Writing for Profit

If you have your own website, you simply must have an FTP program to be able to upload things. If you don’t know how to use one and haven’t got one, I’ll explain how to use it later. But, for now, we’ll pretend that you know how to use it and want to know what plugins to add.

Plugins, for WordPress, are something that adds additional features to WordPress. Some are barely noticeable, some are indispensable. The ones I simply couldn’t live without are:

• Google Analytics Plugin - This one requires you to sign up for Google Analytics, but is really handy. You’ll be able to track who’s visiting your website and where they are coming from.
• WP ShortStat - This is another statistics program. It also shows you who’s coming from where, but it does not go into as much detail as Google Analytics does. It’s handy for a quick check, however.
• TD Word Count - Falls into the ‘you do not really need this, but it’s still kind of cool’ category. It automatically calculates how many words are in individual posts and how many words you’ve written total. This can be handy if you want to make sure you’re not getting too wordy and boring people.
• Viper’s Video Quicktags - This is for displaying any sort of video on your site. It’s not good to have your entire content be videos, you want some text, but every so often you may want to link to a video on various websites (YouTube, Google Video, IFILM, etc.) and this plugin makes it as easy as possible.
• Notable - This one has a bit of a learning curve attached to it. It’s not a simple upload, you have to edit your theme files. But it’s still handy, if you want people to be able to easily use various social bookmarks, for example to Digg your site. You can see what this does by looking at the end of my posts at the icons between my post and the comment area.

I think that does it for essential plugins.

Next time, I’ll explain FTP and how to use it to install plugins and new themes.

In my last regular post, I covered signing up for a webhost. However, setting up WordPress is so simple that I almost don’t have to tell you exactly how to do it.

If you’ve signed up for DreamHost, sign into your panel. You can do this from the front page or by going to http://panel.dreamhost.com. Once you’ve signed in, click on ‘Goodies’ and then click on ‘One-Click’ installs.

Make sure “WordPress” is selected to install (not ZenCart, phpbb or anything else) and scroll down.

For ‘install to’, make sure your domain name is selected. If you want to have more than one blog on your site, you could install it to a subdirectory (like a folder) by typing a name after your domain; something like ‘writingblog’. People will be able to see this, so choose carefully. If you only want one blog and you don’t plan on having anything else, just leave that part blank.

Now you’ll be asked which database to use. If this is your first site, you’ll be asked to create a new database. Type a name in the new database name field, any name (it doesn’t really matter, but you should probably pick something related to your future blog’s name).

For the hostname, you’ll have to pick a new hostname. ‘mysql’ is fine, though you might want to choose something more unique.

First user… this is NOT what you will be logging into your site with. Pick something unique and use a random password. By that, I mean a password that’s a random string of at least 6 letters and numbers.

Now click ‘Install it for me now!’ and wait for a few minutes.

After 5 or 10 minutes, go to your website. If you installed it to {yoursite}.com, go there. If you installed it to {yoursite}.com/{blogname}, go there instead.

It will tell you that you need to run install.php so click on that link. This is where you’ll be asked for your email and your blog’s name. Unfortunately, you can’t choose your login name. You’ll have to use ‘admin’. You’ll also have to use the randomly generated password (at least until you change it).

Go ahead and log in, start poking around.

Next time, I’ll tell you how to actually configure WordPress and some handy plugins you might be interested in.

So you’ve either saved up some money or have been writing for Associated Content awhile. You’re ready to take the plunge and start getting serious now.

But where to start? What host to use? How do you register a domain name? This is the part that scares a lot of people. But I’m going to tell you a secret: it’s easy. If all those spammers who sell dubious products on badly mispelled websites can figure out how to register a domain and get hosting so can you. Honest!

First, you need to pick a host. Why? Because some hosts include a free domain name in their package and this makes things super easy. If you ask a dozen people what host they use, chances are you’ll get a dozen different answers. I’ve been on several hosts over the years and I would have to say that my favorite would be DreamHost. Some of the greatest features of DreamHost include:

• Inexpensive - It’s only $119.40/year. If you use the DreamHost coupon WRITINGFORPROFIT then your first year will be only $22.40. This is less than most people spend eating out in one night.
• First domain name free - Even if you use the coupon above. They register it for you and make it private. All you have to do is use it.
• Unlimited domains - You can run a dozen different sites or more at no extra cost
• Huge Disk Storage - The most basic account includes nearly 200GB storage. 200GB is a lot.
• Huge Bandwidth - Bandwidth is how many visitors can visit your site. The most basic account has almost 2TB bandwidth. This is about 2,000GB or 2,000,000MB. As an average visitor will use less than 20MB, so that is a lot of visitors.
• One click installs - A bit more than one click, but they have various web applications that can be installed simply and easily, with very little knowledge required.
• A bunch of other features - There are numerous other features that are relatively unimportant now, but once you get more experienced you’ll be glad you have.

DreamHost’s signup process is simple, although you will need a credit or debit card if you want to sign up and use the promo code. I believe that you can send in a check, but then you won’t be able to use the WRITINGFORPROFIT coupon. When you sign up, you can pick out a new .com, .net, .org or .info domain name.

At a later date, I’ll cover such things as how to register more domain names, transfering domain names between different registrars, using a registrar that is different than your host. But, for now, you have your hosting and you have your brand new domain name.

Congratulations!

You’ve got a real web presence now.

Tomorrow, I’ll cover how to actually start using it.

There is another ‘Writing for Profit’ website (this site has nothing to do with that site) by an author who has published at least two books via the standard method. His website sells at least one ebook on how to get started writing. Depending on which page you are viewing, the price quoted for this ebook is $20, $30, $40+. Now, not only do the prices not match on the website, the price varies depending on which link you click to purchase the book.

In addition to this, there is text that overlaps on his site and makes the site difficult or entirely impossible to read.

I found the link on his site where you can get the eBook for less than $10 and so I’ve been reading the thing and it does have some good information. Some. However, he does offer dubious advice when it comes to creating a website. Remember the flaws I pointed out a few sentences ago? He suggests using ‘Site Build It’; a service/software that costs $300… per year. He says that is what his site was made with. Somehow, I really don’t think ‘Site Build It!’ is worth $300 per year.

Some of the features of ‘Site Build It!’ as touted in this ebook are:

• Email
• Domain name registration
• Blogging
• Graphic tools
• Hosting
• FTP
• Stats

I’m going to show you how to get all that, and more, for less than one tenth what ‘Site Build It!’ costs.

And you don’t even have to pay for any ebook.