David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals and the creator of Ruby on Rails delivers a powerful lecture at Standford University’s Entrepreneurship Program.

He says that planning is guessing, and for a start-up, the focus must be on today and not on tomorrow. He argues that constraints–fiscal, temporal, or otherwise–drive innovation and effective problem-solving. The most important thing, Hansson believes, is to make a dent in the universe with your company.

He stresses the dangers of accepting venture capital money and why it’s more important to be profitable than be a big company.

Topics:
02:30 – Veer Away from Heavy Management Theory
02:52 – Planning Is Guessing
02:56 – Venture Capital Is a Time Bomb
01:53 – Don’t Play with Other People’s Money
03:09 – Playing It Small Doesn’t Mean Not Making Money
02:56 – Great Ideas Derive from Well-Rested Minds
01:57 – Constraints Are Your Friends
01:08 – Overnight Success Does Not Exist
01:56 – A Small Business Can Be a Highly Profitable Company
02:24 – Out-Teach Your Competition
01:19 – What I Did Learn at Business School

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Note: The theme website inside this video has changed, but the principles for installing a theme remain the same.

How To Find And Install A WordPress Theme For Your Blog

What is a theme?

Your blog’s theme is a simple way of managing your sites layout, stylesheets, and typeface. Your theme will determine how you want your readers to view your blog posts and your website as a whole.

Thanks to the open source nature of wordpress there are thousands of free blog themes that are ready to go right out of the box. Each theme is also easy to modify to better fit your needs.

How To Find The Perfect Theme For Your Blog

1. Pay A professional / Hire A Web Designer - Visit a site like www.elance.com to find someone who will design your blog for you or you can find a local company to do it as well.

2. Use A Free WordPress Theme - Go to the official WordPress Themes Page or search the internet for “WordPress Themes” to find tons of themes websites on the web.

3. Design The Theme Yourself – After you spend some time looking at themes you will be able to learn the simple HTML, CSS, & PHP languages that will enable you to modify existing themes or even write one yourself from sctratch.

How To Download And Install A WordPress Theme

You can either install a theme directly from the wordpress themes tab in your admin area or you can install the theme through the back end by downloading the theme to you hard drive.

How to install a theme automatically?

1. Go to your wordpress admin area.

2. Click on the “Appearance” tab > “Themes”

3. At the top there should be a section for “Manage Themes” and “Install Themes”

4. Click “Install Themes”

5. You will be taken to an advanced search for themes. If you know the name of the theme you are looking for then you can simply search for it now.

If you do not know which theme you are looking for then you should browse through the available themes here until you find one you like.

6. Once you have chosen a theme, click on “Install“. If you choose to, you can make this your current theme back on the “Manage Themes” tab.

You may try out several themes before you find the perfect one for you.

How to manually install a wordpress theme?

1. Download the theme files from the website where the theme was showcased.

2. Unzip them to a folder on your hard drive.

3. Use an FTP program to upload the theme files into the following directory:

/public_html/wp-content/themes/”THEMENAME”/

You can upload as many theme’s as you like to this directory, but be sure to upload each theme to its own new folder.

4. Find a couple that you like then login to your wordpress admin area and click on the “Appearance Tab” > “Themes“. Now each of the uploaded themes should show up in the “Available Themes” area. Choose the one you like and after previewing it you can choose “activate” to make the theme your current theme.

Advanced WordPress Themes

To edit the theme click on the “Appearance Tab” > “Editor” or you can download the theme files to your hard drive and edit them in a text editor and then upload them using FTP.

Be warned that changing your websites theme can cause errors on the page. Always back up your theme files before modifying.

Download the free ftp program at http://filezilla-project.org/

How To Upload Files To Your Webhost Using an FTP Program?

1. What FTP is and why you need to use it?

“FTP” meaning File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another over a TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet

In other words it’s a way to take files on your computer, and upload them to your host.

The process of uploading a file to your server using an FTP program is almost identical to moving a file on your computer from one folder to another folder.

