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The absolute minimum plugins I recommend for personal sites are:

Akismet - (http://akismet.com/) – this plugin catches spam comments, it requires an API key, go to http://wordpress.com/signup/ to signup for an account, check your email for the verification link to get this, once you have verified by clicking on the link in the email, you will receive a second email with your API key, copy this key into the Akismet plugin

FeedBurner FeedSmith – (http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart) – if you wish to use Feedburner to send out emails of updates to your site, then this plugin assists with the redirection of standard wordpress feeds to your custom feedburner address

A future post will cover search engine optimisation and marketing/traffic building plugins I use and recommend.

However, your imagination and needs are the only limit with plugins, you may want to include links to Social Media profiles such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal etc or easily embed a Flickr gallery into a page or post. Or perhaps an Events Calendar. Search and try out different plugins until you are satisfied, and then you can change it all again later!

A word of warning: Plugins can break your whole website, make sure you have a valid backup before installing these. Check your website looks OK frequently. If things go wrong delete the most recently added plugin using FTP and re-check your site. If it can’t be fixed, restore from your backup.

Each plugin has it’s own instructions for installation, and I recommend reading them, but the general process is:

1. Download the plugin as a zip file & unzip on your local computer
2. Upload it to your wp-content/plugins/ directory on your web server
3. Log in to your Wordpress Admin Dashboard & click on plugins.
4. Click on activate to the right of the plugin name.
5. Look at the public side of your website to make sure it looks good.

Once your plugin is installed, there may be options which allow you to customise how it works on your website. Each plugin will have its own documentation, so it’s best to refer to that to gain a full understanding of what is possible.

Before looking for a theme, it is a good idea to have a few of your favourite websites in mind, think about what appeals, what you dislike and have a goal in mind. Once you start searching for themes it is easy to be overwhelmed by the options available.

I always look for themes which mention that they are “widget ready”, a widget is a small piece of code which allows you to add practically anything to your website, so if you think of something in the future you would like to add, you can add it using a widget.

Searching for themes is easy, you can look via the Wordpress site here or by performing a Google search.

Keep a list of themes you like, and bookmark their addresses so you can find them later.

A word of warning: Themese can break your whole website, make sure you have a valid backup before installing these. Check your website looks OK frequently. If things go wrong delete the most recently added plugin using FTP and re-check your site. If it can’t be fixed, restore from your backup.

Each theme has it’s own instructions for installation, and I recommend reading them, but the general process is:

1. Download the theme as a zip file & unzip on your local computer
2. Upload it to your wp-content/themes/ directory on your web server
3. Log in to your Wordpress Admin Dashboard & click on themes.
4. Click on the thumbnail image of your new theme, then click on activate theme in the top right corner.
5. Look at the public side of your website to make sure it looks good.

Once your theme is installed, there may be options which allow you to customise what it looks like on your website, for example, add category lists in the sidebar, change a header image. Each theme will have its own documentation, so it’s best to refer to that to gain a full understanding of what is possible.

While making these changes, it is a good idea to regularly check the public view of the website to make sure it looks correct. If something doesn’t look right, go back into the Wordpress Admin Dashboard and reverse your changes.

Users - in Dashboard, click on Users, Add New and fill out details for the users who will be publishing on the website. The User Roles which come with Wordpress are further explained on the Definitions page. Generally Editor, Author and Subscriber are most commonly used. You can also upload images for each of the Users

Settings, General – fill out the details and click Save Changes at the bottom

• Website title (appears in top blue bar of browser when looking at the site)
• tagline – a line of text which appears just under the site name in most Wordpress themes
• allow anyone to register for the site (so people can subscribe to make comments) and what their role should be (recommend leaving this as subscriber)
• timezone – so that posts show the correct time of publication
• date & time formats and choose the day which starts a week

Settings, Writing – fill out the details and click Save Changes at the bottom

• Most of these settings can stay as selected, however i do like to change the Default Post Category to something more meaningful than “Uncategorized” where possible. Before you do this you will need to open a new screen to add categories to Wordpress.
• Once you have new categories created, go back to Settings, Writing and choose you default category, this means all new posts will automatically have this category but you can select additional categories at the time you write a post.

Settings, Reading – fill out the details and click Save Changes at the bottom

• Again, keeping the defaults for most of these settings is a great way to get started, but it is worth noting that this is where you can set the look of your website homepage to be different than the most recent posts, for example if you would like the fromntpage of the website to always show a specific page like “About Us” this is where you set it
• you can also control the number of posts to be shown here, which is worth looking at once you have more than 10 posts done to your website

Settings, Discussion – fill out the details and click Save Changes at the bottom

These settings control the comments area of your website, and it is worth making a few adjustments to reduce spam to your site if you have allowed comments. We will also be using the Akismet plugin to help reduce spam.

