Learn WordPress in 24 Hours With Expert Video Tutorials

WordPress as a blogging platform has literally changed the way we blog and disseminate information. There are other platforms that are also quite effective, such as Blogger from Google and others such as Expression. Then there are CMS (Content Management Systems) such as Joomla and Drupal which can not only create outstanding websites but can also blogs. But WordPress is unsurpassed in its flexibility, agility and power. It also enjoys a very wide online community that almost shares virtually any information you'd like to know regarding the platform.

Why you need WordPress video tutorials 

Whether you are professional blogger or a casual writer who blogs as a hobby, you want to make sure that your blog looks presentable and professional. Because of the sheer number of blogs online right now, there is intense competition and surfers are extremely choosy. They have zero tolerant for a blog that looks amateurish or that isn't maintained.

1. Search engines love blogs 

You need to educate yourself with WordPress video tutorials because you need your blog to stand out. Search engines love blogs and if your blog is properly optimized it can rank well and bring you a handsome volume of traffic. Unfortunately the majority of bloggers do not have a clue as how to best optimize their blog for search engines. This is where the video tutorials come in handy.

2. Creating a buzz with social media 

Crafty webmasters and bloggers are now reaping a ton of daily and consistent traffic by using social media tools together with WordPress. If successfully employed, this tactic can totally transform your level of traffic. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, StubleUpon, MySpace and Digg can be configured to work with your WordPress blog and share information. Again, few know how to do this and are indeed missing out on awesome traffic and interaction opportunities. Without WordPress video tutorials, it is hard for a regular blogger to fully tap into the raw power of social media.

In many blogging conferences and seminars, we here of a select few who are making almost six figure incomes through blogging. Others have made blogging a full time job. Unfortunately, most bloggers are far from attaining this goal. This is because they have not yet learnt how to utilize WordPress to the fullest.

Creating a Sticky Homepage in WordPress

The process is relatively simple and is very effective when you want new visitors to your site to read an introduction to your site, but have more instant news updates appear as well.

First, navigate to Posts > Add New and write the content you'd like to always be present on your homepage.

Under Publish > Visibility (top right side) click Edit. Next, click the check box to "Stick this post to the front page". Publish your document, then navigate to Settings > Reading.

The default setting for WordPress front page displays is "your latest posts" and this what you'll need to be set to for your latest post content to appear on the homepage. Now that you've made a "sticky homepage" that particular post will always be at the top.

Further customizations can be made under Reading Settings, such as the number of blog posts to show on the home page and whether to include the full text or a summary. In the case of our Site Sparker website, our blog posts are very short so we've chosen to post the full text. But if your blog entries are very long, then you should choose the Summary setting so that only a portion of your blog appears on the homepage. That will ensure visitors can scroll very quickly through all of your posts to find what they're looking for.

If this is at all confusing, you can find a video version of this tutorial at the link below, where it's explained visually, inside the WP interface.

WordPress - How to Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Blog

It is so important to have a contact form on your WordPress blog. Having a contact form gives other bloggers or potential clients the ability to contact you easily and in a straight forward manner. This will add functionality to your WordPress blog. How to add a contact form couldn't be easier as you will see as you follow along.

The way in which we are going to add a contact form to your WordPress blog is in the form of a plugin, there are various plugins available to you for adding a contact form but I will be showing you using 'Contact Form 7'

The first thing you will need to do is login to the Dashboard area of your blog. Once there, click on the plugins tab over on the left hand side and then the 'Add New' tab. You will now be able to enter a search term, enter the name of the plugin 'Contact Form 7' and click 'Search plugins'. You will now see the plugin appear in the list which you are presented with, all you need to do is click on the 'Install Now' link under the plugin name. You will be asked if you are sure you wish to install the plugin, just click OK. Once the plugin has finished installing you can click the 'Activate Now' link to activate the plugin. Your contact form plugin is now installed and active.

You now need to add your contact form somewhere on your blog and I always find this works well as a separate page with the name 'About Us' or 'Contact Us' but the choice is yours, for this example I'm going to add mine to the 'About Us' page which is automatically created when you install a new copy of WordPress. How to add the contact form is simple enough, if you go over to the left where all your tabs are you will see a new tab called 'Contact' - click it to go to the contact form settings.

