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Have you been thinking about setting up your own WordPress site? Talking to other WordPress users, the general consensus is it’s easy!  All you do is install and start blogging. Well that is true but everyone who sets up a WordPress site should be familiar with plug-ins.

Plug-ins are what I call enhancements to WordPress. They are like extra tools to make your site better, custom and SEO friendly.  Only two plugins come with a standard installation and even these plugins can be removed if you don’t want or need them.  Plugins are completely up to you. In this blog entry I’m going to discuss the four “must have” plugins.

The first plugin I recommend is Askimet. This plugin comes standard with every WordPress installation. Askimet works to block spam comments on your blog. Activating this tool is pretty straight forward. In the plugins section, click Activate under Askimet. Then go HERE for your key (this does require you to signup).  Keys for Personal Blogs are free and non-personal keys are between $5-$15 per year. After submitting basic information for your type of blog an email is sent to you with the key.  Back in WordPress there will be a red box at the top t of the page asking for the key. Enter the information and you’re done. Your blog is now protected from spam comments.

The rest of the plugins I’m going to refer to do not come pre-installed on WordPress. You must find them and install them manually. Don’t worry this process is easier than it sounds.  There are two options for installing plugins.

1.       In the WordPress plugin page, there is a search for additional plugins box. Type in the name of the plugin you want, click search and select install on the plugin you were looking for.

2.       Outside of the WordPress admin console, locate and download the plugin you want. Then FTP the unzipped files to yoursite.com/web/content/wp-theme/plugins. Login to the WordPress Admin Console, navigate to the Plugins page and there is your plugin.

The Social Networking plugin that I recommend installing is AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button. This plugin adds a button to your blog posts that allows readers to share the posts on multiple Social Networking sites (like, twitter, facebook, etc) It’s a great way to let users help you get your blog noticed.

There are two SEO plugins that I would suggest to every blog user; Meta SEO and Google Sitemap Generator. Meta SEO helps you manage and add meta tags to your blog posts. After activating this plugin you’ll notice a new category in the left navigation of the WordPress Admin Console “Meta SEO”. This is where you manage your tags. To add tags to posts, either add a new post or edit an existing post. Scroll down beneath the content area of the post and you’ll see new features called Meta Keywords, Meta Tags, and Meta Descriptions, which is where specific post SEO information goes.

The other plugin, Google Sitemap Generator, does just that; it appends new posts information to an existing sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.zip file. Before this plugin is activated, you need to create a blank sitemap.xml and a blank sitemap.xml.zip files to upload to your site. Place these files here: yoursite.com/web/content/. Activate the plugin and submit this xml file to Google Webmaster tools.

I have recommended four basic and very helpful plugins that every WordPress site should have; Askimet, AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button, Meta SEO, and Google Sitemap Generator. Although there are thousands of plugin out there, from my experience these four are the foundation to improving your blog.

Do you use any plugins similar to these? What are your core plugins?

Related posts: Search Engine Optimization Starter Tools, How to manage a blog – tutorial

Filed under: Blog,SEO   Tags: AddToAny, Askimet, Google Webmaster Tools, seo, sitemap.xml, Social Networking, WordPress,
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*UPDATE*

Chad Keck recently put a video tutorial which explains how to do this in a much simpler manner than what I have described below.  I suggest you first try and follow his video. http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_demos/cloud_computing_word_press_install

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to install WordPress on a site hosted through Mosso (Cloud Sites).

Assumptions:

• You know how to manage your domain
• You know how to upload files to your website

1. Set up your Cloud Site.
1a. Login into Mosso then navigate to Cloud Sites under Hosting in the left-hand menu.
1b. Below the currently hosted websites you will see a section Add a New Website. Fill in your details here.

1c. Add the website as you have any others, make sure to allow for 1 database and set the Default Technology to Linux/Apache/PHP

2. Download WordPress. You can get the download at, http://wordpress.org/download/.

3. Extract the zip file to your local computer.

4. Open the extracted directory wordpress and rename the file, “wp-config-sample.php” to “wp-config.php”

5.Set up your MySql database for the website.
5a. After your site is created you should be in the management section of the newly created site. Click on the Features tab to go add a new database.

5b. Once you have navigated to the Features page click on the “Add” button in thee Databases section at the top.

make sure to remember or write down what you fill out in the next two steps.

5c. Step 1 – Give your database a name, I usually choose the domain name of a shortened version of it.  Choose MySql * as your Database type.  Continue.
5d. Step 2 – Enter a database username, I always use the same as you used for the database name to keep it simple.  Enter and confirm your password.  Finish.

6. Update the WordPress file, wp-config.php.
6a. While the database is being created you can go ahead and update this file. Open the file up in your favorite text editor.  You should see where you need to enter your database name, database username, password and host.  The name, username and password you just created.
6b. The host can be found once the database is created under the Features tab you should be able to click on the name of your database to edit it. On this page you will see a section title Database Information.  You will see “Hostname” under the Name and Hostname section.  Use this to replace, localhost below.

update the fields in red below

6c. Update the Authentication Unique Keys in this file.  In the file it gives a handy link to generate the keys, https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/. Open up a browser and go to that url.  Copy the output of it and replace what is in the file with it.

6d. Save the wp-config-.php file.

7. Upload all the wordpress files to your site via ftp.  Go grab a bite to eat, this may take a few minutes.

8. Now you’re ready to start configuring the blog. In your browser navigate to: [yourdomain.com]/wp-admin/install.php.  If you haven’t  set the domain to be live yet you can use the testing url here.
Fill out the info on this page.
Uncheck “Allow my blog to appear in search engines..”  Once you have the blog ready to go live you can check in this settings.
Click the button Install WordPress.

9. Note the username and password and then “Log In”.  I just copy the password to my clipboard.

10. Login and change password.
Login and click on “admin” in the upper right corner of the page.  This will take you to your profile where you can update your password to something you’ll remember.

11. Create and Upload a .htaccess file so you can have friendly urls for your posts.
11a. Open up a text editor and create a new file.  Add the text below:

11b. Save the file as “.htaccess”.
11c. Upload this file to the root of your blog.

12. Update the blog to allow for friendly urls.
12a. In the WordPress admin section under Settings in the menu found at the bottom click on Permalinks.
Under Common Settings update it to one that you like and Save Changes.

13. Delete the index.html file located in the root directory.  This is just a placeholder page created by Mosso until you have your site ready.

YOU’RE DONE.  You should now be able to go to your domain and see your blog.  Some of the steps could be done out of order but following it will get your blog up and running.  I hope you find this beneficial.

Filed under: Blog   Tags: Rackspace Cloud, WordPress,
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