LESSON #34: WordPress Recommended Settings
(Part 2 in a series of 4)
In the previous lesson I talked about some of the benefits of WordPress, and I walked you through the process of installing it on your website.
So today we’re going to talk about what to do after you’ve installed it…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
- structurally not much difference
- posts are archived and categorized
- examples: lesson #32 is a POST. My products page is a PAGE.
- Use Posts for a series of blog posts, articles, or other content that you add regularly to your site; use Pages for the pages of your site that don’t necessarily fit into a blog category.
- You can use parent pages and sub-pages.
- Some marketers claim that Posts are better than Pages for SEO.
General: I usually do not use a tagline.
Writing: I like to increase the post box to 20 lines.
Reading: Choose a static page for your home page if your site is not a blog.
Discussion: I moderate all comments.
Permalinks: I use a custom structure, such as /%postname%/
-better for your visitors
-better for search engines
You may or may not want to use the year and month within your Permalink structure. Consider whether it will be better or worse to date your content.
You can tweak the Post Name part of the Permalink URL when you are adding or editing a Post:
-Don’t make it too long (I prefer no more than two dashes)
-Use a keyword in it, such as a product name if it’s a product review
Action steps:
1) Add at least one category and make at least one post, or create at least one page on your WordPress site.
2) Adjust the WordPress settings to best meet the needs of your site.
3) Choose and set up your WordPress permalink structure.
In the next lesson we’ll move on to the FUN stuff!
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 
Have a great day!
Hey Eric,
Thanks for informative lesson. I wanted to know by using WP can i built a blog site wherein people can open there account and start blogging on different issues or its just for individual blogging, I am just starting and new to the concept. I am planning to make a blogging site catering a specific class of society.
D
Yes it is possible to create a group blogging site using WP.
Hi Eric,
Thanks want to understand will you be covering that in next lesson.
D
I will not be covering group blogs, but it’s not too difficult to do.
For people who wish to setup group blogging sites and love Wordpress, they have a totally different package called as Wordpress Mu. You can check it out at http://mu.wordpress.org/. The feedback on this is pretty good and as always Wordpress rocks.
thanks for the tip!
Hi Dilip,
Thanks for your tip, yes i want to make a blogging site, so whats the basic difference between both of them.
Hey eric,
Hope you don’t mind me asking Dilip.
Regards
ddmagar@hotmail.com
http://mu.wordpress.org/ is if you’re going to have multiple authors writing multiple blogs on the same site.
This is some of the clearest instructions on setting up WordPress I have seen. Great Job Eric. I will be adding some links on my blog and sending some people over to check it out.
Thanks
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer
thanks, I appreciate it!
Hi Eric,
I have a WP question. I wasn’t going to use WP but when I found out I could attach it to my main website in a /directory, I thought that might be kind of cool(just didn’t want it to be my primary site) Is using WP in a directory just as good or effective as using it as a primary webite? I was going to go with Blogger but WP looked so much better…glad I did!
After I installed wordpress I started snooping around all the options…wow…this is exciting!
Get 150 *Top Quality* NICHE Websites With Your Paypal ID On Each!
http://Instant-Paysites.com
Yes it should be just as effective in its own directory. And if you were thinking of using blogger… I like WP much better because then you OWN it, rather than google.
Maybe I’m not as dumb as I thought I was! Thanks Eric
haha, glad I could help clear that up
Eric, what about your PING LIST? Do you use one? If so, can you share it? For new content, is there an advantage to using CATEGORIES as opposed to dumping all new content into GENERAL?
I just use the default pingomatic, because they ping a bunch of different places. If anyone has any proven strategies regarding pinging, let us know.
I think the main advantage of using categories is organizational, and user experience. It could also potentially help with keywords. For example, one of my categories is “PPC Marketing”, so that keyword appears in the sidebar of every page of my blog.
Here is the list I used:
How to Ping Your Blog?
Hope you like it.
I just wanted to add my thanks to the list of your many friends and subscribers.
