LESSON #36: Customizing WordPress
(Part 4 in a series of 4)
In the previous three lessons, I’ve been covering WordPress. We started off with by installing WordPress. Then we talked about the best way to configure WordPress. And then in the previous lesson we talked about WordPress themes and plugins.
Today we’re going to take it a step further and look at how to customize a theme to meet the needs of your business…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
See video for examples of…
-Editing the colors, fonts, and other style in the CSS Stylesheet
-Adding an AdSense ad to the sidebar
-Editing the footer to take away a credit/footprint
-Changing the graphics
Action steps:
1) If you’re not happy with the look or function of your WordPress site, customize it!
Remember, if you need help there is a massive support forum at: http://wordpress.org/support/
In the next lesson, I’ll be talking about making money with your blog.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 
And if you’ve customized your WordPress theme, be sure to show it off to us!
Have a great day!
Eric you’ve done another super video and you made it look so easy.
I’m glad you said that when you made changes it was trial and error until you got it to look the way you wanted. I found it took me several attempts for many of my changes until I was happy with how it looked.
Thanks again and I’m looking forward to your next video.
Thanks! Nice site
Thanks for all the great information.
I went to change all the text-decoration from none to underline and enlarged all the font-size by 4px using the notepad ++ and then doing all of this on my computer and then using filezilla and nothing changed when I refreshed my sight.
What is up with that?
I will look around in support section.
perhaps you still need to ftp changes to your site then re-refresh. jm
do you tweet? http://www.twitter.com/oneblackbird
My guess is that perhaps you did not upload it to the correct folder. Make sure you’re overwriting the corresponding file in the correct theme.
If you’re sure you did overwrite the right file, then perhaps there is an overriding text style that you missed in the CSS stylesheet.
Thank You for your lesson
Wow Eric, talk about informative! I’ve been following your lessons for a while now and just want to let you know that they’ve been so unbelievably helpful.
It was just the other day that I was searching for information on how to customise a WP theme, particularly with Adsense, and all I had to do was wait for your next lesson.
Thanks to you, I now feel confident enough to go and have a play around with those scary looking codes!
Bravo to you for the service you’re providing to us all - can’t wait to start making some money!!
Cheers,
Kristy
Glad to hear it!
Hi Eric,
Thank you so much for the video. I’m not really a technical person but you made it looks easier for me. Your videos are real winners because it shortens the learning curve and it makes things easier and more understandable. I hope you can also make a video of the oio publisher how to actually set it up in a blog.
Jennifer
Eric,
another great lesson.
Instead of doing offline changes and keep using filezilla, can we use Theme test drive plugin and Firebug and make changes quickly.
I have not used a theme test drive plugin, but it sounds like it could work.
Great
It’s just amazing. You are firing at all
those nasty things that kept most of us
from having their WP sites published or
working the right way.
Thanks Eric
This is the lesson I’ve been waiting for. That’s a good idea to edit the files offline. Alternatively couldn’t you edit it online and then download it overwriting the existing one on your local computer?
That’s correct, you could edit it online and then download it as a backup. In some ways that may be easier for you, as you can more quickly refresh to see your changes.
I am so delighted to belong to this place. I have learnt a lot in web design in just few days of watching some videos, i did my wordpress myself for the first time, customize it and waiting to do more with it from your subsequent lessons. Thanks Eric.
Thanks Erick!
After these tutorials I think we are finally ready to get our blog up and running!
Matt
http://TrueColorsTest.com
Hi Eric - Thank you so much for all this great information. I am just starting out and would like to ask you about a couple things. Where do you acquire the Copywrite Logo using my name? ALso, will you be covering Google Adword and Keywords campaigns at all?
I am learning so much. Thanks for all your time and effort - I really what you’ve done!
All The Best,
Jeannie
I’m not sure what you mean by the copyright logo. do you just mean the symbol “C” with circle around it?
The HTML code is
©Or you can just copy and paste the symbol itself into your source code, and I think all browsers can read it.
Yes I will be covering Adwords/PPC traffic.
I wish I had found your lessons before wasting a fortune on poor quality supposed training courses which didnt give me what I needed. Just a quick question re hosting Host gator say you cant have any investment sites - my forthcomming blog is concerned with economic and technical analysis and how this is used to predict the movements in the stock markets - do you think Host gator would close it down and if so can you recommend a suitable host (this is not a scam or get quick rich site but is information only and based on my MBA and forthcomming PHD research).
Thanks again and keep up the good work
I can not speak for HG, but I am confident that a stock market related blog would be fine. I think they mainly don’t want sites where actual investments are being solicited and received, because so many of those are scams.
Something that you touched on in the article and a lesson I learned the hard way,
“Either way, be sure to keep a backup of your theme offline.”
