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How To

A Few WordPress Tips: Themes and Widgets

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WordPress has a lot to offer, which is why GDI offers it to you as part of your membership. WordPress requires a bit more background knowledge to navigate than our Site Builder, so we want to give you all the tools to create your best website when using WordPress through GDI. We will also be sharing a “How To” video for WordPress within the coming weeks, so stay posted! Until then, here a little “How To” for some of WordPress’s most powerful features.

Themes

WordPress themes are offered as way to create a great looking site with less effort on your part. Many themes are customizable and range from simple to very complex with tons of widgets and options. WordPress offers a huge number of themes and GDI now offers its own customizable theme. You can easily find the GDI theme by logging into your WordPress site and navigating to appearance>find themes. The GDI theme will be right at the bottom of the page. Just click apply and you’re ready to customize or just start posting.

To find other themes, you can easily search within WordPress or any search engine for free WordPress themes. You can search for themes in a number of ways including by color, features and columns. Many themes are totally customizable allowing you to create and add your own header and background. Themes also allow you to add widgets to make your page more functional and professional. You can also search outside of the WordPress database for free themes, simply by searching for “Free WordPress Themes,” just be sure you trust the author and site before you download.  When downloading a them from within WordPress all you need to do is activate it when the install is complete. For themes you found outside of WordPress, once your theme is downloaded, simply return to the themes area in WordPress and navigate to install themes>upload. Once your theme is uploaded, you will need to activate it before if will appear on your page and you can begin customizing.

Add Widgets

Now that you have a theme, you can get creative with customizing your page and making it easy to use with the addition of widgets. The many different widgets that WordPress offers can be overwhelming. However, widgets are there to make setting up your site even easier and they really aren’t as complicated or tech savvy as they sound. On the GDI Affiliate blog you can see down the right hand side: “recent posts,” “archives,” etc. These are all widgets.

WordPress is very user friendly and gives you many widgets to choose from and all you need to do just drop them in and activate. I will use the “recent posts” widget as an example of how to add a widget:

People will want to see past posts they missed, so the recent posts widget is a great way to give people access to this. Simply go into widgets, find the “recent posts” widget and drag it to the right hand side where ever you want it to appear. Depending on the theme you have chosen, your options may be “sidebar” “bottom bar” or more. Simply drop it where you want it and customize it before you save. Repeat this process for any widgets you may want to add. Some widgets may require a bit more work and coding, so be sure always check your site to see how things show up.

Now it’s time to for you get started with different themes and adding widgets and create your best page ever.

What other features would you like to see a “How To” blog about?

News

As the US Transitions Away from .com

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You may have already noticed the trend away from .com names as your browse the Internet or use social media sites. Short country code top level domains (ccTLD) are everywhere these days. Click a link on Twitter, chances are it ends in “.ly.” Shortened Facebook links end in “.me.” This is more than a new trend; this is the changing face of the Internet and domain names.

What set Global Domains International (GDI) and and .ws apart from these other ccTLDS now being used by commercial entities?

  • GDI was one of the first companies to begin offering a ccTLD for commercial use effectively making .ws international from day one. With over 10 years experience doing so, we know how to market and position .ws domains and have already had much success. GDI is also the registrar for .ws, meaning all of the rights to .ws are owned by GDI. The experience, established business and internal power and notoriety of .ws  virtually unmatched by other ccTLDs being used commercially.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. The New York Times recently wrote on the importance of new short ccTLDs and their benefits to business. “One reason for the renewed push [for ccTLDs] is a shortage of potential names ending with the most widely used domain suffix, ‘.com.’ More than 90 million ‘.com’ addresses are already in use, and the companies that sell them say few combinations are still available.”

This signifies the ending of the strictly .com age and opens the doors for .ws to be a powerhouse.

With the Internet turning away from .com and towards ccTLDs to tell the story, now is your chance to capitalize on this opportunity.

Full New York Times Article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07dotco.html

How To

Tips for a Great .ws Website

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At GDI, we love to hear from our affiliates, whether its questions or feedback, hearing from you helps us offer a better product and experience. One of our new affiliates recently asked us on Twitter, “What are your tips for a great website?” Since this is too good a question not to share the answer to, read on for our GDI specific tips. It should be noted that these tips are for anyone not using a replicated site.

Your Site Should Reflect You

Your website should reflect your message and your business. This doesn’t mean cover the webpage with photos of yourself (though you can if you want to :)), but more so take the time to personalize your site.  You want you page to stand out from all the other sites on the internet, so customize it! Make your page inviting, eye catching and helpful. You can do this by building your site from scratch to make it truly unique or using SiteBuilder of WordPress, both offered by GDI.

Try SiteBuilder

If your .ws site is your first ever website, try using our SiteBuilder. The SiteBuilder has some very easy to use templates to get you started. SiteBuilder templates allow you to personalize them in a number of ways allowing you to add photos, contact forms and more. For a basic website or your very first site, SiteBuilder is the perfect choice.

Try WordPress

To be able to make an even more personalized website, try our WordPress offering. WordPress requires just a bit more website knowledge than SiteBuilder, but offers a ton of options. The benefits of our WordPress offering definitely make up for taking your time to learn a little more about creating a website. With WordPress you can use link your site with social media accounts, add plug-ins and widgets and have access to some great customizable themes. We are also working on a WordPress video tutorial for our affiliates, so stay posted for that if you’re not sure where to start with WordPress.

Make it Easy to Navigate

Your site should be easy to navigate. You don’t want a visitor to come to your page and have no idea where to go to get the information they need. All sites serve different purposes but there are a few universal things each should have: About Us and Contact Us. This way anyone knows where to click to learn more about your company and  where to click to get in touch with you for questions and business inquiries.  Be sure to have a navigation bar somewhere on your page, usually to the left or right or at the top of the page so people can easily access all the pages of your site.

Calls to Action

Finally what are you trying to accomplish with your site? Do you want a visitor to fill out a form? Buy something? Contact you or share their story? Be sure this is clear on your page. You can’t expect results if you aren’t asking for what you want!