Managing, Editing and Adding Themes to your site

If you are anything like me you will want to get right into changing how your WordPress website looks. Browsing through available free themes and commercial themes is like being a kid in the candy store.
It doesn't matter if you know what look and functionality you want on your site at this point  If you do have an idea you of course can zero in you search.  On the other hand if your not sure what you want browsing through all of the possibilities will help give you some ideas too.

WordPress Twenty Ten Theme

Since WordPress comes out of the box with the Twenty Ten theme the following video will cover how to change the header and background so you can start right away.

Commercial & Free Themes

WordPress has over a thousand free themes available for download into your website.  In the video I will cover how to search for free themes as well as how to activate them.  Just a side note: I refer to "commercial" themes as "premium" themes in the video.  WordPress has been making an effort eliminate the use of "premium" as it relates to paid theme and now call them "commercial". This is something that you will want to be aware of as you search for themes.

Managing, Editing and Adding Themes to your site

If you are anything like me you will want to get right into changing how your WordPress website looks. Browsing through available free themes and commercial themes is like being a kid in the candy store.
It doesn't matter if you know what look and functionality you want on your site at this point  If you do have an idea you of course can zero in you search.  On the other hand if your not sure what you want browsing through all of the possibilities will help give you some ideas too.

WordPress Twenty Ten Theme

Since WordPress comes out of the box with the Twenty Ten theme the following video will cover how to change the header and background so you can start right away.

Commercial & Free Themes

WordPress has over a thousand free themes available for download into your website.  In the video I will cover how to search for free themes as well as how to activate them.  Just a side note: I refer to "commercial" themes as "premium" themes in the video.  WordPress has been making an effort eliminate the use of "premium" as it relates to paid theme and now call them "commercial". This is something that you will want to be aware of as you search for themes.

WordPress Dashboard Overview

The dashboard of WordPress is where the magic happens.  You will see in future videos how you can change the look of your site, add and edit posts and pages, and much more.  For this video  though I will give you a basic tour of all of the elements available and what you can expect to see on your new WordPress website.  Learn where everything is and how to adjust the layout with drag and drop to fit your needs.

WordPress Dashboard Overview

The dashboard of WordPress is where the magic happens.  You will see in future videos how you can change the look of your site, add and edit posts and pages, and much more.  For this video  though I will give you a basic tour of all of the elements available and what you can expect to see on your new WordPress website.  Learn where everything is and how to adjust the layout with drag and drop to fit your needs.

One click WordPress installation on Godaddy

So now that you have a hosting account set up the next step in adding a WordPress site is the installation.  Don't worry you just need to click a button and you are off and running.

By the way this type of one click WordPress installation is common on most of the shared hosting platforms out there.  So even though I have used Godaddy you can use just about anything you would like.

Related posts:
What exactly is WordPress
How to set up Godaddy hosting for your WordPress site

One click WordPress installation on Godaddy

So now that you have a hosting account set up the next step in adding a WordPress site is the installation.  Don't worry you just need to click a button and you are off and running.

By the way this type of one click WordPress installation is common on most of the shared hosting platforms out there.  So even though I have used Godaddy you can use just about anything you would like.

Related posts:
What exactly is WordPress
How to set up Godaddy hosting for your WordPress site

Godaddy WordPress hosting in 10 minutes or less 

My last post was about  WordPress and gave a little information about what it is and what it can do. If you are like most people, just hearing how cool something is isn't enough.  You need to see it in action and use it for yourself. For that reason I am going to continue to post more on how you can set up your own WordPress site and customize it to your needs.  First you will need to set up a hosting account.

There are several hosting solutions available on the Internet to create a WordPress site on. In the next couple of posts/videos I am going to show you how to set up a site using Godaddy.  In less than about 20 minutes of actual work you will have a website up and running. 10 minutes to set up hosting and another 10 minutes to set up WordPress.

Set up hosting for your WordPress site

Here is the nuts and bolts how to video on setting up Godaddy hosting.

Related Post: What Exactly is WordPress

Godaddy WordPress hosting in 10 minutes or less 

My last post was about  WordPress and gave a little information about what it is and what it can do. If you are like most people, just hearing how cool something is isn't enough.  You need to see it in action and use it for yourself. For that reason I am going to continue to post more on how you can set up your own WordPress site and customize it to your needs.  First you will need to set up a hosting account.

There are several hosting solutions available on the Internet to create a WordPress site on. In the next couple of posts/videos I am going to show you how to set up a site using Godaddy.  In less than about 20 minutes of actual work you will have a website up and running. 10 minutes to set up hosting and another 10 minutes to set up WordPress.

Set up hosting for your WordPress site

Here is the nuts and bolts how to video on setting up Godaddy hosting.

Related Post: What Exactly is WordPress

WordPress as an easy to use website publishing tool

I remind myself daily that as an Internet marketing professional there are things that I do and use every day that aren't as common as they would seem to be.  WordPress is a perfect example.  There are currently over 26 million websites in the world powered by WordPress.  It continues to evolve into a simple to use website publishing tool that anyone can use, but a lot of people still haven't heard of it or don't realize how easy it really is.

