We’re going to make it easy for you to make your first Wordpress post. We’ll do this by walking you through the exact steps you need to get some text up on your blog. We’re assuming that someone has already installed and configured a Wordpress blog for you.  You will also need to know your username and password specific to your Wordpress account.

Step 1: Login

Suppose your website is located at www.lovetoblog.com (wish i had grabbed that domain name). To log in to your Wordpress account, you would go to a browser and enter the following address (url).

www.lovetoblog.com/wp-admin

After you hit the carriage return, the Wordpress login screen should come up. It should look like this, except that the username and password boxes will be empty.

Wordpress Login Screen

Type in your Wordpress username, where I’ve typed ‘YourUserName’ (your box will be empty). Then type in your password in the box provided. I’ve already typed one in so there’s a row of dots in the screen shot above.  Click the ‘Login’ button and you should see the Wordpress dashboard as pictured below (your screen will not be greyed-out).

Step 2: Navigate to the Post Editor

Wordpress Dashboard

The first time you see it, the Wordpress dashboard can look pretty intimidating. You can ignore most of it today. You only need a little bit of it for making posts. Don’t worry if your dashboard doesn’t look exactly like mine. The appearance of the dashboard changes slightly with each new version of Wordpress.  In addition, the dashboard often gets additional menu items when you install a plug-in. Since you may have different plug-ins installed than I have, your menus may look different from mine. The basics will be the same however.

I’ve greyed-out most of the dashboard, except for the Posts button.  If you click on the Posts button, you should see a drop-down menu with the items, Edit, Add New, Post Tags, etc.   Your menu may be slightly different, but it will have the Add New button, which is highlighted in the (greyed-out) picture below.

Wordpress Posts Menu

Clicking on the Add New button will activate the Wordpress post editor.

Step 3: Enter the Title

Now you’re in the Wordpress post editor which has two edit windows: one for the title and one for the body of the post. In the picture below, I’ve highlighted the box where you can type in a title. I’ve already typed in “Ad Position Does Not Affect The Sale”, which was one of my titles. Your box will be empty. Left click in the box and you will be able to type in the text of your title. By default, Wordpress makes the title the highest level heading (specifically H1).

Type in the Title of Your Post

Step 4: Enter the Post

Next click in the box beneath the tool bar(s). If you only see one toolbar, don’t worry. I’ll show you how to get the second toolbar in a moment. For now, just type some text in the box to get your post started. I’ve highlighted the area and entered some unformatted text in the picture below.

Type or Paste in the Text for Your Post

Once you’ve entered some text, you may want to explore the Wordpress toolbars. I’ve highlighted them in the next picture.

Please note the two tabs just above the toolbar(s) and to the right: Visual and HTML. These refer to the two major modes of the editor. In Visual mode, you see the post as it will look when published. That is, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). In HTML mode, you see that actual formatting commands as they are embedded in your text. Unless you’ve programmed in HTML, you’ll want to remain in Visual mode. So make sure the Visual tag is highlighted.

Wordpress Editor Toolbars

Clicking on the Kitchen Sink button toggles the bottom toolbar on and off. The kitchen sink button is on the right side of the top toolbar and looks like this.

KitchenSink

In Visual mode, most of the toolbar commands work on selected/highlighted text. For example, to make a word appear in boldface, you select the word by clicking and holding the (left) mouse button down and dragging the mouse across the word, just as you would in any text editor. Wordpress highlights by making the background of the selected characters blue. Click on the b button in the upper toolbar to make the selection bold. Clicking again, undoes the bold command.

Hovering the mouse over a toolbar button without clicking tells you what the buttons do.  We’ll describe the toolbar operations (including inserting pictures and video) in more detail in another post.  For now, this will get you started.

There’s one more very important button you should know about, the Save Draft button.  The Save Draft button is to the right of the edit window in a box labeled Publish.  As the name implies, Save Draft backs up your work.  It’s a way to save your work without making it live on your blog.  Click it often and it can save your life, or at least your computer’s life.    I have seen Wordpress occasionally crash and exit to the login screen.  That is, it logs you out!  When this happens, everything you entered since the last Save Draft will likely be lost.  So just like with any editor, save often.