After a couple of goofs that didn’t work when I supposedly knew what I was doing I learned to not touch anything until I made a back up. Then every couple of changes that works I redo the back up to make sure I do not lose what I did.
Thanks for the lessons I appreciate it and am learning a lot.
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer
Hi Eric,
Great video again. Keep up the good work.
Have you every considered or see any value in trying to combine a membership site with a wordpress site? I see from a quick search that there’s plenty of plugins available to do this.
Ray
http://www.visiolo.com/t/156
Absolutely. I have recently added a Wordpress membership plugin to the notes under lesson #32, and in fact I am considering turning Eric’s tips into a membership site after these lessons are complete
Eric,
Just a note to tell you I appreciate you, and all you do to help out all us noobs out here who tend to bounce from site to site trying to get answers (and many times failing!)Anyway it’s good to know your lessons are just sitting here waiting to answer my questions.
I am not sure about changing the footer link for the theme designer credit.
If i am not mistaken, the agreement for using the theme clearly stated it’s a must to leave the credit untouched if you want to use the theme.
Please comment
It depends on the license for each individual theme.
Some are pretty clear that you must leave the link. Some do not require it. And some use more grey language like “please leave my link.”.
WP does provide instructions for removing links from footer:
http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_Layout_and_Design
And WP does say that you should abide by the author’s license.
In my case, I typically will customize my themes to a point where I believe they constitute a new theme. Therefore, I think it’s justifiable to remove the credit. It’s still a grey area though, and I know there are people who would disagree with me.
But if you were to look at the coding of all the themes on WP, you would find that there is already massive amounts of borrowing from each other already. And for a long time, the majority of themes were all based largely on the code of the default WP themes. So it’s a bit of a grey area.
I’ve been following your lessons for and I am so happy to learn from somebody who thing to teach another people online for free.
Eric Good bless you.
My question is I will like to secure this info lessons somewhere on my computer, I could I save them?
Thanks to you, I now feel confident enough to learn more about WP.
Bravo to you for the service you’re providing to us all -
Tshibangu
Thanks
For now I am not making them available for download because I am planning on selling them in a package when they are all done. In the mean time, you can access all the previous episodes here: http://www.ericstips.com/tips/category/lessons/
“I am planning on selling them in a package when they are all done.”
This will be an amazing contribution to the internet. Can’t wait to be an affiliate!
Colin
Thank you!
eGreetings,
I notice that you use Filezilla…
Can you tell me if it has the option of right clicking on a file on your server and “copy path to clipboard” ?
I use that option a lot in SmartFTP but would like to switch to Filezilla.
Thanks so much for your time.
Terrific lesson!
Kind Regards,
Jeri
It does not have that feature. It does display the remote site path at all times though, and it is selectable, so you can copy and paste it easily. It doesn’t show the filename in the path though, only the directories, so you would also need to add the file name to the path.
So I guess it depends on how much you use the feature.
SmartFTP is good too. I used it for many years, and still do use it sometimes. I switched to Filezilla when SmartFTP started charging.
Wow, Eric, you are just too terrific! Thanks!!
Hi, Eric:
You are a marvelous teacher. I’ve been stuck in information overload for a long time, trying to figure out all the pieces of the puzzle through various training courses. But, chicken that I am, I’ve been too scared to attempt my first blog. For once, my fear has paid off…because I discovered you and you make everything logical and easy to understand.
I must admit, I got a little lost with this course, but I was able to follow your other lessons quite well. You’ve turned me from one who hated Wordpress (because I didn’t “get” it), to one who can’t understand anyone NOT using this wonderful program.
I do have one very basic question for you. Perhaps I missed the lesson. How do you go about setting up and organizing your directories and folders on your desktop? I’d like to set up my Wordpress folders exactly the way you have it…with the wp themes, plugins, content, etc.. Is there a specific lesson that takes us step-by-step through this very basic process?
Again, thank you so much for all your help. I now understand some of the more difficult aspects of the process, but need to organize correctly from the start so I can proceed without any glitches. Also, I’m a little confused about how to download a zipped program to a folder and then upzip it for use with Wordpress.
Do you have a topic list for your upcoming lessons?
Thanks again and again for all your help. I recommend you to everyone and have your website posted on my Facebook page.
I will not be covering that specifically in a lesson, so this is what I would recommend…
In your My Documents folder (or depending on your version of Windows it might be called Owner’s Documents, or it might just be your Visa username) create a folder called WEBSITES
Then create a shortcut on your desktop which goes to that folder (rather than putting the folder itself on your desktop).
In general I recommend only putting shortcuts on your desktop rather than files or programs themselves.
