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learn wordpress membership

Learn How To Create A Membership Site Using WordPress

Have you ever wanted to turn your WordPress website into a membership website? If so, there are quite a few reasons why you may want to. For example, maybe you want to More »

learn how to use wordpress fast

Learn How To Use WordPress Fast

WordPress is the most popular online content management and blogging software out there and for that reason, when you search for information about it online, you’re going to find a ton of More »

best payment processing plugins for wordpress

Learn WordPress.org

When it comes to WordPress, there is a ton of information out there that you can find and learn from. The WordPress community is very user friendly and one place that you More »

learn wordpress 3.3.1

Learn WordPress 3.3.1

If you haven’t noticed, there’s a new version of WordPress available. The new version, 3.3.1 was released a few days ago and the release was issued to fix a few bugs and More »

learn how to integrate wordpress

Learn How To Integrate WordPress Into Your Website

By now you may have realised that WordPress is an all in one solution if you want a website for your business or for personal use. You can easily use WordPress for More »

Learn How To Create A Membership Site Using WordPress

March 10, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
learn wordpress membership

Have you ever wanted to turn your WordPress website into a membership website? If so, there are quite a few reasons why you may want to. For example, maybe you want to create a membership area where only those who sign up to be members of your website can access premium content. Another example would be if you wanted to charge people to learn how to do something through videos or a special program that you’ve created. There are dozens of possibilities with membership style websites, but in order to get going, you need to learn how to create a membership website using WordPress. Below you’ll find a few simple steps that’ll help you have your membership website set up in no time!

Step 1 to creating a membership website using WordPress

Step one starts with installing WordPress if you haven’t already done so. If you already have a WordPress website set up and ready to go, then you can skip this step and move on to step 2. If you don’t have a site set up on WordPress, you’ll need to purchase your domain name, get a cheap shared hosting plan and then install WordPress (hint: look for a hosting company that offers a 1-click WordPress install if you’re new to using WordPress and hosting; it’ll make it a lot easier!)

Step 2 to creating a membership website using WordPress

Once you have WordPress set up on your website, the next step is deciding what you’re going to offer those who sign up as a member. Premium content? Podcasts? Video training sessions? While not essential, it’s still a good idea to decide on your idea or plan before you move on to step 3 so that you know that you’re picking the right membership plugin that’ll cater to your needs.

Step 3 to creating a membership website using WordPress

Step 3 involves simply picking out which WordPress membership plugin that you want to use, installing it and then setting it up. While there are quite a few different WordPress membership plugins available, here’s a short list of some of the most popular ones out there right now:

  • “Membership”
  • “wp-member”
  • “Wishlistmember”
  • “Magicmembers”

Once the plugin that you’ve chosen is installed, you’ll need to follow the plugin developer’s instructions to make sure that you have everything set up as it should be set up.

It’s that easy! While there are little things here and there that are going to be different for each person, you’ve now learned how to create a membership site using WordPress. The most difficult part is probably going to be figuring out what you want to offer to your website’s members!

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Best WordPress Plugins For Google Analytics

March 03, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
best wordpress plugin google analytics

It’s a good idea for every website owner to have Google Analytics or some type of analytics tracking set up. Having Google Analytics or another similar service set up on your WordPress website means that you can see your traffic statistics and a lot of other information that pertains to how your website is performing by day, by week, by month, by year and so on. Without knowing this information, it’s going to be difficult to make any improvements to your website that’ll help it perform better. Luckily, there are plenty of good Google Analytics plugins for WordPress that’ll make getting it set up easy and you’ll be using it in no time.

Before we talk about the best WordPress plugins for Google Analytics though, it’s important to note that you will need to have an account set up with Google Analytics before using any of these plugins. You’ll need an account because you’ll need verification information from Google Analytics in order to help set up whatever plugin you decide to go with. If you don’t have an account set up for Google Analytics yet, go ahead and set one up now and then come back to follow the rest of the steps to get one of the best plugins installed.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress Plugin

One of the main frustrations a lot of WordPress users have when they’re using Google Analytics to monitor their website is that they have to go to a different page to view their website statistics. With the Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress plugin however, you can see your website’s statistics right in your WordPress dashboard.

There is one major issue with this plugin though that you’ll have to be aware of and that issue is that it won’t help you verify your Google Analytics account; it’ll only show you the information that’s in your analytics account. There’s an easy way around this though and the easy way is simply installing another Google Analytics Plugin that’ll help you verify your website like the next plugin: Google Analytics for WordPress.

