www.aardvark.co.za 6
32 http://www.nzs.com/ 6
33 http://www.aigam.com 6
34 http://linkcentre.com 6
35 http://www.info-listings.com/ 6
36 http://www.zensearch.com/ 6
37 http://www.bluedir.com/ 6
38 http://www.imegamall.com/ 6
39 http://payvand.com/yp/ 6
40 http://www.globalgateway.com/ 6
41 http://www.canlinks.net/ 6
42 http://www.albanywebsites.com 6
43 http://searchsight.com/ 6
44 http://www.siteranking.com/ 6
45 http://findingblog.com/ 6
46 http://link-ads.com/ 6
47 http://www.directoryforce.com/ 6
48 http://www.gimpsy.com 6
49 http://www.iguide.co.il/ 6
50 http://www.webworldindex.com 6
51 http://www.canadopedia.com/ 6
52 http://indiafocus.indiainfo.com/ 6
53 http://www.americasbest.com/ 6
54 http://www.great-british-pages.co.uk/ 6
55 http://www.somuch.com/ 6
56 http://www.illumirate.com/ 5
57 http://www.christianlinks.com/ 5
58 http://www.click2directory.com 5
59 http://www.axelis.com/ 5
60 http://www.eurofind.biz 5
61 http://www.abilogic.com 5
62 http://www.gandalfdir.com/ 5
63 http://www.josh.nu 5
64 http://www.linketeria.com/ 5
65 http://www.londinium.com 5
66 http://www.jamjaa.com/ 5
67 http://www.megri.com/ 5
68 http://www.mavicanet.com/directory/eng/ 5
69 http://www.poddys.com/ 5
70 http://www.pedsters-planet.co.uk/ 5
71 http://directory.portalit.net/ 5
72 http://www.tsection.com/ 5
73 http://www.addurl-free.com/ 5
74 http://www.worldsbiggestdirectory.com/ 5
75 http://www.777media.com/ 5
76 http://www.buzznick.com/ 5
77 http://www.directory.ldmstudio.com 5
78 http://www.evenseek.com 5
79 http://www.forage.in 5
80 http://www.global-weblinks.com/ 5
81 http://www.network-room.com/links/ 5
82 http://www.rdirectory.net 5
83 http://search.able2know.com/ 5
84 http://www.siteinclusion.com/ 5
85 http://www.mddccommunity.com/ 5
86 http://slsites.com/ 5
87 http://www.finditireland.com/ 5
88 http://www.dirdir.info/ 5
89 http://www.my-kerala.com/ 5
90 http://www.a-free-directory.info/ 5
91 http://www.webdirectory-submit.com/ 5
92 http://www.my-india.net/ 5
93 http://www.dramba.com/ 5
94 http://www.worthwhilelink.com/ 5
95 http://allfreethings.com/ 5
96 http://www.eu-directweb.com/ 5
97 http://directory.lonelyway.com/ 5
98 http://www.uk-web-index.co.uk/ 5
99 http://www.infignos.com/ 5
100 http://www.singaporesearchengine.com/ 5
101 http://searchwarp.com 5
102 http://www.zeezo.com/ 5
103 http://sonicquest.com/ 5
104 http://www.aryawat.com/ 5
105 http://www.skoobe.biz/ 5
106 http://www.busybits.com/ 5
107 http://www.unifieddirectory.com 5
108 http://dir.ukwizz.com 5
109 http://www.top5jamaica.com/ 5
110 http://www.thetopsites.net/ 5
111 http://www.trycanada.com/ 5
112 http://www.allshops.com/ 5
113 http://www.anyapex.com/ 5
114 http://www.jtrotta.com/ 5
115 http://www.indiabook.com/ 5
116 http://www.resourcehelp.com/ 5
117 http://www.pleaseretrieve.com/ 5
118 http://www.moldova.com/ 5
119 http://www.annasinkovska.com/fashion-directory/ 5
120 http://www.infotiger.com 5
121 http://www.christianwebsite.com/search 5
122 http://www.lybot.com 5
123 http://www.4ppl.com/directory 5
124 http://www.directorylist.org/ 5
125 http://www.spotjockey.co.uk/ 5
126 http://www.turnpike.net/ 5
127 http://www.searchtheweb.com 5
128 http://www.typicallyspanish.com/html/english/ 5
129 http://www.aha.co.za/ 5
130 http://www.zielony.pl/ 5
131 http://www.amray.com/ 5
132 http://www.best-websites.net/ 5
133 http://en.wedoo.com/ 5
134 http://www.url.biz 5
135 http://www.downunderindex.com/ 5
136 http://www.dxpnet.com/riot/ 5
137 http://www.data-spain.com/ 5
138 http://directory.bizhat.com/ 5
139 http://www.burf.com 5
140 http://www.landoflinks.com/ 5
141 http://www.hedir.com/ 5
142 http://www.submiturlhere.com/ 5
143 http://www.worldsiteindex.com/ 5
144 http://www.dhundo.com/ 5
145 http://www.infovisual.info/directory/index.php 5
146 http://www.hotlaunch.com 4
147 http://www.add-link.info/ 4
148 http://www.am-directory.com/ 4
149 http://www.apexoo.com/directory/ 4
150 http://www.abifind.com 4
151 http://www.adverts.gr/grsearch/pages/ 4
152 http://www.businesscatalogonline.com/ 4
153 http://www.buildturkey.com 4
154 http://www.biblestudynotes.org/links/ 4
155 http://buycanuck.com/ 4
156 http://www.bugsdirectory.com 4
157 http://blue.daffodil.uk.com/directory/ 4
158 http://www.clasione.com/ 4
159 http://www.directory-free.com/ 4
160 http://www.directoryon.info/ 4
161 http://www.directorystorm.com/ 4
162 http://www.findwhatwhere.info/ 4
163 http://www.directorydelux.com/ 4
164 http://www.englandsportal.com 4
165 http://www.exoode.com/directory/ 4
166 http://www.floridadirectory.biz 4
167 http://www.friendlycanadian.com/search/ 4
168 http://www.fxdir.com/ 4
169 http://www.ir8.net/ 4
170 http://www.iconcave.com/partners/ 4
171 http://www.indexrated.com/ 4
172 http://www.look4business.org/ 4
173 http://www.listmyniche.com 4
174 http://www.linkengine.com 4
175 http://www.nintra.com/directory/index.pl 4
176 http://www.openhere.com/ 4
177 http://www.orangefish-directory.co.uk 4
178 http://www.robolink.co.uk 4
179 http://red-links.com/ 4
180 http://www.redjuniper.com/ 4
181 http://www.rndirectory.com 4
182 http://www.seekabove.com/ 4
183 http://www.searchmaryland.com 4
184 http://www.simpledir.com/ 4
185 http://www.spheri.com/ 4
186 http://www.sgtsearch.com/ 4
187 http://www.ShopShootah.com 4
188 http://www.thames-valley-business.co.uk 4
189 http://www.thesearchbrain.co.uk 4
190 http://www.thelocalweb.net 4
191 http://www.wura.co.uk/ 4
192 http://www.uudir.com/ 4
193 http://www.UKbest50.co.uk 4
194 http://www.urlshack.com 4
195 http://www.velendi.com/ 4
196 http://www.web-central.info 4
197 http://www.worldwidedirectory.org/ 4
198 http://www.wholeworld.com 4
199 http://www.weblinkdirectory.net/ 4
200 http://www.wahlinks.com/ 4

