Contentedly Maladaptive » making money online

Step 6 (Part 2) – A List Of Useful WordPress Plugins For Your First Website

Decidedly Maladaptive — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:00:59 +0000

This is the second part of the sixth post in a series of posts designed to help you set up your own website.

Continuing on from the previous post, where we discussed both the Contact Form 7 and the Akismet plugins, below is a list of useful plugins that you may or may not want to try out on your own website.

It is very difficult to screw things up completely when you try new plugins. Make sure you read the instructions when installing plugins. If you notice something that’s gone wrong with your site after installing a plugin, just de-activate it and see if that solves the problem.

If not, don’t call me.

This is not a good idea

Broken Link Checker – As your blog or website gets larger and larger, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of “dead” links.

Dead links are links that no longer work usually because other websites re-arrange themselves or just go off-line periodically.

Broken Link checker is an excellent way to discover which of your links are still valid and which are not. With this plugin, you will not only see a list of how many (working and non-working) links your site currently has, but you can also fix the broken link easily through the admin screen.

Google XML Sitemaps – One of the easiest ways to get more visitors to your site is to make it easy for search engines to look over what your site is about. Sitemaps streamline this process.

This plugin is very easy to use. You set it once and basically forget it. Every time you add a new post or update a previously-written post, the sitemap is automatically updated and Google is notified of the change.

Page Links To – This surprisingly useful plugin allows you to easily point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. It can be an URL on your site, or on another site. This is a good, simple way to set up navigational links to non-WordPress sections of your site or to off-site resources.

SEO Smart Links – SEO Smart Links is a neat little plugin that you can use to automatically link keywords and phrases that you put into your posts as well as those that people leave in their comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.

This plugin also allows you to set up a list of keywords that you would like to always be linked to a specific URL. Like, say, an affiliate link. The plugin will do all the work in the background so you don’t have to worry about things.

You can also add the nofollow attribute to those links as well as force them to open in a new window, so people will remain on your site while visiting wherever you chose to send them.

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

Registering a Domain Name
Choosing a Web Hosting Company: Hawk Host or Liquid Web
Pointing Your Domain Name to Your Web Host
Using cPanel and Fantastico to Put Up Your First Website
Changing The Default WordPress Settings On Your First Website
Locating, Loading And Activating Useful WordPress Plugins For Your First Website
A List Of Useful WordPress Plugins

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Step 6 – Locating, Loading And Activating Useful WordPress Plugins For Your First Website

Decidedly Maladaptive — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:41:21 +0000

This is the sixth step in a series of posts – a guide that I’m writing that will help walk you through setting up your own website, on your own domain name, using WordPress as a content management system.

Now that you have your website up and running, it’s time to explore the wealth of plugins that are available for WordPress.

Plugins are part of what makes WordPress such a great framework to build a website with. There are thousands and thousands of plugins out there that are each designed to do something that WordPress can’t do for itself right out the box.

Some of these plugins are extremely useful and some of them aren’t.

Some of these plugins are free and some of them aren’t.

Just because a plugin is free doesn’t mean that it isn’t as good as a plugin that someone is charging for.

For most people, the first two plugins that they are exposed to are “Akismet” and “Hello Dolly.”

Wordpress Plugin Management Screen

Akismet is a anti-spam plugin that is designed to prevent people from coming onto your new site and leave comment spam. Comment spam is very common on the internet. It involves people (or computer programs) coming to someone’s site and leaving a worthless comment that usually includes links to their own site. Usually this is done to promote someone’s viagra or cialis site.

Hello Dolly is, well, useless.

So first things first, we’re going to activate Akismet and then go on to finding other useful plugins. Go click on “Activate” right under the Akismet tab. That will bring up this screen:

Akismet Almost Ready

WordPress helpfully points out that you need to enter your WordPress API key for Akismet to work. So click on that link, and go to this screen and follow the directions on the detailed diagram below:

Detailed Explanation For How To Configure Akismet

Once you’ve done all that, Akismet will now constantly be working behind the scenes to keep spam off your new website.

But we’re not done adding plugins quite yet. Let’s add a plugin that will allow your readers to contact you via e-mail. First, go to the “Add New” tab under the “Plugins” tab:

WordPress Add New Plugins Screen

And then you search for what you’re looking for – in this case, a contact form:

Searching For A Contact Form

Once you click “Search Plugins” to the right, you get taken to this screen, where you can see the plugins that are available:

Selecting A Contact Form From The Install Plugins Screen

Usually it’s a safe bet to go with the highest rated plugin that performs a particular task, although not always. Due to the fact that I’ve used Contact Form 7 on several sites, I can vouch for it as doing exactly as it says.