Your lessons are the first message that I look for in my mass of emails. With your help and some luck I may survive the internet marketing learning curve. Thanks Again, Gene
Thanks for this video. I am starting to experiment with blog plugins now and I was curious to know how you set up yours and if you were using a plugin to get rid of the time and date stamp on your blog posts or is it something I can do without a plugin.
I’ll be talking about plugins in the next lesson, but the time stamp is something I actually did manually by removing it from the theme. I’ll be covering manual customization as well in another lesson.
Hey Eric,
I love Wordpress and your instructions on Permalinks helped as I was a little confused about the structure. I do have some problems with images though. I tried to add a page with free ebook downloads and have them one under another (flush left) with the title and discription right beside the ebook cover image.
The images come out sort of nested (can’t explain in any more than that) no matter what I tried it would not work so now I’m only showing one book
http://www.reachsuccessonline.com/free-ebook-download-of-the-week/
Any suggestions - I was doing it in the WYSIWYG format
Thanks,
by the way do you twitter
I’m guessing you might need to go into the HTML tab on the edit Post page, and see if you can fix the code there to do what you want it to do. WYSIWYG is not WP’s strongpoint… which is one of the reasons I always turn the visual editor off.
Maybe someone else can give better advice.
I don’t twitter because I’m too one track minded, and I don’t want to have to think about what I’m going to tweet next. It would be a distraction for me, and take too much focus away from income producing activities.
I love Word Press. In particularly, the additiional functionality I can get from all the free plugins. I hear there are over 3,000 plugins at this time.
Hi, Eric
Great tutorials. I am just setting up the WP blog
i created with fantastico.
I hope you will cover how to create the tabs on the top
and insert picture in the header.
This part in my view, is one of the most
important of these lessons.
Thanks for the clarifications
I would recommend just finding a theme with tabs on it, and an image. I will be covering themes in the next lesson
I have had a WP blog for several months, but without understanding any of the inner workings. Then just last week I had someone put my website on WP. This lesson and I’m sure the next few are going to be most helpful. Thanks, Eric.
Hello Eric,
Nice post you have. Mostly what you write here I already do it on my blog. I have to admit WP is really a best platform I ever used.
But I have one question, why you not use a tagline in your post?
Thanks
the tagline I was referring to in the video, is the tagline of the blog, which appears under the blog title in most WP themes. WP also has something called “tags” which you can use to tag youe post with relevant keywords, and it’s fine to use those.
Nice tips!
I actually switched my site to a WordPress blog last November. And it is looking pretty nice. Is there any quick tips you could give me?
I think you’re off to a good start. The biggest thing I would advise is to figure out how to use your blog to build a subscriber list. And I’ll be covering list building extensively in these lessons
Thanks Eric for this very helpful and clear tutorial on WP settings. I have used WP in my blog and somehow I have not considered just using the postname as the permalink! I think this is a great suggestion for newbies. One question though. I noticed in your Eric’s tips blogs, the date of the post is not shown but for default WP installations, the date when you post your article is there. How do you disable this feature? Thanks for the tips.
I actually did that manually by removing the applicable line of code from the single.php file of my WP theme. In lesson #36 I will talk about editing themes.
I just got to your reply at this moment. I’ll look at my single.php file and try it out if I can do also what you did! Thank you so much…
Hi Eric,
thanks for your emails, always on the mark. I am enjoying your Wordpress tutorial Lesson #34 and often revisit saved emails to find answers. I believe I can move forward with my Wordpress site more confidently now as you unleash easy steps to follow. Looking forward to more of the same.
Hi Eric,
Excellent lesson!I’m a teacher and I think your video is clear and clean.
Good job!
