Wordpress Plugins
Favorite WP Plugins
Wordpress is a dynamic web design tool and one the main reasons is because of the Wordpress Plugins. WP Plugins are folders, files or pieces of code that have been developed by software engineers, nerds, techies and the like, to enhance your Wordpress experience (and we thank them!) They’ve made it so easy, you just upload and activate and your plugin is ready to go.
Wordpress Plugins Directory
Check the readme file contained in the plugin download for installation instructions.
- Akismet - protect your blog from spam
- All In One SEO - Search Engine Optimization for your Wordpress Blog
- Flexi Pages Widget - allows for different sidebars for different pages
- Google Analytics - track traffic with google analytics
- Google Sitemap - create a google sitemap
- Hit Tail - insert Hit Tail code directly into post or page
- Privacy Policy - google friendly privacy policy
- phpBay Pro - insert ebay listings into post or page, use w/ ebay partners
- Show/Hide Elements - click to show or hide specific sections of content
- WP Members - restrict user access
If you have a favorite Wordpress Plugin, please leave a link in the comments and tell us why you like it. We’ll try it and if we like it too, we’ll feature it here.
Plugins to try:
Additional tools we use:
Later!
Setup A Wordpress Website
How to setup a Wordpress site in cPanel
Wordpress allows you to use the Wordpress Website Publishing Software on your own server or on server space you are renting from your web hosting company. This tutorial outlines the steps to setup a WP site on your own server with cPanel and also how to setup a Wordpress site manually:
Pre-Wordpress setup steps
- Register your domain name with your favorite domain name registrar.
- Setup a web hosting account. To find a web host that is right for you, read about choosing the right web host.
- Point your Domain Name Servers (DNS) to the appropriate addresses. If you’re not sure about DNS, consult your webhost.
Setup Wordpress using cPanel (Reseller Web Hosting)
cPanel is the back-end admin control panel you use to set up all the different aspects of your website including email, mysql databases, Wordpress and hundreds of other options. A quality web host should have a cPanel or other admin interface that makes setting up your website a snap.
This example is step-by-step instructions to setup a Wordpress site using cPanel on the DownTownHost UNIX reseller hosting service. (steps may be slightly different for other reseller web hosts)
- Login to your user Web Host Manager website.
- Click “Create A New Account” and follow instructions. When finished…
- Click “List Accounts”. Find the newly created account, review the info for accuracy, then click the cPanel icon. (your cPanel can also found at http://www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel)
- Log into your cPanel account using the username and password created in step 2.
- Find “Software / Services” menu (scroll down towards the bottom), then click the “Fantastico De Luxe” icon.
- Find and click the “WordPress” link in the left hand column under “Blogs”.
- Click the “New Installation” link.
- Fill in the “Admin access data”, update your “Admin e-mail” then click “Install”.
- Click “Finish Installation”.
- Click “http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/”, then use the username and password (Admin access data) created in Step 8 to login to your Wordpress admin site.
- Click “Visit Site” to see your new Wordpress website.
Customize Wordpress website
Wordpress Themes
Wordpress Plugins
- Check your domain and you should see the standard blue top wordpress default theme.
- Make initial SEO optimizations to the blog. We’re going to have a step by step process detailed to seo optimization to your wordpress blog.
- Get your theme. For this, I took the recommendations of the eurekadiary, which had a ton of insight and was my guide as I installed my first phpbay site. There are thousands of free themes out there and plenty of people offering custom ones. I’d find a nice free two or three column site that you like. Brian Gardner has a nice 3 column design called ‘ for my first site.
- Upload your theme and plugins. The minimal plugins you need are the all in one seo pack and phpbaypro.
*note, when you buy and unzip phpbay pro, be sure you find the phpBay folder to upload into your plugins folder, not the phpBay_plugins folder. If once you’ve uploaded the phpbay plugin and logged into your admin account through wordpress and don’t see it in the page to be activated then you’ve uploaded the wrong folder.
10. Activate All in one Seo.
11. Activate and Set up phpBay pro (see exact steps to set up phpbay pro here.)
Wordpress Basic / Initial SEO Optimization
Log in and click on settings > General. Fill in this information. You can change your blog title and taglines whenever, but the first few things to do is change the wordpress address (url) and Blog address (url) to contain the ‘www’s. Adding the www’s is personal preference, but which ever you choose you need to be sure to be consistent throughout all your linking, and the general consensus is to use the www’s but you can go either way, don’t let it hold you back, mmmkay? Click permalinks, select custom structure and put in /%postname%/. This makes your urls look pretty and contain keywords. This gives you some code to add to your .htaccess file. (open up notepad and copy the entire file there and save it as .htaccess (yes, include the “.”) and upload it to the root directory of your site (normally in public_html). You’re actually going to need one more bit of code to add to the .htaccess file in a later step, so just leave it open for now and you can upload it later.
