Your Band Blog Sample
Nashville artist Christopher Joel guides you through setting a band website using the free blogging software, WordPress. This is a sample from the first 40 pages of the book.
Content
Thank you Bebe for your patience, proofreading, and love.
Your Band Blog Christopher Joel Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Joel Wilcoxson Make Me An Expert Press Nashville, TN Find more info about the author and this book at http://christopherjoel.com Editor and proofreader: Anna Wilcoxson Cover designed by: Christopher Joel Layout by: Christopher Joel
NOTICE OF RIGHTS All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Contact the author at [email protected] for permission. NOTICE OF LIABILITY The information in the book is provided “AS IS”, without warranty. While every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.
Table of Contents
Introduction 5 7 9 9 11 12 12 12 13 13 13 14 14 14 14 17 19 22 22 23 30 36 36 37 39 40 41 43 43 43 45 46 47 53 69 Chapter One - Why WordPress? Chapter Two - Website Basics Hosts and Servers Bonus Questions Domain Names Choosing a Domain Name Buying Your Domain Name Chapter Three - Install WordPress Applications FTP Compression Utilities Text Editor Web Browser Create Your MySQL Database Create an FTP User Five-Minute Install
Chapter Four - Configure WordPress Dashboard Settings Menu Pages Customizing WordPress Themes How to Install Themes Using Themes HTML, CSS, & PHP Tips For Customizing Themes Chapter Five - WordPress Plugins How To Install Plugins Automatically Semi-Manually Manually Performance and Maintenance Plugins Blog Ownership Plugins Musician Plugins
Chapter Six - Companion Sites Blog Tools Music and Media Artist Tools Social Networking Chapter Seven - How I Got To #1 What is SEO? Increase Your Relevance Keywords Titles Attribute in Links Increase Your Popularity Link Popular Sites to Yours Comment on Other Blogs Fans & Friends Blog Settings Categories Permalinks Plugins Chapter Eight - Finishing Touches Widgets Plugins Favicon Create a Favicon Mobile Ready No Comments Cache Database Backup Chapter Nine - Owning A Blog Best Practices Ideas For Blog Posts Get Started!
72 72 77 87 96 102 102 103 103 103 104 104 104 105 105 105 107 108 113 113 115 116 117 118 121 121 121 122 122 124 125
INTRODUCTION
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Introduction
Before I tell you about how to use WordPress as your website, let me introduce myself. My name is Christopher Joel and I’m a rock artist living in Nashville, TN. That’s right, it’s not all country here in Nashvegas. I’ve been singing since I was three years old and playing guitar since Christmas of 1990. My first EP, Fantasy World, was released on May 5, 2009. I’m also a tech nerd. I’ve worked as a support technician, built computers from parts, and programmed websites from scratch. My first blogging experience was in 2006 with my But I’m No Expert blog. In 2008, when I published my music website, http://christopherjoel.com, I began digging through WordPress and testing different plugins, methods, and themes, trying to find the best, most productive way to use WordPress. I discovered tons of plugins and companion sites that can give you all the features of an expensive, custom-designed website for free! After hundreds of hours of research and tweaking, I decided to share what I learned. As a musician, you should spend your time being an artist, not trying solve tech issues and writing code. With this book, I’ll give you the tools and knowledge to create your own website, saving you time and money. You might be wondering: why not just use Myspace as my website? I compare Myspace to renting an apartment; it’s yours to use, but you don’t own it. Myspace is in business to make money for Myspace and to look out for its own interests, not you and yours. While it is convenient, and still necessary for musicians, it should only be one tool you use to interact with your fans.
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YOUR BAND BLOG As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In 2009, Facebook became the most popular social network site on the internet, which means some of the people you interact with are leaving Myspace. Which begs the question, if Myspace is about connecting with fans, but fans are leaving Myspace, wouldn’t it make sense to have a web presence where people can find you regardless of what social network they prefer? Consider this: your band has a brand identity, an image that people associate with your band. Your website should enhance your brand, since it is what people see of your band on the web. Wouldn’t it be better if what people see of your band on the web was fully controlled by you? You can decide how it looks, what it contains, and how it functions. Your brand identity will be greatly enhanced by having a memorable domain name leading to a professional website. Many people are turned off when a band’s domain name leads them to a slow, flash-filled Myspace page that takes forever to load and barrages them with noise (movies and music players). That doesn’t make you look better to a potential fan. Hopefully, you see why using Myspace as your only web presence isn’t very wise and would now like to create your own site. So you might be wondering, with all the available options for creating a website, why choose WordPress?
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Chapter One Why WordPress?
Free!
You can download the WordPress software from http://www.wordpress.org for no charge. There’s nothing better than free for us starving artists.
Easy to install and configure
WordPress is proud to have a five-minute install. It really is a five-minute process too, that’s not just some claim they make.
Simple to use
Why bother using something that makes your life more difficult? WordPress has Dashboard where you can easily manage your blog posts, pages, plugins, themes and the configuration of your website.
Easy to customize
Thousands of themes are available to change the look of your site. You can even tweak the code of those themes to be exactly what you want, and it’s easier than customizing your Myspace page!
Plugins
WordPress.org has a listing of plugins that add functions to your WordPress blog. These plugins range from backup tools to music players to integrated forums.
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Options
Here are just a few of the options WordPress has for your blog: • • • • • • Set a time and date to publish a posting (write now, publish later) Save drafts of a posting Make categories for posts Find out who is talking about your posts Add pages for things like your bio, show dates, etc. Require registration before commenting (prevent spam)
Built-in spam filter
WordPress comes with a spam filter plugin that prevents spam comments. Nothing looks more unprofessional than having someone offer male enhancement products on your blog postings!
Multiple contributors
With WordPress, content can be contributed from multiple people, like each of your band members. Or your manager. Or your sister. Whoever, it’s up to you.
Now that you know some of the advantages to using WordPress, let’s cover some basics about websites, just so we’re all on the same page.
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Chapter Two Website Basics
You need three things in order to have a website: a domain name, a web server, and HTML files. A domain name is the easy-to-remember address to get to a web server, for example: http://cnn.com. A web server is a computer that shares HTML files. HTML is the language that web browsers use to display websites, so HTML files contain HTML code that describes the different parts of a website. First things first, let’s get you a server.
Hosts and Servers
Web hosts are companies that provide you space on one of their servers to store your website’s files. There are bazillions of web hosts out there; you just need to choose one that fits your needs and budget. WordPress has become popular enough that many web hosts have WordPress already installed on their servers, so you won’t need to manually set it up. Here are some popular web hosts with WordPress already installed: • • • • • • Godaddy.com Bluehost.com Dreamhost.com MediaTemple.com HostICan.com LaughingSquid.com
While you could just create a blog for free on WordPress.com, they do not allow you to install plugins. They also charge for things like a domain name, which is necessary for your professional image. It’s typically less expensive to buy a web hosting account and install the WordPress software, and you get the advantage of installing plugins. I’m not going to recommend any specific web host, but I use Godaddy. I’m satisfied with their service and they are a large company, so I doubt they will go out of business any time soon. That being said, here are useful tips for selecting a web host:
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How much does it cost?
Really pay attention to the costs of hosting plans. Many vendors will advertise rates like $6.95 per month, but that’s only if you prepay for a year or two, it’s actually $10.95 to pay month-to-month. Either price isn’t bad, but I’d rather know upfront how much it’s going to cost me rather than being tricked into a price that I can’t afford.
How much space do they give you?
Honestly, anything more than 5 GB is plenty, but most hosts will give you 50-100 GB and some even offer unlimited storage. Unless you’re serving two-hour streaming movies from your site, I doubt you’ll ever get past 5 GB, even with years of song catalogs available for download.
How much bandwidth/file transfer do they allow per month?
Bandwidth, also referred to as file transfer, refers to how much data is downloaded from your site. If you have lots of large files, you’ll use more bandwidth. In general, WordPress sites don’t require much bandwidth, but if you get a huge surge of traffic (like after a concert) your bandwidth needs may go up, so it’s best to plan ahead.
Do you get a free domain name with your account?
