With the Works

I received an e-mail last night from a client with 2 WP blog sites. She hasn’t started working on the second one yet, so she was really confused when she took a look at it and couldn’t figure out how to log in. I thought she meant that she had forgotten her log-in codes, so I sent them to her.

I think I might have been wrong, I took a look at her blog and I think I know what she meant. She didn’t have a link to her admin area on her site because the link to it (Meta)wasn’t in the sidebar of her second blog. Without it, she had to manually input the address in her browser.

Not all WP themes are designed with everything you might want in the sidebars, so you have to add or remove the widgets you need. Everyone with a blog will at some point want to know how to do this, so take some time and watch this video.

This tutorial shows you how to remove and add widget items to your sidebar. Take a look and then experiment yourself- you’ll be amazed at what you can add to improve the function of your site.  There are hundreds of widgets for you to download at wordpress.org.

This video can be seen full screen (it’s easier to see where the cursor moves) by clicking on the button in the image below. When the video is over, use the “Esc” key on your keyboard to get back to this page.

Once your blog is online, you will get lots of spam comments. To help deal with this, you need to activate the SPAM fighter, Askimet, a plugin installed by default in WordPress. I suggest you read the FAQ section http://akismet.com/faq/ to find out more.

In order to activate this plugin, you need a “WordPress API key”, a password/code to start using the plugin.The Askimet key is free, but you’ll need to sign up for a free account at WordPress.com to get it. Sign up for an account now.
NOTE: They will send you your API code in the welcome email from WordPress.com, scroll down, it’s near the bottom.

Once you have your Askimet key, take a look at this video to follow along and find out how easy it is to activate Askimet.

 

Watch this video and find out how.

I’ve created a little video to walk you through the steps. This video is slow moving at times because of the video creation software, but eventually it moves along.

 

When it comes to creating websites, we have more choices than we once did. People who want a web presence often don’t know where to start. As my good friend Kim says, “you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it”.

Most of us want websites we can control ourselves through a content management system (CMS). What people fail to understand is that this will cost them in either time or money. A CMS can be purchased for a price, or you can have your site created in one of the open-source CMS software (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.), but the learning curve with these can be steep. You have to ask yourself, “How much time do I have to learn this, and am I going to do it often enough to remember it?”

Last year, an aquaintence of mine told me that she had signed up for Yahoo Small Business so she can make herself a website. She is a writer and wanted a place to showcase her creative writing and get “known”. When I got home, I took a look at the info about Yahoo Small Business. I thought it was rather simplistic and a little expensive, but it did have a content management system. Oddly enough, my friend’s domain is still parked with an “under construction” notice on it. Perhaps it isn’t as easy as it looks.

My favourite way to create simple websites is to use WordPress software. Although this is database-driven blog software, you can make a small website with it that will work for many people. I often create custom themes for clients and then teach them how to use the dashboard to update the site themselves. I find that most people can manage it without too much trouble. If they find it too time consumming or challenging, they send me updates and I update the site for them.

Many people are creating sites using Joomla, one of the most widely used open-source software for creating database-driven websites. I installed Joomla for a friend of mine who has a lot of time and the interest to learn it. I was a bit surprised to find out that she’s having trouble learning the back end administration side of Joomla. She taught herself to use WordPress in a weekend, so I expected the same speed with Joomla. I’ve read that Drupal is even more difficult to learn.

Whichever way you decide to create your online presence, I can create custom HTML templates or themes for sites made with Joomla, Drupal or WordPress that are unique to your site.