Thanks,
Andy
Hello Eric I’ll make this e-mail short because I know your very busy. I want to create an online directory and one of the ways I wanted to monetize was to charge a small ($10 a month) fee to businesses in the listing. I would use this money to help in the marketing efforts. Is this business model realistic? I know that this question is off topic but I just wanted your professional opinion. Thanks
The business model is realistic, but it is not new and has already been done in most markets. One strategy would be to focus on a particular niche (most likely a city) and try to become an authority site for that geographic location. Then keep in mind that your income will be derived by selling directly to businesses, so you need to be good at selling, or willing to hire an outside sales person. So I’d say it’s definitely realistic; just be prepared to work hard to turn it into an authority site and make it profitable.
Hi! Eric, great lesson, I used Wordpress to create my last blog on my domain:
http://michaelacernescu.com
but I learn doing trial and error, I am sure I don’t know everithing and I listen with great interest your lessons to be sure that I have all the right elements on place.
Thanks Eric
PS The Membership site is facinating, I am reading that one as well. I am in “reading” mode now.
Regards
Michaela
Hi Eric
Fantastic video -
You know it does not matter how much I absorb information about wordpress there is always new or information that will help me.
Your information and video content is brilliant
Many thanks
Hamant
Hi, Eric. Just want to say that your e-mail and videos are really helpful. I am totally non techy but getting there and your support helps a great deal.
Kind regards
jo
Hey Eric,
Another great post. I love the simple break down, which really works for me,
Rich
Hi Eric,
In lesson #33 I installed WordPress and Adobe Reader couldn’t open it.
So I tried using Notepad to open it.
What I saw were all coded messages!
Is there a way to open it using Notepad?
Thanks,
Mike Wong
I’m not sure why you are trying to open it with either of those. WP consists of PHP files, and you need to upload it and install it on your website in order to view and use it. You can edit the code offline, using Notepad.
Hi Eric,
I’ve been following your lessons through and wondered if it’s possible to download the videos. Would be a great help to go back to those lessons as reviews or ‘I’d-remember-Eric-said-something-about-it’ thing. Please advice.
I am not offering them for download, because I am trying to avoid them being distributed outside of this website. I am planning on selling the series on DVD when the lessons are done. But for now, you can go back and watch any of the previous ones on my site:
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/category/lessons/
I finally got my WP installed on my website using my cpanel with Hostgator and it worked this time.
Yeh!!!!!!!!!!!
I even understand it a little better.
Appreciate your help and this lesson was a relief.
Looking forward to the next.
congrats!
Hi Eric,
Thank you for the video. I like the way you focus on the most important things. Can’t wait for the next lesson.
Hi Eric,
I just read your post regarding putting the lessons in DVD. I like the idea and pls give me a heads up before launching. It would be easier to get access to the lessons if it’s on DVD because we can always go back to the lessons especially when we are outside without internet connections.
you never have to be without internet connection use att/sprint/verizon any of the big ones come with a device for your computer to make it completely wireless its all i use on my laptop so no matter where i am i have the internet access i need and at home i don’t have wires running all over like i use to have.
I was wonder if you could use one of those modems instead of cable…..Thanks for the tip
Hello Eric
I just have to say how great these instructions are. They are detailed & clear to the point & explained slowly that any newbie can understand what you say. I was paying money to learn what you are teaching for free & they didn’t even come close.I have put a link to my site, not to promote but hopefully so some one can help me put right the mess I am in with the site.For a donation of course
Dear Eric,
I don’t know how to get a email subscribe like the one below your image in this site. Can you give me some hints? thanks
I’ll be covering list building in depth in these lessons. I use Aweber and recommend them.
Hi Eric. Great lesson. Thanx for your help. Loving all you give. The Lord will continue to reward those who plant seeds.Thanx again, and I am your first follower on Twitter, by the way.
Thanks! And I noticed you were my first follower… thanks!!
I just began using Wordpress fairly recently and I find these posts and lessons very informative and extremely helfpul. The best part was that it was so easy to follow! Thanks!