You will see a contact form called 'Contact Form 1' has automatically been created for you. If you are happy with the tags and the email addresses it has added you can simple copy the text it tells you to or you can add in or take out any tags you would like and change the email address before you copy the text. Once you have copied the information click on the 'Pages' tab.

Once you arrive at the 'Edit Pages' page you will see the 'About' page which was pre-installed with WordPress, hover your mouse over it until a menu appears then click on the 'Edit' button. You will need to edit the text to suit your blog, once you have done this, paste the text which you copied from the contact form settings and click 'update'. If you now click on 'View Page' at the top of the page you will see your new page with the contact form in.

As you can see this is easy enough to do and really adds to your blog, and your readers will love having the ability to contact you easily.

Alester

'WordPress How To' is a valuable resource for anyone that wants to get started with WordPress. The tutorials are easy to follow in a step-by-step process. By the time you finish each tutorial you will be able to carry out what you have learned with ease.

Top 10 Reasons Why EVERY Small Business Website Should Be Built With WordPress

I'll tell you the same thing I tell every one of my new web marketing clients, "WordPress is incredible - and you should be using it for your website." It can save you both time and money, while making it far easier to build a beautiful and limitless website that you can manage and control yourself.

Once you learn more about WordPress, you'll understand why over 80 MILLION websites are built on WordPress, and why NOW is the time for you to learn what WordPress is all about too, and how it can provide immense value to your small business.

Here are my Top 10 Reasons why you should strongly consider WordPress for your website, regardless if you already have one or not.

1. Incredible Power Straight Out of the Box

Immediately upon installing WordPress, you'll have power features that make it easy to manage your website. You'll have a Content Management System that allows you to add/edit/delete your own content, including images and videos, a User Access system that controls who can access your Admin Center and what level of access they have, a powerful Blogging software, and a central location to manage virtually all aspects of your website.

2. Quickly Build Beautiful Websites with Existing

Themes Forget spending $1,000's on a custom website design when there are hundreds of highly professional themes for under $100. Simply find the theme that projects the right image for your business, install it in WordPress, and badda-bing, your new website has a top-quality look and feel to it. Any aspect of any theme can also be customized to suit your needs.

3. Add Powerful Features with Thousands of Plugins

Forget spending $1,000's on custom websites features when there are thousands of Plugins that can easily be installed and utilized instantly. Need a Calendar, there's plugins for that. A shopping cart? A Contact Us form? A Image Gallery? Yep. If it's a common feature, chances are you can find a plugin to use, most of them for free. If not, you can have custom features developed.

4. It's Completely Open Source

Is WordPress starting to sound like a website builder so far that you can buy for $5/month? In some ways it is, but here is where the similarities stop. WordPress is 100% Open Source, and is written in a industry standard web-programming language. This means that your designer/developer is able to work directly in the code of the software to make ANY changes to the system and your website.

For instance, you may have a theme in mind, but the colors don't match your logo. Your designer can easily go into the code of the system and change the colors, or the layout, or the images used, or anything. Perhaps you are using a Plugin, but it lacks an option that you'd really like to have. No problem, your developer can adapt it for you to any specification. With WordPress, anything is possible.

5. Focus on Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress gives you a big head start in the SEO race by providing the core features for you to implement your keyword strategy. You can use search-engine friendly URL's, edit the META tags for each page, and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. In addition, most theme designers take SEO very seriously and code their themes to strict SEO best practices.

6. Constant Development and Enhancement

Technology is progressing faster and faster, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are constantly being developed and released to take advantage of new technologies, to enhance existing features and security, and to develop new, cutting-edge features that make managing your website easier.

7. A Strong and Active Community

In addition to the team that develops the core of WordPress, there are millions of active users of WordPress that can help you in many ways. These users develop new plugins, new themes, provide professional services, and happily answer questions for you in WordPress forums around the world.

8. Keep Your Website Safe and Secure

You invest a lot of time and resources in your website and you need to know it's safe and secure. In addition to security being hardened in every release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep backups of all your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website in the worse of circumstances.

9. Never Outgrow Your Website

Your data, settings, and design files are completely separate from the core of WordPress. This makes it easy to upgrade any area of your site - whenever you want. And, since it's open source, you can build features as complex as necessary. Once you build your website with WordPress, you'll be able to grow your website to keep pace with your business, no matter how big your business grows.

