Today, we’ll take a look at :

• What’s missing from our completed example sites; and
• How to automate your blog with unique content … that’s free!

I’ve had some questions about posting to blogs that we’ll cover over the next few days.

Where We’re At.

Our example site that was built from scratch is now done.  You can take a look at it at CalmingFood.com.  It’s structured with:

• A “static” front page built with XSitePro, which includes an introductory page, some statistics about obesity, and the terms and conditions.
• A blog on the back end that will be updated regularly by Laura, who owns the site.

Another example site that was built for a friend concerns antiquing.  It has the same type of structure.  Both of these sites are owned by people who have never had a web page before.

What’s Missing.

These web sites would both do better if they had electronic mailing lists, which most of the gurus out there will tell you is the primary source of online income.  Currently, people can subscribe to the RSS feeds on their blogs.

AWeber.com is one of the better list management services that I’ve used for quite some time.  They have a free test drive (and the cost is quite modest if you like the service) that’s worth checking out.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today, I’ll show you  how to write your first Wordpress blog post.  This is obviously written for newcomers to the Net who are not familiar with blogging.

This article might appear long because of all of the screen shots, but if you follow along and do the same thing with your own blog, you’ll find that it takes just a few minutes to actually write and post to your blog.  You’ll see how to:

• Add or modify categories;
• Find keywords quickly;
• Add a link to your post; and
• Add an image to your post.

First off, here’s what Laura’s blog looks like before adding in her posts.  This is a brand new site we have been constructing over the last few days, which can be found at CalmingFood.com.

If you are using Jeff Johnson’s SEO blog software (it’s free), I highly recommend that you head over to his Underground Training Lab that is linked in the “template post.”  There’s really good stuff there.

Some Stats – Why You Should Use the Free SEO Blog Software.

If you’ve been watching the progression of the “site from scratch,” we installed Jeff’s software just a few days ago.  Here is what is showing in the stats:

5 pages are indexed in Google, 2 in Yahoo, and nothing in MSN yet.  The following is a screen capture of the pages that are indexed in Google.

You’ll see that the blog template pages are already indexed!  This was before we cleaned up the templates and did anything with the blog.  I really was not kidding when I wrote before that the SEO blog software will get indexed before a site is even completed!  I think it behooves anyone who is building a blog to use the SEO blog software.  After all, it’s free.  You’ll see amazing results.  To be honest, if you’re creating a blog, I think you’re crazy not to use Jeff’s SEO blog software.  It will suck in the traffic and search results and, after all, that’s what you want to happen with your site.

Here’s a look at the site’s statistics before I added the first post around midnight on the 23rd of January (the server is an hour or two ahead).  There were 25 unique visitors, mostly search engine spiders and people who have been following this blog.

Here are links coming in from the search engines and external links.

Before we’ve done any blog posting, the search engine spiders have been visiting.

Setting Up Your Blog Categories.

Okay, it’s time to move on!  The first thing we’re going to do is to set up and/or modify the blog categories. If you’re not quite sure what a category is, imagine your local newspaper.  It might contain a sports section, a business section and a local news section.  Those sections would be akin to a “category” in your blog.  The articles that are published in each newspaper section are similar to the posts that you publish in your blog.

To work with your blog’s categories, you first need to log in at your wp-admin link.  You’ll see a “Categories” link on the left side of your dashboard.

When you click “categories,” you’ll see the categories that are already created.  In this brand new blog, the “Main Content” category was created by default.  Since this is your “default” category, don’t delete it. By “default” category, any posts that do not have another category specified will be posted to it by default.   Just edit it by clicking the “edit” link as shown.

This is what appears when you click “edit category.”  Pay special attention to the category slug:  Notice that it has hyphens between the words.  This is very important so that your categories will be “URL friendly” and will appear correctly in the search engines.

In the example below, I changed the category name and slug, making sure to keep hyphens between the words in the slug part.

After clicking the “Update Category” button, the new name appears in the list of categories on the right hand side of the screen.  On the left, there’s an option to add categories, which we’ll do in the sample blog.

When adding categories, you can create sub-categories by linking them to the category parent.   For instance, Laura could create a category called “Diet Pills” and assign the category to the parent, “Weight Loss Products and Diet Aids.”   The following screen shot shows the different categories that have been created for Laura’s blog.  These can be modified or deleted at any time.  If deleted, all posts associated with the category will automatically move to the default, which does not have a check box next to it.  You can change the name of the default category, but you can’t delete it.

Writing the First Blog Post.

In this example, I’m working with a draft that Laura sent.  NOTE: You can type directly into the Wordpress form.  For this example, I’m using previously written content.  The draft came by email, as shown.

To edit the initial draft, I am copying and pasting it into Microsoft Word so that I can run a spell check.

Add Good Keywords to Your Posts – An Easy and Quick Search.

Before modifying the content, I’m going to take a look for relevant keywords to emphasize.  The draft article concerns comfort foods and weight issues facing children.

I’ll be using Google for my keyword research.  Note that on the bottom right of the screen there’s an icon in the system tray called “PPC WEB SPY.”  This is a free tool that makes your keyword research really easy.  Click this link to watch a movie about the free software and its potential.

In the example below, I decided to search for the terms “children” and “diet” which relate to the article, and then used PPC Web Spy to locate relevant keywords.

