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You are here: Home / Archives for WordPress Setup

WordPress Setup

Book Review of WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers

Filed Under: WordPress Setup May 13, 2013

Packt Publishers is very good when it comes to identifying great topics for their business and finding people who can write in a clear and simple way. In this new book WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers by Paul Thewlis bring you the knowledge to start the process of blogging for any purpose, not just business.

Here is a short overview of the chapters so you can see what is covered in this book.

Chapter 1: A Blog Less Ordinary—What Makes a Great Blog?
Chapter 2: Introducing our Case Study—WPBizGuru
Chapter 3: Designing your Blog
Chapter 4: Images and Videos
Chapter 5: Content is King
Chapter 6: Search Engine Optimization
Chapter 7: Supercharged Promotion
Chapter 8: Connecting with the Blogosphere
Chapter 9: Analyzing your Blog Stats
Chapter 10: Monetizing your Blog
Chapter 11: Managing Growth

WPBizGuru a Case Study

After the first introduction of some great WordPress blogs and how blogs can be used Paul goes into a case study showcasing a new site on http://blog.wpbizguru.com/

In the following chapters he takes you from the basics of the design and changes to match you own ideas (don't get scared by the coding!, it is not that hard..) up until how to write your content and using images and video in your posts.

What I really like in these first chapters is the way he helps you with ideas on how to create a blogging plan and how to implement is focusing on the real purpose of you blog / website.

The following chapters are about how to get traffic to your blog, how to measure that traffic and what to do with it.

The monetizing chapter is a bit limited on how to get the most of your blog traffic, but is surely a start in the right direction. Managing growth is not only about keeping the performance of your site but also about keeping up with comments and reducing spam in your blog.

WordPress Plugins

Paul mentions several plugins in his book that I think are very good, however there are three plugins he uses that I don't use anymore for several reasons:

  • Akismet = replaced by Growmap Anti Spam Plugin (I use the premium version which comes with Commentluv (aff)) because it works better and the free version is well.. free (Akismet is not free in many cases https://akismet.com/signup/)
  • Super Cache = replaced by Hyper Cache if you want it simple or W3 Total Cache for the more techies among us.
  • All-in-One-SEO = replaced WordPress SEO by Yoast, no not because he is Dutch like me, but the plugin just works better and is also free (AIOSEO has a premium version)

Conclusion

WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers is not just for Business bloggers, it is a great starting point for any WordPress blog or website you want to setup. Like I mentioned before I really liked the Blogging plan layout and the focus on the purpose of your blog / website.

One thing I missed was how to secure your blog against hackers, so I will write a blog post on that next because you really need to secure your site. The Backup and restore section of the book are mandatory for making sure you can get your blog back fast.

All in all, a great starting point for any new WordPress website owner that wants his or her website to succeed.

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By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Setup Tagged With: Bloggers, Blogging, Business, WordPress 3 Leave a Comment

From Static HTML to WordPress Website

Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Setup May 16, 2015

This is a question I get on a regular base: How can I convert my Static HTML to WordPress based website?

Let me give you a warning in advance, a WordPress website needs to be kept updated!
A static HTML site can run for years without you ever touching it for things like security updates or new versions. Just to make you aware of the need for updates!

Another thing that needs really close attention is to make sure that your rankings in Google and other search engines stay intact.
That means you need to make sure that the URLs of your old site will stay the same with your new WordPress based website.

Luckily this can be done and for those few links you want to change you can redirect them via your .htaccess file.

Convert Static HTML to WordPress

But first things first, the conversion of your website.

First, what do you need:

  • good hosting (aff) that support php
  • a mysql database: databasename, username for that database and the password for that useraccount
  • the possibility to use a .htaccess file

If you are not sure about the above mentioned items, ask your website hosting (aff) provider!

Installing WordPress in a Subfolder

The first thing you will do is to install WordPress into a Subfolder like /cms .

After you finished the installation you have to set the Privacy setting so that Search Engines are not allowed to visit and index your site (Settings -> Reading) so your new URLs are not getting into the search engine indexes until you are ready with your conversion.

Now you can start building your WordPress website next to your current site, that site will stay active while you build a new one.