10. It's Free!

Perhaps best of all, WordPress is completely free. Zip, zilch, nada. Just download it, install it on your server and start using it - without spending a dime on the software.

I hope this article has helped you get an idea of how powerful and valuable WordPress can be to your business. It will take some time and effort on your part to really understand how it works and operates, but it will be extremely well worth the effort in the long run.

How To Quickly And Easily Embed YouTube Videos In A WordPress Blog Post

In this article, I will describe step-by-step how you can quickly and easily embed YouTube videos in a WordPress blog post.

It's true, a blog with nothing but text can be pretty boring so it is a great idea to add things like pictures and video to your blog. One of the most common question we get asked over at Learn WordPress Visually is how a YouTube video can be embedded into a WordPress post. 

YouTube 

Step 1: Create a new blog post

Step 2: Give your post a title and type in any text that you would like in your post. Note: You can have a post that only has the video or you can have the video in the post along with text that you have added in.

Step 3: Click on the "HTML" tab

There are two tabs on the upper right side of the WordPress posting area. One tab is called "Visual" and the other is called "HTML"

Important: This is the step that most people forget to do so make double sure that you have selected the HTML tab and not the Visual.

Step 4: In another internet window, go to YouTube and find the video that you would like to embed in your blog post. This is the other step that many people get wrong. Make sure that you are not just clicking on the channel, it's important to actually click on the title of the actual video that you would like to embed.

Step 5: Click the "Embed" button which is located on YouTube and directly under the video window.

Step 6: You will now see the HTML code that is needed to embed that particular video. You will also see some options below that code which you can select. Once you have the options selected (you do not have to select additional options if you don't need them) click your mouse in the box with the code and it should automatically highlight the code. Once you have done that, right-click and copy the code (or click on "edit, copy") which will copy the code for that video.

Step 7: Go back to your WordPress window (or tab) and again, make sure that the "HTML" tab is selected. Click you mouse in the posting and put it where you would like the YouTube video to show up. Once you have done that, just right-click (or select edit) and paste that code into that area of the post.

Step 8: That is all there is to it. You can now click back to the "Visual" tab to get back to your normal view. You probably won't be able to actually see the video until you publish your blog post so go ahead and click "Publish" to publish your post and you will now have a post that has a YouTube video right in it which means that people can watch the video without even leaving your blog!

Final tip: When you are choosing the embed options on YouTube, I usually uncheck the "show related videos" box which means that when the YouTube video is done being viewed on my blog, it will not someone else's related video.

WordPress Permalinks

A "permalink" is how the URL (website address) of a WordPress post appears. It is very important that you set your desired Permalink structure first thing after building your new website for a few reasons. First, because search engines index your blog based on your post's URLs, and if you change from one to another you will loose any rankings that you have already received for that post. 

And second, any other incoming links to your post from other websites will no longer work causing you to loose out on any traffic from those links as well. As a general rule of SEO, it is best to have the keywords that you would like any given post to rank for located within the posts permalink.

So then which Permalink Structure Is the Best?

To configure your Permalinks click the "Permalinks" tab in your WordPress Dashboard located under "Settings" on the left side of your screen.

Well now that we know that having your keywords which you wish to rank for located within your post's permalink is best for SEO purposes, it is obvious that the "Default" and "Numeric" settings are not your best options. The "Day and name" or "Month and name" option will place your post's name (which should be the keywords that you are targeting for any given post) into your post's permalink, but they also include a lot of numbers before hand which is not ideal for SEO purposes. The most ideal permalink would be your website address followed immediately by your post's name (which again should be the keywords that you are targeting for that post).

Example: [http://www.YourWebsiteAddress.com/post-name]

Custom Structure Permalink Settings

To accomplish this you want to use the "Custom Structure" option to display your permalinks. You can use a number of different variables to define your Wordpress permalinks, but most of the time you will really only need two. These are the %category% and %postname% permalink structures. You will need to enter these into the "Custom Structure" option box using forward slashes ( / ) to separate these variables so that they look like this: /%category%/%postname%

This structure will display the category that the post belongs to as well as the post's name in your permalink. If you are not using categories to separate your posts or you simply do not want to include the category in your permalink (which I personally do not do, again because the "optimal" SEO permalink is the cleanest, shortest, and simplest) then you can instead just place the /%postname% structure into the option box so that your permalink will only display your website address and the post's name.

