Hi, guys, and welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. Today, I’m going to be walking you through the writing settings section of WordPress. So to get to your writing settings, you want to come down to the navigation menu where it says “Settings.” And you’re going to open up your submenu and scroll down to where it says, “Writing.”

And this is going to bring us to your Writing Settings page. This is the page where you set your basic options for when and how you write all of your posts. So the first section is where you choose pretty much the size and formatting of your posts. So first, you choose the size that you want your post textbox to be. And by default, it’s 10 lines, but I chose 20. So the bigger the number, the taller the box will be on the writing posts page.

The next section is the formatting section, and here, you can either check the first box to convert emoticons to graphics. So if you’re typing any smiley face from your keyboard, WordPress, by clicking this box, will automatically change that into a graphic on display. And then if you click the second box, this will allow WordPress to correct invalidly nested HTML codes automatically.

And then your next three options is your default options. So first, if you forget to post certain items into a category and you want them to always be posted to a specific category, especially when you forget, you choose this item right here. And every single post that you create will automatically go into this category. And by default, it’s always under “Uncategorized.”

And then next, you choose your default post formatting option. So you can choose it to be standard, a side, or a gallery. And then last, you have your default link category. So any time that you forget to categorize a link, by default, they will go under the category you select right here.

Then your next option is the Press This option, and Press This is an application that lets you grab bits of the Web, so you can click text and videos and images from any webpage. And then you can edit it and even save or publish it in your posts from your site. And what you could do is either click it and drag and bring it to your bookmarks bar, or you can actually just right-click it , and it will open up this box where you can actually save it to your favorites, edit it from here, and then save it or publish it.

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Our next option here on the Writing Settings page is our Post via e-mail. Now if you’re not around your computer a lot and you want to constantly publish posts from your email, you can do that by setting up these options right here. So you would enter your server information, your login name, your password. You even have the option to select a default mail category as well, and this is where you would set this up so that you can – at any time – from your email publish posts to your blog.

And the next section is the Remote Publishing section. And here, by clicking either of these boxes, it enables Atom Publishing Protocol and other publishing protocols to allow you to post on your blog from a remote website or a desktop publishing application. So by default, these are both disabled. But if you check the first one, it will add on publishing protocol. And if you click the second box, it will enable different publishing protocols, such as WordPress, Moveable Type, MetaWeblog, et cetera.

And then our very last section here on the Writings page is your Update Services. And here, you can select which ping service you want to notify when you’ve made new posts or updates to your blogs. So by default, it has pingomatic.com, but you can choose any website you want and enter it into this text box here. You can also, for more information, click this Update Services link, which will bring you to the WordPress codex page to give you more information on the Update Services section of the Writing Settings page.

And then, of course, once you’re done, you want to save these changes. And this is how you set your Writing Settings portion of WordPress. Thank you for watching.

Hi. Welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. Today’s tutorial is about trackbacks. Now trackbacks are comments left on your blog by other blogs, not by actual viewers. Now when you write posts, what happens is in that post, you can give a link to a post made by another blog, which of course, would be a different blog than yours.

What then happens is you publish that post. And once you have done this, your blog sends a message to that blog that you have made a link to them. This is called a ping or a network ping. Then that blog can post a receipt that they’ve gotten your message, and the whole point of this is to acknowledge other blogs. Especially if you like something that that blogger has written, you’ll use a trackback, and it’s to pretty much compliment that blogger and to show them that you like what they’ve written.

So to go about actually adding a trackback, you do need a specific version of WordPress. So where it would appear is if you’re on your Add New Post or Edit Post page, you would scroll down to the bottom of the textbox right here, and it would be underneath here.

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Usually, you’ll have an option to add an excerpt for that specific post to put on your Blogroll, or you’ll actually have a textbox here where you would insert the URL of that blog, which would be how you would go about adding that trackback. However, the version I’m using does not have this option, but what I’m going to show you is how to actually manage this trackback option and to set it.

So what you would want to do is come over to your “Settings” link. Open it up, and you scroll down to where it says “Discussion,” right where my cursor is. This will bring you to your Discussion Settings page. And the only box you need to check off for this is right here, this second one, I’m going to constantly check it so you can see what I’m doing. By checking this, you are allowing these trackbacks to occur. So you’re allowing these link notifications to get to your blog and to be given to that blog.