NOTE:  Keep in mind, I did a “down and dirty” quick job without taking advantage of the “drilling for more information” types of data that I could get with the software.  Watch the video to see the full potential of the software.

Childhood obesity looks like a good keyword.  It’s quite popular, the advertiser I looked at is paying $0.78 to $3.10 per click, and has over 20 clicks a day.  This is just one advertiser, so it’s undoubtedly a popular keyword to use.  If I clicked on that keyword, I could get a lot more information from Google.

I added the keyword — childhood obesity — into the title of the article and in the text of the article.

Preparing to Post.

Before making any more adjustments to the article that will be posted, we’ll delete the material that shows by default with the SEO blog software.

Click the “posts” link as shown and you’ll see all of the posts published to date.  Click the “delete” link after the pre-installed template post and it, together with the related comments, will no longer appear on the blog.  Use this to edit any other posts.  It’s self explanatory.

When you click “add new” in the posts menu, you’ll get a form that you can fill with your new blog post.  Remember, you can write directly into this form.  For this example, we’re going to copy and paste the previously written version.

Before copying and pasting the text from Notepad, make sure that you get rid of all symbols from Microsoft Word that may not translate correctly in your blog. Common marks, like quotation marks, are often messed up in Word.   Also, remove the word wrap from the Notepad formatting.  Once that’s done, just copy your text from Notepad and paste it into your blog form.

NOTE:  Wordpress blogs have a function where you can copy and paste directly from Word into the blog; however, every time I’ve seen someone do this, the post is messed up with weird formatting that requires time to clean up.  My advice is that if you are going to copy and paste previously written text, do it from Notepad and you’ll save a lot of time in the long run.

The screen shot below shows the text that is being highlighted.  You can quickly select all text by holding your control key and “A” key down at the same time.

The screen shot below shows the article, pasted into the posting form.  As a reminder, click “save draft” frequently.  That way, if your power goes out or your computer crashes, your work is saved as a draft that you can edit later.

How to Add a Link in a Wordpress Article.

Wordpress makes adding links and other simple HTML codes very easy.  To see all of the features, click the button shown in the screen shot below to open up what Wordpress calls “the kitchen sink.”  This will display additional point and click features, like underscoring, changing font colors, indenting and accessing the help menu.

When adding a hyperlink into your blog post, you first need to obtain the URL that you will be linking to … in this case, Laura’s article will link to an article by the U.S. Surgeon General.  In the example, I have copied the entire URL of the Surgeon General’s article.  By copying it, it is now in my clipboard.

Back at the Wordpress screen, I am highlighting the words that I want to be hyperlinked.

In the next screen shot, I am creating a link.  Wordpress has two icons — one that looks like a chain link and one that looks like a broken chain link.  The chain link will create a hyperlink; the broken link button will remove a link.

When I press the link button, a pop-up screen appears that reads Insert/edit link.  Take special note of the http:// prefix that I’ve highlighted.  You MUST have the http:// prefix in your Link URL … if not, you will get a linking error when your post is published.

• Correct Linking Format:  http://www.example.com.
• Incorrect Linking Format:  www.example.com.

To insert the link, all I need to do is to paste the URL that’s in my clipboard into the “Link URL” box as shown.  In the title, I have added the keyword, “childhood obesity,” to give it some added boost.  When you paste your URL in, make sure that you only have one http:// … by pasting in, you might have something like http://http://www.example com, which will result in a linking error.

The other option that you have when inserting a link is the target.  When people click on your link, the linked page will open into either the same window or a new window.  I tend to specify “new window” links for third party sites.

The screen shot below shows the link, as it appears in the drafting portion of the Wordpress administrative dashboard.

How to Add Pictures and Graphics to Your Wordpress Blog Posts.

Images will break up the monotony of a post and add a bit of visual appeal for the reader.  In the example below, we will add an image to Laura’s first blog post that is an image file that is on the computer hard drive.

The first step is to position your cursor where you want the image to appear.  In the example, I want it to show up in the paragraph that reads “Toward the end of our meal …”

The second step is to click the Wordpress image icon as shown.

When you press the Wordpress image icon, a pop-up will appear.  You can chose to upload an image that is stored on your computer, insert an image that is already on the Internet (from URL), or insert an image that you have already added to your blog (Media Library).  In this example, we will insert an image that is stored on the computer.

By default, Wordpress will allow you to upload using the Flash uploader.  This doesn’t always work … the Browser uploader seems more effective, so I am going to use that option in the example.

After clicking “Browser uploader,” you will see a screen that is similar to the one shown below.  Click the Browse button and you’ll have access to your computer.

When I clicked “Browse,” I received a pop-up menu like the one below.  You can navigate around in your own “browse” pop-up to find the folder where you know your image is stored.

In the example, I am going to insert an image called “Chocolate-Cake-Sample.jpg.”

After selecting the image, click the “Open” button in your pop-up (see the screen shot immediately above).  When you do that, the “browse” pop-up will close and the file will show in your “Add an Image”  screen, as shown below.  Click the Upload button.

After clicking the upload button, you’ll see a thumbnail of your image.  You can add a caption if you want.  You definitely want to type in a description.  For some added voltage to your keyword selection, you could use it in the description.  I did not do so in the example.