If you do chose to use the /%category% structure and your post belongs to two categories, then the one with a top category ID will be selected as the category name (note that the category IDs are assigned according to the order you created them and not according to alphabetic order).

Build Your Own Wordpress Test Lab

In this tutorial we'll go through how to get Wordpress running on your own PC (running Windows) so you have your own personal Wordpress installation to experiment with or learn from. Yes you could experiment with Wordpress on your live website but if you don't have a web host or don't want to play around with your live Wordpress blog then this tutorial is for you.

Firstly we need to install your own personal web server to run Wordpress. Wordpress requires a web server, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language to run. Installing and configuring these in the past was hard work but there's now an application called WAMP (Windows - Apache - MySQL - PHP) which installs and configures everything to get your own personal web server up and running.

Normally you'd pay a web host to host your website or blog and they'd provide the web server, database server and scripting but we're going to install our own personal web server so we can do anything we like in our own personal Wordpress test lab at zero cost.

Visit the WAMP site and download the WAMP Server. Once the file has downloaded double-click it to install the WAMP software.

Once the install begins accept the license agreement and all the default installation options and select to create a desktop icon at the end of the installation.

Once installed and running you'll have a WAMP icon down in the system tray in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen (it looks like a semi-circle)click the WAMP icon down in the system tray and select phpMyAdmin - if the phpMyAdmin page displays then this tells us that the webserver is running and the php script can connect to our MySQL database so you're up and running.

We now have a functioning WAMP web & database server running on our PC. This server provides practically all the functionality that a paid hosting account offers but costs nothing and is for your personal use or use on an internal network if you're teaching Wordpress. It would be possible to use WAMP to host your live blog but we'd advise that it's much better for your live blog to be hosted at a web hosting company rather than allowing people to connect to your own PC running WAMP as there are security, speed and availability issues in running your own publicly accessible web server.

We have our web server now all we need to do is install Wordpress. If you haven't already started WAMP start it by double-clicking the WAMP desktop icon. Open 'My Computer' or Windows Explorer and navigate to C:/WAMP/WWW and then create a new folder in the WWW folder called wordpress.

We then need to download Wordpress so go to the Wordpress web site and download the latest version of Wordpress. Once it's downloaded extract/unzip the installation file and copy the contents of its 'wordpress' folder to c:/wamp/www/wordpress.

If you've downloaded Wordpress and successfully copied the Wordpress files into the correct folder you can open a browser and go to http://localhost/wordpress - you should see a Wordpress page asking you to create a configuration file. So go ahead and click 'create a configuration file'.

Wordpress then asks for the database hostname, username and password to connect to your MySQL server. Wordpress is a dynamic content management system so anything you post in Wordpress is stored in a MySQL database so when a visitor visits your blog or you edit a post Wordpress dynamically pulls this information from the database displays it. In order to do this we need to create a blank database with a username and password so Wordpress can connect to it. Wordpress will do all the hard work of populate this database with all the correct tables but we have to manually create the database and username and password before Wordpress can do this.

Click the WAMP icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen and select phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin should now load in your browser so then in the 'create new database' box enter wordpress_db and click 'create'.

Now we need to add a user to the database. In phpMyAdmin click the 'Privileges' tab then click 'Add a new User'. In the 'user name' box enter wordpress_user (or a username of your choice) and enter a password in the 'password' and 're-type' boxes. Ensure that under 'database for user' the option 'Grant all privileges on database "wordpress_db"' is selected and then click 'Go' down at the bottom right.

Now if we go back to the Wordpress installation screen we can enter the database name, username and password we just created using phpMyAdmin. The database host should be localhost and we'll leave the table prefix as wp_.

Now click 'submit' and Wordpress should say that it can now communicate with the database. Click the 'run the install' button. We then can fill in the options for site title, username and password - this username and password is the Wordpress username and password that you'd like to use to administer your Wordpress blog so you can make up your own username and password which can (and should!) be different from the database username and password we created earlier.

Click 'install Wordpress' and Wordpress should then say you've successfully installed it and if you click the login button and enter your Wordpress username and password you're up and running!

