How to Setup WordPress on your Tech Blog

How to setup, market and monetize your Tech Blog Jan 30, 2015. Nick MarshallIt’s a bit ironic that I would need to explain how to setup WordPress for someone that wants to develop tech-related content, but I’ve promised to guide you from the ground up so let’s begin. WordPress is a blogging platform that just happens to be my personal favorite. Some people will argue that WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS), but I’ll refrain from entering that argument and just say that it is a great tool that allows me to publish content on the web quickly and efficiently, but you still need to seo that site. Once you’ve registered your domain and chosen your web host your next step is setting up WordPress. Hopefully you’ve taken my advice and signed up with Bluehost, but for the purpose of this tutorial I will assume you took a different route.

If your hosting company does not offer a WordPress automatic installation you will need to start by verifying you have FTP access. Personally I use a free piece of software called Filezilla to manage my FTP accounts, but feel free to use CuteFTP, SmartFTP, Fetch or any FTP software you are comfortable using. Now that you have FTP software installed and you have verified that you are able to connect to your web server using the login credentials given by your web host it is time to download WordPress here. The default download of WordPress will be a zip file that you will need to extract prior to transferring to your webspace via FTP. While connected using your FTP software you will need to decide where you want to install WordPress, but by default it should be within the httpdocs or public_html folder. If you plan on building a traditional website and simply want to incorporate your Tech Blog as one aspect of the site then you will need to create a new folder inside the httpdocs or public_html folder. It is now time to transfer the files you extracted from the WordPress.zip download.

At this point things might get a little tricky for the novice, but I have faith in you so pay close attention and we’ll get you through the next step. Inside the control panel on your web host will be a link to MySQL Databases. WordPress is built on a SQL database – every post, title, comment, category and tag is stored into a record in this database and that text is dynamically called upon via php code to render the blog (don’t worry if that didn’t make much sense, sometimes I get carried away). So now you are within the MySQL section of your control panel on your web host — now it’s time to create a database. You will need to remember the name of the database, the username and the password. This information will be necessary in the next step of the process.

It’s time to jump back to your FTP client and edit the wp-config-sample.php file. The first step will be renaming the file by right clicking /rename, followed by right clicking and choosing edit. This should open a text editor (notepad is my personal favorite) and allow you to change the fields. If you are confused about any of the fields, WordPress.org has put together this handy guide here. The last step in setting up WordPress for your tech blog is simply going to the install page which will be something like http://www.yourblogname.com/wp-admin/install.php – be sure to replace “yourblogname” with the domain name you registered. If you decided to install WordPress in another location like I mentioned above it would be http://www.yourblogname.com/folder/wp-admin/install.php – the “folder” would be the directory name you transferred the files to.

For more details on installing WordPress I recommend heading on over to their handy 5 minute guide. If you realized that this whole process is a bit more involved than you expected I recommend you reconsider my suggestion on using Bluehost. One-click WordPress installs and upgrades are a blessing.

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM

If you haven’t decide on which theme to use for your Tech Blog I highly recommend checking out The Thesis Theme for WordPress

Your First 3 Steps after Setting up WordPress.

How to setup, market and monetize your Tech BlogJan 30, 2010Nick MarshallYou’ve registered your domain, you have your web space and WordPress is installed. At this point there are 3 very simple steps you can take towards improving your blog with SEO– Permalinks, Feedburner and Google Analytics. If you are not sure what Permalinks are simple login to your blog’s wp-admin page and click the “Settings” option on the left sidebar. This will expand to show nearly a dozen options (and more once you install plugins), one of which will be Permalinks. Inside Permalinks there are 5 common settings : default, day and name, month and name, numeric, custom structure. The permalink is the way that your posts will be displayed in the address bar of your browser. I recommend that you switch to the “month and name” selection. By choosing this setting your readers will have a reference to when the post was created as well as a descriptive link to share with their friends. Not only that, but search engines love good hierarchy and description in posts so do yourself a favor and change from the Default Permalink Settings.

Next is Feedburner – if you’ve noticed an orange icon with 3 white arcs along the address bar of your browser you’ve witnessed RSS (Really Simple Syndication). If you’ve never heard or used RSS let me quickly explain what it is and why it’s important to your tech blog. In the past people focused on adding Bookmarks or simply remembering the URL for websites they frequent often. The problem with this method is that it is time consuming and if you want to follow dozens or even hundreds of sites it can just be downright overwhelming. RSS feeds are text excerpts of the latest articles published by websites or blogs and by using a RSS reader you can quickly monitor a large number of sites without opening a browser (unless of course you use a web based RSS reader like Google Reader). By default your WordPress Blog will have a RSS feed in the form of http://www.myblog.com/feed and promoting this feed will be your first step in building a following for your tech blog. Feedburner is a free service now owned by Google which transforms your RSS feed into a monetizing powerhouse. Not only will you be able to make money off your RSS feed, but Feedburner will allow Email subscriptions and provide you with analytic data on what links are being clicked in your feed and how many people are subscribed.

The final step is Google Analytics – a free tool from Google which allows you to track your visitors. Understanding what posts are popular and where your audience is located is essential in targeting the right products and advertisements to monetize your tech blog. When you visit google.com/analytics and sign up for a free account you will be given a Tracking Code which will need to be inserted into the Header of your WordPress template. This can be done very simply by visiting your wp-admin page and going to Appearance / Editor then selecting header.php. Once you’ve pasted the Tracking Code and saved the edit Google Analytics will begin tracking the sources of traffic to your website as well as general details about your visitors (location, browser, click tendency, bounce rate, etc). By setting up Google Analytics from the start you are giving yourself valuable data which you can use down the road to fine tune your tech blog.

If you haven’t decide on which theme to use for your Tech Blog I highly recommend checking out The Thesis Theme for WordPress