A lot of bloggers are often on the lookout for an excellent WordPress widget that does what they need it to do. However, if you are familiar with coding, you may find that it is not that complicated to create a simple WordPress widget. For the purpose of becoming familiar with creating a widget, you will be shown how t create a simple widget that chooses a random post from your blog, with an image and then displays it on your sidebar. It is basically a simple “check out this interesting post” type of widget meant to help your readers to find more of your posts.

Each of the pages within your WordPress blog is comprised of a query to your posts’ database. This means that the query will not remain the same depending on which page is being viewed. You may want the query to locate the “10 most viewed blog posts” when viewing the homepage and to locate the “latest 10 blog posts for photos category” when the viewer is on the category archives. The query will return a result set depending on which page of the blog is being viewed with each result being run through the blog template’s “main loop.”

Types of WordPress Widgets

There are two types of WP widgets and they are:

Static Widgets – There are widgets which can be used to position some unchanging HTML code or text in a region within a site. Such widgets are simple to create and will be often adequate for most of the content you may need for sidebars on your blog.
Dynamic Widgets – These are widgets that provide you with full control regarding which pages of your blogs your widgets will be visible. It also allows you to either show or hide your widgets.

Essential Widget Code

The first step to creating your own simple WordPress widget is to create a new .php file in the directory for wp-content/plugins. You can, for the mean time, name the file as random-blog-post-widget.php

Below is a sample random-blog-post-widget.php file and you can modify the section where the names and description are located. However, keep the rest of the code untouched for the meantime. Though this is a basic skeleton widget, the functionality will be entered later at the point that says “//WIDGET CODE GOES HERE”

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Random Blog Post Widget

Plugin URI: http://goldenretriever.me/

Description: Random Blog Post Widget grabs a random blog post and the associated post thumbnail to display on the sidebar

Author: Golden Retriever

Version: 1

Author URI: http://goldenretriever.me/

*/

class RandomBlogPostWidget extends WP_Widget

{

function RandomPostWidget()

{

$widget_ops = array(‘classname’ => ‘RandomPostWidget’, ‘description’ => ‘Displays a random blog post with thumbnail’ );

$this->WP_Widget(‘RandomPostWidget’, ‘Random Post and Thumbnail’, $widget_ops);

}

function form($instance)

{

$instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $instance, array( ‘title’ => ” ) );

$title = $instance['title'];

?>

<p><label for=”<?php echo $this->get_field_id(‘title’); ?>”>Title: <input id=”<?php echo $this->get_field_id(‘title’); ?>” name=”<?php echo $this->get_field_name(‘title’); ?>” type=”text” value=”<?php echo attribute_escape($title); ?>” /></label></p>

<?php

}

function update($new_instance, $old_instance)

{

$instance = $old_instance;

$instance['title'] = $new_instance['title'];

return $instance;

}

function widget($args, $instance)

{

extract($args, EXTR_SKIP);

echo $before_widget;

$title = empty($instance['title']) ? ‘ ‘ : apply_filters(‘widget_title’, $instance['title']);

if (!empty($title))

echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;;

// WIDGET CODE GOES HERE

echo “<h1>This is my new random blog post widget!</h1>”;

echo $after_widget;

}

}

add_action( ‘widgets_init’, create_function(”, ‘return register_widget(“RandomBlogPostWidget”);’) );?>

At this stage, your widget is not much of one. All it does is display “this is my new random blog post widget!” However, it allows you to change the widget title and that is a critical feature for any type of widget.

Adding A New Query and The Loop

In order to create a new query to the database of your blog, you will have to use the function query_posts() together with a number to parameters and then run the output using what is known as a while loop.

To make a new query to your blog database, you need to use the query_posts() function along with a few parameters, then run through the output using a while loop. You will need to replace the code:

<h1>This is my new random blog post widget!</h1>

With the new code:

// WIDGET CODE GOES HERE

query_posts(”);

if (have_posts()) :

while (have_posts()) : the_post();

the_title();

endwhile;

endif;

wp_reset_query();

The query is pretty basic that uses zero formatting and default options of the output. The default option will most likely capture your blog’s ten latest posts. It is still very basic. It can be improved by simply adding some HTML using the command ECHO and then create a link using a function called get_the_permalink()

query_posts(”);

if (have_posts()) :

echo “<ul>”;

while (have_posts()) : the_post();

echo “<li><a href=’”.get_permalink().”‘>”.get_the_title().”</a></li>”;

endwhile;

echo “</ul>”;

endif;

wp_reset_query();

To make the query pick one random post, some parameters will need to be specified:

query_posts(‘posts_per_page=1&orderby=rand’);

You may modify the code to any number of blog posts and there is a wide range of code that you can include within the query which can expand, change the order, or make restrictions of the query results. Once you refresh, you will be able to see that there is a display featuring your latest blog posts plus one randomly chosen post.