Toward the bottom of the “Add an Image” screen, you’ll see some options that allow you to choose the alignment and size of the image.  In the example, we will align the image to the left.  Here at the NotGuru blog, I’ve been using the “none” option because the images are large and I don’t want text to wrap around them.  The Left, Center and Right options allow for text wrapping.

Click “INSERT INTO POST” and you image will appear in your article text.

A Note About Text Wrapping Around Images … If your image does not have some white space around it, it might look weird in your post.  After you have uploaded your image per the above steps, it is easy to fix any alignment issues.  Click the “HTML” tab of as shown so that you can see the code.  Find your image and then add code as highlighted in the screen shot below.

• vspace represents the amount of “white space” on the top and bottom of your image.  In the example, we have it set at 5 pixels since there is already some white space in the graphic.  You can adjust this number so long as you keep the code exactly as shown; i.e., vspace=”20″ or whatever other pixel amount you want to use.
• hspace represents the amount of “white space” on the left and right sides of your image.  In the example, we have it at 5 pixels.  Again, you can adjust this number so long as you keep the code exactly as shown; i.e., hspace=”15″ or some other pixel amount.
• It’s important to have the quotation marks and equal signs as shown in the example above.  Spaces or no quotes may result in error.

Select Your Categories Before Posting.

Prior to posting your article, check the category or categories that you want your article to appear in.  You can select more than one category.  The selection box will be on the bottom of the right hand column of your “write new post” dashboard.  If you do not select a category, the post will automatically be assigned to your default category.  If nothing applies, you can add a new category.

Always Preview Before Publishing a Blog Post.

Before publishing, click the Preview button.  By doing so, you’ll see what the post will look like when it is published.  Click any hyperlinks that you might have in the article to make sure that they are working right.

Publishing Your Blog Post.

After you have previewed your post and are satisfied with it, you can either publish it immediately or schedule it.  In the above screen shot, I clicked the “edit” under “Publish immediately” so that you can see what I am talking about.  This shows a date. You can specify a date in the future and the hour and minute that the post will be published.

You can now see Laura’s first post in the image below.

~~~ Quick Navigation ~~~

Yesterday:  Configuring Your Wordpress Blog Templates — Stylesheet and Other Modifications; Working with Widgets.

Tomorrow:  Amping Up Your Publishing with Free Automated Content.

Popularity: 2% [?]

In yesterday’s post, we installed a template.  Today, we’re going to change it around a bit.

These are general instructions.  Depending on what you decide to do, you might need some html and css knowledge.  To get some general information on HTML, be sure to sign up for the Newbie Tutorial Giveaway and get the HTML Guide that I wrote about here.  This offer expires on January 31, 2009, so don’t delay in signing up.  It’s free.

Here is what Laura’s blog template looked like as of yesterday.

Changing the Blog Title.

One of the things we’re going to want to fix is the titles, which are scrolling across an image called “YOUR AD HERE.”  If you have an easy-to-change template, the solution could be very simple.  All you would need to do is to shorten the title of your blog.  To do so, log in to your wp-admin area and click the settings link that you will see in the left column.

When you click settings, you are immediately taken to the general settings page.  As you can see, the blog title is the first line.

In the screen shot below, I made the title much shorter.  We’ll take a look at the result later.  For the less complicated templates, this will usually fix any weird title wraps.  To get easy to configure blog templates, I highly recommend that you download the free “gold” templates at Themes Preview.

While you are at the general settings page, you might as well go through and make any other changes that you want.  I do not recommend that you allow people to register.  If you do, they can make posts directly onto your blog.  You’ll have a gaggle of spammers, guaranteed.

Be sure to save the changes; otherwise, your general settings will revert back to what they were.

How to Change Your Blog Template’s Universal Appearance:  The Stylesheet.

In the blog example that we’re using, I don’t want the 468 x 60 ad (referred to as YOUR AD HERE above) to show on the blog.  To get rid of it, I will need to edit the template itself.  To edit your templates, go to the “Editor” function under the Appearance menu that you’ll see in the left hand column of your dashboard.

At this stage, you need to know something about html and css.  The first thing that shows is the CSS style sheet, which is basically a “universal” code that will make each page in the blog appear a certain way.  Sometimes ads will show in the header, sometimes in the sidebar and, in this case, in the stylesheet.  I’ve highlighted where it appears in the screen shot below.

I’ve simply deleted the “topad” so it will not show up in the blog.  To make any template editing changes work, scroll down to the bottom of your editor page and you’ll see a “save changes” button.  If you did not adjust the permissions yesterday, you’ll get a warning that you need to make your file writable in order to save changes.  See yesterday’s post about CHMOD.

You can make many other changes in the stylesheet, such as:

• Font sizes;
• Font colors;
• Linking behavior;
• Background colors;
• Anything else you see.

If you screw up, don’t worry. Just FTP the original version back into your site.

My changes went through, and here is a snapshot of what the blog looks like after the fact.  You’ll notice that the banner is gone and the blog title has changed.

A Quick Look at Template Images.

In its raw form, the blog template that we are using has some side ads that are 125 x 120 pixels.  If you have images on your template that you want to change, you can see where they are on your server by right clicking on the image and then selecting properties.  You’ll be able to see the name of the image file, its location and so forth.  You could then create new replacement images by making them the exact dimensions as the original (for instance, 125 x 120 pixels), naming them exactly what the original images are  called, and then FTP-ing them to the exact location where the original image was located. Most of the time, the images will be stored in an image subfolder within your template file.

How to Change Your Blog Template’s Universal Appearance:  The Sidebar.

The sidebar also contains information that you can change.  In the example below, I highlighted some configurable text that came with the blog template.  If I wanted to keep this component in the blog, all I would need to do is edit that text that is shown so that is said what I wanted.

As with the other template files (i.e., Stylesheet), click the “save changes” at the bottom of the screen so that your template will be modified.  This is not shown on the screen shot.

Working with Widgets for Quick & Easy Sidebar Modifications.

Widgets make blog modifications super easy.  Under the Appearance menu (discussed above), you’ll see a Widgets link.  When you click that, you can see all sorts of widgets that you can easily add to your sidebar (there might be more than one sidebar, depending on the template that you use).

All you need to do is click “Add” and the widget will automatically appear in your sidebar after you save the changes.  Initially, you will see them in the right hand side of your widget screen.  Please take note of the following:

• Adding a widget might override code that is already in your sidebar.  For instance, if a search box or a special welcome note was in the sidebar.php file, any widgets that you add might “erase it.”  You might need to go back into your editor and change the sidebar.
• For maximum search engine traffic, add the tag cloud.  I have found that this makes a huge difference in search engine results.

Once you have added the widgets that you want, you will see on the right hand side of your screen a widget list that looks like the image below.

You can easily re-order your widgets by dragging them with your mouse.  So if you wanted “Categories’ on top, for example, all you would need to do is drag the categories button to the top.  Click “Save Changes” and you’re done.

Your “Text” widgets can contain advertising codes, blurbs that you write, or whatever.  Click “edit,” fill in your text title and information, and then click done.  After that, you’ll need to click the “Save Changes” button for your text coding to take effect.

How to Change Your Blog Template’s Universal Appearance:  The Header.

Going back into your “editor function,” the header is generally something that you will want to change.  In many blog templates, there is an image that appears in the header that you may want to modify.  In this example, the only thing that I am going to be changing are the links that appear on the top of the page.  I’ve highlighted the basic code so you can see what will eventually be modified.

How to Change Your Blog Template’s Universal Appearance:  The Footer.

Depending on the template that you download, there might be information in the footer that you want to change.  In the case of Laura’s blog, I’ve added in a general disclaimer about medical and health claims because of the nature of her content.  You can see this in the image below.

When it comes to footers, never remove the blog template author’s links.  I’ve highlighted them in the screen shot so you know what I am talking about.  This will violate the terms of service if you have downloaded a free template. On top of that, it’s just downright selfish.  People who’ve spent a lot of time creating a gift for you should have their acknowledgments.

Conclusion.

What I discussed above is the basic knowledge that you’ll need to make general changes to your Wordpress templates.  In the example blog, I’ve made quite a few other changes that would take pages and pages of discussion and coding tutorials.  When you’re starting out, I suggest that you get “easy” templates and just make the basic changes, such as images and adding in widgets.

Here’s what Laura’s blog now looks like, with all the changes.

