With Dropbox you can either install the software on all of your devices, or if you want to access a file from say a work or university computer that you don’t have administrator privileges on, you can simply download the file via the website. It’s all stored in the cloud and your computer(s) at home or elsewhere don’t need to be on to access the files.

Download Dropbox and get your 2GB of online sync space for free!

In this tutorial, I will be setting up theme for my new niche site TVTycoonGames.com.  I have always had a somewhat strange passion for simulation games in which you manage or run a television station.  There are only a handful of games out there, and I’ve never seen a centralized list of them all before.  I thought I would create a small review site, and my keyword research seemed to show these keywords were the best available given the number of searches compared to the competition for these keywords.  I will post a tutorial on keyword research using Market Samurai in future.

1. Finding Your WordPress Theme

There are many wordpress themes available – mostly paid, but quite a few free ones.  While I plan to use the free theme AdCents in this tutorial, I feel I should just give a quick few words of warning when it comes to using free themes-

If you are planning on seeking out a paid theme, you can pick them up relatively cheaply, and there are several options for doing so.  First, you could have a completely custom theme designed through a service like oDesk, or 99designs.  Alternatively, you can utilize professionally designed themes, which although not custom, are less likely to be found on 25,000 other websites, like some of the free themes.  These themes can generally be purchased either individually, or by joining a template club (with a monthly or yearly fee) which gives you access to all of that company or designers themes.

2. Installing Your WordPress Theme

Step 2A: Once you’ve found the wordpress theme you want to use, or test – and have downloaded the zip or rar file of the theme you want to use attempt to unzip or unrar the file.  If it simply unrars a folder, which contains (either in it or in a single subfolder) a bunch of php files and other folders such as ‘css’, ‘images’ ‘includes’ and so forth, then you can simply upload the file you have unzipped.  However, if the zip file contains more zip files then you will need to upload the zip file which includes the ‘css’ ‘images’ ‘includes’ and other folders as well as the themes php files (such as header.php, index.php etc).  Sometimes, the other zip files may contain things like the themes image source files, so that you can use these to edit the theme – but that is getting a bit complex for this tutorial.

Step 2B: Making sure you have found the right zip file to upload, log in to your wordpress administration dashboard – likely at yourdomain.com/wp-admin/.  Once logged in, select ‘Appearance’ from the left hand pannel, then ‘Themes’.  Now, from the top tabs choose ‘Install Theme’, which will probably be grayed-out.  Under that tab, will be the options ‘Search’, ‘Upload’, ‘Featured’ etc, from which you should select Upload.  Then hit ‘Browse’, select the correct zip file ascertained in Step 2A, and then click ‘Install Now’.

With any luck, you won’t have received any errors – if you did it is possible you did not obtain the right zip file outlined in Step 1, the zip file is corrupted, or the theme is perhaps incompatible with the version of wordpress you are running.  Click ‘Activate’.  Now, your current theme should be displayed, with ‘OPTIONS’ including ‘widgets’, ‘menus’ and perhaps a third option – ‘theme settings’ or something to that effect.  If you do have a theme settings option, click on that now

Step 2C (depending on your theme):  Most, but not all themes include at least a basic theme options page.  If it includes this it will appear within the administration pannel in one of a few likely places.  This may appear under the Appearance menu on the left-hand pannel, or an entirely new menu option may be created.  Alternatively, the theme options page can usually (but not always) be accessed via Appearance > Themes, where under the current theme it lists the options available.

Depending on the complexity of this theme options/setup page, you may be able to enter the URL or upload a new logo image, set the Alt text and in the fancier themes even alter the style, colors and layout quite dramatically.

Because this options page varies depending on the theme, it is essentially impossible to write a guide that is applicable to all of them.   Generally, the options are relatively self-explanatory.  However, where something is not made clear, you can always play around with the settings – save them – then explore the frontend of your site and take note of the changes (if any).

3. Integrating your Logo into the theme

There are several approaches to including your logo in the wordpress theme, and modifying the theme so that it displays your logo.  Here are the three approaches, with the easiest and fastest methods appearing first.