2. What FTP software is the best?

A free FTP program called FileZilla is what we recommend using.

3. How to download and install the FTP software?

First visit www.filezilla-project.org

Download the latest version then install the program

4. How to set up a connection to your host using FTP?

First open up the FileZilla program. Then to enter the connection details you should take the following steps:

• Go to “file” > “site manager” > “new site”
• Enter the name of your website
• Next enter the details of your server, your login, and password details
• For host details, return to the email sent to you when you setup your hosting account, or login to the Cpanel, and find the section that says “Your Site’s IP Address“
• Copy the IP address and paste it into the “Host” field in the Site manager.
• Make sure the servertype is set to “FTP – File Transfer Protocol”
• Enter in your username and password

You are now ready to connect to your sever.

5. How to upload a file to your server using an FTP Program?

First find the file on your computer in the left window pane.

Then find the folder you want to upload the file to on the right side of the window.

Now right click on the file on your computer, then select “upload” or click and drag the file.

Congratulations you are now ready to upload files to your server using an FTP program.

How to install wordpress to your website using the 5 minute wordpress install process.

What tools you will need to install wordpress?

1. The latest downloaded version of the wordpress installation files at www.wordpress.org

2. An FTP program used to upload files from your computer onto your web hosting server.

3. A basic text editing program like wordpad or notepad

What are the exact steps needed for the 5 minutes wordpress install process?

1. Download and unzip the wordpress files onto your computer

Go to www.wordpress.org

Click “download wordpress”

Find file and “unzip” it to a new folder

2. Create a database on your server

Log in to the “cpanel” of your website

To access your cpanel either go to www.YourDomain.com/cpanel or go to www.cpanel.YourDomain.com

*You will need to enter your user name and password that is the same as your account with the web hosting company.

Now that you have successfully logged into the cpanel for the first time you are ready to create a database on your server that wordpress will use to store information.

Scroll down to the “Databases” tab

Click on the “MySQL Databases” button

Enter the name of your new database into the field and click “Create Database”. Ideally the name of your database should reflect the name of your website to avoid confusion later on if you choose to have several other websites.

3. Create a database user name on your server

After you have successfully created the database on your server you need to add a user to that database.

Return to the cpanel front page, and scroll back down to the “Databases” tab.

Instead this time click on the “MySQL Users” then click on the “Add New User” button.

Create a username and password then click on “Create User”

Click “go back”

Now that you have created a user, you still have to add this new user to your database.

Scroll down to the bottom of the “MySQL Users” page to where it says “Add User to Database”

Select your newly created user and database in the fields, then click “Add”. On the next page you will be asked which privileges to give this new user. For this user you want to choose “All Privileges” because you will be the one using this login.

4. Rename the “wp-config-sample.php” file to “wp-config.php”

Return to the folder where you unzipped the wordpress installation files in step 1.

Find the file named “wp-config-sample.php” and rename the file to “wp-config.php“.

5. Modify the details inside the wp-config.php file

Open the “wp-config.php” file using a text editor like wordpad.

Find the section that looks something like this

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere‘);

/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere‘);

/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere‘);

/** MySQL hostname */
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);

/** The Database Collate type. Don’t change this if in doubt. */
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

Replace the “putyourdbnamehere” with the name of your created database.

Replace “usernamehere” with the username you just created in the cpanel.

Replace “yourpasswordhere” with the password you created in the cpanel.

Save the changes to the document.

And get ready to upload the files onto your server.

(If you need help with this part you should stop here and continue after watching the next video)

6. Upload the wordpress files onto your server

Open up the FileZilla program and login to your server.

Open the folder called “public_html” on the right side window (server side).

On the left side (your computer) open up the folder where the wordpress installation files were unzipped.

Select the entire contents of the wordpress installation folder.

Right click, then select “upload”.

*The wordpress files are now being uploaded to your server

7. Run the wordpress installation script

Now that the wordpress installation files have been uploaded to your server all you have to do is return to your website using a web browser and run the script.

