Yoserizal Djamal's Blog

WordPress is a leading blogging software that widely used for website building. Although it is basically a blogging software, now it is used for website building in general. Many-many internet marketer use WordPress to build various type of website, such as personal blog, affiliate website, niche website, review site, etc.

Many people also have developed a great number of add-on products to support WordPress, such as WP theme, widget, and plug-in.

Theme

A theme is a design of website appearance. The specification includes the way a page is divided based on column, could be one column, two or three column design; selection of color usage for back ground, border, etc.; the selection of font face, font size, and font color; the design of header graphics; and the menu design.

Once a theme is installed, it is instantly selectable from admin panel. During the website set-up you can upload and install several themes, and then you can dynamically activate one of them at a time for review; once you have made your mind then leave it activated for further customization. Although the theme is dynamically selectable from admin panel, it is not practical to switch the theme after being put into production / operational, there are some slight difference in detail that may not smoothly compatible.

To start with, you can check the following sites to seek for a WP theme :

http://www.freewpthemes.net/ http://topwpthemes.com/
http://www.elegantwpthemes.com/
http://themes.rock-kitty.net/
http://freewpthemes.co/

Widget

Widget is a component of wordpress that can be dynamically activated or removed from the screen. It is normally intended to be placed on a column such as list of category, list of recent posts, text box, ads or banner rotator, tag cloud, opt-in box, etc. So you can arrange content of side columns by choosing widgets suitable with your need.

There are many widgets freely downloadable from net, see this site:

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Widgets

Plug-in

WP plug-in is add-on program that is installable on a wordpress website. A WP plug-in may perform simple function or complicated multi functions.

One of a simple function plug-in is WP ad-rotator where its function is to display an ad at a time in a rotational basis every time the page is loaded. The ad is taken from a pre-defined list.

An example of plug-in with a more complicated function is SEOPressor, a paid WP plug-in that is used to analyze the quality of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aspects of the the website. It will give the result of the diagnosis regarding SEO quality and suggestion to solve the problems, so it help you improve your page rank in your effort to put it on google page-1.

In conclusion

You have great flexibility with WordPress without having to code any single line of HTML. There are enormous number of WP themes to choose in designing the appearance of your website, both free as well as paid themes. You can customize the content of you web page using available widgets, you can populate your side column with as many or as few widget as you like. You have wide selection of plug-ins to enhance the function of your website. Your imagination is the limit.

WordPress has evolved to be tools of choice to make a website especially for bloggers and internet marketers. It is easy to install and there are thousands of freely available WP themes to choose from for the layout design, and a lot of plug-ins that can be used to enhance your website.

Theme is a layout design for WordPress, it is a ready to use lay-out that consists of column and color design, including header graphics. While plug-in is a specially designed add-on computer program for WordPress website that perform function(s) to enhance the website capability.

Downloading the WordPress.

You can download the WordPress software from www.wordpress.com for free. After unzipped, the software is ready for installation

Manual installation.

You have to do manual installation if your server does not have c-panel with Fastastico, for example your own operated server, or on local computer for testing purposes. We assume that webserver like Apache, PHP, and MySQL database are already properly installed on the computer we are going to install the WordPress on.

1. Before starting installation, make sure you have your MySQL database information (host-name usually ‘localhost’, dbname, username, and password) readily available.
2. Unzip (Extract) the downloaded zip file to a folder say ‘wordpress’.
3. Copy (upload or FTP) the content of ‘wordpress’ forder to the root of your website. For local Apache webserver, copy the folder content to ‘htdocs’ folder. If you want to set up the wordpress as a sub-directory, instead of copying the folder content you should copy the folder itself.
4. Open ‘wp-admin/install.php’ with your web-browser.
   You will be prompted to supply database information, and then the installer program will set-up database objects needed by the wordpress.
   You also will be asked to create username and password. If you don’t provide them, your default username will be ‘admin’ and you will be given a generated password, make a note..
   At the end, you will be directed to login page.
5. Enter your username and password to login.
   You may change the password by clicking the ‘profile’ menu.

Your WordPress website is ready.

Install WP using Fantastico

Currently most web hosting service provide c-panel for easy website management, and it usually has Fastastico Deluxe Installing WordPress with Fastatico is easy.