Some plans offer a free domain name with the purchase of a hosting plan. We’ll talk more about domain names in “Domain Names” on page 12.
Do they have PHP (4.3 or greater) and MySQL (4.0 or greater) installed on their servers?
If you don’t know what these are, don’t worry, you don’t really need to know. You’ll need both for WordPress though. Most hosts already have these installed.
What is their uptime guarantee?
This refers to how often service interruptions occur. Most hosts have an uptime guarantee of 99% or better, which means your website could be unavailable for more than three days and you won’t be able to request a credit to your account for the down time. It would be rare to find one that has 100%, but more common to see at least 99.7% or so.
Do they have a 24/7 support service?
You definitely want help if something goes wrong, and having to wait for the 8 to 5 shift is unacceptable. You might end up chatting with someone from
WEBSITE BASICS 11 Bangalore, but that’s better than having your site down while your fans are trying to reach it.
Bonus Questions
Do you get free privacy registration for your domain (if a domain comes with the account)?
Privacy for domain registration allows your domain name to be registered without showing your private information on the public registers. This ould be really important if you did become well-known and didn’t want your home address out there for all the world to see.
Do they have any website promotion packages?
Some hosts give you credits for ad programs like Google Adwords, Facebook, MSN, etc. These can be very useful credits to have when you release a new album, video, or an opening slot on a tour that’s worth publicizing.
Do they support streaming audio and videos (Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc)?
While you can host your files on Youtube, Vimeo, or some other service, having more than one streaming option is wise planning.
What kind of connection do they have to the rest of the Internet?
This will typically be a connection that starts with OC, like OC48, OC96, etc. This just denotes the speed of their connection to the rest of the Internet, the higher the OC number the better. If they have a fast connection, people will be able to load your site faster which makes you look more professional.
Do they have backup systems in place?
This goes back to making sure your site is there when you need it. A lack of preparedness on their part means they aren’t worth dealing with; find someone else. A good host should have a backup generator for power outages, UPS systems on their server racks (those are battery backup power supplies), and they should be backing up the servers. If something goes wrong, you want to know that your web host will have it solved pronto and will keep your site up and running.
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Domain Choosing a Domain Name Names Choosing a domain name isn’t really that hard. Something like yourband.
com is exactly what you want. The shortest domain name you can get that is related to your band is the best option. The hard part is finding a domain name that’s not already taken. Unfortunately, there is a market for selling domain names, so people have begun registering domain names with the intention of selling them to people who will use them. Hopefully, your preferred domain name is unique enough to not be profitable for anyone other than you. Domaintools.com is a great place to start. Go to the site, type in the domain name you want, and it will either give you all the info on the current owner or say it can’t find any info on that domain. If Domain Tools can’t find any info on your preferred domain name, then register that domain name with a domain name registrar. If Domain Tools gives information about the domain, then that name is already in use. Try a variation like yourbandmusic.com, yourbandrocks.com, yourband.net, or even yourband.us. Keep trying until you find something relatively short that is related to your band.
Buying Your Domain Name
To buy your domain name, you’ll need a domain name registrar. A domain name registrar is simply a site that is officially allowed to sell domain names. Many web hosts are also domain registrars, so its often easiest to do everything in one place. It can be cheaper to use separate vendors, so explore your options and choose accordingly. Here’s just a few options for domain registrars: • • • • • Godaddy Network Solutions RegSelect Registrar Register
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Chapter Three Install WordPress
While WordPress is famous for it’s five-minute install, you will need to do some preparation beforehand. Now that you have your web host and your domain name, you’ll need to install some applications before installing WordPress on your website.
Applications FTP
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and it enables you to move files from one place to another, like from your computer to a web server. There are quite a few FTP applications; here are some popular free and paid options:
Free options: OS X
• CyberDuck - Easy to use, my personal favorite. • ilezilla - Made by the same people who make Firefox. A great apF plication, but a bit harder to use than Cyberduck, in my opinion. • Filezilla - The most commonly used FTP application for Windows. • TP Explorer - Boasts that it’s the original “Explorer-style” FTP cliF ent.
Windows
Paid options: OS X
• Fetch - Has a 15-day free trial and is very easy to use. • ransmit - Has tons of options and is one of the more popular FTP T clients for Mac.
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Windows
• mart FTP - Has a 30-day free trial. Looks like it’s well-maintained S and improved often. • WS_FTP - Also has a 30-day free trial.
Compression Utilities
Compression utilities compress files to take up less space on your hard drive. They also decompress files so you can work with them. There are many compression utilities out there, but the two most common are: • PC - Winzip • Mac - StuffIt Expander There are free versions and paid versions of each of these applications. The paid versions offer more functionality than you really need, so just download the free version.
Text Editor
Both Windows and Mac come with a text editor, so you don’t need to download and install anything. If you use Windows, you’ll use the Notepad application, which can be found by clicking the Start button, then going to All Programs > Accessories. If you use a Mac, you’ll use the Text Editor application, which can be found by opening Finder, then going to the Applications folder.
Web Browser
Windows and Mac each have a built-in web browser. For Windows, it’s Internet Explorer, for Mac, it’s Safari. You may also use another browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. None of these has any advantage over the others when installing or working with Wordpress, so use whichever you prefer.
Create Your MySQL Database
Once you have all of the above applications installed and ready to use, you’ll need to create your database. The instructions will vary based on your web host, so I suggest reading up on your host’s instructions on how to create a new database. For those who choose Godaddy as your web host, here’s how to do it: Go to godaddy.com and log into your account (the login boxes are at the top).
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From the Hosting menu, click the My Hosting Account link.
On the row of your hosting account, click the Manage Account link.
When the Hosting Control Center page has loaded, expand the fourth section called Databases and click the MySQL button.
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Click the Create Database button in the top right corner of the MySQL page.
On this form, you create, describe, and assign options to your new database. In the Description field, type something like “wp-yourbandname database”. This will remind you what this particular database is for later. Create a username and put it in the MySQL Database/User Name field. This doubles as the name of your database. Tip: For better security, choose a password that is at least 8 characters long and includes letters, numbers, and symbols. Invent a password and put in the Enter New Password field, then type the same password in the Confirm New Password field. An example of a good, strong password is: “f8u#Sh!zzl3s”, that’s “fauxshizzles” encoded as a strong password. FYI, Godaddy’s password machine does not allow the following characters in your password: • • • • • • • • • question mark (?) space ( ) caret (^) single quote (‘) double quote (“) colon (:) backslash (\) dollar sign ($) ampersand (&)
• • • • •
greater than (>) less than (<) tilde (~) semi-colon (;) accent (`)
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On the right side of the form, choose MySQL version 5.0. Write down all these settings, you’ll need them when installing WordPress. Click the OK button at the bottom of the page.
When you’re back to the MySQL page, you’ll notice under the Status column that it says Pending Setup for the database you just created. It will take a few minutes for the database to get set up. In the meantime, let’s create an FTP user and upload the Wordpress software.
Create an FTP User
Before uploading anything to your web host, make sure you have an FTP user created. On Godaddy, log into your account and go to your Hosting Control Panel.
Under Settings, select Manage FTP Users.
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On this page, you should already have an FTP user created. If so, take note of the username, then click the Change Password link to make the password something you can more easily remember. Write down both the FTP username and your new password, because you’ll need them later.
If you haven’t created an FTP user already, click the Add FTP User button in the lower right. On the Add FTP User page, fill in your desired username, password, and set the Path to < hosting root >, then click the Save link to save your new user. The page should refresh to show your new user in the list.
Five-Minute Install
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Now that you’ve created your FTP user, go to http://www.wordpress.org. You’ll need to download the WordPress software to install it on your server. Click the orange Download button on the main menu or the blue Download WordPress button; they both take you to the same page.
Click the Download WordPress button on the Download page and it should prompt you to save a zip file.
Choose a place (like your desktop) to save this file, click the OK button, and allow the file to download.
Once the zip file is downloaded, right-click (control+click for Macs) on the file and choose to open it with your compression utility. Save the files to the desktop. Your compression utility may do this automatically for you, just be sure to pay attention to where it saves the uncompressed files, so you can find them.
