One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that if you want to use a theme from somewhere other than the ones you found in your dashboard you can easily install them onto your site by simply finding one, downloading the .zip file and uploading it to your server. If you choose to do this you will only need to add one more step. Go back to the Install Theme link from your Appearance inside the dashboard. Do you see where It has the Install Themes tab on top of the page? Good, I thought so. Click that… again, then click the blue Upload link on the page above the search bar. This will bring you to a page that will give you a Browse button. Click it and select the file you just downloaded to upload to your web site then click Install. From that point just follow the steps I just talked about and you are all set.
Now let’s get moving along to Widgets on the next page. This is where you can really push the boundaries of your web site.
Widgets
Widgets are those wonderful drag and drop pieces of technical candy that will make your site look and work just the way you want it to. They are hiding under the Appearance tab on the left sidebar in your admin panel. You will see them directly under the Themes link.
Your page will look similar to the one above. You will have Sidebar 1, Header 1, possibly footer, left, right, top 1, header 2, the names could be different but the function is the same. The names just give you an idea where each widget area will be.
To add a widget to the sidebar of the site, you just drag and drop the widget from the middle of the page over, pretty much where you want it to go in the sidebar. You may end up with some options popping up, if you do fill in the info you need to fill in, click Save and viola, you can look at your pages URL to view your newly updated web site with the widget active.
To get rid of the widget, just click that particular widget on the right side, and click delete. This will only delete the widget from the site and the settings for the widget. If you want to uninstall the plug-in you will need to do that through the plugins section of the dashboard.
Last optin you have is if you are going to be changing your theme, you will need to drag the widgets toward the bottom of the page to save the settings. There is an Inactive Widgets box that will save all of your settings but keep them off of the site. I like to do this while I change themes just to be safe. I have lost all of my widget settings without doing this in the past so I keep it a standard practice to be safe rather than sorry, And that my friends, is how you work with widgets.
Introduction to Search Engines
Introduction
Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are a pretty simple thing to use as the end user. You have something you need to find, type in what you are looking for and once you click the Search or Find button you have millions of pages that are at least somewhat related to what you are trying to find.
The end user side of things is a pretty easy process but what about getting your site on that list. That is a little more difficult. You will need to do 2 basic things. Submit your site to the Search Engines and make yourself important to those Search Engines. I will give you a few tips to doing both.
In my opinion, the best place to start is Google. You will want to search Google for how to submit your URL to as many search engines as you can name. In this eBook I will be discussing the big three, Google, Yahoo and Bing. I will be touching on some of the others as well like Ask and AltaVista.
By the time you are done with this eBook you will know why Search Engine Optimization is so important, be able to construct a basic plan for a back link campaign, have the resources to put the plan into action, understand the basics of what is and is not allowed and finally if all goes well, get some traffic to your site.
Keep in mind, this eBook is geared towards the Noob to SEO. I will cover the most basic techniques and touch on some of the more advanced ideas.
With that being said, let’s move on to the next chapter and get started with some of the terms you will need to know.
Noobs Guide to Quality Web Sites, The Page 6