Just remember to make sure your WAMP server is running first otherwise you won't be able connect.

How to Use WordPress - 5 Quick Steps For The Geek Impaired

If you have even sniffed around the idea of building a website you've probably heard the name WordPress mentioned by any number of sources as being the best and easiest website software available. If it's that fantastic it must be kind of pricey right? Wrong, it's absolutely free. As you read this article you're going to find out how to use WordPress to get your blog up and running in a matter of hours and start taking advantage of the amazing features the platform offers.

But first why is WordPress so popular and how to use WordPress?

The quick answer is it's a professional open source platform that is incredibly easy to use by non-technical people. No code writing, no CSS or HTML, no geeky stuff at all really. If you can point and click you can design and administer a WordPress website.

Functionality, flexibility and automation are also key features when using WordPress. What would take days to put together using static HTML design is done literally in minutes. The automation features not only make your site more receptive to search engines but saves you an enormous amount of time as well.

Did I mention Google loves WordPress. It loves the ease and simplicity that the software offers the web spiders. It loves the permalinks. It loves the fact that each page has meta tags for easy recognition of keywords. When Google loves you it pays you back with quick indexing and good ranking for a keyword.

So just how easy is it to set one of these up? We're going to give you five quick steps that will have your blog up and running in less than two hours from start to finish. There's not enough space here to cover all the options but this will get you started.

In order to effectively use WordPress, and own the real estate you are going to have to buy a domain (about $10.00) and get a hosting service (about $10.00 a month). There are two steps here that are going to slow you down because you really want to think about them.

The first is selecting a domain name. If you're a local business and the name of your company is Smith and Son Plumbing, and you service Kansas City, it probably would be better to get plumberskansascity.com rather than using your company name.

Think about that for a minute. If you live in Kansas City and your tub backs up and you use the internet to find a plumber, what would you enter in the search? Probably Plumbers Kansas City right? Remember, the domain name does not have to be the name of your site. When visitors go to plumberskanasascity.com they will arrive on a site whose name is whatever you make it like Smith and Son.

So now you have a domain and a hosting service. Go to the hosting service control panel or C Panel and find the red icon for Fantastico and click it. A menu will come up and you want to click WordPress. You'll be asked for the URL for the site, site name, create a user name and password and enter a valid email. Click install.

Boom. You have your blog. Okay it's a lumpy looking blue thing that is the default but we can fix that. What we want to do first though is clean up the default. There are a bunch of categories that will not be relevant to your subject so we just go into the dashboard and start deleting with a click of a mouse, those headings that we don't want and adding the ones we do.

Now to get rid of the default design or theme as it's called. There are over 1,000 free themes available for you to choose from so this is the other time killer. Switching themes, once you selected one you like is a snap. And if you don't like it no worries, you can swap it out for another.

The only thing missing now is content so we need to add a post or article. You'll find that the tool for this resembles Word and you can simply cut and paste an article into it or create it in the tool. What's really cool is you can add meta tags to this page and that goes a long way to making it Google friendly. Click a button to publish and your blog is up and running.

This doesn't even scratch the surface of all the cool things you can do with plugins and other features. It just gives you an idea as to how to use WordPress and how easy it is to create a professional website without any design skills. If you need a site you need WordPress.

WordPress Blogs - The Quickest Way to Make Money Online

Blogs are one of the best and easiest ways for you to make money online. You can set a blog up within minutes, get in indexed in a couple of hours and then turn your attention to traffic generation and earning.

Many people turn to free blogging platforms to host their blog, not realising they are putting the fate of their business in the hands of another ...

Whereas it may never happen to you, it has happened to other people. The free blog companies will delete your blog first and ask questions later if they think you are even slightly in violation of their terms of service.

This can be a serious problem - your earnings could disappear over night along with some very valuable data.

You can mitigate against this problem by hosting a WordPress blog on your own domain. The costs of this is minimal. A domain will cost you under $10 a year and some webspace is well under $10 a month.

Yes, this is some investment, but you end up looking professional and have complete control over your blog. You can install additional plugins that will allow you to earn even more money from it. You have more flexibility and can do anything you want with the blog to make it your own. There is no big corporation staring over your shoulder making sure you tow the party line.

