Okay, assuming you’ve followed my instructions and registered a domain name, purchased web hosting for it, installed Wordpress through cPanel’s Fantastico tool and uploaded a new Wordpress theme, you’re probably wondering what is the next step.

Logging Into Your Wordpress Dashboard

Frankly, if you wanted to you could being writing articles immediately.  To do that, you simply click on "Write" then "Post" from the dashboard of Wordpress’ control panel.  You access your Wordpress menu dashboard or control panel by clicking on the "Login" menu item on your home page.  This will take you immediately to your login page.  Some theme designers omit the "Login" menu item to help prevent spam or hacking of your blog.  If the theme you chose is one without a login menu item you can login to your Wordpress by going to http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-login.php (replacing yourdomainname.com with your actual domain name address).

Editing Your Blogroll

You may have noticed a category in your menu column called "Blogroll" with links to several Wordpress-related websites.  These are default menu option or website links under your Blogroll.  Go back to your home page.  If you’re inside the dashboard or control panel area of Wordpress, simply click on "View Site."  You should now be on your home page.  Look at the Blogroll area closely  Now click on your browser’s "Refresh" button.  See how each of the links in the Blogroll area rotated up or down on position.  Now click refresh again and watch the links roll yet to the next position.  This is why they call it a "Blogroll" and it is essentially a roll or list of blogs you consider personal favorites.

The next thing I want you to do is edit this list.  Go back to your Wordpress Dashboard.  You can either hit the back button on your browser or login to Wordpress again.  Once inside Wordpress, click on the "Blogroll" menu item and check and delete each line item under "Blogroll."  Now, "add" several favorite links of your own.  You’ll want these either links to other sites you own or to other favorite sites that deal with the niche your website is trying to serve.  For now, limit your list to five or six links.

If you wish, you can even change the category label from "Blogroll" to another name, like "Favorite Sites" for example.  You can edit the label "Blogroll" by clicking on the dashboard menu item "Blogroll" and then the sub-menu item "Categories."  Edit the category called "Blogroll" and change it to something you deem more appropriate or that you like better.

In our next post we will discuss how to change the "Options" area of Wordpress.

The next step after installing a Wordpress blog is to find and upload a theme that suits your taste or will work well with the market niche you are intended to serve.  Because Wordpress is an open source blogging software, it has a very large community of developers, including web designers, that create free themes for people like yourself to download and use at no cost. 

You can find literally hundreds of Wordpress themes available for download on the Internet.  Two sites I use often are Themes at Wordpress and Wordpress Themes.  Visit these two sites and browse their extensive listing of Wordpress themes until you find a template you like.  Both sites provide free demo views of what each theme would look like if installed on a website.  Once you find a Wordpress theme that you like, click on its download link and download the theme to your PC’s desktop.  I actually created a sub-folder on my desktop called Wordpress Themes and I download all themes to that directory.  You might decide to do the same later once you see how easy it is to install a Wordpress theme and change the look of your website on the fly in seconds.

Once you download the theme you’ll see that it is in zipped format.  Double-click on the file and it should open in WinZip if you have the program installed on your PC.  If you don’t you’ll need to get a copy of Winzip and install it on your PC.  Assuming you have Winzip, double-click on the theme’s zip file.  A popup window will appear revealing the contents of the zip file.  You’ll need to highlight all the files in the popup windown and click on WinZip’s "Extract" command.  Point your mouse to the folder where you wish to unzip the files to on your PC.  This will usually create a sub-folder named automatically named after the title of the theme.  The contents of this new folder will be all the files you saw in the popup window that were in the zip file.

Now that you have the theme’s contents saved on your PC in a new folder it created named after the theme’s title, you’ll  need to FTP (i.e., upload) the folder and its contents to your new Internet website address or URL.  If you don’t have an FTP program you can login to the control panel of your linux web host and access a program called "File Manager" that will do the same thing an FTP program will do when it uploads files to the Internet.  Whether you use your own FTP client software (which I highly recommend) or you use cPanel’s File Manager, you will need to FTP the entire theme folder and its contents to your website address.  The exact place you will need to upload it to will be the "themes" directory of Wordpress.

The themes directory is located under the wp-content directory of Wordpress.  Let’s assume you FTP to your new website address.  Once you connect you’ll see two folders, labled "public_html" and "www" if you are hosting your website on a  linux server.  Click on either one of these folders.  Next you’ll see a folder called "wp-content" - this is the content folder for Wordpress.  When you click on it you’ll see 3 sub-folders:  uploads, themes and plugins.  Click on the "themes" folder.  You’ll now see 2 more subfolders, "default’ and "classic."  You will now upload your new themes directory and when completed you’ll see 3 subfolders appearing under the themes folder:  classic, default and your new theme’s name.