In order to display a thumbnail of the post, you will need to replace a code

query_posts(‘posts_per_page=1&orderby=rand’);

if (have_posts()) :

echo “<ul>”;

while (have_posts()) : the_post();

echo “<li><a href=’”.get_permalink().”‘>”.get_the_title();

echo the_post_thumbnail(array(220,200));

echo “</a></li>”;

endwhile;

echo “</ul>”;

endif;

wp_reset_query();

The above codes, as you will now see, enables you to easily create your own simple WordPress widget. You may be able to make sense of most of the code but you will be able to make modifications in order to customize the widget by simply changing some outputs or variables through the use of some HTML.

Being among the most popular platform for blogs, WordPress is popular mainly because of how easy it is to use. During the period before widgets were implemented, WP users needed to open theme files in order to insert code which is easy for coders and highly advanced bloggers who have the technical skills.

Should you decide to create widgets for your own blog or for someone else’s, widgets are great ways to provide bloggers control over their sites even if they are not proficient with coding.

Should you have created or modified your WP theme, you will be familiar with a file known as finctions.php that allows you to build some functionality within your theme. A lot of people will ask why you need to bother with a plugin when you have a perfectly capable functions.php? The answer is that it all depends on what your needs are. If you are looking for something that will enable the people who use your site to be able to send messages to one another, then a plugin is a good idea.

A major difference between a plugin and the function.php is that once you change your theme, any changes or modifications you may have made will cease to perform or function. Plugins will continue to perform even if you switch themes which are why they are more preferable than complex webs of codes within the function.php.

Creating a Plugin

On a basic level, plugins are made up of two parts: Plugin header information, Code for the plugin.

Header Information

If you are creating a plugin, you need to start by making use of a PHP tag

<?php
You will also need to incorporate a little header information which will start out like:

/*

Name the Plugin

You will only need to have the name of your plugin here. Should you so choose, you can end the header section by using */

Your whole header section should appear like:

/*

Plugin Name: My Plugin Name

*/

If you take the time to look through WordPress.org, you will notice that there is a mock complete header section which appears somewhat like this:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: My Plugin Name

Plugin URI: http://URI_Of_Page_Describing_Plugin_and_Updates

Description: A brief description of the Plugin.

Version: The Plugin’s Version Number, e.g.: 1.0

Author: Name Of The Plugin Author

Author URI: http://URI_Of_The_Plugin_Author

License: A “Slug” license name e.g. GPL2

*/

?>

It appears much longer because it contains some items that you will not really need if you are trying to create a personal plugin. Although it is always nice to have a description of what the plugin is supposed to do because you may forget over time. And it is always a good idea to have a link that tells you where to get the code for the plugin if you need to look at it. That is why you should include only those elements – the name of the plugin, a description of what it does, and the link to where you got the code (preferably two different sources so that if one no longer works, there is still another you can refer to)

Thus, your plugin should look like:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Login or Logout on Menu

Description: The plugin puts a login or logout notification on the menu of WP Custom menus

Original code found <a href=”http://yellowlabradors.com/creating-your-wordpress-3-menus/#add_login”>here</a>.

More explanation <a href=”http://ilovecanines.org/how-to-add-a-loginlogout-link-to-a-wordpress-menu/”>here</a>.

*/

You may include more information if you prefer. You may include your name as the plugin author and you may also make use of the URL spot to include your link to the source of the original code. This is meant only for you and not the general public so you can include whatever you like provided you have a name for the plugin.

Coding

As far as the code is concerned, all you need to do is to drop the code within the file body.