Whenever anyone sees a free blog the instant assumption is that it is an individual blogging. When they see a domain name and a self hosted WordPress blog they no longer know that - it could be a company, a guru, or anything.

This obviously puts you in a better position of establishing yourself as an expert in the field and in earning.

Once you have created one WordPress blog that is earning you money, it is very quick and easy for you to create more - you have the domain name and webhosting so you can start creating an empire of money making blogs.

Through this, you are on the road to financial freedom.

7 Reasons Why WordPress Blogs Are So Important For Businesses

Blogs today have become a way for people to share their thoughts, experiences or ideas with friends, or people who enjoy to read their posts. They are mostly used as entertainment. But blogs are so flexible that some people and companies use them as a way of communicating to their customers or readers in a more personal way.

People enjoy reading blogs, and search engines also give a better ranking to blogs. They allow the writer to communicate something to the readers but they are also able to comment on what the writer said. So they allow for interaction between people. Having a blog is very important for any business.

WordPress.org blogs are self-hosted platforms that allow you to get your own domain and have complete ownership of the blog and content. They are very professional and have a lot of flexibility when customizing them.

This is why many business owners choose to create a WordPress blog and it's one of the most famous blog platforms. Here are 7 reasons why it is very important to have a WordPress blog for your business:

1. Blogs are easy to setup, cost very little money to maintain, and help build your online presence and credibility.
2. Blogs can get a lot of traffic from search engines and other websites.
3. Search engines love fresh content, so as long as you keep writing and creating content for a specific niche, you could rank on the first pages of the search engines for free. This means more exposure for your blog and your business.
4. People love blogs. They are looking for content that can help them solve a problem. Be sure to help your readers or educate them in a specific subject, and that will get you more traffic.
5. Blogs are interactive. When you create posts, your readers can comment on them. This becomes a social proof that your blog is interesting and popular. People will be more likely to read your posts if it has a lot of comments.
6. Blogs can make you money. If your blog becomes really popular, on a particular niche, you can make money from advertisements or from selling your own products or affiliate programs.
7. With a stand-alone blog like WordPress.org platform, you have complete control, ownership, and flexibility.

It's one of the cheapest strategies to grow a business for network marketers. All you need to do is to make a precise plan before creating and installing your WordPress blog.

Structuring Your WordPress Site

Pages and Posts are the two main content types inside WordPress. While they sound the same, there are actually some big differences in how they work within the overall system.

Pages are most often used for static, permanent articles that won't change very often. About, Bio, Company, Contact -- these are general types of content that won't have frequent updates and can remain as a static page. 

It's easy to further organize your content by creating sub-pages. The top level page is called the Parent and anything below it is it's Child. This setting can be found under Page Attributes on the right side when editing a page.

Posts are most useful with blog or news sections as you can easily create a Category that holds all of those posts, then create a menu link to the Category, which will automatically display every post you've assigned to it. As with Parent/Child pages mentioned above, you can also have as many sub-categories as you want, making for very effective content organization.

If you are planning to write frequent content on a particular subject, then using the Categories/Posts combination is the best way to go, as WordPress will be handling all of the linking and formatting for you.

Another way to split off your Posts is to use Tags. In this way you can have a primary subject like "gardening" but create separate tags for different sub-topics. WordPress will automatically create separate links to all articles tagged with the term you choose, providing an additional method for visitors to find content within your site!

For additional tips on organizing your content in WordPress, visit the links below.

WordPress - How to Install Plugins Within the Dashboard of WordPress 3.0

This is a short article on WordPress - How to install and activate plugins in WordPress 3.0. After reading this article you will be able to install all your plugins now and in the future. There are two ways in which you can install WordPress Plugins from within the Dashboard of your WordPress blog. One way is to search via the Dashboard and the other way is to download them to your computer and upload your plugin via the Dashboard. I will take you through both ways step by step. If this is the first time you will be installing plugins, it is a simple process so just follow along and carry out each step as needed.

Installing Plugins via the Dashboard Automatically

First you will need to login to the 'Dashboard' of your WordPress blog. If you now look over on the left hand side you will see a list of of menus. Hover over the 'Plugins' Menu and click on the arrow that appears, a drop down menu will now appear.

Now click on 'Add New' and you will now arrive at the 'Install Plugins' page.