If you do not want trackbacks, all you’ve got to do is uncheck this box and then, of course, scroll down and you want to save your changes. However, trackbacks are a good thing, so for most people and most bloggers, you’re going to want to keep this feature by checking that box.

Now the last thing I do want to mention is that your blog must report trackback protocol for this to work. And this has been a video about trackbacks. Please stay tuned for more videos. Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. Today, I’m going to be explaining to you how to manage your authors and users on your blog. So I’m going to show you what the page looks like and explain to you the different options you have. And I’m also going to talk a little bit about the rules that users can have on your blog. So it gives you a little bit more of a knowledge if you are going to start a blog with multiple users.

Now by doing this, first, you want to go to “Users” on your navigation menu. When you open it up, you’re going to want to click the very first link that’s titled “Users.” This will, of course, bring you to the Users page. Here is a list of all the users you have currently on your blog. So if you are the only user, you’re going to be the administrator, and you will be the only name in this list.

But if you decide that you want to add multiple authors to your blog, this is where the next part comes in. So first, I will show you that you have the option to delete users at any time, which means they will no longer have access to your blog and be able to write posts or manage posts on your blog either. And by doing this, you would just click the name of the user you would want to delete. You would come to the dropdown menu where Bulk Actions are and you press delete and then hit Apply. And this will delete the User from your blog.

Whenever you want to change their role, you would come to this section after you have clicked the box next to their name, and you can change their role by choosing any of these that I’m scrolling over. And when you’re done with this, you of course, want to hit change and that will change their role.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Next, I’m going to explain you a little bit of the roles’ definitions. So I’m going to open up this box again, and I’m going to start off at the bottom with subscriber. Subscriber only has access to manage their profile. Contributor has the option to write, edit, and manage posts, as well as upload files. However, a contributor, once they have written a post, need to save it as a draft because they need to get approval from the administrator before it is actually published. An author has all of the access that a contributor has. They can edit, write, and manage posts. They can upload files, but they can actually publish their posts to the blog without having to await for administration approval.

Next, we have editor. An editor can do both what an author and a contributor does, so they can, once again, edit, write, manage posts. Publish those posts and upload files. But an editor can also moderate comments. They can manage links and categories. They can edit pages. They can read and edit private posts, and they can also edit other authors’ posts. So you have a lot of roles here, if you’re an editor.

Then last, you have your administrator. An administrator is the site owner, so you can do anything, all of the above, with your blog. And like I said, if you ever want to change the role of someone so that they only have certain access to certain areas of your blog, this is where you would come. You would click one of the options and then, of course, hit change.

And then lastly, if you have a large amount of users on your blog, you can always come to this text box up here and search users. You can also see the amount of posts that each user has right here all the way on the right side. You will see their role here, their email here, and then if you choose to have a name next to them, that will be here.

And any time you want to edit any information for a user, you would simply scroll over their name. And where you see edit, you’ll go ahead and click that, and it will allow you to edit all of the user’s information.

And this video has been brought to you to teach you all about managing authors and users. Thank you for watching, and please stay tuned to more videos.

Hi, and welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. In this tutorial, I’m going to be showing you how to edit a category. Now you may have briefly seen this in our adding a category video, but I’m going to touch on it a little bit more now. And what you want to do first is go to the Categories option on your posts submenu, and it’ll bring you, of course, to the Categories page.

Now instead of going to this section where you would add a new category, you want to come right here to the list of categories you have already created. And if you notice, as I go over each one, you will see three words popped up: Edit, Quick Edit, and Delete. So obviously here is where you can edit and delete them. So one option you can have is you can click Quick Edit where two boxes will open where right from here, you can change the name and the slug and update it.

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Or you can click Edit, which will bring you to the Edit Category page for that particular category. So here, what I’m going to do is just change the name of the category and add a description. So what I would do is I would backspace whatever I already have and I want to add a different name and just make it All DIY – All Do-It-Yourself.

And I’ll keep it none because I want it to be a main category, and in the description, I will just copy and paste something I wrote. In this category, you can find great ideas for do-it-yourself activities around the house and garden. So here, I have my description, and I changed my name. And then once I’m done, I’m going to click “Update,” which will save the changes I’ve just made. And now if you come back to the Categories page, you will notice that the category’s been changed. It says “All DIY,” and it also has a description next to it now. And anytime you want to go back and change any information for any category, this is how you would do so.

Thank you for watching.