It is critical for you to remember that there is a closing PHP tag that appears like ?> so you need to make sure that the code of your plugin must be placed BEFORE the closing tag. Just so you are able to prevent yourself from committing an error of placing something after the closing tag, it can be totally eliminated provided that there is an opening PHP tag that looks like <? php

Completed Plugin Code

After you have placed the code within your file, the complete plugin should look like:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Login Logout on Menu

Description: Plugin puts login or logout menu on WordPress Custom menus.

Original code found <a href=”http://yellowlabrador.com/creating-your-wordpress-3-menus/#add_login”>here</a>.

More explanation <a href=”http://ilovecanines.org/how-to-add-a-loginlogout-link-to-your-wordpress-menu/”>here</a>.

*/

add_filter(‘wp_nav_menu_items’, ‘add_login_logout_link’, 10, 2);

function add_login_logout_link($items, $args) {

ob_start();

wp_loginout(‘index.php’);

$loginoutlink = ob_get_contents();

ob_end_clean();

$items .= ‘<li>’. $loginoutlink .’</li>’;

return $items;

}

Save Your File

There are some things that you need to be very careful about while saving your file. The main thing is that the file must be saved using a .php extension. If you are using Notepad++ it should not be a problem. However, if you are using Notepad (the one in Windows) and you find that it refuses to save your file as a .php then you need to enclose the file name within quotation marks.

“login-or-logout-on-my-menu.php”

Zip the File

After saving the .php file, you will need to compress or zip it so that you can upload it to the admin area of your WordPress. DO NOT put the file into a folder to zip it; just zip the file.

Upload then Activate

Once the file has been zipped, all that is left is to upload and activate it the same way you would other plugins in WP.

If There are Problems…

Should there be a problem with the plugin, you can check a few things:

Check that the code works before you use it. This can be done by initially putting the code within your functions.php file in order to check if it works. If you have checked, and it is working, make sure you remove it from functions.php or there will be a conflict.
Ensure that you are using the correct code. Make sure that it starts with an opening tag <? php and that you do not put the code after the closing tag – remember to eliminate the closing tag ?>
Open the header with /* and close the header off with */
Check that you have copied the code from the original source correctly
Check that the original code is not one that needs another action like having more code inside the theme files
Check that the file has been saved having a .php extension

WordPress has many CMS (content management system) features.  Those features are such that they can allow you to create your very own WP theme. Firstly, you need to understand that creating your own WordPress theme means you will need to be familiar with coding and are familiar with elements like the codes for colors. The codes given below are just guides meant to enable you to understand how the parts of a WP theme come together to make up a whole.

Setting Your Workstation

Creating your own theme starts with setting up your own server on your PC by using either a WAMP or XAMPP (open source web server or mini server resource) for Windows or MAMP for Macintosh computers. These are tools which enable you to perform local testing for WP. They also allow you to work without having to transfer files constantly through FTP.

For editing code, you will need appropriate software like Notepad++, which is free, as it has syntax highlighting while providing you with a clean interface for your code work.

File Folders You  Will Need

In the folder containing your WordPress installation, go to wp-content/themes/ and create a folder named “New 3.0 Theme”. This is where we will hold all of our files during this tutorial. Now create the following files and folders:

/images

style.css

header.php

index.php

single.php

footer.php

archive.php

page.php

sidebar.php

functions.php

First of All – Style.css

Folder style.css is one that will contain the style elements of your WP template. Initially, you will need to make use of the folder in order to declare the template name, author name as well as link, and template description, and the version. As you create your own WordPress theme, the folder style.css of one of two required to enable the theme to work. The second one is index.php.

These are information that you can change or modify anytime. However, it is critical that all is within the comments in order to avoid any adverse affect to the definitions made.

Then, you will have to create basic definitions which will be implemented later in the new template’s PHP files.

To declare specifications for the fonts, and background color to be used on the website the tag is being used. Then the style attributes are declared for headers and the links that will be used all throughout your theme. You can modify the code to change fonts to those that you prefer. The same goes for the color of your background (as well as font colors). You may do a little research regarding the best web colors to use in order to maximize the potential of your theme.

The full size of your web page is under the #wrapper. The header is quite obviously #header. The site’s blog posts will be contained in #blog. Then there is the .sidebar for, obviously the sidebar, and the footer is #footer will be where the basic definitions will be contained.