WordPress
Wordpress (WP) is an easy to setup, easy to customize and easy to use all in one website publishing software.
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WordPress software is a fantastic free web tool that we use to create and run every one of our content managed websites. WP started as a simple blog software used by a few, and now has turned into an all-in-one, self-contained, content-managed, easily to use website publishing application.
When I first started designing websites in 2001, it would take me 1-2 weeks to create a fully functional website and usually a few months before I could establish consistent traffic. Now I can come up with a business idea, buy a domain name, have the website setup in about 10 minutes and have traffic by tonight.
If you take a few minutes to learn how to setup your own Word Press website, it will save you time, money and hassle in the future. I used to envision the perfect website development tool and when I found Word Press, I said “this is it! This is the perfect website creation software” And if you can follow instructions (click this button, type this here), you can use Word Press to setup, manage, and profit from your own online businesses.
Wordpress.com
Wordpress.org
mu.Wordpress.org
What’s the difference between all the Wordpress sites?
The WP software is free to use, either hosted on a Word Press server (support at wordpress.com) or hosted on your own server (support at wordpress.org). If you want to have your site hosted on a WordPress server, when you register with them they will set you up a website as a sub-domain of wordpress.com, such as http://myfamouswebsite.wordpress.com - we encourage you to do that now.
WordPress allows you to get a website online, quick, easy and free. Plus immediate exposure to the search engines. You’ll understand in further steps why it’s important to get your business online right now.
Click here to start your FREE WordPress Blog
Example: myfamouswebsite.wordpress.com is my WordPress sub-domain website
Wordtracker - Free Keyword Finder and Research Tool
Word Tracker exposes the most popular, least competitive, traffic & revenue generating search engine keywords.
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WordTracker is a very powerful tool, but unless you understand why the information it spits out is so valuable, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re always looking for new ways to increase your website traffic then read the following statement. If you agree, you may want to give Word Tracker a serious look…
One of the keys to getting more visitors to your website is to rank high in search engines for keywords relating to your product, service or niche. And to do that, you need to know which ‘keywords’ and ‘keyword phrases’ people are using when they do a search. You then build your website & content around those keywords and phrases, which not only attracts more visitors to your site, but qualified visitors.
If you disagree, read this…
If you agree, which means you understand the content / keyword / search engine relationship, then read more… Read more
How To Use Video To Promote Your Products & Services
Viral Video Marketing
Marketing via Video is a hot way to market your products and services online. Many people are visual learners so just using a text sales page may not be enough to sell some consumers, no matter how great your presentation.
But thanks to affordable high quality video cameras, video editing software and screen capture software available these days, producing your own quality sales video is a snap. Plus, if done correctly, can greatly increase your sales and profit to your bottom line.
Dealer Training - YouTube Video
We sell this online poker dealing course that teaches people how to deal poker like the casino dealers. We made a video to demonstrate the type of videos you will see in our course and to let you know, that if you’re looking to become a poker dealer you will hopefully choose our professional online course.
The video was uploaded to our You Tube account and as of this post has received 22,000 views and an overall 4 star review. Not bad for our first video.
Plus, that’s free targeted advertising folks! Watch it here:
Here is a link to the poker dealing video on youtube.
Along with having it available to the millions of You Tube users we also include this video in our email autoresponder series. Anyone who signs up for our Dealer Training newsletter is also sent a link to this video as a ‘reminder’ about the quality of our course.
How To Use Wordtracker - Revver Video
How to use wordtracker to generate a list of keywords quick and easy (and free).
If anyone was looking for a keyword research tool and watched the demo video of me going through and using just one of the features in wordtracker to generate 100+ keywords, many with virtually ZERO competition that they would be much more likely to purchase the product than if I had just said “I used this cool program to find 100 keywords that had little to no competition.”
Videos reinforce the point, and give interested users unique content that will stick with them. If they liked what they saw, then they would be much more likely to purchase membership to WordTracker right away, or at least use the free version that I link to. And yes, the link on the wordtracker page there does contain my affiliate ID. I know I’m promoting the free version but people who use the free version become people who buy the membership. The product is that good (We use it all the time).
We will add more ways to use video to market your site in the coming weeks, including an example of Viral marketing that is outside of the box… WAY outside of the box!