As you can see on the screen you are able to type in a word or phrase for what you are searching for, now if you know the name of the plugin you are searching for, enter the name of that plugin. If you are searching to see if there is a plugin to carry out a particular task, enter a relevant phrase. For this example I am going to enter 'database backup' as this is something I need to add to my blog. Now click on 'Search Plugins'.

As you will see, a list of different plugins will appear. Look through the list to see if there is an appropriate plugin for what you are searching for. The plugin 'WP-DB-Backup' is in my list which is perfect for what I was looking for, so I will now click 'Install Now' link. You will now see the plugin you chose being installed and it will tell you when it is complete, you will then be presented with the option to activate the plugin - if you wish to do so, click on the 'Activate Now' link.

All done! Any plugins which have been added to the WordPress.org website can now be installed onto your blog in this way without having to download them and install them manually.

Uploading Plugins From Your Computer to Your WordPress Blog

You may still, from time to time need to install a plugin manually, for example, it may be a newly released plugin that has not yet been added to WordPress.org site or you may have purchased a plugin. I will be showing you how to do this using a plugin called 'RSS Bomber' as I have just purchased it.

Once you have downloaded the plugin to your computer, you need to make sure that the plugin is inside a zip file. Now login to your WordPress Dashboard and click on the 'Plugins' tab and then 'Add New'. Now click on the 'Upload' link near the top of the page. Now click the 'Choose File' button and choose the zip file of your plugin to be uploaded, then click 'Choose' followed by the 'Install Now' button. WordPress will now upload and install your plugin. Once the installation of your plugin has finished it will give you the option to activate your plugin, just click the 'Activate Plugin' link to activate it. All done - you will now see your newly installed plugin in your 'Manage Plugins' page.

You have now learned the two easiest ways to install plugins into WordPress 3.0, you can of course upload your plugins via an FTP client but this is a little more technical and why do things the hard way when they can be done in the simplest ways possible!

Alester:-).

'WordPress How To' is a valuable resource for anyone that wants to get started with WordPress. The tutorials are easy to follow in a step-by-step process. By the time you finish each tutorial you will be able to carry out what you have learned with ease.

Manually Updating a Local WordPress Installation Using Windows XP

Introduction

Just recently, I updated WordPress from 2.8 to 3.0. Most tutorials including WordPress's Codex, tell you how to update for a live blog, which is stored at your web host's server. I could not find any information regarding manually updating an installation on a local computer (such as a testing server for theme development), so I wrote this article.

You may be asking, "Why not just use the auto-update feature?" Well, as documented by typing something like "WordPress 3.0 hangs at Unpacking the Update" into Google without quotes, I ran into the problem of the auto feature halting while updating. I had to install manually.

Manual Installation Basics

It turns out manually updating was pretty easy, but was very difficult at first because of pitfalls I did not pay attention to. Those will be documented in the "pitfalls" section below. Although I won't put together an in depth tutorial, I will tell you how I updated my test blog in a very basic way. This same method is similar to the instructions in the Updating WordPress codex page.

1. First, I backed up the database by going to Tools, then Export in the Admin panel. I then selected Download Export File. This method is documented in the article "How to back up your WordPress blog in 60 seconds" by Christopher S. Penn. Type this article title in Google to find out more.
2. In the Admin panel, there were the buttons Install Automatically or Download [WordPress version number]. I chose the download link for a manual installation
3. I navigated to the folder the file was downloaded to. This may be a My Documents, Documents or Downloads folder. In my case, it was a Downloads folder within My Documents
4. I unzipped the folder (wordpress-3.01.zip) by right-clicking and selecting Extract All
5. Following the Extract All wizard opens up the extracted folder. I double clicked the wordpress folder
6. From here, I opened up a second Explorer window by going to Start menu, My Computer. From there I navigated to my original WordPress installation. I installed mine in Local Disk (C:), Program Files, Apache Software Foundation, Apache 2.2, htdocs, wordpress
7. Once inside my original wordpress folder, I copied (Ctrl-C) the wp-includes and wp-admin files from my WordPress 3.01 folder and pasted (Ctrl-V) to the original (WordPress 2.8) folder
8. Although I did not do the following step during installation, as my folders were already set up this way, it is a good idea to set up your folders in Windows XP so they show the full path in the title bar. To do that, go to the Tools menu item, Folder Options..., View tab, check Display the full path in title bar and Display the full path in address bar. This way, you can know at a glance which folder you are in
9. As mentioned in the Updating WordPress codex page, I did not copy the wp-content folder, as this would overwrite my current themes and plugins. For WordPress 3.0, I copied the twentyten theme folder into the wp-content, themes folder to get 3.0's newest default theme
10. Finally, I copied all of the files from the top level folder, wordpress, including index.php. Then I pasted these into the original (2.8) folder. I did not overwrite the.htaccess file or the wp-config.php file, leaving these as is. Usually, these files are not included in a typical install. I renamed the wp-config-sample.php file in WP 3.0 as wp-config-sample2.php just in case
11. From here, I was asked to login to my Admin panel again and prompted to update the database, following the provided link
12. Installation was successful!

