I wrote an article some time ago called Create a Blog You Can be Proud Of that demonstrated how to create a blog from scratch all the way to having a blank WordPress theme. This article will take you from that standard theme to one that includes the plugins, pages and posts you should have to get your blog going.  Follow the steps and you will soon have a blog that you will really enjoy.

It Starts with the Kubrick Theme

Under the Meta heading click on Login

Enter in your Username and Password. Welcome to WordPress!

At the WordPress Dashboard click on Options

Change the Blog title. Change the Tagline.

Press Update Options and then press View Site

You should see your new Blog title and your new tagline. Under Meta press login to go back to the WordPress Dashboard. Press Options and Privacy. Change the visibility of the blog so that everyone including search engines can see your blog.

Press Update Options. On the WordPress Dashboard go to Options and Writing. Look at the bottom of the page where it says Update Services. Make sure that the ping is set to http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

Press Update Options. At the WordPress Dashboard go to Options and Permalinks. Select Custom and enter /%postname%/

Press Update Permalink Structure. At this time you need to change your WordPress Theme. For a detailed explanation of how to do this read 50 Things to Do to Start a Blog From Scratch - Part 2.

Now That Your Theme is in Place

Go to the WordPress Dashboard - Users - Your Profile. Change the display name from admin to your name.

Press Update Profile. You need to add some pages to your site. Start with an About Page. If you need help adding a page read my article called Using the WordPress Write Post and Write Page Editor.

Now is a good time to write your first Post. Delete the Hello World post that came with the Kubrick WordPress theme.

Write your first post by describing what your blog will be about. While you are writing add your first category. At the end of the post include some tags (keywords for your post). After you publish this post you can go back and copy the text and paste it into your About page. Get your plugins installed.

Installing Plugins

WordPress Database Backup - I am listing this one first because I think it is one of the most important plugins you will install. It will automatically backup your blog every day and send you the backup in an email. You should do this!

WordPress Automatic Upgrade - Another important plugin. This one automatically upgrades your WordPress whenever there is a new release!

Akismet - This one comes with WordPress but you need to activate it and get an API key. Akismet is a spam blocker. For more information on how to install this one read my article titled Installing the Akismet Plugin. This is a good one to start with. It will help you get the idea of how to install a plugin.

All in One SEO Pack - This plugin is important for gettting your blog optimized for search engines.

Brian’s Threaded Comments - This gives you threaded comments and a wandering comment form.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - This plugin does all the work for your Sitmap page. It is an HTML sitemap, which means that people can see it. IT is different than the XML sitemap that you will create for Google. If you have questions about installing plugins you can read the article I wrote about installing this plugin titled More Progress on the 50 Things to DO to Start a Blog from Scratch.

FeedBurner/FeedSmith - This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. For more information onsetting up FeedBurner read my article titled Making Progress on the Starting a Blog from Scratch List.

Google XML Sitemap - This one is for the search engines. People on your site will never see it. The instructions will help you upload it to the search engines when you have it installed.

NoWWW - This is really a matter of preference. Do you want your site to be http://www.whatever or just http://whatever? If you install this plugin you will get rid of the www. You get this plugin at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Sociable - Automatically add links to your posts to popular socail bookmarking sites. This plugin makes all links Nofollowed.

Related Posts - This one is good for SEO. It is a little tricky to install. Make sure you have a backup before you do it.

WP-Contact Form - This plugin is a drop in form for users to contact you. I go in to a lot of detail about installing this plugin in an article I wrote called 50 Things to Do to Start a Blog from Scratch - Part 3. If you read this article it will help you through the process of installing all kinds of plugins.

Add the Widgets

A good place to start is with the Text Widget you need for the Feedburner plugin. For more information read Making Progress on the Starting a Blog from Scratch List. Add a tag cloud widget. Tidy up your blogroll and your categories.

Finishing Touches

You should add a few more posts and a couple of categories. You should try and have at least five pages in place. Get Adsense set up. For information on getting your Adsense account working read Google Adsense. You may want to further monetize your site by setting up a Paypal Account to receive donations. Read How to Start Monetizing Your Blog. That should have your blog in a really good place. Now you need to focus on writing articles and promoting your blog!

To start writing posts you need to go the WordPress dashboard and then press the Write button and then the Write Post button.

In the Title area go ahead and type in a title for your post. For this exercise your title is not that important. In the future you need to make sure you use good titles for your posts so that people will read them. We will talk more about that in a later post. I typed in “Using the WordPress “Write Post and Write Page” Editor” as my title for this post.

Working with the Editor

Now that you have a title put the cursor in the text area. The WordPress editor works a lot like most word processing programs you might have used. Once you master a couple of basic skills you will be well on your way to writing comfortably. There are two ways to look at what you are typing. The Visual mode is the setting most like what you are probably used to using for word processing. The Code mode lets you see the actual code that is being generated as you type. As you learn to use the WordPress editor don’t be afraid to try things. Switch from one mode to another. Press the buttons on the toolbar to see what tools are available to you.

There is also a hidden toolbar that can be very helpful. Click on the last icon on the right side of the toolbar and you will get another toolbar.

Check out the options on this toolbar as well. I use the option on the left of this toolbar often. You can use it to make the headings in your post larger than the rest of your text. Check it out by pressing on the down arrow next to where it says Paragraph. You will get a drop down menu with a lot of options.

I have been using the Heading 2 option for my headings in the posts and I like the way it looks. I am going to put a new heading in here, check it out.

Saving, Previewing and Publishing

As you write the WordPress editor is automatically saving your draft. What you write is called a draft until you publish it. As you are writing you should routinely hit the Save and Continue Editing button.

Once you have hit the Save and Continue Editing button you will also have an option to Preview the post on your blog. This option will show up just above and to the right of the toolbar. By hitting Preview you can get a loook at your post before you Publish it. If you need to take a break from writing hit the Save button and you will be taken back to the WordPress dashboard. When you have completed your post hit the Publish button and you will see the post on your blog. Don’t worry if you need to make changes after you publish the post, you can go back and edit it at any time.

Write Pages

When you are adding pages you use the same editor to enter your information. Take some time to get familiar with the editor because you will be using it a lot.

Links

It is a good practice to link information in your posts to other posts that pertain to the same thing or to places on the internet. To make a link all you need to do is highlight the text where you want to put a link. For example, I will put a link in that will take readers to a post I wrote called Starting a Blog from Scratch. To insert the link I first highlight Starting a Blog from Scratch. (To highlight text, put the mouse cursor to the left of the text you want to highlight, then hold down the left button on the mouse, and with the button down move the cursor to the end of the text you want to highlight. Let go of the mouse button and you will see your text highlighted.)

With the text highlighted press on the icon in the toolbar that looks like a chain link.

When you press the link icon you get the following screen.

After the http:// in the Link URL type in your blog URL followed by the name of your post. If you changed the Permalinks like we discussed in a previous post you can just enter the title of your post with each of the words separated by a hyphen. To make my link I typed in mynewbieblog.com/Starting-a-Blog-from-Scratch/

Click on the insert button and you have a link. Go to Preview and check it out to see if it works. If it doesn’t work you may have typed in the URL wrong or missed or mistyped a letter. I am going to go back and insert another link in this post before I finish. I am going to make a link to the post I wrote about Permalinks. I also am going to add a few Tags down in the Tag area. I will add Permalinks, links, and pages to the tag area.

That’s it. Now I will go back and see if there are any mistakes in spelling or grammar. When I feel like the post is in good shape I press the Publish button and the post is then on the blog. I check it again for any errors and fix anything I see. Go ahead and take some time to practice with the WordPress editor until you feel comfortable with the way it works.