So once you click on install, you’ll see this:

Installing Contact Form Plugin

Now that the contact form plugin is installed on your site, click on the “Activate Plugin” link to activate it and go to the next screen:

Contact Form Plugin Activated

Once a plugin is activated there is usually a place on the left-hand-side menu to change the settings for that plugin. Usually the new menu choice can be found under the “Settings” menu tab, but not always.

With the Contact Form 7 plugin, you get your own little menu addition. It looks like this:

Contact Form 7 Plugin Menu

Once you have this up, highlight and copy the code that’s pointed out for you to copy. Note that your left-hand-side menu has changed, it now has a settings tab for the contact form plugin. So once you grab that code up at the top of the screen, let’s set up your new contact form.

You may have wandered through this menu section before – the pages section. Pages are basically parts of your site that are intended to be more static than regular posts. Usually, pages are good spots to put “About Us” sections, menu items and contact forms. This is what the “Pages” section of your site looks like:

WordPress Pages Screen

It’s very important to remember that WordPress Pages are not the same thing as WordPress Posts. Right now we’re just working with pages.

As you get more comfortable with the different concepts, you can fiddle around with creating and deleting pages a bit more. For now, just do what I tell you or you’ll get a knife in the throat.

How To Create A Contact Page In WordPress

As you can see in the detailed and professionally-done image above, there are several elements to be aware of when looking at the “Add New Page” screen in WordPress.

First and foremost is the page title field. This is where you put the title of the page. In this instance, it’s going to be “Contact Allen” – because we want people to contact Allen. Because he’s so friendly and loving.

Once that’s done, click on the HTML code tab. This will show you everything in an HTML friendly way. If you put code into your pages at some point, you will want to use this tab. If you have your HTML tab up, you can paste that Contact Form 7 code that you copied earlier into the field that actually contains the content of the page. I’ve helpfully labeled it “You Write Stuff Here.”

For pages, you’ll probably want to go to the “Discussions” section at the bottom and uncheck “Allow Comments” and “Allow Pings.” Contact pages don’t need to have the ability for people to leave comments on them.

Here’s what I added for AllenSelby.com’s contact page:

Contact Page Almost Done

Note the “Url” that I pointed out. If you ever want to send someone directly to this contact page, you can just send them that url. WordPress is nice in that it handles all that behind-the-scenes stuff.

So, once you have your contact page set up, hit “Publish” and go to your site. There, you’ll see something like this:

AllenSelby.com Now Has A Contact Page

Notice that I now have a new page – the “Contact Allen” page. You should have something like that on your site now. If someone goes to your domain, they will now have the opportunity to fill in the fields, hit send and magically send a message to you!

And that’s just awesome.

Feel free to experiment with plugins and see what works best for you. In the next post I’ll list a slew of WordPress plugins that I’ve used in the past and that I’ve found useful.

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

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Step 3 – Pointing Your Domain Name To Your Web Host

Decidedly Maladaptive — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:32:52 +0000

This is the third step in a series of posts I’m writing that will help you set up your own website, with your own domain.

After you finished the last step and signed up for web hosting, at the end of the process your new web host sent you an e-mail giving you all the details of your new account. It probably included things like your user name, your password, cPanel login information and so on.

Most importantly – for this step anyway – that e-mail probably sent you the nameservers that your host uses. You need to have those nameservers in order to follow this step.

To help you find them in that e-mail, nameservers look like this: ns1.yourdomain.com or ns2.yourdomain.com

You will usually be given two nameservers by your web host to use – the primary (ns1.yourdomain.com) and the secondary (ns2.yourdomain.com).

Once you have those two nameservers, you go to your domain registrar, log into your account and find the domain management screen.

Click Here To Go to GoDaddy Domain Management Screen

Once you’re at your domain management screen, you should see the domain that you registered. The domain should have the date you registered it and the status of the domain. Right now it’s just sitting there, in much the same manner that a fire doesn’t.

Oh Look There Is the Domain Name

If people go to allenselby.com right now (or your website), before you set the nameservers, they won’t see anything useful at all. In order for people to type in “allenselby.com” into their web browser and get to what I want to show them, I have to point the domain name to the web host.

Think of your web server as an apartment or a rented retail space. Your web host rents that space, collects the money and keeps up the property.

A domain name is an address. Short, catchy addresses are easier to remember than long, complicated addresses.