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YOUR BAND BLOG Find your files (they should be in a folder called “wordpress”). Inside that folder is a file named wp-config-sample.php.
Rename this file to wp-config.php.
Open the file in your text editor. Change the following: 1. Replace “putyourdbnamehere” with your databases’s name 2. eplace “usernamehere” with the username you selected for your R database 3. eplace “yourpasswordhere” with the password you made up for R your database. Save the file, but don’t close it yet. The last piece of info we need is the host name of the database. Go back to the MySQL page on your web host and refresh the page. If the database you created earlier still says Pending Setup, wait about ten minutes and check it again.
If your database says that it’s set up, click the Edit button (it has a pencil on it). Copy the host name, then return to your wp-config.php file. Replace “localhost” with the host name you copied. Save your wp-config.php file and close your text editor. Now open your FTP app. You’ll need to tell it which server to connect to, in this case, your web server. Check your application’s Help menu if you don’t
INSTALL WORDPRESS 21 know how to get it configured. Once you’ve gotten it configured, log into your account on your web host. Upload all the files and folders inside the wordpress folder onto your server. Don’t upload the folder itself.
Once they finish uploading, open your web browser and go to: http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php Type the title of your blog (like your band name) in the Blog Title field and type your email address in the Your email field. Leave that box checked and click the Install WordPress button.
Write down your temporary username and password and click the Log In button. Log in using your temporary username and password.
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Chapter Four Configure WordPress
Dashboard
Once you’re logged in, the first thing you’ll see is the WordPress Dashboard. Dashboard shows the recent activity on your blog such as comments, posts, comments awaiting approval, incoming links from other sites, etc. Now that WordPress is installed and you’ve logged in using your temporary username and password, add yourself as a user and make yourself an admin of the site. Expand the Users menu by clicking on the arrow on the Users button. Click the Add New link.
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Fill out all the info and be sure to change your Role to Administrator. Click the Add User button when finished.
Settings Menu
General
Now that you’re set up as a user, we’ll take a look at some of the settings for your new site. I won’t go through every option available, I’ll only discuss the ones I recommend you change from the default settings. Find more detailed information about the settings on WordPress’s website: http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels. Expand the Settings menu and click the General link.
Type your band’s name into the the Blog Title field.
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Change the time zone to match your location. WordPress uses Coordinated Universal Time (mysteriously abbreviated as UTC) for time settings, check the chart below for the American UTC codes: Time Zone Atlantic Eastern Central Mountain Pacific Alaskan UTC Code UTC-4 UTC-5 UTC-6 UTC-7 UTC-8 UTC-9
Change the Week Starts On drop menu to Sunday (unless you prefer to start your week on Monday or some other day), then hit the Save Changes button at the bottom to save all the changes on the General Settings page.
Writing
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Expand the Settings menu and click the Writing link. This section contains the preferences for writing blog posts.
The Size of the Post Box option is for how big you want the editing box to be when you add a new post. The default is 10, but I prefer mine a little bit bigger, so I set it to 20. Check the box for converting emoticons like :) into graphics. If you plan to post entries from your iPhone or an application on your computer, check the XML-RPC box. That tells WordPress to allow other applications to post to your blog.
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YOUR BAND BLOG The Update Services box is a list of sites that get informed when you post new content on your blog. This will help people know you are adding posts to your blog. Start with this list: http://api.moreover.com/ping http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 http://cullect.com/feed/ping http://ping.bitacoras.com http://ping.feedburner.com http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/ http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 http://topicexchange.com/RPC2 http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2 http://www.blogoole.com/ping/ http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php http://www.wasalive.com/ping/ http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/ http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/ Click the Save Changes button.
Reading
Expand the Settings menu and click the Reading link.
What do you want people to see when they first hit your site? If it’s your blog page, then leave the first setting under Reading alone. If it’s another page (like shows or your bio), then come back here after you’ve created that page and make it your Front page diplays option. Hit the Save Changes button if you made any changes.
Discussion
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Expand the Settings menu and click the Discussion link, which contains options for how people interact with your blog. These are some of the most important settings because you want to allow interaction, but not allow anarchy (unless that’s your thing).
Default Article Settings “Check to notify any blogs linked to/from the article” - Check. Sites you link to in a blog post will be notified that you linked to their article. Sometimes, the other blogger will link back to your blog, which improves your search engine ranking. “Allow link notification from other blogs” - Check. This tells you when other bloggers have linked to one of your postings. It is considered polite practice in the blogging world to link to one of their blog posts in return. “Allow people to post comments on the article” - Check. This is all about interaction. Give your fans/readers a way to express their opinions and give you feedback. Other Comment Settings “Comment author must fill out name and email” - Check. This prevents bots (programs that scour the Internet leaving spam messages on unprotected blogs) from leaving spam messages in your comments. This isn’t the only tool to help fight that, but it certainly helps. “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” - Check. This is yet another tool to fight spam messages and helps you know who’s leaving comments. “Automatically close comments...” - Uncheck. Just because a blog entry is old, doesn’t mean that a fan wouldn’t have something insightful to offer about it. Leave as many opportunities to interact as possible.
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YOUR BAND BLOG “Enable threaded (nested) comments ___ levels deep” - Check. If you have a popular article and people start commenting on each others’ comments (this is a very good thing), this option will help keep things organized. I would suggest no more than 5 levels deep. “Break comments...” - Check. Set the first box to something a little more reasonable like 20. Change the second option to “first”, then leave the last option as “older”. This option will only show 20 comments per page and any further comments will be given a separate page other readers can visit to continue reading. Putting comments in chronological order allows people to read all the comments and follow the discussion. E-mail Me Whenever “Anyone posts a comment” - Check, unless you’re insanely popular and don’t want to see each and every comment. This goes back to interaction - seeing every comment is a good way to interact with your fans/readers. “When a comment is held for moderation” - Check. Usually, comments held for moderation have some characteristic that make it a potential spam, so check these out. If it’s a valid comment, you can approve it and allow it on the site. Before A Comment Appears “An administrator must always approve the comment” - Uncheck. The more popular you get, the more comments you’ll get, and trying to police them all will drive you crazy and take away from your time to work on music. “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” - Check. This is the easier-to-manage version of the setting above, since you only have to approve the author’s first comment.
Comment Moderation - Leave this set at 2. Spammers like to put lots of links in their comment posts, so this setting will help catch them. If a fan/reader posts several links inside a comment, it will be held for moderation, you’ll get an email about it, and you can approve or disapprove their comment.
CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 29 The big box underneath is for any words or websites that, if someone uses them in a comment, would trigger WordPress to hold the comment for moderation and notify you about it. If you’re running a G-rated site, this would be a good place to list every dirty word you can imagine, just in case someone gets rowdy or tries to prank your blog. Comment Blacklist - This is very similar to the above option, but marks the comment as spam instead of holding it for moderation.
Avatars Avatar display - Select “Show Avatars”. Many people already have an online avatar they use for leaving comments on blogs, and allowing them to be displayed with their comments is usually harmless. Maximum Rating - You can choose the rating of the avatars that you’ll allow. If you’re running a G-rated blog, then you can choose to only allow G-rated avatars. These ratings are very similar to movie ratings, so you’re probably already familiar with them. Default Avatar - This is what users will get on your blog, if they don’t already have an avatar of their own. Choose the one you prefer; I use the default, Mystery Man. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom to save all your settings for Discussions.
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Media
Expand the Settings menu and click the Media link. This section deals with the pictures you add to your site. Leave the Thumbnail size at 150x150, it’s a good size. Leave the Medium size set at 300x300. Make a note of the large size dimensions. Once you’ve loaded your theme, you’ll want to come back and change this size to match. When you come back to make changes, please notice that these options are the maximum sizes, not actual dimensions. For instance, if the content column on your blog is 500 pixels wide, and you want large-sized pictures, then set the maximum width on the Large Size to 500. The height will be automatically determined in order to keep the pictures proportional. At this point, you’re done with the Settings menu. There isn’t anything to change in the Privacy or Miscellaneous settings, and we’ll configure Permalinks later.
