Today, we’ll talk about plugins. Plugins are pieces of code that add more features to your blog and also help it run more smoothly. There are tons available; WordPress’ own site alone lists 8,079 and there are many more out there.

The plugins I use (and highly recommend) are:

• Akismet
• All in One SEO
• Contact Form
• Peter’s Random Anti-Spam
• Sociable
• WordPress Database Backup
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Akismet
Akismet is a spam blocker and comes with most WordPress themes. It makes a huge difference when it comes to the amount of spam you receive (and you will receive spam messages if you don’t activate it, nobody can hide from them). In order to activate Akismet, you need an API key, which is a set of numbers that WordPress.com. So even if you don’t want to set up a blog on WordPress.com, you need to go to their site and create an account. Fill out the form like this and click on Next. If someone already has taken the username you wanted, they’ll let you know and you’ll have to enter new ones until you find one that’s unique.

You will then end up on a new page where they tell you you’ll get an email from them shortly. Open that email and click on the link to activate your account. It used to be that they sent you the API key in an email, but the last time I helped someone set up a blog, we had to go to the dashboard of her new wordpress.com account and look under the Profile tab. It should be right there up top on the page.

Once you have your API key, log into your blog and go to Plugins. If this is the first time you’re there, you will see two plugins – Akismet and Hello Dolly – both deactivated. You can do whatever you want with Hello Dolly, I usually delete it. On Akismet, you want to click on Activate, and you’ll see that it asks for the API key. Put that in, and you’re set.

Now, to get the rest of the plugins onto your blog, you need to go online and search for them. Once you find them, download them, unzip and put the unzipped files in a folder for transfer to your blog. I have a folder right on my desktop named WP plugins where they all go so it’s easy to find them. You will most likely get a lot of results for each search (I just got 44,300,000 when I did a search for all in one seo), and I would recommend choosing the one that’s associated with WordPress (usually the first one you see).

All in One SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and this plugin does just that: optimizes your blog for the search engines. It automatically generates META tags, optimizes your titles and tweaks a lot of other stuff “behind the scenes” which helps the search engines find your blog. Download, unzip and put in your plugins folder.

Contact Form
The Contact Form can be tricky. The one I use on this blog does not work on all themes, and I’ve had a hard time finding one I’m happy with. One that seems to work almost everywhere and gets good reviews from others is the “Fast and Secure Contact Form” created by Mike Challis. It looks good, is easy to install, and best of all, has a “captcha” field which helps prevent spamming. It’s in WordPress.org’s directory and all you need to do is download it, unzip, and put in your plugins folder for transfer.

Peter’s Random Anti Spam
This is another spam blocker, and I consider it an absolute necessity. It really helps in cutting down on spam comments on your posts (you’ll get an email for each one, so that can really fill up your mailbox quickly). This one, I get straight from the author, and if you do a Google search for Peters random anti spam, it’s the first site that shows up. Download, unzip and put in the plugins folder.

Sociable
This one is optional but I think it’s good to have it. It adds those little buttons you see on almost every site so that people can share something easily on Facebook, del.icio.us, digg, etc.

You get to choose which ones to display (there are 99 of them) and I think it’s a smart marketing move to have it. When you do a search for sociable, the first one that pops up is the one in WordPress’ directory, so go ahead and download, unzip, and save.

WordPress Database Backup
Again, there are many to choose from, I use one from WordPress’ directory called WP-DB-Backup. It’s set up so that I get an email once a week with a backup of my database and have been happy with it.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
This is a great plugin which automatically finds other posts on your site that might interest people who read a particular post. If you scroll down to the end of this post, you’ll see it in action – it thinks that maybe because you’re reading this post about blogging, you’d be interested in my other blogging posts. Download it from WordPress’ directory.

Once you have all these unzipped and put in your plugin folder, open up Filezilla and connect to your blog. When your blog directory shows up on the right hand side, double click on public_html and then on wp-content. In that folder, you’ll see 3 folders: plugins, themes and uploads. Now, find the plugin folder on your desktop in the window on the left. Open it and one by one, drag the plugin folders over to the plugins folder on the right hand side. You’ll see them transfer in the window below.

When they have all transferred, go and log into your blog (if you’re already there in the plugins window, click on something else and then back to plugins to refresh). Go to plugins, and you should see them all listed there. If there’s one that doesn’t show up, it could be because the content was in a subfolder. If that’s the case, go back to Filezilla and double click on that plugin folder in the left hand window, and if that brings up a subfolder, transfer that one to your plugins folder on the right hand side. That should take care of it.

All In One SEO
Before you activate it, click on the Settings menu (the last menu on the left hand side of your blog) and you’ll see it listed there. Click on it and change any settings you want. I suggest filling out the Home Title, Home Description (this is what shows up under your blog title in Google) and Home Keywords and you can leave the rest as is. Scroll down and click Save. Now, go back to the Plugins menu and activate it.

This is how your home description shows up

Contact Form
Click on activate and then create a new page (called Contact, Contact Me or something like that). Put the following code in the html window: [si-contact-form form='1'] (NOTE: this only works for this particular contact form, if you download another one, make sure you read the installation instructions). Scroll down a bit on the page and uncheck Allow Comments. Preview the page, and if you like what you see, publish it. That’s it, now every time anyone fills out the form, you’ll get an email.