Okay, now go to your home page and click on the "Login" menu command.  Type in the username and password you established for Wordpress when you installed the program.  Once you login to your Wordpress click on the menu item labeled "Presentation."  Then click on "Themes" in the sub-menu area.  You will see 3 icons on the page, each representing a small thumbnail picture of what each Wordpress theme looks like — i.e., the default theme, the classic theme and your new theme.  Click on the thumbnail icon that represents your new theme.  Next click on the "View Site" command at the top of the page.  Bingo!  As you can now see, your new theme has successfully been installed and your site has a whole new look and feel.  Now, wasn’t that easy? 

As you see, one of the beauty’s of Wordpress is you no longer need a web designer.  If you want to change the look and feel of your website, just download a new free theme, unzip it and upload it to your "Themes" directory.   Then, click on the theme’s thumbnail under "presentation - theme" to activate it.  As my mom would say, its "as simple as pie."

If you took my advice and purchased web hosting from CostCutterDomains.com, HostGator.com or BlueHost.com, you already have a very special tool that will make installing Wordpress a breeze.  The tool, a special tool for installing multiple scripts or programs on your website, is called Fantastico.  And boy is it fantastic!

When you first created your web hosting account you picked or were assigned a username and password.  This username and password allows you access to your domain’s control panel.  The control panel will give you many options, such as the ability to check your websites, add new email accounts, upload files from your PC to your website, and much more.  One of those “much more’s” is the Fantastico tool. 

To login to your cPanel control panel using HostGator.com, for example, you simply go to http://www.yoursite.com/cpanel — where “yoursite.com” is the actual name of your domain name.  When you try to visit this url address you’ll be asked for your username and password.  Once you enter your login info you’ll see a large website with many icons and labels underneath each icon noting what function you control or access by clicking on the icon.  The Fantastico icon is like a large light baby blue happy face with the label Fantastico De Luxe.

Click on the Fantastico icon and you’ll see many different programs and scripts on the left-side menu of the next page.  Underneath the “Blogs” programs you’ll see several different blog managers you can install with Fantastico.  One of these option is Wordpress.  Click on the Wordpress menu option.  Then, in the right-side column click on “New Installation” option.  This will bring up a blog configuration page.  On the configuration page leave the “Install in Directory” field leave it blank.  This will install Wordpress in your root directory.

Next choose a username and password for your blog.  Then, type in the nickname you want to appear as the “author” for all blog posts you write.  You might want to type in your first name or a ghost name if you want your name to remain a secret. 

The “Admin Email Address” field will have your default email address listed.  You may wish to change this to a custom email address, like sales@yourdomain.com or yourname@yourdomain.com, for example. If you haven’t already added a new email address that matches what you want to put in this field you can do so later, through the “Mail” menu option on your control panel.  At any rate, type in the email address you want to use for anyone responding to your blog.  Don’t forget to add this new email address via your control panel later.

Next pick a site name for your site (Fantastico will prefill this option with your domain name, but you can edit this and write any site title you choose.  Next type in a short 25 to 30 letter (or less) description for your website.  This is like a subtitle or by-line. 

If you opted to use a custom email address for the admin, you’ll need to change the e-mail account username to the email address you’ve chosen.  For example, if your username for your website is “makemoney” then you’ll see  the phrase “makemoney” in the E-Mail account username slot.  Feel free to change this to your new email address if you wish.  Thus, if your new email address you want to use for all correspondence is andy@yourname.com then your email account name username slot should be modified to read “andy.”

Lastly, add your email account password and click on the menu button below that says “Install Wordpress.”  Next, click on the option that says “Finish Installation.” 

You’re almost finish.  When a new page appears you’ll see a slot that says “Email the details for an installation.”  Add your email address here.  Lastly, click the “Send e-Mail” button and the username/password instructions and notes about the installation will be sent to you.

Now go and visit your site.  Just type your domain name into your web browser window using the following format -  http://www.yoursitename.com (substituting with your domain name, of course) and you should see a website appear for your domain with a generic blue and white website template.  You are now ready to start posting to your blog, but chances are you will want to change the template, what Wordpress calls the “theme,” so that your website won’t look so bland as the generic template you’ll see immediately after Wordpress is installed.  In my next post, I’ll provide instructions on how you can change the look and feel, or theme, for your new blog’s web design.