The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

Okay, guys - first step is you have to have hosting. If you don’t have hosting, there are some hosts you can do this one that cost under $10 per month. If you need help finding hosting, pm me and I’ll send you the names of some very reasonable hosts.

Next we’re going to download Wordpress here
http://wordpress.org/download/

Now we’re going to install it using this handy guide (it says it’s handy on the wordpress site, so it must be :wink: ) http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

Make sure to read both of these sections - the Things to Know Before You Begin Installing WordPress and The Famous 5-Minute Installation BEFORE you start doing anything. Have you read them? Good! Start installing, and if you have problems - that’s why we have this workshop. Ask your questions and get help here.

#2

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

One quick tip… when you set up your database, change the designation from WP_ to something else… like anything that isn’t WP, this is for security, to prevent hacking of your db or attempts at hacking… don’t use your initials or even your domains… try something random…

Purpose is to simply NOT let anyone know it has to do with WP. :cool:

#3

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Second Tip > when you install WP, get an API from them, real easy and go to the Plugins tab, and activate Askimet if it isn’t already activated… this will stop the blog from being spammed. You can add other spam plugins later on…

#4

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Third and Important tip… before you do any posts… make sure you have decided on what type of permalink structure you are going to use, because later on, it can be a real bitch to change if you want… ideally you want to include the postname and postid so that even similar titles will be made unique for SEO tactics.

#5

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Slow down blondie … you’re assuming people have a clue what a permalink is! lol

I like your postname/post id concept, so how’s about showing exactly what they copy and paste into the custom permalink to have that happen?

#6

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

lol been one of those days. Installed Google Gears last night, and no FTP this morning…

Permalinks are the URL given to your posts and pages, they are the permanent location of them in your database, and should be styled or configured to be more Search Engine readable. WP (Wordpress) refers to properly styled links as ‘pretty permalinks’.

To be valid, any permalink must end with either the postid number assigned by wordpress or the postname, usually your post title.

If you don’t want to include a date option, then I recommend using both the postid and postname so that you avoid complications if you have similar posts.

I also like to add the category my post is in.

if you go to ‘settings’ on your wordpress admin, then find the tab ‘permalink’ then down is a custom line under the 3 they offer.

/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

The above is straight forward, it adds the year, month, day, and postname.

to add category and postid you would use the

%category%

into the line, to add the postid you use

%postid%

I like to have the date, but to keep it short, you would have the following

/index.php/%category%/%postid%/%postname%/

Always have the trailing backslash as well, plus the page will give you a link to the codec that has a whole list of other options you can use.

Just remember, the link MUST END with either POSTNAME or POSTID.

hth

#7

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

To explain the permalink issue a bit more… Basically the issue is to have something that is as search engine friendly as possible. You want to try to avoid having a general URL with parameters (like the URL of this page :whip:) and go for something that looks a bit more like static documents.

But the other issue is that of the perceived directory structure (there are no real directories - it’s all an illusion set up how you wish). The general wisdom (or myth - not sure which) among SEOs is that search engines don’t like to crawl down more than 3 directories on your site. So if you go with something like /year/month/day/post-title then you’re down 4 directories which is bad. If you put a trailing slash on that then it looks like you’re down 5 directories! Some SEOs go crazy and have a everything in the top directory…

Up until now I’ve always set up my directory structures with “Custom Structure” and the following as the code…

/%year%-%monthnum%/%postname%

That would result in something like /2008-07/post-title which means posts are in level 2 of the directory structure, which is good.

I would disagree on the trailing backslash - I don’t like it and just about every SEO blog I’ve seen that’s based on WordPress omits it.

There’s a bit of a debate as to whether you should include the date in the URL or not. For mainstream corporate stuff I like dates in the URL (as you can see above), others hate it. For porn it’s questionable - does the date really matter on a porn blog post? Probably not. So maybe it is best to have everything in the top directory…

But think also about how you want your site structured… How major of a role will categories play? The blog I’m intending to set up will have a custom home page with the categories featured on the home page - not posts, like a normal blog. Posts will be two clicks away from the home page. For example I want the home page to link to things like:

/category/muscle
/category/twink
/category/jock

What I’d really like to do is to figure out how to drop the word ‘category’ completely from the URL… Not sure that’s possible with categories though… Maybe I’ll just change the word category to ‘gay’ so there’s some SEO benefit to the extra level in the directory structure.

