Website Building biz

Log in, Write, Publish it Online!

So you want to start a website or a weblog (blog) but you don’t know where to start? Or maybe you already have a Bluehost account and you’re looking for specific advice on a Wordpress blog. This page shows every step of the software installation from the point of view of BlueHost’s CPanel (hosting account login) screen. With a few clicks and a few settings, pre-installed Fantastico scripts can install your website. Even if you’ve never made a website before, this can be finished in about ten minutes.

Once you log in, you’ll notice that the Wordpress interface is really just a browser-based word processor with a lot of internet related options. A great way to learn the subtle features and powerful settings is to get hands-on experience and trust Google to find answers to the questions and problems that come up along the way.

In 10 min., you could set up a Wordpress blog similar to this one - and you don’t need a bit of internet experience to accomplish this. This walk-through will guide you through the process and if you follow step-by-step, you might just be amazed how easy it is. Warning: blogging can be addictive.

In the BlueHost account web page (CPanel login), there should be a category titled Software / Services as shown in the picture (if you don’t have BlueHost webhosting click here to sign up or learn more). Find this Software / Services section and click on the Fantastico De Luxe icon.

This is the Fantastico screen on Bluehost. You can see that it includes more than just Wordpress - you can also install Joomla, or Drupal, or even some Wikis & web forums that aren’t in the screen shot. Click Wordpress on the left, and it will bring up the screen on the right. Then click New Installation and you are well on your way.

Setting up Options for Install

1. Install on Domain: This is the name of the domain you want to put your website on - your own dot com (or net or info). One free domain comes with an annual hosting plan, additional ones can be added on for $10 a year.
2. Install in Directory: Even if you just have one domain name, you could set up multiple Wordpress blogs. Specify a directory name here, and the software will be installed there. ie: http://yourdomain.com/blog
3. Admin Username: Think of a secure administrator login, write it down, and keep it confidential. This will be your user name to log in to your website so you can make any changes or new pages.
4. Admin Password: Select a secure password, too. People will try to hijack your website and if you pick an easily guessed password like 12345 then you’re really just encouraging them

Website Options and Blog by Email

• 5. Admin Nickname: This is your publicly displayed name. It can be easily changed later, but try to think of something personable.
• 6. Admin Email: This is an email account you would like to be contacted at in case you have notifications set to email.
• 7. Site Name: This is the publicly displayed name of your website. It is displayed prominently at the heading (in most templates) and can also be changed later.
• 8. Description: This is a short catch-phrase or tag-line for your website. Think of it like a slogan.

Blogging by Email (optional set up)

I’ve never personally used this personally but it might be worth setting up if you often use public computers and would like to save some of your drafts from email form or even publish full web page posts on the go. If you want to skip the blog by email feature, you can enter random information for these fields and continue the basic Wordpress installation.

• 9. Email account name: The login information for the email account you want to use.
• 10. Email password: Password for said account.
• 11. POP/SMTP Server: This is the name of an email server your email is transferred on. ex: mail.domain.com (You will need to check your personal mail settings! If you want to skip this step, simply enter mail.domain.com)
• 12. POP/SMTP Server Port: This is the port number associated with your mail account and email server. Again, enter a random number like 10 or 110 if you want to skip this feature.

OK! When These 12 fields are complete (and you’ve written down your login and username) just hit “Install Wordpress” at the bottom of the screen.

That’s it! Get Blogging!

On the final confirmation screen, you’ll see an input field for email. Write in your personal email account, hit “Send E-mail” and you will get a copy of your installation information including your user login and password.

This screen also has a link to the admin area of your Wordpress installation. As they suggest, bookmark it. You can also leave the Meta section of your sidebars active and have a clickable link from any page on your site. If you disable it, you’ll need to type the admin URL manually or return to the link in Fantastico if you’ve forgotten.

Here’s a secret for blogging success: Write about topics that interest you. You’ll have greater knowledge about the topics you publish, and you’ll find it easier to write new, fresh content for your readers and the search engines. Website writing, content management, and marketing can be a daunting task. Chances are not likely that you’ll get rich quick, but if you work toward something you enjoy you’ll likely find that success comes much easier.

If you want to set up your own personal blog or community website, you need to find the thing that connects you and your readers. What interest do you share in common? It could be anything at all, but unless you’re a professional chef targeting a cooking community, you might not want to be too mundane and discuss in detail what you had for breakfast that morning. Then again, if say humor is your thing, you might be able to turn a story about breakfast into a great laugh that will be passed along.

