10 steps to setting up your WordPress Website!

This How to Set Up WordPress Guide teaches you all of the basics on setting up wordpress. It assumes that you have already installed wordpress on a server and have logged in to your new wordpress site. If you have not done these things yet click on this link to read our entire  WordPress 101 beginners guide to learn everything else you need to know ok?

1. The WordPress Main Navigation Menu  overview

2. How to Set up users (including yourself!)

3. Selecting and installing a WordPress Theme

4. Setting up information about your site

5.  Setting up basic info about writing (posts etc)

6.  Setting up basic information about reading

7. What plugins you should start out with

8. What are WordPress categories and why you need them

9. Adding new posts (Writing articles – BLOGGING – FINALLY!

10. Adding pictures to your posts

The start of each section is titled in RED.

1) How to Set Up WordPress -The WordPress Admin Dashboard overview

When you log into your website (see the beginners guide if you don't know how to) you are in the WordPress Main Navigation Menu. Some people call it the admin panel but in reality it is the Main Navigation menu. It is the control center for your Blog! If you look down the left side of your wordpress blog you will see "Tabs" that let you control the basic settings of your site. These include the following:

The WordPress Dashboard- this has a page of basic statistics about your website like number of posts, most recent posts, most recent comments etc. Posts Tab - This is where you actually add new posts, edit existing posts, search your posts etc

Media Tab - this is the library of pictures, charts, graphs – a library of anything that you have uploaded to include in your posts.

Links Tab - This are links to other sites or places of interest. you often will here people talk about exchanging links (swo that your site points to a page of their site and a page of their site points to yours. his is often done to help each others site (or specific page) get noticed by the search engines. This is where you add such links.

Pages Tab - In WordPress yuou can have static pages that don't change. This is where you set up those pages. Examples of these might include an "about" page where you tell about yourself and your blog. Or a "Splash" Page where you advertise something for sale or deliver an important message.

Comments Tab - This is like the Posts tab except it is where you monitor comments that people have made about articles on your blog. You can approve them, trash them, mark them as spam, comment on them yourself etc.

Appearance Tab- This has 2 MAJOR wordpress Functions:

• 1) It  is where you actually Select and install wordpress Themes or edit them. Don't try to edit a wordpress Theme if you are just starting out. But feel free to go to the Add themes and search for Themes for your blog. We will talk more about this later.
• 2) This is also where you select and use the "widgets" (WordPress widgets are what lets you manipulate what appears in the side panels and sometimes headers and footers of your blog.). Different Themes may have more or less widgets and different widgets. We will discuss them later.

Plugins Tab - This is another MAJOR wordpress Feature (See our How to WordPress Plugins article for more information on this). Basically Plugins are functions that automatically Plug IN to your wordpress blog and lets your blog do new things.  This is where you can add, install, activate, edeactivate and delete plugins for your wordpress Theme.Like adding the "Google XML Sitemaps" plugin to automatically create an XML sitemap for your blog, update it every time you make a change AND notify Google, Bing and Yahoo so they know about it! All of that from a few keystrokes to install the right plugin!

Users Tab – Allows you to set up users and your own user profile

Tools Tab-  this contains  5 major WordPress sub functions:

• Tools – which has 2 main tools. A wordpress speed up tool and a "Press This" Tool that is real handy and lets you grab pieces of web pages for inclusion on your website.
• Import – Whew – this is a complex one.  For people just starting out we are not going to go over this one. you can click on the Import link and read all the different funtions it has (like importing parts of other blogs, rss feeds, etc).
• Export – This is an amazingly powerful wordpress tool that will basically let you save your blog to your PC and then import it to another blog!
• Upgrade – This is where you can go to upgrade your version of wordpres sto the latest version AND upgrade plugins that you are using to the latest version
• Others – Other tools may exist if you have added plugins that are tools – like cloaked links (to hide your links).

Settings Tab – This is where you set up the basic information about your blog and how your blog will operate. The "Stock" out of the box settings usually include the following:

• General _- Your blog title, description, URl, date
• Writing – Set up the size of your post editing box here (Make it at least 20 lines) as well as allowing you to define how to do posts by email, and Update services – these are services to update when you post something and then they automatically update other directories or services on the web. You should include the following wordpress update services:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://pingdevice.com/

http://www.pingoat.com/

http://autopinger.com/

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogpeople.net/ping

http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

• Reading – is where you define how many posts per page and if you want to have a static page for your main page or blog page.
• Discussion – is where you set up how comments and discussions occur on your blog. These settings include things like if a comment is automatically posted or if you have to moderate it (review it) before it is posted live on the web site.
• Media – is where you define default sizes for media (pictures) Not important for the beginner as you can do this on the fly when you insert pictures into your media library or posts.
• Privacy – Not important to most people just defines if you want search engines to not be able to see your blog.
• Permalinks – is where you define the "structure" of your post urls. Click on the tab to see what I mean.
• Miscellaneous – Not important for most people. Mostly defines where your file uploads are stored on your server.

And there may be many more setting options for different plugins that you may have installed. here are a list of a few from one of my websites to give you an idea:

• WP-CopyProtect
• WP-PreventCopyBlogs
• Caffeinated Content
• All in One Webmaster
• Keyword Statistics
• Link Cloaking
• SEO Smart Links
• Smart Youtube
• Sociable
• Ultimate GA
• PostViews
• XML-Sitemap

2) How to Set up users (including yourself!)

1. When you first set up your blog the only user will be the Admin (You!).
2. click on the Users tab and you will see the users. To change your settings just move the mouse over the Admin name and the edit word will appear below it.
3. Click on the edit word to edit the Admin User Setting.
4. You can fill out as much or as little as you want including your Profile and Personal information (I advise against this especially addresses or any other key info).
5. To add a new User click on "Add New" in the Users tab or the Users edit screen.
6. You can add as much or as little information as you want (just like you did for the Admin user).
7. You can use this to give other people access to the site or even to post comments as someone other then the Admin.

