Supplies Needed:

• Feedburner account.
• Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin. Download Here: http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78483
• A WordPress blog already installed and set up on your domain name.

Step 1: Set Up Feedburner Account

Although setting up an RSS feed may sound difficult, it’s really not. To set up a feedburner feed you will want to log into your feedburner account, and then enter your website URL within the box that says “burn a feed right this instant.”

Follow Directions on the next few screens:

When you go back to your feedburner dashboard you will now see your feed. Click on the link to your new feed.

Next click on the RSS button and copy and keep track of your RSS direct link. You will want to copy and paste this link to a text file for another step in this tutorial:

Step 2: Install Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin

Now you will add the RSS to feed to your WordPress blog so you can keep track of all your RSS subscribers. With this step you will want to make sure you have downloaded the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin to your computer.

Next log into your WordPress Dashboard browse to the “plugins” tab, and click on add new:

Then click on upload new plugin.

Browse for the zipped plugin file for Feedburnare Feedsmith and upload to WordPress from your computer:

Then on the next screen click activate plugin:

Step 3: Add RSS Feed to Your WordPress Blog

In this step you will need the URL to the RSS feed you created in step one.

While logged into your WordPress Dashboard browse to the settings tab and click on “feedburner”:

Next add your RSS feed URL you saved in step one to the appropriate box:

Then click save and you are all set!

Supplies Needed:

• Access to Your WordPress Dashboard
• A widget ready WordPress Theme installed and ready to use.

Step 1: Find Your Widgets Dashboard

Most WordPress themes today come widget ready. To access the widgets you will just need to log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the “appearance” box and then click on widgets:

Step 2: Activate Widgets

Once you get to the widgets screen you will find available widgets on the left hand side:

These are the widgets that are already installed on your blog. Most widgets already installed come from the fresh install of WordPress, or may even come as extras with a premium theme you may have purchased.

On the right hand side you will see all areas of your blog where you can place widgets. For example: sidebar 1, and sidebar 2:

To activate a widget you simply drag and drop the widget of your choice from the left hand section (available widgets) to appropriate widget area (right hand section) you would like the widget to appear.

Step 3: Edit Your Widgets

Once the widget has been placed within the appropriate widget area, for example: sidebar 2, you can then edit the widget:

Step 4: Add New Widgets

If you would like to add new widgets to your available widgets queue just go to the plugins tab located in your WordPress dashboard and click on add new:

Search for widgets in the search box:

When you find the widget you want, just click install!

You’ve probably heard that WordPress is incredibly user friendly – and it is! Still, most first time users find it overwhelming at first. If you ever tried to tackle WordPress on your own and felt like giving up, you’re not at all alone. There’s a lot to take in at first.

I was lucky though. I had several patient friends available to help me over the learning curve. Still, I wouldn’t say that I felt truly comfortable for months after. The more I got to know it, the more I realized that WordPress is both simple and complex all at the same time.

If you only want to use WordPress to publish content, it’s pretty darned simple. The visual editor operates like any basic word processor. You enter content, press publish and you’re finished.

Think of WordPress as being three things at once.

1. It’s a Content Management Script that runs on your web server, letting you enter content as easily as writing an email.
2. Your content is stored in a Database on your web server.
3. Finally, it wears a Theme, a set of template files, that determines how the content is displayed online.

Entering content is easy. The database takes care of itself. Customization, want to alter your design and manipulate the database for special needs, you have to tap a whole other area of knowledge and that’s where many get stuck.

There’s good news and bad news for those who want to learn more about managing their WordPress site. The good news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users who are willing to answer your questions. The bad news is that there’s a huge resource of documents and a large community of developers and users…

The trouble for newcomers is usually that they don’t know how to ask the right questions to produce the answers they really need. The documents and forums seem to be written in a foreign language and newbie questions are often answered with links to more foreign explanations that just add to their feelings of overwhelm.

My advice? Don’t give up. Keep asking questions. To get the best answers, provide as much information about your problem as you can. If you’re persistent, you’ll find that things come easier over time.

About the Author:Kelly McCausey of Mom’s Talk Biz invites you to WordPress Orientation, your all access pass to exclusive WordPress learning. We demonstrate answers to your questions during our live web conference sessions. If you’re goal is to do it yourself WordPress Orientation is your pathway to learning how.