For me, politics and economics is the big issue I like to write about, and despite the fact it doesn’t pay so well it, it doesn’t even feel like work. Well, most of the time. The topics I cover aren’t necessarily the same as the ones focused on in the mainstream media, so I’m targeting a very specific group of readers - and (hopefully) providing a very specific service.

Finding and building on a sub-category is also called a niche, your tiny unique corner of the web that should by its very existence find that even small group of people who are already in agreement or share the specific interest. Slang is great - use words and phrases that don’t exist out of this sub-culture. Make references to popular memes in the sub-category. Instantly, anything you write about can be associated by the search engines with the niche you’re targeting.

When you get comfortable with web publishing and marketing you might look at the top dollar niches and then you can do some actual “work.” Get started right and build websites about things you’re interested in. Its the best way to learn, and the best way to turn out quality work!

Since links with specific anchor text are highly valuable in SERPs and SEO, it was only natural that webmasters with good Pagerank and good SERPs would sell optimized back-links for a one-time or monthly fee.  Not only would the purchaser of the links get click-through traffic, they could expect to see a jump in the search engine results.  This practice is perhaps as old as the internet itself, but its fading out of existence.

What was once a no-catch source of practically guaranteed income has become a huge liability.  Google has made it explicitly clear that a link from your website should be a vote of confidence, not for sale to the highest bidder.  If you want to sell links, that’s fine:  Just use the “rel=nofollow” attribute so the search engine spiders understand that the purpose of your link is self-serving or if its something you don’t necessarily want to take responsibility for (like perhaps comments in an unregulated comment system).

If you don’t like Google’s rules, that’s fine.  You own your own website.  Thing is, they own their website and can do whatever they want, too.  If you want traffic you’ll probably want to rank well on it - so there is plenty of incentive for website builders to play along.  Some people have found their websites dropping to zero pagerank overnight - some others don’t even care because they have other sources of traffic.

Some affiliate websites got caught up in this change and found their traffic plummeting.   Adding no follow seems to fix this, or prevent the penalty.  Then again, while Google might make its general intent clear, it is quite secretive of explicit algorithms.  As a result, there is always a great guessing game being played.  Guess right, and you win a lot of traffic.  How much money you can turn that traffic into is up to you.

There’s no way around it… You’ll need links for SERPs.  Content boosts are great - its awesome to write a new page on a relatively unranked website and see it temporarily shoot to the top of the search results, but that’s good for what, 2-3 days max?  My last article didn’t completely vanish this time, but it is sitting around 163 for a search term it first appeared in the index at #6.  For those 12 hours I got good traffic for a key phrase, and definitely made a fair bit of cash for the little effort I had put in.

But if you want your pages to stay ranked, you have to promote them.   How much traffic do you figure a page at #163 in the Google results gets?  Zero!

This is probably why SEO, particularly back link building, is so important.  When you add backlinks to your pages, Google or Yahoo or whatever search spider “finds” them again - and its like Christmas morning all over again (or Easter if you got good chocolate, Happy Easter!)   Accomplish this enough times and they start to think your site must be just great if people keep talking about it and pointing to it.

Even if you’re just building links through self-promotion, its a good sign to them that its a page you value and are willing to put time into so other people can see it.  There has to be some indication that its more than just an abandoned internet dead-end.  If age of a domain were the important factor, wouldn’t the search engines be full of “ancient” results from the 1990s?

Sure, some backlinks will grow in value, but only if they’re on actively written and promoted websites!  Just with more and more content pushing on to the internet daily, the number and positioning of links required to rank well is constantly going up.  Those older sites may have once been the best, but if they just sit there they aren’t going to keep up and the value of their back links will be in constant decline as the market becomes saturated.

So?  I’m working on back links again.   I’ve added this website to a few forum profiles that hadn’t been used for links yet (particularly in related forums!) and I’ve submitted a few articles that have been good for direct traffic as well as the back links they provide.  A few of the articles get syndicated, so I’m averaging about 12 back links per submission.  Sure, 9 of these are on sites designated as “duplicate content” but at the very least the PR & SERPs influence will be taken from the site with the best rankings itself.  If the other sites are indexed, even its supplemental/duplicate, I assume the value of the reference is still greater than zero.

Recently, I added a DreamHost hosting account to my online properties. I wanted to try something new, see if the grass was any greener on the other side of the fence, and secure some more space & bandwidth for future domain names and increased overall traffic to my collection of websites.

Now, my first web host was Bluehost. I researched it for weeks, compared prices, compared features, compared policies and yes, user & customer reviews. I have always been happy with Bluehost so the fact that I signed up for a Dreamhost account isn’t any sort of rejection of my other hosting company.