Then each of of the categories can appear to be a blog and those category pages will link to post pages which I’m now thinking of structuring like

/post/hot-latin-muscle stud

or if I go my old way…

/2008-07/hot-latin-muscle-stud

The point is that my categories have become sub blogs and they can appear to be independent blogs while actually sharing posts…

That’s a really long way of saying WordPress’ directory structure is flexible - think about how you want it structured before you set things up… If you can’t figure out how to implement what you want, the group can figure it out…

#8

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Well, I got the basics set up @ http://www.wilywilly.com - but I want to do some tweaking… I’m changing the categories directory to ‘hot’, so instead of /categories/muscle-guys, I’ll get /hot/muscle-guys - stuff like that (good for SEO).

But I’m having the hardest time picking what I want for a tag directory and the directory structure for posts… I’m almost thinking of going back to the year-month thing for posts, but I want something like ‘hot’ for the tag directory…

Decisions, decisions…

#9

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

what is an API?

#10

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

It’s a line of numbers/letters like a password that you have to input once you activate Akismet in plugins to have it work. Look under plugins, follow the link to get an api key. You only have to do this ONCE, and you’re asking for an account, not a blog. You will get an email with the API key in it … save that puppy somewhere. You can use it in every wordpress blog you create from here on out. Now copy and paste it in where the plugin is telling you Akismet is activated but needs the key code. Update and you’re good to go.

#11

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

I also think you use that API code if you use some stats program that they offer/host on wordpress.

#12

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Ya know, maybe we are starting this workshop off too quickly, or jumping ahead a bit :rolleyes:

The install itself is not really a complicated affair, but perhaps we should be looking at the decisions one should make PRIOR to installing the blogging software?

Such as, what is our blog going to be? Is it to push a micro niche, a niche, or a whole kaboodle of stuff?

Will it all be for the SE to crawl?

Do we want a static or floating front page?

Other factors we should maybe discuss, is layout, frequency we plan to update it with, the amount of links we will be having in our sidebars, and that too brings up some questions, regarding terms.

Are there terms we need to comprehend prior to opening up the site, as well as what type of add ons (plugins) will we want, and naturally, the design aspect?

I think all of these might be worth getting into before we spend the 5 or 10 minutes in installing the software. whistle

#13

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

[QUOTE=Gaystoryman;14913]One quick tip… when you set up your database, change the designation from WP_ to something else… like anything that isn’t WP, this is for security, to prevent hacking of your db or attempts at hacking… don’t use your initials or even your domains… try something random…

Purpose is to simply NOT let anyone know it has to do with WP. :cool:[/QUOTE]

I never thought of that. what a great suggestion. thanks

#14

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Another plugin that I really like for WP is the basic stats plugin. It doesn’t include your own IP address when collecting, and it let’s you know how many times each post was viewed, what outgoing links people clicked on, and what search engine terms were used to find your blog. GREAT tool, easy to install, no issues (I haven’t had any), and pretty darn useful. You will need to use the API code you got when registering with Askimet. They are one in the same if I’m not mistaken. After installing the plugin, some text at the top of your page will prompt you to enter in your API. Do so, and viola!! Done!

Here’s the link to pick it up - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

#15

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

[quote=RDude;16779]Another plugin that I really like for WP is the basic stats plugin. It doesn’t include your own IP address when collecting, and it let’s you know how many times each post was viewed, what outgoing links people clicked on, and what search engine terms were used to find your blog. GREAT tool, easy to install, no issues (I haven’t had any), and pretty darn useful. You will need to use the API code you got when registering with Askimet. They are one in the same if I’m not mistaken. After installing the plugin, some text at the top of your page will prompt you to enter in your API. Do so, and viola!! Done!

Here’s the link to pick it up - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/[/quote]

Yes it easy to set up but it leaves a lot to be desired in what it actually records. It is so different in numbers from virtually every other stats record that I suspect it just isn’t accurate enough.

There are several other good ones, like firestats, wassup, that give you a fairly decent record of lots of things, like even keywords searched, spider vs humans, ip addies, referral ids and IPs, country, os, browser, that it makes the WP one rather mild. There is also statspress that is rather good too, but a hog at times, least on my server.

#16

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Some good points GSM. Personally though, I’ve had some problems with those plugins slowing down my blog, and wassup actually all but destroyed an old blog. That was with an older version of WP though and perhaps that was the problem.

As far as accuracy goes, I check regularly and from what I can see, it’s pretty well bang on as far as the tracking codes I use etc. Between buying traffic and linked traffic anyway.

Not discounting your plugins and advice at all here. Just vocalising my past experiences is all. Thanks

#17

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

Oh I use it myself, and everyone has their favorites, so no biggie. I just found the WP stats to be like way low, in comparison.

Yes wassup, firestats, and statspress are hogs. Wassup nailed a blog as did firestats, before the upgrade to 2.3.2 In one blog I am not even bothering with them, as they do slow things done, then there is the analytics plugin that slows it down, and then … well the list goes one…:bang:

plus I am a plugin pig… i love my plugins but am coming to the decision that they really don’t always make things easier for sales. whistle

#18

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

[QUOTE=Gaystoryman;16796]Oh I use it myself, and everyone has their favorites, so no biggie. I just found the WP stats to be like way low, in comparison.