The reason I sometimes put them directly on my desktop in the videos is just so it’s easy to see.
Then within that WEBSITES folder, you would make individual folders for each of your websites (like the ideacash.org folder that I made on my desktop in the video). If you have certain website(s) that you work with frequently, you can create shortcuts on your desktop for those too.
Then within each website’s folder, you would put everything belonging to that website (html files, wordpress folder/files, etc.)
Also within each website’s folder I create a folder called EXTRA. I use the EXTRA folder to store things that are associated with that particular website, but that are not a part of the website itself.
For example, the EXTRA folder might contain my photoshop PSD source files for the graphics, a Word doc source file of a PDF that I’m giving away on the site, old html files that I’ve removed from the site, etc.
Regarding a topic list for upcoming lessons, I do have one, but i’m not posting it because I don’t want people to steal it
But generally speaking we’ll be covering product creation, list building, traffic generation, product launches, and a few more things.
Thank you so much, Eric. This is exactly what I needed to know.
I can totally understand your reason for not wanting to post your specific topics. I’ll be “tuning” in often to view your lessons. You will, obviously, be covering everything we need to know to be successful.
Best regards,
Debbie
Hi Eric,
I have been following your tutorial series about Wordpress as CMS.
Great lessons.
It has been suggested that I use Joomla, what’s your opinion.
Is Joomla (also an open source CMS) an easer program to master and is it as versatile as Wordpress .
Thanks again for your great lessons.
Hi Eric
You probably know that the server couldn’t handle the number of orders coming through so Mike eventually disabled the early bird order. He’s guaranteed a course to us all and I’m assuming I still go through your link, right?
Thanks
Neil
Yes, thanks.
Oh yeah, I’m sure you guessed I’m talking about Mike Filsaime’s BFM giveaway. BTW, this time the response actually took Twitter down for a while lol.
Hi Eric,
Thank you for your prompt response to my ordering problem with Mike’s Butterfly Marketing 2.0 giveaway.
Nothing solved yet, but I did receive a reply back from Mike’s helpdesk that I would like to share with you and other Eric’s Tips readers who may be lost and confused due to the server crash last evening.
Hi,
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE IN RECEIPT OF YOUR SUPPORT TICKET FOR BUTTERFLY MARKETING 2.0
We want you to know that we ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY TO RESOLVE EVERYONE’S CONCERNS. Due to the massive response to Mike’s Butterfly Marketing 2.0
offer, (triple what we were expecting) AND THE UNFORESEEN ISSUES CREATED BY OUR SERVER CRASHING it may take a little time to answer all your concerns
We are well aware of the concerns over whether or not your order actually was submitted, or if it was duplicated.
Please know…… it is impossible for duplicate orders to be submitted because we have safeguards in place to prevent that.
If your order did submit, you would have received a receipt from our payment processor.
IF YOU WERE WATCHING THE LIVE FEED YESTERDAY ON USTREAM YOU WOULD HAVE HEARD MIKE PUBLICLY PROMISE EVERYONE THAT THEY WILL RECEIVE A COPY OF BUTTERFLY MARKETING 2.0 SO THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO CONCERN YOURSELF AS TO WHETHER OR NOT YOUR ORDER WAS SUBMITTED AT THIS TIME.
Many of you also have issues with logging in to your new account. This issue is also feverishly being worked on and as soon as we have
everything resolved we will let you know.
For those of you who already have a subscription to the news magazine and want to order the Butterfly Marketing 2.0 without creating a new subscription,
we have placed a special order box in your 7 Figure Secrets or GetMySoftwareFree member area so you can do this and only pay for the shipping! Right now,
this special box is in your Profile (it may be moved to the main page later today), so be sure to go to your Profile and place your order.
We want everyone to know that no matter what, EVERYONE who wants a copy of Butterfly Marketing 2.0 WILL be given the chance to order and receive their package,
for a limited time.
Please realize that because of the nature of this offer ( a free five thousand dollar value of product) the demand created has superceded even our best estimates, therefore we request you remain patient and understanding and we will get through this together.
Thank you and prepare yourself for the best product that has ever been delivered to your front door !!
The Staff at Mike Filsaime’s Corporate Office
Long Island, New York
Eric, I’m still on Lesson #33. I’ve posted a new question there. Please help!!!
just replied.
Hi Eric I am so glad I have found someone so willing to share knowledge and help people like me who have no idea but want to keep trying, you are great, Thank You
Eric,
Not related to wordpress but I seek your opinion.
Arbitrage conspiracy is coming to end. They recommend statjunky which is expensive.
I am using prosper202 now.
Want to use one more: I am thinking of two products: Affiliate Prophet and Adtrackz.
which one do you recommend?
Thanks.