Pages
Pages are sort of like blog posts, but they aren’t organized by date and are changed infrequently. Most pages are information like the About Us page, Links, Photos, Contact Me, etc. For your band site, you’ll need to make pages that make sense for a band, like Bio, Photos, Music, and Shows. Since every artist/band calls them something different and has different needs, I’ll just use my site as an example of what you are able to do with pages.
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By default, WordPress creates a page titled About. Most bloggers use this page as a bio, telling who they are and the blog’s purpose. In this case, change About to Bio, then add the other music-appropriate pages.
To edit the About page, expand the Pages menu and click the Edit link.
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Put your mouse near the title of the page and, just like on the users panel, an Edit link will appear underneath the page’s title; click on Edit.
The Page Editor looks very similar to the Blog Post Editor that you’ll see later and uses many of the same tools. Up at the top, there’s a box with the word About in it. This is the page’s title. Change that title to be whatever you want to call your Bio page (I’m using Bio). Below that is a larger box for editing the content of the page. Here is where you will paste in your bio. Edit the text to your liking.
Once your bio is on the page and formatted to your liking, scroll to the bottom of the page and uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkboxes under the Discussion section. This way, you will only receive comments and pings for blog posts, not pages.
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When you’re finished editing your Bio page, click the Update Page button in the Publish section on the far right side of the page. This will save your edits and publish the page immediately. Now that you’ve edited an existing page, I’ll show you how to add a page from scratch.
To add a new page to your blog, expand the Pages menu and click on the Add New link. Type the title of your page in the field at the top. In the content field, enter what you would like people to see when they open this page.
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Underneath the page content field are two boxes: Custom Fields and Discussion. Custom Fields is for putting specific information on the page, which is usually something that can show up as part of your theme or the page template (more on that in a bit). Unless you know what you’re doing, you can just bypass the Custom Field section altogether. In the Discussion section, uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkboxes, just like on the Bio page.
Attributes
On the right side of the Page Editor is a box called Attributes, which contains several options for your pages. Parent The first attribute is the parent page. This refers to how pages are organized. Parent pages are higher in the hierarchy than the child pages. For example, you could have a Media page that has three child pages: Music, Videos, and Photos. They are all media, but let’s say, for the sake of the example, you wanted them on separate pages. When you make the Media page, it’s parent would be the Main Page. When you make the Music page, it’s parent would be the Media page. The Videos and Photos pages would each have the Media page as their parent page also. For a band site, you probably won’t require enough pages to use this organization, so create each page with the parent as Main Page.
Template
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The template refers to a feature that some themes use to give more options for how your pages are displayed. If you pick a theme that has templates for your pages, you’ll see them listed in this drop menu. If not, just leave it set to the default value. Order If you have a specific order in which you’d like your pages to display, use this box to put them in order. The ordering starts with zero and works it’s way up, so the first page on your menu would be #0, the second page is #1, third page is #2, and so on. If you don’t put a number here, it will order your pages by when they were created.
Publish
The last section on the Page Editor panel is the Publish section. The Save Draft button will save the page, but not publish it. This is really good if you don’t have your content nailed down yet and want to come back to it later. The Preview button shows what the page will look like once it’s published. This is very handy for testing the placement of graphics or videos. The Status field shows you the status of your page: published, draft, etc. The Visibility field shows you whether you’ve marked the page as private, draft, or public. The Publish field lets you set a time and date when the page will be published for the public to view. This is a very handy option for scheduling when posts get published, but Pages should be published immediately, so don’t change it from the default setting of immediately. Fill out all the appropriate fields for your new page and click the Publish button when finished. Repeat this process for each new page.
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Customizing Themes WordPress Now that your site is installed and you have created pages, the next thing to
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do is work on the look. You could choose to bust out your design skills and make it look exactly the way you want, or you could opt for the easier route and find an existing theme to customize. It’s much easier to tweak an existing theme than to make your own. There are literally thousands and thousands of WordPress themes out there, most available for free, and you can save countless hours by simply choosing a theme that resembles how you would like your site to appear. Unfortunately, there are thousands and thousands of existing themes out there, so finding one you like may take a while. Alternately, you could hire a designer to custom design a theme just for you, but it is expensive. While I can’t tell you what theme to download, I can give you some helpful tips on finding a theme.
Free or Custom-made?
The first thing you’ll need to decide is: do I want a free theme or one custom designed for my site? While the vast majority of us will probably opt for the free one, some may want their site to stand out or have custom features that can’t be found on free themes. There are plenty of options for both camps and either way, Google is your friend.
Pay more attention to the layout than the colors
By layout, I mean where things are located on the page. Do you like where the columns are located? Should the menu be in that spot? Do you want the menu above your logo? Below it? What about having a column on the left, or right, or both? Most people don’t really notice these particulars when viewing a website, but its vital for this part of designing your site. Some people only see the colors and will pass on a great layout because it’s purple, not black or brightly colored instead of muted. Borders, text, and backgrounds can be changed to different colors easily, but embedded pictures are more difficult to manipulate.
Widget-Friendly = Good
I’ll go over more info about widgets in “Widgets” on page 113, but for now, just understand that being able to use widgets is a good thing.
Customization Options
Some themes have options built-in for customizing the theme, which saves you time.
Documentation
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Find a theme whose developer has his/her own website, or possibly a site just for the theme itself. This will be important if you need questions answered while customizing.
SEO-Optimized
We’ll learn more about SEO in “HOW I GOT TO #1” on page 111, but if your theme says it’s SEO optimized, that will help you in the long run.
How to Install Themes
Automatically
To find a theme, expand the Appearance menu and click the Add New Themes links which will allow you to search the WordPress Theme Directory.
You can search by features by checking the box(es) for the option(s) you want, or if you know the name of the theme you want, just type it in the Search field and hit the Search button.
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When you’ve found a theme you like, click the Preview link to see an example site using that theme. If you want more info about the theme, click the Details link, which will expand to show you the author, rating, version, and when it was last updated.
To install the theme, click the Install link under the name of the theme. Then click the Install Now button on the confirmation window.
Manually
You can also find WordPress themes by searching Google for WordPress Themes, which will turn up at least 32 million results (no exaggeration). To install a theme that you’ve downloaded, open your FTP application and connect to your web host. Upload your newly downloaded theme folder into this folder on your web host: /wp-content/ themes. If you downloaded more than one theme, upload each one to this same folder.
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Using Themes
To use a theme on your site, expand the Appearance menu and click the Themes link.
At the top of the themes page, you’ll see the current theme. Any other themes you’ve installed will appear on this page as well.
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You can preview your site with any theme by clicking the Preview link. If you like what you see, you can activate it by clicking the “Activate Theme Name” link in the top right corner of the preview window. You can also activate a theme by clicking the Activate link on the Manage Themes page. Keep trying out themes until you find one that you think will work for your site.
HTML, CSS, & PHP
HTML is an acronym for Hyper-Text markup Language. This is the language the Internet is built on. Almost every website you see uses HTML. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. In essence, CSS is the code that tells the page what to look like. All your themes will have at least one CSS file included in the download. PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. WordPress was written in PHP. It allows easy interactivity with the database you set up earlier and is used by many sites on the Internet. You don’t need to know these three languages in order to customize a theme, but it does help considerably. I debated writing some tutorials about these three here, but frankly, each would require a separate book to explain properly. I recommend going to a local bookstore or Amazon.com and finding some books about these languages if you really want to get into them. Since you’re a musician and you bought this book, I’d bet you’d rather spend your time playing and writing than learning web development languages.
CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 41 In that case, check out http://codex.wordpress.org, especially the sections about Blog Design and Site Development. The Codex site is an explanation of the parts of WordPress and how they work. There’s a lot of helpful information there about the parts of most WordPress themes. Another good source is the documentation for the theme. Hopefully you chose a theme with its own site and can go there to ask questions.
Want More?
Thanks for reading these sample pages of Your Band Blog. The rest of book walks you through every detail of configuring WordPress for the best results, what plugins to use for your band, what other websites integrate with your WordPress site, how to improve your search engine rankings, and much more! Click the Add to Cart button below and start building your band’s website today!