The Next Step – Header.php

The second step is the creation of the header.php. It will contain your site’s logo and your custom navigation.

The code must be within the header.php of all themes.

Next Step – Add Your Custom Navigation

You now have your header.php with the site’s basic info and your blog’s name, you can then add your custom navigation menu. However, before you add the header.php code, you will need to first open the functions.php and then add some code for enabling custom menus.

In order to implementing the custom navigation menu into your theme, you need to add some code at the need of your header.php doc.

Style Your Navigation

To make your header more aesthetic, you will have to make a class within your style.css called nav

There are some basic declarations like the background, width of the navigation, its alignment, and display value.

To add styles to your links and dropdowns, you will need some code.

Step 5 – Index.php

Your website’s home page is the index.php. It is to contain the code that includes the header, sidebar, and the footer.

Enabling  Thumbnails

In order to enable the thumbnails, you will need to go to the functions.php and right after the code for menu navigation, the following code must be present.

You need to note that the first value of 520 is actually for width and the other is for height.

The Sidebar.php

This will display information on the sidebar of your site. If you remember, you have already included a file for the sidebar within the index.php so all you need to do is to add this code onto that file so that the sidebar will become visible in your homepage.

The Single Post Page

Your single.php will be used for a single post page. Similar to the index.php though it is added in your comments-template div, as well as the code for including comments.php

Page.php

To create a page, you need to use a different file to display content which you have typed onto the page – page.php.

Custom Background and Feed Links

In order to enable the feature in WordPress that allows you to modify or to create your website background, you need a short code.

You will also need to add some code to your functions.php

Footer.php

To create your footer, you will need the following code:

You now have all the elements you need to have your theme. However, the codes given above can be modified. For examples, the codes for the widths, heights, colors, and even site names can be changed as per your own website. These are simply meant as guides. Though most of the codes will work well in WordPress 3.0, you will be able to make adaptations to suit your tastes and needs.

There are also many other features of WordPress 3.0 which will be very helpful in enabling you to create your own themes. However, it is best to practice first and familiarize yourself with the folders and files that you will need to use and which codes go to which files or folders.

Although WordPress is an open source application which is originally meant of blogging, there are a lot of people who have made some modifications to the software to make it serve as an e-commerce functionality. This allows many individuals make use of WordPress as their personal blog, a content management system for their websites, or as a storefront.

There are several ways that you can make use of WordPress as an E-Commerce resource:

By opening a store – There are many WordPress plugins, freely available, that can provide e-commerce functionality. You are simply meant to install the plugin and you can stock your very own online store by simply adding pictures and corresponding descriptions for those products, and to have a shopping cart built-in to enable people to buy from your store online. There are also plugins that will enable you to accept payments from your WP site.

Selling Ads – If you are a WP blogger, there are ways of making money by selling ads on your blog or by selling items on your site. Many merchants that sell services or products which are somewhat related to your blog’s theme may decide to pay you to place their ads onto your WordPress blog. There are also several plugins that enable you to insert advertising directly within your blog posts. You can also consider having sponsored posts which merchants can pay you for providing honest reviews of their service or products.

Affiliate sales – You can earn money from your WordPress site by using it to sell services or products. There are many affiliate marketing opportunities and you will get paid for your efforts when a reader clicks on a link and buys the products you are selling.

Promoting your own business – You can also make use of your WordPress site to blog about your business (be it an online business or an actual shop) so as to reach out to much more people. You can promote your products and build interest.

Turning on the E-commerce

You can sell items through a WordPress blog by making use of plugins which will provide a “shopping cart.” The moment the plugins are installed and then configures, you can now sell products and services on your blog. There are plenty of plug-ins that are available for free. There are also plugins that are available for a price. They can be found within the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.

Features of E-Commerce Plugins

Many of the Ecommerce plugins found in the WordPress Plugins Directory allow you to make us of a tangible or digital listing of products and services. Your site visitors can look at video-based, text-based, or image-based product descriptions. The moment a site visitor finds a product or service which appeals to him or her, that person can click the “Add to Shopping Cart” (or something similar). The plugins will then store the data while the site visitor looks through other products. The moment the site visitor has decided that he or she now wants to make a purchase then he or she will click on “Checkout” (or something that may be similar). When this happens, the visitor then provides billing details and information, after which, the purchase can be confirmed.

