How to build your own website easily using Wordpress 
If you are looking for a quick efficient solution to get a website up and running – Wordpress is most definitely the way to go. Wordpress is an Open Source website publishing software that was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. In this article I’ll discuss in short what type of hosting you will need to host a Wordpress website, how to download it and upload it to a domain, how to change the look by downloading a free theme and how to install it, how to implement some cool functionality (plugins) and how to use the basic Wordpress features.
Hosting your WordPress website
First of all – you need to find a company to host your Wordpress website on a server. Wordpress requires PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) and MySQL (a relational database management system) to work. You’ll also need to choose a domain name e.g. www.example-site.com. The hosting company should be able to register a domain name (the one you chose and if it is available) on your behalf. Ask them to send you the MySQL and FTP login information because you’ll need it to set up a working Wordpress website.
Downloading Wordpress & Uploading it to your website
After you have organised hosting (that will be able to run Wordpress) and got a domain name you will need to download Wordpress CMS. Download Wordpress.
You will also need to download an FTP client such as FileZilla to be able to connect to the server with the above mentioned FTP details. After downloading the FTP client open it enter the Host name (or IP address), username and password (FTP details) and then click QuickConnect (in FileZilla). Then you should be connected to the server. If you struggle with this, phone your hosting company they will be able to help you with this. Download FileZilla
Unzip the Wordpress zip file on your local machine then upload the contents of it to the www folder (usually www or public_html).
Installing Wordpress
If you have uploaded the Wordpress files – go to your domain name e.g. http://www.example-site.com where an installation wizard will be prompted. Fill in all the information you need to e.g. database connectivity login information (usually given by the hosting company) and website name. Continue until you have completed the setup wizard. You can edit the database variables in the configuration file found in the root of your Wordpress installation.
Now that your Wordpress website has been successfully installed you can go to the administrator panel by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin where you can then login with the information you supplied in the setup wizard.
Downloading a Theme and installing it
Now with your website hopefully successfully running, it’s time to customize it a bit with templates / themes.
There are plenty of themes out there you can use. To download themes go to the Wordpress website: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ where you can search for themes (many of which are customizable in your administration panel) and download it.
You can also search for themes within the WordPress administration by clicking on Add new themes link on the left hand side (a sub menu of the Appearance link).
If you downloaded it to your local upload it to your wp-content/themes/ folder and if you search for it via the administration it can be automatically installed. Just make sure your themes folder is set to writable (chmod 777). Then go to your administration and enable your new theme.
Extend WordPress even more
Now with your website looking great you can extend the functionality of it. It is easy to extend Wordpress with existing plugins. You can search plugins again from your administration by clicking on the plugins tab on your left hand side and then click on the sub menu “Add new” where you can search for plugins which is installable similar to that of the themes. (Again make sure your plugins folder is writeable (chmod 777)
Basic Use of a Wordpress website
Creating a new post entry
Click on the Posts tab (found on your left hand side) then you will see sub items underneath the Posts tab then click on “Add new “. Fill in the title of your entry, the body, the category the post should appear in and other fields. You can then click on Preview to view the page (before publishing) or just click Publish to make it live.
Creating a category
One uses categories to organise your postings. To create a category you can either create a new post then where you choose a category click on “Add new category” or you can go to the categories section (under Posts tab) and there you will find a create new category form. Fill in fields and click on “Add Category”.
It is virtually impossible to explain all of Wordpress within one blog entry but I am sure this article will help you to set up a basic website in a very short period of time. Wordpress is by far the best most affordable solution to set up a well functioning website.
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Why use a professional to build and maintain your website?
Today – websites play a vital role in attracting potential customers, building your brand and promoting interaction between your businesses and existing clients. Though you still get businesses that either do not want to invest or invest very little in obtaining a website. This leads to businesses using internal resources to quickly set up a website and in turn update their website intermittently.
This usually leaves a business with a website that looks unprofessional that cannot be found organically via search engines because the website has not been constructed correctly. A website needs to be constructed in such a manner that robots (web bots) can make sense of it so that it can be indexed and finally be found by potential clients.
Visitors to your website want a great user experience. A professionally designed website that is relevant to your product/service improves user experience. Images used in designs should be optimized for websites to improve loading speed. Nothing increases the bounce rate of websites as much as long page loading times.
User experience is improved by implementing functionality like search, quote forms, booking systems to mention just a few. Visitors don’t like to struggle using websites they want to find what they need as easily and quickly as possible.
Maintenance on a website should also be done regularly and if not done correctly it can easily break your website. Building your website in to a CMS (Content Management System) can help with this especially in decreasing the time spent on updating your website.