Yes wassup, firestats, and statspress are hogs. Wassup nailed a blog as did firestats, before the upgrade to 2.3.2 In one blog I am not even bothering with them, as they do slow things done, then there is the analytics plugin that slows it down, and then … well the list goes one…:bang:

plus I am a plugin pig… i love my plugins but am coming to the decision that they really don’t always make things easier for sales. whistle[/QUOTE]

lol I used to be a plugin pig myself. Then I started having all these problems with my blogs. It started when I was still using 2.1 mostly.

I am in total agreement that you really don’t need a lot of plugins with WP. Especially with the newer versions, which now have all the old plugin options built right in. The upload option works great, there’s already plenty of headroom as far as the sidebar widgets go, and the templates and css are very easy to modify. Pretty much all you need aside from a few small plugins which have already been talked about.

For those interested in WordPress, it is my honest opinion that this would be a great time for you to start learning to use it and get familiar with it. It has come leaps and bounds from where it used to be!

Peace:cool:

#19

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

In setting up my blog I’m thinking up a few things that aren’t in the default install that will help. In terms of controlling spiders and duplicate content issues, I’d recommend the following…

Create a robots.txt file and have it be something like this…

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-login.php

Basically that makes it so your admin area and your login page aren’t crawled at all. You don’t want a general block on all things /wp- because there are files like stylesheets that the spiders will want to crawl (I made that mistake and actually remembered it while writing this up)…

I created a physical robots.txt file on disk, but there has to be a way to do it using WordPress itself 'cause I then had to fight with WordPress 'cause it wanted to serve a robots.txt file that didn’t match mine. I wound up adding it to the rewrite rules in htaccess (actually VirtualHosts in my case) - that looked like…

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

I think if you’re using htaccess you’d leave off the / so it would just be !^robots.txt - the VirtualHosts file works differently than htaccess on stuff like that…

Does anyone know how to set up robots.txt in WordPress so you don’t have to go through that hassle?

The next thing I’d do is telling spiders not to index your archive pages. You want post pages to always be important, as well as your main blog, and category pages, but not things like month and date archive pages. Even on the main blog and category pages you don’t really want anything other than the first page indexed - otherwise you’ll have way too much duplicate content on your site.

Now, you don’t want to block the pages completely because then they’ll have link juice that they’re not passing on to other pages. You want the spiders to crawl them, but not index them. To achieve that, put the following in your header.php file, somewhere between and …

<?php if (is_day()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_month()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_year()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_search()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_author()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged'])) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } ?>

I haven’t tested the paging part yet, but I’ve confirmed the other parts work…

#20

Re: The Get Started with Wordpress Workshop

[quote=rawTOP;16883]In setting up my blog I’m thinking up a few things that aren’t in the default install that will help. In terms of controlling spiders and duplicate content issues, I’d recommend the following…

Create a robots.txt file and have it be something like this…

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-login.php

Basically that makes it so your admin area and your login page aren’t crawled at all. You don’t want a general block on all things /wp- because there are files like stylesheets that the spiders will want to crawl (I made that mistake and actually remembered it while writing this up)…

I created a physical robots.txt file on disk, but there has to be a way to do it using WordPress itself 'cause I then had to fight with WordPress 'cause it wanted to serve a robots.txt file that didn’t match mine. I wound up adding it to the rewrite rules in htaccess (actually VirtualHosts in my case) - that looked like…

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

I think if you’re using htaccess you’d leave off the / so it would just be !^robots.txt - the VirtualHosts file works differently than htaccess on stuff like that…

Does anyone know how to set up robots.txt in WordPress so you don’t have to go through that hassle?

The next thing I’d do is telling spiders not to index your archive pages. You want post pages to always be important, as well as your main blog, and category pages, but not things like month and date archive pages. Even on the main blog and category pages you don’t really want anything other than the first page indexed - otherwise you’ll have way too much duplicate content on your site.

Now, you don’t want to block the pages completely because then they’ll have link juice that they’re not passing on to other pages. You want the spiders to crawl them, but not index them. To achieve that, put the following in your header.php file, somewhere between and …

<?php if (is_day()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_month()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_year()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_search()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (is_author()) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged'])) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php } ?>

I haven’t tested the paging part yet, but I’ve confirmed the other parts work…[/quote]

Have you looked into this robots text plugin? Robots Meta

If trying it, might want to check the author’s page… seems there are issues with 2.6 and the options. But also Platinum SEO has a lot of the robots meta data to add to a post/page that might make it easier to use than this Robots Meta plugin…