Hi! Welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. Today’s tutorial is about setting your plugin options. The reason for this is that some plugins have an administration page that allows you to set options for that specific plugin. Please note that not all plugins have this. Depending on what the plugin is, it may have a settings page where you can change specific options for that plugin  to the way that you prefer.

Today’s video is going to be pretty short. I’m not really going to go into the actual settings of each specific plugin because that varies on every plugin, but I will go through the three places that you can find whether or not your plugin has a settings feature, and then an example of what that page may look like.

So, to find whether or not your plugin has setting, you want to come over to your navigation menu. The first place where you can find this
is your plugins link. So, if I open it up, it will appear in this list. If you notice, I have a settings page for one of my plugins called invite friends.

The next place you can find a settings page is your tools link. Here, of course, again it would appear, but I don’t have one under that specific link on my navigation menu.

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The last place you can find this is under your settings link. If I scroll all the way down, you’ll notice that these three links that I am scrolling over are plugins that I have installed, and because they’re under the settings feature on my navigation menu means that they have settings
options.

Now, I’m going to show you what those settings pages may look like. They are all different. Some are long and in depth. Some are short. It depends on that plugin. So, if I come back up to my invite friends settings, it’s going to bring me to their settings page. As you can see, this is very short, so I would just change the options according to what I have right here and then save my changes.

If I then come down to my subscribe to comments link, it will bring me to that settings page, and as you can see this is a lot longer than the invite friends settings. Here I would go through each of my options, and change them according to how I want. Then, of course, save my changes.

Another way you can also find whether or not you have a settings feature is if you come over to your plugins and click install plugins. It will actually show you next to some of them if you have a settings feature.  You just click that link, and it will bring you to the settings page.

This is how you find your settings plugin options. Thank you for watching.

Hi everyone, welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. In today’s tutorial, I’m just going to show you quickly how to get started with WordPress ‘cause it’s actually a very simple process. And for those of you who don’t know, WordPress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform that allows you to create and run your blog or website. And it’s one of the most popular softwares out there, so here as you can see we are on our Dashboard and once you have created your WordPress blog or website this is where you’re going to be controlling everything on your blog, and navigating to everything on your blog. You also will learn how to create posts, have media in your library such as images, videos, and music. You’ll also learn how to create pages, manage your comments and just to give your blog the overall look and appearance that you’d like. There’s also several plugins and widgets that you can install on your blog to utilize different aspect on your blog.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And  there are three ways that you can get WordPress. You can come to WordPress.org and you will click download and all the instructions will be there of how to set it up. You can also come to your host site where that you use WordPress and set it up from there, or you can come to buildmysiteforfree.com which actually sets the site up for you for free. So all you’d have to do is sign up and they set it up for free for you.

You have a video right here that you can actually watch by this website that will tell you all about the free website builder. You can also come over here to where it says services and scroll down to where it says ‘Free WordPress Blog Setup’ and it will bring it to a page that not only tells you what you get with your free blog set up but also what you need to get your website or blog set up for free.

And it shows you how to get started. It gives you a very thorough detailed instructions. You can even come to customer service and ask uestions about this before you start. Not only does buildmysiteforfree set up your site for you, but they also offer free themes and plugins to put on your blog which become very useful not only to monetize your blog but to create your blog in different ways from others.

This is how you start your blog or website with WordPress. Stay tuned for more videos.

Hi guys, welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. In today’s tutorial, I’m just going to show you how to alt tags to images. And alt tags are short descriptions of your image. And the reason we use them is: one, it helps people that are visually impaired, and
two, it also helps search engines to understand what the image is and what it’s about. And in a Google search it will place it will place it correctly in Google images according to the alt tag that you add. Now, you could do this whether you’re adding a new post or editing a new post and you can even edit all your pictures in the media library. So I’m going to show you both ways.

First, here we are on our ‘Add New Post’ page and I’m going to insert a picture by clicking this first icon. Now we can edit anyway, it can be from our computer, URL or our Media Library, it doesn’t matter because once the picture is in front of us we just insert an alt tag from there. So, I’ll just pick one that I already have uploaded. And I’ll just choose this one of Greece, and I’ve already inserted it but, under title you’ll see here it says ‘Alternate Text’ and this is where you’re going to  want to add an ulterior text for the image. And it just says very something very simple “This is a village in Santorini, Greece” you don’t use keywords, you don’t want to use long, dragged out sentences. You just want to use something sweet and simple.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And then, of course, once you’re done you can insert it into your post. Now, if you notice when I scroll over my picture a little yellow box comes up with the alt tag that we just added saying that “This is a picture of a villa in Santorini, Greece.”  Now what you can also do is if you come to your media link on your navigation menu and scroll down to where it says library, it will bring you to the media library page with all the media
whether it be a video, image, audio, added in list right here. So what you can do is you can go through them and edit them. So here we have a  picture right here, all I would just do is click ‘Edit’ and the same outline comes up. Where we have to insert a title, alternate text, we could enter a caption, so here, I might want to just strike.