~~~ Quick Navigation ~~~

Yesterday: How to Install a Wordpress Theme Template.

Tomorrow: How to Write and Publish A Basic Blog Post.

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you’ve just “tuned in” to this blog, what we’re doing is building a website from scratch.  This is an ongoing series of detailed tutorials that are geared toward mom and pop business owners or other new site builders who are building a website for the very first time.

The example site that is being built from scratch is for a friend of mine who owns the domain, CalmingFood.com.  We’re structuring the site with a couple of static pages at the front end, coupled with a blog that is being integrated into the site so that it will always have fresh content.  We’re running a WordPress blog that has been highly optimized with the powerful (but free) SEO blog software.  You can see a step-by-step tutorial on how the software was installed starting here, which explains how to download and extract the software, and then moves onto other installation guidelines.

When we left off on day 14, we left the blog in its basic, ugly form because the software is so powerful that if we started working on the blog right away, the search engines would start sending traffic before we had the site done.  Here’s what the blog looks like, with the basic Wordpress template:

Finding a Wordpress Theme That Looks Good.

The SEO blog software comes with a couple of different templates; however, you might want to find one that looks a little bit more like your site or suits your tastes.  There are many free themes available.  My favorite three Wordpress theme sites are linked here.  For Laura’s blog, I decided to go with my favorite, Themes Preview, and take a look around.  The SandaCom theme looks like a good fit for Laura’s blog.  All I need to do is to click the “download” button and store the zip file where I can find it on my hard drive.

Quick Notes About Themes.

Don’t download just any old theme.  You need to make sure that they are compatible with the latest version of Wordpress.  You might also want some features such as Gravatar commenting, ad spaces and so forth.  I like Themes Preview because they certify the themes which work the best.

Also, if you find that you don’t like what your theme looks like, or want to change your blog appearance down road, you can always install new themes at any time.

Uploading Your Wordpress Theme.

In the screen shot below, I have unzipped the theme that I’ve selected for Laura’s blog and will extract it to a folder that I can quickly find on my computer hard drive.  When you extract, make sure that you extract all files and folders that came with the zip package.

Once the theme is extracted, I’m powering up my FTP program and logging into Laura’s website (called the “Remote Site” in the FTP software).  You can see the site’s folder structure in the screen shot.  As we talked about before, you first want to go into the public_html directory by double-clicking on the folder.

