Plugings, widgets and permalinks are just a couple of things to adjust in your admin area. It’s not really that scary!
First, go to into the admin area and go to the tab “settings” on the right at the top. There will be an option that you need to select that says “register to comment“. Select this and update. That was easy! This will mean that someone wanting to make a comment will have to register first. You will also want to moderate the comments that come in. You can select to approve a comment, delete it, or mark comments as spam.
Also in the “settings” area, there is a tab called “permalinks”. To help the search engines find your keywords in your posts, it is best to set your permalink to display in the following format -http://www.yourblogdomainname.com/%category%/%post-name%/
Plugins - there are many great plugins available. It is best to keep them to a minimum to avoid any complexities.
Your blog will already have the Akismet plugin which helps in dealing with spam. You will need to activate Akismet. First, either go to your existing Google account, or start a new account if you don’t already have one. Then you will be able to obtain an Akismet activation key from your google account, and enter that at your blog to activate your Akismet plugin.
Another important plugin is designed to get your posts ranked on the search engines. You will need All-In-One-SEO plugin and/or SEO Title Tag plugin. Search for the plugin by title, download it to your computer, then upload by ftp into your plugin folder that is part of your blog. And activate it.
Also, a good plug in to have is xml site-map plugin, which will help the search engines index the site. With such the sitemap, it’s becomes easier for the search engine crawlers to see the complete structure of the site and retrieve the details more efficiently. The plugin notifies major search engines when a post is created.
In “settings”, go to “writing”, and go to “update services”. At the bottom of the page is an area to enter your ping list. Copy and paste the following list to ensure your posts are pinged and the search engines know that you have something for them to check out!
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In the “Design” section, go to the tab “widgets”. This is where you select the little extras you want to use on your page. Things like “calendar” are rather redundant, and would just be taking up prime real estate on your blog without being productive. It is best to limit the selection of widgets so as not to overcrowd your presentation.
Next, select text and enter your webform from your aweber or getresponse autoresponder account (refer to resources post or blogroll for details). This will place your optin box on your blog and you will be able to start building your list of subscribers.
Select search widget as this is a helpful tool for your blog visitors.
Select categories widget.
And select blogroll widget, but you will not want the entries that are preselected in the blogroll - you can remove them. RSS may be an option, it is an important element, and many wordpress themes now already have RSS included, which enables your reader to subscribe to receiving your posts to their rss reader.
Another way to use rss feeds on your blog, is to use a plug which you program with your chosen keyword/keywords of your blog topic, and relevant information is pulled from the nominated site and populates posts on your blog with the selected material. This can be helpful with up-to-date information and news, although it is still preferable to build your blog with unique material and your own personality. An example of this would be “wordpress feedlist plugin” (I haven’t used this).
With widgets, the order that you select them is important as that is the order they will be displayed down the page. Select text first, to put your optin box at the top section of the page.
Blogroll will be a spot you will be able to use for hyperlinks to related material or affiliate products.
You may also want to add additional text boxes to add affiliate banners.
In settings, go to “reading” and you will be able to choose between having a static page or displaying your latest post on your main blog page. Most blogs choose to display their latest posts. On this blog I have chosen to display a static page, as the posts on this site are sequential, and are listed in order in the categories listing on the right of the page. This is a variance from a usual blog structure.
These refinements will help in getting the most out of your blog.
To Your Blogging Success,
Julie