Just for now, just do something simple, uh, “this is a picture of a fish” and then we could just even copy it and paste it right into the alternate text. And then we could ‘Update Media.’ And now if we ever insert this picture into a post like I just showed you, the same thing would come
up. When you click on the picture, the alt tag would show up. Actually I’m doing it right now and there it is. “This is a picture of a fish.” Very simple, you could write whatever you like, just get a short description.

And this is how you add alt tags for your images. Thank you for watching.

Here are 15 simple ways to get more traffic to your WordPress blog, starting today!

1. Use Social Media: Facebook and Twitter both experienced triple digit growth in 2009, so it’s vital to tap into their trillions of visitors and use them to promote your blog.  Search engines also rank pages according to how many external links you have.  Plug-ins such as ShareThis and Sociable invite your visitors to submit your posts on their social sites.  Plus you can use a feed, such as Twitter feed, which puts your latest posts as RSS feeds on your Twitter account and updates your blog with any Tweets. You can download all of these plug-ins for free on our resources and plug ins page.
2. Promote on forums: another way to increase your external links and therefore your search engine ranking is to promote your blog on forums.  Sites such as Bloggeries and Digitalpoint can be really effective.  Do inspire potential visitors with a bit of your content, rather than blatant advertising.
3. Promote through prizes: get friends to promote the competition on their social networking sites, as well as using other forums, blogs and even local press to increase awareness.  This is a great way to increase a loyal readership that comes back regularly. 
4. Local promotion: can you get some free publicity by running a competition in your local newspaper or radio station?  You could also give away freebies at a gig or hand out flyers at your local college.
5. Freebies:  if you’re selling a product, send some free samples to journalists, national magazines, local press, review websites and any other relevant organization that might give you a free plug.
6. Comment on other blogs: commenting on other relevant blogs not only allows you to check out the competition and what they’re writing.  You can also become one of their top commentators, which can increase exposure for your own blog.
7. Track what works and what doesn’t: if you know which posts are most popular and what your subscribers tend to like, you’re more likely to increase their loyalty and encourage them to bring more readers with them.  Using a plug-in such as Google Analytics or StatPress, which can tell you everything you need to know about your visitors.
8. Search Engine Optimization: it’s important to write with search engines in mind, which means paying attention to relevant keywords.  WordPress have a free All in One SEO plug-in which is so simple to use and does the job for you.
9. Add Multimedia: by adding images and video clips you can drive traffic to your site through multimedia search engines.  You can also optimize your search engine ranking by adding relevant keywords to your images and clips.
10. Create a Sitemap: using the Google XML Sitemap plug-in is so easy.  Each time you edit or create new content, the sitemap will be updated and all major search engines notified.
11. Create good content: take care of your loyal readership and give them content they’ll enjoy.  It’s important you take care of your consistent readers, who are likely to spread the word about your blog and encourage other readers to join.  Keep it fresh and update your blog three to five times per week to keep your visitors coming back for more.
12. Make use of RSS feeds: RSS feeds allow you to keep your subscribers informed of new content on your site, as well as increasing traffic.  They are one of the most effective ways of publicizing your site and improving your search engine ranking.  The basic WordPress package from any free website builder involves RSS feeds, which you can then customize to maximize your traffic.
13. Make friends with your visitors: people who enter your site will come from a variety of different routes and each with a huge network of their own friends.  Using the Referrer Detector plug-in increases interactivity with your visitors from different routes, and allows you to customize your greeting.  For example, you can remind Diggers to dig your story, or ask Tweeters to Tweet to your post.
14. Improve your article descriptions: description meta tags should contain your keywords, which can increase your search engine ranking.  Also make your meta tag description enticing, as this is what readers will see on the search results page and will make the difference as to whether they click on your site or not.
15. Keep subscribers coming back: by using the Subscribe to Comments plug-in you can inform a user by email when someone has replied to their comment.  This increases traffic because they’re likely to keep coming back every time the conversation continues.

