Setting-Up Your Blog Properly – Part 3
December 6, 2008 by Reba
Filed under Blog, Blogging For Money, Hot Topics
Table of contents for Set Up Blog
- Setting-Up Your Blog Properly – Part 1
- Setting-Up Your Blog Properly – Part 2
- Setting-Up Your Blog Properly – Part 3
As stated in Part 1 & 2, after installing your WordPress blog on your own domain, there are 3 steps you need to take to get your blog set-up properly so it will not only be indexed by the search engines but also be easy to run and a good place for your visitors to go. I’m going to cover each step in a separate post, this is Part 3.
These steps are specific to a WordPress blog hosted on your own domain. The free or hosted services like Blogger and WordPress.com will not allow you to accomplish what is described in these articles. These are the three steps:
- Part 1 – Add the proper plug-ins
- Part 2 – Change the permalinks
- Part 3 – Find a quality theme and activate the widgets
Setting up your theme
There are hundreds if not thousands of free themes and quite a few paid themes that you can use for your blog. The theme will control the look and feel of your blog.
You can find quite a few free themes at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes or just do a quick search on Google for WordPress themes.
To install a theme you first download it from the website where you found or purchased it, unzip it, and then FTP it up to wp-content/themes folder.
After logging-in to your blog click on the Design link. At the point an image of the theme you uploaded will be there for you choose. Just click on the image of the theme you uploaded.
Next you need to set the widgets. Widgets allow you to change your sidebar by clicking the ones you want.
Click the widgets and it will look like this.
This will allow you to activate and arrange your sidebar. This photo may look a bit different from your Widget page because I use the Revolution Theme and it has three sidebars, so I have an option for each sidebar. You will probably just have one.
You can use text widgets to add anything to your sidebar by just adding the code (like you get from MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog or HTML for ads or opt-in boxes). I have added Twitter Badges, links to Technorati, BlogCatalog, FeedShark and a tower of AdSense Ads.
Widgets are quite powerful in making it easy to get your blog to look the way you want without having to do any coding to the theme itself.
My next post in my Blogging For Money series will cover some quick tips for Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO.
Ciao!
Reba
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Great, yet very basic (and IMPORTANT) series! Thanks. I was new to WP as of a few months ago, but now I’m getting better! (Thanks to posts like yours!)
Bill @ Hardgainers last blog post..How to make the ultimate protein/work out drink?
Great tips you have on your site. I am a new blogger and learning to write effective contents. I had started to jot down notes so the idea will not slip out when I sit in front of the com.