For newer versions of wordpress all you have to do is visit the homepage and wordpress will prompt you to install it.

Go to “www.YourDomain.com”

For older versions you may have to type “www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin/install.php”

To finish installing wordpress all you have to do is fill out the Blog Title and your email address and click “install wordpress”

Once the installation is complete you will receive a username and a randomly generated password.

(Don’t lose these because you will use them on the next screen.)

Click “login” and all you have to do is enter the username and password that was just given to you and then you have finished installing wordpress to your website.

Congratulation! You have now successfully purchased a domain name, set up web hosting, and installed your very first website.

Your website should now be up and running and visible to the world.

To access your WordPress admin area you need to type “www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin” and then login.

Get your web hosting at www.hostgator.com

What is a web host?

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation. -wiki

You can think of a your web host like your own personal hard-drive that exists on the internet where you will store your website files.

Once you link your domain name to your web host, then people all over the world will be able to access your blog.

Why you need a web host?

1. Having a web host allows other people access to your website via the internet.

2. You could run everything from your own host right in your own home, but it is difficult to setup and even harder and more time consuming to making sure it is up and running 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

3. It’s much more reliable to outsource the hosting of your website to a professional hosting company.

4. Over the long term it is more affordable to use a web hosting company and it will save you time, and many headaches.

How do you set up web hosting?

We use Host Gator to host all of our websites. They offer unlimited domains all on the same account. So for one price of ~$10 a month you may host several high end blogs and websites.

First go to go hostgator.com and choose “web hosting”.

Of the 3 packages offered you should choose the “baby” package (middle) just to get started. It’s very affordable and allows you to have unlimited domains, unlimited disk space, and unlimited bandwidth. A pretty great deal for only $7.95 / month

Once you are ready. You will choose the option “I will use my existing domain and update ‘My Nameservers’ only”

What is a Nameserver?

A name server is a program or computer server that implements the “name-service protocol”. The most prominent type of name servers in operation today are the name servers of the Domain Name System (DNS). The most important function of these DNS servers is the translation (resolution) of humanly memorable domain names and hostnames into the corresponding numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

Enter the domain name you have purchased earlier from step 2 and hit submit.

Continue to fill out the forms according to your preferences and hit calculate totals.

Next review your order.

When you’re ready hit continue, fill out your profile information and finish paying for the order.

Congratulations, you now have web hosting, but you still need to link your website domain to your web host.

How do you link your domain name to your web host?

1. Get the domain name server details from hostgator.com

The easiest way to get your new server details from hostgator.com will be to check your email right away. Host gator should send you an email with all the details you will need to setup your account right away.

Look for a section saying “Your name servers”

Typically it will look something like this:

ns967.hostgator.com
ns968.hostgator.com

Re-assign your nameservers to your web host.

Login to your godaddy.com account.

Click “My Account” at the top

Find the tab called “domain manager”

Once you are at the domain manager, you should select the domain you purchased before.

Find the section titled “Nameservers” and click “Set Namerservers”

This will bring up a pop-up window (make sure you allow pop-up’s from godaddy.com or else you may find yourself being unnecessarily confused.)

Select “I have specific nameservers for my domains.”

Delete the generic nameservers that have been set by godaddy.com and insert the ones we previously found given to us by hostgator.com

This re-directs your domain from the godaddy site where it has been sitting previously to your own web hosting providers

It’s important to remember that changing a domains nameservers, or any server side modifications to websites will update less than instantaneously. Sometime it may take up to a entire 5 minutes.(or 24-48 hours)

If you have trouble accessing the site right away then you may just have to wait a few minutes, get a drink, then come back and try again.

Now that you have successfully linked your domain name to your web hosting provider all that is left to to do is install wordpress, then you will be ready to start blogging.

Get Unlimited Web Hosting for only $7.95 / Mo at Host Gator

Next: How to install wordpress?