I use Affiliate Prophet, and recommend it. Peter, the creator of it, is an Eric’s tips reader too
Hi Eric, I have not really commented on any of the lessons thus far, just for the mere fact that I have been consumed by the extent of information you are getting out. For the past 12 months I have been trying to start this online business, after moving from one seminars, bootcamps to another. I have never come in contact with such an outstanding coaching like you are giving to us. May God almighty continue to enrich you and make you a blessing to others.
The value of information you are giving out is inestimable. Keep it up.
Thank you sir!
Sorry, just by the way. My lesson 36 has refused to open, this is the 1st time I am experiencing this. It could be due to a problem from my end. I will try again tomorrow and if it is still persisting I will let you know again.
God bless you.
Hi Eric,
First of all I want to thank you for this course, from which we newbies can learn a lot!
I have a question for you if you can spare few minutes:
If I run few sites on one account,like subdomains, can I have WP installed on all domains? Is there going to be any conflict with files?
I plan to reorganize mu sites, to put them all in WP.
Many thanks for your time.
All the best,
Nenad
I do not think there will be any conflict between the files. However, if you want each domain to have its own installation of Wordpress, then I would advise getting a hostgator reseller account so that each domain can have its own Cpanel. It will be easier and better for the long term.
Eric, I’m still waiting for help with Lesson 33. I know you are dealing with lots of people and questions, but I need to sort this out so I can continue on. Please help…
Thank’s
Hi Eric
Thank you so much for giving
all this stuff for free.
Great content. No hide-and-seek.
Rgds
Hey,
Thanks a lot for all of this video information.
Eric, I don’t remember you covering AdSense. Am I mistaken? Will you be covering setting up an AdSense account?
I’m not planning on covering it, as it’s not really the revenue model I’m teaching. But as you saw, I did talk about it as a method of blog monetization, and it’s certainly a legitimate and potentially very profitable way of monetizing content. They have a fairly self explanatory sign up process at http://adsense.google.com
Eric, Okay…I signed up with GoogleAdsense, got my code, put it in Notepad++, saved it, transfered it to the right side in http://FTP. It’s not on my blog. I tried putting it into content and into themes. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was supposed to go on the right side of http://FTP. What did I do wrong now?
Which file did you put the code into? Did you paste it into the sidebar.php file, like on the video?
It looks like perhaps you only dropped the file into the ‘themes’ directory instead of into the ‘thistle’ (the theme you are using) directory within the themes directory. Remember, you need to overwrite the old sidebar.php file.
I tried your suggestion. It still isn’t working. I’m wondering if it’s because my url has the /blog on the end because when I was in adsense they wouldn’t let me list that as the blog name. I wonder if there’s any way getting around that.
It still does not look like you uploaded the sidebar to the right place. I checked your source code and there is no Google Adsense in the sidebar. I do see that there is Adsense in your first post, but it’s not showing up, and I think I think the reason is that the Adsense code is either incomplete or corruputed (probably due to pasting it into WP’s WYSIWYG editor)…
Eric, I’m going back through Lesson #36 to try to fix the Adsense snafoo. Actually there is no room in the right sidebar for adsense. I would like to put it on the left where there is space. How would I do that? Also, the sidebar on the Thistle theme is very busy with things I don’t know what to do with and I don’t want my potential readers to have to look at. How do I get those out of there? Thanks in advanse for your help!
You can put the Adsense anywhere you want, it’s just a matter of inserting the code into the right place.
So you could put it in your left sidebar, you just need to find the right place in the right file. I’m not familiar with the theme, so I don’t know which file that is. But you could just use trial and error.
As for removing things from the sidebar… some of those items can probably be turned off in your admin panel. But most of them you would need to remove from the code of the sidebar.php file.
If you’re not able to figure that stuff out, you might be able to get someone to help you on the Wordpress forums. Otherwise, I would recommend hiring from cheap help on Rentacoder
You could probably have someone make all your desired customizations to your blog for about $10, which is probably a good investment vs. how much time it may take you to figure it out.
Thank you Eric!!
Hi Eric,
I have built a normal website but now want to replace it with a wordpress blog site. The problem is that I am generating a steady income from the current site and do not want to loose any SEO and links that I have already. How do you advise to convert over?
The complexity of it depends on how big your site is, how it is structured, etc.
If the site was not so well established, I’d say just setup your site on WP and turn your old pages into 301 redirects to direct them to the new ones. In *theory* according to some SEO experts you could actually do that and still keep the SEO benefits. But I am skeptical, and wouldn’t do it that way if the site is bringing in steady income.
Instead, I would rebuild EVERY page with the exact same name, title, etc.
You can modify WP’s permalink structure to adapt to however your current files are named (index.html, page1.php, or whatever).
