I thought I was game for anything until I tried to set up a wordpress blog for my website. I am quite frustrated with wordpress right now but I think the biggest issue is I just don't know what to do next. I managed to get to the kubrick page and now I am stuck. Is there anyone who can tell me what I need to do, to set up a blog with plug ins, set themes, blog editors statcounter and anything else I need to know. I don't even know what css is. Before you suggest, I am spending the rest of my waking hours over the next few days reading the wordpress manual, wikapedia and anything else I can get my hands on. If by Sunday I have not figured it out I am deleting the blog. Thanks for your time, PS This is my forth attempt at a thread on this topic today, I had to keep toning it down. You know positve thinking and all... Cheers
I might help, but are you hot? Joke people, stay off the reputation button. What do you need help doing exactly? Plugins are pretty easy, normally you jsut drop them inside the wp-content/plugins folder and activate them by clicking plugins in your blog admin and then activate beside the one you want. Read instructions with each for special install stuff but most is easy. Themes get uploaded to wp-content/themes/ then activated by going to Presentation in your blog admin and clicking on the one you want. Statcounter you just setup your counter at statcounter.com and either paste an invisible one at the very bottom of the header.php file inside your selected theme folder or a visible one (if you want) in the top of the footer. CSS is just a better way to handle layouts etc but regular html still works. If you find a good theme you don't need this just yet. There's a lot more but that should get you started. What specifically do you need? Cheers.
Bless you, thank you so much for putting the process in words one can understand. I actually know what you are talking about, thank you for a great starting point. What do I need specifically? I need to set up adsense ads, and books from amazon. After your response I am hoping here is a sidebar.php page I can put it in. I need to set up a theme I like and with your instructions I feel confident I can begin to figure it out. I also need a better blog editor, with the current one I can't use bullet points or center text or any of the editing I need to do. I am really glad I asked this question tonight, I feel so much better. PS If you care about your reputation, you should remove that "little joke". Thanks your help.
Yes if you have a sidebar.php you can edit ads into there. Put it under the <ul> somewhere but not in between <li> and </li>. It varies per theme but I always make a backup and play with it to get it right. You can use html and <div tags etc to get it aligned right. As for ads in your posts this varies greatly per theme. You can edit an ad into the top of the main index on the index.php (make sure it's the one inside your themes folder), usually right under the content divider. Unfortunately you cannot put an ad in the actual post on this page because it will repeat 10 times. If you have a file like single.php or post.php this is probably the single posts you get when clicking on a title. You can put ads here because there is only 1 per page so no worries on it repeating more times than their TOS allows. Again, I usually back everything up and paste it in different places to see where it shows up. There are some other pages that you can edit later depending on the theme again. Some have their own 404 templates etc. For now I wouldn't worry about RSS (just use the html tags you know) but later on when you want to change the colors of links, fonts, etc. you do that in your style.css file for that theme. It looks scary at first but changing something will usually let you see what you are editing pretty quick. Cheers.
No problem, "RSS" above should have been "CSS" though. If you find a specific spot you need something catch me on messenger sometime and I'll put it on a test install and try to get it like you want. I'm here around 16 hours / day. Cheers.
This sounds like fun. You can use Widgets for the sidebar stuff btw. And the editor thingy, I think the visual editor (tinymce) is good enough.
Thank you once again and I will take you up on that offer. Glad you mentioned rss I need to figure that one out too, both for the blog and my website. But first things first, once I get the basics set up I know I will have questions.
hey tabs, just wondering, is the wordpress blog the one on your sig? cos if it is, its not possible to add adsense and other customisation. Get a hosted wordpress instead. www.wordpress.org
Thanks for asking , no, it is not the one on my signature, I am setting up a wordpress.org blog for my site, so I can have more control over my blogs. I did not post the new blog up because it is not ready for viewing. I am keeping my wordpress.com site though. Cheers,
I have installed WP twice so far and each time hated it so much I deleted it and wrote my own blogging application. WP use 17 queries to load one page when 3 would do.
I recommend using the default installation at first, and then gradually add tweaks and plugins. That's how I started, and now I am very experienced with Wordpress. Last night, took me 2 hours to install and pimp up 5 blogs.
Are you referring to your blog on WP.com or are you installing one somewhere else? You cannot have advertising at all on wp.com
I am working on a wordpress.org blog (blog not ready for viewing), changing blogs due to lack of advertising on wp.com. Cheers.
I noticed you are keeping your old blog, cool - use it to promote posts (almost like an aside to personal posts) to feed traffic to your new blog. WP.com blogs have a lot of advantages that aren't discussed for SEO purpose. Next, it is quite simple Search for posts such as "My Top 10 Wordpress Plugins" Most such lists describe why people like them, and you can learn a lot. Until you have settled down with a choice of theme, use plugins that "hook" into your template, rather than require manual inserts into the theme One good option is to use a packaged theme. Those are themes that also come with recommended plugins. A good example of that is K2, which also has lots of skins available for it. They also have their own support forums for the theme. Uploading themes and plugins is easy and you will soon get the hang of it. Find a good FTP program. I like SmartFTP, but there are many others. Find where your installation is, often in a folder "htdocs" or "public_html" plugins go in public_html/wp-content/plugins/ themes go in public_html/wp-content/themes/ make sure anything you upload isn't nested too deeply, the interface will only look 1 level deep into folders. Thus this is ok public_html/wp-content/plugins/pluginname/variousfiles.php This is not ok public_html/wp-content/plugins/pluginname/pluginname/variousfiles.php After each is uploaded, go to the interface inside admin and switch them on, and then look at the tabs to see what has changed. Test that everything is working well after each upload. one special plugin mention, Ultimate Tag Warrior. Make sure you choose a theme that has support for it already to save you messing around with custom code. K2 has support for example. It allows you to have your own tagging system similar to WP.com, and that adds thousands of additional pages to your site over time.
Oh, in addition, you might find this post on my blog useful for other aspects of setting up (I tried not to duplicate content) How to Move Your Blog or Start a New One
You are right about a finding a theme with plugins, I found the perfect one however it turned out not to have enough color for my needs. I am going to keep it though, because I have learned so much with in the last few days thanks to everyone here. I don't like the wp editor I have (I am talking about the program used to write blogs. ) I can't images to my posts (this would help with my current site) I can't center text and other editing is limited. I can't believe it has taken me so long to find a theme, I love the plugins and layout of the one I stumbled on but I can keep it only if I can put images on. I have not yet mastered adding plugins, infact I have not used one. I don't know where to find the ones I need, I truely dislike the wp help tools. But I am proud of what I have done so far. Thanks for the info, I will be looking into all your kind suggestions. Cheer.