Windows XP Related Pitfalls

Installation was successful after a lot of trial and error and cursing at my computer screen, that is. I was trying to follow the above advice to install manually after the frustrating hang at "Unpacking the update" in the auto install. When trying to manually move the wp-admin and wp-includes folder from the 3.0 folder to the 2.8 folder, I was getting "Cannot create or replace wp-admin: Access is denied" error messages. What was even more frustrating was that I was getting these messages after sending the original file folders to the Recycling Bin via deleting them. I couldn't even Restore the files as access was denied! Surely I thought I scrapped my entire WordPress installation and couldn't upgrade.

Finally I realized what the problem was. I was working in a Limited account in Windows XP. I do this purposefully for safety, because I don't want to be online with an Administrator's account. To follow the above instructions, copying and moving files in the Program Files folder and such, I needed to log in to an account with Administrator's privileges.

I never figured out if the Limited account issue was why the Auto-Upgrade feature didn't work. However, this advice is warranted: if upgrading WordPress manually for a local installation, make sure you are using or have access to an account that has Administrator privileges. I hope this article will be useful for those who may have come across the same problems I did. Thank you for reading.

How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business

If you haven't heard of WordPress, listen. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform -- but it's so much more than that. In fact, this article will teach you some things as to how to use WordPress to automate your website and therefore your business, leaving you time to do the things you enjoy without having to keep your finger on every little "nook and cranny" job that needs to be done. Here are just some of the things WordPress can do.

AdSense

If you use AdSense to earn extra income on your site, the AdSense Integrator can both dad and then manage the AdSense ads you put on your blog, effortlessly following the last AdSense rules and updates without your having to keep on top of them. This is one way when it comes to how to use WordPress that you can really earn passive income without having to do anything except for adding the initial plug-in.

Google Analytics

When it comes to how to use WordPress to track your customers, Google Analytics will help you keep track of who's visiting your page, where they're from, and a lot more information that's valuable when it comes to knowing your customers. The Google "Analyticater" offered by WordPress makes it very easy to add this to your website.

XML Sitemaps

The XML Sitemaps plug-in will make you much more visible to your customers -- in fact, if your customers can't find you, it's not likely you will have any business at all to speak of. However, Sitemaps easily makes you visible to search engines as they crawl your site, which gets you seen on the web -- and therefore gets you more customers.

AWeber

AWeber is a service that, although not free, can really help you explode your business. Used with WordPress, it's another way you can really automate your business. With this service, you can basically turn autoresponder functions into guaranteed customer draws. You can create website sign-up forms, which will help you attract customers; instead of simply having visitors anonymously visit your site and then go away, you can simply include a sign-up form on your blog using AWeber's simple "point-and-click" interactive functionality.

That's not all, though. While most auto responders will send canned messages to subscribers after sign-up and other functions, AWeber actually provides you the ability to give personalized e-mails to subscribers or customers in an automated sequence that's really going to give you the ability to connect with your customers -- and your potential customers, too. What's more, you can also schedule autoresponder functions so that they'll go up when you know your customers are likely to be thinking about reordering, as applicable. Again, this is all automatic, and he will only rarely have to lift a finger after initial setup.

All of this and more is available if you know how to use WordPress and associated plug-ins and services to fully automate your business. Of course, your business is still going to need you to run it, but automating it as much as possible for the simple day-to-day mundane tasks such as those described above will to free you up to focus on the really important part of your business, which is to provide quality products and/or services.