Work From Home

Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog - Part 2

For part 1 please visit Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog - Part 1

Part 2
Customising Your Blog

Once you have your work from home blog up and running you’ll see you have a fairly standard theme along with some default links etc. The first thing you’ll want to do is to log into your blog’s dashboard and have a little look around at all that’s there, for the most part it’s pretty self-explanatory and you’ll see that it’s easy enough to change your blog’s title and subheading (via the options tab) add or delete links (depending on the version of WordPress you’re using it may say either links or blogroll) and make any other standard changes.

Members of the NZPCS program will have received amongst their downloads a zip file of the theme we use along with some plugins that help when it comes to search engine optimisation (non members can find new themes and plugins via a quick search of the internet or Guide To Blogging - NZPCS members may also find it useful to search out other themes for when they’re ready to start their next blog)

You will also want to take the time to update your permalink structure (this is what defines the look of your blog post urls etc (eg your blogurl/post-title etc) Within the autoblog program it explains how and why along with giving you a custom structure to use) you will also want to update the standard ping list (this automatically pings the engines to let them know you have an update on your blog and again with in the NZPCS Seo pack you’ll find an extensive list to add)

The next thing you’re going to want to do is create your first post (you can either edit the default welcome post or delete that and start a new one from scratch) when it comes to search engine optimisation etc you’ll want to take note of things like using the correct keywords etc and you can find more information on that within this blog (eg: Finding the right keyword )

Once you have a few blog posts up and running you’ll want to join some affiliate programs to start monetising your blog(s) I have a list of some of what I use within the affiliate page - affiliate programs - NZPCS members will want to set up a page similar to this - substituting my urls for theirs.

You will also want to change the general look/layout of your page:

Changing Your Wordpress Theme

Once you have the basics set up and you decide to change your theme, you’ll want to find the one you want and upload it to your wordpress folder. When uploading any new theme you need to make sure you set it to the correct path - via your chosen ftp program - open your work-from-home subdomain, click on wp-content then wp-themes it is here you upload your new theme. Once done (if done correctly) when you open your dashboard and click on the presentation tab you’ll see your new theme, click on it and it is now set as your theme.

You upload plugins in much the same manner only this time you go to wp-content/plugins.

For NZPCS Members.

The theme we use is an older theme and therefore doesn’t have widgets etc. what this means is that to change our sidebar etc we need to do it manually (while this may seem like a scary process it’s actually not - and it’s a good idea to learn how to do it this way as it may help you troubleshoot any problems you may have down the track)

The first thing you’ll want to do (after signing up for and being approved by google adsense) is to change the footer.php and header.php file - as a side note - for non NZPCS members - there are many themes available to you that are adsense ready themes - you might want to take note of this as you’ll sometimes need to change the adsense set up on them as well

Open your footer.php file via your presentation tab/theme editor (I always suggest at this stage that you hilight all the information here and copy it onto a separate notepad page - just save that on your desktop in case you need it) you’ll see there’s a code for adsense there - you need to change that to put your publisher ID in - once you’ve pasted your own code in - save this file and do the same with the header.php (make sure if you’re pasting a new code in that you are using the right banner etc size otherwise it might affect the layout of your page)

You’ll also want to change your sidebar.php file to add other products/affiliates etc. Again save the original to your desktop (that way if a mistake is made you can just copy the original back in - or you can also just upload that file from the original zip file you received)

Decide where you want to put things in your sidebar - to make it simple - when you see the initial code on the sidebar.php edit page - you can simply paste in your chosen affiliate links/banner codes etc above the information already there. If you want it underneath the information already in your sidebar go to the bottom of the code already in place and paste it in there.

Some quick code you may need.

To add a line break type in < br >
to centre the banner etc < center > and < / center > to end (without the spaces)(take note of the spelling here too for those of us who like to use British English when it comes to spelling.)

That’s the basics of customising a Wordpress Blog - remember there’s plenty of helpful information to be found both by searching the internet or taking note of the NZPCS instruction guides and videos.

Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog Part 3