Your Band Blog Christopher Joel Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Joel Wilcoxson Make Me An Expert Press Nashville, TN Find more info about the author and this book at http://christopherjoel.com Editor and proofreader: Anna Wilcoxson Cover designed by: Christopher Joel Layout by: Christopher Joel
NOTICE OF RIGHTS All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Contact the author at [email protected] for permission. NOTICE OF LIABILITY The information in the book is provided “AS IS”, without warranty. While every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.
Table of Contents
Introduction 5 7 9 9 11 12 12 12 13 13 13 14 14 14 14 17 19 22 22 23 30 36 36 37 39 40 41 43 43 43 45 46 47 53 69 Chapter One - Why WordPress? Chapter Two - Website Basics Hosts and Servers Bonus Questions Domain Names Choosing a Domain Name Buying Your Domain Name Chapter Three - Install WordPress Applications FTP Compression Utilities Text Editor Web Browser Create Your MySQL Database Create an FTP User Five-Minute Install
Chapter Four - Configure WordPress Dashboard Settings Menu Pages Customizing WordPress Themes How to Install Themes Using Themes HTML, CSS, & PHP Tips For Customizing Themes Chapter Five - WordPress Plugins How To Install Plugins Automatically Semi-Manually Manually Performance and Maintenance Plugins Blog Ownership Plugins Musician Plugins
Chapter Six - Companion Sites Blog Tools Music and Media Artist Tools Social Networking Chapter Seven - How I Got To #1 What is SEO? Increase Your Relevance Keywords Titles Attribute in Links Increase Your Popularity Link Popular Sites to Yours Comment on Other Blogs Fans & Friends Blog Settings Categories Permalinks Plugins Chapter Eight - Finishing Touches Widgets Plugins Favicon Create a Favicon Mobile Ready No Comments Cache Database Backup Chapter Nine - Owning A Blog Best Practices Ideas For Blog Posts Get Started!
72 72 77 87 96 102 102 103 103 103 104 104 104 105 105 105 107 108 113 113 115 116 117 118 121 121 121 122 122 124 125
INTRODUCTION
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Introduction
Before I tell you about how to use WordPress as your website, let me introduce myself. My name is Christopher Joel and I’m a rock artist living in Nashville, TN. That’s right, it’s not all country here in Nashvegas. I’ve been singing since I was three years old and playing guitar since Christmas of 1990. My first EP, Fantasy World, was released on May 5, 2009. I’m also a tech nerd. I’ve worked as a support technician, built computers from parts, and programmed websites from scratch. My first blogging experience was in 2006 with my But I’m No Expert blog. In 2008, when I published my music website, http://christopherjoel.com, I began digging through WordPress and testing different plugins, methods, and themes, trying to find the best, most productive way to use WordPress. I discovered tons of plugins and companion sites that can give you all the features of an expensive, custom-designed website for free! After hundreds of hours of research and tweaking, I decided to share what I learned. As a musician, you should spend your time being an artist, not trying solve tech issues and writing code. With this book, I’ll give you the tools and knowledge to create your own website, saving you time and money. You might be wondering: why not just use Myspace as my website? I compare Myspace to renting an apartment; it’s yours to use, but you don’t own it. Myspace is in business to make money for Myspace and to look out for its own interests, not you and yours. While it is convenient, and still necessary for musicians, it should only be one tool you use to interact with your fans.
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YOUR BAND BLOG As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In 2009, Facebook became the most popular social network site on the internet, which means some of the people you interact with are leaving Myspace. Which begs the question, if Myspace is about connecting with fans, but fans are leaving Myspace, wouldn’t it make sense to have a web presence where people can find you regardless of what social network they prefer? Consider this: your band has a brand identity, an image that people associate with your band. Your website should enhance your brand, since it is what people see of your band on the web. Wouldn’t it be better if what people see of your band on the web was fully controlled by you? You can decide how it looks, what it contains, and how it functions. Your brand identity will be greatly enhanced by having a memorable domain name leading to a professional website. Many people are turned off when a band’s domain name leads them to a slow, flash-filled Myspace page that takes forever to load and barrages them with noise (movies and music players). That doesn’t make you look better to a potential fan. Hopefully, you see why using Myspace as your only web presence isn’t very wise and would now like to create your own site. So you might be wondering, with all the available options for creating a website, why choose WordPress?
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Chapter One Why WordPress?
Free!
You can download the WordPress software from http://www.wordpress.org for no charge. There’s nothing better than free for us starving artists.
Easy to install and configure
WordPress is proud to have a five-minute install. It really is a five-minute process too, that’s not just some claim they make.
Simple to use
Why bother using something that makes your life more difficult? WordPress has Dashboard where you can easily manage your blog posts, pages, plugins, themes and the configuration of your website.
Easy to customize
Thousands of themes are available to change the look of your site. You can even tweak the code of those themes to be exactly what you want, and it’s easier than customizing your Myspace page!
Plugins
WordPress.org has a listing of plugins that add functions to your WordPress blog. These plugins range from backup tools to music players to integrated forums.
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Options
Here are just a few of the options WordPress has for your blog: • • • • • • Set a time and date to publish a posting (write now, publish later) Save drafts of a posting Make categories for posts Find out who is talking about your posts Add pages for things like your bio, show dates, etc. Require registration before commenting (prevent spam)
Built-in spam filter
WordPress comes with a spam filter plugin that prevents spam comments. Nothing looks more unprofessional than having someone offer male enhancement products on your blog postings!
Multiple contributors
With WordPress, content can be contributed from multiple people, like each of your band members. Or your manager. Or your sister. Whoever, it’s up to you.
Now that you know some of the advantages to using WordPress, let’s cover some basics about websites, just so we’re all on the same page.
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Chapter Two Website Basics
You need three things in order to have a website: a domain name, a web server, and HTML files. A domain name is the easy-to-remember address to get to a web server, for example: http://cnn.com. A web server is a computer that shares HTML files. HTML is the language that web browsers use to display websites, so HTML files contain HTML code that describes the different parts of a website. First things first, let’s get you a server.
Hosts and Servers
Web hosts are companies that provide you space on one of their servers to store your website’s files. There are bazillions of web hosts out there; you just need to choose one that fits your needs and budget. WordPress has become popular enough that many web hosts have WordPress already installed on their servers, so you won’t need to manually set it up. Here are some popular web hosts with WordPress already installed: • • • • • • Godaddy.com Bluehost.com Dreamhost.com MediaTemple.com HostICan.com LaughingSquid.com
While you could just create a blog for free on WordPress.com, they do not allow you to install plugins. They also charge for things like a domain name, which is necessary for your professional image. It’s typically less expensive to buy a web hosting account and install the WordPress software, and you get the advantage of installing plugins. I’m not going to recommend any specific web host, but I use Godaddy. I’m satisfied with their service and they are a large company, so I doubt they will go out of business any time soon. That being said, here are useful tips for selecting a web host:
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How much does it cost?
Really pay attention to the costs of hosting plans. Many vendors will advertise rates like $6.95 per month, but that’s only if you prepay for a year or two, it’s actually $10.95 to pay month-to-month. Either price isn’t bad, but I’d rather know upfront how much it’s going to cost me rather than being tricked into a price that I can’t afford.
How much space do they give you?
Honestly, anything more than 5 GB is plenty, but most hosts will give you 50-100 GB and some even offer unlimited storage. Unless you’re serving two-hour streaming movies from your site, I doubt you’ll ever get past 5 GB, even with years of song catalogs available for download.
How much bandwidth/file transfer do they allow per month?
Bandwidth, also referred to as file transfer, refers to how much data is downloaded from your site. If you have lots of large files, you’ll use more bandwidth. In general, WordPress sites don’t require much bandwidth, but if you get a huge surge of traffic (like after a concert) your bandwidth needs may go up, so it’s best to plan ahead.
Do you get a free domain name with your account?
Some plans offer a free domain name with the purchase of a hosting plan. We’ll talk more about domain names in “Domain Names” on page 12.