Google Analytics For WordPress Plugin

With this plugin, you can verify your Google Analytics account right in your WordPress dashboard. Once again, you’ll still need to set up your analytics account with Google before you do anything, but with this plugin, you don’t need to worry about injecting any confusing code into your WordPress theme’s files in order to get your website verified. All you need to do is stick the verification code in per the directions in the plugin and you’re ready to go!

There are quite a few really good Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. The two above are just a short list, but here are a few more that you may want to check out:

  • Simple Google Analytics
  • Google Analytics (no fancy name, just what it is)

Once you get Google Analytics set up and verified on your WordPress website, you can then go ahead and set up Google Webmaster Tools as well which will further help you make your website better.

 

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Learn How To Use WordPress Fast

January 31, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
learn how to use wordpress fast

WordPress is the most popular online content management and blogging software out there and for that reason, when you search for information about it online, you’re going to find a ton of information. You can find information on how to install WordPress, install themes on WordPress, how to use WordPress plugins and how to write a blog post in WordPress just to name a few. All of the information is quite helpful but what if you just need to learn how to use WordPress fast? In order to learn how to use WordPress fast, you just need to know the basics.

Forget about all of the design options for a moment, forget about complicated installation processes and forget about all of the wonderful plugin options that WordPress has to offer. Sure, these things are also very important, but if you want to learn how to use WordPress fast, you’ll want to start with the basics and move on from there. Let’s get to it so you can have your WordPress website up and running in no time!

Step 1: If you don’t already use a web hosting provider that includes a WordPress 1-click install with their plan, find one who does. As for the domain, if you already own it, great! If not, buy it through your web hosting provider for the quickest set up. If they’re prices for domains aren’t what you’re looking for, you can still choose to buy your domain name elsewhere.

Step 2: Choose your hosting plan and log into your hosting control panel. Look for your WordPress 1-click install and choose to install it. Enter your domain details, and answer any of the other questions that the 1-click install process asks for.

Step 3: Activate WordPress and then log into your WordPress dashboard using your domain name followed by /wp-admin.

Step 4: If you want the search engines to start indexing your website right away, make sure your privacy settings are set to public.

Step 5: Fill out the title of your blog/WordPress website under settings.

Step 6: Go to “add new” under the posts section and start typing! Make sure you have the visual box selected at the top right of the editor unless you know HTML and you want to enter all of your posts in HTML format.

Step 7: Set up a few categories and when you make a post, make sure to add tags.

Step 8: If you want to create a new page, go to pages and click “add new”. Once you name your page and have your content entered, publish the page. At this point it’s not yet going to appear in the navigation menu.

Step 9: Now you need to go to appearance and click on “custom menus” and then you’ll need to create a new custom menu (name it “nav bar or something simple) and once that’s done, simply drag the box with your new page name in it over to the custom menu.

All you need to know about WordPress? Of course not…the steps listed above just cover the basics but if you want to learn how to use WordPress fast, you’re now ready to get going!

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Learn WordPress.org

January 22, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
best payment processing plugins for wordpress

When it comes to WordPress, there is a ton of information out there that you can find and learn from. The WordPress community is very user friendly and one place that you can go and find additional information is WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the website where you go to get your self-hosted copy of WordPress and the makers of WordPress have done an excellent job of documenting pretty much everything that a person needs to know. In order to effectively use the website however, it’s good to be able to learn about WordPress.org so you can easily find the information that you’re looking for.

The layout of WordPress.org has changed a little recently so let’s start there. It used to be that in order to find plugins and themes, you’d have to look at the top navigation bar of the website and find where it said “extend.” From there the navigation bar would drop down and you’d be able to choose whether you wanted to view themes in the directory or whether you’d want to view the plugins directory. With the slight change that was made, you no longer have to look under the extend tab to get to the plugin or theme directory. Both of these areas of the website are listed right on the navigation bar.

One of the main reasons why people go to WordPress.org is to download their copy of WordPress. If this is what you’re looking for, the download link is right on the right hand side of the page. If you click on that link, you’ll go to another page where you can download it.

Two very cool things that they’ve added to the website include mobile apps that let you manage and write for your WordPress websites through iOS, Android or Blackberry. Blogging on a mobile phone may not be as speedy as blogging on your computer but it’s great to have the option available in case you do need to update your WordPress website while you’re on the go.

The other main reason why people go to WordPress.org is when they need help with something. As we touched on earlier, the company is wonderful at providing documentation and user help forums where you can learn about what you want or need to learn. You can find both of these areas in the top navigation bar on WordPress.org. It’s important to note that there’s a ton of information so you may feel overwhelmed.