You can then use the All in One SEO WP plugin to make sure all of your pages have the same title and meta-tags as the old ones.
As you build the site, you can keep the old pages online, and delete them one at a time as you create their new versions in WP.
On the other hand, if your existing pages are NOT very well optimized for SEO in terms of their file names and/or titles, you might consider using the 301 redirect method, and take the opportunity to make the site even better for SEO. (For example if you have 100 articles and they are on pages like 1.html, 2.html… you might do better by changing it on WP to something like article-keyword-loaded-title.html). But again I am hesitant to mess with stuff like that on existing income streams.
Hi Eric,
How does Word press deal with site maps and how relevant are they?
Keep up the good work.
Kevin
there are some site map plugins for WP. I’ve talked to some folks who swear by them, and claim their sites get indexed more thoroughly through sitemaps. I’ve talked to others who say it doesn’t matter. I think that the critical factor here is how interconnected your site already is. For example, this site is quite well interlinked through the sidebar. So when google spiders my site, I think they probably see all of it. But if your site is not easily spiderable, or if it goes many levels deep, a sitemap would be advisable.
94 Percent of CNN’s Audience Doesn’t Use Twitter
from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow
twitter logoWhile today might be a huge day in Twitter world with CEO Evan Williams set to appear on Oprah alongside Twitter’s first million follower man, Ashton Kutcher, CNN’s audience apparently still largely has no idea what the service is all about.
Today’s poll on the main page of CNN.com asks “Do you use Twitter?” With better than 80,000 votes cast, only 6 percent of users say “Yes,” while 64 percent say “No,” and 30 percent say “What’s Twitter?” At first glance, these numbers are surprisingly low given the air time the network has devoted to the service, especially in recent days with the Ashton vs CNN battle to reach one million followers.
cnn twitter poll
Of course, for an organization on the mainstream scale of CNN, 6 percent actually translates into a fairly significant number of people – with over 30 million visitors to its site in March according to Compete, 6 percent is around 1.8 million people.
How will the Oprah moment change these numbers? It would be interesting if CNN asks the same question next week.
eric I purchased the exit splash last night and
it shows up on my bank statement but, how do I received the product? Is it downloaded or shipped. probably a dumb question but I don’t know the answer. Thanks
Good purchase
It is downloadable. Dave provides excellent service, so if he has not helped you yet just let me know and I’ll give you his support info.
Eric,
One of the reasons that I do not think Twitter is a fad and going to fade to soon is because of the publicity that surrounds. Most of us that market for a living already know that one of the major keys to survival is advertising and Twitter gets a ton of it and mostly for free. You have have GMA constantly giving it plugs and Twitter is not paying them a dime to do it. They simply just talk about tweeting. Can you imagine if you woke up in the morning and turned on the TV set and Diane and Robin are having a conversation on GMA about how great Eric’s Tips is to learn marketing? Do you think your traffic would pick up? The truth is you would explode in sells by the afternoon as thousands went immediately to the search bar and starting typing in Eric’s Tips.
Just thought I would share these thoughts with you my friend.
You never know. PRAY. and BELIEVE and God may have them have that conversation. As good a person as you have turned out to be. I hope they do Eric. Of course, Not as much as you do huh?
To Our Profit,
Teddy Freeman
270-904-0883
Hi Eric,
This lesson really came in handy. I’ve been struggling with header and sidebar widgets in my website. I’m working now on Amazon store pages and have decided that my theme needs to be changed to one with page tabs rather than sidebar pages list. Is it too late to change the theme? I’ve already imported all posts from wp.com blog.
You can change your theme anytime and your posts will not be affected. The only thing you would have to re-do is any custom coding that you added to the php files (like if you manually added a widget to sidebar.php).
To take this further, I want to use my About page to link to my Amazon Store, my published clips pages, my other published article RSS feeds. The home page will have a daily recipe blog and that will change everyday obviously. But I also want a sticky post that will point visitors to my tab pages. Do I need to change themes to accomplish this? The current theme is default kubrick.
No you don’t need to change themes to do that. I can see your About page (and other pages) already listed in the sidebar of your current theme. But you could certainly try other themes if you want to.
Your category and archive links are missing a / after the domain… maybe that needs to be added to your default blog address in the WP settings.
WELL, BACK IN THE RUNNING—GREAT LESSON! wHEN i TRIED TO ENLARGE THE SCREEN SO THAT THESE EXAMPLES CAN BE EASIER SEEN - I LOST YOU, AND HAD TO BRING IT UP AGAIN. EVEN WITH A SCREEN MAGNIFYING AID, IT’S DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY WHERE YOU ARE GOING UNTIL -IN A FLASH, IT’S ALL OVER! SO I REPEAT MANY TIMES AND TAKE NOTES. YOU KNOW:1,2,3,4,5,6…..ETC. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. AL
Hi Eric,
Finally got thru all the WP lessons.
