Wordpress How To Pro

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

From time to time it’s necessary to pick up and move your blog or site from one hosting service to a new one. There are a variety of reasons for this, for example:

* perhaps you found a better deal elsewhere, more bang for less buck.
* perhaps your old hosting was inadequate, had poor service, or no service, or you just outgrew them.
* perhaps you had a huge traffic spike (“digg effect” or your product launch was a crazy success) and the host told you to get lost.
* maybe your host was bought out and the new host just wasn’t up to snuff, or any number of other reasons.

Moving a blog isn’t quite like moving a static HTML site. A basic HTML site you can just upload to the new host, a blog or more complex site will have databases and scripts and other things that need to be tied together. Fortunately, that’s not a hard thing to deal with.

If you are moving from a linux/unix server to a windows server, or visa versa, the procedure may be a little more awkward given the differences between those systems. Your tech support people should be able to help you through any rough spots there.

First off you will need to have the nameservers of your new host available. Get them from your new host, they will look like ns1.YourNewHost.com and ns2.YourNewHost.com.

When your move is finished you go to your domain name registrar, enter your account, find a section that says something like “update nameservers” and fill in the blanks. Once the nameserver change is accepted it will take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days for your new site to properly appear.

If your new host uses a system that is compatible with the old host then the new host might be able to access the old site and move all your settings, data, databases, scripts, etc., over to the new account. For example, if both hosts use “cpanel” the new host will easily be able to move all of your data.

If your old host kicked you off their system, for whatever reason, or if your new host can’t access the old one, then the old host should be able to provide a total backup of your site. This backup will contain all the logs, data, databases, and everything else that was part of the site. They will roll it all into one file and provide you access to download it.

The you simply upload the entire backup file to your new host and they should be able to install it with no problems.

Moving a blog is very much the same thing. A complete backup of the one site can be moved to the new host, installed, nameservers changed, and your blog will be up and running in a couple of days.

Another option, if all you want is your database, is to start fresh on the new host and upload that database. You will get all your old posts and settings back and you will be back in business.

In the control panel of your old host there should be a section where you can handle your database functions. In cpanel it’s “phpMyAdmin.” In this area you should be able to find a section that will let you export your database. In cpanel you select the database you want on the left menu, then there will be an “export” link on the top of the right panel.

When you export the database make sure that everything is selected and that you download it as a file to your hard disk. (You should do this regularly, anyway, as a backup procedure.)

Next you log into your new host and create a new database. Make note of the name of the new database, the username, and the password, you will need them later. Enter your database control panel and import the database backup that you made.

Upload your blogging system to your new host, but don’t install it. Find the configuration file, in WordPress it’s wp-config.php, though you may have to start with the wp-config-sample.php file.

Open up that file in a text editor (NOT Word or any other word processor. Use Notepad or something like it.) You will see fields to enter your database name, username, password, and host (which will likely be “localhost.”)

Make sure that file is saved as wp-config.php, then upload it to your new host. If you’re using something other than WordPress you will have to change a different config file, but it should be a similar process.

Now set those nameservers and once they “resolve” then you should be able to see your site, up on the new host, just as it always was.

Participate in the conversation by leaving your comment below.

Technorati Tags: hosting wordpress pro, how can upload wordpress script by using ftp cute proffesinal, how to use wordpress to make a pro website, pro wordpress sites wired, transfer blog to new hosting, wordpress how to

These days, it is much easier to create a website than it used to be. In general, website-creation programs are much simpler to use – and you also have the option of signing up with an online web host with easy-to-use page creation tools.

But the biggest change has to be the advent of the blog.

“Blog” is short for ‘web log’. Blogs started off as a way for people to create an online diary. Bloggers would simply log on, tap out a paragraph or two giving their thoughts on life and the universe (and everything in between); click ‘publish’ and that was that. Their words were live on the Internet for anyone to see. The big appeal of a blog was that it was interactive: readers were welcome to add a comment on any post, with a link back to their own blog or website.

Gradually, bloggers started to want more. They wanted easy ways to upload photos, and extra pages on the site – just like a ‘real’ website. They wanted a range of themes, to better express their personality or business.