Laura’s blog is in a subfolder called “WeightJournal.”  If your blog is your front page, you will not need to deal with a subfolder.  In our example, however, we’re going to open the WeightJournal subfolder by double-clicking on it.

Once you are in the blog folders on your Remote Site, you should see three folders as shown:  wp-admin; wp-content and wp-includes.  You must open the wp-content folder.  Do so by double-clicking on it.

Within the wp-content folder are your plugins folder and your themes folder.  Open the themes folder by double-clicking on it.

Now that we’ve opened the themes subfolder, you can see that there are five themes that were already installed with the blog software.  We’re going to be installing another one.

On the left hand side of your FTP program, find the folder of the theme that you downloaded and unpacked.  For Laura’s site, we’re going to use the folder that reads “sandacom.”

You are going to want to transfer the entire unzipped folder.  Don’t transfer the zip file.  Just transfer the unzipped folder “as is” into the themes portion of the blog.

In the screen shot above, I’ve clicked “yes” and sandcom folder was transferred into Laura’s blog/wp-content/themes folder, as shown below.

Set the File Permissions.

In order to modify your theme, you are going to have to set file permissions.  This can be done from your domain’s control panel (select the file manager and proceed), but we’re going to do this within the FTP software since it’s fast and easy.  Select ALL of the theme folders.  You can do this by holding down the control key and clicking on each folder –or– holding down the control key and “A” at the exact same time.  You’ll know that you’ve select all of the folders because they will be highlighted as shown.

Right click your mouse and select chmod. Some FTP programs might have a chmod button or a “file permissions” button.  The main thing is that you need to set the permissions with chmod.

You will want to change your theme’s read/write permissions to 775, which which would look like the following table that shows up when you select chmod.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER AND NOTE – You might want to chmod these files to 777 instead by clicking all of the read/write/execute boxes.  This will ensure that you can make and change permissions on your template.  The 775 might not work.  When you are all done making changes (shown in tomorrow’s post), go back and change the permissions back to 775.

Once you have changed the themes’ permissions, you are done using your FTP program.  Go ahead and exit … or install some more templates if you want a bunch of choices to take a look at.

Changing the Appearance of Your Blog.

Once you have uploaded your themes, log into your blog’s administrative panel.  This is always at http://www.YourBlogAddress.com/wp-admin; the wp-admin extension is very important.  You might want to bookmark your administrative log in page.  When you installed the blog, you had a username and password.  Use that information to log into your blog’s administrative area, which is called a dashboard.

Once you are in the dashboard, look at the options on the left hand side and select Appearance. When you do so, you’ll see the current theme and the available themes.

The available themes have thumbnail images, giving you an “at a glance” review of what’s available.  Click on the theme that  you want to use.

A pop up will appear that shows you what the blog will look like. You’s see an “Activate” link in the upper right hand corner.  If you are satisfied with the theme’s appearance, click Activate.

The blog theme will immediately install and change.  You’ll get a confirmation screen that looks like the one below.

Here’s the skeleton of Laura’s blog, with the new theme installed.  Look at how different it looks from the beginning of this post!

Tomorrow, we’ll start making some modifications to the theme.

~~~ Quick Navigation ~~~

Yesterday: Free Content for Your Blogs and Web Pages.

Tomorrow: How to Modify Wordpress Themes.

Popularity: 1% [?]

As you build your first website, you’re going to be needing content for your blog, perhaps your web pages,and for your marketing efforts.

Here’s an excellent deal.

You get 5 free PLR articles a day, every day.

That’s over 1800 articles that you can use a year.  Free.

Sign up now:  5 free PLR articles a day.

As you progress with your site building and marketing, you’ll see how important it is to have some content to work with.  So do it now.

Another source of free content that you can modify for your web pages and blogs is the giveaways that I frequently announce here at NotGuru.  The current giveaway event is the Newbie Training Giveaway, which ends on January 31, 2009.  Sign up there (it’s free), grab every bit of PLR that you can find and be sure to download a copy of the ebook, “HTML in Simple Terms,” which is important if you don’t know how to create hyperlinks and other common functions.

If you need a fast and easy way to get profitable keywords to use in your free content, be sure and download PPC Web Spy.  It’s free!

~~~ Quick Navigation ~~~

Yesterday: Uploading Your Web Site with XSitePro.

Tomorrow: How to Install Wordpress Templates.

Popularity: 1% [?]

At this point, we’ve written the content, added some products and are ready to upload the brand new site, CalmingFood.com.

The static portion of the site was created with XSitePro, an easy-to-use and highly effective software program for website design.

Before publishing the site, I checked it in the “preview” option of the software, plus ran some spell checks that are also available in the software.

XSitePro has a built-in FTP utility, which makes web publishing a breeze.  The first thing you need to do is to click the “publishing details” tab and insert your FTP information, which is the same as your information that you used to upload your blog.  Where it says “FTP Directory,” be sure to put /public_html/ if you intend for your page to automatically appear when someone types http://www.yoursite.com.  Otherwise, put it in a subdirectory.