Remember my Dad’s stock pick site mystockpoint.com that has 2 languages (English and Chinese)? Got questions regarding using WP for my Dad’s site:
1. Do you think WP will work with 2 languages? i.e. can I put links on the home page to point to the other language like you suggested? Or I need to use other site building tools?
2. If so, do I need 2 WP installs for the languages or just need different pages to point to?
3. Will WP pages or posts accommodate tables?
4. We’ve been using a table/calendar format to post daily results and am wondering what are the best ways to do it in WP: using the same table/calendar format on a page/post or a separate link on each post.. but I like the idea that WP blog/post can easily archive the postings but maybe a separate post for daily results generate a lot of postings?
5. Also not sure if allowing comments to each daily results is good or will generate a lot of work in responding the comments.
Appreciate your insights!!
Shirley
P.S. I finished all the online lessons for html in w3school and half way with the CSS.
1- yes WP will work
2- Hmmm… you could go either way with that (1 or 2 installs). But probably 1 install would keep things simplest. You can create a seperate CATEGORY for the 2nd language.
3- yes both will
4- Again you’ll just have to see what works best for you. There are also some good WP Calendar PLUGINS which may save you some time and help keep things organized.
5- Yup… you’ll have to decide about that one too. I’m a member of a trading site that does not allow comments, but sometimes I wish I could comment.
Eric,
1. do you use html site or wordpress for affiliate site.
2. I want to use wordpress. Not sure how to setup the structure. I know wordpress installation though.
I like to have this structure.
- Home page
- blog
- landing pages: use ppc to drive traffic to LP.
here, visitors from organic side, come to home page or blog posts. PPC send traffic to landing page.
Can I use wordpress to set up like above OR I should use a combination of xsitepro and wordpress.
I looked for videos and couldn’t find. SUggestions much appreciated thanks.
You could use WordPress for all of the above.
However, depending on your strategy, you might not want your standard Wordpress navigation (sidebar and/or top links) to appear on your landing pages.
Therefore one option would be to find a theme with an OPTIONAL sidebar, or customize your theme to remove it manually from your landing pages.
Your other option would be use use something like XSitePro for the landing pages, and just create those seperately from the main site.
Eric,
Thanks for clarifying. So I setup wordpress, front page as static for Home page. Rest as blog posts, right?
where do I put the Landing pages generated by xsitepro, under public_html or wp-content?
Thanks.
correct, that would work for your home page and blog.
You would put the landing pages in public_html.
another one:
If I am using home page or other posts in LP also, with only difference being, as you suggested, LP without nav bar, do I need robots.txt or any other means to avoid duplicate content issue.
Thanks for your help.
I would not worry about it at all if you’ve got a couple landing pages with duplicate content. But if you have MANY pages of duplicate content, then google may assume you’re doing something spammy.
If you’re focusing on PPC and don’t care about SEO, then you still probably don’t need to worry. But if you do care about SEO and need to create tons of landing pages on your domain, then you might consider using a DYNAMIC landing page generator such as lpgen.
but from what it sounds like, you’re probably not building a ton of spammy landing pages.
yes, that is what I was thinking about. Dynamic landing pages. These will have almost same content except the change in headline and sometext.
My concern, if I am using lpgen, Google might punish my quality score even with ppc.
How to escape this duplicate content issue then?
Sounds like dynamic landing pages could be a good option then. You might not have any trouble with quality scores, as long as the main content of the page is relevant.
If you find that your quality scores are hurt from using dynamic pages, one option (albiet blackhat) is to cloak those pages with alternative content for google’s spider. I don’t think I can adequately explain it here, but if you search for it, you should find some black hatters expaining it.
also, another thing you probably might want to do is put your landing pages on a seperate domain on a different IP… away from your main site. Then at least you wouldn;t have to worry about your site getting penalized from an SEO standpoint too.
I personally don’t worry much about duplicate content, because I don’t worry much about SEO
sorry last one, lol.
what is your take on : affiliate theme or flexx theme, I hear a lot nowadays. Is it easier to setup all three just with wordpress using those themes?
i’m not familiar, are those WP themes?
They are wp themes, Eric.
http://www.affiliatetheme.net/
http://flexxtheme.com/
Hmmm… those look like good themes, so I think it really comes down to what works best for you. There are plenty of good free themes too. I’ve always used and customized free ones.
I am thinking of using as you suggested:
Home page and blog: wordpress
LP: xsitepro.
Those affilaite themes are ok but I will save money for time being.
