How To Make Blog

There are literally hundres of WordPress plugins that you can choose to use in your WordPress blog.  A lot of them are extremely useful and I wouldn’t want to blog without, and a lot of them are junk.  Plugins can save so much time for you and can do so many things that you might never thought possible with a blog.  If you are not using them, you should be!  I’d like to give you a list of some of the plugins that I find very helpful.

All In One SEO Pack

This is an absolutely crucial plugin if you are looking to rank your blog in the search engines to generate traffic. It adds a convenient little prompt box just below your text area where you can input the page Title, Description, and Keywords.  This should be standard on all blogs.

Google XML Sitemaps

Again if you are going to generate organic traffic for your blog from search engines you’ll be needing a sitemap to submit to Google, Bing, and Yahoo so they will know when you add new pages and will be able to crawl all of the pages of your site.  Crucial for getting ranked.  It’s very simple to use, just activate the plugin and it will generate a great XML plugin file.

AdSense Manager

If you’re looking to monetize your blog to bring in a little extra cash, this is how you should go about doing it.  You create ad units and put the code into the ad manager and it will create easy input codes to easily, and I mean real easily, input your adsense ad anywhere you want it to.  It also includes this in a widget for easily adding adsense to all your pages.

Google Analytics for WordPress

This adds the ability to very easily add your google analytics code into your blog without having to edit your theme to put in the code, or having to redo it every time you change themes.

TinyMCE Advanced

This is one of my favorite plugins that I have found for WordPress.  Just like all the rest this one takes WordPress for what it is and makes it ten times better.  This adds a whole slew of options for your posting toolbar.  It adds features such as font size, font family, paragrah, styles, copy and paste, superscript and subscript, table editing, smily faces , and much more.  This plugin for me is a definite must.

That is the end of my list, but don’t let it be the end of yours.  There are hundres to choose from and while the ones I listed are mostly used to create much more efficient usage with wordpress, if that’s a word, but there are many more out there that are lots of fun.  Check out my tag cloud, that’s a pretty cool plugin.

How to Make Blog

What is the difference between a page and a post in your wordpress blog?  Which one do you want for your blog?  The two are very similar but there are a few differences that will help you decide which one is right for you.

Posts appear in reverse chronological order.  The newest posts appear on top of the older posts so all the newest information is at the very front.  If your site is about the newest and latest news then you would most definitely post this type of information in a post.

A page tends to be more of a static (non-changing) informative article.  As you can see on our site we have a home page, latest updates page (which contain our posts), a contact page, and a privacy policy page.  These are put there to be permanent so they can be accessed at all times as they are very important.

So in reality you will not have to choose between the two at all, but put information that you want to always be seen in a page, and put information that will change frequently as you add new updates as posts.

There IS the possiblity that you can create an entire WordPress blog with pages, using parent categories to do this, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

How to Make Blog

A Blog Roll is a list of links that the web owner likes.  These links point to other blogs.  The blogroll is usually included in the blogs sidebar as a widget, which is the standard way to do it.  It is possible to split your blogroll up into categories if you so desire.  One could have their list of blogs related to their blog, then a miscellaneous list of blogs that they just like but are not related to their blog.  The blogroll is based on the bloggers personal preference and it can be changed at any time.

Standard Blogroll Operating Procedure

When a blogger links to your blog it is standard practice to do the same thing back.  You should add a link back to their blog as well.  While this is the standard thing to do it is not always done.  Perhaps one of the bloggers does not like the other bloggers blog and does not want to be associated with it.  That is fine and you should never feel you NEED to link to someone elses blog just because they link to yours, but if you don’t mind their blog or even like it then you should link to it.

Blogroll Benefits

Other than just pleasing the other blogger with a reciprocol link there are a couple of benefits to this.  Every time another site links to your site you get what is called a backlink.  The search engines work like this:  the more powerful and relevent sites that link to your site, the more relevent and valuable your content must be.  This gives you a boost in the search engines and makes your blog stand out more than others.  Also you can get traffic from people clicking on your link from the other persons blog.

How to Make Blog

For a while I wasn’t even aware of this feature, and when I found it I was amazed how well it was organized.  Not only does it do the uploading for you and put it on your server but it gives you a giant range of options on what you can do with the image.  Once uploaded you can resize it to fit into your post and have it open in another window if clicked on.  You can have wordpress center the image or wrap around text or doing anything you like.  Since I know we all like pictures, I’ll how you how it’s done!

Right in your text box there is an Upload/Insert option.  Click on the first symbol next to it called Add an Image.

Insert Image

Once you select your file and upload it you’ll be hit with a huge list of options.  While this can be confusing, take a minute to look at all the options you have.  They all come in handy.

You can add a Title, Caption, Description, Link URL, Alignment, and Size.

The first three are very basic and self descriptive, but what is the Link URL?  This is where people will go if they click on the image.  I put it so when someone clicks on the image they will be taken to the full size image in another window.

Those are the basics of adding an image into wordpress.  Oh yeah, to insert it into your post simply hit “Insert into Post”

How to Make Blog

There are several things you can do if you want to install a new plugin.  WordPress 2.8 came with an amazing new feature that enables you to search for plugins right from your WordPress dashboard.  Not only that but you can install them right from the dashboard as well.  This is such an added convenience to the WordPress blog and I think them for adding it.  That is the first way you can do it and its very simple to do.

Now for some of us that works fine, but if you are creating new blogs all the time like I do perhaps you’d like to upload several plugins at once.  What I like to do when uploading a bunch of plugins is create a file on my desktop called “WordPress Plugins”.  In this folder contains the folders of all the plugins that I like, which I got from http://www.wordpress.org.  What I will then do is load up my FTP Client on my hosting account:

FTP Client Plugins

I’ll select all the ones that I want, which I’ve already done, and send them directly to my root/wp-content/plugins folder.  Make sure you get the right path so you’ll be able to use them.

From there just go to your plugins screen, update that ones that need updating, and activate them all!

Thanks for stopping by.

How to Make Blog

I’d like to discuss the importance of Search Engine Optimization for your blog.  If you are looking to get any type of traffic at all from search engines, you need to optimize your blog to do so.  While WordPress does quite the job itself, having the All In One SEO Pack is a neccessity.  It is such an easy thing to install and use that not having it would be unwise.

Installing it is as simple as going to your plugins page on your wordpress dashboard, searching for it, and installing it.  For those who aren’t familiar with that here is a direct link.

After you install it, activate it.  It will show up on your posts page and will look just like this:

How to Make Blog

This will appear just below your post box.  Scroll down to the bottom, and what I usually do is bring it all the way up to the top so it’s right below my text box area so I wont forget to use it.

Happy Blogging!

How to Make Blog