Do they have PHP (4.3 or greater) and MySQL (4.0 or greater) installed on their servers?
If you don’t know what these are, don’t worry, you don’t really need to know. You’ll need both for WordPress though. Most hosts already have these installed.
What is their uptime guarantee?
This refers to how often service interruptions occur. Most hosts have an uptime guarantee of 99% or better, which means your website could be unavailable for more than three days and you won’t be able to request a credit to your account for the down time. It would be rare to find one that has 100%, but more common to see at least 99.7% or so.
Do they have a 24/7 support service?
You definitely want help if something goes wrong, and having to wait for the 8 to 5 shift is unacceptable. You might end up chatting with someone from
WEBSITE BASICS 11 Bangalore, but that’s better than having your site down while your fans are trying to reach it.
Bonus Questions
Do you get free privacy registration for your domain (if a domain comes with the account)?
Privacy for domain registration allows your domain name to be registered without showing your private information on the public registers. This ould be really important if you did become well-known and didn’t want your home address out there for all the world to see.
Do they have any website promotion packages?
Some hosts give you credits for ad programs like Google Adwords, Facebook, MSN, etc. These can be very useful credits to have when you release a new album, video, or an opening slot on a tour that’s worth publicizing.
Do they support streaming audio and videos (Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc)?
While you can host your files on Youtube, Vimeo, or some other service, having more than one streaming option is wise planning.
What kind of connection do they have to the rest of the Internet?
This will typically be a connection that starts with OC, like OC48, OC96, etc. This just denotes the speed of their connection to the rest of the Internet, the higher the OC number the better. If they have a fast connection, people will be able to load your site faster which makes you look more professional.
Do they have backup systems in place?
This goes back to making sure your site is there when you need it. A lack of preparedness on their part means they aren’t worth dealing with; find someone else. A good host should have a backup generator for power outages, UPS systems on their server racks (those are battery backup power supplies), and they should be backing up the servers. If something goes wrong, you want to know that your web host will have it solved pronto and will keep your site up and running.
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Domain Choosing a Domain Name Names Choosing a domain name isn’t really that hard. Something like yourband.
com is exactly what you want. The shortest domain name you can get that is related to your band is the best option. The hard part is finding a domain name that’s not already taken. Unfortunately, there is a market for selling domain names, so people have begun registering domain names with the intention of selling them to people who will use them. Hopefully, your preferred domain name is unique enough to not be profitable for anyone other than you. Domaintools.com is a great place to start. Go to the site, type in the domain name you want, and it will either give you all the info on the current owner or say it can’t find any info on that domain. If Domain Tools can’t find any info on your preferred domain name, then register that domain name with a domain name registrar. If Domain Tools gives information about the domain, then that name is already in use. Try a variation like yourbandmusic.com, yourbandrocks.com, yourband.net, or even yourband.us. Keep trying until you find something relatively short that is related to your band.
Buying Your Domain Name
To buy your domain name, you’ll need a domain name registrar. A domain name registrar is simply a site that is officially allowed to sell domain names. Many web hosts are also domain registrars, so its often easiest to do everything in one place. It can be cheaper to use separate vendors, so explore your options and choose accordingly. Here’s just a few options for domain registrars: • • • • • Godaddy Network Solutions RegSelect Registrar Register
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Chapter Three Install WordPress
While WordPress is famous for it’s five-minute install, you will need to do some preparation beforehand. Now that you have your web host and your domain name, you’ll need to install some applications before installing WordPress on your website.
Applications FTP
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and it enables you to move files from one place to another, like from your computer to a web server. There are quite a few FTP applications; here are some popular free and paid options:
Free options: OS X
• CyberDuck - Easy to use, my personal favorite. • ilezilla - Made by the same people who make Firefox. A great apF plication, but a bit harder to use than Cyberduck, in my opinion. • Filezilla - The most commonly used FTP application for Windows. • TP Explorer - Boasts that it’s the original “Explorer-style” FTP cliF ent.
Windows
Paid options: OS X
• Fetch - Has a 15-day free trial and is very easy to use. • ransmit - Has tons of options and is one of the more popular FTP T clients for Mac.
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Windows
• mart FTP - Has a 30-day free trial. Looks like it’s well-maintained S and improved often. • WS_FTP - Also has a 30-day free trial.
Compression Utilities
Compression utilities compress files to take up less space on your hard drive. They also decompress files so you can work with them. There are many compression utilities out there, but the two most common are: • PC - Winzip • Mac - StuffIt Expander There are free versions and paid versions of each of these applications. The paid versions offer more functionality than you really need, so just download the free version.
Text Editor
Both Windows and Mac come with a text editor, so you don’t need to download and install anything. If you use Windows, you’ll use the Notepad application, which can be found by clicking the Start button, then going to All Programs > Accessories. If you use a Mac, you’ll use the Text Editor application, which can be found by opening Finder, then going to the Applications folder.
Web Browser
Windows and Mac each have a built-in web browser. For Windows, it’s Internet Explorer, for Mac, it’s Safari. You may also use another browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. None of these has any advantage over the others when installing or working with Wordpress, so use whichever you prefer.
Create Your MySQL Database
Once you have all of the above applications installed and ready to use, you’ll need to create your database. The instructions will vary based on your web host, so I suggest reading up on your host’s instructions on how to create a new database. For those who choose Godaddy as your web host, here’s how to do it: Go to godaddy.com and log into your account (the login boxes are at the top).
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From the Hosting menu, click the My Hosting Account link.
On the row of your hosting account, click the Manage Account link.
When the Hosting Control Center page has loaded, expand the fourth section called Databases and click the MySQL button.
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Click the Create Database button in the top right corner of the MySQL page.
On this form, you create, describe, and assign options to your new database. In the Description field, type something like “wp-yourbandname database”. This will remind you what this particular database is for later. Create a username and put it in the MySQL Database/User Name field. This doubles as the name of your database. Tip: For better security, choose a password that is at least 8 characters long and includes letters, numbers, and symbols. Invent a password and put in the Enter New Password field, then type the same password in the Confirm New Password field. An example of a good, strong password is: “f8u#Sh!zzl3s”, that’s “fauxshizzles” encoded as a strong password. FYI, Godaddy’s password machine does not allow the following characters in your password: • • • • • • • • • question mark (?) space ( ) caret (^) single quote (‘) double quote (“) colon (:) backslash (\) dollar sign ($) ampersand (&)
• • • • •
greater than (>) less than (<) tilde (~) semi-colon (;) accent (`)
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On the right side of the form, choose MySQL version 5.0. Write down all these settings, you’ll need them when installing WordPress. Click the OK button at the bottom of the page.
When you’re back to the MySQL page, you’ll notice under the Status column that it says Pending Setup for the database you just created. It will take a few minutes for the database to get set up. In the meantime, let’s create an FTP user and upload the Wordpress software.
Create an FTP User
Before uploading anything to your web host, make sure you have an FTP user created. On Godaddy, log into your account and go to your Hosting Control Panel.
Under Settings, select Manage FTP Users.
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On this page, you should already have an FTP user created. If so, take note of the username, then click the Change Password link to make the password something you can more easily remember. Write down both the FTP username and your new password, because you’ll need them later.
If you haven’t created an FTP user already, click the Add FTP User button in the lower right. On the Add FTP User page, fill in your desired username, password, and set the Path to < hosting root >, then click the Save link to save your new user. The page should refresh to show your new user in the list.
Five-Minute Install
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Now that you’ve created your FTP user, go to http://www.wordpress.org. You’ll need to download the WordPress software to install it on your server. Click the orange Download button on the main menu or the blue Download WordPress button; they both take you to the same page.
Click the Download WordPress button on the Download page and it should prompt you to save a zip file.
Choose a place (like your desktop) to save this file, click the OK button, and allow the file to download.
Once the zip file is downloaded, right-click (control+click for Macs) on the file and choose to open it with your compression utility. Save the files to the desktop. Your compression utility may do this automatically for you, just be sure to pay attention to where it saves the uncompressed files, so you can find them.