Different Methods of Payment Available to Site Visitors

A major advantage of making going Ecommerce with WordPress blogs is that the plugins enable the acceptance of more than one secure type of payments. These can include virtual checks, debit cards, PayPal, or credit cards. However, each of those payment methods needs to be connected to a bank or PayPal account owned by the site owner. The setting up of the different payment methods will be dependent on the plugin’s configuration. 

How Products Can Be Delivered to the Customer

Products which are available for delivery by downloads can be made available to the customer right after they have been purchased. Products which are tangible will have to be physically shipped to the customer.

Most Common E-Commerce WordPress Plugins

There are countless plugins which you can use to go Ecommerce with your WP blog. There are, however, plugins that are more popular than others. Some of those plugins are : 

WordPress ECommerce – This is a simple, yet very popular plugin which is compatible with systems of payment like Google Checkout and Paypal.

eShop — Is a plugin that give you very good basic stock control. It allows you to create your own “out of stock” notification, provides support for check, PayPal or cash payments. It also provides adjustable shipping options based on weight and number of items, as well as several options for product listings.

Shopp – The plugin is simple to use and has the ability to take care of many aspects of ecommerce like tracking sales, and methods and shipping. The plugin can also be used so that orders that have been made can be transferred to another plugin for accounting.

WooCommerce – This plugin is similar to WP Ecommerce and can turn a WordPress blog into an online shop which is fully functional. It can be customized and can work with any WP theme. It also offers integration with eWay, PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.net.

Installing a WP E-Commerce Plugin

Different Ecommerce plugins have varying methods of installation.  Most of the time, you only need to download a compressed or zipped file and then upload the file to the website’s server. You then proceed to configure your chosen plugin – set up methods of payment, providing product descriptions and, for those who are familiar with codes, tweaking the plugin to suit their purposes.

If you are thinking of setting up an online shop or turning your blog into an Ecommerce site, you can easily do so by simply browsing through the available plugins. You simply need to go through them, choose what will work best for you, download the plugin and configure it so that the products and services you want to be made available for sale will become ready for your site visitors. There are so many shopping cart plugins which can work perfectly with WordPress sites in creating a means to go Ecommerce.

When you are trying to build a website or are trying to tweak an existing one, it helps to have a good theme. A theme, simply put, is how your website will look. Luckily, for those who use WordPress, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of free themes available which you can use. They can be extremely useful for people who have very little coding skills. You simply need to make use of search engines to help you to find such free WP themes and choose the one that appeals most to you.

Why Customizing a WordPress Theme is Important

The problem with making use of free resources is that it is guaranteed that you are not the only person making use of it. This means that there are a lot of other websites that look the same way.  Though this can be perfectly okay if you are not that particular about how your website looks. But, if you want to be unique or be set apart from the millions of websites on the internet, then you will need to find ways to make your own theme even if you are not skilled in using codes.

When using WordPress, you will need to be, at the very least, familiar with some codes in order to understand what makes up a theme. And, if you want to create a theme from scratch, then you will need to be well-versed in HTML, CSS or PHP.  There is, though, some middle ground. You can simply choose an existing template that is as close as to the “look” the you want to have for your site and customize it so that you end up getting what you want.

What Makes Up A WordPress Theme

Before you go rushing off to change your chosen WP theme, you should understand the theme’s structure and how things work. The way it works is that you should take a look at the default folder for themes which would look like wp-content/themes/default and in that folder you will find that there are a lot of PHP files which is called template file and a single file labeled style.css.

Whenever you look at a WordPress website’s front page, there are actually a number of template files being used to make that page. The following template files are usually in use:  index.php file, header.php file, sidebar.php file, and the footer.php file. They are the files that will be making up the final appearance and content of the website’s front page.

Thus, the main structure of a typical WP theme is made up of a header, sidebar, content, and footer which are divided between blocks referred to as the PHP files or template files

Customizing WP Themes

Now that you are aware of which parts of your WP website can be altered, you can begin making customizations. However, there are things that you need to keep in mind:

Make use of a child theme – a child theme is one that mimics the parent theme (the main WordPress theme) and it allows you to make modifications to the way the parent theme functions. All you need to do is activate the child theme and you can ensure that the modifications you make to template files do not become overwritten when the parent theme is upgraded. This means you can rest assured that any mistakes you make (after all, learning happens when you make mistakes) do not destroy any critical files.