Hosting Similarities:

Both sites offer unlimited domains on a single account, automatic script and software installation, and a free domain name with registration. They also have privacy options for registered domains, which can be a useful way to avoid spam or scams directed at webmasters. PHP and MySQL is up to date, and I haven’t seen any software or incompatibility issues on either site.

BlueHost Advantages:

BlueHost offers more server storage space and bandwidth right now, at a ratio of 3:1. Of course, if you’re using up 5 or 15 terabytes of bandwidth in a month, I hope you’re also making enough from your website to afford a dedicated host! Some people have criticized their earlier promises of “unlimited storage” and “unlimited” bandwidth, but functionally it is unlimited for the purposes of most smaller web publishers.

I had no problems with the “Digg Effect” and 17,000 unique visitors in a one-day period. The Bluehost servers just kept serving data as long as users were asking for it.

I have also found that the CPanel in Bluehost (the place where you manage your domains and sites) is a lot more intuitive and generally easier to use. The options and controls on both hosts are essentially the same, but Bluehost seems to organize these choices in a better way with more graphical icons. Bluehost wins again when it comes to installing software. There are a ton of options to auto-install up-to-date CMS software, and its instant as opposed to DreamHost’s “we’ll email you when its done” approach.

Click here to learn more about BlueHost or read the full Bluehost review

DreamHost Advantages:

If you use a coupon like Saves50 then DreamHost is cheaper than BlueHost. The current maximum discount for a DreamHost coupon is $50, so this brings the cost of one year of hosting down to about $70. Bluehost only costs about $85 for a year (prices before tax) so its honestly not even that much savings.

Another advantage to DreamHost - definitely the big one - is that you can re-sell server space. You can set up websites for your customers and charge them for the hosting that you purchase from Dreamhost. As soon as you have an account, you are free to charge anyone whatever you want to share some space on that account. Also, not only do they allow beta versions of software packages, some are even included with their auto-installers. Keep this in mind if you are considering a Pligg run website (they can be tough to install manually, but Dreamhost makes it easy!)

Click here to sign up or learn more about DreamHost or read our full Dreamhost Review
(Remember, use the coupon / discount code SAVES50 to get the maximum price savings or click here to see more coupon or promo codes)

There are a few basic types of advertisements that can be built into your website, depending on the type of traffic you’re building and the types of questions that bring your visitors to you from search engines.

Contextual Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

This is one of the most common, and commonly recognized, types of online advertising. Advertising servers (like Google and Yahoo) scan web pages, “read” the content, and decide what types of ads match the subject or topic of the website.

• Pros: Easy to set up, and many programs do not require minimum traffic. Accounts are easy to register, and colors & style can usually be adjusted with a simple visual user interface. Once an ad is customized and activated, you just have to add a few lines of script text and they will show up in a few minutes.
• Cons: Revenue fluctuates, its not guaranteed, and earnings tend to be pretty low overall. Something I’ve noticed too, is that some times when I write about something that I think is scammy or a waste of money - and warning my readers to stay away from such offers - those are the exact types of offers advertising on my site. This could be a big downfall for consumer watch-dog and advocacy websites.

Affiliate Programs

This seems to be the most popular advertising for the most successful website publishers. Pick your specific product, and try to sell that. Like a salesman, you get a return when someone buys the product from you.

• Pros: Affiliate programs ensure that your content directly matches your product, avoiding the occasional mis-match problem in contextual PPC campaigns. You pick specific products you are confident in and truly recommend - you write about them, why you enjoyed them, and you try to get traffic from people who are looking for opinions or reviews.
• Cons: No sales? No pay. Part of the reason why each sale is so valuable to the webmaster is because the company advertising its product doesn’t pay for ads that do not bring them revenue. There is no guaranteed income - unless you’re selling the product.

Page Impression Advertising

Some advertising campaigns get paid for every time the ad is shown, regardless of clicks or sales. Website owners can earn $3-$30 per thousand views (depending on site quality, traffic quality, and other factors)

• Pros: This is a great solution for websites that have a lot of brief traffic in a day. If people come to visit the site but only look at a few pages before moving on and don’t tend to click a lot of links before they bounce, systems like this will allow the webmaster to be paid a part of a cent for every time the ad is shown. You don’t have to make sales, you don’t have to even get clicks.
• Cons: Top-end profits are pretty limited. Other forms of advertising are usually necessary to supplement page-view advertising campaigns, as high traffic will often coincide with high server and hosting costs.