You’re provided with a ton of information here on learnwordpress.com but referencing WordPress.org from time to time is also a good thing to do. You can learn more about updates and see all of the new themes that have been listed in the gallery. Now that you’ve learned more about WordPress.org, you can quickly reference it if and when you need to.

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Best Breadcrumb WordPress Plugins

January 14, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
Best wordpress breadcrumbs plugin

Today you’re going to learn about the best breadcrumb WordPress plugins. Before we get started though, it’s a good idea to know exactly what WordPress breadcrumbs are so that you can determine whether or not this feature should be integrated into your WordPress website. WordPress breadcrumbs have to do with the navigation of your website. It’s a funny little name for the function but when you think about it, the name actually makes sense. For the simple definition, WordPress breadcrumbs tells the user where they are when they’re on a WordPress site. For example, if the user is viewing a post on your blog and breadcrumbs are enabled, the user may see “home/blog/blog post name.” This tells them where they are and it also provides them with an easy way to go back without having to hit the back button in their browser. The reason it’s called a breadcrumb is because some breadcrumbs will have little dots underneath the words that resemble…you guessed it, breadcrumbs!

The whole point of having breadcrumbs installed and enabled is to give the user a good experience. Let’s face it, when someone is browsing the Internet, the usually want to get their information and move on. If a person constantly has to hit their back button to view other areas of your website or they’re left with having to figure out the navigation menu, it can create a bad user experience. If your website is easy to navigate, it may also increase the chances of users staying on the site longer and viewing other content that you have available. There’s no guarantee of that, but the easier you make it, the better.

Now that you know what WordPress breadcrumbs are, it’s time to let you in on the easiest way to get the functionality on your WordPress website or blog. Some themes come with the option to use breadcrumbs so you’ll want to start there but if your theme doesn’t come with the option, you’re next best bet is to use a breadcrumb plugin. We’ve listed a few of the best breadcrumb plugins for WordPress below to help get you started.

Yoast Breadcrumbs

Yoast Breadcrumbs is a highly rated breadcrumb plugin for WordPress, but it does come with one issue. The plugin only works with certain frameworks (Thematic, Hybrid, Thesis and WP Framework). If you’re not using one of those frameworks, you won’t be able to use this plugin unless you add a line of code to your template. Great if you’re comfortable adding in a line of code; not so great if you’re not comfortable touching the code. Even though you might have to do the extra code step if you’re not using one of the frameworks, it’s still one of the best out there and it’s worth a shot.

Breadcrumb Trail

Another highly rated breadcrumb plugin is called Breadcrumb Trail. It’s going to give you the general breadcrumb functionality and you are going to have to add it to your theme template but the plugin author provides a good description of how to do this. Even if you’re not comfortable with coding anything, this is a task that anyone can easily take on. It’s just one line of code that you can place anywhere that you want the breadcrumb functionality.

Are breadcrumbs a must have for your WordPress website? It really depends. If your navigation isn’t easy to figure out or you want to provide a simple method for people to return to previous pages, it’s a good idea. If your navigation doesn’t run very deep and it’s easy to figure out though, it’s a nice addition but not a requirement.

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Learn WordPress 3.3.1

January 09, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
learn wordpress 3.3.1

If you haven’t noticed, there’s a new version of WordPress available. The new version, 3.3.1 was released a few days ago and the release was issued to fix a few bugs and patch up some security concerns. What’s different? A few things, which you’re going to learn about today. It’s always a good idea to learn about any new version of WordPress that comes out so that you can get used to any changes that were made so you can easily transition into using the new version. Before we learn WordPress 3.3.1 though, let’s discuss a few important thing to remember before you update WordPress (if you haven’t already).

Regardless of whether you’re using the auto updater in your dashboard to update to the latest version of WordPress or you’re manually installing the update via FTP, it’s a good idea to deactivate your plugins before you start the process. This suggestion is made pretty clear on WordPress.org, but if you don’t visit the site every time you update to view the instructions, it’s a step that’s easy to forget about. The reason for deactivating your plugins is to prevent conflicts from occurring between your new version of WordPress and the plugins. There have been a few issues of plugin conflicts with the latest release of WordPress and some of these issues prevent site owners from logging back into their WordPress sites once the update installation has taken place. There’s a fix for this, which we’ll discuss at another time but for now, just make sure to deactivate your plugins before you install the latest update.