Customize, modify or edit only the areas you want to change – There is no point making changes to other parts of the page when, for example, all you want to do is change the way the header looks.

Customize WP Theme – The Basics

First things first. You need to know that there is an area in WordPress where you can make all the changes that need to be done. All you need to do is login to your WP dashboard, look for the “Appearance” menu, and then select the button for “Editor.”

If you have no idea about HTML, then you will probably want to faint. But HTML is not all bad and there are some basics that you will need to know. Among those basics are:

align-left  (when you want pictures or texts to be aligned to the left)

align-center (when you want pictures or texts to be centered)

align-right (when you want pictures or texts to be aligned to the right)

h1 or heading 1   (used only for the title or name of the website)

h2 or heading 2  (for important headlines within the body of the text or other areas of the site)

h3 or heading 3  (used for any sud-headings under the second heading – not as important as h2)

h4 or heading 4   (not as important as h3 and so on until heading 6 or h6)

margin-top (represents the margin at the top of the chosen element)

margin-bottom (represents the bottom margin of the chosen element)

margin-left (represents the margin at element’s left)

margin-right (represents the margin at element’s right)

px (short for Pixel which is a measure of size; goes hand in hand with margin)

Now that you know the basics, HTML no longer appears deadly. Now, before you jump in to make changes, it is important to have a clear idea of what are the elements you want to modify or change, for example, “make H3 align to the right”. Then you will need to find out which in which file that element (H3 – which you want to align to the right) is located. To do this, you can make use of the browser search to determine if the element to be changed is within the file you think it might be in.

Before making any alterations, make sure that the original code has been copy pasted somewhere – it is extremely critical to have a backup copy at all times. This is more than extremely important when you have no in-depth knowledge of HTML because you may make mistakes.

Make your changes or modifications and then click on “Update File” after which you need to refresh the website in order to check what changes have been made.

This procedure is something that can easily be made use of when making most of the customization changes that you would like. Make sure you start with the simple ones first in order to become used to the procedure.

Never forget to make backups of the original codes before you make any changes.

Probably the best way to reach out to the rest of the world is to have your own website. This is especially true for organizations, businesses, and other important agents. A website is your presence on the internet. It is your storefront or your façade. In today’s world, a vast majority of people spend time on the internet. They browse, shop, study, blog, communicate, and sell products online. This makes a websites of major importance.

Although having a website is a great asset, you may not have the means or the technical know-how needed to create and maintain a professional website.

Because not everyone is an expert at creating websites, there are platforms which allow people to make use of their features in order to build a site. Among those open source platforms is WordPress. It is considered as the most user-friendly platforms for building websites.

WordPress – What is it?

WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) which is considered as open source. This means that anyone can make use of it and to develop it. WordPress is also among the most popular tools for blogging. It was released in 2003 and has become the most popular platforms on the internet.

How to Get a WordPress Website

There are two ways that you can set up your WordPress website. You can either choose to set up a website which is hosted for free at WordPress, or you can hire a web hosting and domain registration service. A free website that is hosted on WP will tend to have what is known as a subdomain. For example, you are thinking of having a website called “mypetpoodle.com,” if you choose to have it hosted at WP, then the website’s name will look like “mypetpoodle.wordpress.com.” The web address shows up as a part of “wordpress.com” and is therefore known as a sub domain. This tends to appear rather long, and less professional than having your own web address or “mypetpoodle.com.”

In order to have your own web address, you will need to register your own domain name and once you have your own domain name, you can go ahead and hire a hosting service. There are a lot of companies that offer both web hosting and registration of domain names and they can make things much easier for you. Otherwise, if you have two different companies handling those two services, then you may have to request your hosting service provider to give you the “name servers” or ns which you need to send to the service that registered your domain in order for the domain name to become associated with the hosting service. This allows your website to be uploaded on the server.

You will need to make sure that the web host has a PHP version of 4.3 or later, and MySQL of the version 4.1.2 or later running on their servers. Should you find this confusing, simply ask the web hosting service if they support:

PHP 4.3 or later

MySQL 4.1.2 or later

Mod_rewrite Apache module

If they do not, then try to find another web hosting service provider.