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YOUR BAND BLOG Find your files (they should be in a folder called “wordpress”). Inside that folder is a file named wp-config-sample.php.
Rename this file to wp-config.php.
Open the file in your text editor. Change the following: 1. Replace “putyourdbnamehere” with your databases’s name 2. eplace “usernamehere” with the username you selected for your R database 3. eplace “yourpasswordhere” with the password you made up for R your database. Save the file, but don’t close it yet. The last piece of info we need is the host name of the database. Go back to the MySQL page on your web host and refresh the page. If the database you created earlier still says Pending Setup, wait about ten minutes and check it again.
If your database says that it’s set up, click the Edit button (it has a pencil on it). Copy the host name, then return to your wp-config.php file. Replace “localhost” with the host name you copied. Save your wp-config.php file and close your text editor. Now open your FTP app. You’ll need to tell it which server to connect to, in this case, your web server. Check your application’s Help menu if you don’t
INSTALL WORDPRESS 21 know how to get it configured. Once you’ve gotten it configured, log into your account on your web host. Upload all the files and folders inside the wordpress folder onto your server. Don’t upload the folder itself.
Once they finish uploading, open your web browser and go to: http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php Type the title of your blog (like your band name) in the Blog Title field and type your email address in the Your email field. Leave that box checked and click the Install WordPress button.
Write down your temporary username and password and click the Log In button. Log in using your temporary username and password.
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Chapter Four Configure WordPress
Dashboard
Once you’re logged in, the first thing you’ll see is the WordPress Dashboard. Dashboard shows the recent activity on your blog such as comments, posts, comments awaiting approval, incoming links from other sites, etc. Now that WordPress is installed and you’ve logged in using your temporary username and password, add yourself as a user and make yourself an admin of the site. Expand the Users menu by clicking on the arrow on the Users button. Click the Add New link.
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Fill out all the info and be sure to change your Role to Administrator. Click the Add User button when finished.
Settings Menu
General
Now that you’re set up as a user, we’ll take a look at some of the settings for your new site. I won’t go through every option available, I’ll only discuss the ones I recommend you change from the default settings. Find more detailed information about the settings on WordPress’s website: http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels. Expand the Settings menu and click the General link.
Type your band’s name into the the Blog Title field.
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Change the time zone to match your location. WordPress uses Coordinated Universal Time (mysteriously abbreviated as UTC) for time settings, check the chart below for the American UTC codes: Time Zone Atlantic Eastern Central Mountain Pacific Alaskan UTC Code UTC-4 UTC-5 UTC-6 UTC-7 UTC-8 UTC-9
Change the Week Starts On drop menu to Sunday (unless you prefer to start your week on Monday or some other day), then hit the Save Changes button at the bottom to save all the changes on the General Settings page.
Writing
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Expand the Settings menu and click the Writing link. This section contains the preferences for writing blog posts.
The Size of the Post Box option is for how big you want the editing box to be when you add a new post. The default is 10, but I prefer mine a little bit bigger, so I set it to 20. Check the box for converting emoticons like :) into graphics. If you plan to post entries from your iPhone or an application on your computer, check the XML-RPC box. That tells WordPress to allow other applications to post to your blog.
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YOUR BAND BLOG The Update Services box is a list of sites that get informed when you post new content on your blog. This will help people know you are adding posts to your blog. Start with this list: http://api.moreover.com/ping http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 http://cullect.com/feed/ping http://ping.bitacoras.com http://ping.feedburner.com http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/ http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/ http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2 http://topicexchange.com/RPC2 http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2 http://www.blogoole.com/ping/ http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php http://www.wasalive.com/ping/ http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/ http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/ Click the Save Changes button.
Reading
Expand the Settings menu and click the Reading link.
What do you want people to see when they first hit your site? If it’s your blog page, then leave the first setting under Reading alone. If it’s another page (like shows or your bio), then come back here after you’ve created that page and make it your Front page diplays option. Hit the Save Changes button if you made any changes.
Discussion
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Expand the Settings menu and click the Discussion link, which contains options for how people interact with your blog. These are some of the most important settings because you want to allow interaction, but not allow anarchy (unless that’s your thing).
Default Article Settings “Check to notify any blogs linked to/from the article” - Check. Sites you link to in a blog post will be notified that you linked to their article. Sometimes, the other blogger will link back to your blog, which improves your search engine ranking. “Allow link notification from other blogs” - Check. This tells you when other bloggers have linked to one of your postings. It is considered polite practice in the blogging world to link to one of their blog posts in return. “Allow people to post comments on the article” - Check. This is all about interaction. Give your fans/readers a way to express their opinions and give you feedback. Other Comment Settings “Comment author must fill out name and email” - Check. This prevents bots (programs that scour the Internet leaving spam messages on unprotected blogs) from leaving spam messages in your comments. This isn’t the only tool to help fight that, but it certainly helps. “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” - Check. This is yet another tool to fight spam messages and helps you know who’s leaving comments. “Automatically close comments...” - Uncheck. Just because a blog entry is old, doesn’t mean that a fan wouldn’t have something insightful to offer about it. Leave as many opportunities to interact as possible.
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YOUR BAND BLOG “Enable threaded (nested) comments ___ levels deep” - Check. If you have a popular article and people start commenting on each others’ comments (this is a very good thing), this option will help keep things organized. I would suggest no more than 5 levels deep. “Break comments...” - Check. Set the first box to something a little more reasonable like 20. Change the second option to “first”, then leave the last option as “older”. This option will only show 20 comments per page and any further comments will be given a separate page other readers can visit to continue reading. Putting comments in chronological order allows people to read all the comments and follow the discussion. E-mail Me Whenever “Anyone posts a comment” - Check, unless you’re insanely popular and don’t want to see each and every comment. This goes back to interaction - seeing every comment is a good way to interact with your fans/readers. “When a comment is held for moderation” - Check. Usually, comments held for moderation have some characteristic that make it a potential spam, so check these out. If it’s a valid comment, you can approve it and allow it on the site. Before A Comment Appears “An administrator must always approve the comment” - Uncheck. The more popular you get, the more comments you’ll get, and trying to police them all will drive you crazy and take away from your time to work on music. “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” - Check. This is the easier-to-manage version of the setting above, since you only have to approve the author’s first comment.
Comment Moderation - Leave this set at 2. Spammers like to put lots of links in their comment posts, so this setting will help catch them. If a fan/reader posts several links inside a comment, it will be held for moderation, you’ll get an email about it, and you can approve or disapprove their comment.
CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 29 The big box underneath is for any words or websites that, if someone uses them in a comment, would trigger WordPress to hold the comment for moderation and notify you about it. If you’re running a G-rated site, this would be a good place to list every dirty word you can imagine, just in case someone gets rowdy or tries to prank your blog. Comment Blacklist - This is very similar to the above option, but marks the comment as spam instead of holding it for moderation.
Avatars Avatar display - Select “Show Avatars”. Many people already have an online avatar they use for leaving comments on blogs, and allowing them to be displayed with their comments is usually harmless. Maximum Rating - You can choose the rating of the avatars that you’ll allow. If you’re running a G-rated blog, then you can choose to only allow G-rated avatars. These ratings are very similar to movie ratings, so you’re probably already familiar with them. Default Avatar - This is what users will get on your blog, if they don’t already have an avatar of their own. Choose the one you prefer; I use the default, Mystery Man. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom to save all your settings for Discussions.
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Media
Expand the Settings menu and click the Media link. This section deals with the pictures you add to your site. Leave the Thumbnail size at 150x150, it’s a good size. Leave the Medium size set at 300x300. Make a note of the large size dimensions. Once you’ve loaded your theme, you’ll want to come back and change this size to match. When you come back to make changes, please notice that these options are the maximum sizes, not actual dimensions. For instance, if the content column on your blog is 500 pixels wide, and you want large-sized pictures, then set the maximum width on the Large Size to 500. The height will be automatically determined in order to keep the pictures proportional. At this point, you’re done with the Settings menu. There isn’t anything to change in the Privacy or Miscellaneous settings, and we’ll configure Permalinks later.
