How To, Tutorial

Complete WordPress Tutorial Part:III

3 Comments

11. When you scroll down in the window there’s a lot of options you may want to learn on your own, but for getting started sake, we wont cover here. You can always visit the blog for posts on specific WordPress features. You will see “Users,” for the sake of posting a blog, the user you select is whose name will appear as the author.

a. To add users or change how your user name appears navigate to Dashboard>Users. When you click on users, your submenu options are: Add New and Your Profile. Add New is to add a new user for your blog and Your Profile is to adjust the main user’s (your) profile. To change how your name appears, select your profile.  Though your username cannot be changed, you can change your first and last name, and what name appears in your posts. You can also change your email and add some biographical info too.

12. You’ve selected tags, categories, and your author, checked for the best keywords and proofread your blog. You’re ready to publish. To do this, click “publish” in the right hand corner of the page. You can also change your publishing options by changing the default Publish: Immediately to a specific calendar date, marking the post as private or saving the post as a draft instead (drafts are saved, but not published until you choose to do so). Once your post is published, you can select “view post,” which will appear above your headline box. Your post will now appear in the list of posts that can be seen by selecting the main Post link from the left side navigation or selecting Posts>Posts. This post will always exist here and can be edited at any time.

13. You’ve got your posting mastered, now it is time to select a them to customize your blog. Before you start posting you may want to choose a theme. 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.

14. Once you have a theme you can start adding 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.

How To, Tutorial

Complete WordPress Tutorial Part:II

Leave a comment

6. Now you are ready to add you first post. To add a new post, select Add New in the Posts submenu. This will open up a new post. You will see an area for your post title and text. These are self explanatory. Type in your desired title and add your main text. You can also paste text into this window, but may lose some formatting, so be sure to check your work.

7. You will notice that the top of this text window has options that you might see in a word editor like underline, bullets, and font color. Font options are limited because the font that will show up is usually dictated by the theme you chose.

8. Once you have added your text and title, it is time to optimize you blog posts with tags, categories and even the URL. After you have added text to the title box, you will see an option below it with your posts permalink. This is a link that will always take you directly to this post. There is a button to the permalink that labeled “change permalinks.” Click it. When you click this button it gives you the option to choose how your permalinks are displayed. For search engine optimization (SEO) reasons, you do not want your post permalink to be blog.yoursite.ws/123. This will hinder search engines from finding the post. You should select any option you like where your title will show in the permalink such as blog.yoursite.ws/make-money-with-gdi.

9. Once you have saved the way your permalinks will appear, you will be returned to your blog posts. Before you post you should pick some tags for your post. These tags should be words that appear in your post and are great keywords. To see what keywords are best visit Google Keyword to see what words receive more searches. If you see a great keyword, it is a good idea to use it a few times in your blog post for SEO reasons.

10. Categories are an easy way for people to find posts by what they are looking for. Create categories that make sense for your blog like “How to”  “Business Advice” and etc. You can always add a new category whenever you like.

How To

Complete WordPress Tutorial Part:I

Leave a comment

1. Thanks to GDI, you do not have to go through the process of registering with WordPress. It’s an option we offer through your account, so you just need to follow the next steps to get started. To access your already created account with WordPress, navigate to your Members Area then to Plugins>WordPress and toggle the on/off button to “On.” The link that appears below with the format blog.yoursite.ws is where you blog will exist.

a. You can have up to five (5) blogs with your GDI membership. To set your blog as your primary webpage simply click the options button to the right of the URL you would like in the plugin area and select “set to primary.”

2. Click on that link to see what your blog currently looks like. If you haven’t made any changes to it, it should look like this. Maybe you like this format just fine and want to start posting, or maybe you want to change it completely. Either way you need to access the backend to do these things. WordPress calls the main area of the backend the “dashboard.”

3. To access the backend or dashboard, simply return to your plugin area. Near the URL of your blog or site, you will see an edit button. Clicking the edit button will bring you to the Log In area for WordPress. Your user name and password are same as your Members Area user name and password.

4. Once you have successfully entered your user name and password you will be taken to the backend of your blog, the “dashboard.” Which should look like the image below. Your dashboard is you main backend area in WordPress where you will be able to find everything you need.

5. If you are happy with the way your blog currently looks, then you can being publishing blog posts. To create a new blog post, navigate to “Posts” on the left hand side of the dashboard. When you click on “Posts” or any of the titles on the left hand side, a submenu will appear. In the “Posts” submenu you will see Add New, Categories and Post Tags. When you click on Posts, WordPress will take you by default to a list of your past posts, this will appear on the right hand side. WordPress automatically populates a post, which you will see in the list. You can delete that post by selecting Trash from the options that will appear if you hover your mouse over the post title.

Your Home for GDI News, Advice, and Contests