The WordPress blogging script files should already be downloaded and unzipped to your computer. Now you just need to open your FTP client and browse to find the WordPress files on your computer. In this tutorial we will be using FileZilla as our FTP client.

In FileZilla all computer files are viewed on the left hand side under “local site” – which also means “your computer.” In FileZilla browse your computer to find the WordPress files downloaded from the WordPress website. The left hand side of FileZilla under local site should look something like this:

Next you will want to connect to your website in FileZilla. The information needed to connect to a website via FTP is: website or FTP URL, username, password, and port # (default port number is 21.)

Once you are connected to your website you will notice in FileZilla that your website files are listed on the right hand side under “remote site” which also means “your website.” In the right hand section you will want to browse to the public_html folder or the root domain.

Note: The files located within the root domain is what website visitors first see when they arrive at your website. For example if you install WordPress on your root domain the WordPress blog will appear on the following URL: http://yourdomainname.com

However if you would like to install WordPress in a sub folder of the domain you can do this as well. In order to install WordPress in a sub folder you will want to create the folder within your root domain. Just create a new folder within the public_html folder. Name the folder whatever you would like, for example if you want your WordPress blog to be located at http://yourdomainname.com/blog then name the folder “blog.” Then open that folder and upload the WordPress files within that folder.

Next we are going to upload all WordPress files to the public_html folder. You will want to be sure you have already configured the wp-config-sample.php file with the database information and save it as wp-config.php within the WordPress files located on your computer.

Be sure to upload ALL files, including the new wp-config.php file you just created.

Once all the WordPress files are uploaded you will then want to go to your website URL to run the install script. To run the install script go to the following URL: http://yourblog.com/wp-admin/install.php (replace “yourblog.com” with your actual URL.)

Note: If you installed the blog in a sub directory then you will need to add the folder name within the URL like this: http://yourblog.com/foldername/wp-admin/install.php

Next You will want to enter your blog information:

On the next page you will receive the log in information to your WordPress dashboard. Be sure to write down your password and don’t lose it!

Congratulations you are now the proud owner of a self hosted WordPress blog! Now find a fancy theme, some cool plugins, and start blogging!

P.S. At Girly Website Hosting we offer free WordPress installation with ALL hosting packages!

Setting Up a Database

When signing up with a website host they will provide you with information to log into your client control panel. Most website hosts use what is called Cpanel, and this is where most web masters manage their website files, databases, and email accounts.

We will be using the Cpanel interface as a base for this tutorial.

Step #1 Create a Database – After you log into your Cpanel, find the icon that says “MySQL Databases” and click on it.

On the next page you will see a box that says “Create New Database.” There you will enter the name of the database that will be used for your new WordPress blog. After you enter the name click create database.

Step #2 Create a User – In order for the database to work you will need to assign a user and user privileges. On the page you created the database you will find a section that says “Add New User.” Here you will pick out a username, and a password for the new database user.

Please write down the password assigned to the user as you will need this information later on when configuring WordPress for installation. It is a good idea to create a strong database password to avoid being hacked.

Next you will want to add the new user you created to the database you created. This can be done on the same page in the section titled “Add User to Database”:

On the next page you will need to assign user privileges. Just click “All Privileges” and then click make changes.

On the page where you created the database you will now see your database, and the user name. Write down the database name, and database user name. Keep this information together with the password you wrote down in a previous step.

Step #3 Editing Your Wp-Config.php File – The wp-config.php is how you will connect your WordPress blogging script to the database you just created. If you haven’t already downloaded the WordPress script to your computer then now is the time to do so. The latest version of WordPress can be downloaded here: http://wordpress.org/download/

Once you have downloaded the files to your computer you will want to unzip the files. Next open up the wp-config-sample.php file in your text editor. Edit the following fields with the database information you wrote down in the previous step:

Save this file as wp-config.php within your WordPress folder that holds all the other WordPress script files. In the next tutorial we will work on uploading the WordPress files to the website and finish the process of installing a self hosted WordPress blog on your domain name.

In the next post we will complete the process of installing a self hosted WordPress blog!

P.S. At Girly Website Hosting we offer free WordPress installation with ALL hosting packages!

If incoming links aren’t of great importance to you, you could still grab a domain name and host the blog on your main hosting site. If you have an existing website, it is also totally appropriate to install the blog script into a sub-directory on that site.