Keep all of the defaults and additionally:

• Turn on Users must be registered and logged in to comment
• Turn on Enable threaded (nested) comments
• Turn off Comment author must have a previously approved comment

If you want to comments on your website, then turn off Allow people to post comments on the article

Settings, Privacy & Settings, Media – most people won’t need to make any changes here unless they have special requirements – these pages provide some control of whether you want your site to be listed on Search Engine Result Pages and standard image sizes within posts. After using your site for a while you may want to adjust the latter, but generally these don’t need changing.

Settings, Permalinks – fill out the details and click Save Changes at the bottom

This page controls the website URLs or addresses. By default Wordpress pages & posts have names like http://www.yoursitename.com/?p=123 which is not very useful or friendly. To make the addresses friendlier you can choose any of the other options or create your own custom structure. I like to set this to Custom and put /%postname%/ in the box, this will make your addresses look like http://www.yoursitename.com/yourposttitle/ which is much friendlier and has many advantages when people are searching for information via search engines. I prefer to leave the optional fields blank.

Settings, Miscellaneous – most people won’t need to make any changes here unless they have special requirements

Posts, Categories – once set up Categories provide a simple way to classify and navigate around your website watch a video about Categories & Tags here

I think thats enough information to get you Wordpress website set up. However if anything isn’t clear, please put a comment below and I will be more than happy to help out.

Happy Blogging!

This automatically builds up a menu in most Wordpress themes, allowing your site visitors to quickly navigate to their interest areas, or fellow travellers to link from their website directly to your travel stories.

Rather than write another 1000 words explaining Wordpress categories, this excellent video from Wordpress TV makes it easy to understand. If the video looks too small, you can make it full screen size by clicking on the 4 arrows in the bottom right corner.

• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber – Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters, etc.

Posts are the most commonly used type of information on a weblog or blog, they have a date & time of which they were published, and other people can comment on your posts & pages if you have this function turned on. Emails are automatically sent if a new comment is made, so you know it is there.

Words, images & videos can be inserted into both Posts and Pages.

You will need to be logged into your Wordpress site at http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/ using your unique username and password to start preparing a page or a post.

Rather than explain it all wordpress.tv has an exceptional video series to show how you can make a post. If the video looks too small, you can make it full screen size by clicking on the 4 arrows in the bottom right corner.

Creating, editting and publishing posts

Some other information & videos you may be interested in at this point:
Embedding photos, video & audio into your posts
Saving and returning to draft posts & pages
Adding categories and tags to your posts
Publishing your post at a later date
Setting your posts – or entire blog – to private

Creating, editting and publishing pages

As mentioned above, Pages do not change very often, they are sometimes referred to as static pages. They may be useful for Contac info, “About Us” or whatever you see fit. Quite often these have a separate menu area on your website front end so that visitors can navigate to them simply. For a small business, a collection of Pages builds a simple website very quickly.

Again, thanks to wordpress.tv you don’t need to read a lot here, just click on the video below and you will be creating pages like an expert quickly. If the video looks too small, you can make it full screen size by clicking on the 4 arrows in the bottom right corner.

I think thats enough information to get you started on creating, updating and publishing information to your Wordpress website. However if anything isn’t clear, please put a comment below and I will be more than happy to help out.

Happy Blogging!

• incredible flexibility to the theme colours, layout options and functions via user contributed themes and plugins
• ease of use for non-technical users – if you can use a Word Processor then you can add, edit and delete content from your website
• ability for technical users to modify programming, layout and functions
• a world wide community of users to offer support
• enough documentation for every level of user to easily use Wordpress
• constant upgraded and improved with new features

and best yet, all of this is free!

This series is intended as a simple step by step guide on getting started and using Wordpress, it is intended for readers who have limited technical expertise with websites. If anything doesn’t make sense, please drop me a comment in the Comments area below my content so I can improve the information for other people.

If you already have your site setup, and just want to know how to use your site, then skip straight to Part 7 – Adding and editting content on your website

This will be a series of articles, the general structure will look like this:

Getting Started With Wordpress

• Part 1 – Introduction
• Part 2 – What is Blogging?
• Part 3 – Installing Wordpress
• Part 4 – Setting Up Wordpress
• Part 5 – Customising the look of your website
• Part 6 – Further customisation with Wordpress plugins
• Part 7 – Adding and editting content on your website
• Part 8 – Maintenance tasks to keep your website healthy

Of course, if readers want more info, then feel free to ask questions and I will do my best to address them, perhaps with a new article, or amendment to a planned article.

I am available to assist with installation & set up of Wordpress sites for a reasonable fee. Please contact me via email