Estimated cost: $10 ~ $15

Register your domain name at – www.GoDaddy.com

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is an address for your blog

It usually starts with “http://” which means ” hypertext transfer protocol“.

followed by www.YourDomainName.com

Why you need your own domain name?

1. A unique domain name gives people quick easy access to your website.

2. You own the rights to sell or transfer the domain name later if you choose to.

3. It’s shorter and much more professional looking than free options like those at

www.wordpress.YourDomainName.com

How to research possible domain names?

Use a keyword search tool

www.wordtracker.com – on this page you can enter a keyword and it will return a list of related keywords to help you choose in your domain name.

Research the competition.

Use Google to see what kind of competition you may be up against and to know what other people are doing. This will help you make a better informed decision before you decide which name is best.

Brainstorm all possible names in the niche and put them into a list.

How to choose the perfect domain name?

Now once you have a sizeable list of possible domains then you need to choose the best name.

1. Remember that the shorter a domain name is the more valuable it is.

2. Make sure its easy to remember.

3. Make sure its written as one phrase with no hyphens or random characters

4. Also if keywords for your niche are inside the domain name it will be easier to rank in the search engines later.

I.E. if your niche is “small dogs” a good domain name could be “SmallDogZone.com” instead of “SmaDoZone.com” or “theSDzone.com”

How to register your domain name?

The easiest and most popular domain registry website is www.GoDaddy.com

Signing up for an account is free, first create your account.

Next check the availability of the domain name.

Enter your chosen domain in the search field.

If its available then you are ready to purchase it. If not then it will list a series of possible alternatives.

Which is better .com vs .org. vs .net vs. info?

Its important to remember that if you are planning on making money on the website then a .com (commercial) should be used. .net is a good second choice. But others like .info or .me should only be used small or personal websites. For a club or organization you should use .org.

Also a .com will have a higher resale value than a website with the same name as a .info

Fill out the required details and continue the checkout process.

Hit confirm, and you now own your first domain name.

It should be noted that many domain registry will try to sell you various extras at the final checkout, most of the features are not necessary. You will learn how to do everything you need on your own in the next few parts of this series.

Next you will learn how to get hosting for your website.

20% off Hosting at GoDaddy.com – World’s largest Web host!

So you think you want to become a blogger but you don’t know where to start.

This first video tells you what a blog is and what is the best blogging platform to use. It will also explain why we have chosen to use “wordpress” as our blogging platform.

1. What Is A Blog?

A blog is just like any other website however a blog is a collection of articles that are listed chronologically. Blog articles can be separated by category and organized with tags.

Blogs allow you to add new content very easily with no need to understand HTML or code. Content on blogs are usually updated frequently and guests can leave comments on your blog articles; which creates a more interactive environment between the reader and the publisher.

2. Should I Host The Blog Myself?

There are two types of blogs.

Externally Hosted Blogs

Eternally hosted blogs are usually free and easy to get started with. However they lack the control that a more advanced blogger would get from hosting the blog themselves.

Also you can never actually have full ownership of your domain name, at an externally hosted blog your web address will always be listed as a sub domain for a larger website.

Your web address for an externally hosted blog will look like this:

www.myblog.wordpress.com

Self Hosted Blogs

This means that you purchase the domain name yourself and you also provide for the hosting of the website.

WordPress is a extremely sophisticated piece of FREE software that will run your blog, it is also very easy and effective for both beginners and professionals to use.

There are other blogging platforms available, but WordPress is by far the best

3. What Are The Most Popular Blogging Platforms.

For an externally hosted blog there are currently 5 major blogging platforms.

1. www.WordPress.com – Different from wordpress.org but runs the same software

2. www.Blogger.com – This is googles blogging platform

3. www.Typepad.com

4. www.Livejournal.com

5. www.Blogharbor.com

6. www.DevHub.com – Check out our guide to getting started on Devhub

If you’re brand new to blogging then you can test of some of these platforms first to get used to using the interface and learn more about how blogs work with little to no commitment.

