Using Wordpress

For Business

Paul Teague

Using Wordpress For

Business

All of the slides that you see today will be made available to you

online after the presentation.

You do not need to take notes – unless you want to!

The resources page will also include useful and related links.

Using Wordpress For

Business

What is a Content Management System?

Introduction To WordPress: What is WordPress and why

should you consider using it?

The difference between WordPress and WordPress.com

The difference between a blog and a web site

How to set up a free Wordpress site for free in 5 minutes

flat

Wordpress the proper way – using cPanel and installers

Domain names and nameservers

How to get support for WordPress through the forums and

useful sites

Logging into your new Wordpress blog

An introduction to Posts, Pages, Plugins and Themes

Setting up the basics (Title, Tagline, Gravatars and

Permalinks)

The difference between Pages and Posts

Using Wordpress For

Business

Your first Wordpress page

Your first Wordpress post

Adding images

Finding and changing themes

Wordpress categories

Wordpress comments

Wordpress widgets - what they are and how to use them

Wordpress menus - how to set them up and change them

An introduction to Wordpress plugins

Recommended Wordpress plugin: Jetpack

How to install and activate JetPack

Jetpack basics

Social Media shares with Jetpack

Forms with Jetpack

Extra plugins: SEO

Extra plugins: Security

Using Wordpress media for images and documents

My Wordpress recommendations and next steps

Using Wordpress For Business

• I’ve been blogging since 2008

• My blog started life as a trial run

• I didn’t think I’d keep it up!

• My blog has been through several makeovers since I created it

• I only blog occasionally –certainly not every day/week!

Using Wordpress For Business

• At its peak it’s had an

Alexa top 1% ranking,

making it one of the top

visited websites in the

world!

• I currently have 15 x

websites based on the

Wordpress platform

• I’ve installed Wordpress

hundreds of times now

Using Wordpress For

Business • Wordpress is what’s known as a CMS system ... which stands for

‘Content Management System’

• A CMS is a database driven system (usually) that doesn’t require any

technical knowledge once it’s been installed

• CMS is very widely used these days and most people don’t use static

websites any more

• Before Wordpress came along you were shackled to HTML, php,

FTP and all the rest of those techie horrors ☺

• Whenever you wanted to make a change to your website, you had to

pay your webmaster lots of money to do it

• You would never have dared to change even an image on a static

website let alone the entire design!

Why Wordpress?

Using Wordpress For

Business • Wordpress is easy to install and simple to maintain

• Once installed, updates and complete overhauls take minutes

• It’s a WYSIWYG interface and no technical skills are needed (if you

can use eBay and Facebook, you can use Wordpress!)

• It’s used by 74 million+ other people!

• It has an extensive range of supporting plug-ins – many of them free

– which allow your to do virtually anything that you can imagine ...

and then a bit more ☺

• You can add multimedia to Wordpress and it integrates seamlessly

with popular social media services like Facebook, LinkedIn and

Twitter and affiliate programs like Adsense, Amazon and Clickbank

Why Wordpress?

Using Wordpress For

Business

Notable Wordpress Users

Source:

https://wordpress.

com/notable-

users/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Wordpress Options

• There are two versions of Wordpress and it’s

important that you use the right one!

• http://wordpress.com/ is a hosted version of

the software ie you don’t have to install it

• http://wordpress.org/ is the self-installed

version of the software and it’s the option that

you should use

Using Wordpress For Business

http://wordpress.com/ is free,

very popular and extremely

impressive but if you’re

serious about blogging long

term you’ll find it restrictive

quite soon and it’s not best

for SEO

* Don’t worry if you use this, you can easily

export your work and import it to

Wordpress.org ☺

Using Wordpress For Business

http://wordpress.org/ is free

and quite amazing. Since it

moved into version 2 – in my

opinion – it’s had no

competitors ... it is quite

simply the way you should

now make your websites*

* My personal opinion. Detractors will warn

you of security problems. I’ll show you ways

around that ☺

Using Wordpress For

BusinessBasic identification of a website:

• A homepage that displays content from several sections of internal

website pages

• A design portfolio of work

• A blog might be a part of a website, but not the only thing

• A Frequently Asked Questions page that readers can browse to get

more information.

• A page of client testimonials and feedback

• Company’s terms and privacy statements pages

• A contact form that allows visitors to get in touch

• A services/products page that displays what they have to offer for the

visitors

• Put simply: It’s usually made up of basic information and is seldom

updated

Read more: What Is The Difference Between A Blog And A Website?

Blog vs Website

Using Wordpress For

Business

Blog vs Website

Basic identification of a website:

• A homepage that displays content from several sections of internal

website pages

• A design portfolio of work

• A blog might be a part of a website, but not the only thing

• A Frequently Asked Questions page that readers can browse to get

more information.

• A page of client testimonials and feedback

• Company’s terms and privacy statements pages

• A contact form that allows visitors to get in touch

• A services/products page that displays what they have to offer for the

visitors

• Put simply: It’s usually made up of basic information and is seldom

updated

Read more: What Is The Difference Between A Blog And A Website?

