Your first order of business is to install FireFTP into your firefox browser. If you have not yet made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, now is the time to do so. Fire fox is much more robust, more secure and easily configurable web browser. Even the US govt warn about the dangers of using Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox now and you wont ever look back.

Firstly:

Secondly:
Install FireFTP

Third:
Watch this 4m30s video on using FireFTP

I completely understand the confusion about how to ftp, what it means and how to do it when you first begin blogging. Most of us take it for granted as a way to move files across the internet to our webhosts, but for the person new to blogging, I’d like to make ftping as easy to understand as possible. I’ve used both CuteFTP and WS FTP, the latter for years and I’m not only much more happy with FireFTP, I now recommend it as the free ftp client of choice.

This is a short video tutorial on how to FTP your files from your local computer to your webhost. You’ve got your new webhost account and you’ve used Fantastico to install WordPress for the first time but you have no idea how to move files from your computer to your webhost. You may have been told about Cute FTP or WS FTP, but neither are free or as easy as they could be. The solution is FireFTP. FireFTP is a free FTP client for Firefox which allows you to transfer files, WordPress themes, plugins, images or any other files from your laptop or desktop machine to your webhost server account.

how to ftp your files with fireftpWhen you first install your wordpress blog using Fantastico, from within cpanel, a default theme is put in place. Once you’ve found another theme you want to use to spice up how your blog looks, you will have to first download the theme, and then transfer those files to your webhost to be used. This is called transferring the files and it’s done through a process of FTPing.

FTP simply stands for File Transfer Protocol and it’s just a fancy name for a method of moving files across the internet.

FireFTP is an easy method to do so because it’s an add-on for Firefox and opens within a tab of your browser allowing access to your local files and your remote files.

Local files are those stored on your own computer and remote files are those stored on your webhost server.

In the picture above we see a simple diagram showing how your computer is connected to your Web Host across the internet. In the old days (1990’s and early 2000’s), people would work on their web pages using Frontpage or Dream Weaver, Microsoft Visual Dev, or in my case Notepad and then once they had them looking like they wanted, would transfer the files to the Web Host where they would then be available for viewing to people around the world.

Files are transferred to your Web Host using a free ftp program like FireFTP.

These days, blogging platforms like WordPress make it easy to add content to your website right from within your web browser and the days of manually editing, tweaking and formatting your website are gone. With WordPress, it’s easily done with the click of a button.

Web Hosts charge a yearly fee for various services that they offer.

* Storage space for your files
* Database server for your data and content
* One click install of your WordPress Blog
* Bandwidth – or the moving of files from the server to the browser
* Email for your domain
* Online Photo Galleries
* Website Statistics – who’s visiting, from where, what words, and how
* 24/7 phone support
* Much more

Basic packages are around $100 a year but some Web Hosting companies offer much better rates for more than one year. Prices actually vary depending on your contract such as $8.95 per month if you pay by the month, but then lowers to $6.95 per month if you pay for a year in advance. The price may drop to as little as $4.95 a month if you pay for 3 years in advance. I use and recommend both Hostgator and Host Monster as very good places to get your web hosting.

If you want to have a blog or a website, you pretty much need to rent some space from a Web Hosting company in some form or another. There are free places to host your blog, but they’re not as robust or allow you to customize the things you need. They’re a fine place to get started if you need to, but most outgrow their free hosting quickly.

The easiest way to answer the question “what is Web Hosting” is to simply realize that someone, somewhere, has to store your files so that they can be viewed by others on the internet. A Web Host is the computer that manages all the parts of storing your data, managing your traffic as well as the other benefits listed above.

What is web hosting and why the hell do I need it anyway? Great question that deserves a decent answer. One of the first things I taught to my students was this concept of where their website was physically located. In order to view a website or a blog, it has to have a home. The files, images and content have to be on a server somewhere in the world so that when your domain name is typed in, it displays what you want it to display.

Your WordPress blog has a home on a web server. The web server is a computer located somewhere in the world and may be shared by many other blogs.

The server that stores all your files and serves them out when requested is called a Web Host. Web Hosting is the first thing you will require after purchasing your desired website name (or domain name).

Where do you store your themes, plugins and files on your web host and how should you store your files on your own client computer? When you install your wordpress blog using either fantastico or by doing it yourself, the file and folder structure is very specific, you can’t really change it, nor do you want to. There is no room for changing the built in structure, leaving you simply having to understand it so you can FTP your files to the proper places.

create a blog beginnerIt’s actually quite easy and there’s really only two places you ever need to be aware of. Having a system of storing files on your own computer is, in my opinion, actually more important than understanding where they go on the server.

Before I even answer the question about where to store the themes on your blog, I would first want to show you how to store them on your own computer. You may either be building multiple blogs to blog about your multiple passions and interests, or you will be creating a blog about one subject. Either way, when you see a theme that you like, you’ll be downloading it to your computer first, then uploading it to your web host. As you see more themes that you like, you’ll probably want to download them as well. This may go on for a great number of themes, so organization is critical.

This principle is the same for themes and plugins

On your computer, you should have a separate folder for each of these items

1. All your themes
2. All your plugins
3. Your Blogs

The idea is to download any themes you like to your themes folder, then copy them to your local blog folder when you want to use one, then upload it to your web host server from there.

The same goes for plugins. If you have multiple blogs, you will want to store your plugins in one general “plugin” folder, then copy them to your blog plugin folder, then upload them to your web host server when you want to use them.