Step 5: Publish!

The picture below shows my final draft just before publishing. When you’re ready to go live, click on the Publish button. It may take a few moments to process your post, but you can see how it looks by clicking on the View Post or Visit Site buttons. The View Post button is right above the blog title. The Visit Site button is somewhat above that at the top of the window. DANGER: don’t click either of these buttons unless you’ve clicked on Save Draft or Publish first, since you’ll be abandoning any edits since your last save.  I’ve done that too a few times.

Click the 'Publish' button to put your post on your blog.

Here’s what my published post looks like. Note that publishing need not be the end of your changes. The Publish button turns into an Update Post button after it is clicked. So you can change nearly everything about your post after you’ve published it.

How the Post Looks on the Blog

Categories and Tags

This is a topic for another blog, but you will want to create a list of categories of things you plan to write about. You’ll want to assign one or more of these categories to each post. You can assign categories after you publish, so you haven’t lost anything by publishing. Having a rich set of categories will allow your readers to find all the posts about a particular category, like Wordpress, from the hundreds of posts you will have made a year from now.

Tags can also be assigned later. That’s a bigger topic since tags are part of how people will find your posts when they’re searching for a topic you’ve written about. We’ll save this discussion too for another post.

• 1. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to establish a presence on the web. Blogs can be used to:
  • Generate leads, and direct traffic to your lead capture pages.
  • Provide cash flow, via affiliate sites or direct product sales.
  • Establish you as a professional.
  • Support your team or downlines by providing them with training and information they need.
• 2. A blog can be surprisingly cheap to setup and maintain.
  • You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a web designer for a blog. You can set everything up yourself. Really.
  • Blog hosting can cost as little as $6 to $10/month. On Hostgator, $10/month will get you an unlimited number of Wordpress blogs. For those who get really into it!
• 3. Blogs can also be quick to setup.
  • On squarespace.com, for example, you can design the blog yourself with their easy-to-use visual tool. If you can move things around with a mouse, you can design your blog. You can be up and running in an hour or two even if you are a computer newbie.
  • If you are open to a few hours of video instruction, you can set up your blog with Wordpress. This requires a little more time than using squarespace.com, but if you’re more technically inclined, it can give you more design options.
  • There are thousands of free “themes” available to pick from. A “theme” captures the “look and feel” of a blog. In includes the layout, the colors, the fonts, and everything about the visual appearance. You can buy a custom theme if you want, but it’s not necessary. See wordpress.org for a catalog of free themes. You can even change themes after the blog is up and running.
  • With just a little bit of instruction, you can set up and maintain a blog yourself, even if you’ve had little or no web experience. Renegade Professional, for example, has excellent, in-depth, click-by-click video training for creating a blog with Wordpress or SquareSpace.
• 4. There are (free) plugins for Wordpress blogs that make SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and auto tagging (picking significant keywords out of your text) very light work. Squarespace has similar tools.
• 5. There are (free) plugins for Wordpress blogs that let you monitor traffic coming to your blog. You can see how many readers you have for each post on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, etc. basis. Squarespace has this feature as well.
• 6. Blog structure is perfect for linking between blog posts and static web pages that are also part of the blog. These links can increase your rank with Google making your site easier for prospects to find.
• 7. The blog can be the hub of your internet marketing or network marketing campaign.
  • Google Adwords campaigns, twitter tweets, Craigslist ads, Google searches, squido content and more can all drive traffic to your blog.
  • Blog structure (including sidebars and static pages) is great for affliate marketing. Once traffic arrives, it can click-through and buy from your blog.
  • You can also have autoresponders and shopping carts in conjunction with your blog.
• 8. Blogs are a popular form of communication because the articles, called ‘posts’, are short. So they are accessible to readers (and writers) with small amounts of available time. To see the potential for reaching a large audience, please read the newsletter from Ann Sieg below.

In a recent mailing, Ann Sieg wrote:

Blogs have become “mainstream media.”

According to a recent study by Synovate and
Marketing Daily, nearly 40% of Americans
have visited a blog in the past year.