Downloading WordPress

Installing WP is quite simple. The process takes about a mere 5 to 6 minutes. There are also a lot of web hosting service companies that provide the necessary tools that install WP automatically.

Before installing WP, you need to have access to some elements:

Text Editor

Web Server Access

Web Browser

FTP CLient

Once the above elements are all present, you can download the latest version WP on your computer and make sure you unzip it. You should open the WP files folder and try to find the file called wp-config-sample.php and rename it to wp-config.php after which you need to open it using any text editor.

Proceed to write out the details of your database. Then you will need to login to the hosting panel. Try to locate the MySQL section and make a new database then save the information on file. Should you have doubts as to how to make a database, you can ask your web host company for help.

Uploading to Server

Uploading files onto a server can be tricky for a first timer. It gets easier though after you find out how it works. The principle is similar to using your computer to copy files from one folder to another. The main difference is that you are in essence copying files from your computer to the server or remote computer. You will need to use a login and a password to be able to use it.

After you login to the hosting panel, you need to locate FTP accounts and create a new user. Jot down the information like the FTP name, user name, and password. Type http://www.coreftp.com onto your browser and download FTP client, follow the instructions on how to install it and add a new account. Connect to your website’s server using your own FTP information.

Depending on what your server settings are, generally, WP files need to be uploaded to either www or to public_html folders. If there is some confusion, then contact your web host company for assistance.

You can now finally upload the WP files onto the server.

WordPress Installation

When the uploading is all done, it is time to install WordPress. Open your browser and type in www.mypetpoodle.com/wp-admin/install.php and WP should be installed.

There are 3 main folders within the WP installation directory – wp-content, wp-admin, and wp-includes. There are also some more files within the root directory. There are two subfolders within the wp-content; one for themes and one for plugins. Once a theme or a plugin has been uploaded using FTP then that theme or that plugin is now available to become activated within the admin panel of your WordPress. Any multimedia or image files that you upload when you are creating a page or a post within your website using WordPress, they are stored within the folder labeled wp-content/uploads.

You can now start choosing themes to use for your site. You can make use of themes already available for use or create one of your very own. Once you have your theme, your website is now ready to go.

It is very soon that you would be demanded to redesign your old website for suiting the need of the “Web 2.0 age”. Out of all the available platforms for carrying out this important task, WordPress.com by far emerges as the clear cut winner. The latest WordPress version, WordPress 2.5, is extremely easy to use and install. Read below to discover how to install WordPress 2.5 easily.

Begin with downloading WordPress:

The basic step for installing WordPress 2.5 is by downloading the latest version from http://wordpress.org/download/. Create a directory on your computer and store all the images and files together required for the installation of WordPress. Once you have completed the download, save the data in the .zip format.

Unzipping the WordPress files:

Post the completion of the download process, unzip the files in either your root directory or to the desired directory of your computer using the FTP client.

Database creation:

Create the WordPress database, which will be extensively used by WordPress for storing the site information and other content. You can make use of language platforms like MySQL for carrying out this task. Log in to phpMyAdmin for creating the WordPress database easily.

Creation of wp-config.php:

WordPress demands to know the accessibility route of the WordPress database. For this purpose, creation of wp-config.php is required. Modify the file included in WordPress named as “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it as “wp-config.php”. Open the file in a text editor and make the necessary amendments.

Running the WordPress installer:

Enter the URL in your browser of the current server as: yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. Provide the necessary information such as your email address, blog name, etc. As soon as you provide the details and press enter, another screen will flash the installation of WordPress and a valid username and password will be provided to you. This completes your installation process and enables you to customize and manage your blog easily.

Owing to the huge popularity and success of WordPress, it is extremely hard to miss out on its rapid development. As of now, approximately 60 million websites have been build across the world by using WordPress as the building platform and in about half of the cases, as the hosting platform too. In fact, every new day almost 100,000 new users are added to the list of WordPress users. Over the years, WordPress has evolved as an efficient blogging engine and a content management system (CMS). It is an extremely flexible platform and allows easy switching of services to the third party hosts and then returning back to WordPress at any later stage, if required. The main reason behind the booming popularity of WordPress is its added features. WordPress offers a number of distinguishing features such as customized designs, attractive themes, built-in engine analytics, etc. which aren’t offered by many other web hosting services.