A recent article How to Turn a Normal WordPress Installation into a Working Online-Shop discusses how to turn a normal WordPress installation into a working online shop. Although the article is very thorough and well written, it is not the easiest method to turn your WordPress installation into a working online shop. The easiest way to achieve this is by downloading and installing the WP e-Commerce plugin.

e-Commerce Install

Assuming you have a working version of WordPress installed you must do the following:

1. Download the e-Commerce plugin
2. Copy the folder to your local plugins directory
3. Activate the plugin and configure it to your liking

e-Commerce setup

Once the plugin is installed the most important things to do are:

1. Set your default shipping country and associated shipping settings
2. Setup and configure the presentation settings
3. Setup your receipt notification email address
4. Setup your payment gateway
5. Add products
6. Upgrade to gold if you want to add multiple images to products

PayPal Setup

These are the instructions for setting up PayPal for your WP e-Commerce store.

1. Browse to PayPal and sign up using your email address
2. Under Profile > Shipping Settings check the allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above

Google Checkout Setup

These are the instructions for setting up Google Checkout for your WP e-Commerce store

1. Browse to Google Checkout and click sign up now
2. Select whether or not your business has a Google Account for services like AdWords or Gmail?
3. Create your account using your Gmail email address

At your WP e-Commerce store’s Admin

Now that you have a Google Checkout account setup enter your Google Checkout Merchant ID and Key into the payment gateway settings page in the WP e-commerce admin panel

1. Under e-Commerce > Gateway Options choose Google Checkout as your payment gateway.
2. In “Google Checkout Merchant ID” enter your Merchant ID.
3. In “Google Checkout Merchant Key” enter your Merchant Key.
4. Choose your Server Type (Sandbox vs Production), currency, and button style
5. Click the button that says “Submit”

Source :wordpress.org

The Business Directory plugin for Wordpress is an easy way to host a free directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members. Invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing for themselves on your blog.

Listings include company name, a short description, and contact information including a live URL. The plugin includes an admin tab that allows you to approve of listings before they appear live on the site. You can also edit and delete listings.

We will soon have a premium version of this plugin that allows you to promote a listing upgrade to your directory participants; you set the cost and collect via PayPal, they get to upload a logo and appear in the top ‘premium’ section of your Directory.

Business Directory is a great way to increase the SEO value of your site, and to monetize your community participation.

Fresh Installs

1. Install WordPress

   Don’t worry if you’ve never used WordPress. Everything you need to know is on the WordPress Site

2. Install Plugin

   Start off by downloading it from our Revver WordPress Video Plugin page

   Using your favorite File Transfer (FTP) Program, put the entire uncompressed revver directory into your “plugins” folder. From the root of most WP installs, this is “/wp-content/plugins.” More info on this here.

   You should end up with a directory structure like

   yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins/revver/

    

3. Activate The Plugin

   Login to WordPress as an Administrator.

   Go to Plugins Menu and “Activate” the Revver Plugin.

4. Configure it

   In the Revver Plugin Menu, enter your login information for Revver. If you don’t already have an account, what are you waiting for?!

   Sign up now!

5. Post Your Awesome Video!

   When you go to “write” a new post, you’ll now have an option to enter the Revver videoID. Don’t worry if you don’t know one by heart - from within WordPress you can search the entire Revver library to find the clip you want, or you can upload one of your own. Yep, its that easy!

   Once you’ve selected your clip, it will be displayed for you to review and/or post to your blog.

   Add your comments or a description of the content, choose whether to allow video responses, click “Publish” and you’re done.

   If you’ve uploaded a new video for your post and select “Automatically publish this post upon video approval?” Revver will automatically make your post live once the content passes through review and is ready to watch.