Now it’s time to learn WordPress 3.3.1. As was noted, the main reason for this update was to fix a few bugs and security issues. There are a few design changes, but not many. The biggest design change affects the status bar that’s located at the top of the screen when you’re logged into one of your WordPress websites. The status bar or administration bar (depending on what you want to call it), has been condensed so that it’s cleaner looking and it was rearranged a little bit. Everything is still there, but you may need to look under a different section than you did before in order to find what you’re looking for.

The other big design change for WordPress 3.3.1 is how media or files are uploaded. Instead of having 4 icons that you could choose from in order to upload a picture, video, file or music file, you just have one icon that handles everything. Also different is that you can now drag and drop files from your desktop right into the media upload utility. This is a great time saving feature!

The main security issue that was fixed dealt with a cross site scripting issue and then there were over a dozen other small updates that fixed other issues. As you can see, there weren’t a lot of changes to the new version of WordPress, but the couple of design changes that were made are more user friendly and it’s always good to see that WordPress takes security seriously. That’s all there’s to know about learning WordPress 3.3.1!

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Learn How To Integrate WordPress Into Your Website

January 04, 2012   vsweeney   No comments
learn how to integrate wordpress

By now you may have realised that WordPress is an all in one solution if you want a website for your business or for personal use. You can easily use WordPress for a static brochure style website, as a stand alone blog or a combination of both. But what if you already have a custom built website and you want to incorporate WordPress into that website? Will you have to change your whole website over to WordPress or is there a different way of going about things? That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today! Get ready to learn how to integrate WordPress into your website.

If you already have a website in place, there’s no sense in taking it completely down and installing WordPress instead. It’s not that it can’t be done but your website that’s currently in place may already have some optimization in place that has it ranking well in the search engines. It’d also be a waste of time and money if you had a custom built website made, only to tear it down in the end. What you can do however is integrate WordPress in your existing website and you can do this a couple of different ways.

The first way of integrating WordPress into your website is to create a sub-domain. You’d need to go into your hosting account and set up a sub-domain. Each host has this set up a little bit differently so you’ll want to follow their documentation on how you should go about doing this step. It’s generally pretty simple and should only take a minute or less. If your web hosting company offers a 1 click install of WordPress, your next step would be to select the 1 click install and choose the sub-domain that you created for the place that you want the WordPress installation to go. If your web hosting provider doesn’t have a 1 click for WordPress, you’ll have to download the current version of WordPress from WordPress.org and upload the files to the sub-domain directly per WordPress’s instructions.

Skipping back a step for a moment, if you’re wondering what to name your sub-domain, most people simply go with blog.mywebsite.com. “Blog” would be the sub-domain and “mywebsite.com” would be your regular domain name/website address. Now here’s where it gets a little tricky. Installing WordPress on a sub-domain is simple but the design isn’t going to be the same as the rest of your website. Due to this, you’re going to have to have your website designer code in your header area, footer area and any other website elements that you want to appear or you’re going to have to code them in yourself.

The other method of integrating WordPress into your website is to create a new directory for your website such as mywebsite.com/blog. “Blog” would be your new directory and it’s where WordPress would need to be installed. Once again, even if you’re going about things in this manner, the design would still need to be changed to match your existing website. If you’re not sure how to do this, WordPress.org has some great documentation that’ll help you or your designer complete the process. As far as the integration is concerned though, as you can now tell, it’s not very complicated and it only takes a few minutes. Now you can have WordPress on your existing website without having to give up your current website all together.

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Learn How To Post Comments On Your Own WordPress Blog

December 31, 2011   vsweeney   No comments
learn how to post comments on wordpress

Once you have posts on your WordPress blog and your site starts to get traffic, you may notice legitimate comments being left by other people. We say legitimate because once your website starts getting indexed by the search engines, you’re probably going to notice or start getting spam comments long before you start getting comments from humans who truly want to respond and interact with you on your WordPress website. What do you do when legitimate comments are left and you want to respond to those comments? Today you’re going to learn how to post comments on your own WordPress blog. It’s very easy and it only takes a couple of steps so let’s get going!

If you’re not logged into your WordPress website and you go to your own blog, it may ask you to log in or sign up. You’re not going to need to sign up because you already have a WordPress account! To comment on your own WordPress blog, simply log into your website as you normally would and then visit the post or page that you want to comment on (click on “view post” above the visual editor or simply go back to your website after you’ve logged in and go to the post). You’d do the same thing for pages as well.