With the total U.S. population hovering
around 307,000,000 people…

That’s roughly 122,800,000 people!

——————————————
And These Numbers Aren’t Even Counting
The Other 193 Countries Of The World!
——————————————

Pretty mind-boggling, huh?

If you don’t have your own blog set-up and
positioned where these people can see it…

Don’t worry, you haven’t missed out!

According to eMarketer, in 2009 an estimated
96.6 million U.S. internet users will visit
(and read from) blogs at least once a month.

I’m not talking “once a year” like my
first example, this is once EVERY MONTH!

But wait until you hear this.

By the year 2013, eMarketer predicts that
128.2 million people, or…

——————————————
Over Half Of All U.S. Internet Users Will
Be Reading Blogs At Least Once A Month!
——————————————

Which means one thing.

There’s still time for YOU to build one
and cash in on this out-of-control trend.

(Even if you’re not sure how to do it.)

Our one-of-a-kind video tutorials inside
Renegade Professional will show you how.

Click-by-click, one click at a time.

So you’ll never be left wondering…
“What should I do next?”

Here’s where you can register right now.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

Just in case you didn’t know, you’ll find 28
blogging tutorials in our training program
where we cover everything from A to Z.

(That’s over 14 hours of blog instruction!)

Plus, a brand-new 70-minute webinar…

——————————————
“How To Set Your Content Viral In
Social Networks Using A Wordpress Blog”
——————————————

Was recently added late last week!

In it, blogging expert Stephen Anderson
reveals a free “traffic-getting” strategy.

How to deliver your content to ALL the
social media sites — in one simple step!

(Which will result in a reliable flow of
qualified prospects checking out your blog.

But here’s the really cool part.

Stephen illustrates this advanced traffic
strategy using an interactive mind map.

——————————————
So You’ll Get A Birds-Eye
View On How It All Works!
——————————————

If you want to learn the secret to getting
potential customers and business-builders
to not only visit your blog repeatedly…

But also…

-But your stuff

-Request more information

-Fill out your lead-capture form

-Become members of your team or downline

Then I would encourage you to register
for Renegade Professional right now.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

You can “test-drive” it free for 30 days.

——————————————
During This Time You Can Consume
Every Morsel Of Training In The Site!
——————————————

Nothing is off limits.

If you decide it isn’t right for you
simply send me an email and I’ll gladly
refund all your money –- no hard feelings!

And if you decide to stay in, there’s no
“long-term commitment” whatsoever.

You can cancel your membership at any
point in time and still owe nothing.

Are you ready to get started?

Good!

Click the link below to register.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

To Your Success,

Ann Sieg

P.S. Want to know the biggest obstacle
that stops people from using a blog?

They know what to put on it!

Maybe you’ve already tried blogging…

Only to give up a few weeks later because
you ran out of stuff to write about.

——————————————
Maybe Your Brain Shrivels
Up Into A Little Ball
——————————————

When you try thinking of something
compelling to put down on paper.

Maybe you experience dreaded “writer’s block”
every time you open Microsoft Word and try
putting together a few basic sentences.

If you’re thinking to yourself…

“Yeah, that sounds exactly like me Ann!”

——————————————
You’re Going To Love The 6-Part
“Writing With Pull” Series
——————————————

(Which is yours for free when you
sample Renegade Professional today.)

Because Mike Klingler’s going to hold
your hand and walk you through a simple
process that makes writing fun and easy!

You’ll learn how to put together content
(for your website and blog) that your
prospects will become addicted to.

Stuff they want to read about!

You’ll also learn how to brainstorm long
lists of attractive topics to write on.

Issues related to your specific products
and business opportunity…

——————————————
That Will Naturally Cause The
Right Kinds Of People To Find You!
——————————————

I’m telling you it’s powerful stuff.

And again, this entire 6-part series is
yours for free when you give Renegade
Professional a “test drive” today.

Ann Sieg

Suppose you are in an MLM that produces nutrition related products. You’ll probably want to market the business opportunity and the health benefits with separate blogs. Otherwise, your marketing message will be confusing. Here’s how to set up your HostGator account for multiple blogs or multiple websites.