After you include your information, you can test the FTP connection and if it is working right, click “Publish My Web Site.”  Before publishing, if you are not sure whether you included the correct FTP Directory, click the “View Live Web Site” and it will show you the “blank” pre-publishing version of your site.  Check the URL to make sure it is where you want the site to appear.  You don’t want to overwrite any content that you may have previously installed, such as your blog.

In the screen shot example below, you can catch a glimpse of the FTP directory we used for the example site, which is /public_html/ .  The publishing process is fairly quick, and you’ll get a pop-up window showing the progress.

Laura’s first site is now uploaded!  You can see the URL in the browser below, as well as a snap shot of her site.

Our next task is to modify the blog so that it will start working right and to add content.

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Yesterday:  Site Content Writing, Part 2 – Using the Public Domain; Free YouTube Video Creation; How to Write a Privacy Statement.

Tomorrow:  Free Content Sources and Articles for Your Site and Blog.

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In today’s post, we’re continuing the discussion about writing the content for our example site’s static pages.  Yesterday, we researched keywords and products for a brand new site, CalmingFood.com.

Using Information in the Public Domain.

To give the site a bit of “meat,” so to speak, I added some statistical research that is part of the public domain.  The information came from various U.S. government websites and was found at Google’s “Uncle Sam” search.  In writing a page about obesity statistics, I was able to link the page to a free body mass index (BMI) calculator that is in the branded affiliate site that we added a day or two ago.

Creating a Quick and Easy YouTube Video.

You’ll also see on the statistics page that there is a YouTube video that shows the alarming progression of the percentage of people suffering from obesity throughout the United States.  This video was made from images freely available in the public domain, and then putting them together with a free and easy-to-use software program that makes creating YouTube videos a snap.  When this site is completed, I’ll add a link at YouTube to the site, which will help drive some traffic.

The Most Important Part – The Policies and Privacy Statement Page.

All too often, beginning webmasters forget to add a privacy statement and policies page to their sites.  I think this is a big mistake.

If you are selling your own products, your customers deserve to know the return policies and shipping policies.  If you are selling affiliate products, you need to make sure that you have a general disclaimer about third party websites.

To qualify to place Google Adsense and many affiliate programs on you website, you need to have a decent privacy policy statement.

I reviewed some basic, free policy statement generators and more “lawsuit proof” policy statement software back in July (learn how to write a policies statement here).  With increasing Internet regulations, it’s absolutely silly and reckless to neglect adding a privacy policy statement.  Before uploading your site, make sure that you add one.

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Yesterday:  Writing Website Content, Part 1 – Keyword and Product Research.

Tomorrow: Uploading Your Website with XSitePro.

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Using good keywords is critical for your blog or website’s success.  And the process just got easier.

Throughout this blog, I’ve been writing about how you can use various Google tools to conduct your research.

Now, thanks to an investment of over $100,000 in development fees, there’s a new software program that puts everything in one place … and it’s absolutely free.

Developed by Internet extraordinaire Brad Callen, PPC Web Spy is now available to the public.

The kicker is that PPC Web Spy is 100% absolutely free.

I’m not sure how long the free offer will last, so grab it now while you can.  You’ll be able to identify good keywords to use in your blog posts and web pages in a snap … and make your online business much more profitable.

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In this tutorial, we’re continuing to build a site from scratch for a friend of mine who has never, ever had a website before.

I’ve been stressing the importance of knowing your site mission and having an outline of what you want to include in your site.  This applies to mom and pop storefronts, to affiliate sites, to information sites, to membership sites.  If you have a road map, so to speak, you will have a general idea of what kind of keywords and phrases you want to integrate into your site content.

Our example site that we’re building from scratch is CalmingFood.com, which concerns compulsive eating, obesity and weight loss issues.  As I mentioned before, we have a “regular” front end that is static, but the most active part of the site will be a blog that Laura, my friend and site owner, can update on her own without having to have web authoring knowledge.  Today, we’re going to take a look at the research and content writing that went into the static portion of her site.

Use Google and Find Some Good Keywords!

Even if you are building an online store for your brick and mortar business, keyword research is essential.  What you think people are searching for may not necessarily be the words that they are using in real life.

A common pitfall with beginners is that they spend way too much time on graphics, adding sounds, and putting “cool” javascripts on their pages in order to impress their friends. (See our poll, What Makes a Website Stink? )

The reality is that when people use a search engine, they type in words.

You need to know what those words are if you want to get visitors from the search engines.

Google offers a wealth of free resources that will help you figure out what keywords to use.  I have several posts about these great Google tools here.

For Laura’s front page, I used Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to see what the search volume was for a couple of phrases that her site is about; i.e., comfort food and emotional eating.  I used some of the terms that had a search volume of over 200 searches per month.  I didn’t pay much attention to the advertiser competition because we’re not putting Adsense on these static pages; instead, these static pages are monetized with Clickbank products.  I’m looking for organic traffic to these pages with the hope that we’ll attract some interested buyers.  I have not shown the full search results in the screen shot below.

I also took a look at another search term, food cravings.  You can see that there are some pretty hefty annual and monthly searches for the keywords that appeared in Google.  I went with “stop food craving,” which has a volume of 210 annual and monthly searches so far during 2009 (we’re still in January, so this number will obviously change).  Additionally, at least 140 searches were conducted this month at Google for “how to stop food craving.”

HUGE UPDATE!