In the image below, you see a sample of how you could set up the folder structure on your computer for organizing your blog files.

When you first create a blog with WordPress, I highly suggest that the first thing you do after customizing your WordPress Dashboard Options is to install these 3 Plugins.

A plugin is like a utility for your blog that does something.

There are programmers all over the world who build these plugins to do little jobs for them and then they share them. Most of them are given away free of charge, so feel free to experiment with them if you like.

When I first create a blog for myself or clients, these are the first three I install and activate.

First 3 Plugins For WordPress Beginners To Install

* WordPress Database Backup
* Google XML Sitemap Generator
* Blog Stats

Why these three plugins?

WordPress Database Backup Plugin – All your posts, links and any other data you input into WordPress is stored in a database. If anything should happen to your blog or the web hosting server that it’s on, having a recent backup is pretty critical wouldn’t you think? The first plugin allows you to schedule a backup of your database tables hourly, daily, weekly or on demand. There are few options so that keeps it simple. Set it to email the zipped up database content file to you once a day or once a week depending on how often you blog.

Google XML Sitemap Generator – You have probably seen a sitemap but what the hell is XML? Not to worry, this one you don’t even have to understand, except for the fact that it tells Google, Yahoo and ASK.com about your new posts in a format that they can understand easily and effectively. Think “Marketing”. This plugin generates a search engine readable sitemap and then actually goes out and tells them about it (It pings the search engines and says “come look, I have a new post – here’s where it is!” ). This little plugin is extremely well built by Arne Brachold and I even gave a donation to him I was so impressed and appreciative of his efforts.

Again, with this plugin, simply download it, ftp it to your server using a free ftp client like FireFTP and then activate it. Once activated, go to options -> XML-Sitemap page and check off the fields that apply. Simple. There’s a lot of things the plugin asks on the options page, but most of the default options are fine.

Blog Stats – This one does just what it says, it gives you a nice little interface (within your free wordpress.com account) showing you your visitors, where they came from, what they’re viewing, how many came on which days, what they had searched for to find you and much much more. It’s not really critical at all, but it’s pretty good to know if you’re getting any traffic from your link building and especially knowing what your readers had searched for to find you. This little plugin was created by the WordPress team at Automattic.

In order to use Blog Stats, you will have to have to have a username with wordpress. They show you your stats via an interface on wordpress. In order to see it, you have to login to your account AND you have to have an API code (Application Programming Interface code – like a unique id for your account). You’ll need this same API code for an anti-spam plugin as well, so if you already have it, you’re good to go.

To get the WordPress Username and API code, go to www.wordpress.com (dot com, not dot org) and click on “signup”. You’ll see a page where you enter a username and a password for your account.

Below the fields where you enter your username and password you will see this question

When you first create a blog, one of your first steps to complete before beginning any posting is to configure the various subtabs found under the Options tab in the Dashboard. This post focus’ on the “General tab” which shows up first in the list from left to right.

The general tab is where you configure your blog title, tagline, add the www to the domain name and set the blog timzone offset.
Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “WordPress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue WordPress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of WordPress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “General” tab as shown in the image below

After configuring the wordpress dashboard general tab, the next one is the writing tab. The writing tab sets the parameters for your “write a post” page where you enter the actual blog post information.

The options for this tab include the size of the post box ,convert emoticons to graphics for display, setting the default post category, post via email and update services.

This tutorial will focus on the size of the post box and update services

Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “WordPress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

Configure The Writing Tab

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue WordPress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of WordPress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “Writing” tab as shown in the image below

Size Of Post Box

You’ll see that I have “size of the post box” circled. The number you set here has an impact on how much room you have to write your blog post. By default, the number is 10 which refers to 10 rows of space for writing in.

Go have a look at this right now. Login to your wordpress blog, then click the “write a post” link from your dashboard (or click the “write” tab next to “dashboard”).

Make a note of the size of the “post” box under “title”. Not too big is it? If you haven’t already change this setting, it’s exactly 10 rows tall. Personally, I prefer it twice that size just so I can see more of my post without having to scroll through it while I’m editing it.

Now, go back to the “writing” tab by clicking on Options -> Writing and change this value to 20 so that it doubles the writing space available.

Once you’ve done that, we’ll skip over the blog by email part and straight down to the bottom, the “Update Services”

A search engine optimized (seo friendly) page title or blog title is one of the most important aspects of your post. In a previous post, I wrote about how to write a good post title and why it must be written in a way to capture the readers attention. In this video, Search Engine Optimization expert Aaron Wall, author of SEOBook, shows where the title is used, why it’s important and how to write a good title to capture attention

Making a decision about your blog link structure is in the top 5 things you should do before publishing your first blog post. Your link structure is what you see in your browser address bar when you’re looking at a website, blog or blog post page and it’s one of the most important parts of getting traffic to your post.

One of the best ways to rank higher for your keyword phrase is to have them in your domain name. A blog that is about photography would rank higher and come up in more searches if the domain name was something like www.herviewphotography.com rather than www.ya.ru for example. “Her View” is catchy yes, and of course good branding, but for organic search engine traffic from people looking for fine art photography, www.ya.ru would have to rely on a lot of “on page” optimization.

Having the keyword phrase in the actual url of the website page or blog post is a very important and often overlooked aspect of blog design.