One should use a professional to construct and maintain a website as Aa professionals has the ability to construct a website according to W3 standards using the latest proven technologies to optimize websites for search engines and to improved user experience.
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Why use online marketing professionals to do your online marketing.
Today it is extremely important to have an online presence and without any marketing, your website would not get the right traffic for the products or services you provide. A lot of small companies start by doing some type of internet marketing themselves to drive traffic to their websites in the form of PPC, some SEO or via social media. Soon they will find out that this is a full time job and to do it properly they will need professional help.
This week we will have a look at why you need to get professional help for your website, from the management of the website to all types of online marketing that can be utilised. The online marketing industry is an ever changing environment and if you are running your own company and still need to keep track of all the best practices needed to stay ahead something will get left behind.
Online marketing professionals work with websites and the marketing thereof everyday and trusting a company to handle your website might be worth a lot more than just the extra money that you will spend for their services.
People that I’ve met that ran their own PPC campaigns for example, realized that it was getting too involved for them to manage it properly. After handing it over to us they could focus more on their business and performance of the PPC campaigns also improved. Trying to do SEO yourself might be a bit more tricky because SEO is a lot more technical. You need someone that understands the technical side of how websites and search engines work to do that properly. Managing your social media marketing by yourself might work for a while but you will soon realize that as it grows that it will become time consuming, and you will never get to everything that you have to and do proper management of your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Do check back here the rest of the week for more reasons why you should use an online marketing expert.
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Common mistakes that prevent users from reaching goals you set up
You have your website all set up now, and everything seems to be working fine but still users do not reach your goal. In this article I will be discussing some of the common mistakes made on websites that keep users’ from reaching their goals.
Your design
One of the most common mistakes made is in the design of your website. Users can easily be put-off by the lack of good design and development which will result in a high bounce rate. If a design contains too many images the webpage will take a very long time to load and might result in users clicking on the back button of their internet browser to find better results somewhere else. This however doesn’t mean you have to banish images entirely. If you decide to use images they should be web optimized and designed correctly according to internet standards to optimize the loading speed of your web pages.
Forms
In many cases a website’s goal is to get the visitor to submit a form either to register, fill in a contact me request or to submit information for an e-quote. Users don’t like lengthy hard to understand forms as they don’t want to spend too much time on them. Forms should be easy to understand and should not consume too much time to complete.
Call to action
People that visit your website do not want to spend hours looking for information that they want thus your call to action should be clear for users to easily read and understand. Many times users land on a website and they do not know where to go from there to find the information they want. This causes users to leave your website and continue on to find a website that is more organized and easy to understand.
Website copy
Copy according to me is probably the most important factor of your website. It doesn’t only play a role in optimizing your website for search engines but also explains what your website and so your business is all about. Poorly written copy, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors will portray your company as unprofessional or in some cases cause a visitor to immediately leave your website
Finally – I want to stress how important the little things are on your website. Pay attention to detail even if you think it’s not that important because someone else visiting your website might think: “they should have paid attention to that” or “that looks wrong”. Little mistakes are often the reason why visitors to your website do not reach the goals you have set up.
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Why you need a website
You may have probably read our previous blog articles that stress the importance of having your own website to efficiently market your business and get your brand out there; at the risk of sounding repetitive I am going to write about the necessity of having your own website once again, you see this was inspired by a personal and very frustrating experience I had recently, let me elaborate further.
I decided to take a short holiday last weekend and wanted to find an appropriate resort that would allow me to relax and de-stress and God knows we all need that at some point or the other, I had a recommendation regarding a resort from a friend, however when I tried to search for the resort online to have a look at what they offer, and what activities and facilities they have I was sorely disappointed, the resort in question did not have a website, I started getting frustrated as I couldn’t even find decent images of the place
The only information I could find concerning them was on other accommodation sites and the information I got on there was very limited. All these directory sites where you can list your website can help to get good exposure, but are very limited when it comes to what information you give your potential clients.
By having your own website you can you can give the customer a better feel of what you have to offer, you also don’t have limited space to provide them with the necessary details. Your whole website’s look and feel will add to the experience when people actually visit your resort. The nice thing about having your own website is that it will strengthen your brand a lot. You will never grow a very strong brand by just appearing on these other websites. When users find that you own your own website they tend to trust you more than your competitor which they can’t look up online. This means that you immediately gain an edge above your competitor which is always useful when your selling your services.
If you are in the same situation that Chris was in, in his article being your own travel agent you want to get the right information and as detailed as possible when you need it. If your website is easy to find and informative you will definitely reap the rewards. If someone needs to plan a holiday in a short time and can only use the internet, they will choose the company that gives them the best information in the easiest, quickest way.
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