Using Wordpress For

Business

A Wordpress blog can do everything that a

web site can do – and much, much more – but

a web site can do only a small fraction of the

things that a Wordpress blog can do.

Using Wordpress For Business

Registering Your Free

Hostinger Account

Step 1: Go to

https://www.000webhost.com

/free-website-sign-up

Step 2: Fill in the Start FREE

Sign Up! info

Using Wordpress For Business

Register for a paid Siteground

account

Go to

http://paulteague.com/siteground

I use 2 x GoGeek accounts

You need a StartUp account

You get your domain name free

for one year when you sign up for

StartUp hosting

Using Wordpress For Business

You can pay somebody else to install Wordpress for you

This is called outsourcing – it’s a very cost-effective way to get things done.

Don’t pay $5 for a Wordpress installation, that’s a bit cheap, the best deals start at around $40 for installation + 4-5 pages

Using Wordpress For

Business

Posts

• Posts are entries listed in reverse chronological order on the

blog home page or on the posts page if you have set one in

Settings → Reading.

• If you have created any sticky posts, those will appear

before the other posts.

• Posts can be found in the Archives, Categories, Recent

Posts, and other widgets.

• Posts are also displayed in the RSS feed of the blog.

• You can control how many posts are displayed at a time in

the Reading Settings.

Source: Wordpress.com

Using Wordpress For

Business

Pages

• Pages are static and are not listed by date.

• Pages do not use tags or categories.

• An About page is the classic example.

• Pages can be displayed in the sidebar using the Pages

widget, and some themes display pages in tabs at the top of

the blog.

• If you have 50 pages and you use the Pages widget, then all

pages will be listed all the time.

Source: Wordpress.com

Using Wordpress For

Business

What is a WordPress Theme?

• A WordPress theme provides all of the styling of your

WordPress site

• Themes can be free or paid. The better themes tend to be

paid, but there are many brilliant free themes.

• Most WordPress themes provide:

1. the overall design or style of your site

2. font styling

3. colors

4. widget locations

5. page layouts (or templates)

6. styles for blog posts and blog archives

7. additional stylistic details

Source: iThemes

Using Wordpress For Business

• WordPress plugins are bits of software that can be uploaded to extend and expand the functionality of your WordPress site.

• Note: One of the primary advantages of using the self-hosted version of WordPress from WordPress.org is the ability to upload and use plugins on your WordPress site.

• Plugins can be free or paid. There are many excellent free plugins which do all sorts of amazing things – SEO, social media buttons and so on. You definitely do not need to pay to get great plugins ☺

• Plugins are the ‘game changer’ with Wordpress – they allow you to do amazing things in your site – for free – and without the need to get coders involved

Source: iThemes

Using Wordpress For Business

Buying Wordpress Themes

My favourite sources are:

https://themeforest.net

https://woocommerce.com/woothemes/

https://ithemes.com/

It’s best to pay for Wordpress themes as free themes often break and developers get fed up with them swiftly!

The themes that I uses are OptimizePress, ThriveThemes & Divi

Using Wordpress For

Business

WordPress Widgets

• A WordPress Widget is a small block that

performs a specific function.

• You can add these widgets in sidebars also

known as widget-ready areas on your web

page.

• WordPress widgets were originally created to

provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving

design and structure control of

the WordPress theme to the user.

Using Wordpress For

Business

The WordPress Widget Area

Using Wordpress For

Business

The WordPress Menu Area

Using Wordpress For

Business

WordPress Widgets

• One of the many reasons that I love WP so much are the plug-ins

• You can literally think of anything you want to do on a blog and

there’ll be a plug-in available to help you

• Many great plug-ins are free!

• Each plug-in function would cost you a lot of money to code if you

wanted to add it to a regular/static web site

• The simple way to think of a plug-in is that it is something that

does a job on your blog ie it captures email addresses, it shows

your Twitter feed, it lets you put adverts on your blog etc

• A plug-in is just a bit of code in a .zip file (to compress the size)

which you simply download from a website – upload to your blog

– install on your blog ... it’s simple!

Using Wordpress For Business

Remember!

If this is all a bit too geeky

for you, remember that you

can get somebody else to

do the work!

Using Wordpress For Business

Jetpack is the ideal all-in-one

free Wordpress plugin for

beginners.

There’s a lot of ‘stuff’ packed in

there and it helps to make using

Wordpress a little more

straightforward.

I don’t use it – it’s not something

that more experienced users

would feel the need to use.

Using Wordpress For

Business

Jetpack

Using Wordpress For

Business

Jetpack

Using Wordpress For

Business

Siteground

Step 1: You first need to add your domain to Siteground. To begin

this process, head for your cpanel, and click on the Addon

Domains area [1]

Using Wordpress For

Business

Siteground

Step 2: In this process, you ‘connect’ your domain name to your cpanel area. Note in [1] that you

don’t use http or www … just enter the domain name. [2] & [3] are auto-filled, use the password

generator [4] to create your password, then click [5] to add your domain – that’s it!

Using Wordpress For

Business

Siteground

Step 3: Access the

Wordpress Installer [2].

Note also that your

nameservers are very easy

to find [1} if you ever need

to transfer your domain

name.

