Web Logging My Blogging

The title says it all.

This is a test for the twitter api thingy I’m working on.

This is where the fun begins. I’ve been looking forward to this.

I’ve downloaded the Thesis Theme for WordPress and I’ve uploaded it into the themes folder for my WordPress Recipe Blog.

It is located in the wp-content folder.

Once you have the Thesis Theme for WordPress uploaded to your themes folder you can go to your Dashboard.

Click on Appearance

Click on Thesis

WordPress shows you what the default setting of the theme will look like. In the right corner

Click on Activate “Thesis”

Notice that there is a new link on the Themes menu that says Thesis Options. Here is a screen shot.

Click on Thesis Options

Thesis Theme for WordPress allows you to control the look and feel of your blog.

Here is a screen shot of the Thesis Theme for WordPress Options Page in it’s default form.

Click the image to see the whole image.

If you want the Thesis theme for WordPress for your own blog, you can get it by clicking here now.

My Recipe Blog now looks like this:

If you want to see My Recipe Blog in real life, here is the link.

I’ll blog about the changes I make to the Thesis Theme for WordPress Options in upcoming issues.

Next in setting up my blogs, I like to change the URL that WordPress uses to archive the posts.

Click on “Settings”

Click on “Permalinks”

You can see that from here you can change from the Default permalink structure to a customized one. As you click the radio buttons for the Common Settings you will notice the Custom Structure change.

For instance when you click: Day and name

the Custom Structure shows: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

I set up my Custom WordPress Permalink Structure to /%category%/%postname%/

I use the category and postname (or title of the post) for SEO (search engine optimization).

I just tested to see what would happen if you have two categories assigned to the post. The first category in alphabetical order will come up as the one used in the URL structure.

Setting up WordPress with my host is easy, they have it as a click and install. I’m using mediatemple.net

I’ve clicked “Install Application” and got the install page.

I’ve changed the Website path to recipe.aquanda.com as this is for my recipe blog.

I change the Database configuration for each of my blogs and I keep them in separate databases. For this one I’ve named it wp_recipe.

This is very important, I also change the Database table prefix from wp_ to something else. Like wpnew_. This makes it harder for someone who is trying to exploit WordPress sites to get mine. The exploit will look for wp_ and I always make it something else.

This part is fun, I get to give my blog it’s Blog Title: My Recipe Blog. I added my e-mail address and hit “Install WordPress.”

WordPress says “Success!” and gives me an username of admin and a password. It shows me the “Log In” button and I click it.

I’m now at the WordPress login page. http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

Now, the first thing I do when starting a new blog is add a new user that is NOT admin.

Click on “Users”

Under “Add New User” put in your information.

Make sure you change the role to “Administrator.”

Click on “Add User”

The “admin” user is BAD. A hacker could possibly attack your blog because of this. Now that we have ourselves as a new user, we can delete the “admin” user.

Check the box next to “admin”

Click “Delete”

Ouch, and it won’t let me delete the current user. I have to sign off then sign back on as the new user I just created.

Click “Log Out”

Enter your new user information and click “Log In”

Click “Users”

Check the box next to “admin” and click “Delete” then click “Confirm Deletion”

Excellent! My new WordPress blog is ready to go.

Let’s personalize your new blog some.

Click on “Design”

Change your Tagline to your new Tagline.

Step 1: Blog what you enjoy/know/Love

It’s time for a new blog for myself, and this one is really for myself. I’ve been cooking a lot lately and I’ve been wanting to keep track of the recipes I’ve changed. I enjoy doing blogs so I thought I would create a recipe blog for myself.

I’ll be blogging here about my steps for setting up this personal recipe blog.

I’ve done blogs in the past on subjects I thought would make money rather than what I really enjoyed. They didn’t make as much money as I thought and I did not enjoy it as much as my blogs where I was enjoying myself. And I make more money on my enjoyment blogs, not my reach for riches blogs.

Step 2: Use WordPress

The second step to starting a blog is choosing which blogging platform to use. I’ve already got this step covered for myself because I researched and even read several books on blogging a year or so ago. If you have not made up your mind trying to choose a blogging platform can make your head spin. I choose and am still pleased with the WordPress blogging platform. I like the flexibility it gives me to make a unique blog.

Step 3: Use the Theses Theme

The next step for me is having a way to control all that flexibility that WordPress uses. I’ve done coding before and know you can get into the guts of WordPress but I really don’t want to spend my time doing that. I searched, researched, tried and tested lots of WordPress themes. Themes are written so a non-coder can get to the flexibility of WordPress without having to do the coding. It is an interface with WordPress.