Keeping Old URLs

Like a mentioned before, it is very important that you keep the URLs for the new site the same as the old one!

That is why you need to set the Permalinks to custom with the value /%postname%.html this will result in Posts links with the extension .html.

During the development of your new site the urls will be like /cms/page-url.html , but after the final steps this will become /page-url.html , that same as the old site.
Make sure that the “slugs” are the same as the old site, and there is a plugin that you will need which is “.html on pages” . I take it you will have some pages that use the extension .html

You can now start to convert your old pages to WordPress by copying the text or the HTML code of the content from the old website into the HTML code screen of WordPress.

Your page URL is created by the Title of your page, but you can change them by editing the Slug permalink.

There is a plugin that could help you convert old pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/import-html-pages/ Attention! For this plugin to work you really need  PHP5! Ask your hosting provider if you are not sure.

Website Layout

The conversion from your old static HTML to WordPress based site with the same layout is a completely different exercise than what I am describing here, to do that your will have to get a complete custom Theme / Layout.

But why not take this opportunity and change the look of your site together with the conversion? Choose a nice premium or free theme  that will fit you company / website topic and customize it to your needs.

If you are happy with the look and feel and the content of your site you can follow these step to get it “live”:

1. delete or rename the index.html file in the root of your old site.
2. copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the /cms folder to the root of your site
3. change one rule in the index.php file into require(‘./cms/wp-blog-header.php’); (only with the index.php file in the root, not in the folder  /cms!!)
4. change only the Site address (URL) in the general setting (Setting -> General) into the domain (aff) name. (remove the /cms part)

Change Site Address Only!
Change Site Address Only!

5. remove or rename the old  .html files.
6. change the privacy settings so the Search Engines can access and index the site again.

If you handle the change over it this manner, than your old site is not reachable during the 5 minutes you need to rename the index.html so the index.php takes over and if you kept your URLs you are not loosing any visitors from the search engines like Google.

And of course you have taken a complete Back-Up of your old static website so you can restore your old side if you should encounter any unexpected error(s).

If you want new URLs for your pages than you can redirect the old URLs to the news ones in two ways:

  • use a plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
  • via the .htaccess file in which you have to write a rule per url you want to forward:  redirect 301 /olde-url.html http://www.example.com/new-url.html

However if you change your URLs, even with a 301 redirect you could loose some credit and backlinks that are pointing to your site.

Good luck and if you still have some questions, please use the contact form.

If you have other tips and additions that might help others, please write them in the comments section below.

One last question: Is there a need to have this information in an even more detailed form like a pdf manual with screen shots and tips? if so, please leave a comment.

Update: You asked for it and now it's finally here… From Static HTML To WordPress version 1.0

You can share the PDF with friends, post it on you website but you cannot sell it or change anything in it! If you find any language or grammatical errors please let me know so I can correct them.

From Static HTML to WordPress Website

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By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Setup Tagged With: Build, CMS, How to, HTML, website, wordpress 32 Comments

How to Install 21 WordPress Plugins in 5 Minutes

Filed Under: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Setup July 19, 2013

Once you have completed the basic setup of your WordPress website, it's time to add more functions by installing plugins.

Here is a basic list of plugins that I integrate into every WordPress website I build.

Update: Since I wrote this post in 2010 several plugins have changed or have been surpassed by newer better plugins. That is why I created this new list (in alphabetical order).

Basic WordPress Plugins List

BackWPup
Contact Form 7
Fancybox for WordPress
Flare
Google XML Sitemaps
Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin
Limit Login Attempts
No Self Pings
nrelate Related Content
PS Auto Sitemap
Quick Adsense
Revision Control
Simple Trackback Validation with Topsy Blocker
Subscribe To Comments
W3 Total Cache
Wordfence Security
Wordpress Popular Posts
Wordpress Seo
WP Updates Notifier
WP-Optimize

A number of the old plugins are no longer needed as a lot of their functions are now build into the core of WordPress, other ones are integrated into the Genesis (aff)  Theme Framework that is used on this site.

If you need / want more details on each plugin check out 20 Basic WordPress Plugins.