-Carl
Hay Eric
I feel a little overwhelmed right about now. Just to let you know. I am going to re-visit the previous lessons to compose my thoughts. But I’m enjoying the challenge. I need to re-track back to lesson 28-present. I’ve got to get this right. Your faithful student. Hold me up in pray - Peace
Thanks again Eric;
Great material, can a blog at wordpress.net be costomised in the same way
it can be costomized, but not as much. Also there are other advantages of putting it on your own domain (see lesson 23 and 24)
Hi Eric,
Guess what?
I am a member of a blog club and pay $77/month, for information that is 1 year old, non updated membership site.
Guess what more?
You provide more information and no fluff, high quality information for free…
Thanks..
Hi Eric,
If I’d like to put up a video from youtube on my WP blog, what code should I use?
Do you have a lesson on this?
Sorry for the of topic.
Lian Vaiphei
Eric, great tutorials with just enough ‘meat’ to allow it all to flow and actually happen.
I’ll look forward to the rest of the lessons.
I do have a question though…
It would seem WP is just about all one needs to create and run a website so, is there really any advantage (or disadvantage) in using Xsitepro compared to WP?
In other words does WP give you everything you will need?
For a membership site, I would prefer to use WP.
The advantage of using XSite is that it’s a “site builder” so you can really customize your own website and build it from scratch… even if you have no web skills.
With WP, you either need to use a prebuilt theme, or you will have to customize the PHP/CSS yourself. I do cover this in lesson #36.
Dear Eric,
Thank you so much for these lessons. I found you at w3schools and it has been a great blessing to my life to be learning such great things about internet marketing. I have been quietly learning all these months and wanted to give a shout and let you know you are appreciated.
Is is possible to cut and paste copy into the posting section, or do you actually have to compose in wordpress?
Cut/Copy/Paste will all work in the posting areas in WordPress.
Thank You Erick!
Your lessons are invaluable! I am totally new to this “world” but so far I got my domain, hosting account with Hostgator (will upgrade this to multiple domains) installed word press and all this mostly following your lessons.
Now I am wondering how to create navigation bar (add buttons to it), how to add opt in form, privacy policy, etc. Have you already covered these topics or if you could recommend some resources for this.
My blog will be about “Regular Joe” without prior experience in this field or computer skills, who tries to figure out if it is possible to make some decent money on line or is this only myth. This would be “live” postings as it happens with all success and failure so other could see what has or has not worked for me and what mistakes have been done.
I am also wondering if it is ok to start with introducing “Erick’s Tips” as very first step if one wants to learn about this field and to avoid to get ripped off by scammers of all kind.
As always thank your for great lesson!
As for the navigation bar, there are a few options. The easiest would simply be to find a WP theme with a nav bar already built in.
You can then adjust those links within your WP admin panel.
As for privacy policy and adding an opt-in form, I will ve covering both of those topics specifically in future lessons.
Sure you can start by introducing Eric’s Tips… I always appreciate free publicity!
Eric - I already have a wordpress.com blog. How do I transfer daily posts to the new wordpress website. Infact, how do I transfer or link everything on my blog to my new wordpress website.
Here is a tutorial about how to transfer your blog from wordpress.com to wordpress on your own domain:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/03/how-to-move-from-wordpresscom-to-wordpressorg/
Do I have a lot to teach. Victor.
It took me many tries to get wordpress to work on my site. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I played with Site Studio first? Or maybe antivirus and firewall conflicts? Anyways, Eric’s instructions were excellent and easy to follow. I tried manual and the Fantastico one click and kept getting errors after errors. I must have removed all the files and started over 10 times. I tried the Fantastico one click method again and finally it worked that time. I did notice there were two different versions between manual method and Fantastico with manual being the latest upgrade. For now I’m sticking to the one thats working LOL
I’m using a static welcome page until I have time to start a blog.
Still, I don’t think I have everything quite right because when I type in the www address it will bring me to the page without the www in the url.
I really like the Wordpress site above the others and want to stick with it.
I want to thank you Eric despite all my problems. Your instructions were simple and straightforward.
How can i increase the font of my posts.