Peter’s Random Anti Spam
All you need to do with this one is click on activate. All set.

Sociable
Click on activate and then go to Settings – Sociable to select the buttons you want to show up on your site. As you can see, there is a lot to choose from, I would probably not recommend using all of them, but instead the ones you recognize and think will benefit your blog. Leave everything else as is, scroll down and click on Save.

WordPress Database Backup
In the Plugins menu, click on Activate. To edit the settings for this plugin, click on the “Manage – Backup” link in the text of the plugin.

This brings up a new window where you need to make some choices. I leave everything as it is, get the backup emailed to me (make sure the email address is right) once a week. Whatever works for you is good here. Once you’ve made your selections, click Submit.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
There are a lot of customization options with this one, but I leave all the settings on default and just activate it. It has worked great for me, but if you want to tweak it, just click on Settings – Related Posts (YARPP) and make your selections.

That’s it, your blog is now search engine optimized, people can contact you, share your blog on popular networking sites, you will hopefully avoid spam, and you’ll get a backup in your inbox once a week. Not bad for an hour’s worth of work.

As I mentioned above, this concludes my series on how to start a blog. If you have any questions or get stuck on any of the steps, please feel free to contact me, and I’ll do my best to help you out.

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If you’re just joining this series now and want to catch up, check out my earlier posts about how to start a free blog, how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog with your own domain name, and the pros and cons of both.

In my previous post, I talked about pages, what goes in them and how to publish them. To re-cap, pages are where you want to put the information that you need kept front and center on your blog (figuratively speaking).

Posts are the dynamic part of your blog, where you have a chance to “talk” to your readers on a daily basis (if you choose to publish that often). Posts are published in reverse chronological order, so the last one you post shows up first on your blog. If you want people to always see a particular post when they land on your front page, you’ll need to make it a page and make that page “sticky” (more on that further down).

First of all, what should you write about in your posts?
Anything you want! It could be about upcoming events, events you have attended (with photos), case studies, your thoughts on massage, your favorite websites, whatever you feel like writing about. Remember that people will read it though, so to keep a professional profile, you may want to keep tales and photos from last night’s wild party to yourself.

I’m keeping these instructions on the short side, for a more elaborate how to, go back to my post about pages, it’s basically the same steps.

1. Log into your blog (you’ll land on your dashboard) and click on Posts – Add New

2. This brings up a new page with blank fields. Just as when posting a page, I always change the visibility to Private and keep it that way until I’m happy with the post and ready to publish it.

3. Fill in your title.

4. Click on the HTML tab and copy your text from word and paste it here. Click on Update Post.

5. Switch to the Visual tab.

6. Here, make any style changes that you want. You pretty much do it the way you do it in Word – to bold text, highlight the text and click B, and so forth.

7. There are two more things to add to posts that you don’t do in pages: Category and Tags (keywords). Both are important, because they help people find your blog.

8. When you first start a blog, there is one category only: Uncategorized. Make sure you do not leave your posts uncategorized, instead before publishing your post, go down to the Categories window (on the right hand side of your screen), click on Add New Category, type in the name of your new category and click add. It will show up in the list of categories, checked off and ready. Just uncheck the Uncategorized category and you’re all set.

9. Now the tags. Tags are keywords that can be found in the text portion of your post. You want to pick out the most important ones and put them here, and I usually add 5 – 10 tags/post.

So select the words you think describe your post best, type them into the window in the Tags section (on the right hand side of your blog), separated by commas, and click Add. You’ll see your tags below the window. If you decide you don’t want one of them, just click the little x right next to the word.

10. Review your post in another window. If you like what you see, go back to your post page, change the visibility to private and hit publish.

Photos really help to jazz up the posts, and if you don’t have any of your own to use, look at Wikipedia for Public Domain photos, or Flickr Creative Commons for photos that people will allow you to use in exchange for credit (read through all their licenses before doing this though, using a photo the wrong way can get you in a lot of trouble). To add a photo to your post, you need to:

1. Be in the Visual tab.

2. Put the cursor where you want to the photo to show up.

3. Go up and click on the Add An Image symbol.

This brings up a new window where you choose where to get the photo from. It’s a good idea to save the photos you use on your computer, so if you’ve done that, click on Select Files (in the From Computer tab). Find the photo you want to add and double click on it. This will load the photo and you’ll see a little thumbnail of it with some options.

4. Type in a caption or description if you want. In some themes, this can mess with the photo, so I usually leave these blank. You’ll see the link URL, leave that as it is, and below that, select how you want the photo positioned in your post, and what size you want it to be. You can change that later, so if you’re not sure, just pick something. Then click on Insert Into Post.

5. You’ll see the photo in your post, and most of the time, they need to be tweaked. To do so, click on the photo once and you’ll see two little symbols show up. Click on the little picture and a new window will pop up. To make your photos smaller, select a percentage you think will look good. If you want to change the alignment of the photo, do that.