Pages
Pages are sort of like blog posts, but they aren’t organized by date and are changed infrequently. Most pages are information like the About Us page, Links, Photos, Contact Me, etc. For your band site, you’ll need to make pages that make sense for a band, like Bio, Photos, Music, and Shows. Since every artist/band calls them something different and has different needs, I’ll just use my site as an example of what you are able to do with pages.
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By default, WordPress creates a page titled About. Most bloggers use this page as a bio, telling who they are and the blog’s purpose. In this case, change About to Bio, then add the other music-appropriate pages.
To edit the About page, expand the Pages menu and click the Edit link.
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Put your mouse near the title of the page and, just like on the users panel, an Edit link will appear underneath the page’s title; click on Edit.
The Page Editor looks very similar to the Blog Post Editor that you’ll see later and uses many of the same tools. Up at the top, there’s a box with the word About in it. This is the page’s title. Change that title to be whatever you want to call your Bio page (I’m using Bio). Below that is a larger box for editing the content of the page. Here is where you will paste in your bio. Edit the text to your liking.
Once your bio is on the page and formatted to your liking, scroll to the bottom of the page and uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkboxes under the Discussion section. This way, you will only receive comments and pings for blog posts, not pages.
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When you’re finished editing your Bio page, click the Update Page button in the Publish section on the far right side of the page. This will save your edits and publish the page immediately. Now that you’ve edited an existing page, I’ll show you how to add a page from scratch.
To add a new page to your blog, expand the Pages menu and click on the Add New link. Type the title of your page in the field at the top. In the content field, enter what you would like people to see when they open this page.
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Underneath the page content field are two boxes: Custom Fields and Discussion. Custom Fields is for putting specific information on the page, which is usually something that can show up as part of your theme or the page template (more on that in a bit). Unless you know what you’re doing, you can just bypass the Custom Field section altogether. In the Discussion section, uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkboxes, just like on the Bio page.
Attributes
On the right side of the Page Editor is a box called Attributes, which contains several options for your pages. Parent The first attribute is the parent page. This refers to how pages are organized. Parent pages are higher in the hierarchy than the child pages. For example, you could have a Media page that has three child pages: Music, Videos, and Photos. They are all media, but let’s say, for the sake of the example, you wanted them on separate pages. When you make the Media page, it’s parent would be the Main Page. When you make the Music page, it’s parent would be the Media page. The Videos and Photos pages would each have the Media page as their parent page also. For a band site, you probably won’t require enough pages to use this organization, so create each page with the parent as Main Page.
Template
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The template refers to a feature that some themes use to give more options for how your pages are displayed. If you pick a theme that has templates for your pages, you’ll see them listed in this drop menu. If not, just leave it set to the default value. Order If you have a specific order in which you’d like your pages to display, use this box to put them in order. The ordering starts with zero and works it’s way up, so the first page on your menu would be #0, the second page is #1, third page is #2, and so on. If you don’t put a number here, it will order your pages by when they were created.
Publish
The last section on the Page Editor panel is the Publish section. The Save Draft button will save the page, but not publish it. This is really good if you don’t have your content nailed down yet and want to come back to it later. The Preview button shows what the page will look like once it’s published. This is very handy for testing the placement of graphics or videos. The Status field shows you the status of your page: published, draft, etc. The Visibility field shows you whether you’ve marked the page as private, draft, or public. The Publish field lets you set a time and date when the page will be published for the public to view. This is a very handy option for scheduling when posts get published, but Pages should be published immediately, so don’t change it from the default setting of immediately. Fill out all the appropriate fields for your new page and click the Publish button when finished. Repeat this process for each new page.
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Customizing Themes WordPress Now that your site is installed and you have created pages, the next thing to
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do is work on the look. You could choose to bust out your design skills and make it look exactly the way you want, or you could opt for the easier route and find an existing theme to customize. It’s much easier to tweak an existing theme than to make your own. There are literally thousands and thousands of WordPress themes out there, most available for free, and you can save countless hours by simply choosing a theme that resembles how you would like your site to appear. Unfortunately, there are thousands and thousands of existing themes out there, so finding one you like may take a while. Alternately, you could hire a designer to custom design a theme just for you, but it is expensive. While I can’t tell you what theme to download, I can give you some helpful tips on finding a theme.
Free or Custom-made?
The first thing you’ll need to decide is: do I want a free theme or one custom designed for my site? While the vast majority of us will probably opt for the free one, some may want their site to stand out or have custom features that can’t be found on free themes. There are plenty of options for both camps and either way, Google is your friend.
Pay more attention to the layout than the colors
By layout, I mean where things are located on the page. Do you like where the columns are located? Should the menu be in that spot? Do you want the menu above your logo? Below it? What about having a column on the left, or right, or both? Most people don’t really notice these particulars when viewing a website, but its vital for this part of designing your site. Some people only see the colors and will pass on a great layout because it’s purple, not black or brightly colored instead of muted. Borders, text, and backgrounds can be changed to different colors easily, but embedded pictures are more difficult to manipulate.
Widget-Friendly = Good
I’ll go over more info about widgets in “Widgets” on page 113, but for now, just understand that being able to use widgets is a good thing.
Customization Options
Some themes have options built-in for customizing the theme, which saves you time.
Documentation
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Find a theme whose developer has his/her own website, or possibly a site just for the theme itself. This will be important if you need questions answered while customizing.
SEO-Optimized
We’ll learn more about SEO in “HOW I GOT TO #1” on page 111, but if your theme says it’s SEO optimized, that will help you in the long run.
How to Install Themes
Automatically
To find a theme, expand the Appearance menu and click the Add New Themes links which will allow you to search the WordPress Theme Directory.
You can search by features by checking the box(es) for the option(s) you want, or if you know the name of the theme you want, just type it in the Search field and hit the Search button.
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When you’ve found a theme you like, click the Preview link to see an example site using that theme. If you want more info about the theme, click the Details link, which will expand to show you the author, rating, version, and when it was last updated.
To install the theme, click the Install link under the name of the theme. Then click the Install Now button on the confirmation window.
Manually
You can also find WordPress themes by searching Google for WordPress Themes, which will turn up at least 32 million results (no exaggeration). To install a theme that you’ve downloaded, open your FTP application and connect to your web host. Upload your newly downloaded theme folder into this folder on your web host: /wp-content/ themes. If you downloaded more than one theme, upload each one to this same folder.
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Using Themes
To use a theme on your site, expand the Appearance menu and click the Themes link.
At the top of the themes page, you’ll see the current theme. Any other themes you’ve installed will appear on this page as well.
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You can preview your site with any theme by clicking the Preview link. If you like what you see, you can activate it by clicking the “Activate Theme Name” link in the top right corner of the preview window. You can also activate a theme by clicking the Activate link on the Manage Themes page. Keep trying out themes until you find one that you think will work for your site.
HTML, CSS, & PHP
HTML is an acronym for Hyper-Text markup Language. This is the language the Internet is built on. Almost every website you see uses HTML. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. In essence, CSS is the code that tells the page what to look like. All your themes will have at least one CSS file included in the download. PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. WordPress was written in PHP. It allows easy interactivity with the database you set up earlier and is used by many sites on the Internet. You don’t need to know these three languages in order to customize a theme, but it does help considerably. I debated writing some tutorials about these three here, but frankly, each would require a separate book to explain properly. I recommend going to a local bookstore or Amazon.com and finding some books about these languages if you really want to get into them. Since you’re a musician and you bought this book, I’d bet you’d rather spend your time playing and writing than learning web development languages.
CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 41 In that case, check out http://codex.wordpress.org, especially the sections about Blog Design and Site Development. The Codex site is an explanation of the parts of WordPress and how they work. There’s a lot of helpful information there about the parts of most WordPress themes. Another good source is the documentation for the theme. Hopefully you chose a theme with its own site and can go there to ask questions.
Want More?
Thanks for reading these sample pages of Your Band Blog. The rest of book walks you through every detail of configuring WordPress for the best results, what plugins to use for your band, what other websites integrate with your WordPress site, how to improve your search engine rankings, and much more! Click the Add to Cart button below and start building your band’s website today!