I thought i should have option on html and ordinary text but i couldnt find it.
Please, someone should point me in the right direction.
Hello Kola,
If you are writing your post using the “Text” area, you could use the “Paragraph” button. This button lets you select from a number of heading sizes for your text.
Otherwise, you could paste your desired HTML directly into the HTML area.
Here is the direct link to the WordPress support for the best help:
http://wordpress.org/support/
thanks for the great lesson,
dyuane
Thanks for that wonderful lessons that has really changed my mind set to knowing that there are better things ahead.
Thanks for every thing and may your knowledge increase for the betterment of every one of us and the society/world in general.
I don’t often see this comment box as open on my blog.
To see it, one have to click the comment botton to make comment.
What do i need to do to show the box by default?
Most themes have comments by default, but you might want to double check. Then make sure comments are enabled in your WP admin panel settings.
Eric, it has the comment box is not automatically open.
Check the blog i’m talking about using the silverlight theme.
http://incomechamber.com/blog
Hello Kola,
It looks like you can’t comment when your on the home page, which is normal, because comments are always made on specific posts.
When I opened one of your blog entries, the comment option was automatically enabled for me!
I have started to read the blogs first before watching the video. Mainly to see if you are keeping up with everything Eric. You have a lot to do and I am interested in your methods. However, in reading some of the user blogs I cannot wonder whether your patience keeps up with your kindness. A lesson to us all.
What I”m most interested in are your formula
to use on “thinkorswim”.
When can I expect to receive those ?
Hello Freddy,
These strategies are a part of Eric’s Trading Pro System:
http://www.tradingprosystem.com/
What is the disadvantage of tags or tag line Eric ?
I don’t think its really a disadvantage… tags are good.
Great work Eric.
However do you really think Wordpress Blogs are good vehicles for affiliate sales? I see a lot with adsense and product reviews, but they don’t look very professional (excepting highly customised ones with designed tempaltes etc.
John
Hello John,
They really can! This very site is a WordPress blog with over 50,000 subscribers!
Hi Eric,
Happy New Year to you! In addition to working on my Dad’s stock picking website (still in the works since it’s much more complicated with membership, 2 languages and also learning about stock picking myself etc.) I recently put together a website for my husband’s architectural business using WordPress. It’s rather easy to build. Your lessons are invaluable and really help a ton. I learned html and CSS like you said and it made tweaking themes and things in WordPress much easier.
I do have a question for you regarding using WP for my husband’s site:
I created a “Home” page in WP and made it as the Front Page of the site. When I click on “Home” in the navigation bar, the permalink shows: http://www.example.com/home/ How can I delete the …/home/ from the permalink so that it will show just the http://www.example.com as the homepage like a regular site?
I want to use WP to make a regular site with a blog/post area for my husband’s site. I found out if I don’t have post, the site will use the index.php where I have the homepage content and it works out fine with the permalink. However, if I add post, and select a created Home page as the front page in WP, the homepage permalink will show http://www.example.com/home/ which I don’t want. Please help.
As always, you are great teacher and I can’t wait to continue the lessons after I finish this stage of building website.
Shirley
Make sure you are using a Page rather than a Post. Then when you go to edit the page, there should be NO permalink listed below the title of the page.
Is the correct home page actually appearing at example.com? If so, then another option would be to simply hard code the link in the sidebar.php file to point to your URL.
Hi Eric
Thanks for the stellar lesson as usual. There is no way you could deliver the lessons any better.
I installed a Wordpress blog in a blog folder with no problem. However when I tried to change the permalinks as you showed in the video the links came up like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/blog/category/private-label-rights/
where the blog post name was Private Label Rights.
Can you tell me what I am likely to have done wrong to cause the word category to show up?
Thanks
Joe
I believe you just need to remove the category tag from your permalink structure.
Hello Eric… I have a problem with my music blog. All posts are in wrong order. The oldest one is always on the front page. I tried various things to change that. I also installed some post plugins, and de-installed them again, because it did not change anything.