3) Selecting and installing a WordPress Theme

1) Over 1000  free WP Themes are all available for download from within your wordpress main navigation menu by following the steps outlined below. If you want to buy a professionally designed theme for better looks and flexibility then check out some of the professionally designed (but they cost you money) themes from WooThemes. Really nice.

2) Click on the  Appearance tab (about 6 tabs down the left column) and  then Click on Themes.

3) This brings up the Themes management console within your admin panel.

4) now just click on the round "Add" button.

5) This will bring up a search screen that you can enter the Theme name, or search by selecting attributes like colors or by selecting a tag (a term that identifies the Theme like "Magazine Theme" or "SEO Optimized"  and then click on the "Search"  button.

6) This will pull up any Themes with the name  or that meets the criteria you entered.

7) You can then just click on "Install" to install the Theme!

Don't worry, you can always go back to your old Theme by installing it and trying again!

4) Setting up information about your site

1) click on the Settings Tab – This is where you set up the basic information about your blog and how your blog will operate.

2) click on the General  Tab within the settings tab.

3) Enter Your blog title, description, URl, date. NOTE: that if you have not done any keyword research for your Blogs Niche then now is the time to do it. The Blog Title and description (and the Title and description of each blog article that you write) are important Search Engine Optimization fields that should have the primary keywords that you want your blog, and its individual article pages, to rank well for. If you do not know what I am talking about Click on this link and read this  article on Keyword research.

4) DON'T FORGET to click Save Changes!

5) Setting up basic info about writing (posts etc)  

1) click on the Settings Tab

2) click on the writing tab from under the setting tab: 

3)  Set up the size of your post editing box here (Make it at least 20 lines)

4) Decide on a default post category and enter it. See the "Adding Posts" section below for how to add post categories and what they are used for. They are important!

5) Skip the posts by email stuff unless you really think yo will use it.

6)   Update services – these are services to update when you post something and then they automatically update other directories or services on the web. Cut and paste the ones I listed above into the box for update services. DON'T FORGET to click Save Changes!

6) Setting up basic information about reading and comments 7) What plugins you should start out with

1) If you don't know anything about plugins Click on this link to read our article on WP Plugins

2) Here is a list of the essential plugins that you should search for and consider installing Click on this link to read our top 20 wordpress plugins article

What are WordPress categories and why you need them

1) Categories are a way of grouping related blog posts together. If you look at the heading of this website you will see that there are tabs going from left to right across the page. These are groups of blog subjects that people can click on to read articles about that subject.

2) Short but keyword rich categories are good because it helps the search engines help you.

3) To set up a category click on the Posts tab

4) Then click on the categories tab under the Posts tab

5) fill out the self explanitory fields for the Category Name, Description etc of the category that yo want to add.

6) Click Add Category to save the category.

7) You can always go back and add, modify or delete categories later on.

9) Adding new posts (Writing articles – BLOGGING – FINALLY!)

1) Click on the Posts Tab to see all the posts on your blog in the order they were entered in

2) Click on the "Add New" tab under the posts tab to add a new posts.

3) Enter a heading for the post A Title. It should be descriptive, 60-80 characters and contain the main key words for yor article towards the front of the title. DO NOT try to stuff the title full of a hundred key words in an attempt to fool or attract the search engines. It won't fool them and no one will bother to click on the article if the title that comes up in google search results makes no sense.

4) Now click in the Main text box and start typing your blog article! The text box is like a word processing package like notepad or microsoft word. You can go to the Plugins and search for Deans  CK Editor if you  want more editing features (like color highlighting text etc) BUT WARNING I find most of the advanced editors to be VERY slow (OK it turns out that it is the Keyword Statistics plugin combined with the FCK Editor that is slow).

5) Your article should be written for humans to read easily but with enough keywords to make sure that the search engines notice it for your key words. How many is enough or too many? That is a subject of some debate but if it sounds difficult or unnatural to read or overly repetitive then it has too many of the same keywords, If it has way to many the search engines will consider ti trash and ignore it. On the other hand if it has so few that it has no central subject then you have either written an article about nothing or not taken the time to research what keywords people search on when they want to read an article like yours! 6) Once you have written the article go to the right hand panel and select a category for it to be grouped under,. 7) if you have included the keyword statistics plugin (if you haven't you will want too)  then you will want to check the keywords, title and description that it is using for your article. If yo want to change them you have to un-check the automatic box below each one in the Keyword Statistics section.

At any time you can click on save draft in the upper right hand side of the page to save where you are.

9) Clicking Update will update what you have done to the web.

10) Clicking on Preview will pop open a window and show what your post looks like so far.

11) If you forget to save it WordPress does a pretty good job of saving the latest version. When you go to posts and click edit yo should see your post. Clicking on it will open it to edit. If there was a saved version it will say so in the heading area above the post.

• Adding pictures to your posts

1. Click on the Settings Tab
2. Click on the Reading Tab - is where you define how many posts per page and if you want to have a static page for your main page or blog page. A static page for your main page is really a good idea If you want to make sure everybody who comes to your site see's whats on that one page. for example if yor blog is a political blog that might be where you place your main political agenda. But how to do that is beyond this beginners intro. We will put a article in the "Wordpress How To " category for setting up a splash page (thats what a lot of people call it) for your main page.
3. Discussion – is where you set up how comments and discussions occur on your blog. These settings include things like if a comment is automatically posted or if you have to moderate it (review it) before it is posted live on the web site.

OK thats it for this How to set up WordPress article