1. Twitter Blog:  this plug in is great for increasing your external links, which is vital for search engine ranking.  What it does is tweet your blog post, then check for any replies to your tweet and put them in the comments box under your post.
2. WordPress Thread Comment: a great plug in for creating a dialogue of comments, which motivates people to join in the conversation and keep coming back for more.
3. Top Commentators:  this is actually a widget for your sidebar which motivates people to comment more and more, as they fight for the top spot of Top Commentator.
4. Comment Approved Notifier: this is such a simple plug in that emails a commentator to tell them their post has been approved.  This has a double advantage, not only pinging the author again to encourage them to come back, it may also motivate them to check any replies to their comment.
5. CommentLuv: motivates you as the blogger to comment more and more because it shows the latest blog post at the end of each comment you make.  This fosters a community spirit and makes your blog highly interactive.
6. IntenseDebate Comments: this really gives your WordPress comments area the wow factor, using Ajax to write, reply and rate.  It also includes comments voting and allows users to connect to Twitter and friendfeed, which enhances promotion of your site.
7. Highlight Author Comments: this plug in makes your words stand out from the crowd by automatically displaying author comments in a different and distinctive style.
8. Do Follow: this is great for search engine ranking because it removes the “no follow” attributes in comments links, enabling search engines to follow them.
9. WP Content Filter: nobody wants a blog full of swearwords, so this filters out any unwanted words automatically and replaces them with wild card characters.
10. Custom Smilies: allows users to put in emoticons to comments, adding color and fun to your blog.
11. Whisper Comment: this allows commentators to “whisper” their comment to one or a group of other users.  A great tool for allowing enhanced interactivity and a sense of ownership for subscribers, which could encourage them to revisit and bring more people with them.
12. Live Comment Preview: do you want your commentators to be able to preview their comments before posting?  This plug in enables them to do just that.
13. Comment Rating: a brilliant way to allow subscribers to feel some ownership of the blog, by voting on posted comments.  Time to let your readers decide which comments deserve to be shown!
14. Most Commented: a widget that allows users to quickly access the most popular posts, by displaying those with the most comments in the sidebar.
15. Akismet: finally don’t forget that spam can be an issue with any WordPress blog, with comments boxes constantly being bombarded.  This is an essential add-on to any website builder and this is one of the most popular to kick spam comments out.

The tools you have at your disposal can make it easy for you to increase your sales, your site members, your discussions and more. Knowing which ones will make the biggest difference when there are so many to choose from can be tricky, but here are ten plugins that every WordPress website user should know about.

You can find all 10 Plugins in our onsite directory.

1. Mobile Press

This plugin makes your site as useful to someone visiting from a mobile device as one visiting from his or her computer. You can customize your site for mobile viewing and even track mobile views.

2. Wapple Mobile Architect

Since not all mobile devices work the same or use the same web programs, it only makes sense to customize your site to work with individual devices. This plugin does that for you, offering consistency for your mobile viewers.

3. WordPress Wiki

This plugin allows you to create a wiki within WordPress.

4. TDO Mini Forms

With this plugin, you can create customizable forms that let your members and users submit posts that you can approve or disapprove for publication to your site.

5. Members

This plugin is great if you have multiple users contributing to your site. It allows you to set boundaries for users, and determine what capabilities and role each user or member has, and allows you greater control over your content.

6. WP e-Commerce

The e-Commerce plugin for WordPress provides you with a full-feature shopping cart to accommodate sales on your site or for collecting required fees.

7. eShop

Another e-Commerce tool, but this one gives you more flexibility, allowing downloads, sales completed through email, as well as shipping options for products. It also includes an auto-responder for completed sales.

8. Business Directory

Let your customers input their own business information that you can include in a directory right on your site. Users can include descriptions of their business, URLs, contact information, and any other information you want to make available. This can also be a powerful SEO tool for your site.

9. Calendar

Make a calendar available on your site to list upcoming events, sales, and appointments. You can list multiple events per day, and users can see the details of each event, by either clicking on the date or hovering over the date with their pointer.

10. Social Bookmarks

One of the best ways to promote your site or business is through social sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. This plugin allows visitors to post your site to their social networking page, making it visible to all of their friends and followers.

While there are many powerful plugins you can include on your WordPress website, the tools you use will depend on the type of site you have, and can determine the reach and impact of your site will have to the online community.