Have you ever heard of that problem?
Do you have an idea what I could do about that?
The blog is quite new, but I am ranking pretty good and have already quite some visitor. This is my favorite blog. I want to update regularly, and I really need a solution for that.
Maybe you know what the problem is.
Thank you in advance.
All the best,
Arne
Looks like you got it fixed! I’m guessing it was wordpress settings?
hi eric again thanks for th lessons i am learning so much but also getting confused about what would be my best option please dont look at this as some kind of sob story i just really need to do something quickly to earn even a really modest income after being layed off over a year ago i have had no luck in getting work for some reason the pump manufacturing industry harent taking anyone on and as u may imadine im living on the breadline so i need somethin easy to understand that at least i wont lose money on . its just you seem like a real honest guy and i have been burned so many times i would feel so much safer if u had any suggestions .
These lessons do contain my best advice. As I said in the first few lessons, it’s not for everyone and it doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s worked for me and many others. In lesson #4 I mention many ways of making money online, and if you think the information product route is the one you want to take, then these lessons will show you the way.
Hi Eric….finally, someone who REALLY teaches you how to use Wordpress! I have been trying to get this down for some time now and finally your lessons…you know everyone says how easy Wordpress is to use. Well, for a newbie, it’s not really that easy. On the other hand, your lessons are clear and really do make it easy. I can’t thank you enough Eric, and I anxiously await the next lesson. Thank you so much.
Mike
Hi Eric,
What is /%postname%/ mean?And the postname refer to the recent post? Is this the only way to create permalink?.
I”m a real dumb about this.
Thanks.
Aly
It is the title of the post. So if you write a blog post called “How to give your dog a bath”, the URL would be…
example.com/how-to-give-your-dog-a-bath
However, in new versions of WordPress, you can customize the URL of any post as well.
Just commenting because its the 100st comment
But very thanks eric. I’ve been looking for these kind of things for long. And now i foud you!
Eric - You are an absolute Star with regards to the quality on content that You continue to give away here. Thankyou so much Sir. I was so impressed I have even completed my homework
I do hope that I have I have passed the test?
http://grahampriceonline.com/blog/
Kindest Regards,
Graham Price U.K.
Looks like you’re off to a good start!
Hello Eric I was hoping for more on plugins?
Next lesson
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson35/
Eric, Thanks so much. I have been using WordPress for a while already but I learn something new or clear my mind on something everytime I listen to you. Thanks again.
Hey I just sent this URL to my list. I hope you don’t mind.
Thanks, I appreciate the referral!
Hi Eric,
I have been following your videos they are great. I have receive an error while setting securities And I have tried everything to fix it can you help or give an idea I will appreciate it
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@papelcarbon.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request
I have tried email that is showing but is not delivered
Thank you
Hmm, did you have a fully functional wordpress installation before this occurred? Or did it occur during installation? And were you installing it manually, or with the 1-click installer in Fantastico?
Hey Eric,
I have been keeping up with and have been applying all of your lessons, love hostgator and now beginning to love wordpress! I’m 17 years old and have already figured out that I don’t especially love the idea of working for someone else helping them accomplish there goals with me getting nowhere. So I’ve turned to the internet to learn web design and how to market and loving every minute of it! I have a website that I just launched with wordpress and I’m ecstatic for the future and the endless possibilities! Anyway, I have a question, can you upload pages onto your wordpress blog using kompozer? As in, can I mix my blog with whatever I create on kompozer?
Please and thank you!
Great job! Yes you can upload pages to your site from Kompozer, but they won’t be automatically integrated with your WP blog. you would have to create those links manually. So in general, it would be best to create all your pages in WP instead.
If you’re trying to make a page that needs to look different from your chosen WP theme, there are certain WP plugins/themes that will allow you to do that. For example if you want to make a squeeze page without the sidebar showing, etc.
Be sure to download a backup of your WP site from time to time (download a MySQL database backup from your Cpanel)