Old Basic WordPress Plugins List

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator Replaced by PS Automap Sitemap
FD Feedburner Plugin Integrated in Genesis (aff)
Flexi Pages Widget Build into WordPress core custom menu's and Genesis
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2 Replaced by WordPress SEO
My Page Order Build into WordPress core custom menu's
NextGEN Gallery (Only used for Photo galleries, non standard function)
Related Posts Replace by nrelate Relatec Content (with thumbnails)
Robots Meta Integrated in WordPress SEO
Secure Files Replaced by WordFence
SEO Slugs Now done manually for more control
Subscribe To Comments
WordPress Automatic Upgrade Now done with InfinteWP (Remote update software + WordPress client)
WordPress Database Backup Replaced by BackWPUp for more options
WordPress File Monitor Replaced by WordFence
WP-DBManager Replaced by WP-Optimize a lighter version that works great
WP-SpamFree Replaced by Growmap Anti Spam
Fancybox Fancybox for WordPress, works better with WordPress 3.x
WP Security Scan Replaced by WordFence
W3 Total Cache

Yes, you counted correctly, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin, you know how difficult a task it was to install these.

Search for the plugin on wordpress.org, click the install button, confirm that the installation was successful and activate the plugin.

Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!

Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac, and it is a great time-saver.

This is always the first plugin I install using the standard process:

Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate Process

Once you have done this, the magic begins. Go to the option “Plugin Central” under the Plugins menu.

The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field where you can paste the list shown above.
Of course, you can just type the names of other plugins you want to install.

Once you are satisfied with your list, click the “Install Plugins” button.

Depending on your host's security settings, it might ask you for your FTP data such as FTP site, username and password. Or,  it will start to work directly.

The process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting (aff) environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes under two minutes for all 20 plugins.

After the whole process has ran, you need to active all of the plugins, which takes about four clicks.

Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin), choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.

Now all of your plugins are active. Some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right off the bat.

Configuring the plugins will take some time, but you just saved a lot of time on the installation, so go ahead and set all the options that you want. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but now it's time for you to take action!

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By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Setup Tagged With: CMS, Plugin, wordpress 27 Comments

Use the Right Title in Building a WordPress Website

Filed Under: WordPress Setup June 2, 2011

You want your new WordPress website to be easily found by search engines, right?

One thing that you need to think long and hard about is the title of your website. This title will show up on every search engine's search results page, which shows the link to the homepage of your website.

The title should not only contain the keywords you want to target, but it should also invite searchers to click on that title.

The WordPress Title

Most themes (aff) will show the title as the title of your post or page, with or without the title of the site (which is set under Settings —> General).

For myself and the majority of my customer's sites, I use a plugin called Headspace2 which gives you the ability to write different HTML titles. These are the titles that are shown in the title bar of your browser, and are also the titles used by search engines.

With Headspace, you can set different titles for your homepage along with several other pages (archive/category pages, etc.). It shows a separate field under your writing panel where you can put the title.

On this page, you see the title “Use the Right Title in Building a WordPress Website.” But if you look at the top of your browser, you see the title “The Importance of Using the Right Title when Building a WordPress Website.”

The WordPress Theme Header

There is a little catch for Headspace2 to work the right way…. you need to check the way your theme uses the Title function in your header file.

To check this, go to Appearance —> Editor,  select the file called Header (header.php) and look for this coding:

<title><?php if (function_exists(‘seo_title_tag')) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(”); bloginfo(‘name');} ?></title>

In the example above you can use a plugin called “SEO Title Tag” that will do the same as Headspace2, with the exception of a few limitations. You can also see that the name of the site is appended at the end of the title. You need to change that code for optimal use of Headspace2 and replace it with:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?></title>

For branding purposes you could add something extra into the code, such as:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?> | WpSiteBuilding.com</title>

The only problem with this is that the title will get too long for the search engine listings. Search engines will cut the title at this moment to about 60 positions.

Did you install the plugin and change the title function in the header of your theme? If so, it's time to read up on how you can write those great visitor-attracting titles over at Copyblogger's How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

P.S. The code “wp_title” is taken from your database table. If you have another table prefix, you have to change the prefix to match your installation (WordPress Installation).

WordPress Titles

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By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Setup 1 Comment

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