After lots of looking I found the Thesis Theme for WordPress. I’ve watched as this theme has matured into a fantastic interface for WordPress. In fact, I have not even used the latest release. I’ll be blogging about my experiences with the newest release here on this blog as I create my recipe blog.

Disclaimer: This blog is run on the Thesis Theme and if you buy it from clicking from here, I get a small amount of money. I would re-buy the theme today, I like it so much.

When you are searching for Wordpress Theme Options, be sure to consider the Thesis theme. It might not be for everyone, if you like to tweak the Wordpress files than this theme option is not for you.

However, if you want a theme that has a control panel to handle the most common issues and one place to make your style changes than the Thesis theme might be what you are looking for.

With the Thesis Wordpress Theme Option, you get a wonderful, easy to use control panel to set up things like how to handle the header area. Do you want your own graphic? Do you want this theme option to allow you to show the title and tag lines of your blog?

The control panel also allows you to set up your blog’s feed to work the best with Wordpress. You can use the control panel to set what pages you want for your Navigation or Category pages. You can really easily set up Google Analytics or any other statistics software. The control is so easy that it makes it hard to use a Wordpress Theme option that does NOT have this awesome of control panel.

To change the styling of your blog you change a single file within the Thesis Theme if you choose this as your Wordpress theme option. You can see my .custom page for the Blue Blog by clicking on this: Yancey’s Custom Style Sheet for the Blue Blog. The Blue blog of course uses the Thesis Wordpress Theme Option.

Ron Dubin has announced his photo book on Bolivia is now available.

On special assignment, Ron toured Bolivia with an eye for taking pictures to help tell the story of the land. The images show the stark hard environment that is populated by wonderful people.

His pictures of trains in their final resting place in the desert will thrill rail fans.

The portraits of the people will make you want to visit, the spirit in their eyes is inviting.

Visit Bolivia by viewing the sweeping vistas and inspired vision of Ron Dubin in Bolivia A Journey.

It’s great that you got your new blog going. I like the way you have used the Thesis theme for WordPress. You can see now why I really like to recommend it.

This is important, this is the first step I always take when working with a new blog and plugins.

Install Plugin Central for WordPress

Without Plugin Central you have to download then upload the plugin. With Plugin Central all you do is put in the name of the plugin and hit “Install Plugins” which is soooo much easier.

Step 1: Download Plugin Central to your hard drive.

Go to Wordpress plugin Directory page for Plugin Central and click on “Download.”

Step 2: Upload the Plugin Central folder to the plugins folder

Your WordPress blog files have a folder specifically for you to put new plugins in. It is in the folder “wp-content.” Here is the path with my host:
topcolorblogs.com/html/wp-content/plugins

There are already two plugins in the folder, Akismet which is in a folder and hello.php which is a single file. Most plugins will be in their own folder.

The Plugin Central folder needs to go in the plugins folder.

There are many ways to do this. One way is to use your FTP program to open your WordPress site folder on your hosted server and then to navigate to the plugin folder.

I’m using Dreamweaver and have a copy of my site on my hard drive. I copied the Plugin Central folder to my hard drive folder then used Dreamweaver to upload to the hosting server.

Activate the Plugin from WordPress Dashboard

Go to your admin area for your blog or as WordPress calls it your “Dashboard.” If you do not have a quick link to it you can just type “wp-admin” after your blog url to get there.

Click on “Plugins” which is in the upper right corner.
Click on “Activate” next to Plugin Central.

Notice that now Plugin Central is next to Plugins and Plugin Editor on the navigational bar.

Click on “Plugin Central”

Now you can just enter the name of the next plugin you want to add.

Rockie, I want you to put in “Google XML Sitemaps.” You need this next with your Rockie’s Ghost Riders! super blog. (another Thesis theme blog)

I know there are other plugins like Plugin Central for controlling your plugins for WordPress. If you are using another plugin, please leave a comment below and let me know which one you like.

Those new to plugins might also want to read the WordPress page on Managing Plugins.

If you go the Vladimir Prelovac’s page, he wrote Plugin Central, you see that he has listed “All in One SEO Pack.” If you are using the Thesis theme for WordPress, you DO NOT NEED THIS. The Thesis theme was written from the ground up with SEO in mind. In fact, author of Thesis is well known in the SEO industry. Rockie, do not add the “All in One SEO Pack.”