If you are following Steve Anderson’s Wordpress training videos on Renegade Professional, you’ll want to perform the steps we outline below before you install Wordpress. His training videos are excellent, but to keep things simple he doesn’t talk about multiple blogs.

Adding a Domain on HostGator

What we’re going to cover is how to set up separate subdirectories for each additional blog or website you’d like to have. We’ll also associate the domain names with the subdirerctories. You can set up your subdirectories in this way before pointing your new domain names at your HostGator name servers. We’ll show you how to do both of these steps here.

Assuming you’ve already purchased an account from HostGator, you will have received a confirming email that tells you how to log in to CPANEL. CPANEL is HostGator’s account management software. Log in to CPANEL according to their instructions. Then scroll down to the section that says “Domains.”

Choose 'Add Domain' from Cpanel

Click on the “Add Domains” command. This is for adding new domains. You can’t use this dialog for the domain name you used to open your HostGator account. You can use this for any other domain names. You should now see the following dialog.

Enter Domain for New Blog

In the upper box, type in your domain name. Say your new domain is www.whatever.com, then you type in whatever.com as your ‘New Domain Name’ in the box. If you just click in the “Ftp Username” box it should fill in an ftp name for you. In this example it should just be whatever, leaving off the .com. It should also fill in the domain root for you. In this case, the domain root should be /public_html/whatever.com .

You need to set a password, which is how you will access the site. You can make all your HostGator passwords the same, so there’s less to remember.

Clicking on “Add Domain” will create the subdirectory and also set up the automatic mechanisms that are needed to make everything work. The wonderful thing about HostGator is that you can add as many of these domains as you like for the same monthly rate.

Connecting Your Domain Name to HostGator

Now you can go to GoDaddy (or whoever you bought your domain name from) and tell your domain name(s) where the HostGator nameservers are. To do this, log in to your (GoDaddy) account and click on the domain name you’d like to associate with your new HostGator blog. This will open a dialog that looks something like this (in GoDaddy).

GoDaddy Domain Manager

Under “Nameservers” click the “Manage” button. This will give you something like this.

Setting the Nameservers

Your email from HostGator will tell you which nameservers will contain your account. For me, these were NS1833.HOSTGATOR.COM and NS1834.HOSTGATOR.COM. Yours should be similar. Don’t use domain forwarding, assuming that your new domain name matches what you fed “Add Domains”. Just click on the boxes and type in the two addresses for the nameservers.

Installing Wordpress on Your New Domain

That’s it. You can now install Wordpress in the whatever.com subdirectory and your domain name will point to it properly. To install Wordpress on HostGator, run the Fantastico installer and select “Wordpress” from the opening menu. The Fantastico installer can be found in CPANEL under “Software/Services.” During Wordpress installation, you’ll be asked for the name of your domain. In our example, this would be whatever.com. Leave the “Install in directory” box blank, since the directory already exists and is known by the system. That’s it. The rest is quick and easy.

Generally, blog designers don’t pay enough attention to what’s in the sidebars. And guess what? It matters. Well chosen sidebar content can increase readership, increase stickiness and increase responses to promotionals.

These points are addressed in depth in a recent article by Clayton Makepeace. The article discusses the do’s and don’t’s of sidebars. Though the context of the discussion is the magalog, the points apply equally well to blogs and websites.   Incidently, according to Wikipedia, ‘A magalog is a promotional copy of a magazine, usually in a 12-page catalog format.’ Magalog = magazine + catalog.

To summarize briefly, there are two kinds of readers: casual scanners, and straight-through readers. The readers will read through most of the article from beginning to end. However, the casual scanners will flip through the article, sometimes in no particular order, looking for something that catches their attention. The scanners are more likely to find something that interests them if the sidebar guides them to it.  In other words, “great sidebars turn scanners into readers.”

For 21 smart kinds of sidebar content, you’ll have to read the article, which is here. You’ll be amazed at the number of good ideas you’ll get for your sidebars.

By the way, you can see a beautiful example of a well designed sidebar on Clayton’s website, www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.