Programmers everywhere came to the party, particularly with WordPress, a well-known open source. Now, if you want a website/blog, it’s possible to:

* Sign up with a web host with CPanel for a low monthly fee

* Install WordPress with just a few clicks of the mouse, using Fantastico on your website’s CPanel

* Either use one of the pre-installed themes, or browse the various themes available at WordPress (and on many other sites) to choose one that suits your personality or business

* Upload the theme you want to the wp_content folder, using a simple FTP program (such as WS_FTP or Cute FTP)

* Start posting your articles or comments

* Add extra pages to your site (if you want to)

Now that you can add separate pages to blogs – just as you can with a standard website – many people are turning to them as their preferred way of building a website. By using various plugins, it’s possible to do pretty well anything you want.

=== What Are “Plugins”? ===

Plugins are extra features available for your blog to make your life easier. You can get plugins, for example, that will:

- help you block spam

- make it easy to upload and sort your photos

- ping the search engines so they know when you’ve added new content

- insert Adsense blocks so you can earn money from your blog

There are quite a number of plugins available now – take some time to find out what they will do.

=== Help With Using WordPress ===

While WordPress is not the only blog software available, it is an excellent choice because (a) it’s free; (b) it’s relatively easy to use; (c) it’s open-source, and therefore has a lot of people working on it constantly to make it better, and (d) there are quite a few ‘how to’ sites on the Internet showing you how to make the most of your WordPress blog.

One of them is Guido Stiehle (“The Jungle Marketer”) who offers an excellent free tutorial (with video tutorials) that will show you, step by step, how to set up and use your blog. You can find other providers by simply typing ‘how to use WordPress’ into a search engine.

Spend an hour or two browsing, and you’ll see why a blog is a very viable option for establishing your presence on the Internet.

Participate in the conversation by leaving your comment below.

Technorati Tags: allintext:c Post a comment Powered by CoreBlog, Blogging, Blogging Tips, how to blog, wordpress how to

There are three key areas that you can enhance on your WordPress blog that will help you optimize it. The areas are adding additional ping service websites, using Feedburner, and using keyword-rich categories.

Ping Services

The first thing that you should do is add additional ping services to your WordPress blog. You must have administrative rights to your blog and be logged in to gain access the ping service option.

Once logged into your WordPress blog’s backend, click on the “Option” tab and then click on the “Writing” tab and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will see “Update Services” and a box under this title. There are a couple of ping services listed but you can add the following list by copying and pasting in the ping service list box. To complete the process, click on “Update Options”.

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

Feedburner

As a blog owner, being able to capture your blog traffic and generate reports is very important to knowing what you need to do to optimize your blog. One blog tool that works to help optimize your blog is Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to redirect your blog RSS feed through their service so that it can reach targeted blog visitors better.

This helps with optimization by allowing your RSS feed to have built-in options for bloggers to use as they read your blog’s RSS feed. This brings in a stickiness factor which is always good for optimizing your blog. Some of the blog tools that Feedburner allows you to use so that you can increase the effectiveness of your blog are:

Analyze: you will be able to see real-time and accumulated statistics about your blog’s visitor information. This will help you understand the traffic that is going in and out of your blog. This allows you to better target your optimization efforts to specific areas of your blog.

Optimize: allows you to make your blog “browser friendly” so that subscribing to your blog is easy. SmartFeed(R) is an option that you can use to make sure that your blog is compatible for most blog readers. You can even build interactivity into each individual post by using FeedFlare(R) which allows you to add links at the end of each post such as “Email Post” or “Subscribe to Feed.”

Publicize: is another way for you to make sure that your blog attracts web visitors. A couple of the tools that you may use is “Email Subscriptions” and “BuzzBoost”. Email Subscriptions will give your web visitors the opportunity to receive an email once a day alerting them that you have updated your blog. Then BuzzBoost(R) allows you to republish your feed as HTML so that you can add it as a Page on any of your other websites or WordPress blogs.

Using Categories as Keywords

The easiest way to optimize your blog with keywords is to use categories that not only define each post but also relate to other posts on your blog. WordPress blog software uses categories as a way to “tag” search engines so they can be alerted that a new post has been added to your blog for a specific topic area.

Categories are also another way to easily organize the content on your blog. When you list the categories on the sidebar of your blog, it gives your blog visitors the opportunity to see all the content of your blog for a particular topic.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

Technorati Tags: wordpress blogs, wordpress how to, wordpress optimization