A nameserver setting is like a phone book listing. It shows people how to get to your retail space.

So what we want to do now is put our nameserver settings into GoDaddy so people will be able to find our website.

All we have to do is click on the box next to the domain name and the nameserver button becomes clickable:

What Clicking On The Box By The Domain Name Does

And now you click on the button marked “Nameservers” to go to this screen:

You Want To Tell GoDaddy You Host Your Domains With Another Provider

You don’t want to park your domain. Parking a domain means that you’ve registered it, but you’re not doing anything with it. Unless you do something with the domain that you register, like point it at your webhost, GoDaddy will monetize it themselves. They’ll slap some ads on it and hope for regular folks to type in the name of the domain into their browser (which happens with surprising regularity, depending on the domain name) and hopefully click on an ad or two.

Clicking That Button Brings Up These Nameserver Fields

Right now, GoDaddy has your domain pointed at their web servers, as you can see here. The current settings are ns29.domaincontrol.com and ns30.domaincontrol.com. This is done automatically when you register the domain, but we’re now going to change the settings to point at your web host’s nameservers.

Enter Your Own Nameservers

Once you’ve put your own nameservers (and I guarantee that they’re not ns1.yournameserver.com or ns2.yournameserver.com), click OK. You’ll be taken to this confirmation screen:

Your Changes Have Now Been Submitted

You’ll have to wait from a few minutes to a few hours for your nameserver changes to propagate, depending on how busy the world is at the time. GoDaddy is very quick at this, usually. Some domain name registrars can take up to 72 hours, which is another reason why GoDaddy is one of my registrars of choice.

Once the nameserver change propagates, you’ll be able to go to the next step and start putting up your own website.

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

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Step 2 – Choosing A Web Hosting Company – Liquid Web

Decidedly Maladaptive — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:24:10 +0000

This is the second part of the second step in the guide to setting up your own website on your own domain.

Now, if you go to the Liquid Web website and browse around for a bit, you’ll get a little pop-up chat box that will connect you to one of the Liquid Web sales staff. After a while, you notice that they want to talk to you, answer any questions you might have, settle any concerns that might crop up.

You know a company is interested in providing great customer service when they go to all lengths to get you to talk to them – and that goes double for companies who are internet-based.

It seems that more and more businesses out there that provide services are more interested in avoiding their customers – answering questions by sending you a link to their FAQ page or e-mailing you a canned response. While that approach to customer service is a great way to save a considerable amount of money for the company, it does tend to prevent customers from developing a strong sense of loyalty for that company.

Liquid Web has been around since 1997 and has all the technical expertise you would want in a web host with over 150 engineers that pride themselves on Heroic Support. When they say Heroic Support, they really mean Heroic Support. It’s that good. While most web hosts promote a 99.9% uptime guarantee, Liquid Web boasts a full 100% uptime guarantee. If you absolutely, positively want your website to be available all the time, that’s a big plus in Liquid Web’s favor.

Liquid Web owns, engineers and operates their own data centers – 3 of them – which sets them apart from most other web hosts who just rent out space from other, larger web hosts. The level of security and redundancy that they’ve built into their web hosting services is really outstanding.

While Liquid Web’s business focus is really on managed Virtual Private Servers and managed Dedicated Servers, they do have some stellar shared hosting packages that they offer to the people who don’t necessarily need the power – or expense – of the higher-priced hosting options.

Liquid Web Shared Hosting Packages

Like most web hosting companies, Liquid Web has several different levels of shared hosting that they offer their customers.

The lowest-priced shared hosting package that Liquid Web offers goes for $14.95 per month. For that price, you get:

24×7 Toll Free Phone Support
Two Free Domain Names
Site Studio Software
CPanel + Fantastico Auto Installer
1GB RAID Protected Disk Space
120GB Premium Multi-Homed Bandwidth

While this may not seem like a good deal when you compare numbers with Hawk Host shared hosting services, you have to look at everything. Liquid Web offers a great deal more bandwidth than Hawk Host does, but less storage. Storage isn’t a problem on most websites, however – bandwidth, and to an even-greater extent, CPU usage is.

Liquid Web is upfront about how much CPU usage your website can take up on their shared hosting server – 15%. That’s good for a shared hosting environment. Remember – if your site is taking up more than your fair share of server resources, all the other sites on the server suffer.