1. Open you C-panel screen.
   For some webhosting like HostClear use url ‘www.domain-name.com:2082’, and provide username and password.
2. Scroll down, and click ‘Fantastico Deluxe’.
   You will be prompted with your preferred user-name and password for your wordpress admin.
3. Your wordpress site is ready.

Installing wordpress using Fantastico is really easy.

After deciding that you have to have your own website, your next task is finding domain name and web hosting. You are now about to pick a domain name to used as tha name of your site and find a hosting company to host your website.

Domain name is the address of your website someone will type into web browser to view your web page. It is usually written in the format of ‘www.domainname.com’. A domain name is also called ‘url’, abbreviation of ‘unified resource locator’. The word ‘com’ at the end of the url is domain name extension, alse called TLD (Top Level Domain name). Beside ‘.com’ you can also choose ‘.net’, ‘.biz’, ‘.info’, or country specific like ‘.fr’, ‘.de’, ‘.co.id’, ‘.com.my’, ‘.com.sg’, etc.

The question is ‘What domain-name should you pick ?’.

Of course you can use any word (or combination of words) as your domain name. However, since your website will represent you or your business, the suitable domain name will be your business name, for example your company name. If you are about to start building an online business, just find a name for your business entity and use it as your domain name.

For your personal blog, just use your name ‘www.firstnamelastname.com’, for example ‘www.yoserizaldjamal.com’.

Beside company website and personal blog, there are more specialized purpose of website, and you may want to use a domain-name that reflect the purpose. A website may be used to promote or describe a product, then just use the product name as the domain-name. If the website is loaded with information around a specific niche ( a segment of market) then you may use the niche name as domain-name.

I guess you have got the idea, a domain-name should reflect the content, so people will easily remember the name and the content.

How to claim a domain-name ?

In order for a domain-name can be used it must be registered thru a registrar company like NameCheap(www.namecheap.com) or other registrar of your choice. You can register your domain-name for $10 per year. A domain-name must be unique, meaning you can not register a name that has been used by someone else.

In case the domain-name your want is not available (it is already taken by somebody) you may try different extension like ‘.net’ or ‘.biz’ or ‘.info’. If using different extension still does not work, try inserting hyphen (-) between words, or add word like ‘my’ -> ‘mydomainname’ or ‘site’ ->‘domainnamesite’.

Finding a web-hosting.

After securing your domain-name, you have to find a web-hosting service that will host your website. A web-hosting service usually offers choices of hosting package, starting from simple package for personal website to powerful dedicated server for a serious business.

If you are serious to build your online business, then the followings are criteria you need to consider :

• You can use Unlimited disk space.
• You can use Unlimited band-width.
• You can host Unlimited domain.
• You can host Unlimited email account.

Hosting package with above criteria may cost from $3 to $7 per month.

Among the many web-hosting providers I personally have been using ClearHost ( www.hostclear.com ) and JustHost with very good performance. NameCheap also provides web hosting services.

You may have noticed that many hosting package offerings include free domain-name. Do we still need to register a domain-name thru domain registrar ? I believe it is better to obtain a domain-name from a registrar. Later down the road you may not satisfied with the performance of the hosting services, and you can easily changed the hosting and move your website.

At this point I hope you have enough information about domain name and web hosting, it is time to take action.

Many of us feel that we are not technically skillful enough on how to make a website, because it needs a kind of programming task. Behind every web-page there are lines of code of HTML (HTML = Hyper Terminal Mark-up Language), a mark up languange that is understood by a web browser software. Those HTML codes could be static or dynamically generated by a server side scripting languange program like PHP.

The web browser software like Mozilla Firefox interprates the HTML code and displays the result as web page on your computer screen in accordance with the code.

If you don’t have any knowledge on HTML what should you do to build a website ?

It depends on your interest and your plan for the future. You could learn how to write HTML code, or your could use a website builder software, or you could pay someone to build the web-page for you.