Using Wordpress For

Business

Siteground

Step 4: This process is almost

exactly the same as it was for

Hostinger. Make sure that you note

down your username and password.

Leave the In Directory are blank.

Everything else you can change in

the Wordpress admin area.

Using Wordpress For

Business• These are free plug-ins that I use myself

• I would describe these as essential plug-ins on

any blog

• It’s not a comprehensive list – and I’m saving

some for the security section and the SEO part

of the coaching

• They’re all exactly the same process:

Plugins > Add New > Search Plugins > Install

Now > Activate > Configure

WordPress Plugins

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make SEO much simpler

• Put simply, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is giving

your blog the best chance of showing up in the search

engines (Google, Bing etc)

• Most people find it really hard to rank their static

website in the search engines ... but Google loves

quality blogs!

• I’m not an SEO expert!

• These are simple, basic, effective strategies that cost

nothing ☺

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make SEO much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

My comments: Tends

to be most widely

used, I’m not keen

though, it’s over-

complicated in my

opinion.

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make SEO much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

My comments: My

favourite for

Wordpress, I’ve used

it for years.

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make SEO much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

My comments: My

favourite, I’ve used it

for years.

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make security much simpler

• All websites have security and technical issues - even

simple, static websites

• Wordpress is very vulnerable to malicious attack

because of its popularity

• Make sure you use at least the simple security

measures that I give you

• In context, my site has remained intact for 9 years ...

so far ☺

• I pay for Sucuri to monitor and protect my most

important WP installations

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make security much simpler

• Always update to the latest version of

Wordpress

• Do not use the default 'admin' username

• Use a secure password (use a free

service like LastPass to make it really

secure!)

• Keep your themes and plugins updated

Using Wordpress For

Business

My comments: My

personal favourite,

I’ve used it for years.

Can make your

Wordpress site

impregnanble if you

want it to ☺ Not one

for beginners!

Tools to make Wordpress security much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make Wordpress security much simpler

My comments: A

great, effective and

free anti-spam plugin

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Tools to make Wordpress security much simpler

My comments: This

is my preferred, basic

security plugin. It

prevents the most

common ‘brute force’

attacks.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts-reloaded/

Using Wordpress For

Business

General use Wordpress plugins

My comments: A

really simple way of

creating a ‘Contact

Us’ form

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/si-contact-form/

Using Wordpress For

Business

General use Wordpress plugins

My comments: You

might not need this,

but if you’re putting

any tracking codes

on your website,

under EU law, you

should use this.

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/cookie-law-info/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Social Wordpress plugins

My comments: I like

how it looks, it’s got a

bit ‘commercial’ since

I first started using it

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/shareaholic/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Social Wordpress plugins

My comments: I use

this on my podcast

and I pay for it. It

gives a very versatile

social interface

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Social Wordpress plugins

My comments: This

is one of my

favourites, I have

used it for several

years with no

problems

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/aas-digg-digg-alternative/

Using Wordpress For

Business

Setting up your own Wordpress site

• You need to have a proper URL (ie http://myblog.com) as this

is much better for SEO purposes

• Look for web hosting with cPanel with QuickInstall or

Softaculous

• You do not need to pay a lot of money for web hosting

• I used Hostgator for many years, I started with their cheap

‘Hatchling’ plan, now I useSiteGround

• Both are fine for new users

• Go to http://paulteague.com/hostgator25 and enter the code

ChamberDiscount for 25% off or head for

http://paulteague.com/siteground for a free domain name with

your hosting [Affiliate links!]

Using Wordpress For

Business

Buying a domain name

I recommend using SiteGround for your Wordpress hosting – they

give you a free domain name with your 1st year’s hosting, so that

will make life very easy for you!

If you decide to buy your domain name elsewhere, I use

https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/ and have done so since I purchased

my very first domain name.

Due to DNS propagation, it can take up to 12 hours before your

new domain/subdomain will start working.

Only contact your hosting service support desk if your site hasn’t

appeared after 24 hours

Using Wordpress For Business

QuickInstall

Softaculous

• These take all the geekiness

out of a Wordpress

installation

• They’re ‘on-click’ simple –

you genuinely need no

technical knowledge

• This is the biggest secret

about Wordpress – you

don’t need to pay somebody

£££ to install it ☺

• You also get support from

your web hosting company

Using Wordpress For

Business

Your simple Wordpress, small business action plan

1)Think mobile in everything that you do online

2)Think social in everything that you do

3)Create great page content on your site

4)Label your images for SEO power

5)Use keywords for SEO power

6)Use a self-installed Wordpress site with

your own domain name – ditch Wix!

7)Keep your Wordpress site up-to-date

8)Keep listening and learning to develop your

Wordpress knowledge & skills

Using Wordpress For

Businesshttps://wordpress.org/support/ … the

official Wordpress support site. Please

make this site your friend ☺

http://learn.wordpress.com/ … an

amazing free site with step-by-step

guidance. Well worth a look.

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/sup

port ... Need help? Post a question on the

official forum.

WordPress Help

Using Wordpress For

Business

Access all of the slides from today, as well as

lots of useful URLs and resources, via this link:

http://www.paulteague.com/WPFEB