I recently attended a WordPress conference (WordCamp) where developers and users get together to share ideas and network. There are various sessions regarding the uses of WordPress, it's themes and it's plugins and I came away with some great information as well as some exciting insights. One of the things that impacted me the mosts was the beginner WordPress class. In this class there were about 80 people in attendance of which over 70% were women and well over 50% were over 50 years old.  These were mostly people creating websites or blogs for their businesses and in a few cases casual use.  A couple of years ago the thought of having this kind of audience learning how to create their own sites would have been unheard of.  There were also classes for kids to learn how to create their own WordPress websites and blogs, and even a track of sessions geared directly towards Real Estate agents and brokers.

What kind of websites can run on WordPress

The current numbers indicate that the top 12-14% of websites use WordPress as their content management tool. From top news sites like CNN to college sites like Wake Forest University, WordPress can handle anything that you would want.  In automotive retail of course you could create micro-sites or blogs that add value to your clients while helping with your local SEO efforts.

WordPress terms and lingo

In the world of WordPress there are several terms that are thrown around quite a bit. If you are just hearing about WordPress for the first time or have heard just a little then you'll want to know what these are.

• CMS or Content Management System: A Content Management System is software that allows users to contribute and add content to a shared environment.  In the case of websites we are using a Web Content Management System or WCMS to add pages, blog posts, video, audio, images and much more to a website without having to have the technical knowledge of a web developer
• Theme: A WordPress theme is the graphics of a site that your users will see and interact with. With WordPress you can choose from over 1,300 free themes, buy one of the hundreds of commercial themes available, or even custom build a theme to fit whatever brand message and usability you want
• Plugins: A Plugin is software that can give you the ability to extend the functionality of WordPress to do just about anything that you can think of
• Widgets: Widgets are like a plugin that allows you to add functionality through drag and drop to your site without having to edit code

WordPress as the automotive website of the future

This video is from a session that I did at Digital Dealer 8 in Orlando last Spring.  I have added this video so that you can get a better idea of the power of WordPres.  A lot has changed with WordPress since then including some of the statistics.  According to Wikipedia last year WordPress had been downloaded and used for over 200 million websites.  Over the last year WordPress has gone through and cleaned up old sites on WordPress.com and has identified that a large number of sites have been either left as inactive or are not used for legitimate purposes. This brings the estimated number of actual websites to around 26 million that are currently powered by WordPress, which is still incredible.

Related Posts: How to set up hosting for WordPress

WordPress as an easy to use website publishing tool

I remind myself daily that as an Internet marketing professional there are things that I do and use every day that aren't as common as they would seem to be.  WordPress is a perfect example.  There are currently over 26 million websites in the world powered by WordPress.  It continues to evolve into a simple to use website publishing tool that anyone can use, but a lot of people still haven't heard of it or don't realize how easy it really is.

I recently attended a WordPress conference (WordCamp) where developers and users get together to share ideas and network. There are various sessions regarding the uses of WordPress, it's themes and it's plugins and I came away with some great information as well as some exciting insights. One of the things that impacted me the mosts was the beginner WordPress class. In this class there were about 80 people in attendance of which over 70% were women and well over 50% were over 50 years old.  These were mostly people creating websites or blogs for their businesses and in a few cases casual use.  A couple of years ago the thought of having this kind of audience learning how to create their own sites would have been unheard of.  There were also classes for kids to learn how to create their own WordPress websites and blogs, and even a track of sessions geared directly towards Real Estate agents and brokers.

What kind of websites can run on WordPress

The current numbers indicate that the top 12-14% of websites use WordPress as their content management tool. From top news sites like CNN to college sites like Wake Forest University, WordPress can handle anything that you would want.  In automotive retail of course you could create micro-sites or blogs that add value to your clients while helping with your local SEO efforts.

WordPress terms and lingo

In the world of WordPress there are several terms that are thrown around quite a bit. If you are just hearing about WordPress for the first time or have heard just a little then you'll want to know what these are.

• CMS or Content Management System: A Content Management System is software that allows users to contribute and add content to a shared environment.  In the case of websites we are using a Web Content Management System or WCMS to add pages, blog posts, video, audio, images and much more to a website without having to have the technical knowledge of a web developer
• Theme: A WordPress theme is the graphics of a site that your users will see and interact with. With WordPress you can choose from over 1,300 free themes, buy one of the hundreds of commercial themes available, or even custom build a theme to fit whatever brand message and usability you want
• Plugins: A Plugin is software that can give you the ability to extend the functionality of WordPress to do just about anything that you can think of
• Widgets: Widgets are like a plugin that allows you to add functionality through drag and drop to your site without having to edit code

WordPress as the automotive website of the future

This video is from a session that I did at Digital Dealer 8 in Orlando last Spring.  I have added this video so that you can get a better idea of the power of WordPres.  A lot has changed with WordPress since then including some of the statistics.  According to Wikipedia last year WordPress had been downloaded and used for over 200 million websites.  Over the last year WordPress has gone through and cleaned up old sites on WordPress.com and has identified that a large number of sites have been either left as inactive or are not used for legitimate purposes. This brings the estimated number of actual websites to around 26 million that are currently powered by WordPress, which is still incredible.

Related Posts: How to set up hosting for WordPress