Once you’re ready to host your own website then you’re ready to visit wordpress.org

You’ve been blogging now for a few years and despite the ego rush of seeing your hits soar, you’re left wondering whats the point or rather how do you finally make some cash off all that hard work.

In the beginning it can be tough when you’re not earning from your blog, but there are lots of options when it comes to monetization.

6 Ways to Make Money From Your Blog

First Choose your topic and start generating traffic. Focus your blog, blogs that make money usually target a specific market and audience. Be passionate about your subject and generate as much traffic as you can. If you’re obsessed with your topic then others will be as well.

Tip: dont expect to get rich from your blog (at least not right away)

Some blogs report up to 40,000 dollars a month in earnings, but unless you have millions of visitors already then don’t expect to quit your day job yet.

1. Sell PPC Advertising Space

The best Pay Per Click advertising network today is Google Adsense. They will place relevant ads directly onto your pages based on the keywords and topics your write about. If your reader clicks on the link then you get paid.

Exactly how much depends on your traffic and the topic you are writing about.

Tip: This method is easy but you don’t get to choose which advertisers show ads and how much they pay you.

2. Sell Dedicated Ad Space

Some networks like BlogAds will allow you to directly contact an advertisers and sell them your space.

Tip: this method puts you in control, but you might make poor choices about advertisers and prices.

3. Write Paid Reviews

Sites like Pay Per Post will match your blog with people who are looking for paid reviews. You can earn money by writing paid reviews.

Tip: stay credible, be honest and don’t post too many paid reviews.

Be careful because if you overdo it, you can lose readers and traffic.

4. Sell Your Own Merchandise

If you have developed your own brand name or slogans that have become popular then you can find people who will buy your products. Company’s like Zazzle and Cafepress will manufacture and ship products for you and give you a commission on each sale.

5. Sell Affiliate Products

The most popular affiliate program is with Amazon. You can embed items from amazons marketplace directly into your website and earn commissions off of each sale. This method works very well if your blog is centered around a certain product.

Tip: affiliate sales are the best route for newer blogs

6. Take Donations

Sometimes this is called e-begging, but you can use paypal to ask your readers for donations

Dear Blog,
Today I had lots of traffic.
I learned lots about getting super rich with Google Adsense.
I can’t wait till all those clicks start rolling in.
Check out this picture

Later

Going through older blog posts I often find much room for improvement. The more you learn, the more you realize you didn’t know. So when I look at older posts some of them seem like a complete waste of time and others still have huge potential to become successful blog posts.

There are a few things you can look for to improve old posts.

#1 Syntax Errors

The number trick I’ve learned for SEO and good blogging practices has been how to use “Validator.” Sometimes old entries appear to be good posts but are filled with bad html code which can hurt the quality score and the search engine rankings.

On a few occasions I have run old posts through validator and fixed all of the errors, resulting in a boost to my quality score and a huge spike in search engine hits to that particular post.

#2 Dead Links

If you have ever linked to a website that doesn’t exist anymore or posted a video that disappears after a few months then you will understand. These kinds of errors can harm the user experience and make your site look very unprofessional.

Go back and check for broken links and dead videos.

#3 Bad Information or Lack Information

We all make errors, however an errors doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. Make sure you check back through you older posts for accuracy of your statements.

Also there are some posts I found to be missing information all together. For example when I was first starting out I thought that just posting a video by itself would be enough to get search traffic if people were searching for that video.

Now that I know Google doesn’t search inside of video’s I know how important it is to write a detailed post to go along with any video I’ve posted. By just revising those old video posts and adding a few hundred extra words I have seen a sizeable increase in traffic coming to those pages as well.

#4 Miscategorization and Irrelevant tags

You may have created a new category since the time of your post that it would fit better in, and down the road you might find that some of those tags were not as relevant as you originally thought or you could have missed tagging a topic that later on got lots of attention.

Proper categories and tags are a great way to improve navigation through your site and can also improve traffic you see from search engines.

The more you practice the better you will become at blogging and SEO. So remember to update your older work and not let all of that practice go to waste.