First, if your theme does have a theme settings page, the logo image can often be either uploaded, or the URL to the image file can be entered to quickly update the logo.  Sometimes, you may also be able to update the favicon .ico file.  The favicon is the small icon displayed next to your site’s address in the address bar, left of the page title in your browser tabs, and also appears next to the page title in your bookmarks.  You can easily convert a gif or png image file to a .ico using this handy tool.

This is the approach that worked using the free AdCents theme for my niche site TVTycoonGames.com.

Second, if you can locate the image of the logo displayed by default within the zip file you uploaded, then you can replace this within the zip file, or rezip the unzipped file structure.  Then reupload the theme (after removing it if you have already installed it).  Alternatively, using an FTP tool (I use Core FTP LE), you can browse to wp-content/themes/the-name-of-your-theme and replace (or overwrite) the default image.

Third, is probably a better approach to the second method, for SEO reasons.  By having the image of your logo named to include some of your core site keywords, this can improve SEO.  To do this, you must locate within the .php files of the theme where it calls for the default image to be displayed.  Thus, first find the files name.  Next, under Appearance > Editor select ‘Header.php’ from the right hand side.  Using your browsers search function enter the name of the default image.  If you have found it, replace the name with the name of your own logo file – upload the file to that location – and save your changes to the .php file.  However, this may not be located within header.php, and depends on the theme – some other obvious files to try are index.php, but you may have to go through and search the contents of each one.

Note, if your theme does not use a logo image by default, but rather uses text – this option may sometimes be changed within the theme’s settings page.  Alternatively, in some themes this can only be changed by editing the .php files.

4. Configuring Your Footer

In your footer you may want to include a number of things, from a copyright notice to links to various pages – such as your about page or privacy policy.  Depending on the theme you are using, this can be achieved in a number of ways.

First, from within the theme option menu a footer option may be available allowing you to insert HTML code for your copyright notice – and even (if there is enough room) – a few links you could write in HTML if you are familiar with this or using something like an online demo of tinymce to create the html code for you.

Second, if the theme has a footer widget or any widget that appears in the footer area (irrespective of its name) you may place widgets in this area to create your footer.  You can use a simply ‘Text’ widget to insert text for your copyright notice, or links.  Alternatively, there may be a different area for you to place links in a widget – which can be achieved using either a ‘custom menu’ widget, a ‘links’ widget or again simple HTML code inside a ‘text’ widget.

Third, and as a last resort – a footer can usually be added by editing the footer.php file.  This can be done within wordpress from the ‘Editor’ link on the left menu, nder Appearance.  It may take some fiddling to work out where in the footer.php file you will need to place your code.

5. Other things to note-

Using ‘Links’ to create menus and links

This is not the preferred method for creating menus, but is another option.  Within ‘links’ create a category, and then create links associated with that category.

Now from within Widgets (under appearance), add a ‘links’ widget, and select the category you just created and associated links to.  You should be able to move the widget to various widget areas (depending on your theme) and have the links display on diferent places on the page.

Using ‘Menus’ to create menus and links

The newer versions of wordpress come with a built-in menu system.  From the menus screen (under appearance) create a new menu.  Ensuring the tab for the menu you just created is selected, add some links to the menu from the left.  Now save your menu.

From within Widgets (under appearance) drag a new ‘custom menu’ widget to one of the widget areas on the right.  Now within the custom widget’s settings select the menu you just created and click save.  The menu should now be viewable on your webpage.

For example, for a large site – or a portal kind of site – content management systems like Joomla, or Drupal are perfect.  They provide out-of-the-box for various types of layouts, and both come with many different plugins and addons.  In the future, we plan to implement sites using these systems and will post guides here when we do.

However, for a simple site or blog – which is the best place to start – wordpress is arguably the best CMS.  It is certainly the most used, with millions of blogs and sites on the internet hosted using the wordpress system.  There are plenty of themes available freely, or paid.  These can be customized relatively easily, and we will cover this to some extent.  Alternatively, for a completely custom look developers and graphic designers can be hired through various online services such as oDesk or Elance.

Now, from within simple scripts (or an alternative install program) select WordPress under the Scripts List.