Then, click on the Advanced Settings tap up top. In this window, check the Open Link In New Window option. You don’t have to do this, but I always do, it really annoys me when clicking on an image takes me away from the page I was on.

Click update.

6. At this point, preview your post in a new window and don’t be surprised if the photo is in a different position than you thought. What you see in the post window is not always how it looks on your site, so if you’re not happy with what you see, keep tweaking it until you like it.

If WordPress cuts off part of your photo when placing it in the post, you need to change a setting on your blog.

1. Go to Settings – Media (on the left hand side of your blog, way down on the page).

2. Most likely, the Crop Thumbnail To Exact Dimensions is checked. Uncheck it and click Save Changes.

That should take care of it. You’ll need to go back to your post, delete the cropped photo (just select it and hit the Delete button on your keyboard) and re-import it from your computer.

If you want a particular post to always be the first one people see, you need to:

1. Make it a page.

1. Go to Settings – Reading

2. Select A Static Page and pick the page you want from the drop down list. Click on Save Changes.

In my next blogging post, I will talk about plugins, how to find them, get them to your blog, and activate and tweak them.

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I hope everyone had a fun and festive evening last night – we did! Today, we’re taking it easy and waiting for the snow which is supposed to arrive this evening and last until Monday!

This is part 4 in my series of posts about starting your own blog. As I’ve mentioned before, having an internet presence is almost a must these days, particularly if you run a business. In my previous posts, I talked about how to set up a free blog on WordPress, how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog using your own domain name, and the pros and cons of both formats.

Today, it’s all about the pages on your blog. When you first start a new blog, it’s not always easy to know what type of information to include and where to put it. The first thing I do when starting a blog is to create pages with all the information that remains constant.

Pages are the static parts of your blog, where you want to put information that should be visible at all times. They are usually displayed in tabs up top or in a list in a sidebar (sometimes using a widget).

Posts are published in chronological order, with the last one first, and when you have a lot of posts, your earlier ones will be buried deep in your blog, and people will only find them if they search for them, so that’s not a good place to put contact info, rates, etc.

I recommend at least including the following:

- An “About” page where you tell people who you are and what your blog is about, maybe include a photo of yourself.

- A “Disclaimer” or “Terms & Conditions” page, where you legally protect yourself by stating that you are not responsible for actions taken by people based on what they read on your site, etc. (look at mine, or do a search online for inspiration). This page is especially important if you’re in the health care field, but in this day and age, everyone needs to protect themselves from lawsuits.

- A “Privacy Policy” page where you tell people what you do with their info. If you never capture any information, say that, but if you have an email sign up button, you need to mention that if they sign up for email updates, you will have that info, and let people know what you will do with it (sell their email address to advertisers or not, for example). If you use Google ads on your site, there is specific wording you need to include (take a look at my Privacy Policy as an example).

- A “Contact” page where you let people know how they can get in touch with you. My Contact page has an online form to fill out, and I will talk about how to add that in a future post (it’s a plugin).

- If you have an office or clinic, set up a page with your hours, address, phone number and how to schedule an appointment. If you do home visits, mention that, etc.

- If you accept advertising on your site, add a page with rates and info about that

- If you do demonstrations etc. at charity events and such, an Events page is a good idea (I would also mention the events in posts – more on that in a later post)

- If you want to have a sitemap of your blog, that should also go in a page

To zoom in on the screen shots, just click on them and they will open in a new window.

To create a page, log into the dashboard on your blog and go to Pages – Add New

This brings up a new window where you will create your page. The first thing I do is to go to the Publish menu on the right hand side and change the visibility to Private. I like to keep it that way until I like the way it looks and I’m ready to publish it.

Next, type in the Title of your page in the window up top and hit return. You will see a new line of text appear beneath the Title window. This is the URL for your page, and if you don’t like the way it looks, you can change it by clicking the Edit button, change the text, and click Save. This will not change the actual title of your page, just the URL.

Now we’ll add the text part of the page. I usually type the text up in word and spell check it before copying and pasting into WP. Once you’re done with your text in word, select it, copy and paste it into the HTML tab in the text window. If you paste it in the Visual tab, it can sometimes end up looking very strange so I always use the HTML. Click on Update Page.

Switch to the Visual tab to add formatting to your text. You can do it in HTML, but in the beginning, it’s easier to use Visual. Eventually, you may want to just type in the HTML code in your word document before copying it. (I find that easier, but you need to learn some HTML first.)

In the Visual tab, you will see your text, plain but separated into paragraphs. To bold a string of text, select it with your mouse and click on the B up top. Do the same with any text you want to italicize, underline or change in any other way. Once you’re happy with it, click on Update Page again.

To preview your page, right click on the Preview button in the Publish menu and select Open Link In New Tab. This will open a new tab in your browser with a preview of your new page. Your title will say Private: until you change it to Public and publish it.

I like to work this way because you can go back and forth and tweak you page in WP and see what it looks like immediately by just refreshing the preview.

When you’re all done tweaking your page, it’s time to publish it. Go back to your new page window, change the Visibility to Public and hit Publish. That’s it – your first page is up!

In my next few blogging posts, I will talk about how to publish posts, include pictures, install plugins and some other tips and tricks.

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