WordPress Tutorials about Blog Help
WordPress to MailChimp E-Newsletter
May 10, 2010
MailChimp lets you send daily, weekly or monthly e-newsletters containing your blog posts. It is all done using their ‘RSS to Email’ function (Translation: Blog Posts to Email Newsletter).
Email Newsletters with MailChimp
Once you have setup your free MailChimp account and customised an email template with your logo etc, just create an rss campaign. Enter your website’s feed address (if you use WordPress you have one), decide whether you want to show entire posts or just summaries of each, then select how often you want your newsletter to send. Any fresh content/blog posts you’ve published since the last newsletter will slot into your branded template and send automatically every day, week or month. If there is no new content, the newsletter wont send.
How to Create an RSS to Email Campaign
Unless you want to change the frequency of your newsletter or layout at some stage, this is the one and only time you will need to do the steps below. Everything after your rss campaign is scheduled is automatic.
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- Get a free MailChimp account.
- Click on Campaigns tab, then on the big orange Add Campaign button
- Select RSS Campaign from the drop down list
- Add your RSS Feed address and choose how often your newsletter will send
- Design/customise an email template – Before you create your campaign, you’ll want to customise one of MailChimp’s email templates with your colours, logo, links to your website, images etc. This is all done on site and is easy to use.
- Add Your content Edit the content section of your template and insert an rss merge tag (this will be already there if you choose rss campaign) to display either post excerpts or full posts. You can also insert your Twitter feed, add images, special greeting etc.
- Send Yourself a Test .
- Add a Subscriber List - Add any email subscribers you already have by importing the entire list or adding them one at a time.
- Schedule Your Campaign – Select the date you want the first one to send. Eg. Mine is monthly and sends on the 2nd of every month. [Read more]
Understanding Categories and Tags
June 17, 2009
You can use both categories and tags on your WordPress blog to group or describe the posts you write so it can be confusing to know which to use when. Both help your readers to find the information they are looking for. This post describes the differences plus different ways to use them on your WordPress website.
Screenshot showing categories and tags on the same blog post.
Categories
The categories on your blog are usually the main topics you write about or your different audiences. There should be a limited number and you should generally decide what they are going to be when you first setup your blog. They need to be displayed prominently in a categories widget on your sidebar, in a sitemap or as part of your website navigation as this is the primary way your readers will find posts of interest to them. You can see all my blog categories on my sitemap or on the sidebar of this and all my other blog posts. [Read more]
Write Blog Posts for Money
May 20, 2008
When discussing setting up a blog with a new client, I am often asked “why do I need a blog”. In most cases, the answer is traffic.
- Search engines list frequently updated website content (blog posts) higher than static webpages.
- Your blog content attracts people looking for information, establishes you as an expert in your area and leads to sales and enquiries.
- A good blog should drive people to your website/products
- And help you establish a database of customers you can send regular correspondence (blog posts) to.
But…what if you want to literally write blog posts for money??? There are several ways to do this…if your blog content is good enough!
- You can offer customers a custom subscription which they pay for
- Use the BOS (Blog On Steroids) Plugin to charge for your blog content
- Add a donate button to your blog using the payPal Donate Plugin
- Submit your content to an online Publishing service like Triond and earn royalties
Find out how below… [Read more]
Print This Button On Your Posts
May 13, 2008
Giving your website or blog visitors the ability to print your blog posts or webpages is a great way to add value to your product and improve your overall customer experience. It is also a fact that many people still prefer to read information from a printed page rather than a screen. Customers who print your website/blog content can take it home, read it further, follow your instructions, pass it on to others etc.
Use my Print button at the top of this tutorial to see how this plugin works.
Print button on a Blog Post/Page
The easiest way to add a Print this Post link at the top or bottom of every blog post or just the posts you choose is to upload the WP-Print plugin. See instructions below:
- Upload and activate the plugin (search term: wp print)
- You then need to re-generate your permalinks by going to (WP-Admin -> Settings -> Permalinks ) and saving changes
- Go to Settings/Print in your admin panel
- Choose to display a link or just printer icon
- Choose the wording on your print link. Eg. Mine says ‘Print this tutorial’.
- Choose whether you want to print links (the printed version is the entire url), blog comments and images
- Refine the copyright to go at the bottom of each printed page (it is a great idea to add your website address to this)
- If you want to add the Print this Post option to certain posts only, type the following code on the bottom of your post in code view
- If you want the link to appear automatically at the bottom of every post, add a line of code into the post.php or index.php file in your website’s theme files. See instructions…
Printer Friendly Version of this Post
If you’re using Genesis, see my comment below on how to implement this plugin.
Add a Blog Feed to Existing Website
May 8, 2008
If you’ve got a website already and want to integrate a blog or rss feed into the existing layout and design, there is an easy way to do it. Just read my Feedburner article to tell you how.
It is a good idea to include a brief introduction at the top of your web page as well as a direct link to your blog’s homepage.
Websites Using Feedburner’s BuzzBoost to display their latest blog posts on their websites:
Just read my Feedburner article to tell you how.
Adding an Image to a Sidebar Widget
September 14, 2007
Using text widgets, you can put all kinds of things in your sidebar as well as the usual categories, pages, recent posts, blogroll etc.
You could add a photo of yourself, a photo from a post with a snippet of text linking to that post, a photo of a new product, a book review, a membership logo or anything else you want to put in front of your audience. If you look at the sidebar on this blog, you will see that I have added a screenshot of the latest website I have designed with a link taking people to it.
To add an image to your sidebar, you need to be able to
- Resize the image you want to use to the exact size (in pixels) you want it to appear (you don’t want it to be wider than your sidebar or it will play havoc with your page layout)
- Know a little bit of html code (which I will teach you below).
How to Add an Image to Your Sidebar
- You need to upload your image first under Media, then Add New
- Once the image has uploaded, copy the full link to the image including http etc
- Go to Appearance/Widgets and drag a text widget into your sidebar on the right
- Enter html code below and replace the link url with the image link you copied
- Replace hyperlink (if you want one)
- Replace alt text (for search engines) and title text (when someone holds their mouse over an image) as appropriate.
Code to display photo only
<img src=”http://nzwebsites.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pepwebsite.jpg” alt=”Parenting Enhancement Programme Website”>
Download code for photo linked to website or blog page
<a href=”http://www.parent-help.co.nz” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://nzwebsites.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pepwebsite.jpg” alt=”Parenting Enhancement Programme Website”></a>
What is a Website Slug?
September 12, 2007
The title of each post you write on your blog is not just something catchy which appears above your content! It is very important when it comes to search engine ranking and blog searchability.
Whatever title you publish a new post or page in WordPress, a Post Slug is automatically created to make up a stand alone website address for that post/page. For example:
Post Title = Titles and Slugs for Blog Posts
Post Slug = titles-and-slugs-for-blog-posts
The post slug is then added onto the end of your blog address when visitors are veiwing that particlular post. The webpage address (url) for this post is therefore http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2007/09/titles-and-slu…for-blog-posts/
For this reason, naming your posts using keywords and keyword-rich phrases makes it much more likely that your blog will be listed on search engine results for searches by your target markets.
How to change your post slug
You can change your slug to something different to your post title as long as you have no spaces and include dashes between words. If you are not sure where to find the post slug field when writing a new post, click on the image on left to see a screenshot.
The latest version of WordPress has a special box (near the bottom of the page) for setting the post slug. If you can’t see it, click on screen options at the top right of your screen and tick the slug box to show this option.
