7 Day WordPress Camp : Day 2

Continuing from: 7 Day WordPress Camp Day 1.

Yesterday we had done all the important researches and finished with choosing our webhost. Today we are going to install WordPress, a fantastic theme and some required plugins. Also, we will be customizing the settings for our wordpress blog. Let’s get started..

1. Installing WordPress
First, login to your webhosting control panel and create a new MySQL database. Note down the Database Name, Database Username, Database Password and Database Host Address. Next step is downloading the latest version of WordPress. Click Here and the download will start automatically. Extract the downloaded zip file somewhere in your local computer and open the folder. Locate the file “wp-config-sample.php“, rename it to “wp-config.php” and open it with a text editor (For example, Wordpad or Notepad++). Replace the fields with your database details.

Now upload all the files to your webhost using FTP Software (For Example, FileZill, CoffeeCup etc). Once done, go to “yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php“. Follow the steps onscreen and the wordpress will be installed in a minute. You’ll be given a temporary password with the username admin. Login to your Admin CP and change the password to your own.

Wordpress Install

We just have finished installing wordpress.

2. Choosing a Theme
Now we need to change the look of our blog. There are several free yet pretty good looking themes available in WordPress Themes Directory. If you want to have a professional look, I suggest Elegant Themes. They have pretty good collection of professional themes for every niche blogs.

Once you choose which theme to use, download it in your local computer and upload to “/wp-content/themes/” folder and activate it from Appearance > Themes settings under your blog’s Admin CP.

3. Customizing the Theme
If you have chosen the Elegant Themes, there’s not much customizations to make now as they are properly coded and have the necessary tags in place. If you choose a free theme from WordPress Themes Directory, we’ll customize the theme tomorrow to have the proper tags in proper places.

4. Installing Necessary Plugins
Plugins are not mandatory, but having some of them installed makes the blog perfect. There is lot of plugins available but we’ll use the required ones. These are somewhat must have plugins for every blog.

Platinum SEO Pack: This plugin improves your onsite SEO by a mile. It automatically inserts seo friendly meta tags to your posts. You can also add them manually for each single post/page.
XML Sitemap Generator: Automatically generated a XML Sitemap for your blog and pings Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask when a new sitemap is generated. It generates a new sitemap each time a new post has been made or you have edited an old post.
WordPress Related Posts: Automatically inserts related posts using tags for each single post. It also increases SEO by adding a bunch of internal links under post content.
WordPress Database Backup: Scheduled Backup system of your blog. It takes automatic backups of database and files for your blog and stores them locally on the server or email the backup to the email you setup.
WordPress Video Plugin: To easily add videos to your posts from Youtube, Metacafe or similar websites
WP-Video Tube (Free Edition): This plugin adds videos from youtube to your blog automatically and thus automates your income.
WP-O-Matic: It’s an Auto blogging Tool. It grabs RSS Feeds you provided and post it to your blog automatically. Like WP-Video Tube, it also automates your earning from Blogs.

Download the plugins in your local computer and upload them in “wp-content/plugins/” folder in your server and activate them from Plugins > Inactive.

Go through the settings of each plugin and change them according to your need.

5. Customizing the WordPress Settings
We are about to do some changes in WordPress default settings. Default settings are not enough to get the most out of wordpress. Go to the Settings group at left on your wordpress admin control panel and modify the following

General Settings: Change the Site Title field to a Keyword Rich title. Also, add a keyword rich short description at Tag Line.
Writing: Just add the following list of sites at “Update Services“. Here is a good Ping Services list.
Privacy: Make sure the first option is selected at “Site Visibility“. If not, select it and Save Changes.
Permalink: It controls how the URL will be on your blog. We need something special to get the keyword rich URL. Select the “Custom Structure” and add the “/%category%/%postname%.html” (without quotes) at the text field. It’ll output the keyword rich, static type html page for your blog posts. It uses the “URL Rewrite” function of Apache Webserver using .htaccess file and that is one of the reasons I have recommended those hosts yesterday.