• Learn HTML coding
  If you are interested, it is not difficult to learn HTML. HTML is not a programming language like computer programming in general sense. It is only a set of tags to format the presentation of what you want to display on the screen. In a short time you will be able to write simple HTML to build a simple web page. Of course you will need some more time to make it perfect.
• Use website builder software
  For those that are not interested to learn HTML, there are softwares that can be used to build a web-page. Some softwares are available for free, some are paid. With this kind of software you only need to interactively fill forms, and then you can generate the web-page HTML code. Web hosting company usually provide this kind software for free.
  If you do not have any idea yet, you may try My Free Website Builder, a powerful tool to build a website.
  Blogging software is in the category of website builder. If you open a blog account with Blogger or WordPress, you will be prompted with a number forms to fill, and in a snap your blog will be ready.
  
  Wordpress is more flexible. Beside opening a blog account hosted by WordPress, you can also download the WordPress software for free and install it on your own hosting account. It is now a very powerful and most widely used blogging platform on the globe. Thousands of WordPress themes have been developed and most are free, so you have many choices for your webpage design. There are more and more plug-ins developed to enhance the feature and capability of the website.
  
  Many internet marketers prefer WordPress for their websites, it is easy to set up, but powerful. It is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly, it already has RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feature, and there are widgets to manage the presentation layout.
• Outsource it
  The third possibility for you is outsourcing the website development. If you are not interested in technical work, or you don’t have time to spend, or you simply don’t like to do it, then there are many free lancers out there ready to handle your project. You can find them on www.elance.com or other source. This choice will need some money.

I am on a shoe string budget

If you have only limited fund and can not afford outsourcing, your wise choice is using a website builder software. There are instances where sophisticated design is not always the best solution. The content will be the more important factor in relaying your message to the website visitors.

So, if you technically don’t know how to make a website, don’t worry; there are alternative work-arounds. You can concentrate more on your marketing activities.

As an internet marketer (or to be marketer) this is one important question you need to think of "Why do I need a website ?". Of course you will need a website to do internet marketing properly ? It is important to have one, it is your virtual real  estate, it will show the existence of your business.

Can you do affiliate marketing w/o having your own website ?

Affiliate marketing is selling someone else product, and what you need to do is sending people to their sales page, they will do the selling.

Basically you can do affiliate marketing without having your own website.

You can put PPC (pay per click) ads like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, and directly send the click to the merchant's sales page. You can create a free page (called lense) on Squidoo website and put links to the sales page. You can submit an article (with link to sales page on the resource box) to article directories. You also can promote the merchant's sales page in the email with a link to the sales page and sent it to safe-list. Last but not least you can advertise the sales page on any sort of ads such as on Craigslist or media website, or personal blog.

Whenever someone visits any of those above pages or receives email, and clicks the link then he/she will be directed to merchant's sales page.

So, why do I need my own website ?

Well, direct linking to merchant’s website has a risk in case something happen there. They may discontinue the affiliate program and you suddenly lose your business without having any grasp on anything. If the link is placed on your own website you can change it to go to other similar affiliate product, so you have better control.

There is something missing in the direct linking scenario, i.e. pre-selling. You can write something on your landing page to pre-condition the visitor’s mind, so they are more ready to purchase the product when directed to the sales page.

An important aspect of a business is branding. You need to promote your name or your business name so the visitors are aware of who they are dealing with. If everything is the same people will buy from the one they know,  Even if everything is not the same they still will buy from the one they know. By having your own website you will automatically start branding your business right from the start. It will be easier to promote a product to someone that already aware of your name.

What about having a free website ?

There are a number ways you can obtain website for free, for example Geocities.com, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, etc. So, is it viable enough to build a business using these free website ?

You have to re-think this idea. There are limitations as to what you can get from a free website. They might impose a quota of  disk-space, or band-width that you can use. You may have to put their ads on your web page. You may not have access to more advanced coding like html, instead you are only given site builder facility that have limited capabilities.

Usually your url (web page address) will be in the form of sub-domain. Instead of using ‘www.yourname.com’ you will be using ‘yourname.blogger.com’ for instance. It looks less professional.

Knowing the limitations using a free website,  we strongly recommend that you build your own website with your domain name and host it on a reliable hosting company. Your business will appear more professional, and you will get a reliable  website performance to support your growing business volume.

I hope at this point you are now clearer as to why you need a website to seriously build your online business.

Enjoy !