Don’t use Blogspot.com or WordPress.com for a business blog. Your customization options are very limited and you won’t get decent statistics on your blog activities. You can install secondary stat tools but why go to that extra effort?

There are some hosting sites that don’t work with WordPress. Before you sign up for hosting, ask customer support if they are WordPress friendly.

At Girly Website Hosting we do offer FREE WordPress installation with your website hosting package purchase. Affordably priced, our hosting packages start at just $3.95 per month and are designed to help you get a professional self hosted WordPress website/blog.

Click here to view our package pricing, and if you have any questions then please feel free to submit a support ticket.

• Blogger – Free to use, can have a blog on their site (blogspot.com) or publish the content to your own hosting account.
• WordPress – Free to use, can have a blog on their site (wordpress.com) or grab the open source script (wordpress.org.) for use on your own hosting account.
• Typepad – Paid service (typepad.com)

There are bloggers using every type of blog script who swear by their tool of choice and list off great features that keep them loyal. So your own choice will be a personal one.

For a business blog, a common choice is a self hosted WordPress blog only because of it’s option to have static pages, and with a self hosted WordPress blog you are allowed to have an ad supported website.

WordPress is feature rich. It is an Open Source script. This means that anyone can take the source code and edit it. A community of creative and talented people are constantly improving the code and releasing updates for free use.

WordPress is flexible. It works with a variety of ‘plug ins’ which are like hacks for the base code of the scrip. When uploaded and activated, they make the blog script work differently.

At Girly Website Hosting we definitely recommend using a self hosted WordPress blog, and with your hosting package purchase you can actually put in a free request for us to install WordPress for you! Also as a hosting install and customize our free themes at no charge!

There are many websites that have been built using a similar script/database (known as a Content Management System or CMS) and these sites have a lot in common with the blog since a blog script is essentially a CMS.

The lines between blogs and other types of websites are blurring as more business owners choose to build their site with a CMS. While many blogs are designed to look like a web journal, more and more are being designed to look like a regular website.

Because the content you enter into the blog is stored in a database, it can be distributed as a data feed. RSS is the feed that most blogs employ. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.) With RSS, your content can be viewed through any RSS reader or aggregator on another website or on a computer or portable device.

Another benefit to being database driven is that the script can accept and display comments on specific posts and can detect when other sites link to one of your blog posts.

WordPress blogs are, in my opinion, the most versatile where you can either use the blog as a regular blog, or as a static website with a static home page. You can use a blog pretty much however you would like, and it is a lot easier to add, and organize content to a blogging platform unlike a regular html website.

Another benefit of using a blog – WordPress – as your content manager, no exspensive software to buy! Unlike a regular website, with a blog you can easily install a WordPress blog on your domain and you can do this for free!

If you have any questions about blogging or starting your self hosted WordPress blog then please feel free to contact me here.

That means that the other half are not blogging yet!

Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to answer ten common questions that people still ask about blogging everyday. Hopefully by doing so we’ll overcome any reticence you may have about becoming a business blogger.

I know when I first decided to start my very first website back in 2004, it was a big dream and I had NO idea where to even start! So I hit the web and did searches on “how to start a website” and my search brought me to the idea that I would either have to learn how to hand code an html website or buy an expensive piece of software to help me build the website of my dreams. Well needless to say, being a busy mom of two with one on the way, I opted to buy the expensive piece of software!

I was really surprised to find out that designing a website was a lot harder than I thought, and it ended up NOT looking like the website of my dreams.

Once I got my first website up and running I came across a platform called WordPress, and I was little confused at first, but once I started using the software I quickly began to realize I wasted all that money on the expensive software because WordPress was what I was actually looking for!

So now I have more than one website…yay, and they are ALL ran on the WordPress blogging platform. I like to think of myself as a WordPress snob! I recommend WordPress to everyone one of my design clients because it is made for not only hosting blogs, but you can use it as a static website too, and best of all the script is free – no expensive software needed!

I really wish someone would have explained to me more about blogs and WordPress when I first started venturing into the on line world, so that’s why for the next few weeks we are going to talk more about what a blog is and why you should consider a blog for ALL your on line website needs, which includes managing your website all the way to gaining more traffic and more clients.

If you would like to stay up to date as to when a new post is made in the series then please feel free to subscribe to our blog using the options below!