If all of the above keyword research is too complicated, a new and FREE solution just came out:  PPC Web Spy.  This makes your keyword research unbelievably easy.  The developer spent over $100,000 creating this software and for a limited time, is giving it away.   Get it NOW while it’s still free.  Watch the movie about how easy keyword research has just become, and be prepared to be blown away.

A way to capitalize on the keywords is to include them in the header text of your web pages.  This is easy to do with XSitePro – you just highlight the text and select what heading level you want.  Alternatively, you would include the code, <h1>Your Text</h1>, <h2>Next Header</h2> and so on.  With XSitePro, you can then add your keywords in the Page Settings portion of the software.  The Page Analysis part of the software will tell you which keywords have been properly optimized for the search engines.

Throughout your website design and content writing process, it behooves you to do some keyword research.  If you’re selling candles, research what “candle terms” people are actually looking for.  It might add a few minutes of work to each page right now, but it will pay off for you in the long run.  Be sure you emphasize those keywords by either turning them into hyperlinks, naming your pages by keyword (i.e., http://www.yoursite.com/food-craving.html), and emphasizing those words in headings, by bolding or underscoring them, and referencing them in your image descriptions.

Monetizing the Static Web Pages.

There are a lot of great affiliate programs out there that you can join.  On Laura’s site, as with our other example site for Antiquing with Deco Diva, we’ve decided to feature Clickbank products in the static portions of the sites in order to monetize them.  We will be using many other affiliate programs in the blog portion of the site.

You need to sign up as an affiliate at Clickbank in order to receive a commission on your sales.  To find products to sell, click the link that reads “Clickbank Marketplace.”  Enter a general search term as shown below.  You might need to play around with your search terms to find a product that is relevant to your site.

In Laura’s case, stopping food cravings is definitely on target, so we selected this product as one of her flagship products on the static portion of her site.  We selected another product that has a super high conversion level, and included the audio affiliate link in the main panel header that appears throughout the site (see yesterday’s discussion about the “panels” in XSitePro’s website design software).

Understanding Clickbank’s Marketplace Results.

Here is a snapshot of the Clickbank marketplace description of the stop food cravings product that Laura is featuring on her home page:

You’ll see that there is some information in green that may not make a bunch of sense to you right off the bat.  Here’s a quick explanation without taking into account some of the complicated formulas behind the numbers:

• $/sale refers to the average amount of money each affiliate earns per sale.  This fluctuates, depending on possible returns, on transaction fees, etc.
• Future $ would refer to recurring memberships.  This is a one-time-buy product, so the future commissions does not apply and is blank.
• %/sale refers to your commission amount; in this case, 50%.
• %refd shows the approximate percentage of sales that are through affiliates.  In the above example, 44% of the product is sold by affiliates, meaning that the vendor is directly selling 56%.
• grav is based on various Clickbank formulas and indicates the number of affiliates who had sales over the last 8 weeks.  If this number is high, that means that there are a lot of affiliates who are making money with the product.  If low, it indicates that there is very little competition with other affiliates.

In Laura’s case, we know that there are over 200 (maybe over 300) searches a month on how to stop food cravings, and very low competition in our flagship product.  This could mean that the product does not sell well; on the other hand, it could represent a great opportunity.

If you click the “view pitch page” link, you’ll see the product sales page and get a feel for whether or not you want to sell the product.  To create your affiliate link, you click the “create hoplink” page, add in your Clickbank affiliate ID, and copy and paste the URL.  (NOTE:  There are ways to mask the URL, which are not discussed here.)

Some of the Clickbank vendors have fabulous affiliate tools (like the one that appears on the top of each of Laura’s pages).  Most of them, however, do not.

For Laura’s stop food cravings product, we’ve downloaded the picture of the ebook for sale.  To do this, just right click on the image that you want to save, click ’save as,” and store it where you can find it.

Write your text, create hyperlinks using your affiliate code from the “create hoplink” in both your text and images, and you’ve just monetized your site.

If you don’t understand hyperlinks, take advantage of the free newbie giveaway that lasts until January 31.  This giveaway has a “cheat sheet” for simple html code.  Read more about it here.  I think this giveaway event is absolutely essential for beginners.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the additional content in Laura’s static portion of her site, plus a review of privacy policies.

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Yesterday:  How to Design Your Site Template, Using XSitePro.

Tomorrow:  How to Write Web Content, Part 2 – Policies and Research; Creating YouTube Videos for Free.

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Today, we’ll take a look at creating the template for a brand new site.  The site is CalmingFood.com, created for a friend of mine who never had a website before.

The Web Design Software.

The software that I am using in this example is XSitePro, which is packed full of fantastic features.  The screen shots in this tutorial represent a tiny portion of what is available in XSitePro.  I highly recommend this software for anyone who wants to build his or her own website.

The “Panels” On a Web Page.

If you are working with XSitePro, there are different panels that make up a web page.  The beauty of this is that the software can include navigation links, rotating ads or just about anything else that you want to place in your panels.  The following screen shot explains the panels that XSitePro uses.  Because the software generates web pages that rely on CSS style sheets for consistency, what you include in your panels will be consistent throughout your website.

Working with Templates.

XSitePro comes with quite a few attractive, pre-built templates that you can use for your web design. Most of these are quite easy to modify.  A couple of the graphics-enhanced versions require a bit of skill.  You can use all of them “out of the box,” so to speak, but I prefer to design pages that are unique.  In Laura’s case, I decided to create a template from scratch.