Hi Eric,
I don’t know if this email link is still active–but it appears that it might be. So I thought I’d give it a try.
I’ve been going back over your wp tutorials (primarily 35 & 36), but I can’g do all the things you suggest because I can’t find some of the links. For example, on the Plugins section, your screenshot shows the plugins link right under Appearance; my screen doesn’t even have Plugins as a link! I’ve tried everything I can think of without success. So I can’t do a lot of what you show how to do because I don’t have the same page layout. Has wp changed since you made those videos??
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Henry
Hello Henry,
WordPress is always making changes to their site, but you can still access the plugins from the following link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
thanks for the great tips.
Hi Eric, finally got my company web site up at Host Gator…got my email address changed ,wordpress installed, got my theme picked out, installed the plugins Akismet, Flickr, and SEO. I think I’m really getting the technical stuff. I changed the setup a little bit so when I type in my domain name…my wordpress theme comes up…basically I did that by moving the index.php file to the root and editing it. (Directions are found on the wordpress site.) Poosawantos is the umbrella company for all my sites…but I am hoping to come up with a way that I can use poosawantos.com to link things together. Still I am really not coming up with a great niche.
Mmm, feed a person a fish when they are hungry, teach a person to fish and they are never hungry.
Unfortunately I am still hungry, , for now. But that is because I never failed to learn, others failed to teach.
Luv ya
Hi Eric,
If you happen to read my blog, I am pleased to be a student. Emontionally, you are a balance. Spiritually I am overwhelemed. Something wonderful happened to me today and after searching for an answer and waiting, it has arrived, and I am not talking about word press.
Your energy extends beyond the +each
You know, don’t you?
All the best Robbo
Hi Eric,
I think the words: “I Thank you” could be placed as a default in our comments.
I tried hard before posting here. I also lost my day in the WP forum. Found some help like: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/302408
but really couldn’t apply.
My problem is: WP doesn’t seems to allow (as it used to do before at time of your 35 lesson) to choose if your First Home Page, is a page or a post.
I’m trying to make it fixed like a page, and still don’t find a solution. Can you help me please?
Thank you Eric.
You can use any post or page as your home page.
It is under the Settings.
Then under “Reading” settings.
From there you can choose a static page, and select your desired page or post.
Thank You Eric, It works!
I feel rather stupid having lost so much time…
Anyway, you know, It’s the Journey that count, because it makes you a better person.
Hi Eric,
Fantastic lessons! My site is not created in Wordpress, but I want to add a wordpress blog to the site. Can I customise the header of the blog so that it is the same as my existing web pages? Or is this advanced html?
Thanks Eric.
Yes you can customize the header of Wordpress to match the rest of your site. It is not very difficult, especially if you choose a WP theme with a similar sized header as the one on your site (then you can just swap out the WP header with yours). But if you did have trouble with it, you could probably have someone do it for you for under $10 on rentacoder.
Hi Eric….
Thank…..
but,I speak english a bad.
Thank Na…
Eric
Erics Tips is a great course and I’ve been following it for months, and have just gone back to the Wordpress lessons as I wanted to build a set of static sales pages for affiliate products. But I can’t work out where the pages are stored so I can edit them. offline.
That’s one thing about wordpress… it’s not really possible to edit them offline. They are stored in your MySQL database.
However, you could keep them as Word documents (or something) offline, and then paste them into Wordpress when you’re creating/editing the pages.
Hi Eric!
What would you recommend to keep your wordpress blog safe from hackers? I just recently posted my first wp blog sites, and found out a week later that they were both hacked and malicious code has been inserted in the script! I deleted them both, and now I have to figure out how to repost one of them from backup, and the other one…I will have to reconstruct… It is a major mess for me to deal with this! Is there any software, like McAfee or Ad-aware are for PC, that would protect wp blogs (or any web sites) from attacks?
Here is some information about securing WP installations:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/20-wordpress-security-plug-ins-and-tips-to-keep-hackers-away/
Here are some plugins:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/antivirus/
http://www.seoegghead.com/software/wordpress-firewall.seo
While not specifically for Wordpress, McAfee does have a service which will scan your site daily for hacker vulnerabilities:
http://www.ericstips.com/mcafee
The most important thing is to keep it updated with latest version.
Also it is good to run regular backs of your MySQL database. This can be done easily with 1 click from within your Cpanel. You could even make a macro to do it for you using a program such as ours: http://pushbuttonmarketer.com
i really need part of the show course, i really want to design my blog , to add image to the blog and also heasder to it.
Hi Eric,
Your tips have been awesome! I think I have my blog optimized pretty good, but now I need to drive traffic to it, that’s the hard part. I know that the key is to get backlinks, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Is there any advice that you can give me? It would be great if you could email it to me. Thanks!