The most attractive feature of WordPress is its frequent updating ability. This ensures that WordPress is never technologically outdated and always has something to offer to its users. Post every update process, WordPress turns out to be more efficient to use and work with for the users. In spite of a large number of laudable advantages, WordPress lacks a certain amount of credibility in some domains. In order of doing away this disadvantage, an extension of WordPress has been developed referred as the WordPress extension development. Most of the SEO issues and indexing problems have been resolved with the help of such WordPress extensions. Such extensions basically do away with the pages created by the plague sites, without keeping the search engine working in consideration.

Although, the high reliability of WordPress never put forward the need of any data backup, but just a security measure, another extension for WordPress backup was developed. Recently, on the sad demise of Steve Jobs, the man behind the Mac machines, WordPress, in an attempt to pay tribute to this great personality, launched an all new RetroMac OS theme for the Mac lovers.

Web log, popularly called as a blog, is digital representation of a tangible diary, wherein one maintains records or writes daily experiences. Quite to the fancy of every ‘internet youngster’, blog is one of the most searched keywords in the world. One easily understands the basic definition of the blog with insight into its functionality. However, it is still not very clear how to create a blog.

To start with, Internet offers both free and paid blogs. Depending on the reason to create and the level interest, one can choose either of them. Google powered blogger and wordpress.com are world’s leading blogging websites. Google is the webhost when one creates a blog on blogger.com and wordpress.com is the host in other case.  The functionality of blogger.com is limited. Thus, we will discuss ways to create it on worpress.com.

The top three ways to register on wordpress.com is via-

1. WordPress.com- People who are absolutely new with blogs should definitely go with this method. In this way, the blog’s webhost would be worpress.com itself. However, there are limitations to the functionality like no additional themes. The method is completely free.

To start, log on to wordpress.com. Find “get a word press blog now” written, and click it to kick-start a blogging experience.

2. WordPress.org- In this method, one will have to download the WordPress software on the hard drive and then run into a webhost (prerequisite- webhost to hold the blog). After installation, run the FTP into the webhosting website. Few configurations are required to be done like creating MYSQL database. After all this is done, open the computer browser and run ”wp-admin.php” script in it.  You are all set to blog now.

3. Fantastico: To install the WordPress using this method, you will have to run the WordPress software into your webhost. With the help of fantastico, the configuration and script running are automated. There is a CPANEL in the webhost, from there run the fansatico. With few clicks, the blog is ready to go live.

All the above ways to create a blog are equally good. However, one must use them according to the knowledge and scope of use.

WordPress plugins actually aim at enhancing the functionality of your blog/website by adding a lot of exciting features. This helps in boosting your overall online presence and improves the level of interaction with your readers. WordPress plugins are excellent way of improving your blog revenue generation. They are mandatory tools for reaping the true benefits out of the abilities of WordPress platform. Read below to discover some of the major WordPress plugins in different categories for using in your blog and adding amazing new abilities to it.

Optimization of WordPress:

WordPress optimization plugins help in boosting the amount of natural traffic being directed to your blog. This in turn helps in improving your SEO presence on the web drastically. Some of the optimization plugins which can be used in your blog include SEO ultimate, Platinum SEO pack, WordPress SEO by Yoast, etc.

Links for WordPress:

The link plugins are basically used for the management and organizations of the main links on your blog/website. This helps in imparting an improved reading experience to the reader. It also helps in search engine optimization. Link plugins include broken line checker, WP render blog roll links, SEO smart link, etc.

Comments for WordPress:

These plugins help in increasing the amount of reader comments, thereby boosting the interaction between the different readers on your blog. Some of the major comment plugins include Facebook comments for WordPress, intenseDebate comments, comment rate, etc.

Email subscriptions for WordPress:

Such plugins enable you to offer your website/blog visitors email subscriptions and send out the newsletters. Email subscription plugins include subscribe2, constant contact for WordPress, WP email capture, mailchimp list subscribe form, etc.

Membership communities for WordPress:

You must install plugins like mingle, s2member, WP-members, etc. for building active communities for your blog.

Social media for WordPress:

These plugins allow easy promotion of your articles by your readers through different social platforms, leading to publicity for free. You can use plugins like WP tweet button, sexy bookmarks, etc. for this purpose.