The second tier of shared hosting that Liquid Web offers is $19.95 a month. For that, you get:

24×7 Toll Free Phone Support
Three Free Domain Names
Site Studio Software
CPanel + Fantastico Auto Installer
1500MB RAID Protected Disk Space
200GB Premium Multi-Homed Bandwidth

This would not be my choice for shared hosting packages. Just 5$ more per month gets you up to the next tier, which is much more attractive.

The highest-priced shared hosting package that Liquid Web offers goes for $24.95 a month and provides:

Static IP Address
24×7 Toll Free Phone Support
One Dedicated IP Address
Five Free Domain Names or a free SSL Certificate
Site Studio Software
CPanel + Fantastico Auto Installer
2500MB RAID Protected Disk Space
320GB Premium Multi-Homed Bandwidth

While free domain name registration may seem like a good deal, it’s only free for a year. After that, you’re charged. I wouldn’t even bother with it. The free SSL Certificate is a good deal, but it also is only free for a year.

The site studio software may be nice, but for the purposes of this guide it’s unimportant.

The static, dedicated IP address is usually a $2-$5 dollar monthly option with other shared web hosts, and it’s good to see that feature included in Liquid Web’s top shared hosting tier.

Liquid Web Pros

Heroic Customer Service – This is their company motto and they’re very serious about it. They go above and beyond to help you through whatever problem you’re having, and that’s valuable for people who might not know exactly what they’re doing.
Bandwidth – Always a plus, and Liquid Web gives you more.
Uptime guarantee – Liquid Web guarantees your server will be up 100% of the time.

Liquid Web Cons

Price – There is no doubt that, for many people, price is the top concern when it comes to web hosting. And price is important. You need to feel like you’re getting a good return on your investment, that what you’re buying has a good value. Ultimately you have to decide for yourself as to whether or not the higher prices Liquid Web charges shared hosting customers are a good value for you.

When it comes down to choosing Hawk Host or Liquid Web, you have to ask yourself some questions.

Is cost my biggest factor?

Yes? Then go with Hawk Host.

Is uptime and fanatically devoted technical support people the most important factor?

Yes? Then go with Liquid Web.

Continuing the car analogy from the previous post about choosing a web host, if Hawk Host is a Lexus, Liquid Web is a Bentley or Rolls Royce. You really can’t go wrong with either one.

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

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Building Your Own Website – A Step By Step Guide

Decidedly Maladaptive — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:00:54 +0000

I’ve been working at a jail now for over 5 years.

It’s a decent job. The people are interesting, the work is easy, the pay is good and every now and then I get to hit someone with a chair.

On the side, however, I manage a stable of 120 or 140 websites, which bring in a considerable amount of money each month. Nothing crazy, but enough so that my wife doesn’t have to worry about working while she finishes up her student teaching.

Every few days or so, someone I work with says to me, “Hey, you have a lot of web sites, and you make some extra cash with them.”

And I say, “Yes. Yes I do.”

And then they usually ask me, “Well, when you get a chance, do you think you can show me how I can set up my own website? I’d love to make a little money on the side.”

And then I say, “Sure, not a problem.”

At this point they ask me, “Well, what are your days off?”

To which I reply, “Thursday and Friday are good, except on Thursday I’m really only available from 9 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon or so. After that I’m spending time with the kids and my wife.”

They usually say, “Ok.”

And then I continue, “On Fridays I’m watching two of the kids while the third is at preschool until 11:30 in the morning, at which point I then will drive over there with all the kids in tow and pick him up and bring him back home. Then I make lunch for all three, put the baby down and shoehorn whatever website work I can while he’s asleep and the other two are playing Left4Dead. That is, if I’m not killing hordes of zombies alongside my 3-year-old and my 5-year-old.”

At that point we usually exchange numbers and I never hear from the person again, which is really too bad – because it really is very easy to build your own website. And once you have your own website, you can usually make a little money with it. And once you can make a little money with your website, you can usually duplicate the process over and over again until eventually you sit back and realize: “Hey, I’m making a lot of money with this.”

The biggest problem with building websites – at least for most of the people I talk to – is getting started with the process. Because most people aren’t comfortable with much more than Facebook or MySpace, putting together a decent website looks way more complicated than it is. Adding to the problem is that most people don’t know where to look for information on building their own website and don’t know what information is current. There’s a lot of information out there that is dated, biased, trying to sell you something or just plain wrong.

I am hoping that the guide to building websites that I’m putting together, that I’ll post here over the next few days will make the whole web page building process a little clearer and easier to follow for the people who are interested in that sort of thing.

For those of you who want a quick overview of what this guide will include, here it is:

The Guide:

Building Your Own Website

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