I will be covering web traffic in depth from lesson #72 through 85. Thanks
Sounds great Eric! Do you know when approximately lesson 72 will start? Thanks!
It will be in May.
Hello Eric,
After viewing your tutorials on the 5 ways to create a website, it looks like WP is more interesting to me.
Recently I got all the files of a website downloaded to my HG reseller account. This website was from the previous host using the ASP/NET framework and cannot be replicated
on the Linux hosting server.
I was recomended to enagage a programmer to re-code this website.
Eric, may I ask is there an alternative do-it-yourself method to decode or any possibility using WP to tweak and modify this website.
Looking forward for your advie and opinion.
Johnny Pow
I doubt if there is a plugin or any easy way to recode the website from ASP.net to WordPress.
If you were very familiar with WP, you could probably re-create the site yourself.
But if you’re new to it and/or not real comfortable with HTML and PHP, then your best bet is probably to hire a programmer to rebuild the site in WP for you.
I think it will be well worth it, and you will really appreciate the WP interface.
However, I’m also not sure how complex your old site was. If it was very simple, you still may be able to do it on your own by creating the pages from your WP admin area.
Hi Eric - Once again your teaching style is awesome, thankyou!
Could You please advise Eric - are the same principles used when working with php scripting?
Kindest Regards,
Graham Price
Yes the same principles would apply to other PHP scripts. You can edit them in a text editor, and use some trial and error if you don’t know much of the coding. Here is a good site for learning PHP (and other stuff):
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
Hi there great video but it keeps stopping at 6:01 minutes in
Please try these solutions:
http://www.ericstips.com/trouble-viewing-flash-videos/
Eric,
Firstly Thank you, for at least giving me some direction and no BS, I would of given in if i had not found your site. I am trying to enter this world and am starting with a simple landing page to get people to sign up. What is the best way to design this HTML, CSS styles or worpress landing page??? Does the way in which you write it affect traffic / SEO??? I really like the wordpress templetes however I notice no one seems to use them as landing pages, is there a reason why??
I cover squeeze pages in lessons #62-65.
for most of my squeeze pages, I just use basic HTML as I show in those lessons.
However, I think WordPress is great. There are some good WordPress squeeze page templates and other landing page templates.
Yes the way you write it affects SEO. I’ll be covering that too.
The reason a lot of people don’t use WP as landing pages, is because they don’t want a menu, navigation sidebar, etc. on their landing page. But there are WP templates to get around that.
Also, when it comes to Google AdWords, it can be beneficial to have your landing page integrated into your WP blog. (See lesson #65, #73)
Hi Eric
Really enjoyed your instruction, especially the recent instruction on Wordpress.
Just a question about your theme for this site. Like you I prefer a minimalist theme. Is the theme you use on this site from Wordpress.org and if so which one is it.
Thanks
Joe
http://www.UnlimitedWebhostingService.com
the theme I modified for this site was called ’silverlight’
HI, Eric great lesson, you gave a good explanation of the alternative ways to customamize wordpress in a very simple way to follow.thanks again for the lessons. by the way, Eric what was that program that you launched about traffic
that one of your blogger mentioned.
Hi Eric! Thanks for sharing all of these free tips.. But I just have a question though, coz I usually using blogger for my blog post which is a wysiwyg editor. Now I am trying to use wordpress as per your advised. Im just having some difficulties on how I can upload my videos from camtasia to my blog post and how can I put some banner ads. Hope you can help me on how to do it.
Keep it up Eric and more power to you!
In lesson #41 I show how to put video on your site. In Wordpress, I recommend turning the visual editor OFF before posting any video embed code. Otherwise it will get messed up.
Hi Eric,
Great stuff! WP used to seem like this big crazy mess of complicated code, but now I’m having a blast with my site!
Make it a great day,
‘Doc Seth’
~husband, dad, full-time ‘Elevator’~
Hey Eric, I have gone through your video training series several times and have really learned so much. Thanks. I have a question about putting a contact form on a wp site. What plugin would you recommend for this? Also, I want to put a contact form on a static web page, instead of providing an email address. what would be the best way to go about doing this?
Thanks.
Bret
Hello Bret,
Here is Eric’s lesson on setting up a customer list:
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson61/
Eric uses Aweber for his list hosting:
http://toplevel.aweber.com/
HI ERIC THANK YOU, FOR ALL YOUR HELP, I REALLY NEED IT, AS I AM DISABLED, AND TAKE CARE OF MY 87 YEAR OLD GRANDMOTHER, AND MY DISABLED MOTHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU GUYS, YOU SEEM LIKE THE REAL THING, THANKS AGAIN, RICH.
THANK YOU.