Once you’re on your post or page once you’ve logged in, all you need to do is fill out what you want to say in the comment box and submit it. This way you can communicate with those who are leaving comments on your posts or pages. It’s a great way to interact with other people and keep people coming back to your website to stay involved in the conversation. It’s really that simple and it only takes a moment to interact with those who enjoy coming to your website!

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Best Search Plugins For WordPress

December 28, 2011   vsweeney   No comments
best search plugin for wordpress

A search box on your WordPress website can add a couple of different functions that your visitors will appreciate. You can opt to give your website visitors the choice of searching for what they’re looking for directly on your website or you can give them a search box that’ll allow them to search the Internet. A search box that allows users to search right on your WordPress website will help them find specific content that you’ve written, which is beneficial to you since some of your older content that’s not easily seen can be found. If you want to provide users with both options, you can use separate boxes or one box that’ll perform both functions. Today we’re going to pass along the best search plugins for WordPress so you can see how easy it is to get a search box set up yourself.

The best plugins for WordPress:

Google Custom Search

One of the most popular search plugins for WordPress is Google Custom Search. This plugin is so popular due to the fact that you get so many options with it. You can set it up so that it only searches within content on your website or you can set it up so that it searches your website plus other websites that you define. If you run more than one WordPress website, think of how helpful this plugin can be! When users search on the website that they’re on, you can also allow them to search other WordPress sites that you own or run which means that your other sites can end up with traffic from someone searching. The plugin is most commonly used as a widget in the sidebar but there are also advanced placement options as well.

Dave’s WordPress Live Search

If you go to Google to search for something and you start typing, you’re going to notice a drop down menu that displays terms that the search engine thinks that you’re searching for. This makes searching quicker and easier since you don’t have to type out the whole word or phrase that you’re looking for. Now imagine having that same type of feature on your WordPress website when your website visitors go to search for something on your site. This is exactly how Dave’s WordPress Live Search works! Save your website visitors time and allow your content to be found quicker. This plugin does require JavaScript for the live search to work but if it’s not available, it’ll simply work as a regular search box.

Each search plugin for WordPress gives you a different way of doing things so you can choose the one that’ll best suit your needs. If one of the best plugins for WordPress listed above isn’t what you’re looking for, there are quite a few search plugins for WordPress that you can use. There are so many options that you’re bound to find one that’ll be perfect for your WordPress website. You don’t have to use a search box but it’s a nice feature to offer to your visitors.

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Learn How To Get Traffic To Your WordPress Website

December 24, 2011   vsweeney   No comments
wordpress website traffic

Setting up your WordPress website and/or blog may seem like the easy part of the equation because what you’re going to need to do next is get traffic to your website. While the WordPress platform is very SEO friendly, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to start getting instant traffic as soon as the search engines start indexing your website. Matter of fact, unless your website’s subject matter is extremely unique, you may not see a decent amount of traffic to it for awhile, if ever at all if you don’t try and drive traffic to it. It’s important to learn how to get traffic to your WordPress website and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today.

One of the best things to do to get traffic to your WordPress website is to make sure you have a good deal of content on it when you publish it. This will give the search engines a lot of keywords and content to scan and index so that your website starts getting picked up for certain keywords. Once the site is published, it’s also very important to add new posts or content often. It may still be awhile before you start seeing traffic trickle in but publishing good content on a regular basis is one of the leading forces of getting found in the search engines.

Another way to start seeing traffic is to visit other WordPress based websites and start commenting. Now it’s very important to actually involve yourself in the conversation (not just post nonsense) in order to get the best results. Once people start to see your comments and know your name or website name, it may help drive traffic to your own WordPress site where people can start leaving comments as well. If people do decide to leave comments on your website, it’s a good idea to respond and interact so people keep returning the conversation. You never know, one good impression with another blogger or WordPress website owner can lead to other bloggers and people knowing your name.

To get traffic, you need to go exploring! While you’re bound to get traffic here and there after your website ages awhile, it’s still a good idea to go out and make yourself known. You can do this through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. You can even download and install plugins that’ll automatically update Twitter and Facebook when you make a post so that your followers on those social media networks can stay informed when you post new information. When you’re first starting out, try not to self-promote too much or it can leave people with the wrong impression. Keep it to simple and friendly interaction while your name, business name or website name is growing around the community.

If you’re just using WordPress for a personal website to share with friends and family, traffic may not be a big deal to you. If you’re a blogger or a business however, traffic is very important to focus on. There are tons of ways to get traffic to your WordPress website and the ones listed above are just a stepping stone in the right direction. Good luck!

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