Then hit install-

WordPress will a few seconds to install-

Congratulations! WordPress has been installed.

Now at first, I thought maybe they just programmed the 404 robot too well.  You know, he was sick of never getting any attention due to the google tech’s efficiency, so with the AI some lowly intern had warned against, programmed and compiled a file to ensure every google user would now share in his anxiety several times a day.

But now, the 404s are getting more constant – not to mention more annoying.  Some other weird errors are even occurring which I never thought I would see on the mighty google.  Take this screenshot just a few minutes ago, for instance.  Browser issue, perhaps?  At least now I know we can’t just blame it on overzealous AI engineering of a 404 page.

For the first time since I first saw that elegantly plain yet sophisticated google home page – i am actually considering finding another search engine.  Of course, I won’t.  At least, not yet.  Let’s just hope they can fix this issue soon.  Is google broken?

If keyword-driven traffic is important to you, then I cannot stress the importance of doing your keyword research with free tool like Domain Samurai, the free Google AdSense keyword tool, or even a simple google search.  Market Samurai, which comes with a 12 day free trial, is another tool – providing more in-depth research functions than the free Domain Samurai.

However, if you have something else planned for your site, or are just after a fun or quirky domain name then following is a list of domain name and web 2.0 name generators, as well as a few domain tools.

Currently, Domai.nr is my favourite.  It allows you to simply input words or letters you would like to appear in your prospective domain, and have it spit out all kinds of amazing domain names, many of which are in a web 2.0 style.  Those available will have a green cube to their left, but be warned – this is not all that accurate and it may sometimes lead you to believe the perfect domain name is available, when it is in fact not!  There is also an iphone app version available.

Dot-O-Mator uses lists of beginnings and endings to compile a list of domain names, which can be checked for availability.  It comes with a range of pre-set lists that you can select and editor, or you can simply start your own lists.  This is especially handy when wanting to find domain names available for a range of keywords you have researched with a program like Market Samurai. Dot-O-Mator also provides a free web 2.0 name generator, which is great at creating random web 2.0 business names.  It does make me wonder if the makers of products like ‘Joost‘, ‘Boxee‘ and ‘Hulu‘ came up with their names using a generator like this.

BustAName.com is another handy tool once you have an idea of keywords you want to appear in your domain.  Simply input a few, watch it suggest similar words and available domains in the process.

 

DomainTyper.com is similar to domai.nr, though seems to provide less results in each search.

 

DomainNameSoup.com is worth a mention, as it provides a range of different domain name generators.  You can search for domain names according to 3-letter, through to 6-letter availability featuring a combination of letters you want, or simply randomly.  It also features a domain name wizard, business domain generator and many many more.

Suggest.Name – aside from having a pretty cool and keyword targeted domain name itself – offers a great tool for you to generate a list of available domain names, using keywords you have researched.

Also, be sure to check out these other domain name generators:

• newdomainnamegenerator.com
• namestation.com
• impossibility.org
• nameboy.com
• domize.com
• blungr.com
• dnscoop.com
• domainsbot.com
• ajaxwhois.com
• Simon Benjamin’s Web 2.0 Name Generator
• namedroppers.com

Though this is certainly sad news, it does give me hope that there may be some new market gaps emerging with the disappearance of these two blogs.  It also gives me ideas — though there are plenty of tech blogs around, not many really cover a niche market like downloadsquad.com did, and all tend to operate more broadly as technology blogs, covering everything from PCs through to home theaters.

The design of this site is not an immediate concern to me, though it will be addressed in future.  Building this brand new site with the open-source software wordpress, it is going to be somewhat of a learning experience.  Though I have experience with various CMS’ (Content Management Systems as they are often called), WordPress is not one I have had much experience with in the past.  It focuses primarily on blogging, whereas others such as Joomla or Drupal provide deeper solutions, powering content for many different kinds of sites.

Priority 1: Search Engine Optimization

Being new to WordPress, in the coming days I plan to learn the best way to optimize this page for search engines.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be an incredibly important technique for me to learn if I am going to earn an income online.  I am learning to do so with wordpress, I plan to use it as a content management system for many of my upcoming ventures.  So expect a guide to follow soon!