Creating the Header.

The first thing that I worked on was the header image.  A lot of folks use Photoshop; I happen to like ULead’s Photo Impact.  Perhaps that’s because I started using it before I had a copy of Photoshop.   There are some other good graphics programs available, including a number of free ones that are discussed on this blog.  If you want to learn more about Ulead, I’ve added a link below.

If you are using Ulead and someone sends you a Photoshop image to edit, Ulead is fully compatible.

In creating my graphical header, I knew that I wanted it to be 800 pixels wide.  800 pixels is generally agreed upon as the standard size for a fixed web page.  Fluid pages will automatically adjust based on the viewer’s browser screen.  In this example, I’ve created a fixed page.

I downloaded some graphics from IStockPhoto (they’re reputable — I’ve been getting great images from them for over 6 years) and integrated them into the banner.  As you can see in the screen shots, I obviously added some text related to the theme of the site.  All of this was done in Ulead.

You can optimize your images in Photo Impact, which I did as shown below.

When optimizing the header graphic, I chose a size that is less than 30,000 bytes to accommodate any dial-up users.  Heavy graphics files will slow down the load time for a web page, so be very careful about your graphic selections and their sizes.

Once the header graphic was created, I popped it into the software’s header panel, added some keywords, and was done.

A Look at Navigation Menus and Links in XSitePro.

One of the things I love about XSitePro is its dynamic linking features.  In the “page settings” screen shot example below, you can see that the link will appear in the “Info Bar” and Left Navigation Menu panels.  I could put it in the Page Footer or elsewhere, depending on the “panels” that I had enabled.  You’ll also see that the pages can appear in the Site Map, which is generated on the fly.

XSitePro’s page settings allow you to add keywords and a description. You can click the “Page Analysis” tab to make sure that your site complies with recommended SEO (search engine optimization) standards.

If I were to change the name of the page title or the file name for the page — which is called “About” in the screen shot example — the title would automatically update everywhere it is referenced in the web site.  This is a huge time saver and reduces linking errors.  With other types of software programs, you would have to go through your menus and each page and manually correct the page title and file name.

Creating the Navigation Menu.

The navigation menu, the way Laura’s site is designed, will appear in the left panel.  XSitePro has an easy-to-use menu creator that you can change around as much as you want, before you publish your site or as a site modification.  The menu will update whenever you add web pages to your site, and can accommodate “sub-menus” for your different sub-categories.

The “Info Bar” can also be easily created with XSitePro.  For large sites, the web authoring software has a breadcrumb option that automatically updates.  Since Laura’s HTML portion of her site is not very big, I did not add breadcrumbs.

Throughout the design process, you can click the “preview” option within XSitePro so that you can see what your site will look like on the Internet.  Here’s a screen capture of the preliminary template design.

Adding In a Universal Main Panel Footer.

Because Laura’s site about eating disorders and weight loss deals with health and medical matters, I added in a disclaimer.  This was done in the “Main Footer Panel” so that the disclaimer will appear on each and every page.

Adding External Links to the Navigation Bar.

Since Laura’s site has to do with weight loss, which is a huge market both online and offline, we added in a great affiliate program offered by Market Health, which has dozens of  health and beauty related programs.  Market Health has some of the best affiliate marketing materials I have ever seen, including great banners, articles, and even an option where you can create branded sites.  Here, I downloaded a branded site on weight management, which includes a section on emotional eating, for Laura’s web page.  Market Health will even given you free hosting for a co-branded site.  I blanked out the DNS information in the screen shot below.  Rather than using the free hosting, we’re adding the weight management branded site as a subdomain on Laura’s CalmingFood.com site.

After downloading the branded site available from Market Health, I simply FTP’d it to a sub-folder called “management” on Laura’s page (learn more about FTP’ing in the Day 13 tutorial).  What’s sweet about Market Health’s branded sites is that you don’t have to add images, add your unique affiliate link or anything else.  Everything you need is pre-installed.

If you remember, we added Laura’s blog in the beginning of the site creation so that we’d have an accurate link.  The blog link is shown below.

I have copied the blog link and the weight management branded store link and inserted each of them into the XSitePro site designer.  With a couple of clicks, both of these pages will appear in the link menus where specified and also in the site map.

Creating a Site Map.

If you want your site indexed in the major search engines and want good search results, site maps are critical.  They are also helpful for your visitors.  Within XSitePro, you simply click the “other” site design components and then specify the look and appearance of your site map.  It will generate alphabetical and link-ordered site maps on the fly.  When you add or delete pages, the site map will adjust automatically.  This is just a few of the options available from XSite Pro.  I highly recommend that you take a look at the software’s features to see how it will save a lot of time and effort in your web publishing work.

Previewing the Template.

I’ve now set up the template for Laura’s site.  I added in “blank” pages because I knew where I was going with the outline prepared earlier.  From here on out, all I need to do is create content, which we’ll be discussing in future posts.  As to the audio link at the top, it is an affiliate link that I added into the “Main Header Panel.”  It will show up at the top of each post.

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Yesterday:  How to Automatically Update Your Wordpress Blog Program and Plugins.

Tomorrow:  Writing the Site’s Content, Part 1 – Basic Keywords and Incorporating Products Into the Content.

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